Vic Socotra

22 January 2009

Birthdays

(Cake)

The new Administration is only two days old this morning, and has trouble sleeping through the night. I don’t mind, it is part of the process. A draft executive order was circulated that might, or might not, affect one of my business lines, and it was enough to get me up a little before the alarm went off to pad around Tunnel Eight, wondering about the implications of it all.

I sat in the darkness in the living room, listening to the coffee-maker wheezing its way to completion, the tip of the first cigarette of the day glowing red in the gloom.

You have heard all about it on the radio, so I won’t belabor the point. I checked the mail that had come in overnight and saw nothing that gave any clarification to what was going to happen. Too soon to tell. I shrugged and moved on.

What will be, will be.

The two-month sleepwalk after the election is over and some serious stuff is going to start happening. Let’s get on with it.

Of course, you could not have told that from the echoing halls at the Agency when I stopped by to drop off a proposal yesterday. The government workers- and that is not an oxymoron any more than the term military intelligence- had figured this one out.

The new folks are going to stir the pot vigorously. There will be a lot of late nights and midnight oil to re-wicker the budget and crash the programs together to meet new priorities.

We in the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community have feasted on supplemental funding over the last eight years of war, and accordingly there are many good and valued activities that will cease once those stop coming, and other things, less useful, that will hum along because they are in The Base Budget.

It is going to be a painful process. To save the good, the marginal must be cast out in a process the government calls “Rolling to Base.” We have done that before, most recently in the years after the end of the Cold War, and it is no fun. Every program has its constituents, those who depend on them for jobs and mortgages. Nothing and no one goes gently into the good night of oblivion.

That will take a moment to figure out, since no one knows yet what we are supposed to believe. The New People are doing that now, and the continuing workforce seemed happy to give them a moment for contemplation. Based on the number of empty cubicals, it appeared many folks had taken the opportunity to combine the Dr. King holiday, the inauguration, and two weekends into nine days off at the cost of only three days of vacation.

There is nothing to react to just yet anyway- the clarion call to action notwithstanding from our new President. Next Monday will be time enough, I suppose.

Then I realized that it was 23 years ago this evening that my younger son was born. I recall the doctor looking up from where he was working on the other side of the sheet. He glanced at the old-fashioned analog clock, the hands of which were both approaching the full vertical of midnight.

He asked if we cared on which day the new child would be born.

I looked at the Ex, and she looked back at me. Our older son had been born on the 23rd of January in the hospital in the cane fields of Waheawa, a quiet spot on the bustling island of O’ahu. He had taken his time on arriving, displaying a certain ambivalence about his arrival in the world. He would leave the urgency to his younger brother.

“Yes,” we said. “We care. They should each have their own day.” Accordingly, the Doctor got down to work, and the 22nd belongs to the younger, while the older trails behind.

The difference was only a matter of an hour or so, really, but has served to confuse me ever since. “The first shall be last,” is the way I settled on the mental reminder.

I think both boys would agree with me on that count, scripture or not.

Close Window