Leaves of the Palm

A Postscript to My Alzheimer's Column

2012-01-25T13:54:00.000-08:00

A Christian friend reminded me of a couple points I wish I had had room to make in my column "Alzheimer's: It's All in the Family." (The title to this post is a link to that column.)

There is a theory of the mind that I think is consistent with Christian theology, although it is admittedly closer to the Eastern view. This theory holds that the brain does not create consciousness; it receives it. It makes perfect sense to me that as the Alzheimer’s plaques form in the brain they progressively interfere with the reception of consciousness. However, I do wonder if, like a radio receiver with a loose connection or a misfiring diode (or whatever), sometimes, for brief intervals, reception returns to normal or close to it.

I say that because I remember how on my Aunt Jo’s 79^th birthday, when the disease was fairly far advanced, she seemed to be her old self for a few moments. When no one else was in the room, she stood looking at the cake and actually initiated a conversation with me. Addressing me by name, she said, “Can you believe it, I’m actually 79 today?” Sadly, it didn’t last. She didn’t say anything to anyone else for the rest of the evening.

I suppose one could also call this a moment of grace. I know that it is a common occurrence for terminally ill people to rally shortly before the end, almost as if they are given an opportunity to say their goodbyes.

In any event, what I witnessed on the evening of my aunt’s 79^th birthday may just have been one of those examples of how science and faith intertwine. --Ed

A New Twist on an Old Movie Theme

2012-01-22T13:54:00.000-08:00

My friend and former Vietnam sergeant, Bill Cook, was just commenting on the shortcomings of today's electric-car technology. He pointed out that I would be hard-pressed to drive the 100 miles from my home to Forks, Washington, in an electric car. As I admitted to Bill, even if I made it to Forks in an electric car, there would be no recharging stations--only vampires and werewolves, according to Stephenie Meyer of Twilight series fame.
But it occurs to me that this scenario would make for a good contemporary twist on a classic horror movie theme. I can see it now: It is a dark, stormy night, and an environmentally conscious young guy and his low-carbon-footprint, beautiful young girlfriend are motoring through Forks in their electric car when the battery gives out. They knock on the door of a spooky-looking old Victorian mansion hoping to find a place to plug in and recharge their car, and . . . .
Well, you know the rest, except that the vampire of the manor could be a global-warming denier. That and his thirst for blood would make for a powerful motivation and some damned good acting. --S/f, EFP
P.S. to Stephenie: I expect to be paid if you use my idea.

The Latest Newspeak

2012-01-21T13:21:00.000-08:00

I just heard Newt Gingrich brag that he is the only candidate who can defeat a "moderate." When did "moderation" become a bad thing? Do we really need an uncompromising ideologue as our president? The hard right has already redefined "liberal" and "progressive" as undesirable, subversive attitudes. Now Gingrich has added "moderate," and sadly, no one seems to be challenging him on that point.
George Orwell, where are you when we need you? --EFP

Emerging Middle Classes?

2012-01-19T10:05:00.000-08:00

What's wrong with this picture?
I am watching MSNBC coverage of President Obama addressing people at Disney World in Florida. He is touting his plan to ease visa restrictions so that the "emerging middle classes" in China and Brazil can more easily get to the U.S.A. to spend their money.
Whatever happened to the emerging American middle class? Over the weekend, I caught a snippet of an interview with two prominent political scientists who claim we have become essentially an oligarchy instead of a democracy. I believe they are on to something, especially if Obama's vision of rebuilding our economy includes having more people working in service industries, accommodating foreign tourists. See the Palm-Print above for a helpful hint toward thriving in this new economy. --EFP

Alzheimer's--It's All in the Family

2012-01-18T20:15:00.001-08:00

My latest column is on the web today and will be print tomorrow: Alzheimer's--It's All in the Family.
The photo is of my Aunt Jo, who figures prominently in my current column. I took this photo in 1982, when she was in the terminal stages of Alzheimer's. She is shown here with my son Daniel, whom she used to help care for when she was still in the early stages of the disease. (She loved to read to Daniel. Books such as "The Cat in the Hat" and "Go, Dog, Go!" never got old for her--an ironic benefit of the disease..) By the time I took this photo, she could no longer speak and didn't seem to recognize the rest of us. But, clearly, she still felt a connection to Daniel.
I'm pleased to report that the Alzheimer's Association of America did use this photo on their web site for a time. --EFP

The Latest Military Scandal

2012-01-13T11:41:00.000-08:00

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta was right to call the video of Marines urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan “utterly deplorable.” I agree. There are certain values we cannot let go of, even in extremis, and remain human. But I am not surprised that it happened. Anyone wondering why should perhaps turn back to my column of Nov. 10: Reality and Reflections on Veterans Day

The one factor in mitigation I would point to is the nature of the enemy today’s Marines are now facing.

I always felt that the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army didn’t hate us. It was just a war; it wasn’t personal. They didn’t despise everything we stood for. They didn’t behead American prisoners of war. They only wanted us and our influence out of their country.

To the Taliban and al-Qaeda, however, we’re “infidels.” Not just our presence, but our very existence threatens the theocratic paradise they envision. Our troops certainly feel and understand that, making this a much more bitter war than mine was. --EFP

Mixed Feelings About Veterans Courts

2011-12-28T09:51:00.000-08:00

Kitsap County's plan to institute a veterans court seems to have inspired a surprising amount of push-back.

Personally, I’m fully in favor of instituting a veterans court, but the principle of equal justice under the law would seem to be a difficult one to negotiate.

The law, of course, is all about precedent, and there is a precedent we can point to: drug court. Drug courts, as I understand them, are grounded in a twofold premise: (1) that drug addiction is an illness in need of intervention and treatment rather than incarceration and (2) that we don’t need to keep overcrowding our prisons with non-violent offenders.

Are veterans courts grounded in essentially the same presumption—that non-violent veteran offenders are likely to be suffering from some degree of PTSD in need of intervention and treatment rather than incarceration? If so, we should make that argument, pointing to the drug-court precedent.

As a Vietnam veteran myself, however, I do see a downside to pressing for veterans courts. I recall how Vietnam veterans were widely portrayed in the media as dangerously deranged. I would hate to think that our good intentions may contribute to stereotyping our current generation of veterans as walking time bombs, ready to explode at any minute, or even as unhinged and helpless. --EFP

Palm Beer

2011-12-26T10:25:00.000-08:00

I have found my brew! --EFP

The Latest Palm Leaves

2011-12-26T10:20:00.000-08:00

I've been remiss. Here are the links to my latest Kitsap sun columns:
Memories of Two Christmases Past
Diversity and Assimilation Are Not Mutually Exclusive
The World Is Too Much With Us

Mere Palm Loosed Again on Kitsap County

2011-11-12T14:26:00.000-08:00

I now write a column for the Kitsap Sun. My last column came out on November 10, the Marine Corps Birthday and the eve of Veterans Day. In honor of the occasion, I shared a couple war stories: Reality and Reflections on Veterans Day

President James Gaudino's $500K Retention Bonus

2011-10-18T14:21:00.000-07:00

I am thinking I need to take time out to travel to Ellensburg to catch Central Washington University's President James Gaudino's next water-walking demonstration.
Today's Seattle Times reports that CWU's Board of Trustees has approved a $500,000 retention bonus aimed at getting Gaudino to agree to stay at least five more years. This is on top of Gaudino's $290,000 annual salary. And it comes at a time when Washington's colleges and universities have already had to adjust to substantial cutbacks in funding with more on the horizon.
In this fiscal climate, it seems to me that Gaudino better be able to do something as spectacular as walking on water in order to justify that bonus. --EFP

Postscript to My Previous Post

2011-10-15T09:28:00.000-07:00

Regarding the necessity for political compromise, I suddenly remembered something I should have included in my previous post. A theme that runs throughout several of Shakespeare's plays is that a virtue misapplied or carried to extremes becomes a vice. Would that I could drag some of today's Tea Party types through the Shakespeare class I used to teach. --EFP

Beyond Compromise

2011-10-01T23:22:00.000-07:00

The other day, I heard a woman tell Rush Limbaugh that if Romney gets the Republican nomination she will not vote. Her complaint: Romney does not adhere strictly to conservative principles; he is too prone to compromise.
This woman was echoing a theme Limbaugh had been sounding all week--that there is no room for compromise with the "Democrat Party" and what Limbaugh sees as their socialist agenda.
I wonder if these people understand that there is a fine line between upholding conservative principles and being an ideologue. How many people have to be ruined so that the Tea Party types can put their conservative principles to the test? --EFP

Balancing the Budget on the Backs of the Military

2011-09-24T10:15:00.000-07:00

According to Tom Philpott's latest "Military Update" (published today in our local paper), the Obama administration's budget balancing plan includes annual TRICARE fees, substantial increases in pharmacy co-payments, and a civilianized military retirement system. Under the White House plan, according to Philpott, servicemen and women "are expected to share in the fiscal sacrifices to be asked of millions of Americans drawing federal entitlements."
Let me get this straight: following 9/11, our Armed Forces went to war while the rest of America was told to go shopping. No sacrifices were asked of the American public at large. Now, after ten years of fighting two wars, our small All-Volunteer Force is being told that "their benefits are just too generous and must be brought nearer to what civilians receive."
As a former enlisted Marine and a retired Marine officer, I would be okay with that as long as "millions of Americans" start sharing in the same sacrifices and hardships currently being endured by the less than one percent of our population currently shouldering the burden of national defense.
Yes, America reveres and supports its troops! Think of how Curly, of Three Stooges fame, used to pronounce "certainly," followed by "nyuk-nyuk-nyuk!" --EFP

My Take on American Exceptionalism

2011-09-23T11:09:00.000-07:00

American exceptionalism has been much in the news of late. All the presidential hopefuls lining up against Obama seem to want to reaffirm it, and not the least of their grievances is Obama’s apparent apparent reluctance to extol it.

The problem, as Obama Knows, is that there is a fine line between exceptionalism and chauvinism. America is distinctive for lacking a formal class structure, and Americans are generally more upwardly mobile than people in much of the rest of the world. But we are no longer the land of unlimited opportunity, and moving on up in America has always been largely a matter of chance and circumstance. We value rugged individualism and reward self-reliance—to the point of social Darwinism, some would argue. We were founded on the principle that “all men are created equal,” but people of color were excluded from that formulation at the time of our founding. We are still struggling with that legacy. The right to own private property has long been considered especially American—so much so that we tend to equate the fulfillment of that right with the “pursuit of happiness.” The American educational system, once second to none, can no longer claim even second place. On the world stage, we have long touted the right of self-determination, but the Vietnam and Iraq Wars called that commitment into question.

