Heading back home

Maybe it is too early to pronounce the drought broken around Crawford but today, Tuesday August 29, is cooler and cloudy in Dallas where I await a flight to Oakland. I’m awed by the heat around here: the temperature range from 99 to 106 degrees Fahrenheit is incredibly hard on the body and the spirit. My total sleep hours in the last week: about 12… most of them accumulated since the storm yesterday plus last night in a bed with sheets in a hotel bed instead of on an air mattress in a tent (shared with a large, fast spider).

Yesterday was a big day in Crawford and Camp Casey. TexDOT (Texas Dept of Transportation) finally got around to allowing the completion of the water pipe to the property line. The general opinion amongst the camp regulars was that the delay had more to do with passive aggression toward the new settlement than with lack of TexDOT resources to finish the job. Nevertheless, yesterday mid-morning, a young Crawford fellow in a big backhoe humped and clunked and struggled through the rocky ground and the humid air and dug the channel. Then, mid-afternoon, two Code Pink lassies danced under a stream of Camp Casey III’s first flow of water out the new pipe; Camp Casey lads nodded in admiration and appreciation. (I thought of the champagne ejaculated at the winner of a manly competition.)

The day before yesterday, two Black Hawk helicopters scouting the area hinted at the imminent return of our over-esteemed Prez to his brush-free ranch. When I left Crawford yesterday afternoon, an energetic Camp Casey Welcome Wagon and attendant posse was gearing up for appropriate festivities.

Based on these preparations, I have some advice to George/43: Talk to Cindy! Until you two square away this question of What Noble Cause Killed Casey and Continues Killing our Kids (including Iraqi, Afghan, and now Lebanese kids) all y’all White Housers are gonna be bird-dogged. Far better advice: since no reasonable or acceptable squaring can ever exist as an answer to this question, give up The Fort; sign a decree stating you’ll go for Early Retirement with Full Retirement Benefits. (Hell, knock yourself out! Draft your 800^th or so Signing Statement to accompany the decree and clarify your thinking for history. Not only will We the People not hold this Signing Statement against you, We the People, will – finally -- be pleased with one of your presidential decrees.)

Short of that, you and yours are as inviting as fresh-but-limping red meat – a snack-on-the-hoof -- to a well-organized, highly focused pride of hungry lionesses… and I mean “pride” in its most iconic form. You are facing a group of beautiful, efficient, and holistic creatures with a purpose and a niche in an ecosystem on an evolving planet (oops, you don’t believe in evolution, do you?)

Frankly George, you don’t have a chance! Remember, it is the lionesses – not the lions -- that are the actual hunters. You just haven’t accepted that you are already outwitted, overrun, and scarfed-up.

If you won’t or can’t accept my advice, take the immortal advice our military professionals offer our suffering young’uns: Suck it up!

But, I digress.

Camp Casey III is less than 6 weeks old. As a neophyte settlement it is still working out the kinks (so am I and I am 2,652 weeks old!) but one thing that is clear here: the women are in control. And they’re in control in the way of women: relational, focused, relational, hardworking, relational, intent, and relational again. By interesting quirks of fate and serendipity, one of Camp Casey’s most fearless leaders is Colonel Ann Wright (ret.). Out the window goes the simplistic Lefty stereotype that military is ALWAYS … well, militaristic – and NEVER humane. Col. Ann Wright is well-trained and organized, disciplined, focused, comfortable with authority but not authoritarian; her speech is direct, her communication is clear, and she is humane. These are all good traits and can be taught instrumentally. But, Ann Wright goes beyond instrumental teaching. She also embodies deep integrity. This trait can also be learned. But, integrity is an intangible that can be modeled only by those possessing it. Moreover, it is learned … intuitively … via “nose”. That is, one interested in practicing integrity doesn’t actually sign up for a class called “Integrity 101”, nor are there any Integrity Colloquia. But, a sensitive “nose” knows when the whiff in the air, the je ne sais quoi, is Integrity. And, if one has the “nose” to sniff Integrity, one has the potential to embody Integrity. Col. Ann Wright encourages the replication of Integrity by embodying it.

This is Transformational Education at its best.