Oh My God....The New "COSMOS!"

My Letter To Senator Carl Levin

   I am posting this e-mail I sent to Senator Carl Levin because I am angry about his recent action in the Senate to disarm a bill concerning sexual assaults in the U.S. military. Sexual assaults are quite common in our armed forces. I know something about this. They are also rarely prosecuted. The military strives hard to keep a squeaky-clean image. Legal issues are traditionally handled in-house and are therefore pretty darn easy to hide from the public. Other Senators (namely Kirsten Gillibrand) have recently proposed to have military sexual assault cases handled by a source independent of the military chain of command. This was a great idea, squashed this week by Senator Levin who moved to add an "extra review step" within the chain of command. (Watch the documentary "The Invisible War" by Kirby Dick for more insight on how sexual assaults in the military are generally handled.) 
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Senator Levin,

   I am just disgusted with your movement to add an extra "in-house" review step in the prosecution of military sexual assault cases instead of allowing an independent source to handle them. I've read your statements on your website, and I just read your USA Today article. You have no idea how far you've set back the struggle for justice that victims in our military are fighting for. Try to imagine a young woman (or man) being assaulted at boot camp or overseas on active duty. This is a HUMILIATING experience...no one wants to run forward and tell their commanding officer that they've been raped or abused. You say that if the commanding officer decides not to prosecute, then a "higher-level review" is required along with an “automatic review” done by a service secretary if the commanding officer overrules his legal advisors.  One of the major issues we are having is that the cases are not reaching the legal advisors.  Who exactly is going to oversee and enforce these extra steps? Is it up to the victim to make sure this happens? Is the victim going to have to set up yet another humiliating meeting to tell the higher-level officer and the secretary all about the rape? The more hurdles you put in front of a victim, the less likely they will be able to jump over them. You either have no concept of what it is like to be a victim of sexual assault, or you just don't care. Either way, you have done a MAJOR disservice to thousands of people serving in our armed forces. You say this is not a “matter of siding with high-ranking  generals over victims,” but YES, Senator Levin, that is exactly what you have done! This issue will not go away. It will come up again in the future, and in the meantime, how many of our service people will suffer without justice because of your extremely poor decision? Try again, Senator Levin. Try harder. We need a leader here, not another little boy in the boys’ club. 

   Respectfully,

      Jennifer Lewter

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Others

Turn Right When You See The Dead Fish Heads...

    
   I realize this picture is kind of gross, but it was too funny not to share. A fisherman near Hartman, Arkansas likes to hang his huge catfish heads outside on a fence where by-passers can gawk at them. One of our students who recently returned from the Gulf Coast decided to add his own trophy to the collection. Do you think anyone will notice?

SPOILER ALERT! "Star Trek: Into Darkness" Review

Spock (left) and Kirk (right) detain super-human Khan (center) on the Enterprise briefly.

   What can I say? They butchered a classic. For those of us old enough to remember and cherish Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, this one, at least in parts, was a disgrace. When the original dying Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and Kirk (William Shatner) sat on the floor with their hands touching either side of the containment glass, we were devastated. We had seen the friendship of Spock and Kirk develop and blossom during nearly 20 years of television and the first Star Trek movie.  With the new Spock (Zachary Quinto) and Kirk (Chris Pine), the scene was nearly replicated but with the roles reversed: Kirk sat dying in the radiation room while Spock lamented on the outside. It did NOT work! The original death scene is one of the most poignant and famous in the Star Trek franchise ("The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one"), and this time it felt so misplaced I literally couldn't watch it. Quinto and Pine are so new to us (their characters hated each other early in the last movie), we did not have time to respect or love their friendship like we did with Nimoy and Shatner. Hearing Quinto scream the infamous "KKKKKHHHHHAAAAAAAANNNNNNN!" in anguish was borderline humorous. It just did not work. 

   With that said, Benedict Cumberbatch makes a damn good villain! He lacks the smokin' hot charisma displayed by ever-smooth Ricardo Montalban, the original Khan Noonien Singh. 

The Original Khan (Ricardo Montalban)

Montalban's Khan had no trouble throwing a pretty woman to the ground ("The Space Seed," the original Star Trek television series), but the icy new Cumberbatch Khan also hits the woman and then stomps on her leg with the apparent intent to break it. Then our new Khan crushes Admiral Marcus' head between his palms while Marcus' daughter (the little lady who just got stomped on) shrieks in terror.  (WOW - I bet Lt. McGivers from the original series would NOT have gone to play house on Ceti Alpha V with this creep!)

