Annette

Sorry for the silence...we're not currently having Adventures in Japan. Fearless Husband arrived home in Sasebo after a two and a half month absence. 12 hours later, we found out his mother was in the hospital and gravely ill. We scrambled, and with some help from the Navy and the Red Cross, we arrived in Nevada less than 48 hours after FH got off his ship.

My mother-in-law is an amazing woman. She's raised FH since he was about a year old, and has been a wonderful, loving, kind, laughing mother. She's tall and willowy, with big beautiful dark eyes and rich, dark hair and a gleaming, almost-constant smile. She and FH loved to trade books, and to tell each other about new authors each thought the other might like. She welcomed me like a long-lost daughter, taught me her recipes for FH's favorite dishes, and traveled all the way from Nevada to North Carolina to see her son marry me (and got along with absolutely everyone, the entire time!) She's gracious, elegant, and just plain fun to be around.

It's hard here right now for everyone. The grief and sadness is so sharp and heavy it's sometimes overwhelming. However, family has been brought together, old rifts have been healed, and though the illness was sudden, there has still been time for goodbyes to be made, and last words spoken. Those are the silver linings here.

.My mother-in-law is the absolute opposite of all those old jokes. I'm so lucky to have known her, and could not have picked a better mother-in-law if I'd had the choice of any in the world. Thank you, Annette, for your friendship, for your laughter, for welcoming me like a daughter, and for doing such a great job raising the incredible man I married.

I love you.

Edited to add: Annette died this morning. I'm so glad we got to come and say goodbye, and receive that last, beautiful smile.

The Joy of Coming Home

Don't get me wrong...I love the USA. My country offers freedoms found nowhere else (see the Bill of Rights). We have an amazing abundance of inexpensive foods (we spend less of our total income on food than people in any other country on earth). We've got broad, smooth highways and shining skyscrapers and vast vistas of forest and field and mountains and plains. Our diversity is second to none, and when I arrive in America, I see a rainbow of hair color and skin color and eye color, and I exult in that variety that defines our melting pot.
We got to have a Prairie Home Companion visit with Fearless Husband's Lutheran Minnesota family, complete with a Norwegian holiday dinner of lutefisk, lefse, meatballs, krub, krumkake, fattigmand's bakkelse, sand bakkelse, and rommergrot. Grandma Betty can COOK! We also had several intense rounds of Spoons, Spades and Whist, as well as board games after feeding the horses and goats at Uncle Chris and Aunt Jo's farmette.

Then we got to see my family, including my spectacularly smart and beautiful nieces (no, I'm not biased! Ha!) and my wonderful brother and sister-in-law. My other brother gave me one of The World's Greatest Backrubs, and took a day off work to spend time with us. I enjoyed a contra dance with my stepfather playing banjo, some time (but nowhere near enough!) with the looms and dyes with Mom, a too-short but great lunch with Dad and my stepmother, and a truly glorious Epiphany Evensong at my home church (www.st-peters.org), complete with incense and delighted hugs from my fellow choristers.

I bought canned tomatoes with okra, and a box of kosher salt, and some lovely Christmas ornaments on sale, none of which are available here in Japan. I drove down the expansive highway on the right side at 70 mph (the top limit on the expressway here in Sasebo is about 49 mph). Mom and I both wept when we parted at the airport.

BUT...

Joy is coming home. Joy is getting on an ANA flight with perfect, doll-like, bow-bedecked flight attendants bowing and smiling and offering hot towels and hot green tea. Joy is strangers begging your pardon, and cashiers and clerks bowing and smiling and behaving as if their entire existences revolve around helping you, their customer.

Joy is staggering into the house with, God knows, FAR too much luggage, and sighing with happy relief to put it all DOWN. Joy is lying in my very own bed, beside my softly snoring husband, hearing the tick of the house settling itself around us once more.

Joy is coming home again. Happy New Year.

The Price of Being a Military Spouse

The Hong Kong trip has been cancelled. Sad, but true. For good reasons, to keep Fearless Husband and the other Sailors safe--driving the boat through the middle of a typhoon is probably not a safe thing to do, so I'm glad they aren't going to do that.

But I'm sad. I was really looking forward to seeing FH. (Oddly enough, I miss my husband!!) and was so very excited about exploring Hong Kong with him. But the chance will come at some later date, and he should be home before too much more time has passed.

Only got a partial refund on my plane ticket, which is very frustrating...but a good lesson for me about the advisability of spending more and getting a fully refundable ticket next time. It's part of the price of being a military spouse, I guess. I knew what I was getting into when I made the choice to marry FH. Schedules change. At least he is not far, far away in a hot, dry and dangerous climate like so many others serving their country. I get to see him lots more than many other military spouses get to see their loved ones.

So, in the long run, I am a lucky woman. Besides, learning to be more flexible is something I've needed to work on anyway!

