Memorial Day Thanks to All the Lt. Col. William Travis's

February 24, 1836

To the People of Texas and All Americans in the World.
FELLOW CITZENS AND COMPATRIOTS:

I am besieged by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna. I have sustained a continual bombardment and cannonade for twenty-four hours and have not lost a man. The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion; otherwise the garrison are to be put to the sword if the fort is taken. I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, and our flag still waves proudly from the walls. I shall never surrender nor retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism, and of everything dear to the American character, to come too our aid with all dispatch. The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily and will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible and die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor and that of his country.

VICTORY OR DEATH

William Barret Travis
Lieutenant Colonel, Commandant
The Alamo

The Sprout Has Landed

My son is home for the first time in a year. I am amazed at his connection with six-year-old Sgt. York (who absolutely adores his only uncle). Since arriving, they have been battle buddies every time they are together. Sprout even brought Sgt. York a real army gas mask. Ever see a child play basketball in a gas mask? It's quite interesting.

Anyway, last night I slept eight hours straight, the longest I have slept at one stretch this whole year. It's good to have him home even if he only lights for a few minutes at a time. He has lots of catching up to do and fun to have and things to buy and people to see while he is here. At the moment, I will just keep my place, which is fast becoming obsolete to him. He has grown up and can handle things on his own. Dad and I will have to adjust. It will be easier for me than for Dad. Sprout has already had to stop him once or twice for trying to take over the care and feeding of Sprout. It may be a hard pill to swallow but a good cure, nonetheless.

Sprout's Coming Home

Sprout will soon be on his way home and back to my lovin' arms. I've been cleaning the house all weekend, as if he doesn't know what this house normally looks like. As I wait, here's an interesting little tidbit from the Little General's mouth this weekend:

LITTLE GENERAL (as she follows Pedro down the street): Where we goin'?

PEDRO (always annoyed by the General): We're going crazy.

LITTLE GENERAL: Wait! I don't have my shoes on.

(The child ain't right.)

Snort!

In My Email

This is a funny little list I got in my email today. Anybody who works in an office will understand. I must be a Mouse Potato.


BLAMESTORMING - Sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.

SEAGULL MANAGER - A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, cr*ps on everything, and then leaves.

ASSMOSIS - The process by which people seem to absorb success and advancement by sucking up to the boss rather than working hard.

SALMON DAY - The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die.

CUBE FARM - An office filled with cubicles.

PRAIRIE DOGGING - When someone yells or drops something loudly in a cube farm, and people's heads pop up over the walls to see that's going on. (This also applies to applause from a promotion because there may be cake.)

MOUSE POTATO - The on-line, wired generation's answer to the couch potato.

SITCOMs - Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage. What yuppies turn into when they have children and one of them stops working to stay home with the kids or start a "home business".

STRESS PUPPY - A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and whiny.

PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE - The fine art of whacking the cr*p out of an electronic device to get it to work again.

ADMINISPHERE - The rarefied organisational layers beginning just above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the "adminisphere" are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed to solve. This is often affiliated with the dreaded "administrivia" needless paperwork and processes.

404 - Someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web error message "404 Not Found," meaning that the requested document could not be located.

OHNOSECOND - That minuscule fraction of time in which you realise that you've just made a BIG mistake (e.g. you've hit 'reply all')

A Mighty Little Letter

Since Christmas, I have been sending care packages to soldiers listed on Anysoldier.com. This is just the greatest website. Yesterday I was going through the names to find a soldier to send a box to and I ran across this guys post. Click on the link and scroll down the list on the left-hand side of the screen to May 2 and click on the name Johnson, Msgt Rick. He scanned a copy of a letter he received from a 10-year-old. If this doesn't make you cry, you have no heart. I have a feeling a bunch of strong burly airmen in Iraq have passed this letter around and all shed a tear or two. Read it and weep.

Take Two Aspirin and One King Kong and Call Me in the Morning.

Grandkids are a hoot.

Sgt. York celebrated his first springbreak this week which meant Mom and Dad had to make arrangements for his care. He spent most of the week going to work with Dad where he spent his time on the phone calling me - looking for more exciting arrangements. He would have called all his suckerable great aunts if he knew their numbers, but since mine is the only number he knows, I became his secretary. If I couldn't entertain him, I was ordered to make arrangements for someone else to entertain him. This was a daunting task since we all work or otherwise have lives that don't involve babysitting six-year olds.

