Years ago David Sedaris wrote that there is nothing more sad than seeing a man standing on a street corner dressed as a taco. And now, someone has decided that we can do better.
The new National Museum of Crime & Punishment opened a few days ago just around the corner from my job. The museum staff have to wear bright orange prison jumpsuits. I was on my way to CVS during lunch and there was someone from Abu Ghraib come to life, just crossing the street. It is nearly summer so I guess the hood was optional.
I suppose it was only time before a prison economy had its own gift shop and I couldn’t resist going in. Sadly, the “Cop Shop” had a mundane assortment of mousepads, shot glasses, prison art, episodes of COPS, books by John Walsh. No Taser keychains, no Nixon placemats.
It is bizarre that despite being halfway between the White House and the Capitol, the website seems to avoid mentioning political crimes or scandals. Think Dillinger’s getaway car, a signed clown photo of John Wayne Gacy, but not Senator Larry Craig’s restroom stall. You still have to go to Minnesota for that.
Note to self: Email the museum and recommend that staff ought to do Thriller performances to draw in a lunchtime crowd or add something special to a private party. After all, the Geneva Conventions don’t apply!
I had to check their book selection because I had a college professor who told me to read Discipline and Punish. He also suggested smoking a joint first to enjoy it more, and that I could write anything about the book because no one really knew what it said. But no Foucault, no fake drug souvenirs for my desk, and no Dostoyevsky either. However, the museum does include white collar crime: Is it me or does the sign outside look very similar to this?
Something tells me there is not much of a defense section alongside the CSI exhibits. It is interesting that they bother to include criminal investigations at all. That is so old school! They could have just skipped to the punishment.
At the museum you can see a gas chamber and electric chair for $18 and the kids get in free!
For now the only place in town you can see orange jumpsuits and waterboarding demonstrations is in front of the White House. It’s kind of like a Washington DC version of Sea World. And like the Smithsonian, the anti-Bush demonstrators do not charge admission!
Yay to us. We met in 1995, started dating in 1999, and moved together to Seattle in 2000 for Elysia’s first duty station at Bremerton. We were married six years ago today in Central Park.
I proposed during a quick vacation and visit to Elysia’s family in Queens. It is one of the few times I have succeeded in surprising her and I managed to give her family a head’s up without them blowing the secret. Only it did not go the way I intended.
Being confident, I asked Elysia’s father for permission. At the time, I had been looking for work in Seattle for several months. Her dad was very polite and, smiling, told me that perhaps it would be good if I had a job. I couldn’t agree more! I’d had several good interviews, but nothing had come through yet. He again very politely suggested that starting a marriage would be easier once I had a job. I agreed, was glad we agreed, and then Elysia and I went to Central Park where I proposed.
That night at the dinner table, I waited for Elysia’s family to react to the news. Her grandmother only speaks Chinese and everyone speaks it at home, so I just sat there happily munching away and waiting for a tone of excitement in the conversation. It didn’t happen. They were all relatively quiet.
About halfway through dinner I nudged Elysia and asked her to tell them. They already knew. I didn’t know what to make of it and was somewhat disappointed that it was not a big deal. Elysia shrugged it off.
THREE YEARS LATER: I am having a conversation with my brother in law who, thinking back and laughing, casually says “Boy, you sure had a lot of balls to go ahead and propose after her father said No!”
It was incredibly nice weather today, so we took the Metro to downtown Washington DC to hear the US Navy Band and Sea Chanters (chorus) at the Navy Memorial. Pictures here.
There was a wreath laying, words to honor and remember veterans, and a rendition of Taps. The band played everything you would expect a military band to play, and they played very well.
And then they launched into several numbers from . . . South Pacific. The musical is big on Broadway right now so there we were, watching a Musician First Class playing an ensign singing about her Honeybun. Honeybun was also in uniform and wearing his obligatory grass skirt. They apparently drew the line at the coconut shell bra.
We thought that was pretty surreal until they launched into a medley of songs from the ’60s. It is hard to capture how it feels to see the US Navy singing the more vapid songs of the counterculture, particularly when they remind you of Berkeley. Picture listening to a military band playing Age of Aquarius, Windy, and then a crowd of veterans, uniformed servicemembers, families and onlookers waving their hands back and forth for a rousing Let the Sun Shine In.
Elysia and I both wondered what some of the older veterans thought of it, given that there are still deep wounds over Vietnam and that era. In any case, there was something for everyone and we had a good time.
For a few months I was having a hard time figuring out what those little blue decals were showing up on many of the cars on military bases.
I decided — incorrectly — that they were some sort of smug shorthand code for supporting the Global War On Terrorism, similar to the Human Rights Campaign’s yellow equal sign for gay, lesbian and transgender rights.
Finding a car with both stickers would be like discovering a lucky clover, or at least a Log Cabin Republican (equally rare).
