In the GRIP of the TRIP

Big PLANS! Ten-day trip to Europe.

I'm visiting my Peace-Corps grandkids in Romania next week. We'll spend a few days at their place in Giroc, then on to Rome for the bulk of the visit. Then back to Romania for a day, and a flight home.

I've never traveled much before. And when we did travel before my wife's death, she did all the planning and made all the preparations. I've always been a home guy. Wherever Nancy was, that was home. We did a lot of traveling-around by automobile. And we flew to places like Jamaica and Hawaii for vacations. And we often attended educational conventions around the United States. But I never enjoyed the travel-part of such trips. I just liked doing the things we did when we got there.

I could get myself up for short trips and stays (in strange places) for Nancy's sake. But mostly, preparing for trips and doing the actual traveling felt disruptive to me. I only ventured forth to please Nancy. And being anywhere with her was always pleasing to me.

So! Even though I want to visit the kids, this past week has been unsettling for me. Six weeks ago we arranged all the flight-tickets and hotel accommodations in Rome. I say we, but actually the kids did most of that during one of our weekly Skype visits. They know that I am so reluctant about travel, and so UNtechy, that I probably would've been unable to manage the task myself.

They also know me well enough to realize that I can follow a clear itinerary, but they also doubt I can -- or am willing to -- plan one on my own. I always have this suspicion that expensive travel and everything related to it is something of a scam. Sounds old-guy stupid and grouchy, I know. I suppose that attitude goes clear back to my growing up as a poor kid. Early-on in elementary school, I loved reading National Geographic magazine. To this day, a nice juicy article or two on Rome and Romania would completely satisfy me. Except that then I wouldn't get to see the kids.

Skype is nice. Ahhhhh YES!

No rushing to make delayed connections,
no uncertainty about flight numbers and gates,
no canceled flights and discombobulation,
no searching for bathrooms or distant airport gates,
no idiotic stripping off of belts and shoes,
no submitting to wand body searches
when my artificial knee sets off alarms,
no desperate groping around to find my passport --
no problems to solve at all,
Thank you very much!

You're reading this, I know, and thinking: Geeez! What a boring old-guy!

I s'pose you're right!

But I say in my defense that once I agree to travel, I grit my teeth for a moment, then plunge in bravely. Mostly I put on my Oh-isn't-this-FUN-mask, and my face quickly grows to fit it. No one wants to be a stick-in-the-mud.

Still, the preparations are no fun at all. Marisa sent me this Ten-Step-Super-Easy-Travel-Preparation-List. All this past week I've been slogging courageously through the steps. For instance, I'm taking only a small carry-on duffel. It meets the recent size limitations: 24x14x8 inches. I've laid out Marisa's specified naked every-other-day clothing allotment, and everything just about fits in -- at least until the safety-guy tumbles through it at the airport.

One nice thing: Matt and I are about the same size. So I can buy clothing there and leave it for him, if need be.

I'm not taking any toilet articles. I'll buy that stuff in Romania. I speculate that on the way home, I will not be unduly troubled by talkative and otherwise engaging seat-mates. My plan is to read quietly while simultaneously stinking up several rows of seats on my return trip. Could be some enterprising flight attendant will smell me coming, forgo my assigned aisle seat, and place me beside an open window.

Actually, I'm thinking I'll buy new underwear and socks for the return trip, along with a small bottle of mouthwash. And maybe buy one on-board Scotch on the Rocks for a quick gargle.

SEE! This is the sort of thing I don't like about travel.

But all this is quite beside all the trouble I've had to face this week with dread preparations. Took me half a day and several long phone calls to establish that, indeed, my health insurance has an overseas travel arrangement -- in the unlikely event I may need health-care. And I had to find solutions for other problems, including making arrangements for my daughter to come in daily to visit poor deserted Gatsby-Kitty. Come to think of it, Gatsby's the lucky one. He'll laze around here at home all day enjoying familiar surroundings.

Some guy at Verizon took one look at my cell phone and decided I needed a new, much more expensive one to accommodate international calling. I managed to avoid that scam by finding a second clerk who went ahead and added the feature. Of course, I can't imagine who Marisa expects me to call while I'm in Europe anyway. I guess she thinks I may wander off and have to call her to come find me -- a likely prospect, no doubt.

