Day 13: December 23, 2006.

Is it too late to ask Santa for a very special Christmas present?  I expect so.  Sure do wish it would happen though.

Skipped writing yesterday because I spent most of it cleaning out my now-empty house.  The place echoes now.  Echoes have always given me a sense of isolation. When you hear an echo it is usually when you are all alone. Most of the time for me, that has meant out in the wilderness where I have looked for and found a quiet and reflective solitude. Then the echoes are a signal that all is right in nature -- sound travels at 440 meters per second and bounces off of solid stuff like rocks! In my house the echoes are not so reassuring.  Instead they remind me that what I thought I was building here was not so solid. In fact, it could be shattered by one or two people with some agenda in mind that didn't include me.  Fair enough. I don't need to be the star at every game, but what a way to find out I'm not even a bench-warmer any more.  I'm not even allowed in the locker room!

I went to Nurnberg this afternoon with my son.  We both wanted to wrap ourselves in what we came here for -- a sense of tradition and an admiration for the resiliance of humanity over time.  How old is Nurnberg?  I don't recall. But when I sit inside those cathedrals, built more than 600 years ago, I get a sense of connection with the struggles, hopes, and fear of nameless and numberless others.  What was it like when the plague swept through? When the Crusaders rode out of the gates? When the beauty of the Renaissance began to break into the gloom of the Middle Ages? When bombs fell? And when the bombs stopped falling, but left a nation divided? In the journal of history my story, Never ending... though I like to say, seems so insignificant. Just another life swept away in the power of others.

Time allows change and where I might once have given up and accepted the labels the school and district administrators have lavished on me, I am not so inclined to do so now.  There was a wonderful personal piece in the Stars and Stripes today, written by a soldier who questioned the value of the memory of the individual.  His question echoed around those who die in the Iraq War and are quickly forgotten. The lives they touched go uncounted except for the few who attend the funeral and then go silently away to live with the pain of grief and loss.  The writer seemed a little disheartened at the glory of the military honors given to only a few, when all have served and sacrificed.

I mention his letter, which he wrote to thank a supporting organization whose actions lifted his spirits, because I am tempted in two directions here.  Sometimes I feel like no one else has the time and energy to care about what happens to me and that I will have to "just move on because life is not fair and there is nothing you can do about it." Man, those words are a bit hollow when it is you who have to feel the effects of them. And on the flip side I feel like there is a caring, thinking, core group who -- even though life is not fair -- will not allow those who abuse their positions to go unanswered. How do I reach those people? How do I make "we shall overcome" a theme song without over-reaching in a way that quickly becomes tiresome and selfish. As I ponder this I have to acknowledge the timing of the administration. The Christmas season is an easy time to forget the hardships of others and a hard time to find the resources to reach out beyond family and into the power-zone of people who readily demonstrate their willingness to get what they want by what ever means they believe is justified. Combine the timing of my firing with the focus of the season and the out-of-sight out-of-mind strategy in play and the chances are seriously skewed in their favor.  Back to bench-warming...? The loss is harder to take when you know your chance to play was stolen from you.  That sounds like whining, doesn't it?

Want to know what happened with my ID card? Well, as 2 p.m. approached -- the hour at which I had been ordered to turn in my ID card -- and I had no answer from Mr. Sennett about extending my time to retain the ID in order to get all the out-processing done, I emailed him again. What were my choices?  I keep the ID and he sends the MPs after me as he threatened to do previously? I turn in the ID and then how do I ship my car, access post to clear housing, and take care of the other zillion details... close my P.O. box, forward my mail (to where? Until a few days ago I hadn't yet figured out where I would go!).  But, I got no answer from The Man. Evidently he has shrugged off this decision and left it in the hands of the people in Virgina at DODEA HQ.  They seem to have taken off for the holidays.... that's becoming a familiar theme eh? So, I still have my ID.  Does that make me a federal fugitive now?  I guess if the MPs come a'knocking that will be my first clue. I certainly haven't been notified by anyone else about how this is all suppose to work. Lots of action -- no talk.  That's kind of backwards from the prevailing wisdom.

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and time for keeping close to home and loved ones. I hope everyone has a peacefull and very happy Christmas. I will be back at full-tilt trying to make Mr. Sennett's dream of a Storey-less Germany come true on Tuesday morning.  As always, thank you for continuing to give me your support -- all those hugs are starting to break through the blues!