As a child of the fifties and sixties, I always thought that what truly put America on the path to exceptionalism was the so-called “Establishment” and “Free Exercise” clauses of the First Amendment to the Constitution. Acutely aware of the religious strife that had torn Europe apart for centuries, our founding fathers had the wisdom, as Jefferson himself termed it, to erect a “wall of separation between church and state.” To maintain otherwise is to do violence to the text: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

In the America I grew up in, these two provisions were generally understood to mean that religion should be a private and not a public affair. I remember when then-Senator John F. Kennedy, a Roman Catholic, was running for president. Some worried that he would allow the canons of the Church to trump all other considerations. He reassured the nation that he could compartmentalize his faith and act in the best interests of all Americans, not just Catholics.

Whatever his shortcomings, Obama seems capable of such compartmentalization. So many of his critics, by contrast, seem virtually pharisaical in their public professions of faith. Michelle Bachman, Sarah Palin, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum have all been pandering to the religious right for potential votes. Should one of them get elected, the debt for that support will come due. The last thing America needs right now is an evangelist in chief.

Despite what the religious right would have us believe, America, in its most fundamental sense, is not a Christian nation. Our founding fathers were sons of the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason. The prevailing religious sentiment of the time was deism. Deists put their faith in the “laws of nature” and believed in “Nature’s God,” not a personal God who intervenes in human affairs. They conceived of God as the “great clockmaker” who set up the universe to run according to rational laws and principles and who expects us to use our God-given reason in governing ourselves. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were products of this prevailing sentiment and not divine revelation.

Someone needs to remind our born-again politicians and their supporters that even Christ drew a distinction between the secular and the sacred, counseling his followers to “render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” Our founding fathers were wise enough to ground our republic in a consensus of humanistic values and ideals that owe as much to ancient Greece and Rome as to our Judeo-Christian heritage. America was founded as a secular humanistic nation. That was an inspired choice. It set us apart from European history, making America truly exceptional. --EFP

"Les Is More" Revisited: A DADT Story

2011-09-21T11:23:00.000-07:00

Today marking the official end of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, I thought I would dust off two essays I previously published on the issue. The title to this post is a link to one of the essays. I've copied the other one below. --EFP
....................................
"Les Is More: A Don't Ask, Don't Tell Story"

[The following appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on 17 Dec. 2007.]

"Lighten up on 'don't ask, don't tell"
EDWARD F. PALM
GUEST COLUMNIST

Call me "Les."

My real name is "Ed," but I was always Les to the commanding general of the 1st Marine Division when I was a major serving on his staff in the late '80s.
The recent news reports about 28 retired admirals and generals calling for an end to the "don't ask, don't tell" policy have led me to reflect on how I came to be Les. Personally, I think it is long past time for the Department of Defense to lighten up on this issue, as I learned to do in the 1st Marine Division.
The entire time I was on active duty as a Marine officer, there was only other officer named Palm, and he was always at least three ranks ahead of me. His name is Les Palm.
Now, the Marine Corps, compared with the other services, is a small place. Senior officers tend to know one another -- by reputation, if not personally. Les Palm enjoyed a superb reputation throughout the Corps. Ed Palm -- "not so much." This was mainly because of my own career choice. As an enlisted man, I had served in Vietnam as a rifleman and patrol leader with the Combined Action Program. But later in life, as an officer, I became an "adjutant," a professional administrator.
The general clearly had me confused with Les Palm. Whenever I would brief him, he would close the briefing with "Thank you, Les." Or, when I would encounter him in the hall or in the club, he would say "Hi, Les."
For the most part, I was content to be "Les." But one day I did ask the division adjutant, an ironic young captain, if he thought I should set the general straight.
"Hell no, sir!" my young friend replied. "Les Palm is a heterosexual -- an artillery officer. You're just an adjutant," he reminded me. "The confusion can only do you good!"
I retired -- still a major -- in 1993 and went on to an academic career. Les Palm would go on to become a lieutenant general. We never actually met. But my young friend was right; the confusion did do me a lot of good. It prompted me to think seriously about whether having gays serving openly would really be a detriment to good order and discipline.
Later, in interviewing for academic jobs, when people would ask me where I stood on the gay ban, I knew just what to say. I told them that I had seen far more boy-girl problems than problems caused by gay Marines.
I told them that, gay or straight, we have an obligation to keep our sex lives private and separate from our professional lives. And I told them that, should the Department of Defense change the policy and allow gays to serve openly, not only would we adjust but we would lead the way, just as the Armed Forces had done with racial integration in the '50s.
I still believe that. I also still wonder if anyone anywhere has ever confused Les Palm with Ed Palm the adjutant turned academic.

Dragonflies, Clear Creek Trail, Silverdale, WA (9-20-11)

2011-09-20T22:36:00.000-07:00

Dragonflies are nature's helicopters. They can hover, fly backwards, and pivot on their own axis. I love the challenge of trying to photograph them in flight. Click on each photo for a better view. --EFP

Deficit Be Damned--for Now at Least!

2011-09-18T10:45:00.000-07:00

Today's "This Week, with Christiane Amanpour" featured an interview with Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, one of the few large American companies still hiring. We keep hearing that businesses are sitting on large surpluses because they are afraid to hire. The right wing, of course, attributed that fear to strangling government regulation and the socialistic designs of the Obama administration. Schmidt doesn't see it that way. The problem is simply a matter of supply and demand. People are not buying. Hence, demand is down.
Businesses are not going to hire people to meet a non-existent demand for more goods and services. Schmidt recommends that the government put people back to work on infrastructure programs. That would stimulate the demand that businesses need to see before they will hire more people.
It makes sense to me. I don't see how the Republican/Tea Party solution of "getting government off the backs of businesses" could get our economy growing again. That alone will not create the additional demand for goods and services that would require businesses to hire more people.
The irony is that Schmidt is not the first business mogul I've heard advancing this solution. It would seem that conservative ideologues are quick to speak for the business community but not to listen to it. --EFP

The Superannuated All-Volunteer Force Revisited

2011-09-18T10:12:00.000-07:00

This morning, during the "In Memoriam" segment of ABC's This Week, I noted that a 40-year-old Army PFC was killed in Afghanistan. This is just wrong. I said as much back in 2005 on NPR. The title to this post is a link to that commentary. --EFP

The Mantra of the Far Right

2011-09-14T13:44:00.000-07:00

An opponent of a proposed veterans’ services levy here in Kitsap County has been quoted as saying this: "We do not need continued government support to do what we need to do in our lives. . . .What we need is for government to get the hell out of our way."

I’m getting really tired of hearing variations on the Reaganesque mantra that “government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem.” It was more rhetorical than real--just a clever sound bite--when Reagan first uttered it, and it is less than helpful today. To be sure, we need to root out fraud, waste, and abuse at all levels of government. But the fact remains that there are some needs that only government can meet. There are other needs that government has a moral obligation to meet. Given that we have relegated the burden of national defense to less than one percent of our population, the obligation is undeniable, and only government has the mechanisms to ensure a consistent, widespread approach to meeting the need. I support the levy.

And as for our country at large, clever sound bites—especially the mantras of ideologues—are not the solution to our problems. --EFP

Hijacking/"High-jacking" Peanuts

2011-09-05T12:42:00.000-07:00

I finally got a couple decent shots of blue jays hijacking (or should I say "high-jacking") peanuts from our squirrel feeder. Click on the photos for a better look. --EFP

Blackberry Season at Chez Palm

2011-09-04T16:24:00.000-07:00

Our blackberries are finally ripe, and just as he did last summer, "Phineas" is helping himself. Be sure to click on each photo for a better view. --EFP

The More Things Change . . .

2011-08-27T12:02:00.000-07:00

The August 29 issue of The New Yorker features an interesting article that makes Charles Dickens appear to have been prescient. In 1842, in the midst of a trip to America, Dickens recorded the following reactions:

This is not the Republic of my imagination. . . Look at the exhausted Treasury; the paralyzed government; the unworthy representatives of a free people; the desperate contests between the North and the South; the iron curb and brazen muzzle fastened upon every man who speaks his mind, even in that Republican Hall, to which Republican men are sent by a Republican people to speak Republican Truths—the stabbings, and shootings, and coarse and brutal threatenings exchanged between Senators and under the very Senate’s roof—the intrusion of the most pitiful, mean, malicious, creeping, crawling, sneaking party spirit into all transactions of life.

Except for the “desperate contests between the North and the South,” this could have been written about the American government today. Dickens truly found America to be “exceptional,” but not in the idealized sense that the Tea-Party-types and other neoconservatives are currently promoting.

I can relate. An America in which honest disagreements are characterized as treason and demagoguery has replaced reasoned discourse is not the “Republic of my imagination” either. --EFP

Red Dragonflies

2011-08-24T21:37:00.000-07:00

Phineas and I had a good day photographing red dragonflies on the Clear Creek Train in Silverdale, Washington. The only problem was that we both got muddy--really muddy! Be sure to click on the photos for a better view. --EFP

Palm on the Twenty-Year Military Retirement

2011-08-21T10:23:00.000-07:00

"Major Palm, whatever possessed you to . . .?"
I couldn't resist weighing in on the Defense Business Board's proposal to replace the military's longstanding twenty-year retirement option with a civilian-style 401-K-type plan that would require service-member contributions and which would not kick in until age 62 or 65. The title above is a link to a shorter version that appeared in today's (August 21) Kitsap Sun. --EFP

Recently, I have been reminded of an ugly exchange my stepmother “Betty”--an Air Force “dependent,” as we used to call a military family member—once had with a civilian wife. This woman was bitterly complaining about the rising cost of living. Betty tried to commisserate, but the woman was having none of it. “How would you know? “ she demanded. “You get everything for free!”

Something of that same spirit of jealous resentment, it seems to me, may just be animating the current closed-door discussions aimed at reforming the military’s longstanding system of early retirement. The fact of the matter is that military families never got “everything for free,” and they still don’t. They endure privations and sacrifices that are hardly offset by the option to retire at half pay after twenty years’ service.

The group responsible for the current initiative, the Defense Business Board, however, just may not be seeing it that way. Shades of Robert McNamara and his whiz-kids of the sixties, these are a group of civilian business executives who would put the Department of Defense on a more-business-like footing with a 401-K system of voluntary contributions and pension payments that would not start until age or 62 or 65.

At first glance, today’s all-volunteer force may seem to be very well paid indeed. Base pay is higher than it used to be, and a large part of the compensation package still consists of tax-free allowances for housing, uniforms, and food. Contrary to popular belief, these subsidies do not cover the total cost of such necessities, but the average military family would be hard-pressed to get along without them. The kicker is that, upon retirement, the allowances are lost. A twenty-year retiree merely gets 50 percent of his or her base pay, and that is taxable.

