Although 2018 is a year I will happily put in the rear-view mirror, it started well enough for me when I published my settlement with my former agency, which I retired from involuntarily in 2016 because of pervasive age discrimination in my division, in which the agency (i) paid me $5,000 in settlement; (ii) changed my last performance rating from Acceptable to Outstanding which is what it should have been all along were it not for the ageism perpetrated against me by some of the management; and (iii) required training for the managers of my former division, focused on combatting age discrimination. The settlement importantly did not have an NDA clause, and so I settled it for much less money than were my actual damages, and the resistance lives on.
Things nationally and internationally went to hades as the year wore on, from bloody school shootings to phony summits between two two-bit strongmen and an American phony, and I participated in rallies in the District during the first half of the year against the rapid deterioration of American greatness, including at the Supreme Court against voter suppression, the schoolchildren's March for Our Lives, and the protest at the White House against Zero Tolerance at the southern border. These anti-democratic trends are shocking departures from traditional American values and thankfully the midterms showed that America is on the road back to its former greatness after two nightmarish years. Still, there's a lot of work to be done by thinking, patriotic Americans to combat America's lurch towards isolationism and nationalism by people who don't know a thing about the history of the 1930s.
My year and my life changed mid-summer when I started suffered a torn retina which necessitated three surgeries so far, two on an emergency, same-day basis. Although my activities are severely limited while I heal, I was able to attend a cousin's funeral but missed a nephew's wedding, and I was able to undertake half of my annual rocky scramble along the rugged Billy goat Trail but missed out on my yearly autumnal drive along the Shenandoah Ridge.
Most notably were the midterm congressional elections, in which I worked for the successful congessional campaign of Democrat Jennifer Wexton against GOP incumbent Barbara Trumpstock in the Tenth Virginia District, helping to flip the seat as part of the blue wave washing over America in November. My adventures canvassing were exhilarating, from having a man threaten to shoot me to having several loyal democrats and many renounced republicans literally seething as they assured me that they had a plan for election day--to vote a straight democratic ticket. Most importantly I had my third and hopefully last eye surgery in mid-December, so by March or April I can finally get back to regular activities.
Showing posts with label review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label review. Show all posts
Thursday, December 27, 2018
Wednesday, December 31, 2014
Year In Review IV
Here are some of my favorite times from 2014. I had some nice noontime wintertime runs on the Mall.
I took third in my AG in a wintery 5K.
I ran with some former running buddies, including Bex, my first buddy, and David, Markus, John and others.
I had some great solo runs, especially around the Tidal Basin, my favorite running venue.
Wreathed in Cherry Blossom blooms.
Some fast-moving terrific storms closed in a hurry, which made it imperative to keep an eye upward..
I attended my niece's wedding in Portland, OR, in July and had two great early morning runs throughout that town in two days and saw several family members I hadn't seen in awhile including my brother and two of my sisters, including the mother of the bride, the sister on the right.
I had some nice noontime summertime runs on the Waterfront.
I heard some secrets. secrets.
I ran my longest race in half a decade, a HM, and broke two hours.
An anonymous poster on this blog led me to my first solid information of any child of mine in over seven years (in this case my oldest, James Bradley Rogers, now in his late twenties).
I spent a quiet holiday season in the District, doing the annual Holiday Decorations run at work.
The sky over the nation's capital.
I took third in my AG in a wintery 5K.
I ran with some former running buddies, including Bex, my first buddy, and David, Markus, John and others.
I had some great solo runs, especially around the Tidal Basin, my favorite running venue.
Wreathed in Cherry Blossom blooms.
Some fast-moving terrific storms closed in a hurry, which made it imperative to keep an eye upward..
I attended my niece's wedding in Portland, OR, in July and had two great early morning runs throughout that town in two days and saw several family members I hadn't seen in awhile including my brother and two of my sisters, including the mother of the bride, the sister on the right.
I had some nice noontime summertime runs on the Waterfront.
I heard some secrets. secrets.
I ran my longest race in half a decade, a HM, and broke two hours.
An anonymous poster on this blog led me to my first solid information of any child of mine in over seven years (in this case my oldest, James Bradley Rogers, now in his late twenties).
I spent a quiet holiday season in the District, doing the annual Holiday Decorations run at work.
The sky over the nation's capital.
