A Minor Irritant

That would be people like this...

A visit consisting of 22 minutes and 20 page views yet not a single comment.  Our visitor from Adana came looking for photos of Sinop and looked at every single pic I've ever posted of that fair city.  We sometimes feel just slightly under-appreciated.  Ah, well.  That's blogging, innit?

That said... I went and looked at some of my old Sinop pics and found this one, which is one of my favorites:

That would be the lovely Elaine, a woman I once knew and loved.  She was a serious beauty, that girl, even though she wanted to kill me a few years after this photo was taken.  From an old post:

Pictured is the lovely Elaine, a woman I met while stationed in Beautiful Sinop-by-the-Sea. The first pic is a close-up, taken at one of the drunken brawls parties that were the primary source of entertainment and amusement for the crowd I ran with during my sojourn in Sinop. The second pic was taken looking down from the railing of The White Boat on the day I left Sinop. That’s my Buddy Dan In Florida giving me the “thumbs-up.” Dan left Sinop about a week or so after I did.

But back to Elaine. I met her while working at KBOK (the closed-circuit radio station I deejay'ed at) and we became very good friends...but only friends... during our stay in Sinop. We got romantically involved a couple of years later following her divorce. She and I were in the process of making plans for her to accompany me to Japan in 1975, but I had second thoughts about the relationship and ended it in a rather abrupt and uncaring sort of way. Which, in retrospect, may or may not have been “a good thing.” I would have never met The Second Mrs. Pennington had Elaine and I gone to Japan together. There are all sorts of different possibilities associated with that particular line of thought... but ya can’t second-guess your past, eh?

Finally… Elaine is the reason I can never go back to Tucson. I still fear for my life, with just cause. “I did her wrong,” as the song goes, and we both knew it… she much more than I, perhaps. I base that thought on her oh-so-explicit (not to mention graphic) promises of violence to my person should we ever meet again. Ergo: I can never go back to Tucson. For any length of time, anyway.

Big-ass sigh.  Former Happy Days...

Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack… A Preview

We gonna be Suthin' Fried this afternoon, assuming the weather holds… or to use the vernacular: "Lord willin' and the creek don't rise." I dunno why it took so long, but we finally created ourselves an Allman Brothers Band station on Pandora yesterday. And it's good, Gentle Reader, because of tunes like this:

That would be "One Way Out," (the "Live at the Fillmore East" version) which may or may not be the quintessential Allman Bros song. Lord knows there are way too many to choose from and your mileage most certainly may vary. But "One Way Out" works for me! Or maybe "Midnight Rider"…

I like to think I was in on the ground floor for that five year or so period of time when Southern Fried Rock dominated the rock charts in the US. I know for a fact I was there in 1970. From an old post…

Your Humble Scribe did a stint as a DJ (and later as Station Manager) at KBOK, a closed-circuit radio station for the population of TUSLOG Det. 4 (Diogenes Station), Sinop, Turkey in 1970 or ’71. That particular “job” was one of the most rewarding and fun things I did in the military. There wasn’t any monetary compensation involved, but I did my level-best to tape the station’s entire music library and that was more than enough compensation, in and of itself. I use quotes around “job” because DJ’ing was a volunteer thing, my real job was fixing electronic spook stuff, or attempting to, anyway. More trivia: “KBOK” is a play on words, “bok” being Turkish slang for “shite.” GIs. Gotta love ‘em!

I mention KBOK because the Allman's "Revival" (from "Idlewild South") was my theme song… it was the intro and outro music for every show I did. Let's review:

Revival - The Allman Brothers Band

Ah… "love is in the air." Indeed. So… the Allmans kicked off the Southern Fried trend and they were followed in close order by groups like the Charlie Daniels Band, the Marshall Tucker Band, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. The Allmans also influenced later artists like ZZ Top and the immortal Stevie Ray.

It's good to know Gregg Allman recently launched about the third or fourth incarnation of the ABB… they played a fabulous 15-night stand… featuring Eric Clapton for two nights… this year. And while we're speaking of concerts … one of my peak rock 'n' roll experiences was seeing the Frères Allmans on a triple bill with Charlie Daniels and Marshall Tucker at the Cow Palace in San Francisco on New Years of 1971/72. You really don't wanna know just how insane that evening was, Gentle Reader. Oh, noes… you don't.