What we are hearing now, of course, is that the current system has simply become unaffordable, but the presumption that our Armed Forces enjoy unwarranted and undeserved benefits certainly predates our current economic crisis. The current mania for supporting the troops notwithstanding, the civil-military relation in America has always been a strained marriage of convenience. As essentially a socialized system that demands conformity, the military cuts across the grain of our cherished American mythos of rugged individualism, unbridled freedom, and limitless opportunity.

Personally, I suspect that many of the neo-conservatives who have been celebrating and promoting these same myths do not have nearly as much respect for the military as they profess. As people who have realized the American dream on their own terms, many of today’s Tea Party patriots probably join liberals and media elites alike in looking down on the military as a haven for those who lack the talent and the ambition to make it in America, most of whom they consider to be expendable.

Ironically, today’s neo-conservatives are the same people who like to remind us that “freedom isn’t free.” True enough. We have to continue to pay for it in many ways, the current twenty-year retirement included. It is an entitlement in the literal sense of the word—something that a twenty-year veteran has earned and is indeed entitled to. --EFP

Remembering Chuck Armstrong

2011-08-18T18:46:00.000-07:00

“Captain Palm, whatever possessed you to compare being a Marine officer to being an unemployed Ph.D. driving a cab?”

That was the unlikely start of what turned out to be one of the most enduring and supportive friendships of my life—my friendship with Charles (“Chuck”) Armstrong, who passed away on Sunday, August 14, after a short but valiant struggle with brain cancer.

It was early in March, 1985, when then Major Armstrong, USMC, had occasion to pose that decidedly unmusical question. I was serving at the time as the Marine Officer Instructor with the Naval ROTC unit at the University of California Berkeley, and an arsonist had burned down our building over the President’s Day weekend in February. The following week, as we were waiting for the police to allow us into the ruins to reclaim what we could, a passerby—a very young, cherubic-looking woman—exclaimed, “I’m glad it burned!”

Later that same day, in the heat of the moment (pardon the pun), I penned an op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle entitled “Book Burning at Berkeley.” I pointed out that the building had housed an extensive library of naval literature and lore, including the personal papers of Berkeley’s first professor of naval science, Admiral Chester Nimitz. But my main theme was how little that young women, and so many students like her, knew about the military profession and those of us who had chosen to pursue it. My op-ed was generally well-received among the closet conservatives in the Bay Area, and it would have been applauded by my fellow officers and military authorities alike had I been just a bit more guarded about my own mixed motives. “All things considered,” I had written, “I would rather be a Marine officer than another under-employed Ph.D. driving a taxi.”

Someone in the Bay Area (I think I know whom), complained to Headquarters Marine Corps, and I found myself accused of not displaying the proper enthusiasm for my Marine Corps career. While I was nominally under the control of the professor of Naval Science at Berkekey, a Navy captain, Chuck was the Corps’ program sponsor and my real boss. The head of Manpower, Lieutenant General William Maloney, had tasked Chuck with investigating the complaint. I still remember how Chuck closed that initial phone call: “I wonder, Ed, if you appreciate how serious this is.”

Chuck, I later learned, had recommended that I merely be reprimanded, but General Maloney was having none of it. He was quoted as saying he wanted “a high and tight at Berkeley.” I was to be “short-toured”—transferred to Camp Pendleton after only one year of what was to have been a three-year tour of duty.

My wife and I resolved not to go quietly. To make a long story short, with the support of the editor of the Chronicle, we threatened to go public with my plight. Much to our surprise, it worked. I received a call from Headquarters Marine Corps telling me, in effect, that it had all been a mistake and that I was not going to be short-toured at Berkeley. Still, I was not surprised when the promotion list to major came out that spring and I was not on it.

(A word about the significance of that promotion is in order. It is the make-or-break promotion, the tenure point. Only by making major can an officer stay for 20 years and qualify for a pension.)

With nothing to lose, I appealed to the Board for Correction of Naval Records, arguing that I had been passed over as the result of my refusal to go quietly. The Board must have agreed. My passover was set aside, and I was promoted to major in July of 1986.

What I will always remember, though, is how I found out that I had made major after all.

Chuck called me. He seemed almost as happy about it as I was. Unfortunately, his call came at a particularly awkward time. Andrea told him to hold on, that she had to get me out of the shower. Chuck, putting two-and-two together about my being in the shower in the middle of the day, seemed to get the biggest kick out of that phone call. It was a good day all the way around.

I understand now why so many Marines took such offense at what I had written. The profession others had embraced as a calling and a special trust, I had dismissed as a mere job—worse yet, a job of last resort. I also understand what it says about Chuck that he would still befriend me. The military in general is rife with people I like to call military spiritualists. These are generally humorless people who take themselves far too seriously and who believe that the military profession demands a uniformity of attitudes, values, and aspirations. Chuck, I came to realize, was the real thing: a true military professional with an enlightened and well-informed commitment to his profession. He was also a student of history who believed that what set the Marine Corps apart was its willingness to capitalize on the talents of some decidedly eccentric characters, a few of whom loom large in the popular legend and lore of the Corps. The Marine Corps is indeed a unique fraternity. But to Chuck it was also a big tent, with a place for a frustrated, would-be professor of literature like me.

My problem is that I never could leave well enough alone. Despite having nearly lost my Marine Corps career over intemperate, and possibly disloyal, public statements, I had to have the last word. I went on to publish “Winning Hearts and Minds at Berkeley” in our professional journal, The Marine Corps Gazette.

In this piece, while I led off with the tragic loss of Berkeley’s ROTC building, I took a much more balanced approach to the problems of officer accession on the liberal college campus. Unfortunately, not all the Gazette’s readers saw it in that light. I had been heretic enough to argue for deemphasizing uniforms and close order drill and for emphasizing academics. Predictably, that piece earned me the disapproval, and even the ire, of many of my fellow officers—but not Chuck’s.

I’m sure that Chuck didn’t agree with all my assertions in "Winning Hearts and Minds at Berkeley," but he very much approved of the effort. He encouraged me to keep writing for Marine Corps Gazette. He felt it was vitally important to have a professional forum for the frank and open exchange of views. He went on to tell me that the Gazette had not always filled that bill, but that it now had a new enlightened editor in Colonel John Greenwood who was determined to bring in new voices and provocative ideas. That was the beginning of a long and fruitful association with Colonel Greenwood. I became a regular contributor to the Gazette, doggedly promoting the liberal arts in general and literature in particular as essential components of a professional military education.

In becoming a regular contributor, I was following Chuck’s lead. Truth be told, Chuck was always a better writer than I am. He had the gift of graceful, succinct expression. His pieces were always well-informed and authoritative, but he also had the knack of keeping it light and lively, with just the right balance of serious commentary with colorful colloquial expression and humor. But what really made the difference was Chuck’s credibility as a warrior. He wrote with firsthand authority about the central business of the Corps, and he had the liberal education to be able to establish that authority within the geo-political context in which the Corps must operate. I am sure that many a reader must have disagreed with Chuck over the years, but I never saw him savaged in angry letters to the editor. Everyone respected him.

Chuck, in short, was the closest thing to an actual renaissance man that I have ever known. In addition to being a legitimate warrior and a gifted writer and speaker, he was a world-class athlete. When the Marine Corps began to emphasize physical fitness and weight control in the mid-seventies, Chuck made it his business to lead the way. He went on to set a world record for the greatest number of pull-ups performed in a single day.

It was the late, great balladeer Harry Chapin who, in one of his songs, observes that “it’s sometimes better not to touch your dreams.” For better or worse, I began to touch mine in 1990. With the help of a couple of sympathetic colonels, I managed to get assigned to teach English at the U.S. Naval Academy. This was to be my twilight tour. I had wanted it, and I embraced it, as my halfway house back to civilian academia. It worked, after a fashion. I retired from the Naval Academy in 1993 and went on to a job as the chair of the English Department at Glenville State College, in West Virginia. Still, that Naval Academy experience left a bad taste in my mouth. Ironically, I now look back on my time at Berkeley as the best three years I spent as a Marine officer and my time at Annapolis as the worst. My reasons for feeling that way are complicated, and I went on to air them in opinion piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

To say that that piece was not well-received among my former English Department colleagues and academy alums would be an understatement. Even retired Lieutenant General John Sheehan, then head of the academy’s alumni association, sent me a personal letter denouncing me and my piece as an embarrassment. But Chuck and Colonel Greenwood, himself a Naval Academy alum, stood by me, and I stand by my views. Recently, in fact, I expanded and refined that Chronicle piece into the lead chapter of a book on the intersections of military and academic culture.

One thing that always bothered me was my apparent inability to validate the faith that Chuck always seemed to have in me. There were several reasons why I wanted to move on from that small college in West Virginia. Not the least of those reasons was the thought that Chuck, who never lacked for self-confidence, believed me to be capable of doing much better. He and Colonel Greenwood both encouraged me to apply to schools such as VMI, where my unusual blend of military and academic experiences might finally be fully appreciated. I tried that route early on, but my deliverance from West Virginia finally came in 2001 in the form a deanship at Maryville University of St. Louis.

It was, frankly, a job I never should have taken. Maryville at the time was a house bitterly divided between an administration intent on reorienting the university toward professional programs and a faculty unwilling to let go of their traditional commitment to the liberal arts. I ended up siding with the faculty, a fatal mistake for a dean who served at the will and pleasure of the president.

I lost that job after three years, and I credit Chuck with playing a major role in pulling me out of the doldrums and restoring my self-confidence. Chuck insisted that I could pursue any number of new opportunities because the Marine Corps had instilled in me an ability the average academic couldn’t match—the ability to get people to do what I wanted them to do. I walked away from Maryville with a reasonable settlement, and within a year, I had another dean appointment at a college in a place where my wife and I had always wanted to live.

One thing I especially appreciated, and will always remember, about Chuck was his sense of humor. When my “Winning Hearts and Minds at Berkeley” came out, Chuck told me he had a theory about who the arsonist was who had claimed our building. According to Chuck, I did it—in order to get bylines and to pad my writing résumé.

On this particular occasion, I felt it incumbent on me to apologize for a mistake I had made in “Winning Hearts and Minds at Berkeley.” In one unfortunate sentence, I had mentioned the “charges that have been levied against the military profession” when I meant “leveled against,” and the editor didn’t catch the mistake. Chuck generously brushed my apology aside, assuring me he had not noticed it because he was just the simple sort of guy who used to “drive his Chevy to the levee.”

