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05 July 2005

Best Tan

I had a bunch of stuff to do yesterday, and only got to part of it. I pounded on some job applications in the morning, and some stuff for the radio until after lunch. The sun was out, and the humidity was low, and finally I couldn't take it any more.

I was supposed to be moving, or going to the grocery store, or doing my laundry. There is a titanic amount of activity that will happen this week. So, I put on my trunks and went for a swim, and then reclined for a nice retro-sunburn. Leslie's grandchildren ran around the pool deck, five or six of them, and the old folks huddled under the yellow umbrellas

I like to get a little color in the summer. All right, I love to fry in the summer. There was a time when I had a world class tan, and I understand that it may kill me one day. But there it is.

I dozed, and through my eyelids I could see the color of the sky in the Indian Ocean , pastel blue and impossibly far away.

I was fried enough by four that I was useless for further activity. I watched the fireworks from the overpass on Route 50, when it was time, only able to see the tips of the exploding blossoms over the trees.

The Beachboys were on the television, live on tape from the capital Mall. There only seemed to be two of them trying to keep the franchise going. But bless them.

I turned on the radio this morning at 0445 even though I did not want to. The explosions around town kept everyone up late, and the capital is moving slow this morning after the fireworks last night. I would anticipate a good commute, if I was going downtown. But instead I am headed out to an undisclosed office to get polygraphed as a condition of access to one of my old jobs.

I'm ambivalent-to-hostile about the process. There used to be stark terror at the prospect of flunking one of these, since it would mean instant termination of employment. They no longer have that lever to pull, since my job is not directly connected to routine access. But it is still intimidating to be hooked up to the box with a limitless number of questions they might ask.

One never knows how long these will go- the questions are simple enough, after all, but it is a hostile interrogation by any standpoint. Not the way I prefer to start the week.

The conflict over the next Supreme Court associate justice is going to have the town all riled up for the next month or so- it will be all posturing until the President comes back and releases the nominee's name.

The planned coincidence of the comet "Deep Impact" with the 4th of July and the opening of "War of the Worlds" was pretty cool. They are saying that the Spielburg film grossed $78 million on the opening weekend, and there were sighs of relief from Hollywood , which has been in the doldrums this season. They are apparently considering the quality of the films as part of the equation.

I think we have just come around to the place we were when "The Blob" and "It came from Another World," the parables about the start of the Cold War were popular. The touchy-feely aliens are dead, for now anyway.

I don't know which of the explosions has the most significance. District officials used the crowd on the capital Mall for an experiment in mass evacuation. When the fireworks ended, they altered the timing of the traffic lights, doubling the amount of "green" time on the roads heading to the bridges.

They say they got the crowd moved pretty well, though once the flood arrived in Northern Virginia things came to a screeching halt. At least the District made the crowd someone else's problem.

Working downtown as I do, this has more than passing interest to me, and I often ruefully consider my Mother's advice to "Never live on the other side of a bridge from where you work."

Her generation had a better work ethic than mine does. If it gets too hard, I can just turn around and "work from home," as they say. Getting back the other way is more problematic, which is why I keep a pair of running shoes in my desk downtown. If the bridges are still up, I can always walk home. Or swim for it, I suppose, though no one has been swimming in the Potomac since the Air Florida flight hit the 14th Street Bridge.

The paper is filled with leaks from the Quadrennial Defense Review, a kabuki dance that occurs every four years to examine the state of the American defense capability. the real war is of course about the allocation of resources between the Services, and with the Air force and the navy largely irrelevant to the current situation in Iraq , there are people willing to talk on "deep background" and shape the public perception before the decisions are made next year.

The basic building block of the military establishment is being challenged, The capability to fight two major wars simultaneously. That covers the contingency of the Soviet Union roaring through the Fulda Gap as the North Koreans come south on the peninsula.

That clearly can't happen, and Iraq is an odd amalgam of requirements. It is not quite a war, and certainly not peace. There are only 13,000 fewer troops in-country than there were at the conclusion of major ground combat. But there is no apparent need for the F-22 Raptor fighter, or aircraft carriers and submarines.

That has the people who build them a little nervous, which resonates politically. Aircraft carriers and fighter jets are coincidently built in pieces in all fifty states. It is not efficient, except as a means to keep the programs alive, but that is the nature of the beast.

There will be a need for these things, if we wind up fighting China someday. That is the scenario that is the planner's dream. A real peer opponent! I wonder how the equipment sometimes shapes the policy. Having the capability to deal on a military level with a resurgent China is necessary, most agree. But having the capability can lead to the same sort of weapons race that we had with the Soviet Union . I suppose we are going down that road, inevitably, and I have no constructive advice on how to avoid it.

Coming on the heels of the Base Reallocation and Closure (BRAC) study, the hapless denizens of the Pentagon are being run ragged, studying numbers over and over. In the old days, this was the quiet time of the programming cycle, a time to kick back a little and think. Now it is as frantic as budget submission time at the Holidays.

There is no time I would rather take a vacation than after the 4th of July. Just lie back, and work on the tan.