"You thought he never took anything seriously until you saw his class rank"

My brother Don in Vietnam, '68.
He's the one that looks to be in charge. That looks like he is 16 years old.
One of his graduating classmates from West Point said:
"You thought he never took anything seriously until you saw his class rank"

His class rank was 2nd Academically I think.
Because he ranked so high, he could pick what branch he wanted to serve in and not just be assigned a slot.
I'm not real big on AI, but it did provide the following:

At West Point, branch selection works similarly to a sports draft, and it is directly tied to a cadet's performance:

• The Selection Order: Cadets are ranked from top to bottom based on their cumulative performance over four years (their General Order of Merit, which includes academics, physical fitness, and military leadership).
• The "Draft" Process: The cadet ranked #1 gets first pick of any branch in the Army. The cadet ranked #2 gets the next pick, and so on down the line. Each branch (such as Infantry, Armor, Aviation, or the Corps of Engineers) has a limited number of open slots.
• High-Demand Branches: The Corps of Engineers has historically been one of the most competitive and highly sought-after branches. Because it requires strong technical and academic skills, its limited slots usually fill up very quickly.

Because Don Lynn Renfro was at the top tier of his class, his high ranking gave him the leverage to secure a highly coveted slot in the Corps of Engineers before those positions were completely filled.

As a Corps of Engineers officer deployed during the height of the Vietnam War, his service aligned with critical military realities:

• Timeline of Deployment: The Class of 1964 graduated just months before the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in August 1964, which catalyzed massive U.S. military intervention. Consequently, nearly the entire class—especially those in engineering and combat branches—served multiple tours in Vietnam between 1965 and 1972.
• The Role of the Engineers: As an Engineer officer, LTC Renfro's responsibilities in-theater would have centered on combat engineering and infrastructure. This included clearing heavy jungle for landing zones, building fortified base camps, constructing tactical airfields, and keeping vital supply lines (like Highways 1 and 13) cleared of mines and open for troop movements.

Class of 1964 Impact: The Class of 1964 was one of the hardest-hit West Point classes of the era. The class lost 35 men in combat in Southeast Asia, and many others returned with severe injuries or earned high-level valor awards. LTC Renfro's leadership during these high-stakes, dangerous engineering campaigns formed the bedrock of his decorated career, which ultimately culminated in his promotion to Lieutenant Colonel.

My brother Don went on to build some of the military installations we hear about in the Middle East.
His last assignment was teaching and heading up the ROTC program at the School of Mines in Rapid City South Dakota.
Don told me one time he could "teach physics to a monkey"

Sadly, Don was taken by kidney cancer at the age of 55 a few years after retiring from service. The same cancer would claim his son Dave Renfro, my nephew, before his 50th birthday.
The same cancer that for some reason I have survived, minus one kidney.

Bullets I have dodged..

When I was a kid used to go hunting with my father out in east Texas. It was just outside my momma's family's town of Alto, just south of where HWY 294 intersects with the Neches river. I believe that section of land became a hunting club later on.
A few years later, when I was a teenager, I drove down there all the way from Fort Worth with a buddy to hunt mushrooms in his '63 Impala. Got back there on these old red dirt lumberjack roads, and was heading back to HWY 294 on one that ran right next to the Neches. The river was running high and red from heavy rains.
The further I got down that road, the muddier it got until I reached a point where I couldn’t hardly turn back, and it made no sense to keep going.
I would fishtail for a stretch, barely slip my way sideways up a hill by red lining the engine, and coast back down. I would look out the drivers window inches away from the 10 foot drop to the river. I made my buddy get out of the car. There was no need for us both to die, our bodies bobbing to the surface like the hand in Deliverace, in the middle of Corpus Christi Bay.
It was a miracle we made it out of there, and I discovered why there was more than one rusted out carcass of a car back there in the thickets stuck on an old lumberjack road.

Chris Christie

 

Careless People

“I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.
"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Consequences Part Two

I went to Walmart. New electric skillet, big soup pot, and cutting board. no groceries just some new gear for the kitchen None of them fit into a bag.
I presented my receipt to the gentleman at the door. He waved me through.
I said "No sir, you should check my receipt"
He said "No you're good"
I said "Yes, but I haven't always been. Please check my receipt."
"No need"
"Please. Please sir. It's part of my affirmation as being a responsible acceptable member of society.."
I asked him three times real nice and still he wouldn't do it.
It's getting hard to find good help these days. See previous post...

