Write a new post in response to today’s one-word prompt.
Jolly, especially at this time of year invaribaly invokes themes of red, usually a large gentleman with a flowing beard, red suit and a predilection for exotic pets…
A long time ago, in a country far far away, jolly was green, the Jolly Green Giant that came from afar to rescue downed airman, often deep into bad guy territory…
Evolving from the Jolly Grren Giant HH-3 to the Super Jolly Green Giant HH-53, and then into the SPECOPS MH-53 PAVE LOW
Heavily armed, but lightly armoured, relying heavily other aircraft to suppress enemy fire, Jolly Greens would push into unfriendly skies to locate and recover downed airman, many who were seriously wounded.
These operations would often involves dozens of aircraft….rescue helicopters, fighters and attack aircraft, tanker, command and control aircraft…and it was not unusual for one rescue to turn into another…
I’ve spent a bit of time at sea on small warships, frigates and the like, and been on board baby carriers like Ark Royal and Jeanne d’Arc…
…I visited the New Jersey on a liaison visit to Philadelphia in 2011…the sheer size of everything just blew me away. Ive driven past the Wisconsin at Norfolk a few times but that’s not the same as standing under these massive barrels…knowing that each turret weighs more than each of our old (pre-ANZAC) frigates…
…easy to feel small…
This class of ship represents a pinnacle in naval design that we may never see again…sheer brute force in offensive and defensive capability…built to dish it out and take it too…
This week, share something that glows. Maybe you’d like to experiment with some Golden Hour photography, or perhaps you know someone with a glowing smile. We’re excited to see what you share.
Never volunteer. That’s like one the the greatest military truisms – ever. And one of the wrongest. Nothing risked, nothing gained. My experience always was that something good generally came from volunteering – being volunteered, perhaps not so much…
I’m starting on a new volunteer adventure. The Fire Service was never something I really considered before…I travelled so much in my Army, then Air Force lives that I would have been unlikely to have been able to meet the training commitments but really, my head wasn’t really in that space. Most of my post-infantry career was in TTI roles (Top Two Inch) , thinking jobs, often working on my own, solo…not really the team environment from way back then.
Way back then…
My lifestyle changes over the past year have changed my ‘headspace’…an Outdoor First Aid course brought back all those Band 4 Medical memories and encouraged me onto the Pre Hospital Emergency Care course in September and that team working environment showed just how much I missed team work. On top of that, I needed some place to keep up those PHEC skills..
A friend joined another local brigade and I followed her progress…mid-winter, the local brigade delivered a recruiting pitch to our Business Association meeting and, although I wasn’t ready then, that sowed a seed that took root post-PHEC. I went down one training night and, in half an hour, I was helping a firefighter into a hazsubs ‘carrot suit’…
Training is officially two hours every Wednesday night but that’s the minimum…National Park 281 is only a small brigade but most members work odd hours and days so there are usually ad hoc training sessions throughout the week. For recruits like me, there is also a lot of study and training – just getting on top of the language is a mission – to be signed off before the week-long recruit firefighter course at the National Training Centre in Rotorua…with a little luck and a few more people falling off the wait-list I may get on the January course…
So volunteering…it’s a bit more than a couple of hours a week and a bit of study…lifestyles need to change: a pager can go off anytime so little things like ‘cap, shirt, Bata Bullets, need to be more prescribed and practiced; parking the truck pointing up the driveway saves a few seconds…many of us live in Raurimu, a time-consuming 5km north of the station: we don’t have the critical mass or number of calls to justify standing watches…
Small team, good team…hard training, good training…repetitive training, even better…
I saw this topic pop up in the morning mail and thought it would be a quick and easy post…
The Muses/ˈmjuːzᵻz/ (Ancient Greek: Μοῦσαι, Moũsai; perhaps from the Proto-Indo-European root *men- “think”) in Greek mythology are the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the poetry, lyric songs, and myths that were related orally for centuries in these ancient cultures…In current English usage, “muse” can refer in general to a person who inspires an artist, writer, or musician.
