“I--I hardly know, sir, just at present-- at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning,
but I think I must have been changed several times since then.” ― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
but I think I must have been changed several times since then.” ― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
EMBRACING ENIGMASThis page is an organizational dumping ground, as I pull on some of these threads...
Below is no more than random topics being roughly assembled as I attempt to get these bits organized into some sort of chronological, relational or simply rational flow. So if I accidentally leave this page turned on while in site development, let this serve as my disclaimer - It'a a work in progress. |
Grab links and logos for >The Adoption OptionAt Risk Youth |
Born into an above Top Secret, Q-Cleared Military family living in a civilian world.
For the uninitiated, define that Q-Cleared is not only above Top Secret it is specifically nuclear weapons and atomic energy. He andby extension, since we lived off-base, the family were Q-Cleared in 1949, 7 years before I was born. From a toddler, when my big brother was asked, or my mother pressed too hard, the answer usually went something like, "He's a Navy officer working on projects above Top Secret. His clearances extend to our entire family, so we can't talk about what he does." But in reality, we didn't really know. I eventually figured out it had to do with cyphers, codes and signals, protracted duty usually in the Pacific, other than that, it didn't matter, since he did not talk about.
Living in a Civilian World
I came to learn that on a military base, other kids may be in your situation, and the 'cleared' families coagulated as if bonded by the silence. In the civilian world, it translates very differently. It did not help my had was tall, commanding in presence and used to ships full of men saluting him, he often looked like a 'spook', as they were called in the Cold War. If someone found out his specialty as Cryptography,communications, etc, the information just enhanced that image. While I at times came off as more than evasive, the reality was, I was often in my head editing what was about to come out of my mouth. School friends, teachers, counselors, brother, nobody got the full truth. It was assumed that any information, personal or otherwise, certainly family matters, were to be shared on a 'need to know basis" only. I think my brother was the one in the end that suffered the worst of that. Mine was keeping their secrets anther 15 years following their deaths. I did not reveal them to my brother until the filing of the RECA claim required him to be informed. I guess The Chief taught me well.
Living in a Civilian World
I came to learn that on a military base, other kids may be in your situation, and the 'cleared' families coagulated as if bonded by the silence. In the civilian world, it translates very differently. It did not help my had was tall, commanding in presence and used to ships full of men saluting him, he often looked like a 'spook', as they were called in the Cold War. If someone found out his specialty as Cryptography,communications, etc, the information just enhanced that image. While I at times came off as more than evasive, the reality was, I was often in my head editing what was about to come out of my mouth. School friends, teachers, counselors, brother, nobody got the full truth. It was assumed that any information, personal or otherwise, certainly family matters, were to be shared on a 'need to know basis" only. I think my brother was the one in the end that suffered the worst of that. Mine was keeping their secrets anther 15 years following their deaths. I did not reveal them to my brother until the filing of the RECA claim required him to be informed. I guess The Chief taught me well.
Military Bases and Officers Clubs
S.F. Bay Area frequented Bases = Treasure Island-Yuerba Buena/SF Bay was his last assigned active duty as well as reserve duty base.
The military keep him in proixmity to "USS Estes" until she was fully decommissioned. Her movements and that of his, based on the military's need of him took us most often to (in order of frequency): Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard, S.F., Mare Island Naval Complex, Vallejo: Port Chicago Naval Weapons Station (Military Ocean Terminal Concord)
Housing blooms at last at once-toxic Hunters Point shipyard site
the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard this spring and summer is providing an extra glow for San Francisco officials, who have been battling the Geiger counter for decades to get the homes built. The 420-acre shipyard was one of the nation’s most polluted sites, the center of a federal nuclear program in 1946 that included a secret laboratory where tests were conducted to determine the effects of radiation on living organisms. Military equipment and ships contaminated by atomic bomb explosions were kept at Hunters Point, and the grounds were also polluted with petroleum fuels, pesticides, heavy metals, PCBs, organic compounds and asbestos from the grading of serpentine rock in the hills. It all comes, however, against a background of protest from environmentalists and residents of the adjacent Bayview neighborhood, some of whom believe they were poisoned by toxic and radioactive dust particles. The issue gained traction in 2004 when radiological testing identified 91 sites at Hunters Point where there was potential radiological contamination, mostly around buildings associated with the notorious Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory.
