9 MAR 06. Dear __________ Many thanks for your letter of 24 FEB 06 & the two Big Ones. I am very happy that your leave was successful & enjoyable & I appreciate the update on the European countries you visited. Things have changed there since my last visit, but they do everywhere. I'd be willing to bet, however, that Mexico City is still populated by Mexicans, since they are populating the rest of North America. Ha!

I don't blame you for extending your tour, with our economy in its present shape. All I wish is that you make it alive & in one piece. As I see it, risk is often worth taking, on behalf of one's freedom from dreary, tedious jobs & lousy bosses. Life is fatal, anyway, & quality beats quantity in my book None of us lives forever, & the most miserable people I've known seemed to believe that they'd live forever! I never believed that, so I've never been miserable.

Our real treasures are our memories, which serve us as our data base for making mature decisions throughout our lives. Experiences of all sorts are therefore our investments in the future, so that we become wiser as we grow older. In Spanish, there is a saying: "The Devil knows more because he is old, than because he is the Devil."

M unplanned retirement has brought me many benefits, such as freedom from the 9 to 5 routine, clock-watching to avoid being late for work; clock-watching to make sure I was not chewing my lunch too slowly, &c. The clock was my dictator, & I felt like a character tied to the seconds, as in "Mission Impossible." I can look at my clocks without any discomfort or anxiety. I haven't wound it in 2 years, so it has stopped. There is a Scottish saying, however: "A stopped clock is right twice a day. A true Scot is probably too cheap to throw out a broken clock, I'd imagine. You know why we don't hear of a Scottish bungee jumping team? Because they're too cheap to use bungee cords! Being Scottish myself means that I'm speaking from experience, although I've never been bungee-jumping, with or without the cords. I don't suggest you try that as a form of amusement. Parachuting seems more reasonable & also practical, especially if you travel on an airline which is too cheap to pay for landing rights at an airport. I've known glider pilots who really like to fly like birds, with no noisy engine. They often high-flying birds so they can find thermals to gain lift, & they can spot likely places for warm air to rise, such ascliffs & traffic intersections! One fellow said he glided home on the hot air from cars at intersections. He'd lose altitude over the street, until he got to the next intersection. Then he'd obtain lift & continue his glide. I don't think he wan fibbing. I wonder what the drivers would have thought if they'd looked up & seen this huge 'bat' overhead, following them at night! I'd probably get a start. Since a glider is silent, except for wind possibly rushing past control surfaces, most people wouldn't think of looking up, unless they heard a motor. It's funny how expectations can affect our senses. People may not see an aircraft which makes no noise, for they are not expecting to see one without the noise. Then ther are noises which do not mean "aircraft' to many people. I was walking in downtown Toronto, Canada, one sunny afternoon when I heard an airship overhead. I looked up & saw a blimp circling the CN Tower & I looked around at the people walking an the street. Not one was looking up, for the sound meant nothing to them, whereas, they'd have looked up if they heard a helicopter, for everyone recognizes that sound! An airship sounds like a large truck, maybe an 18-wheeler down-shifting & accelerating overhead, since the engines are not needed to maintain lift, but direction. The same mentality of expectation seems to determine whether motorists see pedestrians, bicyclists &/or motorcyclists. They also see what they expect to see, to a dangerous extent, as I've learned.

Speaking of aerial adventures, I read a book about the Soviet Spetznatz commandos by Suvorov, in which he describes parachuting from 300 feet! He claimed that the commandos had compressed air tanks which would cause the parachutes to spread out sufficiently to slow their descent. Well, those commandos were so tough they probably didn' t need parachutes. Is it true that the U. S. Army uses "The Thief of Bagdad" as their training film for Iraq? That flying carpet looked real handy! Please keep in touch & take care of yourself. All the best, as always.




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9 APR 06. Dear _______! Many thanks for your letter of 30 MAR 06 & the Big One! It was great to know that you are O.K. & that your situation is actually improving, despite the "burea-crazy," as I call it. World War II vets called it "SNAFU," Situation Normal: All Fouled Up. You may also use another F-word, as some also do.