With less difficulty I informed my bank I'd be in Europe using my ATM and charge cards, so they wouldn't put a stop on my requests for funds. And I had to hunt-up and buy a money-belt thingee just in case I have any money left to carry in it after the first few days in Rome. Thank goodness we prepaid our hotel accommodations there. Wouldn't surprise me, though, to find they'll have us sleeping on the roof.

I won't bother you further with my old-guy travel fears and woes. Enough to say I've spent the past week making travel arrangements and being pushed only slightly past the edge of sanity. And that's why I haven't posted.

Right this minute I'm wishing I could just stay home. But that's a good sign! Somehow I always have much more fun that I expect I will!

Now that I've posted all these complaints, I confess I started ten days early. I have more preparations to accomplish before I actually set forth late next week. Could be I'll post more pre-travel adventures over the next few days.

Soon as my sanity returns.

Be assured I'll issue a fun-filled travel report when I return -- IF I manage to find my way home.

Wish me luck and an early
Bon Voyage!

Is this the best they could do?

I'm not a trained critic of artistic endeavor. I'm not even an artist. All I know is what I like.

Having said that much: I'm seriously disappointed so far by the Hanks-Spielberg production The Pacific. This first week's offerings are pathetic. Forgive me, I'll keep this venting short.

First of all, the offerings are so fragmentary -- itty-bitty pieces, two-three minutes in length. As if that were not enough, the fragments are often over-lapping. That is, some statements are made over and over again in subsequent pieces.

That's bad enough, but large portions of this first presentation are reserved by the producers to tell about the production and its difficulties and supposed triumphs.

I find particularly laughable the assertions by the producers, directors, and actors about their so-called basic training experience. All of NINE DAYS. I can only imagine that Spielberg and Hanks and others who had a hand in structuring those paltry nine days never had a legitimate military basic training experience like so many of their viewers had.

Those of us who did experience legitimate military basic training remember well our disorienting first week: its ragged depersonalization phase by which we wound up losing much of our personal identities as individual civilians. This was followed by the first difficult eight weeks designed to orient us to an entirely different life-style -- as functional participants in a new sort of group. And while much of the training may well have been abusive, it had its purposes. The real fun began during the second eight-week period of so-called advanced infantry training: a program which taught us many functional things, including mastery of a wide variety of weaponry.

For those who qualified and were interested, other very specific training programs were offered after this initial SEVENTEEN WEEKS of BASIC TRAINING. I repeat: nine days of basic training? Laughable.

One nice thing about the Hanks-Spielberg foray into so-called basic training is that they provided the experience for their actors. At least these actors could then act as if they had been through something challenging. It seems to me that this so-called basic training was all a part of the hype -- as if to say: "Forgive us for this lousy production. We tried so hard!"

Some other things they did (or did NOT) do strained my credulity and made me angry -- or at least impatient and somewhat disgusted. One such thing was an error so basic I was astonished. After the series of two-minute introductions of known personages such as Sledge, Basilone, and Philips, the producers then used some of these aging heroes of Guadalcanal to introduce and comment upon filmed segments of specific happenings during the six-month battle. The problem was they didn't bother to re-introduce these speakers by name -- a simple printed name identification would have been sufficient to accord these speakers the recognition, legitimacy and honor they deserved.

A similar error, though much more serious, was their handling of the series of naval battles opposite Savo Island, in which the Japanese sank at least six of our destroyers in savage night-fighting encounters. The Australian cruiser HMAS Canberra, the American destroyers Quincy, Monssen, Barton, Laffey and two others were all sunk in what has been called since "Iron Bottom Bay" where our marines had been landed. These costly sea-battle losses are accorded perhaps ten seconds of film showing one unidentified vessel going down. Accompanying pictures of this unidentified sinking vessel, one of the unidentified speakers tells us that with this vessel the marines lost their provisions and ammunition. Such off-hand and cursory handling of so significant a set of events strikes me as irresponsible.

Again, almost throughout, the focus of this introductory segment of The Pacific is upon the hardships encountered and overcome by the actors, the film-crew, and staging units of the production. Never mind the hardships of the marine division which ultimately drove the Japanese from the island.

Perhaps I'm offended because I was six years old when our marines landed on Guadalcanal. My favorite cousin died there. He was my namesake: Robert Westphal, a seventeen-year-old senior who dropped out of high school and with his friends enlisted in the marines on December 8, 1941 -- the Monday morning after the costly Japanese sneak attack upon Pearl Harbor.