The dry dock and shipyard at Hunters Point was owned by Bethlehem Steel Co. when the Navy bought it in 1941, 11 days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. It eventually grew to 866 acres — 446 of which are underwater.
Secret testing lab
The secret Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory, established in 1946, operated nearly three dozen sites at the shipyard and was used by scientists to study ionizing radiation and test biological and chemical weapons, including experiments on animals, according to records. Hunters Point was used by the Navy to decontaminate about 60 ships used as targets in atom bomb tests in 1946 and 1947. One of those ships, the Independence, was severely damaged in two explosions at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands and was still radioactive when it was brought to the shipyard seven months later. .
The ship was used as a nuclear waste dump and test lab for decontamination studies until 1951, when the Navy weighed it down with 55-gallon drums of possibly radioactive material and sunk it off the Farallon Islands. The wreck was found in March by researchers 2,600 feet deep in the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary.
“They would train sailors in going through the ship, simulating going through their own ship after a radioactive attack to detect radiation or to practice cleaning it,” said James Delgado, director of the Maritime Heritage Program for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and leader of the expedition that found the wreck. “It was all part of the Navy learning how to deal with the bomb. The ships in San Francisco were battered, and there was some radiation. Eventually the Navy felt they had learned what they could from them and didn’t want the Russians to get access to them, so they sunk them.”
From 1955 to 1969, the military consolidated the nuclear lab near Crisp Road into the multistory, windowless Building 815, which is now part of the cleanup operation. The Navy, at the behest of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and concerned neighbors, was forced to bring to the surface its secret atomic past. Radionuclides, such as Radium-226, Cesium-137 and Strontium-90, were subsequently detected in low concentrations in several areas, including inside storm drains at the shipyard.
There were allegations that the dust from grading was causing cancer and other health problems in the Bayview neighborhood. The Navy identified hot spots and began the long process of cleaning up the former laboratories, buildings and other locations where there was testing or disposal of radiological material, including a former heap of molten metal and a 46-acre landfill. Old radium dials and other material buried in bay mud had to be removed. 4,000 dump trucks full of soil contaminated by radiation have been removed. That’s in addition to the 20,000 dump trucks of soil contaminated by chemicals and 28 miles of sewer and storm drain pipelines that were removed, according to the Navy. About 5 percent of the 300,000 cubic yards of tested soil is contaminated by radioactive material, officials said.
Three parcels have been cleaned up completely, and two more are expected to be clean by 2016, according to the Navy. Still, the cleanup and removal of contaminated piping, groundwater, bay sediment and soil is expected to continue until 2021, when the Navy hopes to turn over the last parcels to the city. What can’t be removed will have to be covered up and capped before it can be opened to the public, according to the cleanup plan.
2 men in pic are = Hunter's Point, Looking out from Building 253 in 1961 by Telstar Logistics
On the other hand
It always felt like we were special somehow. On base, Military gates opened and everyone saluted The Chief and snapped to in his presence. In officers clubs the room would welcome his and as a Master Chief Petty Officer, even Commissioned Officers showed him due respect. I remember sing the E.F. Hutton commercial series for the first time, "When E.F. Hutton talks, everybody listens." He was often a quiet man that drank in the room and socialized, but when it was a conversation of importance, when he spoke, the room went quiet and all ears were his, whether they were trying to show it or not.
Off base it was quite similar, as he was known in most places I accompanied him, and he was a Military man's man with many rich Naval stories that could be told.