And then there was the time I made the mistake of telling Chuck about how I had chided my mother-in-law over her ongoing battle with feral cats that kept using her flower beds as their litter boxes. For Christmas, I gave her “Earl the Dead Cat”—a stuffed animal in the form of a cat, complete with a flattened mid-section, tire-tread marks, and felt Xs for eyes. Chuck insisted on helping me go one better. He sent me a perfectly mummified cat that he and his father had found between the walls of an old house they had torn down in Paris, Texas. Chuck said that it just went to show that, if you keep something long enough, you’ll find a use for it. In honor of Chuck, I did try to give it to my mother-in-law, but ingrate that she is, she declined. Chuck’s mummified cat now resides in a display case in the Science Department of Glenville State College.

I would like to think that on one occasion I somewhat repaid Chuck for his unwavering faith in me. I don’t remember how it came about, but I do remember his confiding in me regarding the one reservation he had about taking a tour of duty with the State Department in Central America. He first had to go through an intensive course in Spanish, and he was concerned about whether he really could become fluent in Spanish—or at least he professed to be concerned. I reassured him that he could do it. By that point, I was certain that Chuck Armstrong could do anything he set out to do.

Along the same lines, I would like to believe that Chuck was legitimately proud of me when “Tiger Papa Three,” my memoir of my Combined Action service in Vietnam, won the Heinl Award in 1989 for the best contribution to Marine Corps history published during the previous year. He was certainly generous in his praise of the piece.

It came as quite a surprise to me—and to a lot of other people, I’m sure—when Chuck announced that he was going to retire from the Marine Corps in 1991 at the rank of lieutenant colonel. I’m sure he could have gone to full colonel, and probably beyond. To fall back on a much-abused phrase, he had the “right stuff.” But he said his priorities had changed now that he was a father. I don’t doubt that he was sincere about that. But I also suspect that his State Department tour had opened other doors for him. Given the timing of Chuck’s Marine Corps retirement and his subsequent trips to and consulting about the Middle East, I’ve long wondered if Chuck actually ended his career with the CIA. If so, I’m sure that it was not ambition or opportunism that motivated his move, but rather the opportunity to do more good than he could as a Marine officer.

During our time in Southern California, my wife Andrea and I got to know Chuck’s wonderful wife Marlys. We met his son Jason shortly after he was born, and we have followed his progress in the annual Armstrong Christmas letters (ostensibly penned by “Ringo” the family dog). Clearly, Chuck and Jason had a marvelous relationship. Chuck took great pride in Jason’s accomplishments, and I know that Jason will continue to make his father proud, wherever he is.

From the Marine Corps’ perspective at least, I spent too much of my wayward youth studying war literature and not enough studying war. But one of the things I learned is that certain peak experiences in life are ineffable—beyond the power of mere words “to add or detract.” Chuck’s untimely death is certainly one of them. But I was moved by the heartfelt epitaph that his good friend Turk McCleskey wrote on the day of Chuck’s death:

If courage could have saved him, his courage alone would have sufficed. If tears could have preserved his life, mine alone would have floated his boat back to this side of the river and made him a centenarian. I never expected to outlive him, and I miss him tremendously.

Speaking of courage, according to Marlys, one of the last things Chuck said was “no man had a better life.” I believe it. It’s just that all of us who knew and admired him wish there had been more of it.

--Ed Palm

Bremerton, WA

August 18, 2011

On the Nisqually Glacier Trail

2011-08-03T12:38:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, August 2, I decided to brave the snow-packed trail and to follow a guide to the Nisqually Glacier overlook on Mt. Rainier. Normally, this trail would be clear by now, but Mt. Rainier saw record snowfalls last winter. I am especially pleased to have caught a lenticular cloud forming over the mountain. Click on each photo for a better view. --EFP

A Forks Eagle

2011-07-19T22:11:00.000-07:00

I found this eagle in a tree just outside Forks, Washington. I wish the light had been better, but we're not having summer this year in Western Washington. Given what people are enduring in the East and the Midwest, I know I should be grateful. Still, it would be nice to have some sunlight and temperatures in the seventies at least. --EFP

The Ancient Mariner

2011-07-09T19:38:00.000-07:00

I spent a pleasant morning kayaking in Dye's Inlet. --EFP

Today at the Dog Park

2011-07-08T13:03:00.000-07:00

Phineas found friends today at the dog park--as usual. --EFP

The Lieutenant Dan Band Here in Bremerton

2011-07-06T14:11:00.000-07:00

Gary Sinise's Lieutenant Dan Band gave a two-hour free concert on the Naval Base here in Bremerton yesterday. Sinise and his group did a fantastic job. A good time was had by all. Click on the photos for a better view. --EFP

The Annals of the Rod and God Club: The Rosary Society

2011-07-05T10:18:00.000-07:00

My recent visit to my old friend Fred Zdeb inspired me to recycle this piece, which originally appeared in the now defunct online magazine Word Catalyst (JAN. 2010). The photo is of Fred and Mary Body, Director of Parish Services at Holy Spirit parish in New Castle, Delaware. Fred and I were members of the first graduating class at Holy Spirit Elementary School (which closed six years ago). We took a sentimental journey back there on Saturday, June 25. Ms. Body was kind enough to open up the school and to show us around. As shown here, Fred is still his old charming self--a trait that features prominently in this essay. --EFP

I confess it: I was never a good Catholic. When I was growing up, my idea of the mystery of the Trinity was how South Philadelphia could ever have produced the likes of Frankie Avalon, Fabian, and Bobby Rydell. But the fact of the matter is you just can’t beat the comic relief of a Catholic school education.

The all-male Catholic high school I went to, the Salesianum School for Boys, was widely known and respected throughout northern Delaware for three things: a no-holds barred approach to discipline, a winning football team, and its Saturday night dances. Public- and private-school kids of all creeds used to flock to those dances. (I would say of all races and colors too, except that I would be lying. Delaware was still largely segregated in those days.) “Sallie’s” dances were especially popular among the girls of Ursuline and Padua Academies, the principal all-girls Catholic school in the area. Like us, after a long week of being harangued about the dangers of entertaining impure thoughts, they were eager to engage in some coeducational imitations of immorality.

I say “imitations” because Billy Joel’s lyric is only half right: It wasn’t just the Catholic girls who started “much too late” in those days. It was still an age of “nice girls” and “tramps” (and for all the hype, the tramps seemed to be in short supply). This was before the pill was widely available, abortions were illegal, and the social stigma of unwed pregnancy helped to keep us in check. Girls didn’t just give it away. You had to lay siege to it. But that made it all the more special when the walls finally came tumbling down. Frankly, I don’t know whether to envy or feel sorry for today’s kids, so many of whom are already jaded by the age of 16.

Sadly, a good friend and classmate of mine, Fred Zdeb, was barred from the dances. His was the good fortune or misfortune—depending on your point of view—of having devoutly Catholic parents intent on keeping Fred from the “occasions of sin.” As I understood it, they had already had one child go wrong, Fred’s older sister—a “sadder but wiser girl” who had gotten pregnant out of wedlock at age 14. Fred’s parents were bound and determined that Fred would not bring further disgrace to the family. Hence, he was forbidden to attend the dances.

Compared to the rest of our gang, Fred had been sheltered, and he could seem painfully naïve and irredeemably square. I remember that, when we first met, Fred was seriously trying to be a good Catholic. One of his heroes was St. Ignatius. I suppose I bear much of the responsibility for corrupting or liberating him—again depending on your point of view.

Fred’s most notable characteristic was a nearly constant smile and an irrepressibly cheerful tone of voice. Nothing seemed to get him down. He was also tall and a bit gangly in those days. Among guys at least, all this made for an unfortunate first impression. In talking to and interacting with Fred, you couldn’t help but think of probably the most popular cartoon character in those days, Bullwinkle J. Moose, of “Rocky and His Friends.” Underneath that seemingly slow and unassuming exterior, however, lay an unusually imaginative and resourceful mind perceptive enough to exploit his parents’ one blind spot—their devotion to the Church.

A word about Fred’s parents may be in order: Fred’s father was an imposing figure. A former seminarian, he had enlisted in the Marine Corps at the outbreak of World War II and saw combat in the Pacific. Fred maintained that his father had risen to the rank of sergeant major before the end of the war. I could believe it. There was an intensity about him. He never said a cross word to or in front of me, but I could tell that he was clearly not a man to be trifled with. His one interest in life seemed to be the life of his parish. Church suppers, bazaars, bingo, whatever—he was always there, helping.

Fred’s mother always impressed me as kind and gentle and much more affable than her husband. But she too was committed to the church. This was an age when other Catholics were beginning to question Papal authority and to think for themselves. But not Fred’s parents. They were not ones to half-step; they really tried to live their faith.

As for Fred—not so much, at least not once he fell in with bad company.

The truth of the matter is that I always underestimated Fred. Bound and determined to court and enjoy the occasions of sin, Fred told his parents that he had joined the Rosary Society, a club whose mission it was to repair old Rosaries to send to the missions. (The missions can’t ever get enough Rosaries, I suppose.) Fred further told his parents that the Rosary Society was meant to be a devotional alternative to the dances and that it met at the same time—from 8:00 to 11:00 p.m. on Saturday nights. While the dances were being held in the gym, this mythical Rosary Society allegedly met in a classroom at the other end of the school building.

Fred’s parents were so pleased with this turn of events that they wouldn’t hear of letting Fred take the bus to Rosary Society meetings. His father insisted on driving him. He would drop Fred off at the rectory end of the building at 8:00 and pick him up there promptly at 11:00. Fred, of course, would wait until his father had driven safely off and then walk through the school to the gym.

One of the circumstances that worked greatly to Fred’s advantage was that we were supposedly emulating St. Francis de Sales, the “gentleman saint.” We were all expected to be “Sallies gentlemen,” externally as well as internally. We were required to wear coats and ties, not just for school but for all school events and activities, football games and dances included. Hence, Fred was turned out for dancing as well as for repairing Rosaries on school grounds.

It also helped that Fred was tall (6’3” or 6’4”) and slim with blond hair and blue eyes. He was Sallies’ answer to Troy Donahue, yet he was unassuming and supremely unselfconscious. To say he was well-received at the dances would be an understatement.

One of the great themes of Elizabethan tragedy is that evil inevitably overreaches. Fred got away with his subterfuge for fully three months. But even Shakespeare’s Iago couldn’t think of everything. The one thing Fred didn’t count on, and couldn’t control, was his increasing popularity.

In Fred’s defense, I should remind readers that these were still the days in which nice girls didn’t call boys. They were supposed to wait for boys to call them (although it was permissible for a girl to get a friend to let a boy know that she was interested and would welcome a call). Apparently so smitten that she threw over the rules, one of Fred’s dance partners just had to know if Fred would be at the dance on Saturday, so she called him—at home. (Teenagers having their own cell phones would have been inconceivable to us in that time and place.) The problem was that Fred wasn’t home at the time, and his father answered.

