On Saturday we visited Larriland Farm to pick strawberries.  It is the end of the season and there were not many left, but we did find a few without bugs.  They are not organic but do practice Integrated Pest Management, which means that they rotate the crops to make sure that each bug gets a well-rounded diet.

We have yet to see an amazing farmer’s market here.  Downtown Washington DC has a smaller market, but a friend has noted that it must be run by retired Beltway PhDs who moved to the suburbs and became artisans in retirement.  $13 small blocks of cheese, $6 loaves of bread. They make Whole Foods and its $4.50 artichokes look reasonable.

When shopping off base there is sometimes some sticker shock because the commissaries are about 30 percent less expensive than civilian grocery stores.  Unfortunately, the produce at all but the largest commissaries is often in pretty bad shape.

Going to a pick-your-own farm is a good deal and it is a fun family activity.  Usually there is sampling involved and there is a lot to do before you get tired.

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!”

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

Our daughter found the afikomen at my cousin’s Passover seder and we are now the proud owners of a Moses action figure. 

We now have three action figures in our household, so I raise the question:

Who would win?

Choice #1:  Moses

Weapon:  Has a Shepherd’s Staff/Rod of God!

Noteworthy experience: Confronted the Pharoah with God’s Demand; Argued with God.

Choice #2:  Lunchbots

Weapon:  Can of tea transforms into samurai warrior, bowl of soup morphs into ninja assassin!

Noteworthy experience: An assassin must be invisible as well as deadly, hiding behind the most innocent disguise.

Choice #3:  Elysia, Warrior of Virtue

Weapon:  Formidable kung fu fighter; trained to harness the five forces of Nature and to wield the power of the Ancient Virtues.

Noteworthy experience: A beautiful, golden-haired orphan raised by Master Chung, she dutifully assisted Master Chung as he trained the Warrior Rooz.

I attended a presentation on Tuesday by Alan Andreasen, a guru in the field of social marketing – how to get people to change their behaviors in order to improve their personal welfare and promote positive social change. Whether the goal is to get people to eat healthier, undergo preventive medical screenings, or save for retirement, many nonprofits spend a lot of time and money only to discover that no one is heeding their advice. 

Professor Andreasen says that because nonprofit staff believe so much in their work, they often have a hard time accepting that the problem may be on their end and not with their audience.  To paraphrase closely,

If you find yourself lamenting “If only we could get these people to wake up, they would understand how good this is for them,” then you are the problem.

As in the private sector, the customer is always right and your failure to sway them may very well be because you have not taken the time to listen to your audience and understand what motivates them.

On the same day as I heard Alan Andreasen speak, I found out that events were planned in Washington DC to mark the five-year anniversary of the war. My first thought was that I might be interested in taking Citrus to a simple vigil on the National Mall to reflect on the past five years.  Two thirds of Americans want the troops home, so I assumed that there might be an opportunity for the country to unite in remembrance of those who have died and those who are serving overseas.  While wood is the appropriate gift for a five year anniversary, I was hoping for something other than a bonfire.

Of the 14 events planned in Washington DC this week, nearly all involved civil disobedience. My daughter is good at going limp and throwing a tantrum, but I just didn’t see the point of blocking the IRS, yelling at the American Petroleum Institute offices, or harassing the wonks at the American Enterprise Institute.  I strongly believe that rabblerousing is an important American tradition, but isn’t the point of civil disobedience generally to create a spectacle so that you can deliver a message through the media?  Given that we have had five years to digest the facts of the war, what was the message the public needs to hear?

According to the Washington Post, the protest at the IRS began with a rallying cry of “Wake Up, America!“

The message was wrong and it showed. 

Only about 200-300 people participated citywide.  Reporter Dana Milbank noted that at the IRS, there was an average of 6 people for each of the 21 organizations that sponsored the event. In five years, the primary anti-war organizations have not been able to connect with people beyond the usual suspects.  That is a disgrace and United For Peace and Justice organizers ought to just fold up shop.

Are people really apathetic?  I don’t think so. The polls show that people are more concerned about the economy than the war, not entirely surprising given that the war has not affected most people as directly and our president has never called on the American people to do anything. As one infantry officer points out, when he returned from Baghdad, Janet Jackson’s exposed breast was the top news.  I think that all of the presidential candidates are happy to talk about the economy instead of the war, but they are kidding themselves if they think the war is no longer as important.