Let's close this out with my favorite Marshall Tucker song…

Oh, my.

Mixed Bag

Dueling Videos out of Iran… featuring an official video from the Iranian regime pontificating about the American threat (with guest appearances by John McCain and George Soros!) and which also ham-handedly encourages Iranians to report “suspicious activities” to the Iranian authorities; and a cell-phone video of an impromptu uprising by young people at an Iranian mall against the Modesty Police. The MEMRI vid can’t be embedded, but the cell-phone vid made it to YouTube. So here it is:

There’s a full description of the riot at the mall at Pajamas Media, along with other useful links.

The cell-phone video represents good news, to say the very least. The fact that the Iranian regime is producing videos encouraging the population to become informants is also good news, if you think about it. It remains to be seen where the allegiances of the Iranian people lie, but there are strong indications the younger folks have had enough.

This, on the other hand, is not good news… in any respect. Sanctions are warranted, to be sure. But the unrest of the Iranian people and their increasing willingness to confront the ayatollahs’ goons must be considered in any future course of action. The Iranians go to the polls for parliamentary elections on March 14^th. To say that election will be interesting is the understatement of the year. Can you say “martial law?”

Good Lord… I’m just so thankful to be an American.

(h/t for the MEMRI piece: Lex. The other bits are from memeorandum and Google News.)

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Today’s Pics: These may be the last of the Sinop pics. I have more, but you can wear anything out if you try hard enough. Today’s pics fall into the category of Local Color…even though they’re in black and white. Interesting architecture, eh?

As always...click for larger.

Full Stop

I am SO with Rick Moran at Right Wing Nut House on this…

I am usually quite proud of being a conservative. I know in my heart that the only way to enjoying liberty under the law AND equality of justice is through the application of conservative principles to government and society. And I am usually proud of the rational, reasonable basis on which most conservatives see the world and evaluate people and events.

That’s why it embarrasses me to no end to see fellow conservatives who actually believe that Barack Obama is some kind of “Manchurian Candidate” sent by Muslims to undermine American society. Or that Obama is a closet Muslim just waiting to take power before unmasking himself. Or perhaps most bizarrely, since Obama was born to a Muslim father, he is a Muslim whether he wants to be or not and that Muslims elsewhere will not let him forget his heritage.

There are other permutations to this theme involving Obama’s middle name of Hussein which to some of my fellow conservatives is a dead giveaway that he is Muslim. And there are no end of theories, rumors, tall tales, and outright lies about Obama’s Muslim childhood spent at this madrass (sic) or that mosque which “proves” him to be a son of Islam.

[…]

And that’s why I find charges that Obama is some kind of closet Muslim so absurd. The candidate may have been trained as a grass roots organizer using the playbook written by radical Saul Alinsky. And he may have been involved in radical lefist politics early in his career. But a man who has so carefully crafted a political resume by conveniently being absent for key votes or voting “Present” on controversial bills – all the better to obscure how far left his politics go or what his true politics are – it is not beyond imagining that whatever his religious beliefs, they are calculated to effortlessly merge with the rest of this image Obama is presenting to the world. There is no room for Islam in this image nor is there anything in the public record that would indicate Obama has even given his Muslim heritage – if indeed his father was a member of the Islamic faith – a second thought as an adult.

Read the whole thing. As Moran and many others… including YrHmblScrb… have noted, there are many reasons to disagree with Senator Obama, and no lack of reasons why he shouldn’t be the next Commander-in-Chief. His middle name and his parentage ain’t part of ‘em.

Just frickin’ stop it.

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More of the same. And it’s getting tiresome, Gentle Reader.

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Today’s Pics: More from Sinop. Today... street scenes, and both shots were taken from the city wall once again. The conical objects in the second picture are part of the town’s hammam, which I never visited. Kinda strange, that, since I loved the public baths in Japan and visited them often. But…the public baths in Turkey are quite different than their Japanese counterparts. Or so I’ve heard.

Back in a bit. I was up waaay too late, yet again. Sometimes it bees like that.

Rather Random...

I don’t listen to Rush Limbaugh but I used to once upon a time, and I don’t particularly like Rush Limbaugh but I agree with about 97.6% of this rant:

Limbaugh is reading an editorial by Gary Hubbell that appeared in the February 9^th edition of the Aspen Times Weekly, so this is old news. Still and even, old or not…there’s a lot of truth in that, eh? If you disagree, I’d like to hear about it…with an emphasis on “why.” If you have the time and inclination, of course.

