My short break turned into a long one. Part laziness. Part vagaries of life. The day after Christmas I got the glorious news that I had prostate cancer. An unopened gift of sorts. Of course I was crestfallen. Not that I had the big C but that Superman was no longer invincible. The journey has gotten interesting.

In the true Jesuit tradition I took nothing for granted and began doing research. Books and internet articles provided me with the basics. This disease is common among those my age. The fact I was in good shape worked against me. The implied longevity of my life dictated that I do something about it, not ignore it.

I got to meet a bunch of interesting people in the medical profession. Each MD had a little different slant on things and that was just fine. One even noted that it was a matter of personality. I could watch and wait, zap it or just remove it so there were no questions. Which one do you think I picked?

After a PET scan and an MRI I got surgery a week and a half ago. I wasn’t nervous or upset. I just wanted to get it over with. I mention all this not as an “organ recital” buy rather a cause for wonder. Throughout everything I had my wits about me and wanted to absorb the experience.

I had never been in a hospital as a patient before and the University of Colorado Med Center is a great place to lose one’s virginity. The entire complex is less than ten years old. They started from scratch and did not have to make do. When we arrived at admissions at 5:30 AM I was astounded to see a dozen or so fellow travelers already there. As it turns out this place has 24 operating rooms and is building 6 more. Cut down again. They didn’t care if I was Ted The Great. Just start the process Mr. Kenny and keep it moving.

After getting checked in I was escorted back to pre op by a very pleasant nurse. It was one of many handoffs throughout the day. Each one was beyond caring. I said please and thank you to everyone but moreover wanted to know something about them. Married or single? Kids? From Colorado or elsewhere? They seemed to be surprised by my queries and were only too happy to fill in blanks. Very cool.

I met the whole team from docs to nurses and each one described what they were going to do in great detail. Beth was our OR nurse and like a good drill sergeant kept everyone in line. At precisely 7:20AM (and I mean to the second) the good ship lollipop was wending its way to OR10.

It wasn’t like being wheeled through an episode of ER and of course I was yukking it up with all involved. I peered around at every detail and was surprised how compact it was. There were tons of vials and dials but they all seemed to fit perfectly. The table was definitely a twin and no more. They actually tied my legs down which I of course found offensive. How is guy going to put the moves on nurses when I was thus constrained?

The most incredible part of the whole thing was that it was all going to be robotic. My brilliant 41 year old surgeon never laid a hand on me. They put the mask over my mouth and for the next 3 1/2 hours TTG was blissfully in dreamland while the gang inserted about one wrench short of a tool chest in my belly to extract the interloper. Mission accomplished.

A couple of hours after that Lazarus awakened but I was not jumping off the gurney just yet. Tubes and wires adorned my torso and everyone was asking if I was okay. Why wouldn’t I be with Kathy and all these beautiful women poking and prodding? I kind of just laid there and was wondering what the hell had just happened? You listen for beeps and alarms and just hope it is not you. A few patients were pains in the ass but most were just trying to grin and bear it.

It was almost like a prison where you have never met the guy or gal in the next cell but you started to conjure up what they looked like and where were they from. I probable should have passed notes. Some had come from 4-6 hours away because our rural nature as a state demands it. One was from Hawaii. I have no idea how that happened.

I continued my questioning and this new set of staff was more than willing to spill their guts. It was wonderful. One Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) was coming to the end of a twelve hours shift. from 7:00PM to 7:00 AM I said “I bet you are going home to get some sleep?” Not so. She was going to class at the Denver School of Nursing at 9:15AM. Talk about a work ethic. I guess it was almost the same for someone to go home and take care of unruly toddlers.

Well enough of this. I hope you don’t mind that this is the way I wend back into your lives. I had to have a cover story for all my goofing off. I have missed you guys and gals. I have a bunch of things to talk over with you. I have watched this crazy world we live in for some common threads. Some good. Some bad. But we will give them full air together.

I will try to stick with Tuesdays but don’t bank on it. I will also attempt to put pen to pad weekly but the times may dictate more or less frequently. In other words I will be random with a plan if that makes sense. I have been thinking a lot and I hope to prod you to do the same once again. It’s a gorgeous day here in Denver and the view from Unit #509 is glorious. You all look just fine.

As always
Ted The Great

Factoids:

Surgeons in the 1800’s were both healers and barbers. They used the same utensils for both. Today we have general and specialty surgeons. A surgeon today might perform up to 500 operations per year. The male surgeon performs up to 30% more than the female. Why? The male is trusted more. Incredible.

Intuitive Surgical manufactures the Da Vinci Robotic surgical system. There are over 3200 installed thought the world varying from $500,000- $3.0 million per unit. Last year there were more than 600,000 procedures on their systems. The stock came public for around $5 in 2000 and currently trades under symbol ISRG. Last quote was $492.59.

Minimally invasive surgery is being performed on urological, cardio, breast cancer, hysterectomies et al. They simply use smaller more precise tools and as a result your recovery times and complications are quicker.

The head OR nurse can make in excess of $100k per annum depending on location. The median salary for a general surgeon is $190,000. For a specialty surgeon it is $396,000. These may or may not seem high but consider the cost of medicine and doctor’s salaries are not the primary villains.

In the US we spend more than any other country in the world on healthcare. On the order of 40% higher than countries like Canada, UK, Denmark, Sweden. Yet our life expectancy of 78 pales to their 82-83 years.

This is #200 of Ted’s Head. That encompasses four years more or less of pondering. I have put out a lot of verbiage and I hope that some of it has made sense. I thank you all for reading and commenting but most of all just thinking. It’s what it is all about.

I have gone back through several topics I have written on to see if there aren’t some common threads among them. Partially to see if I am consistent in my words and moreover to ascertain if I have become redundant and monotone. Ergo boring. The jury is still out on this end.

Some of my vexations? Leadership or lack thereof.Whether it is business, government or church our management as a whole has been lackluster in its avoidance of doing the right thing. Everything is couched by money, power or ego.Consequential is the inability or lack of desire of people to get involved and speak out for what should mean so much to them. Wealth and power bugs me not by their very existence but for the arrogance and callousness they engender. Lastly is the victim. We are by our own hand responsible for what goes on in our lives. Every thing good or bad that happens is a result of a decision you made. No one else is to blame.

I hate what is going on with cops today. Just imagine if your whole day was spent with the dregs of society. Petty thieves or bank robbers. Drug lords or pimps. The most incredible domestic disputes that are blown up even moreso by booze or hallucinogenics.You are lied to constantly. Sometimes you are set up and ambushed. Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t. Not once in a while but constantly throughout too long a shift.Then a mayor gets voted in by piggy backing on populism and rabble rousing. That sucks.