So perhaps the Battle for Guadalcanal has deeper implications for me than it may have for other viewers. Over my lifetime I've read scores -- literally scores -- of books about the European and
Pacific theaters of operations of what has been called The Second World War. It could be that Spielberg and Hanks had another audience in mind -- one less deeply involved in the terrors and losses of the war. One more casual and far less interested.

I understand that disinterest in part. After all, since various elements of the 1st Marine Division landed on Guadalcanal August 7, 1942, there has not been one day when somewhere in the world various armed forces have not been engaged in killing each other. This is not to say that American troops have been actively engaged in all these battles. Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that military battles continue every day some place in the world. We can scarcely expect this third generation to be deeply interested in the battle for Guadalcanal. No doubt this younger generation has battles and losses of their own.

But still, if the producers seriously wish to tell the story of Guadalcanal, they have a responsibility to do more than offer a silly menu of tiny fragments from which a mildly interested audience can select -- as their interests may dictate.



So what can I say? I suppose that after the wonderful job done by Spielberg and Hanks with Band of Brothers, after Saving Private Ryan, I expected something more thorough and gripping, something approximating the sacrifices made by our marines on Guadalcanal and our navy personnel close to the six month battle.

I'm disappointed by this first (of ten presentations) about the Second World War in the Pacific. What I see is a silly menu of two-three minute segments that might have been better served had they been artistically woven into a gripping representation of the events that unfolded in the Pacific Theater from Guadalcanal forward. Isn't that what high-caliber producers and directors are supposed to do? Tell the story! Don't expect a poorly informed audience to shove the pieces together as they might a jig-saw puzzle.

Simply put, the incredible sacrifices made by so many of my cousin's generation are not well-served by what I have seen so far. I would be surprised if critical review does not force the producers to pull the series out of circulation.

What I have seen so far runs the risk of trivializing the Pacific War. I don't want to see and hear about the supposed difficulties and heroism required of those engaged in this production. Instead, I prefer to learn something more about the Pacific war itself -- about the heroic sacrifices made by the men and women of that generation who actually sacrificed and served in the Pacific.

Please! Weave these fragments together.
Otherwise, don't waste my time.

Death and Disappointment

My brother died yesterday morning. He had a stroke early in the week and slipped away over a period of four days without fully regaining consciousness.

He died in Florida, where he and his wife, Sue, have spent their winters over the past few decades. He was nearly five years older than I -- an age gap that separated us in school and home life. In fact, it's not too much to say I hardly knew him. Yet there are many good things I do know about him.

I'd like to share some of those good things in this posting.

Dick was extremely bright, a quick learner of all things practical. But he didn't like school. He graduated from high school in 1948 and joined the marines. Ironically, his entry tests were so impressive that he wound up spending nearly all of his three-years in various service technical schools. He once told me that his best judgment was that attending school was interesting, and much less difficult than he thought Korea might have proven to be.

Evidence is, he was a good student and a good marine. He served his three years and made staff-sergeant. When he mustered out, he didn't make use of the GI Bill to attend college -- which was too bad, because he could have done well in any area he wished to study.

What he did was go into our father's successful building business in Chicagoland. During the fifties, Dick and Dad were busy and successful building large business buildings, schools, and school additions. It was during that period I worked with my Dad and Dick during two summers when I was not teaching.

Dick superintended jobs for Dad's firm. I learned that Dick knew and practiced all the crafts with consummate skill. He was a master carpenter and a fine electrician, a good pipe-fitter and mason. He could lay out and pour concrete with the best.

All those skills made him a really good job superintendent. I often worked with him on small, pick-up, finish tasks on jobs nearing completion. He was especially good at tying up the odds and ends of jobs. That is, sometimes sub-contractors' work did not exactly meet specifications. I mean sometimes the work did not "join" exactly. For instance, a block wall might drift an inch or two off plan -- perhaps the wall, the radiation and window plans, and the ceiling did not join precisely, for instance. Dick could knit all those "loose" pieces together so that things appeared exactly "on plan" and functioned soundly and safely.

Dick was by nature a "fixer." He was clever and creative, the sort of workman who proved invaluable on any job -- especially on a job where some other journeyman had not done things right. Dick could straighten-out any mess. . .make it look good and work well.

I learned much of what I know about design and building by working with him. And those skills served me nicely over the years Nancy and I spent renovating and upgrading our old home on the river. Even today I like to design and build things on our land -- barns and decks, raised beds and bridges are challenges I've enjoyed. Most men learn such things from their fathers. I acquired most of my skills with tools from my brother.

