CANDOER News | ||
Communicators AND Others Enjoying Retirement
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July 2011 | Summer Issue | Volume 11 - Number 2 |
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Welcome to the latest issue of the newsletter dedicated to the CANDOERs (Communicators AND Others Enjoying Retirement). This newsletter will be distributed quarterly. New issues will be posted on the Web for viewing on or about, January 15, April 15, July 15, and October 15. The CANDOER Web site and newsletter may be viewed by going to the following URL: www.candoer.org The success of this newsletter depends on you. I need contributors. Do you have an interesting article, a nostalgia item, a real life story, or a picture you would like to share with others? Do you have a snail-mail or an e-mail address of one of our former colleagues? If you do, send it to me at the following e-mail address: Please, NO handwritten submissions. This newsletter is available free on the Web to any and all who worked with or for members of DC, OC, IRM, IM, or LM. This publication is available on the Web only. None of the material in this newsletter has a copyright, unless otherwise noted. If you wish to print the newsletter and make copies to distribute to others, please feel free to do so. The CANDOER News will be available in three formats: the first format will be as a web page; the second format will be as a PDF file; the third as a Microsoft Word document. The PDF file (Adobe Acrobat) and Microsoft Word document will allow you to print the newsletter. If you are unable to read the PDF formatted newsletter, you can go to www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html and download the FREE reader. When installed on your computer, it will allow the automatic opening of the PDF file. Some primal termite knocked on wood And tasted it, and found it good, And that is why your Cousin May Fell through the parlor floor today. Erick Morin has added the CANDOERs to Facebook. If you would like to join the group the URL is: www.facebook.com/pages/Candoer/175231445841913 Summer has finally arrived. I thought it never would. We had a bad spring here in Southern Maryland. It was the middle of May before we started seeing warm weather and then it seemed to rain every day. This weather really cut into my fishing. By the first of July last year I had been fishing 65 times. This year I have only been out 43 times. The fishing has been great. I just cannot get out on the water often enough to suit me. This issue continues with the articles sent to me by John Lemandri. Millie Mary Bruce (@millie_bruce on Twitter.com) was born in Banffshire, Scotland on August 2, 1944. She had an undergraduate degree in Meds at the University of Glasgow in 1962. She has done nourishment therapy and she educated adult nutrition in Adult Day Care Clinics. She previously worked for scientific journalists and reviewers that produced articles for the New England Journal of Medicine. She is now retired and from 2005 to the present she has been a guest copy writer for health-related web sites and blog sites. With the death of Secretary of State Eagleburger Tim Lawson suggested I include CANDOERs remembrances of him. The remembrances are included in this issue. This issue also includes several of my favorite lymrics by Ogden Nash. PLEASE, I need more articles. This creature fills its mouth with venom And walks upon its duodenum. He who attempts to tease the cobra Is soon a sadder he, and sobra. Tim Lawson I still remember Secretary Eagleburger's final day in office. It was in January 1993. Because Eagleburger was an almost constant smoker and no one was brave enough to ask him to stop the State Department was almost the very last federal agency to mandate a "no-smoking" policy. It would have to wait until Eagleburger was gone. Assigned as Special Assistant to the DAS (for IRM) and a smoker myself at that time (with the help of my Thai bride I managed to quit about six years ago), I joined a group of probably forty or so smokers from throughout the Building who came to the cafeteria late that last afternoon. We ordered coffee, sat and smoked, determined to see out this final afternoon of evil pleasure. At around 1630 or so, Eagleburger, trailed by two or three assistants and two DS bodyguards, came walking through the cafeteria with, as usual, cigarette in hand. Before exiting, he stopped, turned around and looked at us. The Secretary then proceeded to take a long deep drag from his cigarette before turning and leaving. Us hardy bunch of cafeteria smokers had just been witness to the 62nd Secretary of State departure from official duty status. In what seemed like only a second or two later, four local security guards walked in at both side entrances to the cafeteria and announced that all smokers were hereby instructed to extinguish cigarettes and that with immediate effect "smoking was no longer authorized in any spaces of the U.S. State Department." The "smoking lamp" at Foggy Bottom was out forever. At that moment there was a kind of muddled, yet audible collective moan from the group as we stood up and headed outside to the Department internal courtyard (which was extremely cold that late January afternoon) and promptly lit back up again. There we were, all smoking and shivering, and in silent reverence, wishing the now former Secretary of State all the best. I first met Larry Eagleburger when he was assigned to the US Mission NATO in Brussels as the Political Advisor to Ambassador Harlan Cleveland in about 1968. He was a fine gentleman and easy person with which to work. In all the time I worked at State I never met Eagleburger at main State. I did run across him when I went on a TDY trip to Beijing in November/December of 1975. I was there to support President Ford and Kissinger when we formally recognized the Peoples Republic of China. Joe Acquavella was CPO. Joe assigned me to work the Midnight Shift. About 2 in the morning I was processing traffic from the Department when I hear a knock on the window. I went out and open the window and there stood Eagleburger. He has several pages of a hand written speech that Kissinger was to give when he and the President arrive at the airport later that day. He says to me, "I need this typed up in a large font and double spaced." I explained to him that the only typing device I had available was a teletype Model 28 and it only had one font. He said NO you have to type it in a larger font. Again I explained to him I had no typewriter, but down the hall in the first office to his right, along side the Ambassador's office (George H. W. Bush), are two secretaries whose sole purpose was to type anything the party needed before/during the President/Secretary's visit. He got irate and demanded I type up the speech. I shut the window in his