Tuesday Pre-Wrap: Mukasey, Movie, Letters from the Past

-Mukasey voted out of committee, 11-8. Goes to full Senate now. Suggest the People demand that he be put on a very short leash with plenty of oversight. I also want him to be successful in making the DoJ a respected and legal arm of our government again.

-Netflix movie: Hero, a Flying Daggers type movie, Chinese though in English which Diane and I both appreciated.. Fun, interesting, colorful, nifty dancing and leaping and flying. Like a dream.

More later. Watching pbs and Frontline - a program on rendition...

Ok, back after a short break to hear about those illegal renditions that the CIA performed.

-Letters from the past, that would be my letters to Diane as I sailed around the Far East with Diane back in Yokosuka tending the home fires and, by the time we left in mid 1965, two youngsters as well. After posting about Goodbye, Darkness this morning, I continued to think about my own Navy days. Got to the point where I asked Diane if those letters that we saved all these years and carted around with us from pillar to post had much detail about where the Washtenaw County was during those days we were away from Yokosuka. She remember that there was not a whole lot as we were careful about revealing information that the enemy (whoever that was) might be able to use, you know, loose-lips-sinks-ships kind of stuff. This was more dire in 1964 and 1965 as the problems down south (Vietnam) became more acute.

In any case, Diane did retrieve the letters for me. They had been sorted and bundled by year so it was easy for me to go immediately to times that interested me, like the spring of 1965 when we did a lot of steaming between the Philippines and Vietnam waiting for Washington to make a decision. Found some references to just that and other stuff as well. Like a scheduled R and R in Hong Kong; like taking a load of 357 Marines from Fugi to Naha in February; like going from Subic Bay (Philippines) back to Buckner Bay (Okinawa) in March; like asking Diane if she made it to Kobe for what we thought was going to be a mini vacation for all of us but was then cancelled, that being in February as well; like being at our objective (probably Chulai, Vietnam) in May. Cool beans. There was also comments made on what was going on on the ship, people relationships, shore leaves, even hitting golf balls while docked or anchored down in Subic Bay with a fellow officer before heading to the pool for swimming, sunning and drinking. More cool beans.

But, as many of you know, a little bit of me goes a long way. And I quickly tired of the perusing and went on to other things, like watching the Nova program on sputnik and eating popcorn with Diane. Will go back though and do a little more peeking in on the past.