The New Khan (Benedict Cumberbatch)

   So is this new Star Trek movie worth seeing? Yes, of course it is. The special effects are amazing; going to warp has never been more exciting. Seeing Uhura (Zoe Saldana) carefully walk towards and speak Klingon to a gang of well-armored and highly agitated Klingon warriors was a welcomed first for her traditionally-chairfast character. (The new Klingons are scary as hell, by the way! This was the first time I've seen one with pale blue eyes.) I also enjoyed one of the early scenes with Spock in the volcano as lava erupts and sprays around him. A very nice homage to the traditional meaning of the word Vulcan (Roman god of fire.) There is also a new starship introduced here - a much larger, 3 times faster, black military ship that nearly destroys the Enterprise. Now we know what Into Darkness means - the Starfleet mission to explore space and new civilizations is now turning into a darker, sadder, military delegation. The scene in Admiral Marcus' office of a line-up of models showing the progression of flight from the Wright Brothers' airplane all the way through the (hypothetical) Enterprise spaceships was a really nice touch. Kudos, guys! 

   Leonard Nimoy makes a very brief but well appreciated appearance in this movie as well. I will always be happy to see our original Spock spouting words of wisdom in these "rebooted" versions. 

   And it's good to know we'll be seeing more of Khan in the future. They kept him alive, in a cryogenic tube. That was probably a mistake. 

   Oh! My Father would have been pleased to see that J.J. Abrams left out his camera lens-flare signature this time. Or at least I didn't notice it. Guys, please work on some original story lines before you tap into old Star Trek gold. We want to be fans of the reboot, but you can't steal the crown jewels without earning them first. 

   UPDATE: 6-14-2013   I saw the movie again, and it is LOADED with Abrams' lens-flaring!! I really didn't notice it the first time. (Must not be that bad of a movie if I was that engrossed in it... :)

Patient Number 5,896

My family and I had to let go of someone we loved last week. Taking him off life support was somewhat like putting your favorite cat or dog to sleep, except much worse.

This was my father.

 At the funeral, my cousin Wendell told me that it will be the hardest thing I'll ever have to do. I believe him for two reasons: 1) He's older than me, and 2) He's a minister. I do not think this was his first removing-someone-from-life-support experience.
  There are a few things I wish I could change about the events that occurred during my father's 17-day hospital stay. Having him walk away from his ordeal would of course be at the top of my list. Number Two would be having him sent back to the Huntsville Hospital Medical Intensive Care Unit (MICU) instead of the Huntsville Hospital Surgical Intensive Care Unit (SICU.) The nurses Dad had in MICU were phenomenal. He commented on how sharp they were. These people were really taking care of him, and I could tell how much he appreciated it. He talked about them using their first names. He spoke of them as though they were his new friends. He gradually showed enough improvement that he was put in a regular hospital room (out of intensive care) for a while. I don't really know what happened next. I don't think the medical staff could give a good explanation, either. Dad looked to me like he was on the mend. He had asked me to go buy him an iPad and some pens and notepads. He wanted to write stuff down. He had plans. He was alert and witty because he was fully oxygenated. But then he started crashing again, and he was put in SICU because there weren't any beds open with his old friends in MICU. He needed oxygen, he needed vasoconstrictors to keep his blood pressure up, he had a blood clot in his leg, he was retaining fluid, he was having seizures...

Jesus. CHRIST. I couldn't sleep that night. And I didn't really want to. I was scared he would be gone when I woke up. I flew back to Huntsville. By the time I was allowed in to see him again, I found my Dad tied to a bed in SICU, looking all bruised and discolored, swollen and puffy, mildly sedated and on a ventilator.

The next saddest thing I've ever seen in my life was my Mom walking into her house with baggies full of Dad's spare clothes, his glasses, his new iPad that he never used, his little TV radio that he had to have on his bedside tray.

I keep getting angry when I think about some of the medical personnel in SICU. Do you know how I found out they had given up on my Dad? I could tell by the way they talking in front of him. They weren't talking to him, they were talking about him as though he wasn't there. But he was there. He was awake. I knew he could hear them. He couldn't say anything back because he had a ventilator tube down his throat and his hands were tied to the bed rails. Dad's new day nurse and kidney doctor were displaying the same level of psycho-social competence as someone who decides to dump his girlfriend by changing his Facebook status to "single."

I was in that room, cheering for my Dad every time I was allowed to see him. I was bragging about the baby steps of progress I thought he was making, and those inglorious bastards had already determined that patient number 5,896 was doomed but did not take the time to tell his family.

 I feel like an asshole, friends. I lied to my Daddy while he was on his deathbed.
     

Can't Wait! Star Trek: Into Darkness

All we need now is the same advertising stunt done over the Golden Gate Bridge. That is where Starfleet Academy will be located, after all.  :)

Movie release date: May 17, 2013

That's CANADA, not CANCUN

   What do you do when you hear your cousin is getting married down in sunny Cancun? You buy tickets, of course, especially since your very favorite cousin is planning to go and you've never been to Cancun. (At least I haven't.) My family said they were using the cheapcarribean.com site to plan their trip, so that's what I used, too. I'm always a little nervous about using a new travel site, but I was pleased to see that you could break your trip package down into two payments. AND, you could also buy insurance in case you get sick or become unable to travel for some reason. So I put down the first payment of $600 or so, and I bought the insurance. I called my cousins to tell them the good news. And that's when they told me that the wedding had been called off. 
   Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!