I wouldn’t call myself an Angry White Man. But I am disturbed at the way things are going in this country, so I most definitely relate to the sentiments in Mr. Hubbell’s piece.

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I posted about Blogger Play at some point in the distant past (“distant past” being in blogging terms, not in real life), but I’m danged if I can find it. What it is, aside from being a serious time-waster, is a random selection of photos posted on some of the millions of blogs hosted on Blogger. You’ll see some real gems from time to time, and the cool thing is you can stop the slide-show, back it up, or fast forward. Check it out if you haven’t already. Make sure you have some time to spare coz you might be there for a while…

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This is useful, in that geeky sort of way that floats MY boat: Country Codes of the World. Most are intuitive, a few are not. You can zoom the illustration, as well. Yet another time-waster, if you want it to be. Or not.

(h/t: Will, at MS-NBC’s Clicked…which is another cool time-waster in itself.)

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Today’s Pics: More from The Wall. No, not that wall…the one I posted yesterday. The one on Turkey’s beautiful Black Sea coast. The first pic is taken standing upon the most ancient of fortifications while looking north at the most modern of fortifications…of a sort, and at the time. These modern fortifications, and those like them, endure only in our memories and in certain places on these here inter-tubes, which may or may not be permanent in nature. One hopes, and all… but still. One never knows. I use the term “fortification” when referring to the monitoring site in the sense we were sentinels on the far-flung walls that bordered the Evil Empire. The work was quite serious, and we took it seriously... as all sentinels throughout time have done.

The second pic was taken from the wall looking down upon a Sinop city street. You’ll note a modern tiled roof that apparently extends out directly from the wall I’m standing upon. One of the more interesting things about this ancient wall…which exceeded ten feet in thickness, in places… was the fact the Turks built modern homes and businesses directly into the wall. Some of the residences were mere hovels that consisted of hollowed-out spaces in the wall, converted to living quarters of a sort. Other buildings used the city wall as one of four walls for the new building… always the rear wall, for obvious reasons… and some of those buildings were two or more stories high.

And the third pic? Just your standard yet gratuitous “pretty girl” pic that happens to fit in with the current meme. You’re welcome.

Oot and Aboot (That's Canadian, In Case You're Wonderin')...

We lost one…

HAGATNA, Guam -- A B-2 stealth bomber crashed Saturday at an air base on Guam, but both pilots ejected safely and were in good condition, the Air Force said.

It was the first crash of a B-2 bomber, said Capt. Sheila Johnston, a spokeswoman for Air Combat Command at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia.

And then there were only 20. Losing even one hurts, when you consider they cost $1.2 billion, each. Still, it was bound to happen at some point. The great good thing is both pilots got out alive and are doing well. It could have been worse, as it’s said.

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So then ya know what happened? This: “Official apology after CIA 'torture' jets used UK base.” Excerpt:

The Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, had to make a humiliating apology to the Commons after it emerged that the US failed to tell British officials that two CIA rendition flights carrying suspected terrorists landed on the island of Diego Garcia in 2002. Six years on, one of the suspects is still being held by the US at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The other has been released.

Mr Miliband denied there was a deliberate cover-up and said he believed the US had acted "in good faith". However, Gordon Brown, attending an EU summit in Brussels, expressed his "disappointment" and said Washington's failure to disclose the flights earlier was "a very serious issue".

That’s from The Independent, the British left-wing fishwrap that is otherwise (in)famous as the print home of columnist and pundit Robert Fisk, Moonbat Extraordinaire. C-SPAN (God Love ‘Em!) ran the entire “apology” yesterday as delivered by Mr. Milibland in the House of Commons. The broadcast lasted about an hour and I was privileged to watch it in its entirety.

The thing that struck me as supremely odd was watching the US Gub’mint being articulately defended by the Labour Party (!) against vociferous attacks from Conservatives (!!) and Liberal-Democrats (not surprising at all). Those of you who don’t keep up with Brit politics might well say “So?” Well, just imagine John Kerry or Teddy Kennedy holding forth in the Senate and defending Dubya, or the actions of his administration. Yesterday’s spectacle in the Commons was the same sort of thing and just goes to prove it’s all about politics, anywhere and everywhere. The party out of power will do whatever is required to put the party in power in a bad light. So much for “principles.”

