A new profile picture

Each year I change my profile picture to a picture of me from the preceding year that speaks to where I am or was in the recent pass.  For instance, when I started this blog about 13 years ago, my first profile picture was me standing in a park on Staten Island, where I grew up, with the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in the background.  I was running the New York City Marathon the next day and it seemed a fitting portrait of my blog at that time.

Over the years I had profile pictures of me, if I remember correctly, standing before an Indian battlefield in Wyoming (the Fettermen Fight, formerly known as the Fetterman Massacre), eating a pizza, visiting a baseball park and attending a protest rally now that my Street Fighting Man days from the early seventies during the Nixon years have been necessarily revived during these Trump years.

Last year, 2019, my profile picture was a snapshot of me from November 2018 as I headed out to canvas for a democratic challenger, Jennifer Wexton, in the Tenth Virginia Congressional District running against the Republican incumbent in a seat that had been Republican for forty years.  We flipped the seat, the first seat to be announced to have flipped during that entire historic blue-wave night.  I was pretty proud to have contributed a meaningful effort that fall in the fight to preserve our rule-of-law nation.

For this year's profile picture I reached back to March 2019 when I visited Omaha Beach in Normandy, one of the five D-Day beaches that the Allies stormed 75 years earlier during Operation Overlord, the success of which presaged the utter destruction Nazi Germany eleven months later.  Omaha Beach was the bloodiest and most bitterly contested of the five landing beaches and the initial shallow lodgment there almost failed, a catastrophe which would have unhinged the whole Allied line those first days and might have caused the American, British and Canadian troops to be driven back into the sea.  Unlike at the other four beaches, the first wave of American troops at Omaha suffered mass slaughter wading ashore and for almost the whole day the Americans reached only the seawall, perhaps thirty yards past high tide, under which they sought shelter from the murderous fire raining down upon them from the bluffs beyond the narrow coastal strip.  Orders were being prepared to withdraw them but in the afternoon intrepid soldiers singly or in pairs or clumps went up into the nearby hills, engaged the enemy and the beachead was preserved and enlarged as more troops came ashore.  It was a close thing and a costly victory, with hundreds of Americans killed and thousands wounded on that beach alone.  It is a reverential place for Americans to visit, haunted no doubt by the ghosts of shattered young men roaming ceaselessly among the ruined detritus of war still there decades later.  It was a time when Americans were great and proud and wanted to make the world a better place, and weren't victims of seemingly hopeless circumstances wanting only to keep the world out by building a thousand-mile wall, separating families and caging children.  My dad fought with the First Marine Division in the Pacific driving towards Tokyo and my girlfriend's dad fought with Patton's Third Army driving into Germany, and I was humbled to stand upon that hallowed beach in France yet suffused with pride at the can-do American spirit it represents.

2018, 2d quarter.

In April, I viewed the flowering Cherry Blossoms in the District when I ran around the Tidal Basin once with a friend and also walked around it twice more, once with a friend and once alone.  I also made stops at the National Tulip Library near the Washington Monument and enjoyed its three-week burgeoning glory.  Other flowers important to me came out that month, including flowing phlox and spherical alliums.

In May, I visited downtown Leesburg, forty miles west of my house, and had a delicious lunch there in an old restored bank building, afterwards wandering around its shopping outlets.  I picked up my running pace as I increased my three-times weekly mileage from a mile or two each time to 5-mile loops around the greater neighborhood and a couple of 10K runs on the W&OD Trail, including one weekend run where I was given a free bottle of chilled water from a for-pay fluid stand set up at the top of a long hill by a child, supervised by his mother, because I looked so hot and sweaty.  I ran in the Memorial Day 3K fun run in Falls Church, my first race in a year, and had lunch at the local gourmet pizzeria afterwards with the Empty Chair.

I acquired an I-Phone in June, obviously a life changing event, for the better, right? and donated blood products for the last time to date (maybe I'll get back to it again someday) and went out to lunch or dinner with friends a few times.  My running continued, with 5-mile runs around the 'hood and with friends in the District a few times at noontime.  I enjoyed lunch at the Lost Dog Pizzeria in Westover on Father's Day with the Empty Chair again and arrived at a plan to forego this so-far useless exercise on future holidays and birthdays when my youngest estranged son turns thirty, which will be happening soon enough.

The most notable day in the month was the last day of June when the Protest Against Zero Tolerance was held at Lafayette Park in the District on a very hot day.  This well-attended rally protested against the inhumane current administration's policy of tearing babies from their mother's arms at the southern border and jailing the children at points all over the country, possibly for forced adoption later by eager American parents.  Again I was the Street Fighting Man, just like in the late sixties and early seventies, decades after I thought those days were long gone in America.