face and after several minutes he quit pounding on the window. That morning, as I was getting off shift Joe, told me Bush wanted to see me. Bush said Eagleburger demanded my name and that I be reprimanded. He asked me for my side of the incident. I explained to him what had happened and he said he would take care of it. I never hear another word about it. One story about Lawrence Eagleburger that I can relate too is when he and I were in the TACSAT room that was set up during the Granada invasion. John Kennedy and Sid Reeves were the only two State Department Communications people on the ground. Mr. Eagleburger was trying to find out what was happening and was jabbering away at them. He'd carried an ashtray into the small room, setting it down by a NO SMOKING sign. He then began chain smoking. At one point he had two cigarettes going in the ashtray and another in his hand. He looked over at me and said "Bob is one of those yours?" pointing to the ashtray. I said "No Sir". He said good, I thought I was about to run out of cigarettes. In 1982 I volunteered to work week-ends in support of the Lebanon task force during the Habib Mission from June to September. Larry Eagleburger was serving as the Under Secretary for Political Affairs at the time. We had a satellite link established to support the mission in Lebanon. On several occasions I would need to take messages directly to Eagleburger, and since it was on the weekend he would be dressed very casually, and I often found him in his office sitting on an exercise bicycle, churning away, while reading official material that was on a reading platform between the handle bars. He was always charming, friendly and polite when he would add my material to the handle bar stack. I was very impressed with the man and the importance of his position. Behold the hippopotamus! We laugh at how he looks to us, And yet in moments dank and grim, I wonder how we look to him. Peace, peace, thou hippopotamus! We really look all right to us, As you no doubt delight the eye Of other hippopotami. By Millie Mary Bruce For both males and females of all ages cardiovascular disease is considered the number one killer. It kills more people than ALL kinds of cancer grouped together. If you're black or over sixty-five, your chance of heart disease is bigger. However, it's an equal opportunity destroyer. Tell me, O Octopus, I begs Is those things arms, or is they legs? I marvel at thee, Octopus; If I were thou, I'd call me Us. by John Lemandri The American Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa, had a decent size cafeteria where many of its employees would eat their meals or have a cup of coffee. During my first week I noticed a lone figure sitting at a table, excluded from conversation with the others. As I stared in his direction, one of the employees at our table remarked that the lone figure was the Regional Psychiatrist. We all had jobs that required a top secret clearance at minimum, and no one wanted to associate with the shrink, else the State Department pull your clearance or at the very least promote you into one of those other jobs which required yet another degree of psychiatric evaluation. The ostrich roams the great Sahara. Its mouth is wide, its neck is narra. It has such long and lofty legs, I'm glad it sits to lay its eggs. Teletype Operators Needed for State This was the headline of a 1963 newspaper article in a local newspaper in Columbus, Ohio that Phil Tinney saw. He sent a postcard and the rest was history.) WASHINGTON - The U. S. Department of State in Washington, D.C. is seeking experienced cryptographers or teletype operators. The State Department, as the federal agency responsible for advising the President on foreign policy matters, conducts essential day-to-day relations with foreign governments. The State Department welcomes inquiries from all persons interested in careers as cryptographers and teletype operators. Applications forms may be obtained by addressing a post card or letter to: Recruitment Branch, Department of State, Washington, D.C. 20520. Belinda lived in a little white house, With a little black kitten and a little gray mouse, And a little yellow dog and a little red wagon, And a realio, trulio, little pet dragon. Now the name of the little black kitten was Ink, And the little gray mouse, she called hum Blink, And the little yellow dog was sharp as Mustard, But the dragon was a coward, and she called him Custard. Custard the dragon had big sharp teeth, And spikes on top of him and scales underneath, Mouth like a fireplace, chimney for a nose, And realio, trulio daggers on his toes. Belinda was as brave as a barrel full of bears, And Ink and Blink chased lions down the stairs, Mustard was as brave as a tiger in a rage, But Custard cried for a nice safe cage. Belinda tickled him, she tickled him unmerciful, Ink, Blink and Mustard, they rudely called him Percival, They all sat laughing in the little red wagon At the realio, trulio, cowardly dragon. Belinda giggled till she shook the house, and Blink said Weeck! which is giggling for a mouse, Ink and Mustard rudely asked his age, When Custard cried for a nice safe cage. Suddenly, suddenly they heard a nasty sound, And Mustard growled, and they all looked around. Meowch! cried Ink, and Ooh! cried Belinda, For there was a pirate, climbing in the winda. Pistol in his left hand, pistol in his right, And he held in his teeth a cutlass bright, His beard was black, one leg was wood; It was clear that the pirate meant no good. Belinda paled, and she cried Help! Help! But Mustard fled with a terrified yelp, Ink trickled down to the bottom of the household, And little mouse Blink strategically mouseholed. But up jumped Custard snorting like an engine, Clashed his tail like irons in a dungeon, With a clatter and a clank and a jangling squirm, He went at the pirate like a robin at a worm. The pirate gaped at Belinda's dragon, And gulped some grog from his pocket flagon, He fired two bullets, but they didn't hit, And Custard gobbled him, every bit. Belinda embraced him, Mustard licked him, No one mourned for his pirate victim. Ink and Blink in glee did gyrate Around the dragon that ate the pirate. But presently up spoke little dog Mustard, I'd been twice as brave if I hadn't been flustered. And up spoke Ink and up spoke Blink, We'd have been three times as brave, we think, And Custard said, I quite agree That everybody is braver than me. Belinda still lives in her little white house, With her little black kitten and her little gray mouse, | And her little yellow dog and her little red wagon, And her realio, trulio little pet dragon. Belinda is as brave as a barrel full of bears, And Ink and Blink chase lions down the stairs, Mustard is as brave as a tiger in a rage, But Custard keeps crying for a nice safe cage.
Take care and be safe! |