I sure do miss Dame Maggie.

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Oh, shit. This hurts, Gentle Reader:

Today that term is all around Barack Obama — perhaps because there seems so little other way to explain how a first-term senator has managed to dazzle his way to front-runner in the race for the presidency, how he walks on water for so many supporters, and how the mere suggestion that he is, say, mortal, risks vehement objection, or at least exposing the skeptic as deeply uncool.

I don’t care if this is propeller-beanie wearing, egghead analysis, or even the fact that it appears in the NYT…which, as we all know, is…umm… partisan. Simply knowing that one is considered to be “uncool” in certain circles is, well, uncool. But it’s a badge of sorts, and one I’ll wear with pride.

It appears I’m not the only person who’s uncool, though. According to the WaPo, anyway. Excerpt:

It's the nature of the Web -- and, really, of life. What goes up must come down. What's popular becomes too popular. What's seen as hip and hot and cool eventually gets mocked.

Even, yes, Barack Obama.

In recent days, sites have popped up indicating that the ongoing online Obamamania has hit a wall. What kind of wall? A snarky, ironic, this-Obama-thing-has-gotten-over-the-top wall. Obama's smiling mug is mashed up on countless faces on SenatorObamas.com. He's Sumobama. He's Pharaohbama. He's Navajobama, complete with a blue-and-white feathered headdress. The blog Is Barack Obama the Messiah? features a photo of the Illinois senator standing on a flight of stairs, Christlike, above an adoring crowd while a ray of light beams from above.

And on the aptly titled Web site BarackObamaIsYourNewBicycle.com, the candidate caters to all your needs: Barack Obama made your bed . . . Barack Obama folded your laundry . . . Barack Obama picked you up at the airport . . . Barack Obama remembered your birthday . . . Barack Obama is your new bicycle . . .

That's funny ha, ha. And funny ouch.

Heh. It was just a matter of time, really. There’s more at the link.

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Much ado about nothing much… Wherein Our Illustrious Guv’nor is (supposedly) being run hard by the Democrat contenders for his endorsement. The NYT:

Mr. Richardson’s transition from supplicant to benefactor provides a glimpse into a rarefied theater of political persuasion. Within hours of his exit from the race, he received calls from Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama and John Edwards. Mr. Clinton, who as president made him United Nations ambassador and then energy secretary, called him even before his withdrawal was announced. All of them wished Mr. Richardson the best and told him he had run a great race and, oh, by the way, “we need you.”

And they promised to be in touch.

“I want to make it clear that I’m not annoyed by any of this,” Mr. Richardson said of the repeated overtures.

[…]

Since ending his own run for the White House, Mr. Richardson has entered what he calls “a period of decompression.” He has grown a beard, ridden his beloved horse, Sundance, and started going to art museums around New Mexico again and to boxing matches in Las Vegas. He is sleeping about seven hours a night, up from four on the campaign trail, yet somehow looks more tired, as if the accumulated wear of the last year has taken residence in his eyes.

“I’m not annoyed…” That, Gentle Reader, may be the understatement of the day. Well, sorta. Note there’s precious little about Richardson concentrating on the business of running New Mexico… instead we have Billy riding his horse, trekking up to Vegas, and hanging out in art museums, which may or may not explain the new beard. I suppose that’s what he does best.

I could see where a Clinton-Richardson ticket would make good sense, less so where Barack is concerned. Either one would possibly benefit from Richardson’s endorsement, with emphasis on the “possibly.” As for me, personally? I’d just like to see Richardson out of Santa Fe, for what that’s worth.

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The graphic above is evidence of another one of those “was it something I said?” moments here at EIP. I first mentioned the phenomenon last summer. I still feel the same way… even though this latest drop off leaves me in a better overall position, traffic-wise, than when I first blogged about precipitous drop-offs.

This most recent freefall is due, in part, to the extraordinary amount of folks who hit EIP on V-Day looking for creepy valentines… note the significant upward spike in traffic on 2/14. After that it’s all downhill. Makes ya wonder… even considering a lot of folks are using RSS these days.

