Diane's 35th birthday

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!

Dearest Sweetie,

It's been a hard year. Time after time people come up to me and ask: "How is Diane?" and I tell them, and then they get these wonderful ideas, especially my dad, "Oh, did she try botox? Have they found a Cure?" and Beki: "what remedies is she trying?"

There are no easy answers.

But there's you. Every day I see you struggle, and every day, you don't always win, but you are always there, and you always get done what needs to be done, and you take care of yourself, and you take care of us.

It's not fair. You are an outgoing, witty, vivacious, expressive person, and this disease doesn't let you smile, or ask the screen: "Okay, what's happening here?"

But it does let you rely on us to buy the wine at Wegman's, and to buy you pizzas at Costco, and to buy you Banh mí at DC Sandwich shop, right next to Pho 75, and to buy you A&Js to assuage you when you pick me up from the airport on my return from Vermont.

This year hasn't been an easy year, but it's been a happy one, because you've united yourself with the Suffering Christ, and you have us, who love you, day after day after year after year.

Also, Elena Marie says she needs more hugs, and Li'l Iz is ready to take another turn about the parking lot. Our kids are all grown, and it's all thanks to your firm, loving, guiding hand.

Happy Birthday.

My Dad's speech at the Newport Vets Town Hall, 2021

Hello, my name is Rod Auclair. I'll be 82 two months from today, and I find that the real pleasure and treasure of being elderly are our memories. 

God knows, we don't have a lot of time left to make new ones. "Young men shall dream vision and old men shall dream dreams," it says somewhere in the Bible. And some of my best memories came from the beginning of my service in the U.S. Air Force in January, 1962 in enlisted men's basic training at Lockland AFB, San Antonio, to its end as a captain at Stewart AFB in Newburgh, NY in Dec, 1966. Four months before our son, Douglas, was born, his crib, a dresser drawer on a 3rd floor walking opposite the police station on 77 Ann St., Newsburgh.

I started as a weapons controller, better understood as a defense fighter aircraft interceptor director in a 4 story block house, two stories of which housed our giant IBM 2000 computer, no chips then, only very hot and very many glass radio tubes that were our 0101 on/off computing switches. And it worked and we watched those antique fighters (and their pilots) that you once could see lined up outside the gate of Vermont's ANG (Air National Guard) at Burlington, the tubby F-89 Scorpion, the Delta winged darts of the F-102 and F-106, the fantastic F-16. I was a gold bar 2nd Looey then, and learning to direct fighter pilots with no flight experience myself was stressful and scary, but I remember the smile and congratulations from a Korean War vet captain who patted me on the shoulder and said, "Congratulations, Auclair, you got your first [vulgar word deleted] when I and my younger airman ?/c guided a real fighter to attack a real mark inwards, probably a T-80 Korean war vintage Shooting Star.

The affirmation from that good-hearted captain, the lasting affect of what affirmation must mean to all of us. That we had worth, that we have done, and can do, well. This was something special that I found in my military service, for more than in civilian life. And I would find it so even more when I was puzzled to find I was assigned to a year's remote tour to Thule, Greenland, after I had asked for duty in West Germany. THULY? UltimaTule? which translates roughly to "the end of the world."

We were a special squadron, given the task of "bluesuiting" [militarizing] the operations control center of the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System, ironically acronymed "BMEWS"ed, which it wasn't. We would take over from very highly paid RCA contract people to run the monster radar arrays out there, away from the seaport airbase of Thule, formerly the home of Inuit Native Greenlanders who were moved across the icy bay, our whole base including us out in booneys, powered by generators and steam from a permanently moored WWII Liberty Ship.

But the magic was I served with officers and enlisted men who were WWII-Army Air Corps (brown shoe) vets called back to duty for the "Korean" police action of the fifties, who decided – what the hell! – might as well get my 20 [years of service] and retire, courtesy of Uncle Sam. And they (mostly) were a hoot! They had this perspective of "you gotta be kidding" to razing each other by making midnight phone calls (when it was our shift cycles) to their buddies asleep back in the BOQ as the 2th clk, GMT.

11:11 "TOOTHPICKS!" or 22:22 hrs "TRAIN TIME! [too-too:too-too!]" 

Your tax dollars at work.