   I called cheapcarribean immediately to see if I could get a refund. I told them the wedding had been canceled, and they said "the insurance doesn't cover that." If I had been sick, I would have to get an actual doctor's note for them. Things started getting fuzzy here. I began to lose my temper, I'm afraid. I was promised a credit voucher for $596.25, after they knocked off a fee of $50.  I was told I had to use the voucher within one year of the date it was issued, and I couldn't use it on a cruise. The employee I spoke to said he was "pretty sure" I could use the travel voucher for airline flights within the continental U.S., but it would have to be with the same airline I had originally booked with. Well, okay, I could probably work with this. I printed out my voucher and taped it to my bedroom wall.
   Months later, I decided to plan a trip with my favorite cousin Beth. (No weddings this time.) It took several weeks for us to finally decide on Vancouver, Canada as our destination. Neither of us had been before, and we both had heard great things about the city. We decided to fly into Seattle and then drive across the border. 
   I spoke to four different cheapcarribean representatives before I got this to work for me. At first they couldn't understand why I had a "cheapcaribbean" credit voucher since I had canceled my trip within 24-hours of booking it; I should've had an American Airlines voucher. All of the flight prices they were giving me for Seattle for my needed time frame were more than $1000. Holy crap! I've never flown in the U.S. for more than $600. I went straight to the American Airlines website myself and found acceptable tickets for right under $600. I called cheapcarribbean back and told them to book it for me. The rep informed that I could only use a certain percentage of my voucher for an airline flight. "I haven't heard this before," I snapped at her. She was the fourth or fifth person I had talked to, and that really was news to me. She put me on hold and then came back. "Nevermind," she said, and she booked my flight with another $15 charge on it.
    Hopefully I was done with cheapcarribean. I'm not sure I'll be so quick to go to a destination wedding again, or do business with a company that has the word "cheap" in their name.
   It came time to fly to Seattle, and, I missed my flight out of Little Rock. After packing up, watering plants, feeding cats, doing laundry, all the little things you need to do before you leave your house for a while, (and we had to stop and get gas on the way to the airport), I arrived at the check-in terminal approximately 26 minutes before departure. I was not allowed on the airplane. "If you didn't have a bag to check, we'd let you on," said the very young and very new American Airlines representative. It was Saturday evening and the place was dead. This was the last flight out of Little Rock for the night. The next flight was at 6:15 am the next morning, and it was booked. My cousin was already in Seattle waiting for me. "Why don't you let me go and send my bag later?" I asked. "TSA won't let us do that anymore," he said. I was starting to lose my temper again. This airport was tiny. No one was in line to go through security. I should've been able to zip right through. The boy called his supervisor so I could talk to him. His supervisor said he would talk to me when he got done upstairs. *After* the plane leaves. I was furious. Once upon I time I would fly somewhere every week for my job. Airlines usually work hard to make sure you don't miss a flight. I have gotten to a gate 15 minutes before departure and still made the flight. Now they have new rules. I was told the computer "locks you out" 30 minutes before a flight. 
   I was assigned standby tickets and told to come back the next morning to see if I could get on the 6:15 am flight in case someone didn't show up. I had hope that this would work, since 5:15 is a ridiculous time for anyone to be up and functional, so I figured someone would miss their flight. And that's exactly what happened. I spent the night at the airport. On the cold, hard floor, with construction going on through the whole night. I didn't sleep, actually. I lay there, on a spot of red carpet, huddled with my fleece jacket around my head. There were padded benches downstairs, but there is also a singing Coke machine right next to them. Jeez! The bright overhead lights were on the whole night. It was horrible. 
   Around 5:00 am, I went to the American Airlines terminal to check in my luggage. The same supervisor was there from the night before. He did not make eye contact with me. I paid $25 to check my one bag. I went upstairs to my gate and waited. There was a large group of scuba divers who were going on a trip together. Two other men from their group tried to check in less than 30 minutes before take-off. They were cut off, just like I was. "They're going to miss some dives," I heard their dive instructor say. He spoke to several different airport employees to try and get them on. He was not successful. And THAT'S how I got a seat on a full plane to Seattle. One man's ruined vacation is another woman's seat to salvation.
   It was not a direct flight - I had a short layover in Dallas. I had to do the standby thing again, and thankfully someone missed their time window or else I would've had another fun evening at an airport. 
   I landed in Seattle, and my sweet cousin Beth picked me up. We ate dinner at a nearby restaurant then headed for the border.  We stopped at a Cabela's on the way out of town. There are no Cabela's where I live, so it was fun to see all of the stuffed animals on display. They had huge fish tanks with bass, crappie, and sturgeon (see photo below.) 

A living fossil - the Sturgeon

  
To be continued.....