What Does Socialism Look Like? It Looks Like Us.

When I listen to the TV or radio news commentary from back home I
hear political commentators accusing each other of Socialism. Many of
those commentators have no idea what Socialism really looks like.

But we do over here. It looks like us.

In a Socialist system, all the money is collective--there is one budget.
Just like us. There is an Army budget. If pay goes up, procurement
goes down. The opposite is also true. Reduction in Force (the Army's
version of layoffs) means more money for equipment.

Medical care is free, or the same price for all, but no one gets to
choose their doctor. Just like the Army.

In a Socialist system everyone gets the same pay if they have the same
rank, regardless of their productivity. Unions work this way. In the
Army an E4 with four years service who is a first-rate Blackhawk crew
chief, fit, and fully qualified makes exactly the same pay as an E4 with
four years service who is truck driver flunked the PT Test and still
can't fill out a maintenance inspection form.

In a really ideal Socialist society, no one owns private property. Your
housing depends on your rank. If you lose your rank you lose your
house. Since there are no privately owned vehicles, the only vehicles
are state-supplied and go with a position. So a unit commander gets an
SUV, a platoon sergeant takes the bus.

In a really radical Socialist system, everyone would dress alike and eat
together. If they had to carry weapons, they would only carry the
weapon designated for their job.

So here we are with assigned housing, assigned vehicles (or not), and
assigned weapons. We eat in the same three DFACs. We all dress alike,
both men and women. The commercials on our radio and TV do not sell
products, they attempt to modify our behavior for the betterment of the
state. We get the same pay for very unequal work. We all have the same
doctor.

In a radical socialist system we would not have freedom of worship as we
have here. In an interesting socialist aspect of life here, all
Churches use the same building. So the Catholics, Lutherans,
traditional and contemporary Protestant services, Gospel service, and
any other group that wants a worship service holds it in the same room.
This aspect of our socialist world emphasizes that all Christians really
worship the same Lord. I like that.

In America, in the active Army, even though we still dress alike at
work, we can wear our own choice of clothes after work. A Colonel can
choose to drive an 8-year-old Chevy and a Specialist with a
re-enlistment bonus can drive a new BMW M3 or a Suzuki GSXR. But not
here in Iraq.

We are defending freedom but for now, we are what Socialism looks like.

Bike Update

By the time I go to bed, I will have close to 850 miles this month. So I should get to 5000 miles in Iraq and 7000 miles for the year by mid December. If I time it right, I should be able to hit on of the milestones on December 19--the 40th Anniversary of my drivers license!!!

I celebrate that day every year. Usually I can mention at a holiday party and say I am pretending this particular celebration is in honor of my driver's license anniversary. It's usually good for a laugh. It turns not so many people celebrate their driver's license anniversary.

In sad bike news I think I am losing a bearing on the road bike. It makes and awful sound when I pedal and the freewheel is not very free. If it is a bad bearing, I don't have to sit up nights trying to decide which bike to ship and which to keep. The road bike goes in the Conex, the Mtn. bike stays.



On a completely different topic, I got my 7th Army Coin today. It's an unofficial award that recognizes a good job, sometimes on the spot and has no paperwork. I'll take a picture of mine, but the ones on the photo above are typical. Today's coin was for being the emcee on Veteran's Day from the Garrison. I got another one from my brigade commander for the same event.

Evangelical Icon Fading

At Chapel today the Chaplain asked the audience "how many people know the name Joni Eareckson?" Three of us raised our hands. I suppose there were 80 or 90 soldiers and only three raised their hands. If you don't know the name here are the first two lines of her Wikipedia entry:

A diving accident in 1967 left Tada hospitalized and paralyzed (as a quadriplegic; unable to use her hands or legs.)[1] After two years of rehabilitation and in a wheelchair, Tada began working to help others in similar situations.
Tada wrote of her experiences in her international best-selling autobiography, Joni, which has been distributed in many languages, and which was made into a feature film of the same name.

when I became a believer in 1973, it seemed Joni was everywhere in Christian media and even secular media.

Two years ago, Joni returned to my life in a way. She and I had very similar injuries. She smashed the fifth vertebra in her neck, I smashed the seventh. In 1967 MEDEVAC was rare. More importantly, medical science was only beginning to bring the discovery of DNA into practical treatments. In 1967 Joni's first responders may not have put her on a backboard. She was not MEDEVACed from the scene. And her hospital did not have a neurosurgeon who just returned from Baghdad and was very skilled in replacing smashed vertebra with bones from cadavers. All of which I had.

Joni has touched millions of lives with her ministry as a paraplegic. I may have had a ministry as a paraplegic, but I consider it a very awesome blessing that I do not have her ministry.

The advances in medical science since Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA (They knew from Mendel and Darwin what they were looking for) are something I am VERY thankful for on this Thanksgiving Holiday Weekend. Younger Christians here often talk excitedly about how Christian rock stars cross over and get played on secular stations. The new icons of Evangelical Culture play metal and alternative and get picked up on secular stations. They make movies, or at least animated vegetables. More sadly, they put saddles on dinosaurs in an indoor theme park labeled a science museum.

