"Chill out will ya"

Ok.  Last post I was talking about my very noble friend who faced a choice between family and his comrades.  And I talked about choosing between two good things.  That was on the train going to work.  Now I am on the train home in the quiet car.  I sat next to a guy who seemed pissed off to share the seat.  Ten minutes after we leave the station, he takes a call.  I let him know we are in the quiet car.  His response is to say "Chill out will ya" and stomp away out of the car.

Which means, he is among the small but constant group of people who sit in the quiet car so they won't have to listen to other people's calls.  What they want is the "Quiet Except for ME Car."

As opposed to the person choosing between two good things and doing the right thing, these people--the ones who know very well they are sitting in the quiet car--want the world to revolve around them.  They have every opportunity to choose to do the right thing and choose to be jerks instead.

The Four Loves in Camo

No, I am not going to write about a soldier with four girlfriends (or she could have four boyfriends!).  CS Lewis wrote a book called The Four Loves about the four Greek words for love.  We lump all these words together in our one word Love.

In Greek the word Eros is romantic love, Philia is friendship, Storge is love among family members and long-time familiarity, and Agape is what we call charity.

Yesterday at lunch I talked to a soldier who volunteered for an upcoming deployment, then changed his mind when it looked like his marriage would end when the wheels went up.  His one-sentence choice was between deploying with his buddies or keeping his family.  He chose his family.

But The Four Loves makes clear why this is no easy choice.  Friendship and Romance are different kinds of love, but they are both love.  And both Friendship and Romance grow from a free choice we make of that particular friend or lover.  Of all soldiers we serve with, there are a few whose company we enjoy above all others.  Falling in love often begins with a moment in which we see our beloved and decide in a moment 'That's the one.'

Which puts Romance and Friendship in stark contrast with Charity and Family.  We do not choose our uncles, cousins, in-laws, children and even pets.  Families form from existing families, blending and adding to form a new family.

Charity is expressed best by God's Love for us and Mother Teresa's love for lepers.  God accepts us as we are:  needy, nasty, selfish and small.  Loving us does not show His good taste, but His compassion.  When Mother Teresa lifted a leper from a Calcutta gutter, she was not thinking 'This is the best leper in this gutter.'  She was expressing the kind of Love God has for us and wants us to have for others.

While  Romance and Friendship are a free choice based on our estimate of the value of the beloved, Charity and Family Love are freely given with no regard to value at all.  We love the child who didn't learn to tie her shoes till she was 12 just as much as the one who is on the honor roll and a starter on the soccer team.

All through my Army career, I have seen these agonized choices between two good things.  A man who is choosing between family and friends is torn by two kinds of love.  The toughest moral choices are not between Good and Evil, but between Good and Good.  And they hurt all the more because when we choose between two goods, we know we are hurting someone who does not deserve it.

More later.

Daily Inspections not acceptable

This weekend many of us went through an Aviation inspection getting ready for a visit by the Inspector General.  A warrant officer who is also a Blackhawk pilot is in charge of the security for the aviation facility.  Because this is a highly secure area, they conduct a 100% inventory of keys at the end of every day.

The inspection requires a semi-annual 100% inventory of the keys.  Our security officer showed the inspector the daily log of key inspections.  Since it says "Daily Log" the inspector said it was unacceptable.

Our security officer asked.  "If we are supposed to have an inspection on June 1 and December 1 could I give you the inspection sheets for those particular days?"

"No" was the answer.  The sheets are labelled Daily so they are unacceptable as Semi-Annual inspection verification.

In the area of key security, he was rated "Unsatisfactory."

Clearly, it is important not to accept daily inspections when a semi-annual inspection is needed.

Welcome to the Army.

First month in Iraq, fuelers set up at Camp Normandy

 Roomie, SGT Nickey Smith, goes to Camp Normandy with the fuelers.

Waiting for the bird

Luxury accomodations

 Nice neighborhood!

Commute is Getting Worse

I talked to a guy at Dow yesterday who just returned from four years working in Sao Paulo, Brazil.  He commutes into Philadelphia from Wayne PA and is very happy with the drive on the Schuykill Expressway.  It is a narrow, crowded highway into America's fifth largest city.  But the traffic moves.  Different than driving in Sao Paulo.

