Highlights: Safety Standown (Alchohol, Sexual Harrasment training), submitted flight bonus request ($18K), President’s Day 72, sorted through 8 months of mail, since the lappie isn’t working.
Everytime we get a long weekend, (72 hours / 3 day) the powers that be have to gather everyone around & remind us to be safe. It’s not obvious, but a sad statistical truth that we lose more Marines every year to traffic accidents, motorcycle wrecks, Marines hurting themselves in bars, on surf boards or skiing into trees, etc… than combat losses in war. It’s the train wreck you see coming, because it hits us every year. It’s avoidable, if you can get guys to be as safe when they play as they are when they work,,, but somehow that slow-motion statistic keeps ticking up every year.
If you’ve been around a squadron long enough, you’ve heard a lot of these safety briefs. This time, the squadron brought in a few pros. A recently retired Sgt Maj gave the alchohol brief. If he didn’t make a dent in your attention span, no-one can. Drinking & putting car keys in your hand = bad. Got it. Drugs will help you kill yourself or get you tossed out of the Marines. Got it.
He threw an interesting new statistic at me: medically speaking, the human brain isn’t fully developed until roughly 24 years of age! So most 18-21 year olds are making big decisions with half a brain! That works in recruiters favor around the high schools (= ha ha.
Aside from that, the other presenter worked on creative ways to put the message across that sexual harassment still happens, and comes out in subtle ways sometimes. It’s tough to make this subject enjoyable to sit through. I’ll leave it at that.
The squadron has a new female Sergeant Major. She’s tough & talks straight. She looks like she knows her business and is not the kind of Marine you want to piss off. She strikes me as a great Sgt Maj: someone you trust instantly, and you know cares about the success of the squadron and all the Marines in it. Not a default “mother”.
In Indonesia there are very few women in the military.
I went to a TNI military dinner last December in Jakarta. There were several 21-26 year old women wearing uniforms with junior enlisted rank insignia safety pinned on their sleeves. Our Indonesian Navy hosts were LtCols and Colonels, with just a few U.S. officers. In America, there are strict norms about fraternization,,, especially between officers & enlisted.
Here, two girls were assigned to each table to make light conversation, and when line dancing picked-up after dinner, no American was left un-dragged onto the dance floor. Two of the girls said they joined the Navy 2 weeks ago. In America, this whole scene is unthinkable. Fraternization for starters.
Conversely, it makes me even more proud that America employs women for their capabilities, not social graces; in our military they do real jobs, and are promoted on that criteria.
No disrespect intended for my Indonesian friends. We just have very different systems. The “norm” is not a universal standard everyone might recognize.
The CO signed my flight bonus paperwork, and our long weekend was immediately in progress.
At home I had 8 months of mail stacked-up in the form of two, 15 inch stacks. Lord knows how many trees fell before the junk-mail gods, only to inundate my mailbox with unwanted ads and promotions. It took at least 4 hours to get through this stuff. =/ whew.
Since my laptop isn’t working, for some reason- I had nothing else to do.
(insert pic of mail) [1]
Everytime we get a long weekend, (72 hours / 3 day) the powers that be have to gather everyone around & remind us to be safe. It’s not obvious, but a sad statistical truth that we lose more Marines every year to traffic accidents, motorcycle wrecks, Marines hurting themselves in bars, on surf boards or skiing into trees, etc… than combat losses in war. It’s the train wreck you see coming, because it hits us every year. It’s avoidable, if you can get guys to be as safe when they play as they are when they work,,, but somehow that slow-motion statistic keeps ticking up every year.
If you’ve been around a squadron long enough, you’ve heard a lot of these safety briefs. This time, the squadron brought in a few pros. A recently retired Sgt Maj gave the alchohol brief. If he didn’t make a dent in your attention span, no-one can. Drinking & putting car keys in your hand = bad. Got it. Drugs will help you kill yourself or get you tossed out of the Marines. Got it.
He threw an interesting new statistic at me: medically speaking, the human brain isn’t fully developed until roughly 24 years of age! So most 18-21 year olds are making big decisions with half a brain! That works in recruiters favor around the high schools (= ha ha.
Aside from that, the other presenter worked on creative ways to put the message across that sexual harassment still happens, and comes out in subtle ways sometimes. It’s tough to make this subject enjoyable to sit through. I’ll leave it at that.
The squadron has a new female Sergeant Major. She’s tough & talks straight. She looks like she knows her business and is not the kind of Marine you want to piss off. She strikes me as a great Sgt Maj: someone you trust instantly, and you know cares about the success of the squadron and all the Marines in it. Not a default “mother”.
In Indonesia there are very few women in the military.
I went to a TNI military dinner last December in Jakarta. There were several 21-26 year old women wearing uniforms with junior enlisted rank insignia safety pinned on their sleeves. Our Indonesian Navy hosts were LtCols and Colonels, with just a few U.S. officers. In America, there are strict norms about fraternization,,, especially between officers & enlisted.
Here, two girls were assigned to each table to make light conversation, and when line dancing picked-up after dinner, no American was left un-dragged onto the dance floor. Two of the girls said they joined the Navy 2 weeks ago. In America, this whole scene is unthinkable. Fraternization for starters.
Conversely, it makes me even more proud that America employs women for their capabilities, not social graces; in our military they do real jobs, and are promoted on that criteria.
No disrespect intended for my Indonesian friends. We just have very different systems. The “norm” is not a universal standard everyone might recognize.
The CO signed my flight bonus paperwork, and our long weekend was immediately in progress.
At home I had 8 months of mail stacked-up in the form of two, 15 inch stacks. Lord knows how many trees fell before the junk-mail gods, only to inundate my mailbox with unwanted ads and promotions. It took at least 4 hours to get through this stuff. =/ whew.
Since my laptop isn’t working, for some reason- I had nothing else to do.
(insert pic of mail) [1]
posted by jonathan adventures at 11:47 PM
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