I hate what is going on with blacks today. A ten to twelve year old kid did not ask to brought into such a broken world. Dad’s gone and Mom lives with a boyfriend who beats you. Or else she is working two or three jobs and the TV is the babysitter. Don’t sit close to the window or your ass may get shot up by a drive by. And the Sharptons and the Jacksons milk it for all it is worth rather than preaching to root out the culture of irresponsibility that perpetuates their meaning. And then some jerk tells me to pick myself up and make my way in life without a tinge of understanding. Really?

I love people with soul and a heart. There was a cop here in Denver who went to an emergency call for an old woman. He noticed the yard was in bad disrepair. He and his wife came back off hours and cut the lawn and trimmed the bushes.On another call a little boy was choking. Tragically he died and the father had no money. The attending cop paid for the funeral. Why? Some kids had bought he and his partner lunch a few months back.He thought it was only fair. There was a black kid in Seattle being hugged by a motorcycle cop. But I am sure you have heard all those stories.

I adore people who can cheer and sing. I think the choir in our church is fabulous because they offer a prayer that is so sweet but moreso sing with one voice.I get lost in revery when I hear a beautiful symphony or maybe Norah Jones belting out something right from the gut. I am humbled and grateful when someone tells me that my smile lights up a room. I grin and say hello to everyone I see and every so often a pretty girl smiles back.It is beyond wonderful to feel that somehow I have made someone’s day a little bit better.

I love to play with words and sometimes just let it rip. Puns are fun and most of the time the words just start flying out. My fingers can’t type fast enough. Some times it makes sense. Sometimes it doesn’t but I can tell you at all times it is 100% TTG. I may be harsh or obscene but it is not for effect. It is what’s going on inside and I can’t edit that out.

I am off on a variety of projects. On a personal as well as public side some things need fixing and some need a new creative look. I am going to be more involved in Hospice to try to pave the way for people to understand it better. I am also working with a close friend to help caregivers in their lot. Unless you are on the front lines you can’t even fathom the stress they have. Their souls and psyches need someone to be their champion.

The Denver Post put out an editorial on an upcoming piece of legislation that serves Death With Dignity. A form of legal suicide. I am against it. I wrote to our state senator and told her of my experience and she nicely blew me off. She had all the experts and polls she needed. Let the chips fall where they may but the process has really pissed me off. You can see my letter to the editor below.

To make it short and sweet I am going to take a few weeks off. Not so much a sabbatical but a fresh look at things. I will be debating the future of Ted’s Head as to content and regularity. I am going to go out and try to get things done. I am going to walk the walk and talk the talk of all my ramblings. How can I tell you to get your ass in gear if my tush is sitting behind this desk? Be back soon with new tales to tell

As always
Ted The Great

Factoids:
The Denver Post wrote an pro editorial calling for the option of legal suicide. My reply.

“The terminally ill already have an option. It is called hospice.Death is not a medical procedure for us but a process of life as  being born is also a process. We use no artificial means to keep a person alive. Their life passes as their body shuts down its systems in a very natural and most would agree beautiful way. 

As we mess with life in so many ways from genetics to replacing body parts and sustaining life by artificial means we are indeed on slippery slope. What you are really advocating here is ending life by artificial means. You say that under the guise of “Coloradans esteem independence and free choice.” Speak for yourself please. 

As a volunteer in hospice I could not have more compassion for Mr. Selsberg and his family. We have had ALS patients, Alzheimer patients, cancer and the like. If the bill’s proponents want to see “death with dignity” I would invite them to come out and spend a shift with me. They might have  a different viewpoint. 

Sooner or later science and self determination will go too far if it hasn’t already. Then the genie will truly be out of the bottle. 

Ted Kenny
Volunteer, Porter Hospice”

The people at Channel9 here in Denver were desperate for a filler piece. See the following
http://www.9news.com/story/news/health/2014/12/15/have-you-had-the-conversation/20448465/

Teds Head is viewed by over 300 people on different weeks with readership in over 20 countries last year. We usually average 5-7 replies per week which they tell me is great. Most of them are complimentary which means I hang out with a bunch of liars or at least very kind people.

As I sit reviewing 2014 I am looking at all sorts of numbers from my investments to my handicap. One can’t help but look at the figures as everyone wants to pare down and decipher what the hell this all means. It is actually quite telling how our moods and our outlook can be determined by a twist of a decimal point or integer.

So many of these are guesstimates. It is amazing how fortunes rise and fall on a survey. The unemployment rate is just that. The Bureau of Census surveys 60,000 households and asks them who is working and who is not. From this is garnered a rate and is deemed up or down and ditto your IRA.

At earnings season all the gurus try to project what the earnings or losses will be at XYZ corp. When they are announced they may hit or miss by one or two cents and the quants pick up key words in their algorithms and either reward or trash a stock accordingly. Then they have a conference call to explain everything and the stock continues to bounce around on projections. All of these are just numbers but who cares? Everyone looks knowing and C’est la vie.

You can play with numbers to make things look good or bad. A major league baseball player can manipulate his ERA or batting average to merit a multi year contract. His agent deftly surveys the market to show his man is not really that bad but actually better than most. What other industry can you be so handsomely rewarded for batting .270 or having a losing record and ERA just under 4.0?

By the way I don’t know about you but the analysis of everything cosmic in every sport takes a lot of fun out of doing something stupid like just watching the game. We regurgitate the On Base Percentage or Slugging Average of a guy just playing a sport. The golfer has a .043 chance of making a 40 foot putt. I know that stupid! But the best is always this kicker has not missed a field goal in his last 43 tries. The kiss of death!

The number of children born to unwed mothers in the US is 40% of the birth rate or around 1.6 million. They will then tell you it is 72% among black women which is horrific. It is the single most critical problem in solving poverty among African Americans. They will not tell you it is 30% among white women as if to say that is not really a bad number. Hello?

The number or Americans killed in Afghanistan from 2001 -2012 was 6,488. There were 11,766 women killed by their current or ex male partner in the US in the same period of time. Approximately 150,000 of the rest of our citizenry were murdered during this era. 93% of the blacks were murdered by other blacks. 83% of the whites were murdered by other whites. Males make up 90% of murderers and are equally divided by 50% black and 50% white. I am sorry. I am sure you already knew that.

I am not trying to make one side look better or worse. The point is I can fudge the numbers or at least make them look good by the way I present them to you. One of the easiest ways to present things is as percentages. While helpful I also find the mode a tad misleading.

For instance I can tell you that 7% of our population over twelve years of age abuse drugs. 6% abuse alcohol. That doesn’t sound all that bad until you realize that is 24 million and 17 million of our fellow soldiers respectively. A total of 41 million denizens have a serious problem and you and I are going to be paying for it for a long time in everything from lost productivity, healthcare and long term rehab if they don’t kill themselves first.