Two days of three so far this week my commute home was longer because a train broke down or was delayed.  I was more than an hour late Tuesday, a half-hour yesterday.  The commute is two hours each way already, so delays really suck.

In December I had a different problem caused by the conductor.  I wrote a letter of complaint.

Here it is:

On December 8, 2011, the conductor on the 10:59 pm train to Lancaster refused to allow me to travel on her train.  I believe her name is Debbie.

I have commuted from Lancaster to Philadelphia on Amtrak since 1995 for three different jobs.  Since I returned from deployment to Iraq in February 2010, I have bought monthly tickets and travel to Philadelphia three or four days per week.  I am an avid bicyclist and sometimes bring a folding bike with me on the commute.  I normally travel to Phila at 706am and return at 535 or 642pm.  

I have a folding bike with 20-inch wheels and another bike instead of folding breaks in half.  I then fold the two pieces of the bike.   

On December 8 I worked late.  On the platform Debbie said the bike did not fold so it was not allowed on the train.  I had been bringing this bike on trains for almost a year and said that to Debbie. She said, "That's not true."  Really?  

I am a 58-year-old combat veteran of Iraq with five kids.  I do not often get called a liar to my face.  

My employer covered the hotel room because I had to stay over in Philadelphia.  Debbie said she was concerned about passenger safety, but she had three completely empty cars.  If she thought anyone was in immanent danger from a folded bicycle, the bicycle could have been stored in an empty car.

I did not write immediately because I am treated so well by Amtrak and tell my friends who drive how nice it is to take the train.  My wife and I are also in the process of adopting a child from Haiti.

But this morning I was reminded of just how rude Debbie is.  I am writing this letter on the 706am train to Philadelphia.  I had not seen Debbie since the incident until this morning.  We are in the quiet car.  She is talking loudly.  Loudly enough she was asked to quiet down.  She said, "I am allowed to talk."  When the conductors sneer the rules, even if they are off duty, that is a real problem.

I do not think you should have customer service people who act in an arbitrary and insulting way to customers and disobey your own rules.

I want an apology from Debbie.  

Sincerely yours,

Neil Gussman

Lancaster PA 

Flushing at Home, at Work, in Iraq

Toilet training is clearly not equal in the many parts of my world.  And new information can change the flushing habits of people brought up push the chrome handle after doing their business.

I work in a 7-story museum and library.  My co-workers average more than two college degrees each.  The bathrooms in our building are shining clean.  But in the 4th floor men's room, walking up to a urinal means looking down into yellow water.  At 9am the water is blue from the previous night's cleaning.  But the 4th floor has offices for the most environmentally conscious members of our staff.  Which means, I suppose, "If it's yellow, let it mellow, if it's brown, flush it down."

At home, my 12 and 13-year-old sons are still being trained to aim, flush, and wash.  They always get two out of three.  I occasionally listen for the proper sequence of water sounds and correct on the spot if there is a mistake.  But sometimes when I take a shower I find and unflushed toilet.  

In Iraq the toilets were often horrendous.  Once people were posting Facebook pictures of a turd that would not flush and got named Il Duce, after Benito Mussolini.  How the connection was made, I don't know.  These guys not only pissed on the seat, they shit on it which seemed to me physically impossible.  But who knows.  On drill weekends, many soldiers clearly do not know urinals flush.  Or maybe they are environmentalists.

In any case, most days, I see yellow water somewhere.

Moving Pictures onto Facebook

Over the next few months, I will be moving the thousands of pictures I have from Iraq and from Army weekends to the facebook page http://www.facebook.com/2104GSAB for my unit and my own facebook page http://www.facebook.com/ngussman.  With the war in Iraq over the pictures are all of places that will be just memories.  If the current government succeeds then no one will need outposts with blast walls in the middle of nowhere.  If things go badly, all those places could end up ruins.  Either way, my home-away-from-home at Camp Adder is history.

