02 September 2010
 
Storm Avoidance

 
 
I am going to miss the Hurricane, or at least Earl, anyway. They are saying there will be five named storms this season, and the Carolinas (and maybe us in Virginia) will take the brunt of it. I don't think it will affect business, though it clearly will have an impact on travel.
 
I am hoping to stay in Michigan just long enough for Earl to pass. It was gratifying to put five hundred miles under the wheels, leaving it behind as the voices on the radio talked about evacuation and intensification of the swirling winds.
 
Out on the road, it was hot, sunny and humid. The weather is a funny thing. I checked the mobile web when I got out of the Pennsylvania mountains and got a couple connectivity bars on the mobile phone, I saw a note from a pal in San Diego, who said they had an ominous early frost after a summer that never really lived up to promise.
 
I swerved a bit trying to type on the tiny keypad and answer him, but hit the rumble strip on the inside median and gave up trying to multi-task behind the wheel.
 
I made it as far as Milan, Michigan, the prison village, before sudden dense rain and darkness drove me off the road. Signs on the road outside the Star Motel warned me not to pick up hitchhikers, as if that was something anyone in their right mind would do.  I looked out the window of the 1950s bungalow-style room and watched the rain, thinking about weather and change, since the former governs my progress on the road and the latter is what the trip to see Raven and Mom is all about.
 
I have another buddy who just retired from a senior government official at a major military command. As such, he had an interest t in climate angle on national security and beat up his staff meteorologist regularly about warming and climate issues, trying to get past the political agendas. His informed take is that we are entering a 30-year cooling phase and maybe something more significant.
 
I have walked into the buzz-saw of the controversy before, and have learned to practise a certain amount of storm-avoidance. I don't have a revealed truth on the matter, as some do, and have a compelling need to tell me how and where to exhale my CO2.
 
For the record, I am opposed to our profligate energy wasting and pollution on aesthetic grounds, if nothing else, but before this is all over we may be thankful that the carbon is mitigating the approach of another ice age.
 
 Growing up in the Great Lakes region, I am well aware the big inland seas have their own rhythm of ups and downs, and intimately familiar with the Chicken Littles whocan only see what is happening on any particular day. Hell, I am one of them.
 
I guess we will see, won't we?
 
I set up the lap-top at the Star Motel, poured a strong vodka and found an unsecured wireless network I could tap into.
 
I saw a note from Mac, and opened that one first.
 
“You did fairly well on your account of the founding of The Professional organization, but you must have had enough wine to start getting things back-assward by the end.”
 
I could see him gently chiding me for lack of attention to detail, but I always say the Daily Socotra is just the first rough draft, sometimes even rougher than the Times.
 
Mac’s note continued. “Karen was Rufe Taylor's widow.  The NMITC building was named Layton Hall, and Karen thought her late Rufe deserved better than having the auditorium named for him, he being the three-star, and Eddie having retired with two. “
 
“Now, you know I worked for both Layton and Taylor, and I found it hard to be objective in this scrap, but I favored Karen's position. Rufe was a great intelligence officer who did a lot for the Naval Intelligence Community, although he started off as a cryptologist.  He is the only one I know who ever changed designators from 1610 to 1630.”
 
I made a note to remind him that Jeremy Clark was another one, though he did not make flag, he was Deputy Director of DIA for several years as a retiree.
 
“It was a sensitive issue, the naming thing. Eddie Layton, of course, was the "intelligence hero" of WWII and was the first 1630 to make flag rank.  You pay your money and take your choice.”
 
“Anyway, Karen coughed up ten grand to make his name more prominent through an award for the top grad at the intelligence basic course. She gave a check to Bob Trafton. The first CO of the schoolhouse. That gave him the willies, having that money on his desk, so he consulted the then-DNI Bill Studeman in the Pentagon, who got a reading from his lawyer. He asked NIP if it could establish a Foundation to accept the money since the Navy could not. So that is how 23 years of good works and dozens of endowments and scholarships started under Shap Shapiro.”
 
“Of course we  later named the Fleet Intelligence Training Center of the Pacific in San Diego “Rufus Taylor Hall,” so I guess all’s well that ended well.”
 
I copied the body text of his note to try to fix the story, and made a note of another complaint from someone who did not think the Lebanese waitress with no “H” really belonged in an objective account of a Professional Organization’s history. I took the matter under advisement.
 
I am getting to the point in years where maybe objective history takes priority, but Sara is so good looking that in my younger days, on a port visit, I might have contemplated missing ship’s movement to stick around and see what might come up.
 
I closed up the lap-top and got ready to leave the Star Motel behind. Four hours in the Bluesmobile to the little city by the Bay, driving into the storm that I cannot avoid.
 
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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