Friday, April 25, 2008

Science Cheerleader

I have not added a blog roll to my blog yet. I should. High on the list will be Darlene Cavalier's Science Cheerleader site. She is a former Philadelphia 76ers cheerleader who studied the role of citizens in science and science policy in graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania and created her site to get involved. She organizes science events for Discover magazine and has a big family.

Summer Camp Starts on my Birthday!

Next Friday, May 2, I will be 55 and celebrating with a morning formation to begin a three-week summer camp. I don't have the schedule yet, but it is supposed to be three weeks of individual skills to get ready for deployment--things like throwing grenades, convoy training, and combat lifesaving. As with the two-week school I will try to post every day, mostly so I don't forget all the things that happen.

Comeback Athlete of the Year


Masters Athlete magazine put me in their nominations for Comeback Athlete of the Year. As you could see from my post two weeks ago, the nomination mostly depended on me getting back on the bike and into racing--my results didn't matter. I will be in a stage race this weekend: a road race, time trial and criterium--three events in two days. As with the last one, my big goal is to finish.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Gen. Petraeus and Poetry in my In Box

A couple of days ago I got two books in my In Box at work--a counterinsurgency manual by Gen. David Petraeus and a new book of poetry by guy who writes about the business of chemistry in his day job. I ordered only one--the poetry book. The counterinsurgency manual is a gift from a friend in Belgium (a mother of three and recently a grandmother) who is rather mystified by the whole Army thing and thought this book might be helpful for me. I haven't read the Petraeus book yet, but I read on the poetry book on my commute this morning--AMTRAK and SEPTA.
The other book, Aquinas Flinched by Rick Mullin, is bright, sharp, angular, and more than a little weird. Rick is also a painter and his the same description would work for his painting. To tell you the truth, it describes him pretty well also. I am guessing the manual won't be as much fun to read.

Sunday, April 20, 2008

New Weapons

Formation this morning was in "full battle rattle," that is helmets, bullet-proof vest, load-bearing equipment, pack, etc. After formation we drew our new weapons and gas masks. We now have M16A4, an improved weapon with additional cooling which makes it heavier than the previous versions. We were also issued scopes. Body armor and equipment are fine on a 50-degree morning, the extra weight keeps you warm. I imagine it will be less comfortable in the summer.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

New Review on Books and Culture

My review of the book Atoms and Alchemy in the latest issue of Books and Culture is now available on line. I have worked with Mary Ellen on other projects in the history of chemistry. In our last article we wrote about the history of isooctane and tetra-ethyl lead. She did the early history, I tied in Dale Earnhardt Junior's blown engine in the 2nd NASCAR race of 2007, World War 2 aircraft, and 60s Muscle Cars. We each have our own expertise. That article is part of an exhibit catalogue that has not yet been published.
My next article for B&C (assuming it is accepted) is a review of a book called Nylon and Bombs a book about the DuPont Company. The book was originally published in French and my co-author is Brigitte Van Tiggelen, a visiting scholar at CHF and presidente of the Memoscience, a history of science organization in Belgium. A lot changed when the book we reviewed was translated into English. Brigitte talked to the author so we could write about the many pitfalls of translation, even when the author speaks both languages.

Monday, April 14, 2008

Re-enlistment

I signed up for a year last August. I had planned to sign up for three but the recruiter said if I sign up for one, I can re-enlist for three then get a bonus. I could not get a bonus for enlisting because I had prior service and needed job training. So I wrote a note to the retention specialist (the person in charge of re-enlistment) in our brigade.
Here is her answer to my email:
Your entire email sounds like a test question! I love it...I will do some
research for you and then I will get back to you with an answer.
Have a great day!

And here's the test question:
I was at Aberdeen for training during the last drill, but wanted to contact
you before the next one April 18-20.
I am now an MOSQ 63J10. [Meaning I completed the training.]
My enlistment ends August 15, 2008.
I will be 55 years old on May 2.
At the time of my enlistment on August 16, 2007, I had 11 years, 2 months,
2 days of service including 6 years and 7 months active, three years active
reserve and the rest inactive.
SO
Can I re-enlist for six years just after June 15 getting me over 18 years at
the end of that enlistment at age 61 allowing me to retire because I will
be both over 60 and over 18 years?

Will I have to enlist in an active duty unit to get the retirement?
Let me know.

It does sort of sound like a word problem on a test.
I'll let you know what she says.