The actual pleasantries that passed between this young lady and Mr. Zdeb are lost to posterity. But as Fred would later learn, much to his chagrin, this girl asked if Fred would be at the dance that Saturday night.

Mr. Zdeb worked as an accountant for DuPont, but he must have had the mind of a lawyer. He knew that direct evidence was superior to circumstantial. He said nothing to Fred about the call. He told only his wife, who initially refused to believe that her good Catholic son would dissemble about a matter of faith and morals. She agreed to set a trap that would either clear or convict Fred.

Come Saturday night, Fred thought nothing of it when his mother decided to ride along with his father in taking him to his Rosary Society meeting. They dropped Fred off as if nothing were wrong. But, instead of heading home, they drove around the corner and waited 15 minutes before heading back the building.

Again, as Fred would later learn, his mother went in first. She was intent on finding the Rosary Society meeting and vindicating her son. After a few minutes of wandering around the deserted halls—with rock and roll music echoing through them from the gym, no doubt—she encountered a priest and asked where the Rosary Society was meeting. This priest must have been perplexed at first, but he reassured Mrs. Zdeb that there was no such meeting that night, nor was there any such society affiliated with Salesianum.

What came next deserves to live on in the annals of adolescent embarrassment. There is a memorable scene in the 1967 John Boorman film Point Blank in which a determined and menacing-looking Lee Marvin (himself a former Marine) walks toward the camera along a seemingly endless corridor, his leather heels clicking rhythmically. His body language and expression both seem to be saying, “I dare anyone to try to stop me.” I like to imagine that Mr. Zdeb looked like that in striding into and through the gym on a mission to find his son.

Picture it: there is Fred, in the zone, slow-dancing and oblivious to everything but the young woman with her head, and forbidden parts of her body, pressed against his chest, even her hips occasionally touching his, when he feels a tap on his shoulder. Expecting it to be one of us, just one of his friends, wanting to cut in, Fred turns around, only to find his father standing there and staring at him.

Rather than try to make himself heard over the din of the music, with the same finger he had used to tap Fred on the shoulder, Mr. Zdeb gestured to follow him, and out they went, with Fred getting some inkling of what it must feel like to walk that fabled “last mile.”

The problem, as I now see it, is that Fred was living under the authority of people with no sense of irony, much less an appreciation for imagination and resourcefulness. We didn’t see much of Fred outside of school after that—not for a long time. But Fred won out in the end. He finished that academic year with two Fs, which meant that he couldn’t continue at Salesianum. He transferred to the local public high school, where I have to believe the girls didn’t start quite so late.

There are a million stories associated with the Rod and God Club of my day. This has been one of them. --EFP

The Seabeck Eagles 2011

2011-07-04T18:11:00.000-07:00

Between finishing my classes and my trip back East, I missed the peak eagle period at Seabeck this year. I finally got to Seabeck today. I did get a few good shots, but nothing to compare to previous years--the best of which I have posted first. Click on each image for a better view. --EFP

The New York Sewers

2011-07-04T17:53:00.000-07:00

There are indeed alligators in the New York sewers. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. I found this one in Brooklyn, near the bridge, while visiting my friend Gary. Click on the photo for a better view. --EFP

Laurelhurst Studio Dancers Annual Dance Concert

2011-06-12T21:54:00.000-07:00

We took in the annual dance concert of the Laurelhurst Studio Dancers Saturday night in Portland. Cassie Allen, the daughter of our good friends in Portland, was one of the performer. It was a good occasion for a little available light photography with my Olympus EP-1 with a Lumix 45-200 mm lens. Click on the photos for a better view. --EFP

Our Crow

2011-06-10T21:11:00.000-07:00

A crow has joined our little backyard menagerie this spring. He comes every day for the peanuts I have been putting out for the squirrels and blue jays. Today, he was feasting on some old bread I put out. --EFP

A Blast from the Past--Canoe After Shave

2011-06-03T22:42:00.000-07:00

I recently realized that I have had this bottle of Canoe after shave since 1962 or 1963. It was the most popular brand when I was in high school. Girls professed to like Canoe, and guys wanted to believe it was an aphrodisiac, guaranteed to make girls swoon and capitulate. Sad to say, but it never lived up to that promise for me.
I moved up and out of my mother's house in 1965, and I had enough sense to know that after shave would not be needed at Parris Island. I forgot all about this bottle of Canoe until after my mother died in 1978. It was still in her medicine cabinet, and I have been toting it around ever since. My antique bottle of Canoe still has that nice fruity scent that I remember--perhaps a little too fruity for me at this stage of my life. But it does bring back memories of the days when "the world was all before" me. --EFP

Allergy Season

2011-05-30T15:29:00.000-07:00

Our most pervasive, invasive weed, Scotch Broom, is in full bloom. It is not a good time of the year for allergy sufferers. --EFP

The Unforgotten: Run to Tahoma, May 28, 2011

2011-05-29T10:39:00.000-07:00

Kitsap County, yesterday, held a ceremony and organized a motorcycle run to transfer the unclaimed remains of seven veterans from the Coroner's Office to the Tahoma National Cemetery in Covington, Washington. I was the county's volunteer photographer for the occasion. The title to this post is a link to the entire album. S/f, Ed

The Bremerton Armed Forces Day Parade

2011-05-22T22:54:00.000-07:00

The Bremerton Armed Forces Day Parade is billed as being the oldest and largest one in the country. I don't know if that is really true, but Andrea and I thought we should take it in at least once. Just our bad luck, though: it rained (and never got above 55 degrees) throughout the two-hour parade.
The parade marshal was Major General Richard Mills, USMC.
Click one each of the photos for a better view. --EFP

Phineas at Seabeck

2011-05-19T21:16:00.000-07:00

Phineas and I went to Seabeck today, in search of the eagles that pass through here in early May. We saw only two juvenile eagles, and I didn’t get a good shot of them. But I did get this one of Phinny, so the trip was worthwhile. S/f, Ed

Charm School Graduates

2011-05-19T16:23:00.000-07:00

This is a proud day for Andrea and me. See below. We are now certifiably well-mannered—in “basic manners” at least. Andrea will surely insist on framing and hanging this certificate next to my Ph.D. diploma.

Seriously, it was our dog “Phineas” who passed the course. I can’t believe that the Humane Society didn’t put our dog’s name on the diploma. S/f, Ed

The Church's Sex Abuse Scandal Revisited

2011-05-19T09:04:00.000-07:00

Four years ago, the Seattle Times was kind enough to give me some space to comment on the Catholic Church's sex abuse scandal of recent years: "Danger Signs on the Early Path to Priesthood"
Now, just the other day, the prestigious John Jay College of Criminal Justice released its five-year study of the scandal, largely blaming the tenor of times for leading priests astray. Stuff and nonsense, I say!
As I wrote four years ago, I have to believe that the Church’s high-school seminary system played a major role in the scandal. Having attended a Catholic grade-school myself, I can personally attest to how throughout the eighth-grade we were periodically made to meditate on the topic of whether we had vocations. Under that sort of pressure, many a thirteen-year-old boy may have misinterpreted his indifference to girls as the sign of a vocation, only to experience a different sexual awakening in a conveniently cloistered same-sex setting. I would bet that the majority of the priests who preyed upon young boys were products of the high-school seminaries.
No one seems to be looking into this angle. Someone should.
That high-school seminary system now is largely defunct. But the Church has yet to admit that it was a mistake. Perhaps when it does, it will be able to move on.
A poet I otherwise loathe, Robert Browning, in his poem "Fra Lippo Lippi," put it best: "You should not take a fellow eight years old/ And make his swear never to kiss the girls." The age, of course, is different, but the principle remains the same.--EFP

The Palm Yacht

2011-05-07T13:12:00.000-07:00

Here is the newly acquired Palm Yacht--still in dry dock at the moment. Our weather is still quite blustery, but I am hoping to take my new vessel out on sea trials soon. Be sure to click on the photo to get the full impact. --EFP

Tiptoeing through the Tulips Again This Year

2011-05-03T22:22:00.000-07:00

The tulips were in full bloom last Sunday in the Skagit Valley. I took these photos at RoozenGarde, the public garden of one of the largest growers in the valley. The man in the khaki shirt is one of the Roozen brothers. The four young people are indicative of the 60-degrees-shirts-and-shoes-off mentality of the Pacific Northwest. Click on the photos for a better view. --EFP

A Wide Load

2011-05-03T22:01:00.000-07:00

This little Oregon Junco is building a nest under the eaves at the back of our house. --EFP

Delaware Dissing Bin Laden

2011-05-03T10:21:00.000-07:00

In view of Sunday night's big news, I can’t resist sharing this Palm-Print, which I took on January 1, 2002, at the annual Hummers’ Day Parade in Middletown, Delaware. The Hummers’ Parade is a parody of the Mummers’ Parade, held annually on New Year’s Day in Philadelphia. The folks in Middletown can’t resist having a little fun at the expense of Philadelphia, under whose hegemony the northern half of Delaware lives.

House Fire

2011-04-16T00:25:00.000-07:00

It was not a quiet day here in Silverdale, Washington, my adopted hometown here in the Northwest. A house on our street caught fire. It started in a carport and spread to the garage and roof before the fire department got it out. The cause is "under investigation." One of these photos is up on the Kitsap Sun's Web site. (Click on the photos for a better view.) We'll see if they use it in the print edition. --EFP

A Blast from the Past

2011-04-04T21:17:00.000-07:00

"Sarge" and friends, Vietnam, 1967

Confession being good for the soul, I will admit a special connection to one of the pop tunes of my wayward youth. Every time I hear the Four Tops rendition of "Just Walk Away Renee" I find myself flashing back to the last half of 1967 and to "Papa Three," the Combined Action Platoon I served with in Vietnam.

The sergeant in charge of our platoon--Bill Cooke, or "Sarge" for short--joined Papa Three after a 30-day leave back home, his reward for extending his Vietnam tour of duty by six months. One of the things he brought back from "The World," as we called it then, was a small battery operated tape recorder. Along with the recorder he brought some tapes of "the latest sounds."

I suppose that my memories of that tape recorder remain vivid for two reasons:

First, before going to Vietnam, I had one very much like it. My mother, who worked for a wholesale electronics company, had purchased two battery-operated miniature reel-to-reel recorders--one for me and one for my girlfriend. Mother thought my girlfriend and I would like to record and send tapes back and forth to one another. We used our recorders a few times when I was stationed at Camp Lejeune, but I did not take mine to Vietnam.
Second, it was strictly a voice recorder, meaning that it didn't have the dynamic range necessary for recording and playing music. Hence, while the music Sarge had recorded was still recognizable, it played with a screechy, almost metallic sound.

"Just Walk Away Renee" is the one song that stands out in my memory. I don't think Sarge played it more than any of the other numbers he had recorded. I think it was because that song, for some reason, really taxed the limits of Sarge's recorder and sounded so bad that it was almost good. It was at least memorable.