There are currently 11.3 million undocumenteds in the US today. That is roughly 3% of our populace. 80% are Hispanic which is a bunch. But 20 % or some 2 million aren’t of brown color. I don’t know about you but that is not just a drop in the bucket to me.

In my last shot at percentages think about the 1%. As Kathy and I travel the world we are fascinated at everywhere from San Diego to Vancouver and Aukland to Paris that there is such an incredible amount of high end real estate. Your first question is “Who are these people?” The 1% of the world population is 70 million. The 1% of the US is 3.3 million. We have 545 billionaires in the States.That’s a lot of money floating around in the pockets of a lot of people. Better buy Tiffany and Sotheby’s stock.

Point being is it is important to look at percentages. They and numbers are a very opportune way to decipher a lot of data. But when we reduce everything to decimal points and axes on a graph we really lose the humanity of things. We want to categorize and put things in neat piles. Worse yet we can’t look past the numbers. Sorry but even though your department is making money and has done so for years you are not meeting projections. Progress you know. Been nice knowing you and good luck in future endeavors. Nice and antiseptic. By the numbers.

I am a white, married, male, Catholic, retired and who knows what percentage. I am no longer looking for my 15 minutes of fame but I really do hope I am more than a statistic. I hope I contribute more than a decimal here or there. I hope I am a human being to be respected and in turn be able to respect you. It’s just me. Numero Uno. Happy New Year to all and and thanks for listening.

As Always
Ted The Great.

Factoids:

Workplace: 67% of American workers are planning on leaving their job this year. 46% of us will fail in our first 18 months of a new job. Square pegs, round holes. 10,000 Japanese drop dead yearly at their desks from overwork after 14-18 hour days.

Lifestyle: The average person spends 5 years of their life standing in line. Americans waste $165 billion annually by tossing away unwanted snacks and meals. The math works out to approximately $529 per person each year. On any given day there over 2 million impaired drivers on the road. There are more cell phones than toothbrushes in the world.

Population;
There are more women than men in the US population of 325 million. In the 85+ category they outnumber men 2 to 1. Guys, there will be some hot times in the rest home tonight. We were 76 million in 1900, 200 million in 1968, 300 in 2006 and will be 439 million in 2050. 81% of us live in cities and the population is moving west and south.

Peace on Earth…

I was going to write a cozy fireside piece about mistletoe and visions of sugar plums. Sorry but the facts of the day don’t lend themselves to that. I read of kids being mowed down by some maniacs in Pakistan. 138 of them. Their blazered uniforms reminded me of the ones my grandsons had on when we visited them in London a few months ago.

What about Australia? Just plain working folks were having coffee in downtown Sidney. Kind of like me having a Venti Starbucks this morning in Denver. Down Under has a tranquil and innocent feel. Just people enjoying life for what it is. No longer.

Then the tragedy in New York. Two cops with no axe to grind had their brains blown out by some crazed maniac. They were eating their lunch and probably talking about football or what they were going to do for Christmas. There were no choke holds. There were no hands up. But they still went down because of the uniform they wore. What have we come to?

I got to thinking about this whole anger and revenge thing. Sure I am Irish and can get pissed with the best of them. But could I hold a cold muzzle on someone’s temple and squeeze the trigger? What about a Bushmaster with an extended clip on full automatic spraying death and destruction everywhere? I hope not. Is this all random and aberration or evidence of a world that is going terribly wrong?

Come on TTG we are not that way. Really. How many shake their fists at the TV and abhor everything from presidents to protesters? The One Percent to nee’r do wells in our ghettoes. A love gone wrong or an uncaring boss. We seem to be able to conjure up a contrary thought on just about anything and those are the seeds that feed our unrest. We look for kindred spirits to agree and then lather ourselves with self satisfaction. An exaggeration? Think on.

Listen to our conversations and our demeanor. I can flip off a guy that cut me off in traffic and carry the visceral reaction for blocks. I can be livid at someone who just won’t see my line of thinking. I can reward someone’s supposed cruel or uncaring behavior with cold stares and an attitude that can persist for months. I continually ask my self why?

We love to have people agree with us. It shows our brilliance and insight. We then go on to reinforce that with channels and dailies that prey on our smugness. It must be so. I heard on the radio or saw it in the paper. We become pros at reading the editorials and not quite having the time for the op eds.

Now if you take the contrary you are an asshole through and through. You just don’t get it. How can you possibly feel that way? Don’t you all agree? And then we bathe in the hosannas that are proclaimed in the locker room at the club or the local red neck bar. Peace is tranquility and a sense of ease as long as you are on my side of the argument.

A simplistic way is to take everything as a personal affront. You diss me. You don’t show me no respect. You laughing at me? What are you looking at homie? I’ll show you. I’ll pack heat and brandish it because it’s all about pride and status.

Now that’s in the hood. But are we that so far removed? Power and money can exact a lot of revenge. You say one word I don’t like and you are fired. I can ostracize you with a single phone call that will soon spread the word. It can be the country club or a VFW hall.

I don’t know how to make this all better. How can we sit down and just listen? Why is your belief in this or that so fragile that you can’t look at an alternative view? Why do we need the comfort of the clan to dictate what is right or wrong. It’s gong to take some real powerful forces to change this dynamic. I don’t know that we have them.

I went to my granddaughters winter concert last week. Now we should of course call it a Christmas concert but wait. They go to a charter school that is more than diverse. I would guess the makeup is at least 35% of color. The lineup of songs was Christian, Jewish, Hispanic and African American.

The kids were great. They reeled off everything from Yiddish to Noels. There was no pecking order or self consciousness. They got it. We are all in this together but more importantly it feels good. I wish we could freeze that collegiality in time but I have a feeling they will fall to this prejudice or that. That’s life and I am not that stupid.

I can dream for both of us. Don’t worry you don’t have to raise a finger. I will continue live on blissfully in my naiveté. I think we can be a better country and even a better world. I am going to keep looking. Peace on Earth? There was a guy who lived two thousand years ago. You don’t have to believe he was God. Just think about what he had to say. Treat the other guy or girl just like you would like to be. Is that so far off the wall? Sounds like a plan to me.

As always
Ted The Great.

Factoids:
Sorry there are none. I gotta wrap presents.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

Cleaning Up….

It’s close to year end and I am doing the required semi annual cleaning of my office here at World Headquarters. Confusion reigns and somehow I think that works for me. Something about a creative mind or at least that is my current excuse. Kathy leaves my cave alone. Not out of respect for my privacy but in fear of getting bitten by something even up here on the fifth floor.

I am a chronic note writer. I have tons of notebooks loaded with this idea or that. Waxing philosophically or just daydreaming. After I die and someone looks at all this crap they are going to realize what a whack job I am. There is of course my tome of “50 Great Ideas I haven’t Done Squat About”. A man has to have priorities. But it’s great to look back and see where I have changed and what stays constant.

