Perspectives and Parallels

It’s been awhile, since I’ve sat down to record what’s going on. “Things” have gotten in the way. From a celebration parade for a 100 year young friend, to work, on. Truth be told, it’s hard to focus my mind on what to write, though I know from experience, that once I sit down and start writing it will pour out of me. But somehow, it’s different right now. I try to find things I can put in perspective, parallels I can use to what is going on around me, and what I find seem jumbled, since there seems to be nothing to put this in perspective, no parallels from my past to use. I think about keeping track of days and times and how difficult that is right now. Much easier when we have set schedules for what day we do what and what time things routinely occur. When we lived in Korea, we worked 6 days a week and I had trouble keeping track of the days, so Mike bought be a Seiko watch with the day and date on it as well as the time. Now my FitBit watch tells me the date and the time, but I have to open my phone to see what the day is. Saturday’s we would work a half day, then I would go to the base beauty shop (we might have had less than a couple dozen women on base, but we had a beauty shop), and for a few dollars, I would get my hair done, a manicure, a facial and a massage once a week. Those days of pampering myself seem so far away now. Shortages of food and supplies? When Desert Shield and Desert Storm were going on (Aug ’90 – Feb’91), I was living in Germany working in the Kaiserslautern Military Community (at one point in time, Kaiserslautern had a larger population of American citizens living there then anywhere outside of the CONTINENTAL United States – ie, more Americans than Alaska or Hawaii had.) When the war started, there were shortages in the commissary, not of food as much as cleaning supplies and the families left behind in Germany after the military deployed to Desert Storm were told it was because the shipments had followed the deploying troops. We honestly didn’t believe that they needed our family size household cleaners in the Desert, but we did believe that the things that would normally have been shipped to Germany were still sitting on the docks in the US, while they prioritized sending other supplies to the troops in the Desert first. Then there was Korea – where just about everything was rationed. If you wanted to buy coffee or tea, those were rationed to prevent them from being sold on the blackmarket downtown (I remember getting to the tiny shoppette we had once without a current ration card and the gentleman behind me in line graciously using his tea ration to help me out.) Shampoo and cosmetics however weren’t rationed and I would often see a GI walking out of the Shoppette with a case of shampoo that would have lasted me (with my waist length hair) for several months and he would be back a day later to buy another case. Now if you can find soap, kleenix or toilet paper at the grocery store, you are limited to one or two “packages” of it, so you hope to find a “multipack” rather than a single pack when you go shopping. When I was in Korea, we had an annual Team Spirit exerc ise with a combined force of South Korean and American Troops close to 200,000 men and women. I managed the largest food service operation in the Pacific at the time, at Osan Air Base. We had an issue one year with the supplies arriving in time for the exercise and a water shortage, so I ended up using a wartime priority to order the papergoods (plates, cups, flatware, etc) and other supplies needed to feed the troops. What I used was a minor part of the system that is being used now to try to get supplies manufactured and sent to the right areas in a timely manner. Stockpiled supplies. I remember being at MIZZOU in the early 70’s in the ROTC program and the NCO’s going through the stockpiled supplies of C-Rations in the basement of Crowder Hall and pulling out the cigarettes and chocolate. The US Military has always stockpiled resources. I worked for the Army’s 29th Area Support Group in Germany after I got off active duty. Their primary job was to maintain the stockpiles, than when Desert Shield and Desert Storm happened, that transitioned into sending those supplies to the Desert. The stockpiled supplies, foods and medicines would be inspected on a regular basis and while some would be rotated out and used with the incoming supplies at the local bases, we typically wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the new and old items. Only antibiotics, hormones and a very few other medications couldn’t be used years after their use by date. And foods, unless the package was bulging or leaking or rusting, could almost always be used. Use by dates and best use by dates, don’t mean a food is bad, just that it’s quality might not be the same level as when it was originally packaged. No one questioned using 5,000 masks found in a crypt in the National Cathedral that have been stockpiled and forgotten for over 10 years. Lack of coordination? We moved from Hahn Air Base to Ramstein Air Base right after USAFE