Uncle Billy

 Since 1979, I have virtually stopped reading fiction, except for those few articles I may read in today's newspapers.  Just kidding...kind of.  I prefer reading books about American history and biographies of people who made an impact on American history.  

The only fiction I have read would be books that are sometimes called "faction", because they are novels about historic events, people and places.  Examples would be Burning Ground, by D.A. Caldwell, about the exploration of what is now Yellowstone National Park.  Caldwell also wrote Fatal Ground, about what is called Custer's Last Stand.  I have also read many of the novels of James Michener, which cover a wide range of history.

The reason for my interest in American history began in 1979, when I was living in Atlanta Georgia.  I had gone to attend a school to acquire my flight engineer rating and was hired as an instructor afterwards.  I met many Southerners while I was there.  One of them is still one of my best friends, about whom I wrote in earlier posts.  However, there were some who were still carrying a grudge against people from the North.  They put them in two categories, Damn Yankees were those who came to visit and left and Goddam Yankees came and stayed.  At that point, I seemed to fall into the latter group.

At that point, the Civil War had been over for 114 years.  Growing up, I had learned about the war as early as grade school and in much more detail during my junior year in high school.  However, I had moved on and was very surprised to learn how people in the South held a grudge more than a century later.

I wanted to try to gain an understanding of the war to have something to say to them, when they told my how terribly the people of the North had mistreated them.  I wanted to learn about their war time experience and their reasons for fighting the war.   Some explained that the focus of their anger and hatred and the excuse for their behavior to me was General William T. Sherman.  My thoughts were that no one from my family had come to the United States until the later 19th Century, so WTF?

Sherman had brought the war to Georgia, taking the city of Atlanta and then marching across the state to Savanah.  To execute that march, he had severed his supply lines and his army lived off the land, taking what was needed from the farms along the way.  What he didn't need was destroyed.

As I read, I got a better understanding of Sherman's thinking.  When the war began, he was the head of a military academy in Louisiana, that became Louisiana State University (LSU).  Sherman was from Ohio and had graduated from West Point.  David French Boyd, a close friend, recalled Sherman declaring at that time:

"You people of the South don't know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you're talking about. War is a terrible thing! You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it ... Besides, where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them? The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on Earth—right at your doors. You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see in the end that you will surely fail."

Southerners were not convinced.

I am now convinced that I know far more, than my antagonists of 1979, about the causes, execution and aftermath of the Civil War.  The following video provides the best and easiest to grasp explanation of what drove Sherman to do what he did in Georgia.

Communication Skills

 We learn to communicate almost immediately after birth.  Infants can see facial expressions and infer meaning from them.  They communicate with their own facial expressions in a very short time.  It is not difficult to see when they are happy or whether something is bothering them.

When my kids were learning to swim at a very early age, the guy who was teaching them had developed his PhD around a system of teaching young children to swim.  He taught us that different cries from infants meant different things.

There are cries of anger.  There are cries of fear.  There are cries of hunger.  There are cries of, "Hey, I messed my laundry and I want someone to do something about it".  There are many other messages being sent by this crying, but in all cases, a response is expected.  "Let me know you have heard and understood what I am communicating and that you will do something about it".

We moved on to learning the alphabet, then putting it together in words and eventually, sentences and paragraphs.  Even before that, kids are learning language, simply by hearing others speak and trying to imitate.  I've long said that the first time a child says no is the beginning of the development of that child to become an independent and self sufficient adult.

Communication becomes more and more sophisticated as we grow and have more life experience.  I was fortunate to be a child and teenager during the 50s and 60s, when there was more discipline and eduction going on in schools, as opposed to much of the indoctrination of today.  I attended Catholic schools through high school.  We were drilled with correct spelling, grammar  and diagramming sentences.  

As you may know, if you have read my blog from the beginning, I did not attend college.  In some ways this is beginning to look like a blessing, although college was probably not as bad then, as it is today.

Two years after graduation from high school, I was drafted into the United States Army.  I have written extensively about that experience. This morning, I was thinking about some of the things I was taught about communication while in the army.  During my second 8 week period of training, Advanced Individual Training (AIT), we were being taught how to talk on radios.  This was primarily because we were being trained to be scouts for armor units.

As scouts, we would be probing advanced areas, searching for the enemy and reporting back to the main body, the location, nature and size of enemy units.  We would also be calling in artillery strikes.  Precise and clear communication was critical. Mistakes or misunderstanding could cause lives to be lost.

Sometimes it was necessary to spell words in radio communicaion.  It has been decided that the normal alphabet can be easily misheard or misunderstood.  Therefore a phonetic alphabet was developed.  Words are used to represent letters.  You may be familiar with the phonetic alphabet that was being used by the US military during World War II, from seeing the TV series Band Of Brothers.  It covers E Company, 2nd Battalion of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, "The Screaming Eagles".  At that time the phonetic word for E was Easy.

At some point after WW II, the countries of NATO changed the phonetic alphabet.  This new one was the one we learned in 1966.  For example, Easy was changed to Echo.  Supposedly, the reason for the change was to make communication between people who spoke different languages more easily understood.

Not long after I left the army, I began learning how to fly and as you can imagine, precise and easily understood communication is as important in aviation as it is in the military.  Here, I encountered the familiar NATO phonetic alphabet again.  This makes sense, as airplanes can easily be flown anywhere in the world, it is necessary to have a standardized method of communication.  It was decided that English would be the language of international aviation communication and the NATO phonetic alphabet would be the standard.  Lucky for me, I did not have to learn new ones.  Not so lucky for those who want to be involved in aviation and their first language is not English.  Life can be tough.

Another aspect of critical communication, that I touched on slightly in discussing infant communication, is acknowledging reception of messages. In aviation, a read back is usually expected and sometimes required.  When air traffic controllers tell pilots to fly a certain heading, change to a different altitude or clears them for takeoff, landing or an approach, they want to hear back from the pilot, exactly what they have cleared them to do.  Simply saying Roger, will usually piss someone off.  The read back should also include the call sign, to assure that the correct airplane will do what the controller expects them to do.

Although it is usually not as critical, normal communication between humans should also have some standards.  When someone says something to you, it is good policy to acknowledge in some way.

OK, the reason I started thinking about this, is that I have a mobile repair guy, here in Fort Myers, I have been dealing with for a few years and I have been trying to get information from him.  He and his office have not been getting back to me and I am pissed, but I don't want to dust him off.  He is very good, when I can get him out to work on the coach.