In the corner there is a stack of bygone Wall Street Journals.I thumbed through several. I like this paper because there is a lot to it. I get the right bent and assimilate accordingly. Same as I would for the NY Times or my local Denver Post. Yet the variety of topics and analyses from the markets to latest trends is done rather bluntly and without much pretext that borders on zany. I like zany.

There was a blurb on single pilot commercial planes. Seems the aerospace industry has been at this for a while. From an engineering point of view it is close. Whatever cost savings they may realize might be off set by the cost of Prozac and booze in the back of the bus. Seriously, they want driverless cars, naval ships and now planes. What are we going to do in our spare time?

In the world of high finance Jaime Dimon has been cured of his throat cancer. He recovered quickly enough to personally lobby several congresspeople to do away with bans on derivatives. There was a fund manager from Black Rock in London who was banned from trading in the UK ever again after being caught turnstile jumping for an extended period of time on his daily trek from a trendy suburb to downtown London. They would have put Bernie Madoff in front of a firing squad. Lastly we are still dealing in the courts with the Lehman Bros. bankruptcy. I should have been a lawyer.

In Mansions there was the announcement of the listing of an educational entrepreneur’s Southampton estate for $140 million. It seems he runs a thing called Avenues, The World School. It is headquartered in Chelsea and charges $40,000 a year for primary tuition.I wonder if there is a teacher’s union?

On the same note schools are now hiring gourmet chefs for school lunches. It’s not what you learn but how you eat. I can remember a bologna sandwich on white bread wrapped in waxed paper that you downed in about 90 seconds so you could race out for the playground.

An article about Sony tugged at my heart strings. It seems they have been hacked by North Korea. Execs were caught redhanded trashing Angelina Jolie and Obama. The latter in a highly racist tone. No harm, no foul apparently. But in the height of hubris they took the press to task for printing private conversations saying the tabloids were breaking the law or at least the law of the jungle. And yes the saga of Bill Cosby goes on. Whatever side you are on it shows the seamy side of what we thought was innocence.

News becomes strikingly obvious. The recent rains in LaLa Land are mainly washing into the Pacific. Why? Because they paved over the Los Angeles River to prevent flooding. You wonder why this state is screwed up? This morning there was a picture of a coal train derailed and overturned spilling the contents into a river outside of Lexington, Kentucky. But then again the Keystone pipeline is a threat to the environment. You thought I was stupid until I craftily started connecting all these dots.

There is corruption in Haiti and various nations from Africa to the Continent. And right here at home we have the strangest of bedfellows in the persons of Ted Cruz and Elizabeth Warren. Representing the Atilla the Hun Right and Socialism at its best they have the microphone but I wonder if any one is listening. A recent articles suggests that at least a few are getting the message.

Well my fingers are dirty from all the newsprint I have transferred. I have to put out the trash and shape up my act before I succumb to any more revery. It’s good to look at day and week old newspapers. One of them goes back to November 22,2014. Right before the huge drop in oil prices. It shows the lack of predictability in our world. It betrays our schizophrenia as a human race.

I am putting things in piles not order. I will still pick from this or that. I will try not to take myself too seriously. Most of all I will go beyond the headlines and wander down dark alleys. It’s more fun that way. Cleaning up? Never.

As always
Ted The Great

Factoids:

The recent impasse on the budget brought by Senor Cruz actually helped Obama get some long held up appointments through. Seems the Surgeon General wasn’t passing muster because as the top doc he wasn’t properly equipped to handle Ebola and was for gun control. Aaargh.

Johnny Manziel crashed and burned in his debut. Andrew Luck of the Colts trash talks in a different way. He congratulates defenders on their great moves and hits. I read it in the paper.

A 35 year old something just got $355 million invested in his company providing small office suites for startups. That valued his fledgling company at $5 billion. Where did I go wrong?

You can rent a chalet on the slopes in Courcheval France for $60,000 per night. $500,000 is what one tenant is paying for a six-bedroom suite that occupies the entire 39th floor of Manhattan’s posh Pierre Hotel.The renter is not only renting the suite for the entire month of December, but also the separate one-bedroom Getty Suite next door for $150,000 a month. That’s overflow for guests.

Finally there was the sale of a Miami Beach condo for $55 million. Weren’t these places see throughs five years ago? “All the News That Fits the Print”

The “Broken Window” theory of criminology espouses that we pay particular attention to even the most minor of infractions. In so doing we project an atmosphere of order and lawfulness ergo preventing larger crimes from happening. Many have said that what happened in Ferguson and Staten Island are emblematic of that. I don’t have any quarrel with the theory no matter how tragic the outcome.

Davita is a medical technology firm here in Denver. For years they  have specialized in dialysis treatment which has been a comfort to millions. Like any red blooded profit driven company they wanted to ensure their flow of patients. (No play on words). So they opened dialysis centers and then at artificially low prices sold those clinics to renal specialist docs. Then after the appropriate wait time bought them back at a substantial profit to the aforementioned sawbones on the condition they refer all future patients to the facility. Caught red handed as it were Davita paid $389 million in fines. Clink.

Not used to being in the headlines the oncologist industry came to the fore a few weeks ago under the watchful eye of 60 Minutes. The gist was that a new cancer drug that cost twice as much as an older competitor was adjudged by Sloan Kettering to be no more effective. After such unwanted publicity Sanofi lowered the price of the new drug by 50%. Fair enough.

The plot thickens as the price decrease was not necessarily passed on to the patient or in this case Medicare. You see the oncologist as in MD sold the life saving drug directly to his patients. Under the guise of being more convenient for his clients the practice now became more profitable by providing both care and the medicine in one stop shopping. Most did not lower the price. Medicare has to pay the going rate no matter what because Congress said they couldn’t negotiate. Which drug do you think gets prescribed? Clink.

Enter Supreme Food Service. This erstwhile friend of the armed forces had a contract to provide food and water to our troops in the Middle East. In the warlord tradition of the Middle East, Supreme buried a whole series of overcharges to the point where they were selling water at ten to twelve times the going rate. They settled with the Defense Department for somewhere in the neighborhood of $450 million. Clink.

Over the past few months the auto industry has issued recalls for more than 50 million cars. Since we sold about 13 million vehicles in 2013 that is close to a four year inventory of new cars. They ranged from auto ignition switches to air bags to bad brakes. All life threatening without any exaggeration. Takata the maker of the airbags is resisting a further recall. See the malaise is international. Clink.

Last but not least are our friends from the securities industry. Their malfeasance has ranged from selling mortgage backed securities in which they knew full well there were flaws to rigging LIBOR. In the first instance they will tell you pressure from Washington (as in the devil) made them do it. Barney and Bill wanted every American to have a home whether or not they could afford it. They had no other choice. They did pay many billions of dollars in fines but that was without admitting any guilt. Clink.

