Today, August 29, is the ten year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina making landfall on America soil. More specifically, the hurricane made landfall on Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, that day but the sheer size of the storm impacted the Gulf of Mexico coast for over 150 miles in both directions. Winnie and I were living on the Mississippi Gulf Coast then, and on storm day we were sheltering in a friend’s house only 30 miles east of landfall. Katrina’s landfall was a life-altering event.
We’re in the dog days of August but time still seems to be flying by. So many chances of fun have passed without actually seizing the moment. Those few moments of fun that actually happened stand out like jewels in the cluttered mass of routine that hardly vary from one season to the next. It seems there’s just not enough time to do fun stuff, but always enough time to do the chores of daily life.
Yesterday I faced the possibility of a mass shooting in a place I worked, that had seen a mass shooting only 21 months ago. It turned out to be a false alarm, but the response by law enforcement and reactions of people involved showed me just how close to the edge we’re living.
Being married to a Chinese lady means I have frequent adventures in Asian cuisine. Along with the cuisine comes the adventures of accompanying Winnie on her shopping trips to local Asian grocery stores. I enjoy visiting these stores for a chance to explore the amazing things Asian people consider edible.
Winnie has been talking about learning to swim for almost as long as she’s been in the US. A few weeks ago she finally took the plunge and signed up for swimming classes. Of course, she also wanted me to sign up with her, so I could “help her out” with her classes.
Last week the Washington Post ran a blog post titled “Washington Post Story: Here’s how much of your life the United States has been at war.” The author Philip Bump used a chart to show the percentages of a lifetime an American has spent at war, based on their ages.
This got me thinking about just how many American wars I’ve experienced during my lifetime.
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
As I’ve been exploring the Potomac River by water, I’ve discovered some interesting spots and learned some interesting history. One spot that is rapidly becoming my favorite is Mallows Bay, on the Maryland side of the river, which is the location of the largest ship graveyard in the Western Hemisphere.
Regular readers of this humble website might have noticed that over the past few weeks we’ve gone through several changes in our look. Astute regular readers might have also noticed that on frequent occasions the look of this website was “Basic HTML,” a look where the actual layout was sucky basic lists of posts and navigation with no apparent effort made in layout.
There are reasons for all this.
I was in Las Vegas, Nevada, last week attending a Navy reunion with the crew of USS Scamp (SSN 588), the first submarine I served on during my Navy career. In addition to sitting around with old shipmates drinking, sharing sea stories, and generally catching up on 35 years of living, I chartered a kayak trip down the Colorado River. And what a trip that was!
A Deeply Personal Decision
Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5 – 4 in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges that the Government cannot prevent same-sex couples from marrying. Their decision came down to an entirely appropriate application of the Fourteenth Amendment to our Constitution.
To hear Conservatives wailing and gnashing their teeth, one might think the End Times have arrived. I guess for them, it may have.
Opinions & Commentary
Freedom to Marry Gay Rights