CONSEQUENCES

For forty weeks I cooked for a large group on Sunday mornings.
I would start getting ready on Thursday, planning the menu, getting groceries.

One week I went to the grocery store for some last minute items. When I got home I discovered I had forgotten milk for the biscuits and gravy.
So I went up to Albertsons to get milk.
As I entered the store I thought of a few more items I ought to go ahead a get now that I was here, so I grabbed a cart.

The first aisle I went down had the kitchen gadgets. I didnt really need any kitchen gadgets, but as I passed by the whisks I spotted one that might save me a trip to ACE Restaurant supply. I was planning to make Eggs Benedict the next week, and I needed a really flexible whisk for making the Hollandaise sauce. All my whisks at home were pretty stiff.
Hanging there from the rack was a fairly flexible whisk. It wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, but it would work, and like I said it would save me a trip to ACE.
but they wanted $12.00 for it.
Twelve dollars for this little whisk.
I spent a long moment deliberating this. I would be using the self check out. I could just “forget” to ring it up right?
As much as I had been spending at Albertsons feeding the group they practically owed it to me. In fact, when I walk in the door there ought to be balloons and confetti streaming down I’m such a good customer.
I put the whisk in the cart and the whole time I was doing my shopping I was deliberating whether to steal the whisk or not.
I’m happy to say that I DI D NOT steal the whisk. When I got up to the front I paid all $12.00 plus tax for this rip off of a whisk.

But here is the thing. Where the consequences come in.
When I got home guess what?
I forgot the milk!
I wasn’t going back up to Albertson so I went to the convenience store and paid $7.95 for a gallon of milk.
Consequences man. That’s what I get for even thinking about it.

WHY DO WE EVEN DO THE NATIONAL ANTHEM AT SPORTING EVENTS?

Originally posted in 2017
Here at Bulletholes, we think we know why. Sports bring out the best that one can hope to aspire to. The amount of dedication and desire it takes to excel and win, even to compete, can hardly be measured. It requires a high level of personal competence and accountability. For the student fans in the stands, its a metaphor for what they should try to acheive in the classroom. I never went to college, but I would imagine after the game over the weekend, whether won or lost, inspiration is drawn from the game and applied to their studies. Same with everyday folk. I went to a Rangers game a few weeks ago. I watched Gomez, an aging veteran, on his first at bat as a Ranger hit a 3 run homer. It made me proud to go to work the next day, and proud to live in a country that lends itself to such principles and aspirations.
Sports and competition is supposed to appeal to the best that is within us.

So we say the pledge in classrooms, and listen to the National Anthem at sporting events to remind ourselves that the principles of hard work and fair play of the event we are about to see also reflect what should be the principles of the country we live in.
In reality this is not always the case, and the history of sports reflects that as well, as in the cases of Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron, Mohammed Ali, the 1968 Olympics and more recently, Colin Kaepernick. For that reason, I don't see taking a knee during the Anthem as being traitorous or disrespectful. I think it is patriotic. If anyone truly wanted to disrespect the flag, they might give it the bird, or turn their back. There may be no finer gesture of respect than taking a knee. Its very brave to go against the social norms, and lend your voice, and your ass, to a group of people that wants to be heard."



It often takes guts and courage to protest, because protest means you're standing against something others believe in — or entrenched traditions, which can be extremely difficult to change. Almost universally, the athletes who have stood against what they see as injustice suffered social and economic consequences, not seeing the benefit personally that their efforts led to for others.

Lots of comments on the original post.

https://www.facebook.com/notes/4992109660799999 

SHUT UP ALREADY

Dear Mr Trump;
Please stop fucking with the economy. My retirement is coming up too soon for you to decimate my savings. I’ve poured a lot of money into it the last several years, and its been a real boon. I’m not as concerned about outliving my money as I once was. My retirement earnings were doing quite well until you started with all these dipshit tariffs and unnecessary wars.