Headquarters was bombed in 1981. While we weren’t at Ramstein when the bombing occurred, we heard endless tales of the missteps that occurred. The Terrorist Bombers hadn’t realized that the base was so large, that the “operational side” of the base came to work at 7:30am, but the “Headquarters side” of base didn’t come to work until 8 am. They timed the bomb to go off right before 7:30 in the parking lot, figuring that they would get mass casualties with everyone rushing to get to work on time. Instead, only a few early birds were around. The Bombers, left the base right away and the police later found evidence that they had gone right outside the base gates and watched from the Mackenbach Woods next to the base. Immediately after the bombing, as shock and disbelief set in, NO ONE on the base took charge. Finally a Lt Col took over and started directing operations. As a result, no one initially notified the German authorities. Those precious few minutes were enough for the bombers to get away. Is the lack of international coordination allowing the virus to “get away” from the scientific community that is seeking a vaccine and cure? Attacking the most vulnerable? When we lived in Germany, the Bader Meinhof Gang and the Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Faction)-RAF, was very prevalent. They bombed hospitals, schools, US military clubs, the October Fest and were the ones responsible for the bombing of USAFE Headquarters. For the most part, we did our best to ignore them. One person (other than the poor guy who was murdered in order to get his uniform and ID to get the terrorists on base and the really high ranking officers), wasn’t their target. (We rolled our eyes when told we weren’t supposed to hang uniforms on the outside laundry lines because they might be stolen and used to enter the base.) The object of terrorism is to terrorize, and how do you best terrorize? You attack the defenseless and show the defenders that they can’t protect their most vulnerable members. Isn’t that what COVID 19 is doing to us? Attacking first our most vulnerable elderly population and showing us we can’t protect them? Shelter in Place? When I was a small child, I lived in French Morocco during the Revolution as the Arabs fought to be free of European control. We would watch the French evacuate in one direction in their tiny little cars and the Arabs evacuate in the other direction with their donkeys and carts and we were told there was a mandatory curfew in place and we were to STAY INSIDE for our own protection. Learning new computer programs and procedures. In the mid 1980’s, when personal computers were just starting to be used, I was responsible for computerizing the Services Division, I worked in. No one had any idea what they were doing, and the first instruction was to “format” the harddrive in increments of 7, so we all formatted our brand new hard drives at 7, which was too small to hold anything and crashed all the computers. At which point they said increments of 7 at or above a certain number base number. Today, I work on learning ZOOM, MS Teams, how to do Virtual Open Houses and showings and much more, each with its own blips and blurps and failure points. Adapt our living environment? Anyone who has ever spent time around a military person, especially one on a remote tour or long deployment to a third world country, knows that US troops are inventive and able to adapt to whatever is thrown at them and will adapt their environment to fit the situation, just as we are adapting our homes for sheltering in place, working from home, home schooling and family life right now (though having an entire room to quarantine things in for 3-4 days - up to a week or two, when you bring them home from the grocery store or they get delivered to your front door still seems a bit much to me, but my California relatives swear by it.) As I write this, I realize that I survived all of those times and others, and I know that in a few years, I will joke about how I survived COVID 19 and the many things we did to “protect” ourselves from the unknown, some of which in hindsight will seem ridiculous (like putting pantyhose on over our masks) and My husband keeps saying every time he walks into a store or bank wearing a mask, he expects someone to stop him. As someone once told me, the vacation trips that you take where everything is PERFECT, may be great, but they don’t make for great stories afterward, while the times that tried us and where we really wondered if we’d make it to the other side are the trips that we are still talking about years later, when we can look back in hindsight and laugh at the perils we stood up to and fell down against, but we survived through them and have reached a point where we can laugh as we talk about them. It may take awhile, but we will find a vaccine, develop herd immunity and come out on the other side of this stronger for the lessons we’ve learned about what we can survive and how inventive we can become. Here's to coming out of this stronger with great stories to tell that will make us all laugh down the road. Dale