The bigger piece was the LIBOR rate fixing. This is the governing factor in interest rates for over $5 trillion a DAY worldwide. Now the boys on various trading desks got together everyday and fixed this to their own advantage. It wasn’t one firm but a bunch of dealer and dealer banks that openly colluded. Damn regulators. We can police ourselves.Billions to settle. Clink.Clink.Clink.

When you get into all of these you realize that it was not just one rogue trader or VP although we can always find one fall guy to take one for the team. It is many times a staff or department or an entire organization that commits the felony. People of all sorts big and small knew what was going on and either looked the other way or were complicit in the caper.

These were the big guys. Everyday all over America there are thousands of instances of theft, corruption, payoffs and dirty tricks. I am not trying to play moralist because indeed it is a fact of life. Yes it has gone on for centuries. There are good guys and bad guys. I just wonder if the scales are tipping so far we glibly accept the status quo as necessary to do business or that great panacea,”These are really victimless crimes” ?

A nation or body politic is defined by its mores. It is who we are. But it must be consistent. If we are gong to nail a guy for stealing cigars or selling “indie” cigarettes the same rule of law has to be meted throughout. Is there a big difference between beating a guy senseless in the ghetto or putting a competitor our of business through illegal pressure? I dunno. But sure as hell if we are going to get indignant and demand we fix broken windows in one section of the world we better be ready to do it in all.

As always
Ted The Great

Factoids:

Medicare Part D or the prescription benefit section prohibits Medicare from securing drugs at cut rate prices. Essentially they have to pay the going rate without any negotiation. The VA on the other can bargain and pays about 50% less. This was all engineered by Louisiana Representative Billy Tauzin(Cajun of the Capitol) who after passage quit Congress the following week to become the head of lobbying for the pharmaceutical industry.

The massive fines paid by banks, docs etc are a tax deductible time. So a $100 million fine actually becomes $65 million after tax. It is one case where they love the high corporate tax rate.

The In the U.S. unreported income is estimated to be $2 trillion resulting in a “tax gap” of $450–$500billion. This is the result of being paid cash or under the table for goods and services.

Illegal income is derived from drugs, prostitution, embezzlement, etc. Imagine a typical weekend in New York City. Experts estimate that at least one percent of the population – 80,000 plus – spends $200 on illicit drugs. That alone would amount to $16 million dollars a week or $832 million a year. That is just drugs and that’s just New York.

I decided to start off with a legal phrase just to get myself in the right mood. When it comes to attacking problems of course various forms of the legal profession jump to the fore. I have been pondering prejudice as well as hate, discrimination and other lowly virtues. I have been trying to do so from an intellectual point of view which of course taxes me greatly.

We as homo sapiens try to make sense of our world. As thinkers we don’t just worry about food and shelter but the incredible diversity in race, ethnicity, social groups, individual preferences and their interplay. It is normal and actually quite healthy to put people, places and things into categories.

These can be positive or negative. We tend to stereotype to keep things simple. That leads to prejudgements which can be real right or real wrong. We have “in” groups which we belong to and “out” groups who are our antitheses. Depending on your state of mind there is fluidity in the groups or an iron rod in the back once the decision has been made.

Sexism is the viewing of a gender and ascribing qualities to each side. Men are from Mars. Women from Venus. Great. We all act differently but does the role become antagonistic? Certainly when one senses fear, anxiety, jealousy or ignorance. This usually morphs into anger and a marvelous little emotion we call hate. That hate becomes so engrained that it leads to blinding rage and any absence of rational thought. Verbal or physical violence is called up at a moment’s notice.

Just look around you. The battle between good old boys and feminists is on display every day. Women think they should run things and that the world would be a better place. Men are petrified that they might be right and so give every inch grudgingly. Patience wears thin on both sides. Arguments turn petty and childish but each feels a growing sense of urgency. This can’t turn out well.

Is racism so far off? Whites think blacks are criminals at best and animals at worst. Blacks don’t understand why they scare the shit out of people. You are the greatest on the football field or basketball court but don’t move in next to me or date my daughter. Hispanics are lazy, no good illiterates. And gringos just want me to come and pick vegetables but the friendship stops there. These sons of bitches are trying to take over our country.
Go back where you came from. Oh yeah? Where did you or your forefathers come from?

Let’s finish off with a good helping of Jews, Atheists and Muslims. Can’t you just feel the juices flowing? In a crazy way it is just the best exhibit for us to say we are the better. My belief system, lot in life and athletic team are so much superior to yours. Face up to reality and recognize your place in life as long as it is second or less to mine.

Since at least the Middle Ages there has been this pecking order that is defined by land and servitude. Instead of one Holy Roman Emperors we have consistently created more and more fiefdoms. I am lord and master or mistress over my slice of the pie. I have power. I have wealth. I have knowledge. I am better than you. You are a nice person but subservient. I am not opting for socialism but as the gaps get wider and views more entrenched the chance of ever getting together become more remote.

Competition and intense rivalry have become part of our mores. Go back to putting things in buckets. The more complex the more general I have to be. I don’t have time or the desire to get to know individuals. I will just spend time with my own kind. I know them. Ant that of course begs the first step to solve this problem. I have to sit down and understand how other groups do things. I have to lay down my own beliefs for a moment and listen to yours. I have to for even the briefest of moments think that you might have some salient points.

Now as I get to know you I just may not fear you or be envious of you. God forbid I might actually get to like you. Despite what people might think we are all the same. Take us apart on the medical examiners table when we are done and everyone’s plumbing and gray matter is the same. The Human Genome Project has determined that nowhere in our gene pool is there one for race. And yet it is so built into our society.

In my wanderings I have discovered a thing called Contact Hypothesis. It says that we can cure or at least alleviate prejudice by approaching enemies on an equal basis and have the same goals. There was a show awhile back that took people and put them in very uncomfortable situations. One chapter had a homophobe right smack in the middle of some gays. He had to live with them for thirty days to win the prize.

I am sure you can figure this one out. He went in with a closed mind and came out with a whole new set of friends but more importantly a new perspective. He gained knowledge, got over his anxieties and low and behold had a different point of view. Brilliant my dear Watson. Brilliant.

I can’t even begin to understand what it means to grow up black. My wife or daughters could try to explain to me about glass ceilings or a lesser status at the club. I am not sure I get it. What if I was a nice simple fun loving family man Muslim? Can I really learn to love Tom Brady?
There are two concepts at work. Compassion and empathy. There is a simple reaching out and saying I would like to walk a mile in your shoes. Let me listen to you and maybe you could do the same in return. If you saw the picture of the motorcycle cop and black kid in Seattle I hope you get the idea. The young man was beyond upset. The cop reached out and said,”Can I have a hug?”
Some wag called it a photo op. I call it a start. How about you?