It's strange to think of Joni as passing to the margins of Christian culture.

Life Here Seems to be on Hold, but Life Goes on Back Home

Last month the last of the six Gussman brothers died. My father, George, was the fourth of six sons born to two Jewish emigres from Odessa, Russia. My grandfather died in 1932 just over 20 years before I was born. I have very few memories of seeing my father's three older brothers: Abraham, Emmanuel and Ralph, but I occasionally saw the youngest of the six, my uncle Harold, and most often saw the fifth brother, Lewis. In our family, everyone referred to him as Uncle Louie. He was the most successful of the five brothers, following Grandpa into the produce business and building a highly regarded business of his own.
Louie always drove Cadillacs and often drove too fast. My father liked to tell the story of Louie being one of the first to get a new Cadillac after the auto plants started making cars again after World War 2. Louie wrecked the car not too long after. He wasn't badly injured, but no one seemed to car about him anyway. People at the scene and after said what a shame it was to wreck a new Cadillac.
Uncle Louie had one son, Bob, who I always thought of as an uncle rather than a cousin because he is about 15 years older than I am. I saw Bob more than any of my cousins. He had a very dry sense of humor, in contrast to the loud exclamations that characterized most of the people at Gussman gatherings. Bob, like his Dad, is still working long past the age others retire, and if he lives to 100 like his Dad, he will also probably work till he is 98.

The obituary below is from Produce News--a trade paper. It says a lot about Uncle Louie as a businessman and as a person that they would run his obituary.

Mutual Produce founder dies at 100
by Brian Gaylord

10/21/2009
BOSTON -- Lewis Gussman, founder of Mutual Produce Corp., here, died Sept. 30 at Newton-Wellesley Hospital in Newton, MA, following a brief illness. He was 100.

Mr. Gussman launched the wholesale company, formerly named Mutual Produce Inc., at the New England Produce Center in 1955. He sold the company in 2000 and continued to work for Mutual Produce Corp. until he was 98.

"He paid his bills on time, he ran a good business," Richard Travers Jr., co- owner of Mutual Produce Corp., said of Mr. Gussman. He added that some shippers have been doing business with Mutual Produce for 30 years.

Mr. Travers said that Mr. Gussman loved the produce business because "no two days are the same." He said that Mr. Gussman would "jump on the phone" to tell callers that he'd rubbed elbows with their grandparents.

Sadly for Mr. Gussman, he outlived his contemporaries in the produce industry. "He was the oldest guy around here for 15 years," Mr. Travers said. "He was an icon of the produce industry."

Mr. Travers recalled that Mr. Gussman "loved playing with fruit, creating displays that were outstanding."

Paul DiMare, president of Boston-based DiMare Inc., said that Mr. Gussman was a mentor of sorts to him. He described Mr. Gussman as "honorable" and "one of the best produce people."

"He was a double A house in [the] Blue Book," which meant that he paid his bills every week, Mr. DiMare said. "There aren't a whole lot of companies that do that."

Mr. DiMare said that "everybody respected [Mr. Gussman] in Boston" and that he had a "great list of top-notch shippers."

Mr. Gussman's five siblings -- all brothers -- also worked in fresh produce, though not at Mutual Produce. Mr. Gussman's father also worked in fresh produce.

Mr. Gussman is survived by a son, Bob Gussman, and his wife, Trudi, of Winchester, NH, and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Lewis Gussman was preceded in death by his wife, Ethel Rosenberg, in 2004.

Bob Gussman said that the family is considering holding a memorial gathering in the spring.

Ups and Downs

Last week I mentioned that I have been sending friend messages to my high school classmates on Facebook. After 38 years away from Stoneham, I am missing my childhood home in a way I never thought I would. I suppose getting homesick in Iraq is about as surprising as getting thirsty in a desert.
Today I got a brief message from one of my high school classmates thanking me for getting in touch and asking me to Google his son. His son was killed in action in Baghdad in 2006. I read the many messages from his friends and family on the memorial web site. Seems clear from the messages he was a good soldier and a good man also. He was 22.
Before I went through the pre-deployment processing and training for this trip, I made three visits to Brooke Army Medical Center, which everyone refers to as BAMC--pronounced BAM-See. BAMC is the treatment and rehabilitation center for those who lose limbs. I was in San Antonio for four days, had some free time and thought I ought to go and see what this war really costs.
I talked to parents at BAMC. But they are different than the parents of the dead. Even when their child is maimed, he or she is alive. The parents of the dead have only memories. I have other friends who have lost children. Two men in our unit lost children during this deployment. I went to one of the funerals when I was home on leave.
Part of what we are here for is to comfort each other when we face grief. On this day after Thanksgiving, I am very thankful for four healthy children. And I will put the grieving parents I know at the top of my prayer list.

I Won the Race--Story in the New York Times "At War" Blog

The race went off fine. My runner and I won the team competition. And the story is on the "At War" blog in the New York Times!!