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It’s supposed to be warm here on The High Plains today…approaching, if not exceeding 70 degrees… if the weather materializes as forecasted. Warm, however, ain’t everything. Especially when one has gale-force winds accompanying said warmth. And gale-force winds are what we have, Gentle Reader.

We be rockin’ here at El Casa Móvil De Pennington. And how.

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Today’s Pics: …are from Beautiful-Sinop-By-The-Sea. That would be by the Black Sea, Gentle Reader. Sinop has history, and lots of it. The town, like most towns that stretch back to medieval times and long before, was entirely surrounded by fortifications. The city walls are still extant and were in remarkable shape when I was there, given the age of the fortifications…which stretch back to Roman times and earlier. They also happen to be fully accessible and are wonderful places to play, if you’re of a mind to climb and don’t mind picking your way through and around various and sundry obstacles.

The first pic shows a portion of the city wall, viewed from the Yeni Hotel. The second shot was taken on the wall itself, and bears looking at in its larger version. Coz there’s detail, and lots of it, Gentle Reader.

Mostly, But Not Completely, Obama...

Ya know what scares the livin’ sheiss out of me? As of this morning… This:

Yes We Can Obama Song by Will.I.Am

MySpace 45 new posts 10,163,831 views

This video has been Number One on the ViralVideos list for over a week now and the number of views is simply incredible, to say the very least. Just for contrast, the video with the second highest number of views on the list (“Frozen Grand Central) has 5,228,274 views.

O! My Country!

As if I needed yet another reason to be depressed. Is it too late to raise the voting age to 35? Please?

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Speaking of The Phenomenon from Illinois… he had yet another big night last night, and he’s up to ten straight victories in the Democrat primaries. Victory, of course, is relative when it comes to Democrat primaries and their arcane delegate allocation process. The delegate count remains somewhat close, but Obama is opening up what may be an insurmountable lead. At least the pundits think so…

Some folks are saying it’s all over but the shouting. Or the crying, as the case may be. Yet still, not everyone’s impressed. Particularly Robert Samuelson who, writing in today’s WaPo (“The Obama Delusion”), sez:

It's hard not to be dazzled by Barack Obama. At the 2004 Democratic convention, he visited with Newsweek reporters and editors, including me. I came away deeply impressed by his intelligence, his forceful language and his apparent willingness to take positions that seemed to rise above narrow partisanship. Obama has become the Democratic presidential front-runner precisely because countless millions have formed a similar opinion. It is, I now think, mistaken.

As a journalist, I harbor serious doubt about each of the most likely nominees. But with Sens. Hillary Clinton and John McCain, I feel that I'm dealing with known quantities. They've been in the public arena for years; their views, values and temperaments have received enormous scrutiny. By contrast, newcomer Obama is largely a stage presence defined mostly by his powerful rhetoric. The trouble, at least for me, is the huge and deceptive gap between his captivating oratory and his actual views.

{…}

The contrast between his broad rhetoric and his narrow agenda is stark, and yet the media -- preoccupied with the political "horse race" -- have treated his invocation of "change" as a serious idea rather than a shallow campaign slogan. He seems to have hypnotized much of the media and the public with his eloquence and the symbolism of his life story. The result is a mass delusion that Obama is forthrightly engaging the nation's major problems when, so far, he isn't.

Specific examples abound in the entire op-ed. As it’s said: RTWT. Hopefully we’ll see a lot more articles in the mainstream press now that Obama is definitely the front-runner. Too late? I think so, but your mileage most certainly may vary.

But Hey! Speaking of Obama supporters being “dazzled…” there’s this...

These women were so dazzled they completely forgot how to spell. (yes, I AM being charitable. Very.) (h/t for the image: V the K)

And then there’s this… I missed it, but Ed Morrissey did NOT. From The Good Captain’s post:

Matthews asked (ed: Texas state senator Kirk) Watson to name any significant legislative accomplishment by Obama, and the campaign surrogate got stumped:

MSNBC's Chris Matthews: "You are a big Barack supporter, right, Senator?"

State Sen. Watson: "I am. Yes, I am."

Matthews: "Well, name some of his legislative accomplishments. No, Senator, I want you to name some of Barack Obama's legislative accomplishments tonight if you can."

State Sen. Watson: "Well, you know, what I will talk about is more about what he is offering the American people right now."