As always

Ted The Great

Factoids:
Eugenics is the belief and practice of improving the genetic quality of the human population. Hitler took this to the extreme and decided civilization belonged in a test tube. Some believe that interracial marriages bring down the quality of the species. Homo Sapiens is the species. There are no subspecies.

After pornography the most queries on the net relate to ancestry research. Just think if you go back in time we are all descendants of one another. It is also understood that as we intermarry in the next 1000 years the differences between us may be indistinguishable.

Race is actually a creation of modern day society. It did not exist in Roman times or the Dark Ages and quite probably not until the 17th century. Like race there is no known gene for skin color. It is widely accepted that color is due to climate not race. If England was equatorial then the Brits might be black instead of milky white. Go figure.

In colonial days the British were considered to be superior and Africans, Irish, Chines and Italians were inferior. The later were referred to as “Guineaus” which was actually an epithet reserved for blacks. Anywhere from 1/2 to 2/3 of the original colonists came to the Americas as indentured servants.

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The leaves have now fallen. The sweet smells of crackling oak logs emanate from chimneys through the neighborhood as we take that brisk walk before the feast. Everybody is too old or too cool for touch football. Besides now that we live in the city one must sport their tweeds and scarves to match the moth-eaten but very camp corduroys that still fit. Let the games begin.

We along with 46 million other households in America will soon lay eyes on that succulent bird festooned with stuffing and cranberries of all sort. His or her well tanned skin looks like they just came back from two weeks poolside at the Fontanblue in Miami Beach. Of course there are idiots everywhere for whom the oven is not good enough and they will attempt once again to deep fry that Tom without setting themselves and their house on fire. There’s a 50/50 chance they will spend the evening in the Emergency Room or the psychiatric ward. Stay tuned. Live updates at 10:00.

Now this plump creature is actually native to North America but has undergone several changes from the wild to domestication. Like most of us it has grown large by overeating and lack of physical exercise. The average used to be 18 pounds in the 60’s and now comes close to 30. Steroids and breeding have given these babies enormous boobs. Turkey breast. Get it? They are so top heavy they have bad knees and weak legs to the point that they fall over when they walk. Sound familiar?

The males are the all stars of plume. The “Toms” flap their 5000 multicolored feathers to the “hens”. That red fleshy thing hanging off his nose is called a snood. It fills with blood and droops down when mating. I kid you not. I can’t make this up. It’s where “strutting your stuff” came from.

They all have wattles. These are the multi level folds around the neck where they can pass for either Churchill, Alfred Hitchcock or Mitch McConnell in a look alike contest. The ones that are warehoused have 1/3 the sized brain of the wild ones. As I grow older sometimes I feel that way.

They gobble, cluck, purr and yelp. Now you would think this is talking turkey but that would be too easy. That phrase is really derived from pleasant talk around the dinner table. They haven’t seen some favorite repasts where Uncle Joe gets smashed and Aunt Sarah starts lighting into him. The kids start a food fight and the dog hurls from eating too many table scraps. Aah. Home for the holidays.

Makes you want to go cold turkey on this whole festive thing. The nearest we can figure this out is that when one is weaned from booze or drugs it resembles a cold plate of turkey. No frills and Elmer Gantry is hanging on your slurred speech to do some straight talking. Another variation is that a person in withdrawal looks the carcass of a cold turkey. Nice visual, TTG

All this anatomy brings us to the wonderful world of giblets. In the old days there was a bag of goodies stuck in the avian from the butcher that contained the heart, liver, neck and other visceral organs. My grandmother actually cooked the heart and then asked me if I wanted some. “It’s good for you. It”ll put hair on your chest” she said. What are you nuts? Good thing she didn’t give it to my sister. They now sell those tender goodies to pet food companies for gourmet cat food. A sucker born every minute.

Speaking of marketing. The wild turkey is capable of flying and reaching speeds of 55 miles per hour. I know a lot of my low life friends who can do 110 when they have a bunch of Wild Turkey in them. In its early days these prized spirits were somewhere between anti freeze and moonshine. The boys would take it hunting and at the start of every trip they would say,”Let’s bring some of that Turkey stuff.” Some enterprising redneck put label on it and sold it to gullible Yankees with a 12 on it. They thought it was years old and of course it was days.

While we are in the South one of my Savannah savants is claiming Turkey is a state. Not on the Eurasian border but because it borders on Georgia. They actually think it is right next door to Grease. I was going to bring up the Black Sea but that would open a whole new can of worms. Like Old Rufus, we will let sleeping dogs lie.

Okay I give up. I could go on but you and I have a meal to eat. I could flip you the Bird but you would  probably  cancel your subscription. Like the infamous “Balls” treatise I decided to sit down and put the feisty TTG away. For the day let’s forget about ISIS and immigration and yes even Ferguson.  It is amazing what this sick mind can come up with when I am allowed to just let it fly. It’s great fun. You should try it some time. Say a prayer for those who are not home and those that have no home. We are bunch of lucky dudes and dudettes. Give thanks. Happy Thanksgiving to all.

As always
Ted The Great

Factoids:

In lieu of useless information, here below for your review is a reprint of “Balls.” Merci for your patience.
Balls…..1/07/14

“Balls”, said the queen. “If I had them I’d be king.” What an interesting word. Without getting into anatomy 101 let’s contemplate spheroids.

The obvious are sports objects. But when we think of a football it is oblong and not circular. Cogitating even  further you forget whether you could be talking about soccer or the USA brand. They all seem to have seams and some even have laces. They spiral. They rotate.

Now baseballs are great but we always want to improve them fresh out of the box. There is some kind of river mud that umpires apply to every shiny new one to make them appear dirty. I’ll accept that but who decides when the ball is too dirty to be used in the game? The same guy who soiled them in the first place. Sounds like job security.

Awhile back Mr Doubleday said they had to be so wide and the seams just so but who had any sort of measuring device to make sure they were all perfect in the early 1900’s? Some clever guys discovered if you loaded them up with saliva they did some strange things and prolonged the pitcher’s career. They banned that idea soon thereafter. Purity of the game.

Then they tried Vaseline which was also the hair tonic that cool guys doused themselves with back in the day. How were they  to know that rubbing their hair and  balls ( remember we are talking baseballs) at the same time would do anything? Ditto gaping holes created by belt buckles and sand paper. You thought they were all dumb jocks.

In the wonderful world of golf before Bubba Watson, the objet d’art was a thing called a featherie. It was a bunch of feathers sewn into a wad of leather. Next there was the gutta percha which was just a ball of rubber they painted. Then some savant decided there could be a good use for rubber bands and he wound the longest rubber band into the middle of the little white capsule. Of course we as kids could not wait to perform surgery on the good old Spalding Dot and unwind that baby from end to end.