Waiver Moving Forward

Today the first stage of getting a waiver should be completed.  Right now, like any Mac user, I am struggling with opening the Army forms.  My old COMPAQ laptop I use for Army stuff decided to quit in the middle of downloading the file.  Oh well.

In my last post I wrote about the survey of what Americans value.  My wife and I were talking about the list.  She said I have to make clear that the list is talking about what people value in their own lives.  So when competence ranks #23 of 30 she says it is not something the respondents hold as a personal value even if they value it in others.  Most people very much want competence in people around them--doctors, lawyers, police, teachers--but that does not mean they value it in themselves.

Very true.  The worst sort of sports fan is exactly that.  A 300-pound guy who can't run or throw across a street yet knows exactly how Tom Brady should lead the Patriots in the Superbowl.  Competence is not something he values in himself.

Why Go Back in the Army?

Two days ago, I had a two-hour psych evaluation.  My wife and I have to get the evaluation to be sure we are not crazy before we adopt our next child.

The psychologist was very interested in why I would go back in the Army after almost 25 years.

I talked to her about some of the reasons I had, but one reason became more clear to me in Chapter 2 of a book titled The 10 Natural Laws of Successful Time and Life Management by Hyrum W. Smith.  If you are the type of person who cares about time management, you may recognize Smith as one of the founders of Franklin-Covey and the Franklin Planner System.

My wife carries a Franklin planner and is a strong advocate of the system.  I am a disorganized mess and working through the book in hopes of becoming organized.

So, did I join the Army to be more organized?  No.

But in the book on Pages 63-4 is a list based on a national survey in which people were asked to list the things that had the highest priority in their lives.

Here it is:


In a survey carried out in the United States in 1992, the following
values were most commonly mentioned:
  1. Spouse
  2. Financial security
  3. Personal health & fitness
  4. Children and family
  5. Spirituality/ Religion
  6. Sense of accomplishment
  7. Integrity and honesty
  8. Occupational satisfaction
  9. Love for others/Service
10. Education and learning
11. Self-respect
12. Taking responsibility
13. Exercising leadership
14. Inner harmony
15. Independence
16. Intelligence and wisdom
17. Understanding

18. Quality of life

19. Happiness/Positive attitude

20. Pleasure

21. Self-control

22. Ambition

23. Being capable

24. Imagination and creativity

25. Forgiveness

26. Generosity

27. Equality

28. Friendship

29. Beauty
30. Courage

When I thought about going back in the military, I knew without being able to completely say why that the military had a better grasp of reality that the civilian world.  For many reasons, soldiers call civilian life "The Real World."  But I don't think so.  The list shows why.

Look at the bottom of the list:
23. Being capable

28. Friendship

30. Courage

A "real world" in which competence, friendship, and courage are bottom-of-the-list, optional extras is not the kind of life I want to live.  

The psychologist was very professional and said affirming things about all my life choices, but I am going to guess she likes the Franklin survey list the way it is.   

France Suspends Combat Operations in Afghanistan

On Thursday four French soldiers were killed and sixteen were wounded when an Afghan soldier they were training blew himself up.  Following the incident, the French President suspended combat operations and all training of Afghan soldiers by the 2000+ French troops serving in Afghanistan.

Earlier in the week I had a moment of sympathy for Mitt Romney when he was criticized by his Republican rivals for speaking French.  The same people who criticized Jon Huntsman for speaking Mandarin.  The same people who are too self-satisfied and stupid to learn another language themselves--not they have a particular talent for English.

There will certainly be criticism by the chubby commentariat on the Right of the French decision.  But since none of the loud-mouths on right-wing radio ever served in the military, they will be talking out of their XXL asses.

France was our first ally and without them we would have lost the Revolutionary War.  France remained our ally after their own revolution and it pisses me off every time I hear criticism of France by the Chicken Hawks who are in favor of war as long as they are fought by someone else.

I don't know if or when French troops will return to risking their lives training Afghan soldiers, but in this ten-year-long war, French troops have been on the ground and in the fight since the beginning.  French critics in the US have been on their fat asses just as long.