I consider those skills a rich gift Dick gave me.

Dick eventually started a small maintenance and building business in Lombard, Illinois. With a sort of studied simplicity, he incorporated the business as "Dick's Fix-it." That was more than just quaint language. What his wealthy, commuting, well-healed clientele soon learned was that if something in their large homes didn't work, Dick could fix it. He would do any job for his clients -- from replacing light-bulbs to on-the-spot appliance repair.

Dick also worked with his clientele to design and construct new kitchens and baths, or entire additions. He was an inveterate learner, too. He was the sort of person who could work two weeks with an air-conditioning contractor, for instance, and acquire the necessary skills to serve his growing clientele's heating, air-conditioning, and heating needs. He was just bright, a quick learner, an expert doer.

I use the word clientele specifically, because that's the sort of relationship Dick built over time with the people he served. They became his clients. His business always grew. You renovate a kitchen for someone who is pleased, and many of that client's friends begin to rely upon your expertise, as well.

That's why Dick's son, Zack, came to work with Dick. The work was there, and Zack had his father's easy-quick expertise with so-called mechanical things. So when Zack finished his bachelor's degree, he chose to join Dick in the business. They became a good team.

Another thing I admired about Dick was his marriage. His wife Sue would fight a tiger if it dared to attack Dick. And she'd win, too. Dick and Sue were best friends, a committed team. In that way, Dick and Sue were like Nancy and me. That committed relationship tells me many good things about my brother and his wife.

Believe me: I know well how much Sue and Zack will miss Dick.

I find myself wishing I had known my brother better. My life has been school and books. Dick's has been building and maintenance, hand-tools and practical service to his clients.

We lived apart and rarely saw each other. Over the years we lost touch. I'm sorry I didn't know him better.

In the end, he was the
brother I hardly knew,
but regarded with respect.

In Memoriam:
Richard Westphal Meadows
January 1, 1930 -- March 12, 2010

Notes on Personal Prejudice

I've been looking forward to Tom Hanks' treatment of the WWII in the Pacific.

What alternately shames and puzzles me, as I grow older, is that the Pacific war seems to trouble me more than the European war. How can brutalities be parsed? I'm certain that my emotional fixation on the Pacific War has to do with my early childhood impressions of the two theaters of WWII. I was so young. I turned ten years old during Thanksgiving week of 1945. And, of course, I knew so little about anything as an elementary-school-boy.

But I do remember the racial overtones of the War in the Pacific. The Japanese were dehumanized. They were the others, the inhuman and brutal -- those characterized by the fanatical banzai attack -- those others who fought to the death on god-forsaken landscapes in another world with which I felt no concrete connection. Perhaps it's also true that American involvement in Korea and Vietnam has reinforced my prejudices, hard as I may try to press those prejudices down beneath my level of consciousness.

I've read scores of books about that entire period. But it appears to me that I have read four books on the Pacific for every one I've read on what I long-ago came to characterize as the "German War."

And Yes! There's the rub. Though my name -- Meadows -- is Scotch-Irish, both my paternal and maternal grandparents' names are German -- Houk, Westphal, and Osterheld. In fact, though I was raised Methodist, my one-hundred year-old aunt recently told me my father was Jewish -- a supposed fact that should help me identify more strongly with the holocaust. But it doesn't, perhaps because the holocaust is too completely horrible to grasp by someone not immediately caught up in it.

Could be that my life has been so good and easy that I haven't learned to fear and hate. Or perhaps more accurately I have learned to suppress my fears and ignore my prejudices.

Could be that despite what I have learned through voluminous reading and study of WWII -- and despite my German heritage -- I remain what I have always been: a Methodist choir-boy who grew up to be a school teacher. I grew up playing high-school football with German and Italian Catholic kids who thought of themselves as I learned to think of myself: we were all just American kids.

Furthermore, I never fought in any wars. I was too young for WWII and Korea, pulled my draft-time before Vietnam, and was never recalled into the army during any period of unrest during and following the Vietnam war.

The battles I fought have all been on the big screen. I served in the Army as a water-safety instructor. I braved the ravages of sun-burn, sinusitis, ear infections, and athletes-foot. I won the Good Conduct Medal -- which just goes to show how little my officers paid attention to me.


