Just keeping you posted...

Seems our Program Manager is caught in Florida, flight grounded by high winds which we shan't name. She has to catch a later flight this week. The rains will be here, although they say Thursday will have a break. The rains come in bands like waves upon the beach and I did jog and walk yesterday but then was well soaked in the evening drive. I have lost, last week, one of my better workers to the Chain Bus, he had to move on to Monroe Corrections Complex. That made me short, and sure enough one of my other better workers has two afternoons of group counseling to attend every week before the end of December, and yesterday they had the Veterans Banquet - yes, we have Veterans inside our fences that are in State issue serving time, we also have them in Corrections Officer uniform and admin - there are Veterans everywhere - just not as many as there were at the end of the draft in 1973. The Republic of Korea, Israel and Switzerland still have almost universal military service for various reasons.

I had attended for eighteen weeks Infantry OCS at Fort Benning, GA, in the Fall of 1967. Got pretty close with the rest of the platoon. Years later as a First Sergeant I was running the streets of Fort Bragg and saw one of my platoon mates, now a Major in Special Forces and we talked in his office. He had once been visiting a Federal Prison on some mission or other, and had run into one of our platoon mates in the administration of the institution and they talked and caught up, then the administrator, called on a telephone and they brought in a prisoner, who just happened to be one of our platoon mates. Strange, no guarantees of how well you will do, just because you had a chance it all comes back to what you choose to do and act.

Back to reality of today, I had best take out the garbage and get ready to run, have to make better choices, my wife told me no early retirement - I have to keep on keeping on... but the government wants my tax contributions, so I already know. Do remember to honor the service of our vets tomorrow - from this vet it is embarrassing to see free meals and such, but tears flow when the children who I hope never know war say thank you. Their future has always been what it was about, we don't want to dwell on our past.