Now tennis balls were a whole other matter. They were white as the driven snow and the country club tennis ensemble. No colors allowed which of course had a lot of connotations in the days of white shoe WASP establishments. Then Jimmy Connors et al decided to shake up the high brow set and we went to orange and the effervescent yellow of today.

One time in a fit of cosmic thinking I tried to imagine how many balls were in the air throughout the world? Just think of all these things defying gravity? Of course they all fell back to earth at some point. This was both in a literal and figurative way. But I digress.

Now we also have balls as in parties. Many are debutante soirees where a young lady is introduced to society. The lovely lass is escorted by her dad usually and a host of whackadoo collegians. The latter’s sole purpose was to drink heavily and be available to dance with some stuffy old lady or the deb herself if they were still able to stand.

I actually attended one of these fetes at the Garden City Hotel. White tie and tail. A couple of my father’s buddies, Art Florence and Bill Dailey, decided I should juice up my act. Bill had a top hat and cape that he added to the pot. Artie wanted me to wear a ribbon sash with a few old war medals but I begged off on that affectation. I do have my standards. Any way I was a big hit with the guy at the Greenvale Diner at 6:00 AM while I was trying to sit steady on the stool all the while popping the top hat in his face.

Now you could say from time to time I am on the ball. Where the hell did this come from? Some people think it refers to being on the ball of your feet. That is the large protuberance from your foot just aft of your big toe and forward of your instep. It’s supposed to give you get up and go power. Not the right answer.

It actually comes from keeping your eye on the ball. In most sports it is a must. You can’t not look at a baseball coming at you at 100 miles per hour. In golf your best excuse for screwing up a shot is “I looked up” thereby avoiding the reality you have a lousy swing.

I was playing tennis one time with former Aussie pro Colin Dibley. We had a great game and then your favorite smart ass here started chiding him about his serve. You see he held the world record for fastest serve of 134 mph and he had not displayed it in our match. He told me to stand back in the return court and if I could get a racket on any of the three he whistled at me, he would buy dinner. After the second one I was just standing with my Wilson T whatever protecting my you know whats.

Well I guess if you have gotten this far you realize that I am now balls up. That is really any disastrous situation. The balls referred to are NOT testicles. The term dates from the days of wooden sailing ships when the existence of a shipboard disaster, such as plague, lack of food or water, mutiny, etc. was communicated to the outside world by hoisting largish, brightly painted wooden balls up into the rigging. Balls of different colors represented different disasters and therefore served as either requests for assistance or warnings to stay clear. How do I get out of here?

Now before you start bawling I will go. But just think all of you slugs with minds in the gutter way back in the beginning when I just said the word “balls”. We all let our mind wander this way or that. And honestly it is a good thing. No politics or angst this week. Just fun.  I hope Ted’s Head  got you into just a little bit of crazy thinking. We need it every now and then.

As always
Ted The Great
Factoids:
Ted’s Head was viewed over 5500 times last year. There are some 300 lost souls that read it from time to time. They actually come from 40 countries and I am sure many are involved in Al Quaeda, Hammas, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Tea Party. This is #148 and counting. The post, “Would You Date An Undertaker?” received the most comments.
I would ask you to take your email list and just once send them either a copy of Ted’s Head or just the address:

https://tedsheadco.wordpress.com

I would love to add to our bunch of loonies. Not for self-aggrandisement but just to try to get more people thinking. On second thought maybe you should wait a week.

It’s been a wonderful week for human interaction. ISIS is slashing throats. The Israelis and Arabs are killing each other. We have the myriad of serial killers, hostage takers and lone wolves. If you watch the news blood and gore sells and we are going down the toilet. Even Charles Manson is taking out a wedding license. Geez Louise.

Excuse me while I go to the other end of the spectrum. There was a surgeon who died of Ebola. Doctors Without Borders volunteer not hours but months in a hard hit area. There are religious of all sorts who are not hell bent on killing people but saving them in hospitals, orphanages and schools. People here man food banks and banks of rivers to keep them from flooding their neighbors.

While I was giving platelets last week I was thumbing through the Robb Report. It thrives on the materialistic life style and ostentatious. Store after store has been announcing an earlier than ever opening on Thanksgiving to give you a leg up on buying crap for Christmas. But then the likes of Bill Gates and Bono give like there is no tomorrow. Are we all cut from the same cloth or did one of us get saint dust and the other an evil serum to determine how we would look at life?

I am leaving deviant behavior on its own. I want to understand altruism, charity and empathy. I want to understand how people can go beyond a few hours a week and sometimes volunteer for their entire lives. Not with a sense of duty but true joy at helping their fellow man.

It must take a wonderful person to be altruistic. It is the belief in or practice of disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others.Sounds lofty enough but think about it. You are putting someone else’s needs completely ahead of yours. It is the opposite of selfish and says somehow I am going to make your day better. I don’t matter. You do. You spend your whole day where your radar is pointing outward and not within. Is it just me or is that incredible stuff. I am not sure I can even come close.

Easy TTG, these people are of a special breed. Must have been their upbringing. Probably had very special parents. Maybe there was some particular moment where they got struck by a bolt of lightening. Maybe there is a different way to look at this than holier than thou art. Perhaps we can adjust our sights.

I get worried about our world today. Cell phones, internet, cyber cafes, all claim to help make us more connected. Do they? You hear stories of guys spending hours on end on their computers without ever seeing the light of day or a breath of fresh air. I can shop online. Don’t have to talk to a salesperson. No bank tellers. We will soon be to a point where we won’t have to see a doctor. Just put your IPhone next to your epidermis and we will have it all figured out. We will send you your meds and voila you are healed.

Now if I don’t know what you look like or sound like then you are just bits and bytes to me. You are no longer a person. I don’t care what happens to you because you never physically invade my world. The anonymity of all this says the only person I really have to be worried about is me. No feeling. No emotion. No empathy. Just keystrokes on my IMac.

I have a bad habit of asking when I go to Starbucks if people say please or thank you. The highest percentage I got was in Madison, NJ at 30% and the worse was Edwards.CO where it was 0%. Now if I feel for you and understand who you are and that you matter in the world how can I do that? I was in Sienna Italy and Kathy and I were checking out. The girl behind the desk thanked me. I said for what? She had been in a bad mood all morning and when I came up to the desk with a big smile on my face she said she really felt better. She was cute and Kathy belted me. Told me charity begins at home. Just kidding.

So what I am really saying is we all can’t go to Angola or join the Peace Corps even if we wanted to. The Mormons take a year off to proselytize. That’s a stretch. But how many of us who are retired could spend some time somewhere helpful. Writing checks is wonderful but how about getting our hands dirty? Could a mom or a dad help out at an inner city school ? Could you just rake some little old lady’s leaves? Over 60 million people volunteered last year. Big number but still just 20% of the population.

