Writin' Forty

When I worked for my last job I had to attend some sort of class teaching me about something. The woman teaching the class was an Air Force reservist Lieutenant Colonel. Now, this was relatively close to me having left the Air Force myself as a Major and somehow she and I got to talking about  what led me to my current gig doing what I was doing. I told her about my last job in the Air Force, being a commander of about 200 or so people on a small island in the middle of nowhere. How I was the person who, as a satellite operator, was the guy largely in charge of the flying mission that got dignitaries from the United States to South Africa and back for Nelson Mandela’s internment. Things which normally look pretty good on an officer’s performance review. Probably good enough to be considered for a promotion to the next rank. After a quick frown,  she  pretty matter of  factly  said “You weren’t sponsored.” When you are sponsored that means that someone has taken ...

  It hit me just a short time ago that a lot of this…whatever we are in right now is about power. It’s a common thread that just continues to pop up. Wielding a gun is placing a lot of power in your hand. Let me tell you what I think being a gun advocate should mean. Let me first state that I personally do not care if you own a gun. Literally couldn’t care less. Now, being a gun advocate to me should mean you own a weapon (or 2, or 12) and you could fire each one with precision, which means you train at least semi regularly with the weapons you own. It means that you have them secured where just no one can get them. It means anyone in the house within a reasonable age should be trained on the weapons you own. Wait, I’m not done. It should mean that you would want that same standard for anyone who owns a gun. Why am I rambling about this? Unfortunately there have been many shootings that have occurred in the United States and nearly every one follows  the same script: shooting ...

  It’s about a week out before an important presidential election, possibly the most important one of my lifetime. Advertisements are abound to include nearly every social media outlet prompting you to vote. Text messages from call banks asking have you voted and sometimes even who you are voting for. Even President Obama has an ad out asking people to have a plan to vote (then execute said plan). That is an excellent idea and one I’m not here to debate.   The question I have is :  what is my plan for dealing with people who vote d for or plan to vote for Donald Trump? I’ve been thinking about this, really, since the man was put into office. At that time I was the person who would be on social media, primarily Facebook, trying to tactfully tell people that nothing good could come from voting for this guy. How morally deficient he is. How his words and even more important, actions, have encouraged white supremacists to be more forward and demonstrative with their actions. ...

I never wanted to pay attention to politics and I want you to know that is as true of a statement as I ever said. As a black American, I would say I went along as I got along as much as any other person for most of my life, even if starting my career as a black officer in the Air Force made me a minority of a minority. I was aware there were racial things, issues,  events . But I stayed away from politics. I remember when I was in college and eligible to vote for the first time, in Air Force ROTC it was talked about how military was supposed to vote Republican. I remember an e-mail going through ROTC channels about how the Clintons were connected  to dozens of murders. This was somewhere circa 1996-1998.  I remember maybe 10 years later in one of the best assignments I was a part of in the Air Force that people, if you had a set of ideas they didn’t like, would call you derisively a “liberal”. This made you defensive about not wanting to be one. I remember not liking that...

  I made the decision to go back to  jiujitsu  as soon as the school opened back up in early June. Let’s talk some background: Jiujitsu  wise, right after the tournament I went to and won my match it felt like certain lights were starting to turn on and that I was making my leap, as it were, towards really getting it. Man, is it a cool feeling to have. COVID hit and…ugh. Training stopped. The promise I made to myself is that I would not fall out of shape, even if I wasn’t able to go and train like I wanted to. So, the day I stopped training was the first day I popped in the  Beachbody  T25 workouts. I did those for 11 weeks straight. Shaun T kicked my butt. The result being I gained a little muscle, kept in cardio shape, and hit the ground running once training started up again for me. My  jiujitsu  game was more of a mental one for those 11 weeks than anything. Couldn’t train, but was very happy with how I kept myself in shape to be able to get r...

  Yeah, this has been one heck of a year. Most of it I went silent on this blog for and I have no one to blame but myself. I normally type these things up when I’m in a meeting at work or  it’s  a little dead at my desk at work. Problem being that I haven’t been at work, per se. I’ve been home for about 6 months now due to COVID-19. I can honestly tell you I didn’t see that coming. Many of us didn’t. It took me way too long to realize that I have spent a lot of time in front of my work computer where I wasn’t’ actively doing work or I was listening to a meeting via phone/ webex /what have you and I could have been killing everyone softly with the song of my words. So, to the 8 people who read this: I’m  sorry.  I should have done better. This downtime really does things to a man. I’m fortunate in that most of the things that it’s done to me are good. My life certainly is  more simple . I don’t have to put on work clothes; I put on a t-shirt and shorts and m...

The weekend has passed and for those faithful 8 who have read this blog that means that my first jiu-jitsu competition has come and gone. The results? Well? I felt prepared coming into the competition and had a good night’s sleep leading into the event. It was weird, because I woke up in the middle of the night with a cough that wouldn’t shake. Then I got kind of hot. One of the very few conditions under which I can’t sleep is if I’m hot; that plus the cough made me panic that I might be getting sick. NOPE. No time for that. I went downstairs and took some Airborne, dropped some black elderberry syrup  (get some, that  ish  works)  in the  Airborne  mixture, and then took some probiotics with  the Airborne/black elderberry mixture. I was not messing around. I could literally feel the cough stifle itself about 15-20 minutes later. I had been intermittent fasting about 2 weeks leading up to the event but needed to put something on my stomach the...