Of course, I have no way of recreating that distinctive sound. I can only share a tolerable You Tube video of the Four Tops singing their version of the song. The title to this post is a link to that You Tube video.

I am still in touch with four of my fellow Papa Three Marines. I am hoping they can remember some of Sarge's other selections. --EFP

Palm Makes a "Splash of Red"

2011-03-30T12:08:00.000-07:00

The online literary magazine Splash of Red has been kind enough to give me some exposure as a photographer. (I can never resist that one.) The lead photo appears below. The title to this post is a link to my work in the magazine. Be sure to click on the lead photo in the magazine for a better view. --EFP

The March Super Moon

2011-03-21T23:19:00.000-07:00

I tried my hand at photographing this month's "super moon." I took it Saturday night (3-19-2011) from a hill overlooking Silverdale's Dye's Inlet. Click on the photo for a better view. --EFP

Back to the Shores of Tripoli!

2011-03-21T17:39:00.000-07:00

Our Libyan intervention is likely to be yet another instance of no good deed going unpunished. Even if we succeed in deposing Qaddafi—and that’s doubtful--the extremists throughout the region will turn that success to their recruiting advantage. This is bound to reinforce the notion that we are leading a crusade against Islam.

On Sunday, for once, I found myself in agreement with Monica Crowley, the right-wing woman on the “McLaughlin Group.” She reminded the rest of the group that, just because Qaddafi is scum does not mean that the people trying to unseat him are all wonderful. Libya could very well go from bad to worse. --EFP

Under Suspicion

2011-03-16T14:54:00.000-07:00

Good news--I think: My ophthalmologist, who has been treating me for glaucoma for the past year, finally sent me to a specialist, and she has downgraded me from a "glaucoma sufferer" to a "glaucoma suspect." I am to keep taking my Travatan drops and to come back for a recheck in six months. Perhaps at that time, if I have continued to improve, she will downgrade me again--from "glaucoma suspect" to "glaucoma person of interest."
You never know! I may just beat this rap yet.--EFP
P.S. I wonder if, like Emerson, I can now claim to have become "a transparent eyeball"?

The NPR Blues

2011-03-13T20:02:00.000-07:00

Here is a prime example of what goes around comes around if I ever saw one.
   I am not a fan or a supporter of the Tea Party, but I just can't pass on the irony of NPR president and CEO Vivian Schiller's recent fall. She was forced to resign over the recent sting interview in which the head NPR fundraiser, Ron Schiller (a namesake, but not a relative), was derisive of the Tea Party and its members.
   Vivian Schiller was the one who publicly defended the firing of NPR commentator Juan Williams last October. Williams made the mistake of admitting that he feels anxious when he sees a person in Muslim garb on an airplane. Williams had confessed to feeling such anxiety on the Bill O'Reilly Show. He was speaking for himself and not NPR. But that distinction mattered not to Schiller,who got up on her high horse and pronounced Williams guilty of falling short of NPR's high standards of journalistic objectivity.
   I wonder: can Schiller spell "karma"?
   I confess to some little insight into this controversy. After a promising start--five commentaries in a little over a year--"All Things Considered" suddenly cooled toward me. The producer I had been working with was "reassigned," and I never did click with the new one. More than once, she pointedly reminded me that "All Things Considered" was a "news show" and that commentators who had been contributing for years were no longer getting on the air.
   The full impact of those comments didn't sink in at first. Clearly, NPR has been running scared over its federal funding for some time now. They have been desperate to rebut accusations of liberal bias.
   Truth be told, I'm not likely to get back on the air. I wasn't very good at it to begin with. My writing was much better than my delivery. Still, at the risk of being accused of self-interest, I have to recommend that NPR stop trying to curry favor with conservatives and resume calling them like they see them.
   Say it loud, NPR: "We're liberal and elitist and we're proud! --EFP

My Rebuttal

2011-03-07T17:33:00.000-08:00

The Kitsap Sun was kind enough to give me some space to respond to a critic who charged me with being insensitive, inhuman, and sexist. I plead guilty to the first two charges, innocent to the third. The title above is a link to my rebuttal in The Sun. --EFP

Mere Palm Again--Loosed Upon the Media

2011-02-27T10:27:00.000-08:00

The Kitsap Sun was kind enough to give me some space to say something I've been burning to say for some time now. The title above is a link to my article.
It is, admittedly, a provocative piece, and some readers seem to have missed my point. If I had had more space, I would have made a few points clearer.

Above all, I hardly think Lara Logan deserved it. She is just the latest example of something that has always bothered me. Consider how much coverage her assault got—for three days on her network and at least one day on the others.

We need aggressive reporting, and for the most part, I’m a fan. Where would we be if some unbridled reporters hadn’t shown us the gap between official pronouncements and the reality in Vietnam as well as the disconnect between ends and means? And we really can’t blame some reporters for being as opportunistic as they are idealistic. But I still maintain that there is a dubious moral distinction between those who get paid to kill and those who get paid to watch.

The 1983 film Under Fire touches on this. A mercenary has occasion to remind a smugly judgmental photojournalist that they get paid the same way—by the body.

By the way, the only grievance I have with Lara Logan is that she is not provocative enough, nor is she sufficiently objective in her reporting. My current critics would do well to remember which correspondent came out publicly in defense of General McChrystal. It was Lara Logan. --EFP

The Copenhagen Subway

2011-02-19T10:01:00.000-08:00

I just placed this one in Anderbo, an online literary magazine edited by Rick Rofihe. (Click on the photo for a better view.) I took it in 2004 during a trip to Denmark and Germany. The title to this post, above, is a link to the photo in the magazine. The editor also gave me a nice little bio blurb, which I have copied below the photo. --EFP

Edward F. Palm, originally from New Castle, Delaware, is a former enlisted Marine, a Vietnam veteran and retired U.S. Marine officer turned academic (Ph.D., Pennsylvania). He has taught at the U.S. Naval Academy and Glenville State College and has held dean appointments at Maryville University of St. Louis and Olympic College, in Bremerton, Washington. Palm is also a lifelong serious amateur photographer and an occasional freelance writer who considers photojournalism to be his "road not taken." He lives in Bremerton, Washington.

Today at the Dog Park

2011-02-16T20:54:00.000-08:00

Around and About The Pike Place Market

2011-02-07T23:34:00.000-08:00

These are just a few images that caught my eye Saturday at Seattle's Pike Place Market. Click on each image for a better look. --EFP

Phineas at the Dog Park

2011-02-02T00:16:00.000-08:00

As usual, Phiney made friends today at the Silverdale Dog Park. I can't run yet (see my last post), but I can take him to the Dog Park. He needs the exercise, and I need to get out of the house. Click on each photo for an enlarged view. --EFP

Intimations of Mortality--My Own, Recently Garnered at the Bremerton Naval Hospital

2011-02-01T20:04:00.000-08:00

Medical College, Shunde, China, February, 2006

I first experienced a sharp spasm of abdominal pain after running last Tuesday, 25 January. It passed quickly; I just chalked it up to my age. (You can't run at 64 without experiencing some aches and pains and without needing liberal doses of what my friend Chuck Armstrong calls "Vitamin I"--otherwise known as "Ibuprofen."} On Wednesday, the pain started in earnest. It was a hot, steady pain in the center of my abdomen, Just under my ribs and radiating around to my back. I took a Vicodin and a wait-and-see attitude.

On Thursday, it got worse. At 4:30 a.m. I awoke to terrible pain. I got up and took a Vicodin and did a little work. Finally, by 6:00 a.m I was able to get some sleep. I got through the day thanks to four more doses of Vicodin. At times, I even thought I was getting better on my own. Thanks to the Internet, I developed several theories about what could be wrong--ranging from a gall bladder attack to dietary indiscretion. (I had made Irish soda bread and had eaten some of the raw dough. Food poisoning also crossed my mind.) I felt better in the late afternoon and evening, but by bedtime, the pain had come with a vengeance. I couldn't get to sleep.

At 1:30 a.m. I threw in the towel. I told my wife what was going on, and we agreed that I had better go to the emergency room. We spent all night there, taking every medical test known to man. The attending physician was nothing if not thorough. We did blood work, x-rays , and an ultra-sound--all of which were inconclusive. Finally, a Cat-Scan revealed an angry appendix. After that, the doctor pushed on the lower-right quadrant of my abdomen. I had no difficulty believing that it was indeed appendicitis.

Hence, I had surgery at 11:00 a.m. Friday. Fortunately, the surgeon was able to do it the laparoscopic way. I have three small holes instead of a large incision. The pain, was atypical, the surgeon told me, because my appendix was not quite in the right place. It was “posterior,” as she put it. It must have been all those Marine Corps sit-ups that caused that.

This was my first surgery, so I have nothing to compare it to. I got out Saturday morning at about 10:30. I was sore at first, and I didn’t have much appetite Saturday or Sunday. Of course, I’m not supposed to run or do any other strenuous activity for four weeks. But I feel pretty good now.

I have nothing but praise for the Bremerton Naval Hospital. Everyone was great--the doctors, the nurses, and the corpsmen. They even gave me a private room. Heaven forfend that I should ever again need emergency surgery, but if I should, I would not hesitate to go back to USNH Bremerton.

I realize now that self-medicating and trying to tough it out was not the best response. If my appendix had “perforated,” as they put it, I would still be in the hospital.

And that’s the way my week went last week. It could have been worse. --EFP
P.S. Because I am a retired Marine officer, I was able to take advantage of the military's brand of socialized medicine. I didn't have to worry that my emergency appendectomy was going to bankrupt me. I don't support Obama care because it does not go far enough. Joint replacements and other forms of elective surgery are one thing, but basic health care is a human right. We could afford to provide it if we were not fighting elective wars and building new nuclear submarines.

The State of the Union--As I See It!

2011-01-25T16:39:00.000-08:00

I know not how President Obama may gauge the state of the union tonight, but I got two indications of my own this week.
   First, I tried to send a birthday card to my longtime friend Gary Racz using the Brooklyn address I have always used in the past. It came back marked "not deliverable as addressed." My only mistake was to spell out "Seventh Ave." instead of writing "7th Ave."
   Second, Congresswoman and Tea Party activist Michell Bachman has credited our founding fathers with ending slavery.
   I just hope that whatever gods there be--the ones of Mount Olympus, the Judeo-Christian variety, or the Tea Party's imagined Founding Fathers--will see fit to bless America. --EFP

The Huck Finn Controversy

2011-01-09T13:32:00.000-08:00

(I couldn't resist weighing in on this one.)