Monday, December 29, 2014
Year in Review II
I listed the dozen books I read this year that had the most effect upon me, leaving six reads off the list. None are bad books, and here is the list:
The Raft by Robert Trumbull. Written in 1942, it's about 3 American fliers stranded on a tiny rubber lifeboat when their torpedo plane went down in the Pacific during the war. They were adrift over a month before being picked up by a passing American ship. A tale of privation, resourcefulness and determination, I read it as a boy and was mightily impressed by it. It was okay as a re-read half a century later.
Fire by Sebastian Junger. Junger's The Perfect Storm is one of my favorite books. This book, a collection of stories about wildfire firefighters, several of whom lost their lives, is also okay.
Micro by Michael Crichton and Robert Preston. Ghost written by Preston from an unfinished book by Crichton after Crichton died, I think it's about tiny robots that attack humans by getting into their blood stream and saw their way out with minuscule scalpels. But I really don't remember, and can't remember how it came out, beyond that the world didn't end. How many more unfinished manuscripts did Crichton leave behind?
Harbor Nocturne by Joseph Wambaugh. I've read all of Wambaugh's books about cops so I read this, his latest effort. If you haven't read Wambaugh before, start with The New Centurions (fiction) or The Onion Field (factual) instead.
Tin Can Man by Emory J. Jernigan. The wartime experiences of a sailor aboard a destroyer in WWII, written 50 years after he lived through them. Interesting details about the daily wartime experiences of sailors, and some of the personal incidents the author relates might even be true.
Iwo by Richard Wheeler. A standard battle book about the most savage fight of WWII, excepting, perhaps, only Stalingrad. The ferociousness of this fight to the last man between the Marines and the Japanese had a lot to do with the decision to use atomic bombs to end the war finally.
I'm always interested each year to tally up the types of books I read each year. Of the eighteen, three were literature (A Tale of Two Cities; Walkabout; Food of the Gods), two were biographies (John Paul Jones; Kesselring) seven were histories (Glittering Misery; Retribution; Iwo; Tarawa; Japan's War; The American Revolution; Lincoln and His Generals), one was political science (Wilson), two were novels (Harbor Nocturne; Micro), and three were true action (Fire; The Raft; Tin Can Man).
I don't watch a lot of movies but sometimes I check DVDs out of the library. I enjoyed The Last Stand with Arnold Schwarzenegger made a couple of years ago because, actually, it was well written and Arnold was at his understated best. The absolute worst movie I have seen in a long time was The Little Fockers, a terrible, pointless waste of time despite a great cast including Oscar winners Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman and Barbara Streisand.
The Raft by Robert Trumbull. Written in 1942, it's about 3 American fliers stranded on a tiny rubber lifeboat when their torpedo plane went down in the Pacific during the war. They were adrift over a month before being picked up by a passing American ship. A tale of privation, resourcefulness and determination, I read it as a boy and was mightily impressed by it. It was okay as a re-read half a century later.
Fire by Sebastian Junger. Junger's The Perfect Storm is one of my favorite books. This book, a collection of stories about wildfire firefighters, several of whom lost their lives, is also okay.
Micro by Michael Crichton and Robert Preston. Ghost written by Preston from an unfinished book by Crichton after Crichton died, I think it's about tiny robots that attack humans by getting into their blood stream and saw their way out with minuscule scalpels. But I really don't remember, and can't remember how it came out, beyond that the world didn't end. How many more unfinished manuscripts did Crichton leave behind?
Harbor Nocturne by Joseph Wambaugh. I've read all of Wambaugh's books about cops so I read this, his latest effort. If you haven't read Wambaugh before, start with The New Centurions (fiction) or The Onion Field (factual) instead.
Tin Can Man by Emory J. Jernigan. The wartime experiences of a sailor aboard a destroyer in WWII, written 50 years after he lived through them. Interesting details about the daily wartime experiences of sailors, and some of the personal incidents the author relates might even be true.
Iwo by Richard Wheeler. A standard battle book about the most savage fight of WWII, excepting, perhaps, only Stalingrad. The ferociousness of this fight to the last man between the Marines and the Japanese had a lot to do with the decision to use atomic bombs to end the war finally.
I'm always interested each year to tally up the types of books I read each year. Of the eighteen, three were literature (A Tale of Two Cities; Walkabout; Food of the Gods), two were biographies (John Paul Jones; Kesselring) seven were histories (Glittering Misery; Retribution; Iwo; Tarawa; Japan's War; The American Revolution; Lincoln and His Generals), one was political science (Wilson), two were novels (Harbor Nocturne; Micro), and three were true action (Fire; The Raft; Tin Can Man).