I was due to have minor out-patient surgery on Thursday so I really didn't want to miss any other days of work. Luckily, my surgery went fast as expected, I was put to sleep for about ten minutes and we were on our way home a little after 10:00. I felt fine, though groggy, and Stoicdad was going to be home with me for the rest of the day so we decided to call our son's office to see if Sgt. York had yet been sprung. He had not so we agreed to stop by and pick him up and take him home with us. When we got to the office, Sgt. York was outside climbing a tree and his dad looked rather glad that we had come. I don't think he was getting much work done. As Sgt. York jumped in the car, he handed me a DVD of the new King Kong movie. His plan was for us to watch it with him. My plan was to sleep for the rest of the day.

When we got home, we popped the DVD in and Sgt. York climbed into bed beside me and begin to tell me how scary the movie was. He had already seen it and he made me fast-forward through the boring beginning and go straight to the scenes of dinosaurs and King Kong. As he watched, I drifted off to sleep only to have him occasionally wake me up yelling "Don't look Grandma, don't look." Oh, this was gonna be lots of fun. By the time the movie was over, he was stomping across the bed, beating on his chest. Then he made me get up and take him out front where we have two Crepe Myrtle trees that are great for climbing. I took the paper and sat and read while Sgt. York played King Kong for most of the afternoon. He climbed and beat his chest and jumped and did it all. I'm sure if there had been a Barbie doll anywhere around, he would have dropped his "never play with dolls" rule and swung her from here to Kingdom Come just like Kong did in the movie.

Sgt. York tends to get sucked into movies. For a while he was the Incredible Hulk, passing out quite often wherever he happened to be (home...church...grocery store) and waking up angry... very angry. He really thought that he turned green. He would proceed to pretend to destroy everything in his path. Heck, I thought he was the Incredible Hulk. Now he is King Kong. If there is a nice hanging vine anywhere, he will be swinging from it. His sister's Barbies will all be missing heads and other limbs by the time he takes on a new persona.

Let's only hope they don't do a remake of The Swamp Thing. I can't afford the water bill.

A Cat For A Fallen Marine

I never knew Bradley Faircloth. We both lived in the same town, he graduated from my high school and he was the same age as Sprout, but I never met him. He was a Marine who died on Thanksgiving day, 2004 while defending our freedom in the battle of Fallujah.

The year he graduated from school, his senior class attempted to raise enough money to have a statue of a panther, the school's mascot, erected on the campus. My senior class left the school a sundial sitting on a pedestal next to the flagpole...a far more obtainable goal. The last time I looked, the pedestal was still there, minus the sundial. Though the class of 2002 fell way short of raising enough money to buy a panther statue, Bradley didn't give up hope and before he left for Iraq, he told his mother that if he didn't make it back, he wished that she would see to it that the school got it's panther.

Yesterday the school got it's panther. (That's my sister introducing herself)


I wanted so bad to go to the unveiling of this statue, just to be a part of a sort of memorial for a fallen soldier, but the best excuse I could come up with for leaving work was that as a military mom, I sympathized and that just wasn't good enough. We all sympathized. After work yesterday afternoon, Sis and I went over and took pictures and declared it a worthy statue. The money that poured in after Bradley Faircloth's death was enough for a statue, a huge rock pedestal, a well laid brick flooring, landscaping, two engraved marble slabs and lights all around.

Bradley's mom did not want the statue to be a memorial to her son, she just wanted his wishes fulfilled. And that is as it should be. If this statue held an American flag or bore the name of a fallen soldier, it would always be sacred, untouchable...not the idea the soldier or his class had in mind I think. No, this panther should always be decorated on Homecoming Day with gaudy paper flowers and blue and gold streamers, and used as the back drop for yearbook pictures for years to come, and as a place for happy school memories to be made. It should not even be a sin if students from the school's arch-rival (Sprout's alma mater) should decide to sneak over after the "big game" and paint the score on the side of that panther in bright orange paint in years when they win, giving the City's cannon a much needed rest after 75 years of drive-by paintings. I think this young hero and football player would want it that way.

But they did find one small way to make this statue a monument to Bradley. A line from the school song engraved in marble says enough.

An honored soldier, a worthy monument. Thank you Bradley Faircloth.