I did a spot of googling, mainly in search of an image to fit my perception of ‘muse’ and to lesser degree, see what others might be thinking. At first I thought this quote was pretty apt:
A writer’s muse
One day he will find you. He will touch you and you will feel a lifetime of indifference – of apathy melt away in a single moment. And you will ache for him. You will love him, in a way you walk a tightrope – in the way people learn to fall asleep in a war zone. You will bleed for him until the day they are gone. You will bleed for him every day after that. The time will pass and you will feel robbed – you will grow bitter. You will ask why but you won’t get an answer. And that is when the words will come.
~ Lang Leav
Who is Lang Leav? “…Leav is the international best-selling author of Love & Misadventure, Lullabies and Memories. She currently resides in New Zealand with her partner and fellow author Michael Faudet…”
What was wrong with this picture and many of the other memes, notes and articles that I found is that they all portray a muse as a dark thing, the bringer or the result of pain and tragedy. And that’s just wrong…
Yes, I am still riding my wave of Beatles nostalgia after watching Across the Universe last weekend…such great, so very clever words…if you haven’t seen Across the Universe, it is really worth the watch…if you like The Beatles…if you like the grassroots groundswell of change that swept the late 60s…if you just likely a feel good story put to great music…original takes on classic tunes…
It’s sad that so many people think that tragedy and pain is the only inspiration…my muse inspires through happiness and light…a mischief smile…a twinkling eye…examples well-set…
That inspiration shouldn’t be this rare…
This is my muse…(look away from the screen and just hear the words)
My muse…changes the way I think…
My muses…changes the way I feel…
My muse…keeps me on the path of light…
Even just relistening to all these tunes while drafting this post rekindles those memories and I’m writing again…the world might be a dark and scary place, there may be many things happening that we don’t like or that may frighten us but we shouldn’t be looking to the darkness for our inspiration: nothing good lies there…we should look to the light, look what’s good and let that inspire us…
When I’m working in the study at home, I use Plex to shuffle through the music library and send it down the stereo to play through the house. I often rewarded (and occasionally punished) with an eclectic blend of sounds throughout the day.
If You Only came on just as I was browsing the (long long long) list of unused prompts in my WordPress folder. The sentiment of the song seemed to fit the prompt ‘Empty‘…it’s sad to think that someone you know could be feeling like this, not realising what they have going for them, maybe wanting to reach out but ‘too’, too whatever to make that first move…
If you only knew
Just how we feel about you
You couldn’t hurt like you do
And if you only knew
How everybody loves you
You wouldn’t feel so alone
Well, everybody’s looking
Oh, what must they be thinking?
Oh, what must they be thinking?
And every glance, and every shrug and gesture
It has another meaning
Oh, what must they be thinking?
Well, I know what I think
That if you only knew
Just how we feel about you
You couldn’t hurt like you do
And if you only knew
How everybody loves you
You wouldn’t feel so alone
On every tongue a whisper
Oh, I know what they’re saying
Yeah, I know what they’re saying
Do you see that face, it says
“You have no right to be”
Oh, what must they be thinking?
Oh, what must they be thinking?
Well, I know what I think
If you only knew
Just how we feel about you
You couldn’t hurt like you do
And if you only knew
How good it is to see you
You wouldn’t feel so alone
And on one day
You may find that you’re no different
But ’til that day
We see you waste your days away
But if you only knew
Just how we feel about you
You couldn’t hurt like you do
And if you only knew
Just how good it feels to see you
You wouldn’t feel so alone
Don’t you feel so all alone
“Don’t you feel so all alone” That’s not a question, it’s a direction…many people don’t see that, can not make that move to reach out…sometimes they just need that nudge, the random phone call, the casual coffee, the ‘was just passing by and thought I’d drop in‘…
Anyway that’s today’s totally random post…Plex has gone on to The Pogues now…
Find inspiration in one of the popular topics on Discover. For this week’s Discover Challenge, focus on identity. You may use it simply as a one-word prompt, or tell us what the word means to you. Or you might publish a sketch that represents who you are or how you feel today, a poem about identity in our digital age, or a personal essay about who you once were.