Busy? Giving blood takes about a half an hour. You couldn’t possibly spend and hour or two at a food bank could you? Maybe your local park or river could use some TLC. This thing called charity can wear a lot of faces. How about just holding a door for someone. Instead of yelling at a service tech or waiter what about saying I feel your pain. Corny? Deep down do you really think so?

Generosity, forgiveness and unlimited love are probably the antithesis of laissez faire and caveat emptor. Prosocial sounds a hell of a lot better than antisocial. Am I in the spirit this season? Not quite but at least I think I am pointed in the right direction. Who are these people? No different than you and me.

As always
Ted The Great LOFO

Factoids:

There have been 215,000 volunteers in the Peace Corps in its 50 years of service spanning 139 countries.
Doctors Without Borders sign up for a tour lasting from 3 months to a year. They performed of 77,000 surgical interventions, helped birth thousands of babies, manned a burn center in Haiti, worked in the war of Syria and inoculated millions.

Americans give an average of $2974 per family per annum and that amounts to 2% of our GDP. $335 billion. 2/3 is given by individuals, 5% by corporation and 15% by foundations. The rate of giving is actually a horseshoe with the very poor and very rich giving 4% of their income and the middle around 2 1/2%.

40% of Americans are capable of giving blood but only 10% do so. It’s amazing how that 20-25% participation in these things keeps cropping up.

Veterans Day always seemed like a holiday for old farts. When you were young and invincible the flag waving was nice but I wasn’t about to go to the American Legion hall or join the VFW. Now when I visit the VA I see guys in the lobby, hunched over and beaten up and a lot of them wearing “Viet Nam Veteran” ball caps. Am I that old?

I joined the Navy in the late 60’s. Nam was ever-present and the draft was in all ahead full mode. There were guys that got a deferment for this or that but most of us joined something. It was a sense of duty because quite frankly everyone was doing it. If it was all volunteer I can’t say one way or another whether I would have joined.

That being said I really treasured my years spent with Uncle Sam as my boss. I was 22, fresh out of Georgetown and we didn’t really take career paths too seriously at that time. I didn’t know what I wanted to do in life so why not see the world.
My first ship was a prototype of a new Garcia class Destroyer Escort out of Newport,RI. About 420’ long and with a ships compliment of about 250 including 13 officers. The Navy sent me to communications school and of course when I came on board was made First Lieutenant which is about as far from electronics as you can get. Made perfect sense.

This was the deck crew and was for the most part the repository for every raw recruit and misfit in the service. You chipped paint and heaved lines. Bosun mates had a rep for hard drinking, cussing and fisticuffs. I knew the Uniformed Code of Military Justice by heart. I would go to quarters in the morning and from the look at bloodshot eyes or big shiners knew part of my day would be spent writing guys up. C’est la guerre.

As an officer you stood watch on the bridge. There were four hour increments and that is where you started to grow up. On the Mid Watch (12:00-4:00 AM) you were in command as officer of the deck. Everyone else was sleeping. There is a ceremonial tradition in the Navy where you say “I relieve you” and the off going Ltjg or whatever salutes and says “I stand relieved”. You are now in charge both under Navy regs and maritime law. Pretty heady stuff for a young turk. Light up a Marlboro Red under the Southern Cross and you were king of the world.

Well of course my big mouth and bravado had me on my second tour in Viet Nam as skipper of Swift Boat. It was a 50’ gun boat with a crew of 5. The next step in my maturation process. I was still calling the shots but now on a 24/7 basis. A little older and I hope a little wiser. You developed your leadership style that would probably carry on in years to come. For better or worse you came into your own.

I won’t bore you with war stories because that would take too much time and too many scotches. But I will tell you that if I didn’t want to get married and have kids there is a good possibility I would have stayed in. There was an exhilaration of going to sea and feeling the gentle roll of the hull as we picked up speed. It was exciting to tail a hurricane to see what the big ship could take. It was bone jarring to transit the Gulf of Siam in 20 foot seas in a 50’ beer can. And then who can beat Navy Whites on liberty. All part of the job.

When I got out, there was a petty officer who looked over my papers and very unceremoniously said,”You can go now.” No thanks. No good luck. Just see ya’. That was a little deflating. But it was the way I came in. In OCS there first thing they do is shave your head. Everyone looks alike and they don’t really care who your daddy is. A newbie chirped up and asked when he would see his wife. The chief growled back,”If the Navy wanted you to have a wife it would have issued you one.” When status and background don’t mean a thing it is good. We should all have to go through that for some period of time in our lives.

Today among contemporaries if I run into people who haven’t been in service I sense a sense of unease. They will say they did this or that and that is why they couldn’t serve. It really makes no matter to me. They don’t know what they missed. Over the years I have formed close friendships with many of those with whom I served. These are wonderful men and very decent people. I am so glad I have them.

When I see these guys in Iraq and Afghanistan I am in awe. Some of them have not put in three years but 8-10 tours over 10 long years. When I go to Normandy I look at battlefields that raged for days on end. Their three to four years were a lot different than mine. But then again today we are still a Band of Brothers and Sisters. I take my hat off to all of them.

A couple of years ago a close friend had a retreat in the mountains near Vail. He set it up so that injured warriors from Walter Read could come out and have a little time off. The airlines were more than generous. There were cabins and fishing for them and their families. He asked me to come out. I donned a Navy sweatshirt and tooled down country roads with not too many cares.

When I got out of the car I was floored. A I met these fine young men and their cute wives and kids. I was in awe. Their broken and missing limbs and wounded psyches were hard to fathom but even more their spirit. They were upbeat and even more than humble. Each man came up to me and said, “Sir, Thank you for your Service”.To each one I choked back emotion and said,” No son, thank you for yours.” Happy Veterans Day and God Bless to one and all.

As always
Ted The Great

Factoids:
1. 30 of the 43 Presidents served in the Army, 24 during time of war, two earned the rank of 5-star General (President Washington and President Eisenhower) and one earned the Medal of Honor (President Theodore Roosevelt)

2. Less 28% of Americans between the ages of 17-23 are qualified for military service, that’s only about 1-in-4. Drugs,obesity and education are the main disqualifiers

3. The Department of Defense employs about 1.8 million people on active duty. It is the single largest employer in the United States, with more employees than Exxon, Mobil, Ford, General Motors, and GE combined.

4.There were 400,000 military deaths in the Civil War, 458,00 in WWII, 58,000 in Viet Nam, 2,229 in Afghanistan and 4,488 in Iraq.

5.Non-lubricated condoms are distributed among the armed forces not just for safe sex, but as an emergency water canteen. A non-lubricated condom is part of the United States Military Standard Issue Parachute Pack Survival Kit (SRU-16) and can carry a liter of water..and that’s the truth.