Missed the Toilet Bowl!!

In the military, soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines hate few things more than mandatory fun:  events that are supposed to be fun, but attendance is required, not requested.

I missed today's mandatory fun, an all-day sports event called The Toilet Bowl.  Faculty from the Defense Information School play football against the instructors.  The services also have games--Army and Air Force versus Navy and Marines.  There is barbecue for lunch.

The event begins at 8 a.m. and ends at 3 p.m.  For Army students, attendance is mandatory.  Air Force students could attend, but if not, they had a long weekend.  

Guess who was happier.  

Two Army students were excused from the event (You could say flushed from the bowl!).  I did not have to go because my step-daughter's father's memorial service is tomorrow.  Another sergeant had a suicide in his home unit.  

Everyone else went to the TB.

I asked one of my civilian instructors if he was going to the Bowl.  He said he would, but he is also a Navy veteran and remember mandatory fun with no small amount of pain.  He said,  "I am a civilian.  I can take leave."

Finished First Feature!!!

Today we wrote a four-page feature article about our foodie instructor Peter Robertson.  He cooks foods from around the world, he knows all the best restaurants in Baltimore, and he and his wife pick their homes by which on has the best kitchen.

Like every feature, it was draining to write, but the topic was fun.  I want to go to his favorite restaurants.  His Korean fave is the Honey Pig in Ellicott City, Md.  With a name like that how could it be bad?  They have iron skillet tables and cook right on the table.  I really like th Chinese restaurants that put the hot pot in the middle of the table so you cook your own food.

Formation soon.

Photography Begins!

Today we got our cameras, learned some basic camera operations and went off to shoot pictures. Unlike the writing, I learned new things from the first minute we were taught how to set and operate the camera.

We have to use manual focus which meant I took some blurry photos, but we were taught the relationship between aperture and shutter speed in a way that should help me take better photos.

Learning to be a better photographer will not change my uneasy philosophical relationship with photography itself.

When I first got into journalism in the late 70s, I was handed a camera and told to shoot pictures to go with my stories.  I shot 400 ASA black and white film and shot from multiple angles so I could get one good shot in ten.

But the camera also changed my relationship with my subjects.  Some people say the camera takes the soul of the person getting her picture taken.  I think it takes the soul of the person taking the picture.  When I interview a subject for an article I don't care what the person looks like.  When I am looking for a photo subject, symmetry and beauty lead my criteria for a photo. 

The world looks so different to a photographer than to a writer. 

I want to keep the Biblical view:  In the beginning was the Word.  Let the words determine the photo.

Photography Tomorrow!!!

Because I am in the Army, I get to take pictures of things most people never see.

Now I will learn HOW to take pictures properly when I get these oppotunities.

Tomorrow the class I was waiting for begins!!!!

Photography.

For four years I have been taking photos, nearly 20,000 of them.  And I don't really know what I am doing.  For the next three days I will get professional help with this problem--three full days of photo class.

Today was the final day of newswriting.  I am pretty sure I did well.  My average is in the high 80s or low 90s so far.  I am sooooooooooo much better at writing than proofreading.  The Army, not surprisingly, stresses accuracy over everything else in the writing process.  Be dull if you must but don't screw up.

Family Weekend Gets Complicated

Jacari, Nigel (first two, front row) and I drove to Richmond Saturday to see Lauren.

Kiersten joined the boys and I Saturday morning at Waffle House.

Annalisa went to see Iolanthe Sunday.

Lisa is in Minnesota--I talked to her on the phone.

This weekend was as a lot of fun, and I even got to catch up on sleep on Sunday, but it was definitely not a weekend to relax.

I had been planning for a few weeks to visit Lauren this weekend in Richmond.  The original plan was for my wife to drive the boys to Fort Meade Friday evening, then I would drive with them to Richmond Saturday morning and return after Lauren's season-opening football game on Sunday at 1 p.m.

Then I was put on the duty roster on Friday evening from 8:30 p.m. till 30 past midnight (Zero dark 30).  And my wife had a math meeting at 7:30 a.m. Saturday!  I thought I might try to drive home at Zero Dark 30, but that morning we got up at 3:45 a.m. for a ruck march.  By the time I got off duty I had trouble driving the one-mile trip back to my bunk.

In the morning I drove north to PA.  While the boys cleaned the house, I did the laundry.  Around 3:30pm we drove back to Fort Meade where the boys ate in the DFAC (Chow Hall).  They ate burgers, fries, cake, Coke--they were very happy.  Then we drove to Richmond.

Lauren had couches and beds for us.  The boys played video games.  I went to sleep.

The next day the boys and Lauren and Pete got up at 6:15 and played with the dog.  I slept till 9. 
We had brunch at Lauren's, walked to the River, then went to Lauren's football game.  The start was delayed by an hour so we only saw the first half, but Lauren, Pete and Pete's brother John all played well.

At 230pm we drove back Silver Spring MD where my wife picked up the boys.  She had been visting Iolanthe in Frederick VA. 

So we got to see all of the family in VA and PA.  Lisa is in Minnesota, so seeing her is a little more difficult.

Marine Knows Twitter

Got a great lesson about twitter today from a Marine sergeant who does social media here at the Defense Information School (DINFOS).

He told us to use facebook to interact and use twitter to follow breaking news.  He gave us sites to follow and told us not to worry about hashtags, they are not necessary for searches.  We can just search twitter for subjects we care about.

He also showed us good things we can learn from Yelp and other social media sites. 

The class was two afternoons and covered all of social media.  There were no tests, no lesson plan and no homework.  The oddly informal character of the course shows just how new the whole subject of social media is to the military.

The contrast was especially strong today because our morning class was about rewriting national news into local news stories.  This was the staple of weekly newspapers, but has all but vanished now that most everyone gets their news from electronic media.

We had a very formal lesson in how to do something that is very rare, and an ungraded lesson in how to do something that will be the center of all communication with young people--90% of the military.

Bathroom Stalls Get Busier at School

No, we did not have an outbreak of food poisining.

As of today, Army students are not allowed to have cell phones during the duty day at DINFOS.  We were told about the new rule at final formation yesterday. 

We are learning to be news people.  At the beginning of today's public affairs class the instructor told us we should all be news junkies and asked how we get our news.  Everyone said, "On my phone."

The Air Force is laughing at the Army again.  "You guys can't have cell phones?"

We are allowed to write a request to the battalion commander if we want or need and exception to policy.  But very few soldiers will do that.  The jokes at class breaks say cell phones will ride in back packs and magically appear in the bathroom stalls.

61 days to graduation.