WTH
Sleet and freezing rain between here and Destin, bitter cold with and behind it. We are not accustomed to this winter weather here on the Florida Gulf Coast, which increases risk to the extreme, especially for drivers, cars and trucks on the road, all passengers, walkers, children, elderly.
The lunch plan is oysters though.
Bad news for commanding officers of the two Navy destroyers whose ships were in collisions last year that killed seventeen sailors. Negligent homicide, dereliction of duty and hazarding vessel are the court martial charges. The chain of command already was fired, from Seventh Fleet vice admiral down, at least one rear admiral, commodore, captain, commanders, probably officers and senior enlisted on watch those nights. This was inevitable, but if the report is true and complete, firings and disciplinary actions need to go a lot farther and wider, including deployment authority and decisions, but highest command will slip by free. http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/11/politics/navy-ships-training-expired/index.html?utm_source=CNN+Five+Things&utm_campaign=d1274f43ea-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_01_17&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6da287d761-d1274f43ea-81726613. Asking sailors to do more than is possible and then court-martial them when disasters follow. It’d be family inconvenient, but ships could be rotated between western pacific ports for operations and either or both Hawaii or west coast ports for training. Maybe four star heads need also to roll. Or maybe emphasis needs to be on major corrective action over punishment. Why do I care - - I just do, it's the Navy, I will always care. Always.
Emails this morning from Seabear and from Walleye Direct, both we’ve dealt with, and just reading their email ads makes the mouth water. The Walleye Direct ad includes lake smelt, which always brings to mind my late 1977 adventures. In process of retiring from the Navy, I was traveling here and there for job interviews. One was in Brooklyn, which Linda said she wasn’t moving there and if I’d taken it anyway, trust me, you can trust me on this one, the rest of my life thereafter would have been vastly different from the retired goofball priest sitting here in 7H writing a blogpost this morning and waiting for the bitter weather to arrive from Destin.
But the one I have in mind was in Chicago: it was a high corporate position for which I was imminently qualified and the company flew me from Harrisburg to Chicago, put me up in a nice motel, and bought my meals while I was there. For supper the night before my first interview I ordered fried Lake Smelt, I’d never even heard of smelt. The waitress brought me a huge basket, steaming, piping hot, piled high with tiny fish not much larger than sardines.
I dug in and it was exceptional, delicious, memorable. Stupidly, with the first one I blistered the roof of my mouth, which downgraded the supper experience but not the smelt from A plus to B minus. Out of hundreds of applicants who responded to the full page Wall Street Journal ad for the executive position, I was one of ten on their short list, and one of two finalists whom they flew in for interviews, but Linda said she wasn’t moving to Chicago either, so when the selection board chairman phoned me to say they’d chosen the other guy because I didn’t seem overly enthusiastic about their company or the position, I was good, fine, relieved.
As it was, after Navy retirement I worked in WashingtonDC for a year, started my own defense-related business and did that for the next several years, drove new Cadillac cars, traveled all over the US and to Canada and Australia, taught graduate courses in defense acquisition management as adjunct professor for UnivWestFlorida, went to Gettysburg theological seminary and was ordained deacon and priest, enjoyed many pursuits and scored high in life, including fourteen years eating oysters and mullet in Apalachicola and pastoring a beautiful, historic old church of parishioners whom I still love, plus Grace Church, StThomas by the Sea, and especially Holy Nativity; but if I’d been a little more enthusiastic at that late 1977 job interview I could still be eating fried smelt for supper every night, it was that good.
Oh, what the hell.
DThos+ somewhere way downstream in +Time+ and, looking back, regretting little or nothing