But the most exciting moment was when Major Lynn F. Walker, Senior Space Surveillance Officer and I, his assistant officer on duty in Ops with our enlisted crew, headed by a very competent and calm Senior M. Sgt, picked up what looked like bogies [missile] coming in our only, huge scanning radar which was about 4 stories high and groaned like one of monster dinos from Jurassic Park. when it moved and locked onto a threat. Alarms went off from Greenland to North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) in Atom Bomb-proof control center mounted on giant springs in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado Springs. The system console that controlled this radar (alarm lights flashing) to use that the lunar cancellation switch had not been thrown. We were tracking the moon! Sarge reached up and flicked the switch and all became quiet, except for the dripping sweat.

Major Walker and I remained friends for the few short years he lived after he retired. He was so often homesick for his wife at Thule. His wife was Catholic, and he became so also at Thule, and I, half his age, was honored to be his God Father.

My Mom's Letter to my Dad, ... on my Birthday

4/26

Dearest Rod,

Thank you so much for calling me at work this morning, at 9 a.m., the twenty-third anniversary (to the minute) of our son's birth. Giving birth – giving life – to Douglas was one of the finest things I ever did, and I couldn't have done it withoutyou.

That, by the way, goes for a lot of fine things I've done: I couldn't have done them without your cooperation, help, and support. Sometimes I try to imagine what my life would have been like w/o you and let me tell you, it's not a pretty picture I don't see anything I can admire. You know you were a turning point for me. I have never regretted finding you, chasig you mercilessly, marrying you.

Because, you know this – I admire you, my love.

me

The Military (Combined post)

Hi.

My name is Doug Auclair, and I served, Active Duty, as an officer in the United States Coast Guard from 1989 to 1995 after graduating from the US Coast Guard Academy.

When I told my wife that'd I'd be speaking here at the Newport Vets Town Hall 2021, ... IN VERMONT, she asked me: "Why? Are you special?"

And I'd like to think about that question, because I'm not special. And I'm sure many of you think something similar. I bet many of you think: "Hey, I served. I did my duty, and it was an honor to serve. I'm not special. I just did my job." Because it's hard, isn't it, when people say: "Thank you for your service." To just say: "You're welcome. It was an honor to serve." Because it's not something special. It's just something you and I did.

My sister challenged me, too, to be brave, maybe even to be fearless, sharing my experience here.

And, I'm sorry, Beki, but I don't know how to be brave. I just did my duty. That's all. 22-hour days, some days, continuously, too, in the Bearing Sea, north of Alaska, saved 150 lives, but ... it was just me, and everybody else aboard ship, just doing our job. And I got that from my Dad who served in the Air Force, stationed in Greenland and Turkey, watching the skies, day after day, year after year, why? So the people he, you, and I, love here, at home, were able to go to bed, knowing that we were ever vigilant in the execution of our duties. For my dad, it was the air, for me, it was the seas.

Coast Guard Fore'er: we go out to sea, but it doesn't mean we get come back. Some of us didn't. I did. Why?

Some of you feel that way, too. I bet. "Why did I get to come home when my ship-mates didn't? Why are you thanking me for my service, when I got to come back? Why can't we honor the ones who didn't?"

But maybe, we are special. 

And maybe we are brave. 

And maybe bravery comes easily and naturally for you, maybe bravery is a fire in your heart, and more than just doing your job. But maybe you just did your job, like me, ... but that's needful, too. The warfighter can't be brave, without the rest of us supporting the effort, all day, every day. There is bravery, and honor, in 'just doing your job.'

Because why? Because you did serve. You did do your duty. And you do honor your fellow service members, the ones who didn't come back, you honor them today with your memory of them and you honor them with your life, your example, and your witness.

One thing I learned in the Service is this: we are family. We have a shared experience that's ineffable. When, going through TSA at Reagan National Airport in Washington D.C. to get here, I met an Air Force Academy grad, class of '90. We had a connection, a bond, that none outside the service will ever have. Suddenly, and instantly, we were brothers, and he cared more for me, and I for him, more than anybody else at the airport, and we had each other's back, just like that. 

Because we served. 

I talk how the military is family, it's a way of life. And nothing gets you thinking about life more than death. I came up to Vermont because the headstone was laid for my mom just this week. And, I am at a point in my life where my friends are dying. It will be my turn someday, too. This past year, I went to the funeral of my best man, Mike Malovic, Master Sargent in the US Army Chorus, and I accompanied my dad's friend, Lt Commander, USN, to bury his friend, Captain Jim Mathews, USN, both at the Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C. with full military honors. 