Saturday, April 12, 2008

First Race. . .I Finished on the Lead Lap

One minute into this race I remembered why I love racing so much. I was at the back of the 40-rider pack hoping just to stay on. Several guys came up and welcomed me back on the start line. It felt strange to be there. But then the whistle blew and the pack rolled out slowly. As we picked up speed I stayed at the back, but I knew where to ride to stay on and as we turned into the wind I was looking for the best place to be, looking up the road to see who was at the front and feeling like I never took a year off. Halfway around the 5.7-mile lap is "The Hill." Halfway up I found myself in a group of guys who were getting dropped. I closed up to the back of the pack and managed to stay with the main pack all the way around the course the "The Hill" on the next lap. At that point I was off the main pack. I rode for a couple of laps with a guy who just turned 50 years old. I stayed ahead of the pack and rode the whole distance without getting lapped. As it turns out my result was no worse than the last two times I did this race. In 2006, I dropped out at the same point. In 2005 I did 32 races and was dropped in only two--Mt. Joy and the Road stage of the Fitchburg MA stage race. I have a Guard weekend next weekend, but the following weekend is the Ephrata Stage Race. The road race and the criterium are flat, so I may be able to hang in until the end. But I will be crawling up the hill in the Sunday morning time trial. It is four miles flat then four miles up--I should finish at the back of that one,

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Eleven-Month Crash Anniversary

Today was eleven months exactly since I crashed. On Wednesday, May 9, 2007, I flipped to the road at 51 mph. Today, Wednesday, April 9, 2008, I rode down the hill I crashed on for maybe the 20th time since I got back on the bike and then rode over to the Wednesday night training race for the first time since the accident. I only did two of the seven 3-mile laps then rode toward home. Lisa picked me up about four miles from the training race course. By the time she picked me up I had ridden 44 miles so I was ready to stop.

First Race on Saturday

I just signed up for my first bicycle race since the crash last year--11 months ago today. I don't expect to do very well--my training miles are down by half from previous years--usually I would have close to 2000 miles by now, currently I am just short of 1,000. But it should be fun just to ride in a race pack again and see my teammates. This race is 29 miles on a hard, hilly course so I don't expect to finish in the same zip code as the leaders.

Monday, April 7, 2008

Radiation Training

Over the weekend I completed a long Army course on line about testing and maintaining equipment that uses radiation in its illumimation or operation. In the Army way, each instrument was covered in detail, but the bottom line on every one was: if anything is wrong, double bag the entire instrument, put it in a new box and ship it back to the people who are actually authorized to work on it. The introductory material on sources of radiation was very clear and easy to follow.

Saturday, April 5, 2008

Good and Bad Press

The AP article about my wife being frugal is on more than 200 web sites so far. She got many emails from friends and strangers, most with congratulations, some with advice on how to be more frugal. One was nasty. It was also anonymous. The message ended with him saying the message had been routed through seven ISPs so don't try to trace it. So this coward went to all that trouble to say something ugly to a mother of four . CS Lewis said (following all the great Church leaders of the last 2000 years) that Pride is the worst sin. It is the sin that separates us from God, because a proud person is (in his or her own mind) God's equal. But in this life cowardice is the worst sin "horrible to anticipate, horrible in the act, horrible to remember" is how CS Lewis describes cowardice. And this particular coward uses the email address Jack_Ryan@lycos.com. Jack Ryan is the hero of the Tom Clancy novels. So this actual coward uses the name of a fictional hero to hide behind when threatening a woman who is a live organ donor (a kidney, 2002) and for several years a hospice volunteer. An illustrated dictionary could use a picture of this guy as the definition of a coward.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

My Frugal Wife

Last week I got a message from an Associated Press reporter writing about frugal lifestyles. My wife Annalisa is in the lead of the article.

No Pass to San Antonio During Basic Training

While I was in San Antonio, I saw dozens of Air Force basic trainees walking around in their new, rather ill-fitting uniforms, some with family, some in groups taking pictures of each other at the Alamo and tourist traps. Seeing them reminded me I never got the one-day pass to San Antonio while I was in Basic training in 1972. Our flight (the Air Force equivalent of a platoon) got 7 days of KP--kitchen clean-up duty--during our six weeks of basic training. Most flights got one or two. The other three flights training with us got none. The reason was Ivan--a tiny little guy in our flight who refused to throw away his electric razor and shave with a blade like the rest of us. Why did this matter? When the inspectors from headquarters went through our barracks, ten demerits among 45 guys meant we were on KP. Ivan got 15 by himself because they counted hairs inside his electric razor. We got 2 days of KP for that in addition to the one we had just for being in the duty rotation. Two weeks later, Ivan flunked again and we got four days of KP--including the weekend we were scheduled for a day in San Antonio. Our drill sergeant let us know that if any harm came to Ivan we would all be serving our enlistments in Leavenworth Federal Prison. We did get Ivan back, but that's for a later post.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Randy's Parents Will Go Home Soon

Continuing from the last post, Randy's Mom and Dad, Debbie and Neil, will be returning home to West Virginia soon. Debbie said Randy is healing so well that he will be able to live on his own soon as he goes through Rehab for the next year or so. Debbie said she would like to stay with her son, but she will also be happy to be home. Debbie works for Coldwater Creek and said they have been "really great through all of this." They said they will hold her job as long as it takes. I will keep in touch with Debbie and Neil and post something when I hear news.