I understand when the bottom fell out during COVID it wasn’t your fault. But it is exactly the kind of thing that happens to evil rulers; pestilence, invasions of frogs and locusts, and hail that catches fire when it hits the ground. No one had seen anything like it. That I can tell you.
I know none of this will make a whit to you. You've been raking it in hand over fist the last 20 months, and the price of ground beef and private parties on lush tropical islands is meaningless to you.

Colin Powell famously said of Iraq “You break it you buy it” and Mr Trump you broke the shit out of it. I know you think its all Biden’s and Obama’s fault, and the Ukraine blah blah blah, but no, it’s you. I believe things will get better in spite of you come November. I don’t think we can fix anytime soon the shit you’ve broken but we can stop you from breaking it more.
So just stop, and shut up already.
Thank you for your attention to this matter
Steve

A SMART PILL

I've been know to say "I can't prove to you marijuana is a gateway drug, but its not like taking a smart pill either"

Interesting article on marijuana legalization today from George Will.
"As the eminent scholar of drug policy Mark Kleiman once said: Society can choose to have the problems of drug legalization or those of prohibition. But given those troublesome plant-derived molecules, society cannot choose not to have problems."

So I followed the link about this "eminent scholar of drug policy" and found this, regarding Mr Kleinman:
"Kleiman’s opposition to drugs was not puritanical, and if you told him you enjoyed an occasional drink with dinner or every few months smoked weed at a party, he’d shrug. His opposition to intoxicants was in recognition of the fact that while the typical vice can be enjoyed safely by most users, a majority of the market demand is from a minority of addicts. For instance, three in four American adults drink, but most drinks are consumed by the one in eight American adults who drink to excess. Similarly, there are far more occasional and basically responsible users of illegal drugs than there are drug addicts, but it is the drug addicts who consume most drugs. Even if the typical user gains some benefit at minimal cost from occasional mild intoxication, most of the aggregate use is from people who meet the clinical definition of addiction disorder: They are unable to stop or cut back despite their drug use creating problems at home, school, or work."

Read that again...
"Even if the typical user gains some benefit at minimal cost from occasional mild intoxication, most of the aggregate use is from people who meet the clinical definition of addiction disorder: They are unable to stop or cut back despite their drug use creating problems at home, school, or work."

BOOKS THAT OUGHT TO BE BANNED

or THE LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
Once upon a time , I was a good little church boy. They gave me a book to read. It was about a kid up in New York, a bad kid, who joined a gang, got into street fights ( they called them "rumbles"), carried a switchblade knife, banged chicks, made zip guns out of car antennas, smoked pot and shot heroin.
He had been saved by the Lord and started a ministry and wrote a book of his own "Run, Nicki, Run!".
So they gave me this book to read in hopes that I would never do any of that stuff, and keep on sbeing a good little church kid. I liked it so well I also read Nicky's book.
But what it really did was the opposite. I'd never really thought about it before, but after reading these book I wanted to rumble. I wanted to carry a switchblade, make a zip gun; I wanted to bang chicks, smoke pot and steal a car. I hoped to keep away from the heroin.

Disclaimer... Sometimes when people read what I write , they think I am taking a position. But i'm not. I'm just telling a story.

Dr. Fauci, a modern day Prometheus

Prometheus was the Titan who defied the Olympian gods by taking fire from them and giving it to humanity in the form of technology, knowledge and, more generally, civilization.
He was punished for this action by being chained to a stone where an eagle would come daily and feast on his liver. His liver would grow back over night, then again with the eagle.

Looks like a lot of people have found a scapegoat in Dr Anthony Fauci.

He has been accused of funding dangerous gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China, that may have resulted in a lab leak, releasing SARS-CoV-2 into the world; promoting mitigation policies that infringed on civil liberties; profiting off his pandemic-era fame; and hiding the truth about what he knew about the virus’s origins and when.

I think under his guidance many lives were saved during the CIVID pandemic. I hate to imagine how COVID would have gone if RFK Jr were at the wheel.
In Ayn Rands novel “The Fountainhead” the hero Howard Roark is portrayed as a modern day Prometheus.

In the Western classical tradition, Prometheus became a figure who represented human striving, particularly the quest for scientific knowledge, and the risk of unintended consequences.
And now Senator Rand Paul, he wants to eat Fauci's liver.