rlfj: Blog

I refer regularly to the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Utica. That hotel is still present, and is one of the better ones in the area, but at some point in the 90s (I think) it was sold to the Radisson chain. Since then it has been sold to Marriott as part of their Delta chain. My family has had many weddings, receptions, and parties there.

Congrats to those who recognized ‘Rufus T. Firefly’ as Groucho Marx’ character in the classic movie Duck Soup. It’s my favorite Marx Brothers’ movie.

To those who commented that it would be impossible to do venture capital in the Baltimore area, I simply point out that Warren Buffet has been able to earn a very nice living running his little shop in Omaha, Nebraska. Omaha? Really? Outside of corn and cattle, it has even less going for it than Baltimore! (I’m sure it’s lovely - don’t stone me with the wonders of Nebraska, please!)

There is still some controversy surrounding how cue balls get to the proper outlet in a coin operated pool table. I have had a lot of people reply it’s not magnetism, but different size that makes the difference. Okay, I went to the font of all knowledge - Wikipedia - and looked it up. Here goes:

“Coin-operated pool tables such as those found at bars historically have often used either a larger ("grapefruit") or denser ("rock", typically ceramic) cue ball, such that its extra weight makes it easy for the cue ball return mechanism to separate it from object balls (which are captured until the game ends and the table is paid again for another game) so that the cue ball can be returned for further play, should it be accidentally pocketed. Rarely in the US, some pool tables use a smaller cue ball instead. Modern tables usually employ a magnetic ball of regulation or near-regulation size and weight, since players have complained for many decades that the heavy and often over-sized cue balls do not "play" correctly.”

So much for that issue; we won’t return to it.

Enjoy!

Welcome back to the story & the blog.

Quick note - Back in Chapter 24 I commented on coin operated pool tables, and how I had no idea how it figured out what was a cue ball. Well, one of my readers knew! There is metal in the cue ball and a magnet routes the ball into the correct track to the cue return. Simple and brilliant. I never would have guessed that. Thanks.

There were a lot of interesting ideas tossed my way about what Carl should do next in his life.

• The CIA will want him as a Spec Ops warrior. (As I said, before, he’s just a busted-up company grade artillery officer. They can hire any number of perfectly good Special Forces or SEALs for what they need.)

• The NSA will want him for code breaking or crypto work. (This actually made a fair bit of sense. It’s not going to happen, but this was really an interesting idea. It could be made to work.)

• The Army will want him as a civilian contractor. (Doing what wasn’t made very clear and sounds pretty far-fetched to me.)

• Building a computer or software company. (This also made a certain amount of sense, although a lot of the big names had already started by then. It could be made to work.)

In chapter 62, we finally learn what Carl is going to do in the future - venture capital. Of all the guesses I got, only one person mentioned this! Keep reading for more on this.

There were several comments that Carl shouldn’t have had to move his own stuff. The Army has a duty to ship your possessions from your last duty station to your last civilian address of record at their expense. This is true. However, my experience with my son, who is in the Navy, is that the military moves you at their convenience, not yours, and by their mover, not yours. My son lost several reserved apartments on his last move and would have had to deploy to his next duty station ahead of his wife, by over two months, because the Navy’s movers were booked. He ended up getting a PODS and moving himself, and then getting reimbursed later. As another point, Carl’s last civilian address of record was in Troy, NY, not Lutherville, MD.

Enjoy!

One of my readers commented that I should mention some appropriate veteran’s organizations. While I invented the West Georgia Veterans Coalition in the first story, there really is an IAVA, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. There are also the Wounded Warrior Project, Team Rubicon, and many others. Many of these groups have dedicated programs to help with PTSD and suicide prevention. If you or a friend or a relative need assistance, there are groups out there to help. You just have to ask.

I gave a lot of thought to Chapter 12. I started writing this story with some parts going back to 2019. I wrote the section where the spring of 2020 occurred before anybody knew about coronavirus. At that point I went back and added a quickie paragraph, and that was what ended up being published. It wasn’t long after that before it became obvious this was something truly disastrous. I seriously considered taking a break for a month before publishing this chapter in order to see what was happening with this mess. Instead, I compromised. I added quite a bit more but left some of the details vague.

One thing that has struck me about the crisis was the plethora of heartwarming ads from various companies telling us all to stay apart so we can all be together later. It reminded me of a section in A Fresh Start during Hurricane Katrina, where Carl Buckman was talking to the head of ExxonMobil about freeing up some helicopter capacity. “I knew that three things were going to happen. After the storm, some of their helicopter capacity would be offered to the government, that some wonderfully heartwarming commercials would be generated about how they were helping, and that before I was out of office Lee Raymond would be knocking on my door for something worth billions of dollars and I would give in.” Art imitating life, or life imitating art? Or maybe I’m just a cynic?

Another instance of life imitating art occurred during the pandemic, while watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail, with one very eerie scene. “Bring out yer dead.” “I'm not dead.” “Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.” That was a very weird experience and nowhere near as funny as it once was.

For those curious, I took the details on the UGA history doctoral program from the Guide to the Graduate Program in History at the University of Georgia. It took a while to work through the UGA website to find it, but it gave me a lot of information on what Grim would need to do to get his doctorate. It’s nineteen pages long; six pages are for the master’s program, and thirteen pages are for the doctoral program.

For the moment, we are taking a break from Grim and returning to Carl Buckman for a bit. We’ll be coming back soon.

Several readers wanted to know why Grim wanted to get a PhD. It was going to be a pain in the ass. Why move out of the house? Why spend all the time doing it?

Why does anybody get a PhD? Because they want to! I remember when I was getting my MBA, going to school nights while living in a one-bedroom apartment with a daughter sleeping on a cot in the dining room. Why did I do that? (More than once since then I’ve asked myself the same question.) Real answer, it was either that or a PhD and I didn’t want to do research. Still, it could have been for any reason.

Anyway, Grim wants to get his doctorate. I can tell you flat out that a doctorate really opens a wide range of possibilities in academia, in case you want to become a teacher. I would bet it would also look good on a fancy resume for a consultant. Probably make for a nice-looking business card, too. We’ll just have to wait and see!

Finally, dnkjd51 pointed out if Grim winds up being an expert witness on police procedure or tactics in any sort of legal proceeding the PhD will look pretty impressive. I never even considered that, but it’s quite true. Courts love expert witnesses with doctorates. A teenage Joe Fumblefingers with a PhD will rank a whole lot higher than somebody with forty years’ practical experience.

Many comments on my writing about PTSD, all complimentary. This is a real disease. I have a nephew who did a tour in Iraq in the Marines, in Fallujah, and he has had some major problems since then. It took him and his parents years to get him to admit to the problem and he’s been through two marriages and God only knows how many jobs and places to live. They were very worried he would commit suicide. His third wife seems to be the charm, and he’s really coming together. God bless her!

Stellate Ganglion Block, SGB, is a real treatment being studied for treatment for some symptoms of PTSD. I learned about it watching 60 Minutes. I didn’t make it up.

I got a very nice email from elfkabezhaltera explaining something that I didn’t know and that Grim didn’t know. “At some point Grim wonders why the soldier with a light machine gun is called an "Automatic Rifleman". Simple - in the dim past such a soldier was armed with a Browning Automatic Rifle (as the US Military played pretend that the BAR was a squad level machine gun).” That makes a lot of sense. At the time the BAR was used, the primary infantry weapon was the Springfield ’03, and then the M1 Garand, neither of which were automatic weapons.

Enjoy!