Readers of George Orwell’s 1984 may remember that Big Brother’s society employs bureaucrats charged with deleting from the language words the government deems unsuitable. Kudos to Harvard’s Professor Alan Gribben for bringing us one step closer to the future Orwell envisioned by editing the N-word out of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. But as long as we are going to hide the ugly truth about nineteenth-century Americans and their use of that offensive word, let’s not half-step. Let’s sanitize some other inconvenient truths of American history and culture.

We could change the history books to reflect that the Plains Indians grew tired of their migratory lifestyle and petitioned the United States government to establish, and restrict them to, reservations.

Likewise, we could declare that West Coast Americans of Japanese descent demanded to be placed in protective custody during World War II.

And, while we are at it, why not revise the embarrassing history of slavery itself, recasting slaves as disadvantaged day laborers? But that would require New South Books to hold the presses and to send Orwellian “Newspeak” advocate Gribben back to the text with his blue pen. --EFP

An Avid TV Watcher

2011-01-03T11:34:00.000-08:00

Much to our surprise, our Parson's Russell Terrier Phineas--"Phinney"--took an interest in last night's PBS special on crows. --EFP

Razor Clamming at Pacific Beach

2011-01-01T21:11:00.000-08:00

We spent the last day of the year digging for razor clams with our friends the Allens at Pacific Beach. It was bitterly cold, and it was hard work. But we got 61 clams--more than enough for a few large batches of chowder. Here is an assortment of Palm-Prints from our day of clamming and its aftermath. --EFP

Kitsap Sun's Monthly Photo Challenge

2010-12-15T20:19:00.000-08:00

I'm pleased to report that I got top billing in our local paper's monthly photo challenge--EFP

FRAMES: Challenge #32 Candid Stand-Outs

Wednesday, December 15th, 2010

Once again, nicely done on the candid challenge everyone!
Here are a few we (Yay I get to say “we” again since Derek is thankfully joining us again via back and forth emailing from across the Sound) thought stood out for various reasons:

“Aunt Jo and Daniel” by Ed Palm
The photographer added a note to this photo about how it is a picture of his Aunt during the final stages of Alzheimer’s and while she didn’t recognize him anymore, there seemed to still be a connection between her and his son, whom she had cared for at one time. The additional information helps put the photo into context and the viewer can really understand what the moment captured is all about. Instead of just a small moment between a woman and child you realize the small things in the image, like the purse in the background and the tray that he is leaning on, and all of that adds to emotional moment that is portrayed. Even if you didn’t know the backstory of the image the photo has beautiful light, nice composition and is a nice moment. It’s all around a fantastic storytelling image, and those storytelling images are our favorite kind of images.

Palm on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"

2010-12-05T10:32:00.000-08:00

I couldn't resist weighing in on the current debate over "Don't Ask, Don't Tell": "My Turn," Kitsap Sun, 5 Dec. 2010, p. A11

A Mariner's Fan

2010-12-01T16:16:00.000-08:00

Clearly, you're not a real Mariner's fan until you get one of these. --EFP

A Revolting Development!

2010-11-23T00:00:00.000-08:00

We're having our first snowstorm of the winter--already!--complete with two power outages, thus far. We only have about four inches of snow, but that's enough to paralyze Western Washington. --EFP

Palm on Veterans Day

2010-11-11T11:39:00.000-08:00

The Seattle Times was good enough to give me some space today: "Appreciate the True Value of Military Service."
I couldn't resist ringing some changes on Sarah Palin's recent boast about raising a "combat soldier." I wonder if in her economy that is better than raising a pediatrician, a policeman, or a priest." --EFP

The Freudian Slip of the Day

2010-11-04T09:03:00.000-07:00

On the Today program this morning, Texas Governor Rick Perry praised former President George Bush for doing a good job "protecting us from freedom." Truer words were never spoken. --EFP

My New Teaching Assistant

2010-10-14T21:33:00.000-07:00

I thought I would share a couple images of me and my new teaching assistant, "Phineas," hard at work. Clicking on the photos will enlarge them. --EFP

My Photo of "Big Bad John"

2010-10-04T17:16:00.000-07:00

The Sun, a literary magazine out of Chapel Hill, has accepted the photo I've inserted below. It's a remnant of my eight years in West Virginia. The little fawn's mother had been hit and killed by a car, and some friends found the fawn trying to nurse on its dead mother. They took care of the little guy for a week, before turning him over to the Department of Wildlife Services. The man in the photo is John Diehl, the brother of the Vice President of Administration at Glenville State College. --EFP

A KC-135 Flight Log from 1966

2010-10-03T13:19:00.000-07:00

It's time I told the story of this flight log--my next writing project. Note the last name on the log. --EFP

Old Mill Days

2010-09-30T22:29:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, Andrea and I took in Old Mill Days, an annual fair held at Port Gamble, Washington. --EFP

"Do the Puyallup!"

2010-09-18T22:41:00.000-07:00

Today, we decided to "do the Puyallup," as they say around here. We went to the annual Western Washington State Fair in Puyallup (pronounced "pew-yowl-up".) --EFP

Larry on Zero Tolerance in Lieu of Common Sense

2010-09-16T21:30:00.000-07:00

My old friend and fellow Marine Larry Scroggs shared an interesting reflection on the tenor of our times:
Watching local news. Sixth grade boy was caught carrying a knife at school. Not threatening anyone just had it in his possession. Police were called. Boy was carried off then released to his parents. School says he will be suspended at least ten days and it could be as much as one year. Criminal charges are pending.
Flashback to 1958-1959. I'm in sixth grade. Attending a combined elementary-junior high school on an Air Force base in northern Maine. Just about every boy in sixth grade carried a pocket knife. In fact, most boys from fifth grade on up carried knives daily. Usually a Boy Scout knife if you bought your own or maybe a Barlow or Schrade if your dad was an officer and bought one for you. On the far end of the playground at recess and lunch many of the boys would be playing Stretch or Mumblety Peg. We also had a "chicken" knife-throwing game, but we usually didn't play it at school because sometimes someone would get stuck and that could create problems. Isn't it great that those days are gone? I don't know how all us boys kept from stabbing each other or cutting ourselves. Maybe sometime I'll tell you all about the high school boys from the local small farming town who came to school with shotguns or deer rifles in their trucks during hunting season. I know it's hard to believe but no one called the SWAT team. In fact, the coach may even have walked out to your truck to check out your new .30-30 lever action.
You wouldn't see that today. Things are so much better now that the government has written all their "zero tolerance" rules and laws to replace common sense. We don't have to get all confused with trying to think of the "right thing to do" or the "best course of action" or "what's in the best interest of the child". The politicians have written all the rules for us and no thinking is required. Just enforce the rules.
Larry reminded me of a comparable situation. Not too long ago, a first-grader (I think it was) was charged with sexual harassment for kissing a little girl in his class. His elementary school too had a zero-tolerance policy in lieu of common sense. An old joke, a play on a Wordsworth title comes to mind: that school was determined to stamp our imitations of immorality. --EFP

Today at the Dog Park

2010-09-09T22:50:00.000-07:00

Mt. Rainier Marmot

2010-09-06T18:10:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, we went to Mt. Rainier, where we found this little marmot popping up to check out the hikers on his trail. As always, please click on each photo for a better view. --EFP

Of Religion and Original Intent

2010-09-02T16:26:00.000-07:00

[The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has taken this one too: Of Religion and Original Intent.]
Back in the mid-nineties, when I was a professor at a small college in West Virginia, I had a telling encounter with a Muslim international student. We were going over a paper he had written for my class, and at one point in the paper, he had referred to America as a “Christian nation.” The context was innocent enough. He was not attacking America, and this was before 9/11 raised the national consciousness about the problem of Muslim extremism. So I saw this as merely the occasion for a teachable moment—an opportunity to give the student a more sophisticated understanding of our American government.
     I explained that, while the majority of Americans may consider themselves to be Christians, America has no official religion and that our Constitution mandates a separation of church and state. I could see the student becoming visibly upset as I tried to explain this concept to him. I had obviously shaken a deeply held core belief. I let the matter drop and went on to point out the rhetorical and grammatical problems with his paper. I realize now that religious identity must have been central to his concept of nationhood and that, as far as he was concerned, every nation had to fit into one of three categories: Muslim, Jewish, or Christian.
      I think of this encounter every time I hear one of the rightwing pundits calling America a “Christian nation,” or dating the doom from the demise of school prayer—or, worse yet in my view, asserting that our founding fathers never intended to build a wall between church and state. I also think of it whenever I hear these same pundits calling for a reaffirmation of America’s exceptionality.
     When I went to school, I was taught that one of our greatest marks of distinction as a nation was our decision to keep religion out of politics. I was told that our founding fathers--as men of the Enlightenment, the aptly named “Age of Reason”--had learned the lesson of hundreds of years of religious strife in Europe. They wisely wanted to set America apart from all that. Hence, they crafted the First Amendment forbidding the establishment of a state religion and guaranteeing freedom of worship.
     A close reading of the Declaration of Independence will reveal that the framers claimed their right to rebel not directly from God but from “the laws of nature and . . . nature’s God.” That is not a Christian formulation but rather a deist one, a philosophy that was much in vogue during the 18th century. Deism held God to be the “great clockmaker” who set the universe up according to natural laws and who is now leaving it up to us to take care of the secular realm. Hence, I am all for turning back to the original intent of our founding fathers. It is past time to usher in a new age of secular humanism, reaffirming that religion is a private affair.
     I don’t know how that young Muslim student felt about America, nor do I know whether he went on to become radicalized or not. But I do know that the so-called “narrative” that Muslim extremists are using to recruit and radicalize moderate Muslims holds that America is waging a new crusade against Islam in general. And I have to believe that all the neo-conservatives rallying and agitating to redefine America as Christian are reinforcing that narrative and playing into the hands of the extremists. --EFP

A Funny Story

2010-09-01T16:13:00.000-07:00

The news that 12 Fort Lewis Stryker Brigade soldiers are being investigated for conspiracy to commit murder in Afghanistan reminded me, by some odd conjunction, of the funniest story I heard while serving in Vietnam. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has been kind enough to allow me to share that story. --EFP

"A Funny Story" in the Post-Intelligencer

Victory in Iraq?

2010-08-31T18:37:00.000-07:00

Back when we were mired in Vietnam, some wag—I forget whom—suggested a way out: “Let’s just declare victory and leave.”

It seems to me that this is exactly what we’re doing in Iraq. Despite what the neo-cons would have us believe, we haven’t won the war, nor are the Iraqi military and police ready to keep the peace. And a large number of U.S. advisers and trainers are remaining behind, in harm's way. I wish someone would poll a significant sample of average Iraqis, asking, “Do you feel you’re better off without Saddam than you were with him?” I suppose it comes back to the old Marine Corps axiom: "If you can't stand the answer, don't ask the question." --EFP

Racing to the Top

2010-08-31T13:20:00.000-07:00

The Obama administration’s Race to the Top initiative, with its emphasis on teacher quality, reminds me of something my father, a career Air Force pilot, once told me.