It seems as if the NCOs watch too many Hollywood movies, like Cinderella, The Ugly Duckling, &c. to believe that initial losers & pains can magically turn into Rambo/John Wayne material under combat stress. When I was in U.S. Army Basic Training at Fort Ord in 1960, we had one bad apple in our company, & he washed out before he finished Basic Training. He was no team-player, & you wouldn't want him on duty next to you You could rely on him for one thing: he would always let you down! It has been alleged that competence in war require that one is crazy, for combat is not designed as mental health-therapy! Normal people suffer all sorts of stress, but one may imagine a crazy person who would LIKE such conditions, as in the crazy novel, "Catch 22." I've never met such a person, as yet, & I've known many vet from all over the world, mainly during my 'vacations' in the midst of civil wars in Colombia & Central Africa. I have never met any crazy person who was very competent in anything, but was very dysfunctional in nearly everything. What would make a dysfunctional person sudden change his attitudes & his behavior? A blow to the side of his head? An explosion next to him? A sniper round cracking above his head? As you observe, such surprises do not tend to shape up the flakes & nuts, but cause them to be more dysfunctional than they are already. I wonder what studies were ever conducted to claim that incompetents suddenly become competent, when subjected to combat stress. Maybe those NCOs smoke stronger stuff than tobacco. Maybe they watched "The Dirty Dozen" too many times. Ha!

If I could make a wish, it would be for us to "declare victory," & give Iraq back to the Iraqis.

The USA had a public transportation system before the automobile destroyed it. As I understand, no public transportation system can pay for itself if people are scattered all over the map. A public transportation system is designed to carry a large volume of passengers, but when we count the number of cars with one driver & no passengers, we see the problem. In countries with many people living close to one another, like Europe & Japan, public transportation is the way to travel. One Japanese fellow showed me around Hiroshima. He said that every square inch of land is precious, for there are so many people in so little space. To use cars for transportation would require lots of land to be paved over for roads, but if they did that, then there would be no Japan, just one strip of asphalt with a white line middle! I learned that one could not buy a car in Japan, unless he could prove that he could had off-street parking. I saw a building fire in Hiroshima. The streets were so crowded with cars, trucks & pedestrians that the fire truck had difficulties to arrive at the fire scene let alone in time to put out the blaze before it spread! One American writer said that a chronic fuel shortage would render U.S. cities & suburbs dysfunctional, because they were designed around the automobile, with cheap fuel in mind. Small, heavily-populated areas like Singapore, Hong Kong & San Francisco make reliance on the automobile absurd. There is just not enough space in which to drive or park, without paving those areas over! The car is a means of getting from one place to another, without destroying those places on behalf of the automobile, as would have to be done if the car were the only form of transportation.

Is it true that parking is such a problem in Iraq that drivers must blow up their cars in order to avoid parking tickets?

"Red Dawn" was pretty incredible, to me, for it depicted normal American couch-potato kids suddenly become tough guerrilla fighters, like bandits in the Balkans or Afghanistan. Other viewers, like myself, said that the film came 20 years too late. It should have appeal at the height of the "Cold War." I guess we could call it "Cold War Nostalgia."

I read Heyerdahl's "Kon Tiki," but some claim it was pure speculation on his part. "The White Gods," however, are ancient Indian legends, likely based on fact, for I've heard much about them in Mexico & Peru. How much is fact, & how much is fiction is still to be discovered. Another speculative writer is von Daniken, who claims that ancient stone carvings in Peru, & depict astronauts. The famous Nazca figures can only be viewed from the air, as I understand for at ground level one only sees low piles of rocks. I suggested that ancients could have viewed them by constructing tall towers of wood with ladders, or riding kites like hang-gliders, or even hot-air balloons, but my pro-astronaut enthusiast said that I was "no fun."

