Mondays have always been a tough day for people shackled to the working world. We are fortunate that the Writer’s Section has a built-in antidote from the lives we used to live. One of our better scribblers hones a piece through the week, polishes it on Sundays, and provides finished copy for release as soon as most of us are awake and grumbling.

Arrias also does verse, the only one of The Salts who has the patience to meld his words and sentiment to the discipline of meter. None of the rest of us do. You know we are lucky to have engineering expertise in the person of DeMille. Rocket was a fighter guy in his prime, and understands the reality of practical physics in his maxim: “Speed is Life.” Loma was a technician at his best between three and four hundreds knots. They called him a “Bombardier Navigator” in the airplanes he used to ride. That wasn’t exactly what he did, since technology moved faster than terminology. That meant having the ability to adapt a jet to deliver remarkable systems intended to discourage opponents.

Splash? It would be better to ask him directly. He claims to have been an Intelligence specialist of some sort, entrusted at various times with interpreting “tasks” with “context.” Odd duck, but useful in understanding what we were paid to be doing.

Arrias led the morning production cycle. We are working today on that, and issuing a book of essays from Point Loma, one of entertaining and insightful vets who applied his civilian background to the events of the world. We miss him a lot.

Melissa used to run business organizations that supported the aggregation by making things work. That includes actually managing personnel, strategic planning and implementation of the Chairman’s goals.

We have been looking for a decent lawyer- a “JAG”- from their association with the Judge Advocate General union to ensure we stay legal and can avoid dealing with corporate Legal at a disadvantage. And if we could find a decent Logistician, the people who can provide the material to keep The Farm running properly, we would know there was breakfast, flask and dinner on the daily menu in that general order.

All successful organizations we have served with include those skills, honed to fine appreciation. So, we got the morning off to a start and began the other part of Mondays, which includes grumbling. There is a fine and wobbling line in the production cycle. As you may have heard, there are some curious things going on in the wide world. Some of them are so strange as to have an intrinsic and humorous aspect. This group is Boomer flavored, which is naturally a distinct liability. That age group is old enough to have been introduced to a new concept called “ecology,” a new means of understanding the world around them.

Most can remember how to spell the word “Cuyahoga” and use it in a sentence. For the younger readers, that is a river in Ohio in the United States that used to catch fire with disturbing regularity. In keeping with those sorts of routine events in that era, there was the Coming Ice Age. The same people who experienced rivers that caught fire grew up in places where the very terrain demonstrated that gigantic glaciers had scoured the soil and rock, piling things up and knocking them down. We were informed with breathless abandon that if we did not take immediate action, the glaciers would be back.

Apparently we responded with sufficient alacrity that the world instead was going to catch fire like the Cuyahoga river, though not because of inflammable pollution but because of Carbon Dioxide. That was almost perfect, since we breath it. That rapidly gets to mathematics, which is a problem the people off the property have addressed as being a product of some current gobbledygook about patriarchy or some genetic-related oppression regime.

So, DeMille started the meeting by saying we weren’t going to talk about sensitive issues like pronouns, melanin, carbon dioxide, elections or anything that included the words “cheap” and “wind.” There was a notable relaxation around the circle, since that took most of the contentious issues off the table, at least for a Monday morning. Splash asked if we could discuss why the World Health Organization decided to skip a couple Greek letters in the nomenclature for the new variant of the current plague. “They skipped “Nu” and “Xi,” which normally come in sequence before “Omicron.”

The group paused, since we knew something else was coming. Splash looked down at his tablet and then looked up again, plainly energized. “We got vaccinated against the Delta strain. Then they skipped some. The WHO says “Nu” could be confused with the English word “New,” which would not reflect the actual nature of the variant. “Xi” was skipped because it is a common surname, even if it isn’t spelled the same way in one large country.”

Rocket had been in a social fraternity and knew some Greek letters. He followed with accustomed speed. “You mean China, and that is why we don’t call it the China Virus.”

Melissa was alert and responded quickly. “Even though we have always called these things by the name of the place they came from. Spanish Flu and all that history.”

Rocket frowned. “But they found the Spanish variant first in Kansas. Why didn’t they call it the Jayhawk Flu?”

“Why don’t we try that after lunch,” said DeMille. “I am not going to waste time of stuff we can do nothing about. The Chairman will reject it as too controversial.”

“I am just glad we got back around to the returning Ice Age. Global warming was making me tired.”

“Just call it change. That is what we are all going to have to live with.”

Copyright 2021 Vic Socotra
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