You generally do not expect to see some things cross paths, like gunfire this weekend at the Northwest Folklife Festival in Seattle:
The fight occured during a relatively peaceful afternoon at the festival next to a drum circle . . . One man got into the suspect’s face, screaming, “This is a peaceful event!”
Last week I bought tickets to the Rock The Bells tour, after debating whether or not we would get stepped on too much in the general admission area near the stage. But now I can say that it is definitely going to be safer than a folk festival!
As a kid in Berkeley, there was always a Sunday drum circle on the lower level of Cal’s Sproul Plaza, mainly a bunch of weatherbeaten guys and the occasional dancing hippie chick. Today drum circles are some sort of audio acid test. Driving on base? Show your ID. Going to a demonstration of some sort? Please reveal yourself in bongo. So many codes to keep track of.
Still, back in Seattle, what is going through the mind of the green chicken thing guy as the suspect is being led away?
photo by Joshua Trujillo, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
I finished my eighth, and final, basic cake decorating class. We had to come up with something using a Wonder mold, which makes a dome.
I decided to make an aging hippie.
Citrus has been singing Anchors Aweigh for a while now, but there’s a little girl out there who really does a command performance on YouTube (in the category of Toddler Singing). You will either think it is funny or cruel.
Watch out Shaughn, Citrus is gaining on you!
Translation for those not in toddler land:
Anchors Aweigh, my boys
Anchors Aweigh
Farewell to college joys
We sail at break of day, day, day, day
Through our last night ashore
Drink to the foam
Until we meet once more
Here’s wishing you a happy voyage home!
(Go Navy! Beat Army!)
We went to the National Zoo on Mother’s Day with three other families from our classroom at the base Child Development Center. Pictures are here for friends and family — all others can skip unless you want to look at The Most Adorable Children on the Planet.
Oh, and one picture of a panda and another of an exhibit of his poo, which I only note because they have to keep it chained down so no one takes it. Now that Citrus is potty-trained, let’s hope she doesn’t want her own display.
Three of the kids, including Citrus, are the same age and are Eurasian with mothers who are Asian-American officers. What are the odds?
Only about 15-20 percent of all servicemembers are women — 201,575 in 2006. Of those, about one third are officers. And only about 2.3-4.7 percent of Air Force and Navy officers are of Asian descent.
Now playing a little loose with the numbers because the real ones are hard to come by, if we assume that the number of Asian female officers mirrors the percentage of all female officers
. . . my guess is that 3.3 percent of Navy/Air Force officers are Asian-American women. And 3 of the 685 were at the zoo.
All of this means one thing: I should have gone to bed rather than be doing these sort of calculations. Still, Elysia and I thought it was kind of interesting.
On a whim, I just signed up for the Military Officers Association of America’s Spouse Symposium in June. It is taking place in Virginia Beach, so we are likely to make a mini-vacation out of it and visit the place we called home in 2005-2006.
I can’t really explain why I am going other than I find the subculture to be fascinating and somewhat alien. No offense intended to any milspouses reading this. Take me to your leader, I come in peace.
I wonder if there is a hazing ritual.
A few weeks ago Citrus got a pink poodle balloon at the Blessing of the Fleets ceremony. In his short life, he met SEALs and Seabees and sat in an armored Humvee. Now here he is deflated, the life drained out of him, but still very much loved.
He meets his fate tonight.
Today was Military Spouse Appreciation Day. A few days ago the President honored six recipients of the President’s Volunteer Service Awards, and it was nice to see that one of the six is an Air Force husband who has done a lot of fundraising for military family programs.
I found it noticeable that the White House ceremony included a male, civilian husband, because I know there are others out there even if they seem to be rare in the milspouse community. After all, more than 200,000 active-duty servicemembers are women and they aren’t all single or dual-military! Or are they?
If you look on the web, you would hardly know that there are civilian husbands of servicemembers. Take a look at the images on the Military Spouse website, for an example. Whether in the civilian news media or the many websites serving the military community, about the only place “spouse” always includes men is on the official DoD websites or in the President’s proclamation. Actually, to be fair, the National Military Family Association (which was originally formed as the Military Wives Association) does a good job of being inclusive. Still, there are others who think that using “spouse” is political correctness run amok and long for the old days.
But what does the data show? Several papers on military marriages do not include female servicemembers or dual-military couples because the sample sizes are too small for whatever statistical analysis they are trying to do. Everything I have read suggests that civilian husbands are extremely rare, and definitely more so than dual-military couples.
And then I uncovered this: About half of all officers are married, and 39 percent of those couples are dual-military (42% and 49% for enlisted). If you want to see something very interesting, look at the number of male servicemembers who are married to another servicemember. [The full research paper, based on 2002 data, is here.]
The data suggests why I have run into other civilian husbands — whether at work or when buying a Christmas tree from a volunteer firefighter — despite my thinking that I am the oddity. Roughly speaking, I’m estimating that there are just over 42,000 civilian husbands out there. Very few compared to the number of civilian wives, but enough to get at least one or two loads of laundry done.