The military keep him in proixmity to "USS Estes" until she was fully decommissioned. Her movements and that of his, based on the military's need of him took us most often to (in order of frequency): Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard, S.F., Mare Island Naval Complex, Vallejo: Port Chicago Naval Weapons Station (Military Ocean Terminal Concord)
Housing blooms at last at once-toxic Hunters Point shipyard site
the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard this spring and summer is providing an extra glow for San Francisco officials, who have been battling the Geiger counter for decades to get the homes built. The 420-acre shipyard was one of the nation’s most polluted sites, the center of a federal nuclear program in 1946 that included a secret laboratory where tests were conducted to determine the effects of radiation on living organisms. Military equipment and ships contaminated by atomic bomb explosions were kept at Hunters Point, and the grounds were also polluted with petroleum fuels, pesticides, heavy metals, PCBs, organic compounds and asbestos from the grading of serpentine rock in the hills. It all comes, however, against a background of protest from environmentalists and residents of the adjacent Bayview neighborhood, some of whom believe they were poisoned by toxic and radioactive dust particles. The issue gained traction in 2004 when radiological testing identified 91 sites at Hunters Point where there was potential radiological contamination, mostly around buildings associated with the notorious Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory.
The dry dock and shipyard at Hunters Point was owned by Bethlehem Steel Co. when the Navy bought it in 1941, 11 days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. It eventually grew to 866 acres — 446 of which are underwater.
Secret testing lab
The secret Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory, established in 1946, operated nearly three dozen sites at the shipyard and was used by scientists to study ionizing radiation and test biological and chemical weapons, including experiments on animals, according to records. Hunters Point was used by the Navy to decontaminate about 60 ships used as targets in atom bomb tests in 1946 and 1947. One of those ships, the Independence, was severely damaged in two explosions at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands and was still radioactive when it was brought to the shipyard seven months later. .
The ship was used as a nuclear waste dump and test lab for decontamination studies until 1951, when the Navy weighed it down with 55-gallon drums of possibly radioactive material and sunk it off the Farallon Islands. The wreck was found in March by researchers 2,600 feet deep in the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary.
“They would train sailors in going through the ship, simulating going through their own ship after a radioactive attack to detect radiation or to practice cleaning it,” said James Delgado, director of the Maritime Heritage Program for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and leader of the expedition that found the wreck. “It was all part of the Navy learning how to deal with the bomb. The ships in San Francisco were battered, and there was some radiation. Eventually the Navy felt they had learned what they could from them and didn’t want the Russians to get access to them, so they sunk them.”
From 1955 to 1969, the military consolidated the nuclear lab near Crisp Road into the multistory, windowless Building 815, which is now part of the cleanup operation. The Navy, at the behest of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and concerned neighbors, was forced to bring to the surface its secret atomic past. Radionuclides, such as Radium-226, Cesium-137 and Strontium-90, were subsequently detected in low concentrations in several areas, including inside storm drains at the shipyard.
There were allegations that the dust from grading was causing cancer and other health problems in the Bayview neighborhood. The Navy identified hot spots and began the long process of cleaning up the former laboratories, buildings and other locations where there was testing or disposal of radiological material, including a former heap of molten metal and a 46-acre landfill. Old radium dials and other material buried in bay mud had to be removed. 4,000 dump trucks full of soil contaminated by radiation have been removed. That’s in addition to the 20,000 dump trucks of soil contaminated by chemicals and 28 miles of sewer and storm drain pipelines that were removed, according to the Navy. About 5 percent of the 300,000 cubic yards of tested soil is contaminated by radioactive material, officials said.
Three parcels have been cleaned up completely, and two more are expected to be clean by 2016, according to the Navy. Still, the cleanup and removal of contaminated piping, groundwater, bay sediment and soil is expected to continue until 2021, when the Navy hopes to turn over the last parcels to the city. What can’t be removed will have to be covered up and capped before it can be opened to the public, according to the cleanup plan.