Matthews: "No. No. What has he accomplished, sir? You say you support him. Sir, you have to give me his accomplishments. You've supported him for president. You are on national television. Name his legislative accomplishments, Barack Obama, sir."

State Sen. Watson: "Well, I'm not going to be able to name you specific items of legislative accomplishments."

Matthews: "Can you name any? Can you name anything he's accomplished as a Congressman?"

State Sen. Watson: "No, I'm not going to be able to do that tonight."

Matthews: "Well, that is a problem isn't it?"

It will be in November. Hope and change sound great ... for a while. At some point, the spell breaks, and people wonder how all this hope and change will morph into actual policy, and whether the candidate can actually deliver it. That usually means looking at the record to see how the candidate did so in the past, when they had the opportunity to do so.

That excerpt is from MS-NBC’s coverage of the primaries last evening. I don’t watch MS-NBC at all, ever. But (a) I’ll not digress here and (b) I’m damned sorry I missed that particular exchange. Good on Matthews for pointing out the would-be Emperor is most definitely naked. You can bet anything and everything that’s important to you that Senator McCain will be relentless on this particular point, as he should be. (The Huffington Post has video of the Matthews – Watson exchange here. Watson looks like a blithering idiot. Emphasis on “blithering.”)

Speaking of Senator McCain… I’m not intentionally slighting the Republicans by focusing on the Democrats, but the Republican race is over. Everyone knows that except for Mike Huckabee and a handful of disgruntled conservatives ideologues. All the action is on the Left side of the house now, innit?

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Teflon Don completed his journey back to Iraq and is now in the field and posting…with lots of photos. Great good stuff here, as most of y’all already know. The man can write, Gentle Reader, and has a good eye for pictures, as well.

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Can we please dust off the sedition and treason laws now? From World Net Daily:

JAFFA, Israel – Mideast terrorist leaders today thanked actress Sharon Stone for claiming to Arab media the U.S. used the Sept. 11 attacks as "pretext" for launching wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The terrorists stated Stone's remarks, published this week in Arabic, reinforce their views that current U.S. foreign policy is leading America toward destruction.

"What Stone said strengthens what we have been saying all along – that the Bush administration and the American evangelical Christians who control U.S. policy are leading America to defeat," said Muhammad Abel-Al, spokesman and senior leader of the Popular Resistance Committees terrorist organization.

Aside from her remarks about 9-11, Stone, in her interview with the pan-Arabic Al Hayat newspaper, also bemoaned what she called Americas' decision to ignore the deaths of "600,000 Iraqis."

She stated she was against war with Iran and criticized the international community's failure to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Senior terrorists here urged Americans to take heed of the "Basic Instinct" star's comments.

It’s past…waaay past… time we charge and bring some folks to trial for their remarks in direct support of the enemy. I’m all about free speech, but this? Stone is over the frickin’ TOP.

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Today’s Pics: Another woman from my past. Pictured is the lovely Elaine, a woman I met while stationed in Beautiful Sinop-by-the-Sea. The first pic is a close-up, taken at one of the drunken brawls parties that were the primary source of entertainment and amusement for the crowd I ran with during my sojourn in Sinop. The second pic was taken looking down from the railing of The White Boat on the day I left Sinop. That’s my Buddy Dan In Florida giving me the “thumbs-up.” Dan left Sinop about a week or so after I did.

But back to Elaine. I met her while working at KBOK (the closed-circuit radio station I deejay'ed at) and we became very good friends...but only friends... during our stay in Sinop. We got romantically involved a couple of years later following her divorce. She and I were in the process of making plans for her to accompany me to Japan in 1975, but I had second thoughts about the relationship and ended it in a rather abrupt and uncaring sort of way. Which, in retrospect, may or may not have been “a good thing.” I would have never met The Second Mrs. Pennington had Elaine and I gone to Japan together. There are all sorts of different possibilities associated with that particular line of thought... but ya can’t second-guess your past, eh?

Finally… Elaine is the reason I can never go back to Tucson. I still fear for my life, with just cause. “I did her wrong,” as the song goes, and we both knew it… she much more than I, perhaps. I base that thought on her oh-so-explicit (not to mention graphic) promises of violence to my person should we ever meet again. Ergo: I can never go back to Tucson. For any length of time, anyway.