I don't watch a lot of movies but sometimes I check DVDs out of the library. I enjoyed The Last Stand with Arnold Schwarzenegger made a couple of years ago because, actually, it was well written and Arnold was at his understated best. The absolute worst movie I have seen in a long time was The Little Fockers, a terrible, pointless waste of time despite a great cast including Oscar winners Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman and Barbara Streisand.
Sunday, December 28, 2014
Year In Review I
Books. My house is filled with more books than I could read before I die. Is that a bad or a good problem to have? And my friends want me to use my Kindle and start queuing up electronic books. Naw. Paper works just fine.
This year I read 18 books. It could have been more but I'm currently mired down in a biography of Winston Churchill during the war years. I'm going to finish it--he was a great man--but I'm juggling library returns of the volume between the Arlington and Falls Church systems as I read about 10 pages a night. Anyway, that leaves choosing my top dozen books of the year more like deciding what half-dozen do I discard. How many books did you read this year?
In order of importance to me:
1. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. I read this in 9th grade but that was decades ago. Perhaps then it was my opening into what a rich world adult reading was. I never forgot the open and the close (I'm paraphrasing)--It was the best of times, the worst of times…It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done. I just didn't remember much in between. What a fabulous book. I also think it's prescient for the ultra rich in America as they unconcernedly allow societal inequities to become ever more prominent.
2. Woodrow Wilson: Revolution, War, and Peace by Arthur Link. Almost a great president, but not quite. Am interesting time in America as we slumbered and almost awoke to our world-wide responsibilities one generation before we actually did. Wilson was a pedantic, smarter always than anyone else in the room, who didn't listen to anyone in that room. He promulgated the 14 points which have caused trouble even down to today, most specifically about the right of national self-determination. Think Scotland and England, or Quebec and the rest of English-speaking Canada. The British Prime Minister during the peace treaty negotiations to end WWI sniffed that the almighty Lord had ten commandments and Wilson had fourteen.
3. Walkabout by James Vance Marshall. A tale of 2 city children surviving in the outback of Australia after a plane crash, with the help of an Aboriginal boy on his walkabout, a coming of age solitary trek for a male reaching puberty. It doesn't go well for the native boy despite, or perhaps because of, his concern for others.
4. John Paul Jones by Samuel Eliot Morison. This biography won the 1959 Pulitzer Prize, one of two Morison won. His short volume, The Two Ocean War, is an excellent summation of America's naval war during WWII.
5. Lincoln and His Generals by T. Harry Williams. A little dated (c1952) but interesting expositions on McClellan, Pope, Meade, Grant and the other eastern theatre Civil War generals.
6. The American Revolution by Bruce Lancaster. Part of the American Heritage survey of America's wars, an interesting read on how and why one third of the colonists managed to create a new nation (one third pretty much remained neutral and the other third was pro-crown and decamped to Canada when the Americans won, without their property mostly). Think George Washington.
7. Japan's War by Edwin Hoyt. A long slow slog through how Japan rose to militarism in the twenties and thirties and were at war years before the Germans invaded Poland to "start" WWII. An unwinnable war, a developed country trying to pacify China. Think Vietnam.
8. The Food of the Gods by H.G. Wells. Not his best work, but I enjoy the writing of Wells.
9. Glittering Misery: Dependants of the Indian Fighting Army by Patricia Y. Stallard. Life on the frontier inside of army forts for adult and children dependents of cavalrymen in the 1880s and 1890s. An interesting glimpse into the hard lives of boys and girls and wives of men on the point of the spear as Americans pursued its "manifest destiny."
10. Kesselring: The Making of the Luftwaffe by Kenneth Macksey. It would help if you knew that Kesselring was the German general who stymied the Allied advance in Italy during WWII for two years. He apparently commanded the Luftwaffe (Nazi air force) in the early good days for the Germans in WWII. Do you want to know why the Germans (Nazis) were so hard to beat? They had great technology and great generals, and Kesselring was one of the best.
11. Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 by Max Hastings. Americans poured fire and brimstone upon the resolute Japanese during this period as they advanced across the Pacific, in retribution for the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. We had to nuke 'em to make them quit. My Dad fought in this terrible conflict and surely would have died if we had had to invade Japan in 1945 and 1946. Does that tell you where I stand on the controversy about whether the Americans should have dropped the bombs, or were racist in doing so? (The Germans had already quit.)