I note that U.S. military like to convey an aggressive image by combining many operation with the word, 'assault'. The World War II Germans did the same by adding the word, Jaeger, or "Hunter," which connotes activity & movement, attack, rather than defense Even anti-tank gun crews were called "Tank-hunters," despite the fact that they were hiding in ambush in fixed positions & used "Tank-defence guns." Paratroops were "Parachute-hunters," which might mean that they were hunting for parachutes! Since a paratrooper in German is a "Fallschirmjäger", I would, when carrying my umbrella in Berlin, introduce myself as being a "Regenschirmjäger (Umbrella-hunter). That got me some chuckles & weird looks. Ha! I rarely carry an umbrella, for it does not work when rain & wind come together. For rain, I wear German Army surplus raincoat & a suitable hats while wearing my "assault galoshes."

Yes, you have a good idea. A Yakima Walmart air-assault is just what we need!

As you may know, Yakima is basically Northern Mexico population-wise. We had a large Mexican demonstration in protest against the tightening of U.S. immigration laws, which we not enforced, anyway, & are most unlikely to be enforced, in view of all the demonstrators in major U.S. cities. Since the demonstration here, we hear more gunshots in the barrios or Mexican neighborhoods all around Yakima's dead downtown area. Four days ago, in the afternoon, I was chatting to a fellow resident in my apartment building, when we heard TAT-TAT! I said, "AK on full-auto!" My acquaintance, who is a Vietnam vet said he was about to say the same thing. One day ago, around 2:00 p.m. (1400 hours) I heard the two AK-47 shots again, just as loud as before. But this time, a vet who'd been watching from the third floor spotted the shooter's location & called the cops. I haven't heard the AK since then, but last evening I heard two shots from a large-caliber rifle. Maybe there is something significant in the number two. The gang-bangers have their peculiar codes, signs & signals. They had better cease the shooting, for they might disturb the drug business, which emphasis coke & meth. Some meth comes up from Mexico, along with the coke, but lots of meth is made in this state. As one DEA fellow sang: "Methlabs are bustin' out all over..." The least I can do is to keep the curtains drawn when I work with my lights on at night. Someone might like to take a shot at an easy target, so I don't want it to be too easy.

I actually read about an Army recruiter in Florida who told his prospective recruits that Iraq was safer, combat-wise, than Miami! I hope Yakima does not get such a reputation, for, as you know, I like the quiet life. My typewriter is loud enough for me. Yakima is beginning to resemble the type of rootin'-tootin'-shootin' Mexico I knew, back in 1966 & 1967. Colombia does not resemble Yakima, as does Central Mexico, for Colombia was much greener. In Colombia we had bandits & terrorists throughout the 1960s, but drugs did not become a factor until the 1970s, to my knowledge. The Colombian terrorists thus became narco-terrorsts. In Mexico, the narco-traffickers were not terrorists, but now they are also narco-terrorists, of the sort we are beginning to get in Yakima. It's just a matter of time, & time depends entirely on profits to be made in the drug trade.

For relaxation, you guys might want to rent a video version of "Lawrence of Arabia." You'd like the train-ambush scenes in which Lawrence & his gang use IEDs to blow up the tracks, just in front of the oncoming trains. If you don't see enough camels in Iraqi you can see all the camels you want to in that movie, oh, & there's lots of nice sand for you to look at as well! On second thought, you may prefer to watch some underwater movies, or green jungle adventures, with lots of streams & fresh water.

My father worked in oil exploration. He said that he was on an oil derrick when he saw Iraqi forces approaching Kuwait. The former Iraqi dictator had decided it was time to take Kuwait, but I understand he was shot to death in his palace, & his "assault" on Kuwait was abandoned. I forget who replaced Karim Kassim, perhaps some guy called "Saddam." Fortunately, my father's contract was up, so he did not stick around to see if Iraq was actually going to invade Kuwait. Most of the time, he worked in The Rub al Kali Empty Quarter in the Sultanate of Muscat & Oman. It was a nice, dry place, he said, with lots of sand, but there was surf to go with it, & sharks to keep you alert.

One thing I noticed when I heard the AK shots, was that I woke up without any need for coffee. I mentioned this discovery to some locals, since AK rounds are caffeine-free & non-habit-forming. That's what my old Landmine & Boobytrap instructor said "Explosives are non-habit-forming." Come to think of it, I don't know anyone who has an explosives habit.

Just take care of yourself . All the best, as always.