Monday, March 31, 2008

Center for the Intrepid

Today I saw the Center for the Intrepid, what is now the main rehab center for badly injured soldiers. Sandy, the receptionist, let me see the first floor public areas and told me about the facility. I had to sign up in advance for a tour so that will have to wait for another time. I talked to soldiers yesterday and today with Boston accents. I grew up in Boston and lost the accent in Basic training in 1972, but can still hear it in just 2 or 3 words. Both soldiers were from suburbs outside Boston. One was looking forward to going back home to stay, the other wanted to stay in San Antonio. I knew they were both real natives because they both talked about how expensive everything is in Massachusetts compared to the South. Real Boston-area natives far from home love to complain about prices back home and talk about how cheap things are everywhere else. Any mention of the Red Sox comes after the price complaints.

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Randy's Parents

Today I visited the Powless guest housing located just across the road from the Center for the Intrepid. I met the parents of a soldier named Randy. He was in the family's room sleeping. Mom and Dad were outside in the smoker's gazebo. Randy stepped on an IED on January 13 of this year. His immediate prospects were grim. His left hand was gone and the rest of the arm was mangled and his legs were both mangled to the point that they were not sure the legs could be saved. Randy's Mom described the doctors from both Landstuhl where Randy was first Med-evaced and Brooke as "amazing." Randy is the sixth of seventh children of a blended family from West Virginia and the only soldier.
More later, they just closed the door on my flight so I have to sign off.

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Fisher House at Brooke Army Medical Center

This weekend I am in San Antonio on business at a petrochemical conference that starts Sunday afternoon at 430pm. I arrived at 2am on a late flight from Newark and rented a bike at 11 this morning. I rode a north and east then back to the south to Brooke Army Medical Center. I had read several articles about the Center for the Intrepid at Brooke, the places where amputees and other severely wounded soldiers go through rehab. I arrived Saturday at 1pm to the sound of loud music. Crossroads, a local Texas rock band, was playing on the porch at Fisher House and a local group was serving barbeque to soldiers and their families. I talked to a volunteer named Pete Peterson who told me about the place then introduced me Inge Godfrey and Russell Fritz, the manager and assistant manager respectively. Russ gave me a tour. It turns out Inge and I lived in the same military housing area in 1976-77--her husband and I were assigned to the same base in Germany. I am going back tomorrow morning.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Back to Work

I have been catching up on work for the past few days and thinking about the contrast between the Army and my civilian job. At work I am a manager without a staff. A manager because I have a budget, but a "private soldier" when it comes to work. I write news releases, speeches, negotiate with video producers and photographers, talk to reporters who cover chemistry, and work on teams that are getting ready for events. The emphasis is on what I do. I work at home two days a week because I live 70 miles away and many of the things I do, I do alone. And if something comes up in a project I am working on that our president or a director should know about, I can drop in and talk to them, or send them an e-mail.
In the school at Aberdeen, my first responsibility was to be wherever the school staff said I was supposed to be. Even the tests and performance evaluations were essentially pass-fail. As soon as I met the standard on a performance test or got 70% on a written exam I was done with that art of the course and on to the next part. One member of our class was clearly the best at every hands-on performance measure in the course. If someone was stuck, he was the one they called. But he got a low (passing) grade on one test and so we did not have an honor grad. the first sergeant spoke to us every morning at formation before we went to class. In fact we could depend on him repeating everything at least once per formation then repeating a lot of the same warnings and information a half-dozen times more.
In my day job, time matters. Standing in front of our first sergeant all that mattered was that he believed that we understood the information he was passing to us.
Today I worked on 20 different things, and did no paperwork to prove I did any of it. I am a civilian again--at least until May.

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Graduation

We got our DA form 1059s, the form saying we are now qualified in our military job (MOS or Military Occupational Specialty). There were four different groups and ours was last. We were all seated at tables and went up one at a time to receive our certificate from the course instructor then shake hands with the instructor, NCOIC (sergeant in charge) of the school and the school commander. At the end of the ceremony the NCOIC, an master sergeant with close to 30 years service who is younger than me, told the group he wanted to bring one of the students to their attention "Specialist Gussman who has a 23 year break in service and has the patriotism to return to duty after all these years." I got a round of applause and some very quizzical looks. In the hallway later a couple of guys from other classes said, "That's way cool what you did." I didn't really do anything, but it felt like I just won a race--and I didn't even sweat.

Canvassing Shows Just How Multicultural South Central Pennsylvania Neighborhoods Are

  In suburban York, Lancaster, Harrisburg and Philadelphia, I have canvassed in neighborhoods with multi-unit new homes like the one in the ...