I didn't know Jim, but, he was family, because of a friend of my dad in the military. But I got to know Jim in how his son and daughter honored him, Irish wake-style, and through the stories his comrades-in-arms told about him as they served together through the Vietnam era.

And I wonder: how will we be remembered? Family. For some of us, our closest friends are in the military, and they, and you, hold the stories of our lives in those moments of hard work, hardship, and comradery. For us in the military, how we live is important, but also, how we are honored and remembered when we die. I saw so many young people in attendance at both those funerals, seeing, perhaps for the first time how the military honors its own, with dignity and respect. 

Are our young people today honored with dignity and respect? Some young people have to be asking themselves that question. Were we treated with dignity and respect in the military?

Hell no! We were worked hard, then, pulled out of the rack after two hours of sleep, and worked hard, again. Were we thanked? Hell no! We did our job and were upbraided if we didn't do it right, and were rewarded with even more work if we did.

But where else do you get that hard line? I had 300 fellow shipmates' lives in my hands every day as the engineering duty officer, and I had the US border to protect, laws to enforce, and lives to save. And I did all that. Where else in the world can you have a job where what you do matters? In the USA, there are less and less places that people can contribute in a meaningful way. In the military, you can drive a desk or clean the latrine, sure, but you can also put your life on the line, or you can support the warfighter or peacekeeper who does put their lives on the line. Their lives directly depend on you doing your job.

Where else can you say that? And, where else can you do that with your shipmates that will build friendships that will last the rest of your lives?

We are the American Fighting Men and Women. We serve in the forces that guard our Country, and our way of life. We were prepared to give our lives in their defense.

And that is something that we were given: a blessing, an honor, a burden, and a privilege. And I thank God for that honor and that privilege, and I thank God for you, my brothers and sisters, who served in our Armed Forces.

Thank you for your service.

Comrades-in-arms

The military is family, it's a way of life. And nothing gets you thinking about life more than death. I came up to Vermont because the headstone was laid for my mom just this week. And, I am at a point in my life where my friends are dying. It will be my turn someday, too. This past year, I went to the funeral of my best man, Mike Malovic, Master Sargent in the US Army Chorus, and I accompanied my dad's friend, Lt Commander, USN, to bury his friend, Captain Jim Mathews, USN, both at the Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C. with full military honors. 

I didn't know Jim, but, he was family, because of a friend of my dad in the military. But I got to know Jim in how his son and daughter honored him, Irish wake-style, and through the stories his comrades-in-arms told about him as they served together through the Vietnam era.

And I wonder: how will we be remembered? Family. For some of us, our closest friends are in the military, and they, and you, hold the stories of our lives in those moments of hard work, hardship, and comradery. For us in the military, how we live is important, but also, how we are honored and remembered when we die. I saw so many young people in attendance at both those funerals, seeing, perhaps for the first time how the military honors its own, with dignity and respect. 

Are our young people today honored with dignity and respect? Some young people have to be asking themselves that question. Were we treated with dignity and respect in the military?

Hell no! We were worked hard, then, pulled out of the rack after two hours of sleep, and worked hard, again. Were we thanked? Hell no! We did our job and were upbraided if we didn't do it right, and were rewarded with even more work if we did.

But where else do you get that hard line? I had 300 fellow shipmates' lives in my hands every day as the engineering duty officer, and I had the US border to protect, laws to enforce, and lives to save. And I did all that. Where else in the world can you have a job where what you do matters? In the USA, there are less and less places that people can contribute in a meaningful way. In the military, you can drive a desk or clean the latrine, sure, but you can also put your life on the line, or you can support the warfighter or peacekeeper who does put their lives on the line. Their lives directly depend on you doing your job.

Where else can you say that? And, where else can you do that with your shipmates that will build friendships that will last the rest of your lives?

Thank you for your Service

Hi.

My name is Doug Auclair, and I served, Active Duty, as an officer in the United States Coast Guard from 1989 to 1995 after graduating from the US Coast Guard Academy.

When I told my wife that'd I'd be speaking here at the Newport Vets Town Hall 2021, ... IN VERMONT, she asked me: "Why? Are you special?"

