104 days till vacation.
Diana and I are taking our first major vacation in…longer than I care to admit. We’ve done a few trips over the years, but they’ve almost always been tied to events. Six weeks after we got married, we went to Austin—for my dad’s funeral. We went back a year or so later—for business. We took the kids to Seattle—for my brother’s wedding. There have been a lot of trips for weddings and funerals, but few just for the fun of it.
A year after we moved to Oklahoma, we took a long trip to Oklahoma City and western Oklahoma. After a funeral trip to Ohio, we took a few days on the drive back and visited a few places around St, Louis. More recently, Diana and I took a long weekend to southern Oklahoma, which was fun. But most of the trips have been tied to events, and most of the time, the kids have been with us. This one’s just the two of us.
Where are we going?
Hawaii. It’s been something of a vacation bucket list kind of thing for me for years, for no particular reason. I suspect that’s true for a lot of people who want to visit the islands. There’s a romantic draw to the place that’s difficult to put into words.
We’ll be staying on Kaua’i, the northern island. We’ve got plans for several excursions, including a trip to O’ahu to visit Pearl Harbor. There’s likely going to be a helicopter tour, a luau, and maybe some whale-watching, too.
Small World
A few days, I read a thread at a veterans forum about the airborne capabilities of U. S. law enforcement. Yeah, there are people who think American cops should be able to parachute into an area. At any rate, one of the guys mentioned having assisted 82nd Airborne units with Hurricane Andrew relief operations, flying some of them around via Blackhawk helicopters.
During that same time, I was working at Marietta College. Our chief was friends with the chief at what was then Miami-Dade Community College, and wanted to go down and help MDCC’s police department for a few days. That turned into taking a bunch of students from Marietta down. We spent a day helping clean up MDCC’s campus, but the students wanted to do more, so we ended up going down to Cutler Bay. There, we took over organizing a supply distribution point at a shopping center. It had a big water tank with no way for people to take water home, and a circus tent with mounds of clothing, non-perishable food, and toiletries.
When stuff like that gets sent down to disaster areas, it’s often just thrown in the truck with no sense of organization. You might have a pallet with diapers piled on top of food with clothing mounded over everything. Then at the relief point, a lot of that stuff just gets dumped in piles, again, with no organization.
The Marietta kids jumped into that mess with both feet. Some went into the tent and started organizing the piles and pallets there, creating aisles so you could reach everything. Others went into the shopping center and started cleaning it up so that we could have an orderly way to distribute the supplies. By the time we left two days later, the tent was set up as a warehouse, and people could walk through the stores in the shopping center to grab what they needed. We were all super proud of the work we did.
At any rate, at one point we had some small command element of some part of the 82nd there. I kind of remember a colonel, but memories are hazy thirty years later.
I mentioned this to the pilot at the forum, and he said he remembered flying a nurse into that parking lot.
Kind of cool to run into someone that way.
American Heartland
I’m more than a little dubious over the announcement of a world-class theme park in NE Oklahoma. Vinita is not exactly a bustling metropolis. Its population is about one-third of the total county population. There’s just not a lot of infrastructure in Craig County. Aside from that, you’ve got Branson and Silver Dollar City just two hours to the east. Oklahoma City’s Frontier City is about 2.5 hours west. I’m curious about how a new park would affect or be affected by these other parks.
The area could certainly use the economic boost the park will provide. I’m just not yet convinced that this will actually happen. The announcement caught a number of people by surprise, like the Cherokee Nation. The tribe hadn’t heard from developers in over a year before last week’s press conference.
I count it as a plus that the land has already been purchased, as that kind of thing is one of the major stumbling blocks to this kind of project.
I wish them luck.
TV
After watching roughly half a million clips from the show on YouTube, I finally got around to starting Justified. I figure by the time I actually finish watching six seasons, the entire sequel will be up and I can just go straight through it.
One of the scenes I’ve seen (heh) several times on YouTube is the opener, where Raylan shoots Tommy Bucks. Can you imagine getting hired for a guest appearance and getting killed in the first two-and-a-half minutes of the show?
And I’ll say right now that S1 E4, “Long in the Tooth” did absolutely nothing to help my discomfort with dentists.
Reading
Several months ago, a story out of McCurtain County raised quite the ruckus. Two county commissioners, the sheriff, and at least one deputy were recorded making threats to kill a pair of journalists. The officials were upset about how the journalists were reporting on a variety of issues at the sheriff’s office. The New Yorker covers the story in A Small-Town Paper Lands a Very Big Story. I think the AG got it right. Based on what I’ve heard and read of the comments made, I think the county officials stopped just short of creating an actual conspiracy to commit murder. By stopping where he did, I think AG Drummond left the way clear for another agency or jurisdiction to bring charges.
A couple of weeks ago, I shared my thoughts about Operation Underground Railroad and Sound of Freedom. This week, I came across a piece at The Roys Report entitled Opinion: 6 Groups Fighting Human Trafficking Better Than Operation Underground Railroad. The article summarizes their previous coverage of OUR, then talks briefly about each of several alternatives, both the good and the bad.
Washington Post has a terrific story about the Appalachian Trail – Why the famed Appalachian Trail keeps getting longer — and harder. If that link doesn’t work, try this archived link, but it doesn’t have the extra media content. There was a time in my life when I wanted to hike it, or at least a portion of it. I never really did more than dream and read about it though.
Reuters reporter Andrew Hay had a good story about How Native American police are fighting the crisis of missing people. Native/indigenous peoples tend to fade into the shadows for some reason, and that’s not just an American thing. It happens in Canada as well. Glad to see more attention being brought to the issue.
Writing
Another blogging milestone reached this week. This is the 40th post this year, which is one more post than I made last year. My top year for posts was 2016, when I made 71 posts. Thinking more about it, the actual number was probably a little higher because I was making some guest posts back then.
I should be on track for at least 52 posts this year if I keep my weekly streak going. It’ll likely be a little higher though, because of the AI posts I made back in May, and the occasional Music For a Sunday Afternoon posts.
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