Again, I'm anxious to see Hanks' production. What I'm hoping is that now, late in my life, I can come away with a keener sense of what that war meant, who those others really were, and what that might mean today.

I've studied all my life!
I've lived all my adult life
on college campuses.
How can I still be prejudiced?

(near) Death and Taxes

Sorry about the long silence. I have two good excuses.

Last Tuesday morning I woke up before light with flu symptoms. Really fun stuff. Persistent vomiting that went on most of four days. But it was more than that. It felt like I was exploding from the middle -- in both directions.

The few people close to me have been asking me ever since, howcum I didn't call the doctor, or drive to the emergency room. They've been full of easy solutions, of course. I didn't call the doctor because I didn't realize how sick I was -- or may have been, until it was too late. I didn't go to the emergency room because I was soon so sick I couldn't stand, and because I was too dizzy to drive.

Plus, by the time you're my age, you've been sick in these ways enough times you just take for granted the symptoms will eventually run their course, and you'll soon feel better. And anyway, I kept alternately vomiting and evacuating my bowels over a series of active sieges. I thought each was surely the final one, after which I chose to just lie on a pile of towels on the floor by the john. I'd fall asleep exhausted, then wake up after awhile feeling somewhat through. I completely lost track of time.

In fact, I apparently lost track of whole days.

Soon's I could stand up, I'd stagger into the bedroom and burrow under the covers. Each time I thought I'd outlasted the siege. But after what seemed pretty soon, I was back in the bathroom trying to decide which end to empty first. I may've slept intermittently, but I couldn't tell.

Throughout the ordeal I kept thinking: "This's gotta be the last time." But it wasn't. I've never been alone and sick before. It never occurred to me to call EMS.

Some time in the middle of the second day I thought my dizziness might be a symptom of dehydration. So I started drinking ice-cold water. That would go down and stay awhile. Then it came up. But it was so much better than dry-heaves that I continued drinking water. Could be that some stayed down and kept me from dehydrating.

It was some time during that second evening that I entered an astonishing stage of what I can only define as resounding flatulence. In fact, I'm certain I shattered some records in the areas of volume and sheer length. But I have no way of proving my stellar performance.

I must confess, I knew I was getting better because -- despite the soreness in my stomach muscles, back and shoulder joints, I had began to laugh. Forgive me, please: it's a male thing, I suppose.

I mean: I may have felt completely exhausted. My stomach muscles may have ached, felt torn from breast to pubic bone. I may have been bleary-eyed and bewildered by the intensity of the siege. But still: there is nothing quite so hilarious among boys as a fart that rolls out rich and round, long and blusterous.

Forgive me please a moment of boyish pride -- rare among septuagenarians. Most important, when the wind began to blow, I knew -- with a sense of real elation -- that the final phase of my stomach episode had finally arrived, and I had survived.

I fell asleep in bed. It was Friday noon when I woke up. I stayed in bed most of Saturday.


So much for (near) death. So what about taxes.


I spent most of Sunday and all of Monday gathering together figures for my scheduled meeting with my tax accountant. I seriously hate tax time. So, over the years I have developed a meticulous system by which I collect and record every single check I write that has implications for filing my taxes.

I develop an exhaustive file envelope for each category of deduction. Donations? Each check is stapled to its proper stub. Each check is rolled into the total figure. Each is listed according to category. Then I need only hand this carefully annotated sheet to my CPA who can then make the typewritten entries on the appropriate form.

Within an hour my CPA makes all designated entries. Finally, she hits a button, and joila! The figures roll out, and I know instantly how much money is coming back to me from the IRS and the State.

Nearly always there is some small figure owed me. I'm disappointed in my planning-budgeting process for the year if the figure coming back is too large. I see no point in granting either the state or federal government an interest-free loan.

Don't misunderstand me, please. I'm not a bit cranky about paying taxes. I love living as I have always lived in this country. Reasonable taxes make this good life possible. It's just that I'm not really patient enough -- nor skillful enough -- to do what my bright and able CPA does for me so faultlessly.

We're a good team. I have the same sort of relationship with my skilled financial adviser. Because I'm aware of my weaknesses in financial planning and accounting, I know I have to work harder. I know I have to help these two competent people help me.


I'm sorry I haven't posted for eight days. These have been my excuses.

Nothing sure but death and taxes.
It appears I've survived another year.
But those flu symptoms were a near thing!