Here's the link to the story with photos.

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Among the hundreds of things I miss about home during my year in Iraq is the Turkey Day bike race in Lancaster County, Penn. This unofficial final race of every season draws 50 or more racers from around the county, and it shows which cyclists kept up with their fitness routines since the end of the season in September. So when I finally got a chance to organize a bike race on Tallil Ali Air Base after six months here, I wanted it to be on Thanksgiving Day.

As far as anyone on the base knows - and there are civilians who have been here since late 2003 - no one has ever organized a bicycle race at Tallil base, or as the Army calls it, Contingency Operating Base (COB) Adder. To the purist, the Task Force Diablo Biathlon was not exactly a bicycle race, but bikes raced in it and bikes crossed the finish line, so it was a bike race.

A biathlon was also an easier sell at Garrison Command because the cyclists don't ride in packs. In July I tried to organize a race for Labor Day weekend. I had a promoter, Rich Ruoff, who put the race on his Web site and was going to handle registrations online. Bike Line of Lancaster gave me two boxes of prizes. I could get medals from the KBR people who organize the running races. Everything was set, but then I met with a sergeant major (who has since left) and the race was over before it started. He wanted me to guarantee participation of at least 100 entrants and guarantee their safety - a tall order for a bike race.

The current garrison sergeant major was stationed in Italy and rides a Colnago road bike himself, so he was more amenable to hosting a race. Early in November, we had a meeting at Garrison, got the green light and started to put together road guard crews, medics and advertising.

Everything was in place, then the day before the race it rained. Real rain. After six arid months here the roads were awash in mud. Tallil has about 20 squat, dirty trees in 20 square miles of base and no grass. As soon as it rains, the armored trucks and fuelers with their four-foot-high tires drag mounds of mud onto the road. I rode that morning and found myself and my bike caked with mud by the end of the ride. I thought the race might be canceled. But by afternoon the sun was out, and an east wind was drying the mud.

We had both team and solo racers. The really cool people race solo. (I have a heel spur and raced as part of a team.) Being half of a team also solved a problem I had with organizing a bike race and riding in it. I was worried about winning my own race. But since I was in the "less cool" category I did not worry. We also kept the distance short -5k run, 15k bike - which favors the runners.

At 5:00 a.m. I walked the ¼-mile to the start/transition area at the House of Pain gym. I walked both of my bikes because my commander, Lt. Col. Scott Perry, was borrowing my single-speed mountain for the race. By the end of the race he wished it had gears.

The coffee shop is just 200 meters from the House of Pain so I could start the day caffeinated. The road guards started arriving right away and the medics followed soon after. By 5:45 there were only 20 competitors. Five minutes later we had the safety briefing and I gave the race instructions. I thought I was very clear. But not everyone listened.

At 6:10 a.m., 30 racers started the 5k run. Ten were doing only the run. Six of us stood at the side of the road and watched the runners disappear in the pre-dawn gloom of this cloudy morning. We were the riders in the team event. Around the edge of the House of Pain parking lot, leaning on the concrete blast walls, sat two dozen bikes - from a perfectly clean 20-speed Giant carbon road bike with bladed spokes to a $100 mud-covered PX special.

After the runners left, I did a few sprints to get warmed up. There's just no way to be a race organizer and warm up. As the race timing clock neared 18 minutes, my partner, Sgt. Derek Miller, made the final turn on the 5k run. When he finished, I took off riding as hard as I could into a 10mph east wind. Our main competitors were a pair of Air Force security police. Their runner was nearly a minute behind mine, but their rider had gears and I was on a single-speed road bike. As it turned out, the only other rider I saw was the guy on the 20-speed Giant. He was coming toward me when I was just past half way. He yelled, "Am I going the wrong way?" I said yes and kept pedaling. He won't do another race without riding the course first.

At 50:12, I was the first finisher. The Air Force team was two minutes behind. The next finisher was the overall solo winner, Maj. Joel Allmandinger, followed by two more solo competitors. Their race for fourth was the best race of the event. The two riders are both colonels, Colonel Perry, who commands the aviation battalion, and Lt. Col. David Callahan, the deputy commander of the armored brigade at COB Adder. The pilot beat the tanker in the run, but Colonel Perry was on a single speed mountain bike. He was O.K. on the first part of the course riding into the east wind, but on the south side of the course the tank commander could change gears and was going 6 or 7 mph faster with the tail wind. Colonel Perry got passed on the south side. Colonel Callahan stayed ahead until the finish.

After the race I handed out the helmets, gloves and water bottles from Lancaster Bike Line and the medals from KBR. I am hoping we can do one more race on December 19th.

Sgt. Neil Gussman rejoined the Army in 2007 after a 23-year break in service. He blogs every day about his experiences as a 56-year-old soldier at http://armynow.blogspot.com. Sergeant Gussman is a Category 3 masters racer. He has done more than 120 races since he turned 50, including three while he was home on leave in June.

For Nigel--A MEDEVAC Blackhawk Takeoff--Afternoon, into the Sun