And I'd like to think about that question, because I'm not special. And I'm sure many of you think something similar. I bet many of you think: "Hey, I served. I did my duty, and it was an honor to serve. I'm not special. I just did my job." Because it's hard, isn't it, when people say: "Thank you for your service." To just say: "You're welcome. It was an honor to serve." Because it's not something special. It's just something you and I did.

My sister challenged me, too, to be brave, maybe even to be fearless, sharing my experience here.

And, I'm sorry, Beki, but I don't know how to be brave. I just did my duty. That's all. 22-hour days, some days, continuously, too, in the Bearing Sea, north of Alaska, saved 150 lives, but ... it was just me, and everybody else aboard ship, just doing our job. And I got that from my Dad who served in the Air Force, stationed in Greenland and Turkey, watching the skies, day after day, year after year, why? So the people he, you, and I, love here, at home, were able to go to bed, knowing that we were ever vigilant in the execution of our duties. For my dad, it was the air, for me, it was the seas.

Coast Guard Fore'er: we go out to sea, but it doesn't mean we get come back. Some of us didn't. I did. Why?

Some of you feel that way, too. I bet. "Why did I get to come home when my ship-mates didn't? Why are you thanking me for my service, when I got to come back? Why can't we honor the ones who didn't?"

But maybe, we are special. 

And maybe we are brave. 

And maybe bravery comes easily and naturally for you, maybe bravery is a fire in your heart, and more than just doing your job. But maybe you just did your job, like me, ... but that's needful, too. The warfighter can't be brave, without the rest of us supporting the effort, all day, every day. There is bravery, and honor, in 'just doing your job.'

Because why? Because you did serve. You did do your duty. And you do honor your fellow service members, the ones who didn't come back, you honor them today with your memory of them and you honor them with your life, your example, and your witness.

One thing I learned in the Service is this: we are family. We have a shared experience that's ineffable. When, going through TSA at Reagan National Airport in Washington D.C. to get here, I met an Air Force Academy grad, class of '90. We had a connection, a bond, that none outside the service will ever have. Suddenly, and instantly, we were brothers, and he cared more for me, and I for him, more than anybody else at the airport, and we had each other's back, just like that. 

Because we served. 

We are the American Fighting Men and Women. We serve in the forces that guard our Country, and our way of life. We were prepared to give our lives in their defense.

And that is something that we were given: a blessing, an honor, a burden, and a privilege. And I thank God for that honor and that privilege, and I thank God for you, my brothers and sisters, who served in our Armed Forces.

Thank you for your service.

ἥρως

 

The ancient Greek word for 'a man' is 'ἥρως' ('hero').

And, ... men are heroic, stoic ones at that. (Although the ladies may argue that a man with a cold is nothing like a stoic hero). But we're also supposed to 'open up.' We're supposed to share our thoughts and feelings. Because that builds better relationships and happier families.

But does it? Where does this advice come from, because, it seems to me, that this is a modern invention, and not tested with ... well, not tested at all, by any measure, other than a 'well, that's what you're supposed to do.'

But are we?

I had a twinge today, over my heart.

So, the modern approach would be to share this with my family. But I know what would come from that: we would rush to the ER, the ER would rush me through tests, the doctor would review the tests and, like every other time (even when I had my heart attack), the doctor would see every single indicator in the nominal range, but, the doctor, being a doctor under modern liability constraints, would recommend I convalesce at the hospital under 24-hour observation.

A visit to the ER costs $2400 if I'm driven there (more if I'm escorted in an ambulance) (much more). An overnight stay at the hospital?

I don't even want to think about that cost.

So, instead of baring my heart and sharing my feelings, I went for a walk.

Yeah. Like a man, I decided to walk it off.

And that worked.

This time.

But what if it didn't?

Well, the first time I decided to run my heart attack off, that didn't work, and I almost died (twice) and was rushed to the ER, WHO FOUND ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG WITH ME, until I ended up on the operating table with a stent.

Yay.

So, either way, walking it off worked. And, even when it didn't, I turned around, came back home, told my family, and we rushed to the hospital WHO SAID NOTHING WAS WRONG WITH ME because they're used to the modern man, who eats junk food, doesn't exercise, and dies in a very obvious way, not with a guy who exercises every day and whose body adjusts around bad genetics.