12. Iwo and Tarawa by Richard Wheeler and Robert Sherwood. Two Pacific War battle books, tied for twelveth on my list, written a generation after the conflict (Iwo by Wheeler) and during the war (Tarawa by Sherwood who was there), two of the worst battles the Marines ever fought and won (did they ever lose a battle?) What did your daddy do during the war?
This year I read 18 books. It could have been more but I'm currently mired down in a biography of Winston Churchill during the war years. I'm going to finish it--he was a great man--but I'm juggling library returns of the volume between the Arlington and Falls Church systems as I read about 10 pages a night. Anyway, that leaves choosing my top dozen books of the year more like deciding what half-dozen do I discard. How many books did you read this year?
In order of importance to me:
1. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. I read this in 9th grade but that was decades ago. Perhaps then it was my opening into what a rich world adult reading was. I never forgot the open and the close (I'm paraphrasing)--It was the best of times, the worst of times…It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done. I just didn't remember much in between. What a fabulous book. I also think it's prescient for the ultra rich in America as they unconcernedly allow societal inequities to become ever more prominent.
2. Woodrow Wilson: Revolution, War, and Peace by Arthur Link. Almost a great president, but not quite. Am interesting time in America as we slumbered and almost awoke to our world-wide responsibilities one generation before we actually did. Wilson was a pedantic, smarter always than anyone else in the room, who didn't listen to anyone in that room. He promulgated the 14 points which have caused trouble even down to today, most specifically about the right of national self-determination. Think Scotland and England, or Quebec and the rest of English-speaking Canada. The British Prime Minister during the peace treaty negotiations to end WWI sniffed that the almighty Lord had ten commandments and Wilson had fourteen.
3. Walkabout by James Vance Marshall. A tale of 2 city children surviving in the outback of Australia after a plane crash, with the help of an Aboriginal boy on his walkabout, a coming of age solitary trek for a male reaching puberty. It doesn't go well for the native boy despite, or perhaps because of, his concern for others.
4. John Paul Jones by Samuel Eliot Morison. This biography won the 1959 Pulitzer Prize, one of two Morison won. His short volume, The Two Ocean War, is an excellent summation of America's naval war during WWII.
5. Lincoln and His Generals by T. Harry Williams. A little dated (c1952) but interesting expositions on McClellan, Pope, Meade, Grant and the other eastern theatre Civil War generals.
6. The American Revolution by Bruce Lancaster. Part of the American Heritage survey of America's wars, an interesting read on how and why one third of the colonists managed to create a new nation (one third pretty much remained neutral and the other third was pro-crown and decamped to Canada when the Americans won, without their property mostly). Think George Washington.
7. Japan's War by Edwin Hoyt. A long slow slog through how Japan rose to militarism in the twenties and thirties and were at war years before the Germans invaded Poland to "start" WWII. An unwinnable war, a developed country trying to pacify China. Think Vietnam.
8. The Food of the Gods by H.G. Wells. Not his best work, but I enjoy the writing of Wells.
9. Glittering Misery: Dependants of the Indian Fighting Army by Patricia Y. Stallard. Life on the frontier inside of army forts for adult and children dependents of cavalrymen in the 1880s and 1890s. An interesting glimpse into the hard lives of boys and girls and wives of men on the point of the spear as Americans pursued its "manifest destiny."
10. Kesselring: The Making of the Luftwaffe by Kenneth Macksey. It would help if you knew that Kesselring was the German general who stymied the Allied advance in Italy during WWII for two years. He apparently commanded the Luftwaffe (Nazi air force) in the early good days for the Germans in WWII. Do you want to know why the Germans (Nazis) were so hard to beat? They had great technology and great generals, and Kesselring was one of the best.
11. Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 by Max Hastings. Americans poured fire and brimstone upon the resolute Japanese during this period as they advanced across the Pacific, in retribution for the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. We had to nuke 'em to make them quit. My Dad fought in this terrible conflict and surely would have died if we had had to invade Japan in 1945 and 1946. Does that tell you where I stand on the controversy about whether the Americans should have dropped the bombs, or were racist in doing so? (The Germans had already quit.)
12. Iwo and Tarawa by Richard Wheeler and Robert Sherwood. Two Pacific War battle books, tied for twelveth on my list, written a generation after the conflict (Iwo by Wheeler) and during the war (Tarawa by Sherwood who was there), two of the worst battles the Marines ever fought and won (did they ever lose a battle?) What did your daddy do during the war?
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