Looking at 2018, the first quarter

In January I published my settlement with the FTC for its age discrimination as evidenced by my premature retirement in early 2016 due to a hostile work environment created by management in my former division.  The Commission agreed in September of 2017 to pay me $5,000 in settlement of my claims, to change my latest evaluation from Acceptable which was biased and wrong to Outstanding which it should have been all along, to issue me a certificate of superior service and most importantly to me, to provide training to the managers in my former division specifically for age-discrimination and to, in what I informally call the Chris Clause, require the same training for any former manager of mine who left the agency and who also returned within five years.  I am proud of the settlement I achieved against my agency by myself after a year and a half of litigation and negotiations, in a blow against what I consider to be prevalent age discrimination, and which importantly to me did not contain an NDA agreement so that it would be buried in a veil of secrecy.

I also attended a rally at the Supreme Court protesting voter suppression emanating out of a case brought against Ohio for aggressively purging voter rolls of persons who didn't vote and then check their mail from the voter police, and I predicted to the spineless Republicans in Congress that "We're coming for you in November."  Which us Dems did, to the tune of a turnaround of going from four Democrats in Virginia versus seven Republican Congresspersons then to seven Democrats versus four Republicans now, and a blue wave sweeping over the House by forty flipped seats.  We're coming for you all in the Senate and White House in 2020 too, just you wait.

In February I kept up going to lunch program at the local pizzeria on holidays and my estranged sons' birthdays, since two of them have birthdays in February and someday I hope to see one or all of there on one of those special days.  I also started running again, slowly, after letting my restricting Achilles strain heal for half a year.  My doctor threatened to schedule me to see a surgeon if it didn't get better by wearing a Boot, so I gave it plenty of time to heal since I'm not a surgery-first guy.

In March I got into the District a few times to run a mile or two with former running buddies and to walk around to see some of the city's omnipresent famous sites.  I had the unpleasant experience of dealing with the Social Security Administration trying to "disenroll" from Medicare after I had already quit the program by letter, including a dreadful visit to a social security office which is like visiting a third-world bus station and cooling your heels there for an entire day.  Late in March I played the Street Fighting Man in the District again at the schoolchildren's March for our Lives, as our offspring plead for sensible gun regulations like no more sales of assault rifles to teenagers and prohibitions against mega-30+ round clips, where I signed up people's pledges to vote in November.

   

Street Fighting Man

"Everywhere I hear the sound of marching, charging feet, boy." At a rally this year in front of the Supreme Court in support of voting rights as it heard a case based on Ohio's aggressive purging of its voter rolls disenfranchising thousands of citizens who didn't vote for two years and didn't read their junk mail.

"Because summer's here and the time is right for fighting in the streets boy." Voter suppression, that's what it is.

"But what can a poor boy do except to sing for a Rock and Roll Band."  For 40 years I never showed an i.d. to people who knew me by name in order to be allowed to exercise my right to vote, until now.

"Hey! Think the time is right for a Palace Revolution." We're coming for you in November!

Take Ten

When I started blogging last year, I filled out the Favorite Music part of my Profile by listing my ten favorite songs (plus three more, one each that reminds me of each of my sons) . This was hard! This year I'm going to list albums instead of songs.

A Day in the Life (Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1967) by the Beatles. I read the news today, oh boy.

Sympathy for the Devil (Beggar's Banquet, 1968) by the Rolling Stones. I rode a tank with a general's rank and the blitzkrieg raged and the bodies stank. Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name.

Won't Get Fooled Again (Who's Next, 1971) by the Who. Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

When the Music's Over (Strange Days, 1967) by the Doors. For the music is your special friend, dance on fire as it intends, music is your only friend until the end.

Badge (Goodbye, 1969) by Cream. Thinking about the times that you drove in my car, thinking that I might have drove you too far.

Time Has Come Today (The Time Has Come, 1968) by the Chambers Brothers. I've been loved and put aside, I've been crushed by the tumbling tide, and my soul has been psychedelicized. Now the time has come, there are things to realize, time has come today.

Purple Haze (Are You Experienced? 1967) by Jimi Hendrix. Is it tomorrow, or just the end of time?

California Dreamin' (If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears, 1965) by the Mamas and the Papas. California dreamin' on such a winter's day.

Get Together (The Youngbloods, 1967) by the Youngbloods. We are but a moment's sunlight, fading in the grass.

Born to be Wild (Steppenwolf, 1968) by Steppenwolf. Head out on the highway, looking for adventure and whatever comes our way.

Bet you couldn't do just ten.