2 men in pic are = Hunter's Point, Looking out from Building 253 in 1961 by Telstar Logistics
On the other hand
It always felt like we were special somehow. On base, Military gates opened and everyone saluted The Chief and snapped to in his presence. In officers clubs the room would welcome his and as a Master Chief Petty Officer, even Commissioned Officers showed him due respect. I remember sing the E.F. Hutton commercial series for the first time, "When E.F. Hutton talks, everybody listens." He was often a quiet man that drank in the room and socialized, but when it was a conversation of importance, when he spoke, the room went quiet and all ears were his, whether they were trying to show it or not.
Off base it was quite similar, as he was known in most places I accompanied him, and he was a Military man's man with many rich Naval stories that could be told.
Bars, backrooms, showgirls and show tunes
Clubs, Mexico, Reno & Vegas Strips, Primadonna, Barkers, Off-Broadway SF, gay prides, Polk Street, HAight-Ashbury, Finochio's and the Mitchel Brothers theaters.
Self-censoring24/7 since birth,
Generally accepted at all times everyone was on a need to know basis, inside the house and out - on base or off. Editing ones-self became essential within the family following his diagnosis. Did not help family image in that what he did could not be discussed, people avoided getting too close.
Early exposure to marital sexual physical and psychological challenges due to genital impacts from the radiation exposures.
Troughs of radiated water ran under the latrines on the ships, and his was the first genital amputation known in the world at the time, they believe not only as a result of his repeated exposures, but that this may have been a direct impact to this particular expression of cancer - one of many more to come. As a result, and due to a personal knee injury, I began spending a lot of time assisting the amputees returning from Vietnam for treatment at Oak Knoll Naval Hospital. The most serious amputees returned there and the quality of skilled surgeons and doctors was impressive. I would wheel them down stairs and out onto the grounds for sunlight, fresh air and conversation. But, after spending the time with these brave men, I knew the Chief was in the best hands possible to deal with this. The endless days weeks, months, years and ultimately decades of swinging between health crisis and hope, all were spent in the endless hallways of Oak Knoll, with the best resources the San Francisco Bay Area being called on to observe, assist or evaluate. That is where my story differs than most. I became convinced, if there were ever surgeons on the planet who could take this on the first ever radiogenicly induced cancer so extreme as to require not just a resctioning of his penis, but a full penilectomy with entire rerouting of his urinary track. It was unimaginable the mental anguish and dibilitating physical and psychooligical impacts. EVeryone thought I was growing up too fast at 10 from all the exposure living their lives brought into mine, but dealing with this level of adult physical and psyco-sexual issues with life or death consequesnces was all just part of my reality. At 15, I began growing up even faster.
Lawrence Livermore Labs
Physicists - Fractals - Metaphysics
Near-Death Experience pre-hysterctomy
3 exploratory surgeries leading up to Full Hysterectomy...
Copper pyramids prove their power...
Plus the plants growing towards the pyramid, not the sunlight streaming in the floor-to-ceiling windows in the Walnut Creek top floor condo with cathedral ceilings. Note > Best short explination >
Common-Law Wife at 16
Explain how The Cheif managed to handle this one...
Death with Dignity/Right-to-Die Advocate
Free Jack Kavorkian story.
Aura documentation of clearing a life crisis
Grab the 5 photos & Story
Adoption >
Providing safe harbor for at-risk gay teen - Single and 35 was not even a consideration. More like me than any child I might have given birth to.
When they call you Mom... you keep them. - Momism's at El Monsour, S.F. - Lance article for Fine Art Magazine
When they call you Mom... you keep them. - Momism's at El Monsour, S.F. - Lance article for Fine Art Magazine
Social Observations
Through the Looking Glass -
Smithsonian takes 2 paintings from "Holes in the Sky" series.
Permanent collection of National Air & Space Museum - 2007 (ck date)
