15 September 2003

Storm Warnings

It is the Ides of September, by Roman tradition the marker from which the month is measured, forward and back. It is the 258th day of 2003 an there are 107 days left to go. For me, it is the day after the Big Pink's pool closed. For the second consecutive year I claim the honor of being the last recreational bather. I watched Darius the half-Persian, half Mormon lifeguard lock the gate shortly before eight last night and it was official. He hates to get wet, and he stands his duty in baggy cargo pants, t-shirt and ballcap on backwards. He was named for Darius the Great of Persia, and his father had then spell it the Western way on the birth certificate. There was a lot of anti-Iranian sentiment going on at the time, and he wanted to honor his heritage without being overly provocative. He is going to take a holiday in Morgantown, West Virginia, where he once went to school. He says they really party there, and he plans on visiting a bar owned by Persians that treated him pretty well after they heard him cursing one time in Farsi. It is a diverse country, even out in the Mountaineer State.

I told him I would see him again next year and walked back to the building's side entrance under the surveillance camera, still dripping. The rhythm of life here in Big Pink now changes. The ladies won't be doing their low-impact aerobics and I won't be swimming underwater, marveling at the sensation of weightlessness and tranquility with each powerful stroke.

Sometimes I pretend I am Lloyd Bridges in Seahunt, and I almost told Darius. Then I remembered he would have absolutely no idea what I was talking about.

It is military payday and to my relief it appears that the Defense Finance and Accounting service has not delivered a paycheck. It appears that the system has recognized my change of status. Retired pay comes once a month, at the far end of the distance to the Ides. I scrolled through the news to see if there was anything of consequence out there. On this day in 1917 Alexander Kerensky, the head of a provisional government declared Russia a republic. Czar Nicholas was not asked for comment, but Kerensky wasn't about to execute The Little Father of the Russian people. Less than twenty years later today the German leader who was chief rival to the successor of Lenin, (who had no such objections to the murder of the Royal Family) passed the Nuremberg Laws depriving German Jews of their citizenship. He also made the swastika the copyrighted symbol of the Nazi State. Five years after that in the skies over Britain the Royal Air Force inflicted heavy losses on Hermann Goering's Luftwaffe. The tide, as Churchill observed, was beginning to turn.

Not the beginning of the end, he growled. Only the end of the beginning.

A decade after that Doug-out Doug MacArthur made a daring gamble and landed deep in the rear echelon of the North Korean Army at the west coast port city of Inchon and began their drive to retake Seoul. The advance would not stop until they ran over Pyongyang and reached the heights over the Yalu River, and looked into China. Where the forward troops would soon hear the bugles of the Chinese People's Liberation Army.

Thirteen years later four little African-American girls were blown up in the church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, which took another half century for justice to play out. I remember hearing the news and thinking that the fabric of life was beginning to unravel, not knowing just how bad things could really get.

Two decades later an event in my walk-on part in the vast parade of history occurred. I was in Hawaii but still following the events that accompanied the fall of the Pahlavi Peacock Throne. It was in 1982 when the Ayatollah's thugs executed Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, the former transition Foreign Minister. They said he plotted against the government. I had, too, but they couldn't get at me.

We were only doing our jobs, as we saw them. Like Lenin, the Ayatollah and his pals were in no mood for temperance. Killings were much in the news. Vicki Barker had a piece on the Jordanian Parliament's refusal to increase the penalties for so-called "honor killings." Under the honor code, men are permitted to execute female members of their family if they have committed grave offenses to the family name. Like falling in love, or doing what they want. The BBC featured a smart lady from Amman's comment. She said the men were always yammering about the liberation of Palestine but didn't quite grasp the fact that there was some long overdue liberation needed at home. It was a nice comment, but she is Middle Eastern, and couldn't quite continue the logic of what she was saying. She attributed the hardening of attitudes in Jordan toward the murder of women to the American and British invasion of Iraq.

Where Colin Powell is making a surprise visit to shore up support for the transition government. The Times reports that the National Guard troops who were recalled to duty for the Global War on Terror are having their tours extended to a full year in Iraq. There is some dissention in the ranks. Not that anyone is not going to do their duty, they will. It is just a question of whether or not they will sign up again. Army officials are reportedly concerned about the long-term sustainability of the effort, but they are stuck. Everyone else is committed and this is the logical consequence of decisions that were made a long time ago in setting up the volunteer force. The discontent among the reservists who are having a year razored out of their civilian lives is a sort of storm warning. There is trouble ahead if something is not done. But at least we have the opportunity to do something about it. Unlike the weather.

I looked out from the balcony this morning in the gloom. It is dark, of course, and humid. They are predicting thunderstorms in the afternoon and so I do not contemplate walking to work. All the tumult out there in the wide world pales in pales in comparison to what is coming to us this week. Hurricane Isabel is all but certain to strike the central Atlantic coast late this week. At the moment she has diminished in intensity, down to Force Four from Five with winds in the 150kt range. Landfall is expected late this week. We have a major presentation to be done Friday morning in the District, and we may wind up doing it in a driving rain. Things can change, of course, but it is time to scurry about and get ready.

I thank Osama bin Laden for reliving me of the requirement to stock up on canned goods. I have plenty, in case we lose power in Big Pink. I did stock up on batteries for the radio and the flashlights and pulled some stuff out of the freezer to cook in advance of the storm's arrival. Computer models show that a region from New Jersey to North Carolina was at highest risk for a direct hit. As of this morning Washington is in the cross-hairs. The National Hurricane Center released a statement that tropical-storm-force winds will tickle the North Carolina coast as early as Thursday and hurricane-force winds of 70 knots will roar over the Chesapeake Bay area later that day.

I am interested in a personal way. I was undecided on the duct tape issue. Plywood panels for the windows is out of the question, but I could certainly put some big crosses of tape on the glass to keep the windows from shattering. But that can wait, I figure. If things get bad I can always do it with the storm in progress. I thank Secretary Ridge for ensuring that I have a hefty supply of tape. This all-hazards approach to the Global War on Terror is paying big benefits already. I clicked around the net to see how to plan my week. Accuweather.com quoted an expert named Joe Bastardi as saying "As it comes ashore, a storm like this can expand as it weakens, pulling more and more energy into it and becoming a much more extensive storm." Joe must have had a hard time in grade school, keeping the family name. He says Isabel is coming this way at ten miles an hour. It is eight hundred miles from the Virginia Capes, churning as it goes. It is either an inconvenience or a catastrophe, depending on how it works out. We have eighty hours to get ready, a luxury in today's world.

The State Emergency managers are already hard at work. They are making provisions to evacuate the Virginia peninsulas that protrude into the bay. Interstate 64 that runs down the Middle Neck to Norfolk and Virginia Beach will flow only westward if Isabel looks like it is going to come ashore there. Governor Warner will make that call when the time comes. Which will be in a day or two. I would like to see it, but I think the prudent thing to do is hunker down right here and let the State Patrol and the National Guard take care of it.

The part of the Guard that isn't directing traffic in Baghdad, that is.