What does it profit my family that I share with them 'I have a twinge over my heart'?

The profit, actually, the cost, is that they worry unto death, all day, waiting, again, for a no-result from the hospital and a $2400 bill for the trouble.

Men, ... women, too: be a burden on your families, that's what God put you on this good, green Earth for, to help each other make your way through this day. You can't help, nor be a help, if you have to do everything all by yourself. If the world hinges on you, alone, then what, even, is every other person in your life for? Each person in your life is a gift from God. Thank God for these gifts by being there for them and allowing them to be there for you.

But don't be an unnecessary burden. Don't impose yourself onto people. Don't smother them, don't worry them, don't crush them out of the one-sided conversation you harangue them with. You are here for them which means if you have a plan or a problem, include them in helping to solve it, if you have a worry, share it, but only insofar as they can help you get over it.

Fine line?

Nope. You know when you're being a jerk.

Don't be a jerk to your family. Be their help, and be their hope.

"Anguish"

So, I've gotten my whole family to read Salinger's "For Esme: with Love and Squalor," so: my work here is done. Mission: accomplished. Life: complete. Dad level: shining star.

What is the point of "For Esme: with Love and Squalor"? And why is it Salinger's Magnum Opus? (No, not "Catcher in the Rye," that unfortunately generation-defining work.)

World War II changed us. Read Wilfred Owen's "Dulce Decorum Est." But it changed us in a more profound way than that. Sartre wrote "Nausea" in answer to the question: "What if there is no God, really?" And he got sick of it, the idea that there's nothing, is nothing, and when we die, will be nothing. World War II caused an Existential Crisis that not only we have not recovered from, but, looking at this generation, we continue to go down the spiral to Oblivion, screaming: "XANAX AND DOLLARS! XANAX AND DOLLARS!"

Nausea. We are sick, but we don't even know we are sick, because we're pretending that 'everything's fine' and 'I know what I'm doing' because 'there's got to be a point to all this, ... doesn't there?'

Doesn't there?

Salinger addresses this question, head on, in "For Esme: with Love and Squalor." What is the point? And he addresses it with us: the most unreliable narrator.

Take X. What does he say? ever? in this story? He does speak, but note how he does: "I told her that..." "I relayed my ..." "I felt that I should ..."

He addresses the other Platonian Shadows in this story not as himself, but as a narrator through himself.

The Narrator has crossed himself out of this story, and is using his own person as a shadow-puppet to redirect our attention away from him to ...

... to, well, anything and anybody else other than him.

He doesn't want to be seen.

Esme sees him.

Esme, bored Esme, hiding her yawn in the choir loft, sees that he sees her, and seeing her, sees her for exactly who she is. She is above all this 'normalcy' this ... SQUALOR of the Every Day, so far above it that she does these common-place things -- singing, asking: "what are you doing here?" -- at a level beyond the normal: she exists in a higher plane than everybody else, because, unlike them, these walking shadows, she does exist, she is alive, and vibrantly so. She sees our narrator, sees him seeing her, and in seeing him, gives him life, and hope, and joy, and meaning, and purpose, ...

... for one microsecond of his lifeless life.

Then he, before and after, descends right back into the Squalor of the Every Day, pretending to be normal, pretending to be 'fine,' and utterly failing to fool anybody, even and most particularly, himself.

So.

Where is the hope in this hopeless story?

"Seymour: an Introduction" tells us the answer.

"The Artist screams [crying out in Anguish] and when we run to him and ask him: 'What's wrong,' he can't say. He cannot speak it. But it is his EYES! It is his EYES that see the pain and the lost and the emptiness of this life, and cannot unsee it. And that is what kills the Artist. His EYES."

The hope, in "For Esme: with Love and Squalor," is that Esme sees the Narrator, just for that one second, and, in a totally free act of kindness, reaches her heart out to his heart, and says to him: "I see you. I see your weaknesses. I see your strengths. You are alive. I love you. I see you."

And being seen, before, during, and after, living in the squalor of the Normal he creates for himself, yes, but in that Squalor, he now has that. He was seen. He was real to someone. He brought Joy to her: happiness, delight, recognition, hope.

And that is what he will have to his dying day.

And that is something no one can take away from him.

Ever.

Not even himself.