Update 2/20/2008, mid-day: I've mentioned The White Boat more than a few times of late and it dawned on me that all y'all have not the slighest idea of which I speak. So...for your illumination, here's the SS (or MV, or whatever prefix the Turks use on their ships) Izmir as she was pulling up to the pier on the blessed day I departed Beautiful-Sinop-By-The-Sea. One doesn't have days like this very often, Gentle Reader. Or trips on The White Boat, for that matter.

A Couple of Milestones...Plus Ruminations on the Past

It’s the eclecticism… Or, yet another reason I listen to RP almost exclusively these days. From RP’s play list this morning:

8:21 am - Frank Sinatra - The Coffee Song
8:19 am - Bottle Rockets - Coffee Monkey
8:14 am - Dire Straits - Expresso Love

“Coffee Monkey” kicked off just as I was draining my first cup; I come back to the desk with my second cup and Sinatra’s on. Oh, Yeah! I just don’t have this sort of wide variety in my music collection. Bill and Rebecca do. And they use it, too.

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A couple of milestones passed me by this week…milestones that should be noted.

First: to use the military vernacular, SN2 is working for half-pay as of this past Friday, the 18^th of January. That means he has over 20 years of service now, for you non-military types. One is eligible to retire at 50% of base pay at 20 years, ergo: working for half-pay. He won’t retire anytime soon, though. But with the passing of this milestone, planning for his post-military life has begun. Transitions, and all that. Not to mention the fact I’m feeling pretty old, yet again. To think I have offspring that could retire…Aiiieee!

Second: Yesterday marked the passing of one full year since I lit my last cigarette. I still miss ‘em, too. Badly. But I ain’t going back…

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Long-time readers of EIP know there’s a guy by the name of Dan who hangs around EIP and comments occasionally. Dan and I go back nearly 40 years and he is my oldest friend (speaking of the duration of the relationship and not his age…although he can qualify in that space, too). We met at Wakkanai AS, Japan in 1968 or 1969 and we were both in the same racket, job-wise…which is to say we were both 303X2s, the USAF job code for aircraft control and warning radar technicians. We were also drafted by the Air Force for a “special duty identifier” job that took us out of Air Defense Command’s radar business and into USAFSS’ spook biz, beginning in Wakkanai and leading a couple of years later to Sinop, Turkey. Dan and I worked together, drank together, rode motorcycles together, and raced ‘em all over Hokkaido, too. Here’s a pic of Dan sitting along side of a road somewhere near Wakkanai at some unknown time in ‘69, framed by his Yamaha DT-1 (on the left) and mine… on the right.

Dan and I both loved Wakkanai for a number of reasons, not the least of which was, in retrospect, the nature of the job we did. And the bike racing and associated carousing, of course. We both managed to wrangle second tours at Wakkanai after we rotated back to the US in 1970, and we returned to Wakkanai in 1971. Alas, the Air Force had other plans for Wakkanai and for us. In a strange turn of events, USAF announced Wakkanai would be closing shortly after Dan and I returned there in late 1971. The unusually rapid base closure (lights out by the end of 1972, as it were) meant all personnel would be re-assigned to other bases, and Security Service flew in a team of personnel specialists in to handle the short-notice re-assignment process. Dan and I got the short, dirty end of the re-assignment stick. We had two choices: take an assignment to Sinop, Turkey and remain in USAFSS, or turn down Sinop and “get released to Air Force.” While Sinop wasn’t exactly a garden spot assignment, the possible alternatives that came with being released to Air Force for world-wide assignment were decidedly worse. Much worse…like Alaska. So, we opted for Sinop…returning to the US for a short leave before heading off to Turkey for a one-year remote tour in Beautiful Sinop by the Sea.

After our leaves were up Dan and I met in New York and caught Pan Am’s legendary Flight 002 for Istanbul…with an interim stop in Frankfurt. Dan is pictured below in a shot taken during the short layover in Frankfurt.

After Istanbul we caught a THY Fokker to Samsun, Turkey, and then lucked out and caught the Army’s twin-engined Cessna mail plane to Sinop. I say “lucked out,” because the alternative to the 30-minute mail plane flight was a four-hour bus ride over the tortuous and quite scary mountain road between Samsun and Sinop. Dan and I would make that bus trip a couple of times later on during our tour, but that’s quite another story…and one that won’t be told outside of the bar and amongst good friends. To protect the innocent, of course. Not to mention the guilty…

So. There we were…on the beautiful Turkish Black Sea coast for one long, long year. This is the view of the town of Sinop from The Hill, as the base was known.