It was the early eighties, and the Marine Corps was having no end of problems with the new Harrier “Jump Jet.” There had been a series of devastating crashes, and people were beginning to wonder if there was something inherently wrong with the design. Drawing on twenty-plus years of flying experience, my father advanced a theory that certainly rang true to me.

A production airplane, he explained, has to be designed to a level of mediocrity. Even a mediocre pilot has to be able to fly it safely. This is because no operational squadron can count on placing only exceptional pilots in its cockpits. The Harrier, my father suspected, was just too demanding an aircraft for the average pilot. And the reality is that the majority of pilots are going to be mediocre—just good enough.

The same holds true, it seems to me, when it comes to teachers. To be sure, we need to weed out lazy, unmotivated, and incompetent teachers. But, no matter what we do, we’ll never be able to put an outstanding teacher in charge of every classroom. Like those operational pilots, the great majority of our teachers will be mediocre—just good enough. And, in my view, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

I feel this way because I don’t believe that replacing a mediocre teacher with an inspired one will guarantee an improvement in standardized test scores—the main criteria some would use in judging teacher effectiveness. There are just too many variables in the equation, parental support and cultural background ranking high among them.

For example, as I look back over my own public school education, I can’t say that any of my elementary school teachers stand out as having been exceptional or particularly inspiring. But they got the job done, and they were able to do so for two reasons: They were supported by parents who understood the need for discipline, and they taught within a school system that didn’t reward or promote students who failed to perform.

Recently, I heard the noted conservative pundit Michael Medved proclaim that class size was not a significant factor in educational effectiveness. If I understood Medved correctly, he is all for judging teachers on the basis of standardized test scores. It seems to me that if we go that route, if we begin to purge teachers whose students fail to score well on standardized tests, we will need to build new schools—ones with large lecture halls. That’s because each member of that limited, elite corps of truly exceptional teachers will probably need to teach classes of 250 to 500 students. --EFP

The New Pharisees

2010-08-30T14:07:00.000-07:00

[I'm pleased to report that this one appeared in The Kitsap Sun on September 1, setting off a firestorm of response. As I always say, if you can't be insightful, at least be inciteful. Here is a link to the letter in the Sun: The Return of the Pharisees
................................................................................
I am amazed that Glenn Beck’s disciples are O.K. with his criticism of President Obama’s Christianity (at Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally on Aug. 27) For one thing, I don’t recall that Obama ever made anything but a general profession of faith, asserting merely that he is a Christian. But more importantly, Beck doesn’t seem to have paid any attention to the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18: 9-14). Nor does he seem to hold with the injunction to “judge not that ye be not judged” (Matthew 7: 1). Finally, Beck is a Mormon. Are his disciples aware that many Protestant denominations and the Roman Catholic Church alike consider Beck’s beliefs to be outside the Christian mainstream? It would seem that the Pharisees are back and that they are being led by Glenn Beck. --EFP

Phiney at the Dog Park

2010-08-29T22:22:00.000-07:00

Here are three more shots of Phiney at the Dog Park. Please click on each photo for a better view. --EFP

The New Spartan Mother

2010-08-29T15:09:00.000-07:00

[Cpl. James L. Reaves, killed in action, December 4, 1967]

Sarah Palin has lately carved out a new role for herself. At Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally in Washington on Saturday, she was quoted as bragging that “I raised a combat vet, and you can’t take that away from me.” Palin has clearly cast herself in the role of the fabled Spartan mother, who in sending her son off to battle would warn him to come back carrying his shield or on it, and with his “wounds all before.” That last phrase was a warning that he had best die facing the enemy and not running away or his mother would be ashamed of him.

Clearly, a line has been crossed in America. Despite what rightwing revisionists would have us believe, even during the darkest days of our Vietnam War, the great majority of Americans still respected the military. The difference is that they didn’t revere and idolize the military. And there are at least two reasons why this new attitude is not in our best interests.

First, as women can attest, one of the best ways to keep someone down, ironically, is to place him or her up on a pedestal. Women were once viewed as too good, too ethereal, for higher education and for careers. Their roles as wives and mothers were idealized. The effect was to keep them in their male-ordained places. We’re doing essentially the same thing to our troops. We give them glib expressions of gratitude, but that’s all we really give them—lip service. The average American doesn’t seem to mind that we don’t have enough volunteers and that our soldiers and Marines are enduring multiple combat tours. The result was predictable: widespread problems with PTSD and an alarming increase in suicides. Yet people like Palin don’t seem to feel this. They obviously view our troops as Spartans all--born and bred just to fight.

Second, the country seems to have forgotten that the military has a vested interest in war. It is a great oversimplification to view the civil-military relation in America as clean cut. Our military does indeed answer to civil authority, but the lines between civil and military authority become blurred at the top. Generals and admirals are ambitious people, and they usually don’t get to four-star rank without having highly placed political allies. It is naïve to think that a president gets unalloyed, completely objective professional advice from the general he places in charge of a war. Such a general is part of the administration team, and he is expected to speak only on message, to shape his opinions and assessments to fit the administration’s views. Just ask General McChrystal if you don’t believe that.

There is also the problem of military careerism. It is difficult to be a credible warrior without a war. To its credit, today’s military seems to have curbed the abuses we saw during Vietnam. We’re not seeing high-ranking officers pinning medals on one another willy-nilly, nor are we seeing them trying to save face with inflated body counts and chest-thumping predictions of imminent victory. But still the military profession demands a “can-do” spirit, even when something cannot or should not be done. Theirs, after all, is “not to reason why,” but rather to “do and die.”

The military is indeed an honorable profession. Soldiers render a necessary service in this fallen world, but it is a serious business and one that should never be sentimentalized. What it comes down to is that a soldier’s mother sends her son out to kill another mother’s son. Sarah Palin, and all the neo-Spartan mothers like her, would do well to remember that sad necessity. --EFP
[This piece has been picked up by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: The New Spartan Mother.]

Mere Palm Loosed Upon Seattle

2010-08-28T12:59:00.000-07:00

I'm pleased that The Seattle Times gave me a little space to today to comment on a topic near and dear to my heart. It is in keeping with my motto: If you can't be insightful, at least be inciteful: "Vietnam vets should speak up"

Grand Opening of the Silverdale Dog Park

2010-08-28T12:50:00.000-07:00

Our new Silverdale Dog Park opened today. Phiney and I attended the grand opening. Please click on each of the photos for a better view. --EFP

Life with Phineus

2010-08-26T21:51:00.000-07:00

Our eight-month-old Jack Russell Terrier Phineus--"Phiney" for short--has developed a taste for blackberries. Click on the photo for a better view. --EFP

More Blue Jays

2010-08-26T21:45:00.000-07:00

I'm still moping melancholy mad, trying to take a perfect picture of a Blue Jay flying with a peanut. Click on each photo for a better view. --EFP

Blue Jays with Peanuts

2010-08-20T20:30:00.000-07:00

I'm still obsessed with trying to get a good shot of a Blue Jay flying with a peanut. Click on each photo for a better view. --EFP

The Olympic Game Farm Revisited

2010-08-14T12:49:00.000-07:00

On Friday the 13th (8/13/2010), we took Andrea's brother Brian, his wife Linda, and son Evan to the Olympic Game Farm in Sequim, Washington. Click on each photo for a better view. --EFP

WikiLeaks

2010-07-29T12:59:00.000-07:00

The lyricist Peter Allen was a prophet: “Everything old is new again.”

WikiLeaks is to the war in Afghanistan as the Pentagon Papers were to my war, the American war in Vietnam. Once again, a lone individual has taken it on himself to reveal more about a war than the administration wants us to know. More importantly, WikiLeaks has opened a new “credibility gap.” People of my generation should recognize the term. It was coined to denote the distance between the administration’s orchestrated claims of progress and the mounting evidence of misdirection and stalemate the press was witnessing. It was the Tet Offensive of 1968 that would illuminate, once and for all, the gap between the official rhetoric and the reality on the ground. We weren’t defeated militarily, but our leadership was discredited; and in a free society, that’s worse.

This time around, however, there is an important difference. That original credibility gap was a crime of commission. The Johnson administration inadvertently opened it in an effort to con us, the American public, into supporting a war that even Robert McNamara knew to be unwinnable. To its credit, the Obama administration has not been cooking up phony statistics or touting inflated body counts in order to sell us on the current war. But, as the WikiLeaks documents suggest, they have been guilty of crimes of omission. They have been less than open and honest about how badly the war is going. Even worse, no less than the Johnson and Nixon administrations during Vietnam, they seem to have been classifying documents not out of military necessity but mainly to cover up mistakes and to avoid embarrassment.

The Obama administration should indeed be embarrassed at having succumbed to this temptation, but the press too should be red-faced. It should not have fallen to a self-appointed Internet watchdog to show us why this war too may be unwinnable. Once again, that should have been the role of the press. But the fact of the matter is that our major media outlets have allowed themselves to be co-opted. During Vietnam, reporters were free to roam around and to report independently of military authority. Today, reporters are approved by military authority and “embedded” with military units. The term is an unfortunate one; it suggests that reporters are “in bed” with the units they cover. As a result, it seems to me, today’s reporters are perhaps identifying too closely with the troops and are reluctant to offend the command that can, in effect, kick them out of “bed.” We are just not seeing the same degree of journalistic independence and healthy skepticism that were so much a part of the coverage of my war. Witness, for instance, CBS correspondent Lara Logan’s recent hand-wringing over General McChrystal’s firing.

There is, of course, legitimate concern that some of the documents published by WikiLeaks may put our troops at greater risk. There is likewise grave concern for our Afghan allies whom Julian Assange has reportedly identified. But he should have been preempted by more responsible members of our own Fourth Estate. We may indeed realize a greater good if the WikiLeaks revelations prompt a thorough reconsideration of why we’re risking the lives of our troops in the first place. In the meanwhile, it is time for the press to get out of bed and to show us what is really going on in Afghanistan. Let’s hope it doesn’t take a second Tet-style offensive—a Ramadan Offensive perhaps—to bring that to pass. --EFP

Moonrise Over Dye's Inlet--July 25, 2010

2010-07-25T22:46:00.000-07:00

Duck Race 2010

2010-07-25T17:13:00.000-07:00

Today, we had our annual Rotary-sponsored duck race here in Silverdale, WA. The duck race is the culmination of our annual three-day festival, "Whaling Days." The ducks just wouldn't cooperate; the wind was against them. The organizers had to take up the containment boom in order to get them to the finish line. --EFP