I began drafting this post around the time of one of the recent active shooter incidents in the US. It says so much that such incidents are now so frequent that I cannot remember which it was, possibly Orlando…
The aftermath of each of these incidents is marked by bitter ‘weapon’ versus ‘ideology’ outbursts and exchanges. I do not thing that either side really gets the issues: each tragedy is little more than an excuse for each camp to dust off (not dust-off which is a far more noble act) respective meme collections.
It is America’s right to have whatever laws, rights and responsibilities that it wants to inflict on itself. I have no more problem with the Second Amendment than I do with the Fifth although I would offer that the rights of the Second should be read and applied in the context of their context i.e. as the people’s contribution to a well-regulated militia…the key phrase being well-regulated.
The ‘right’ to espouse an ideology probably falls under the First Amendment…the one that protects free speech…but again that comes with responsibilities. We have probably all heard of, if not actually read or heard the actual words, Oliver Wendell Holmes “crying fire in a theatre” quote. For the record, this is what he actually said to give context to those words:
The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic. It does not even protect a man from an injunction against uttering words that may have all the effect of force. The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent. It is a question of proximity and degree.
Contrary to the good Justice’s opinion – the key work in his theatre analogy is ‘falsely’ – in the information domain, the random and rabid shotgunning of the information militia (plural) is as destructive regardless of whether it has elements of truth or fact or not.
Every time those ideological memes fly, their sole function, intended or not, is to fan the flames of ideological conflict. As much as I thought it needed work (thought #1, thought #2), what we are seeing is the phenomenon that David Kilcullen theorised in The Accidental Guerrilla: the more something is ‘fixed’, the worse it gets. This is the irony of irregular warfare.
With regard to the active shooter incidents in America, there is another factor in play that may not be present or which is certainly less present in incidents. A large element of American psyche identifies with the ‘main in the white hat’, ‘one riot, one ranger’, the rugged individual standing against all odds, etc. This ethic is quite commendable and certainly not unique to the US. What sets it about in the US though is the accompanying mindset that a gun is what you use to resolve an issue.
We’re not on any sort of moral high ground here or in Australia where the national equivalent is a punch in the head, or the desire to deliver such but that ‘message’ has to be delivered up close and personal, it cannot be delivered from across the street or even across the room; and it is far easier to neutralise. In the UK, or parts thereof, the local equivalent maybe a cloth cap or the good old ‘Liverpool kiss‘…again, attacks with limited projection or lethality from afar…
It is this overwhelming cultural drive that guns solve problems that is America’s challenge. It’s not how many guns you have or what sort they may be. It’s not what you believe or who you disagree with. It’s not how accessible guns or unsocial ideologies may be. Those may all be separate concerns but, weapon or ideology, it’s the drive to resolve what angsts you with a gun that is the problem…
I love those rugged individuals roles immortalised by Clint Eastwood, John Wayne, Jan Michael Vincent, etc etc but I don’t build my life around them. When I have a beef with the local council or my employer or the grit truck driver or the mailman, I don’t feel I have to to take a gun to resolve the issue or make myself feel better.
It is one thing when the line between reality and fiction becomes blurred. It is quite another when those worlds begin to overlap…where the ‘final option’ becomes the only option…
Having said that, we can hum ‘Imagine‘ all we like…COIN 101 reminds us that cultural shift happens over generations but being honest about the problem is the first step towards a solution…
It felt quite strange, finishing work with daylight to spare…just not that many people out and about this evening…but worth it for a view like this…
Even just relistening to all these tunes while drafting this post rekindles those memories and I’m writing again…the world might be a dark and scary place, there may be many things happening that we don’t like or that may frighten us but we shouldn’t be looking to the darkness for our inspiration: nothing good lies there…we should look to the light, look what’s good and let that inspire us…