Staging a “death march” in front of a recruiter’s office or doing techy and trendy flashmobs attract a handful anarchists or hipsters, two groups that struggle mightily to prove they are not part of the masses. That’s not a challenge — that is high school cliques redux. Building a true movement from all walks of life and sending a strong message to our leaders is much harder. May we not have another five years to do it.

The Washington Post is reporting that the cost of a new fleet of Marine One helicopters  has nearly doubled, to about $400 million each.

It is essentially a military style combat helicopter supposedly intended for use as a surveillance platform and for large crowd control missions. With powerful armament, stealth technology that allows it to fly virtually undetected, and other accoutrements (such as infrared scanners, powerful microphones and cameras, and a U-Matic VCR), it appears to be a formidable tool in the war on terror.

Just kidding. I only changed about six words of a description of the 1983 movie, Blue Thunder. Makes you wonder how much Lockheed Martin is charging taxpayers for press packages when the documentation is already out there!  Still, the Post does not say if the new Marine One can do a 360-degree loop. How much would that be worth?

On the cheaper end of military spending, one Halloween Harvest Parade on base, we discovered that our daughter had been turned into a helicopter and paraded around as part of a fleet of Future Pilots of America, complete with a uniform shirt. Note her propeller. The motto on her shirt, Flying High, probably needs some refining before it is suitable for a president.  Though maybe that depends on the president.

Monday at base day care:  “On March the 17th we will wear green for Green Day. Our activities will include singing, discussing things that are green and painting with green paint.” Citrus is…a punk rocker!

Citrus just started a new round of swim lessons, and you can see in this photo that she has yet to respect some simple concepts such as Don’t Drown Mommy. 

The Navy also starts with the basics, such as making sure Mommy does not drown herself. If a new JAG does not know how to swim, in Officer Indoctrination School she has to at least learn how to stay afloat for five minutes and swim 50 yards. That way if you fall off a ship, you at least have a chance to be rescued. Of course, there was no practice involving a toddler attached to your head, which I believe could violate the Geneva Conventions under certain circumstances.

Perhaps Elysia can raise that question in class tomorrow at the Army JAG school.  They are going to discuss the Geneva Conventions, and I imagine the lecture has the potential to draw on some interesting examples such as waterboarding. The Bush Administration surprised a lot of people last month by announcing that they consider it to be legal under certain circumstances, whereas Congress has already banned it (twice) and the Supreme Court ruled against the Administration’s treatment of detainees. 

Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama condemn waterboarding and three Republicans in particular have been very critical of it as well:  Senators Lindsay Graham, John Warner, and John McCain. In one of the Republican debates, McCain was sharply critical of Mitt Romney for not taking a position on the issue — it was TV worth watching!

 

Unfortunately, just two weeks ago McCain voted AGAINST a Senate bill that would ban the C.I.A. from using waterboarding and other harsh techniques. The strong convictions he displayed on camera seem to have disappeared when it came time to walk the talk.

In any case, it will be interesting to see if his change of heart comes up in the Presidential debates or if conservatives rally around him now that he is the GOP candidate and reserve their criticism for Senator Lindsay Graham.  Graham, an Air Force JAG, has apparently angered many people by asking the most simplist of questions:  If Iran captured and waterboarded one of our servicemembers, would it be torture?

Even if this is particular example is grandstanding, few officials – including the Attorney General — are willing to answer the question.  I think military families deserve an answer.

Elysia and Citrus made homemade pizzas tonight:  One for Mommy and Daddy, and a baby pizza. 

Guess who hogged the mushrooms?

Citrus has been going through a rebellious phase lately, involving a lot of naughtiness and ignoring her parents.  We haven’t considered FedEx’ing our small wonder to China but if it isn’t due to her environment, perhaps it is genetic?

I dug out the ultrasounds and it seems we overlooked our first clue.  Are we the victims of some covert experiment at military hospitals?  After all, the Army is working toward humanlike robots on the battlefield, but they didn’t say exactly where they would come from.  The truth is out there.

Sometimes it is hard to tell who has more fun staying at home, me or Citrus.  We played with alphabet noodles on Wednesday.  It would be hard to do Shakepeare’s Complete Works in noodle, but the thought crossed my mind.  As you can see, the letter ‘A’ presented some difficulties — it caught the flash too well, and then Citrus ate it.

* Romeo and Juliet