The base at Sinop was officially named “Sinop Common Defense Installation (CDI),” which was a euphemism meant to imply the American and Turkish armed forces operated the installation jointly. Which was sorta true, as we had a small Turkish Army garrison collocated with us, but the Turks were separated from the “US side” by high chain link fences, topped with barbed wire. NO ONE got into the US operations compound without some serious security clearances…period. The things we did in there were among the most sensitive of all US intelligence activities at the time. The base itself was run by the US Army Security Agency (ASA) and was otherwise known as TUSLOG Detachment 4. The Air Force was a tenant unit on the base, and had the dual designations of TUSLOG Det. 204 and 6934^th Security Squadron…but you never saw the 6934^th designation… anywhere… even on base at Sinop. But…that was work. Let’s not go there. Here’s a pic of a small portion of the antenna farm at Sinop, taken near the USAF barracks. That water-tower looking thing is actually a large electronically-scanned antenna array, and was part of the system Dan and I worked on.

And speaking of the barracks…this was our home away from home…

And this is the dorm room Dan and I shared…

So. Our year at Sinop passed rather uneventfully and oh-so-slowly, it seemed…at the time. Now that I’m gifted with hindsight, it was over in the blink of an eye. Dan I went to work, drank a bit lot more than we probably should have, went exploring in the town of Sinop…which has some remarkable ancient ruins and an even more remarkable history. We both hired on to the local closed circuit radio station as volunteers and hosted a late nite rock ‘n’ roll show interlaced with snappy patter and the like. We spent lazy weekend days during the summer on our very own (Army-run) private beach, drinking beer and lusting after what few American women there were in the area. We went down to the Yeni Hotel on the weekends and drank lousy Carlsburg beer while watching European tourists get off the White Boat and walk around Sinop for an hour or two before continuing on their cruise of the Black Sea. And we took that bus ride to Samsun a couple of times for wild nights of raki-fueled debauchery. To quote Dickens: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” In spades, Gentle Reader, in spades. I may have had better years in my life, but danged few…and none come to my mind at the moment. Such is the nature of nostalgia, eh?

To close…Here’s another good Sinop-related site…best I’ve found, actually… that focuses on the military (albeit Army) side of Sinop. The owner of this site preceded Dan and I by about a year and has written a detailed narrative about life “on The Hill” supplemented with lotsa good pictures.

Dilemma

Main Operations Complex, Sinop, Turkey

I spent a year in Sinop, Turkey around 1970 or so. My recollections of that experience are hazy, for the most part. Let’s just say I was “anesthetized” for the greatest part of my time there. At any rate, I spent a few hours perusing this web site and reminiscing about my misspent youth, particularly those times in Sinop and its environs. “Misspent” is too kind, perhaps. Other words or terms come to mind, such as “deviant,” “socially unacceptable,” and flat-out, break-all-the-rules, illicit behavior. I’m extremely fortunate to have made it through those times without…uh…coming to the attention of the authorities, in all their various permutations. I had a lot of deviant company during those days. It was, after all, the end of the ‘60s and the beginning of the ‘70s. Think sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. Plastic hippies. Different time, different place.

I digress.

But, O!, the stories from that era…debauchery, drunken nights, lazy days off spent on the beach, interspersed more than a few semi-serious explorations into the history, archaeology, and folkways of Turkey (even youthful deviants sometimes experience serious moments). And then there are the work-related stories, most of which I’m not sure I’m at liberty to relate, even 35 years after the fact. There are some things I took seriously then, and still take seriously now.

On the one hand, I’m thinking “it is what it is”…that was then, this is now, and other such rationalizations. I’m not the same person now, not even remotely, as I was back then. On the other hand, there’s no freakin’ way I’d tell the story I have in mind to, say, my grandchildren. I may or may not have shared this story with my boys (I think I have, actually); I know I’ve told the story to a few very close friends. The story always gets a lot of laughs when I’ve told it in the past. And it’s been quite a while since I’ve written an installment of “Weird Scenes Inside the Gold Mine.” The story I have in mind definitely fits the mold of those stories, I’m just agonizing about self-incrimination and all that.

Dilemma.