(Willow Group at the Amen Corner in the Heart of Winter. Photo by The Lovely Bea.)

Can’t and won’t do the rant again today. I took my aluminum helmet off when I got back from Willow, exhausted from the week. Things have been both busy and slow as the artificial crisis continues. Certainly stressful.

It is all self-inflicted, of course, and we citizens are just along for the ride. I was at the Agency yesterday to see if my badge still worked to grant me access, and ask some questions of my former comrades to see if they had any better clue than I do.

There is guidance, of a sort. The Secretary’s memo from before the holidays was a cheery “Don’t worry, be happy” note to his many constituents. The memo that a colleague handed me was much more grim. It is unclassified- not even “For Official Use Only”- and was signed out by Deputy Secretary Ash Carter on the 11th of January.

He directed rolling furloughs for the vast work force- my colleague thinks it will amount to a payless day off for everyone each pay period- and hiring freezes and all the long list of things we did in the wake of the end of the Cold War.

There was no direction from Ash about what to do about us. Contractors have become a major component of the Agency workforce, though contracts are the one thing that can be terminated “at the convenience of the Government.”

Nothing big is going to happen until people actually make decisions beyond the DEPSECDEF’s general guidance, and of course there is a complete lack of knowledge on what to make decisions about.

It might be time to take a vacation and see if sanity breaks out in the meantime. I am not holding my breath.

It was raining as I walked out of the building, and I limped down the stairs to the lower level of the parking garage on the way back to the Panzer. There is a warm tropical mass of air that is colliding with January’s chill, and it is extreme for the middle of the month that is the heart of winter.

I stopped at the office to work through the queue of emails I could not read on the road, or in the no-phone zone of the Agency. Naturally I was thrilled to hear the announcement that everything was fine in Afghanistan, or will be in 2014.

Then I glanced at the clock and decided to walk over to Willow to celebrate the victory.

Old Jim is down with the latest cursed edition of the Flu, so I took his seat in tribute. Chris the Marine, Big Jim and Jasper were holding down the bar as the place filled up with people. Chris was in a philosophic mood, and we talked at the end of the bar about all manner of things. Combat vets have a unique perspective on things: some issues matter, and others simply are not worth the waste of time. He was going to take in the gun show at Richmond this weekend. I have decided to avoid the crowds and just go to the farm and veg out.

Admiral Norm stopped by- he is retiring next week after three decades in the game, and presently the Other Russian, Jon-without, the Lovely Bea, placid Jamie and The Master Chief anchored the Amen Corner.

The Other Russian had a unique perspective on the whole thing- he has been through the end of a world, and started a new one. All of us have been to The Show in one way or another. The stories of places and faces flew, from Moscow to Stuttgart to Sarajevo to Saigon and up the Gulf to the Sandbox.

OK- the world may be going to hell in a hand-basket, but damn if it isn’t a good world while there are people like this in it.

(Not a bad antidote to the Heart of Winter. Photo the Lovely Bea.)

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com