And maybe, with the extra time at home, I can find more time to add more photos and adventures next week! Stay tuned...

The Great Tree Massacre

Now that things have eased off a little bit with my freelance work, and Fearless Husband is back at sea for a while, I hope to get caught up with some adventures. Please forgive the long delays! Current news: FH is on his Fall Cruise. He has a very full schedule, as the LPO for his department, work as a career counselor for younger Sailors, a college course, and work towards several certifications. If things work out, I hope to meet him in Hong Kong for a few days. Life's good here for me, though I miss my husband! I'm now co-president of the ship's Family Support Group, which is keeping me busy. I'm still doing freelance work, and working part time for the base newspaper. I've also been asked to help the Officers Spouse Club with a brochure and some publicity for a "Samurai Day" they're putting on. I hope to spend some time this fall at Miyuki's school, volunteering with her classes and learning from them as well!

Here's an adventure from earlier in the summer that I've meant to write about, but kept putting off. (Notice first of all, in the photo above, the amount of greenery to the left of the house--the little bit you can see of the trees in my tiny yard--and also the shaggy look of the pine tree in front of the house. Do me a favor and don't notice the terrible view of me in that photo!)

When we signed our lease for our house here in Japan, it was spelled out that we would be responsible for the weeds and sporadic grass in our tiny little yard, but that our landlord would be responsible for the trees. As a matter of fact, we were very specifically prohibited from doing anything at all to the trees.

Our yard is quite small. On the side of the house, we have a driveway shared with the neighbor directly behind us--the driveway ends in our neighbor's tiny carport. One side of the driveway is the high wall that supports our next door neighbor's house and yard, keeping it from tumbling down the hill onto us. On the other side of the drive is a stretch of gravel along the side of our house, that is (ha ha ha ha) supposedly big enough for two cars.

Beside the front gate from the street to our front door is a 3 x 3' area with several large rocks, two tiny azalea bushes, and one very Japanese pine tree. On the other side of the front door are three little boxwoods. One can walk on a very narrow sidewalk between the camellia-lined fence and the front of our house to get to the little fenced yard (our house is L-shaped, and the yard is in the crook of the L). The yard itself is perhaps 10 x 15'. Behind the house is enough room for one not-very-wide person to walk...and this area is also gravelled. So, I don't have much yardwork to worry about.

Our teeny yard has five teeny azalea bushes and five small trees. When we moved in, the camellias along the fence were in bloom. They seemed a little severely trimmed to my American eyes, but I figured they'd fill out eventually. The trees were not very tall at all, but were pretty bushy. In America, I don't think I've ever thought about trimming back the trees in any house I've ever lived in, and I probably would not have thought twice about trimming these trees.

But we're in Japan.

In June, on the days it didn't rain, if I thought about the trees at all, it was to be grateful for the shade and privacy we were afforded by their bushy leaves. Then everything changed.

I got a call from the housing office, to let me know the tree trimmers would be coming to my house in a few days. I thought to myself "gee, I should do something about the weeds and grass in the yard before they come..." then promptly forgot about it. So I was a little surprised one morning to open my bedroom curtains and find two elderly gentlemen in my yard in gardening uniforms, complete with hats, boots and white gloves (almost all the Japanese uniforms seem to come with white gloves, including flagmen in the streets).

I was fascinated to watch these men at work. They plucked every single blade of grass and every weed by hand from both the yard and from every square inch of gravel around the house. The trees were trimmed to a most astonishing point...to my American eyes, they had been destroyed. The two men spent two days plucking grass blades and carefully trimming the trees from their aluminum tripod ladders. They bagged every leaf in small, neat transparent plastic bags, and trimmed every pruned limb into 30cm lengths before tying them into neat bundles. I offered both men water, and exchanged bows and "ohayou gosaimasu" (good morning) with them several times, peeking out often to watch them at work, and to observe their short, formal and deliberate tea and lunch breaks. They both worked with great dignity and a slow but unstoppable sense of purpose.

When they finished, they swept the bare dirt smooth with homemade-looking twig brooms, bowed to me one last time, and left with the bags of leaves and bundles of sticks. (If they'd left me the bundles and bags, I would have had to space them out when taking them to the trash pickup, each of us being allowed to leave only two bags of leaves and two bundles of sticks per trash day.)

It took me a while to get used to the newly nude trees, and the huge increase in sunlight in my little yard. But the trees have leafed out quickly and well, and look great now. I'm almost dreading how bushy they will get before my tree men come back next June! I've learned since they left that the trees in my yard, especially the pine tree in the front, have been trained over years to their current shapes, and are quite valuable. They must be trimmed in order to maintain their shapes (like my front pine tree) and also to keep them small (in the case of the trees in my yard). Since I am perched on a pretty steep hillside (like many houses here) and also cheek-by-jowl with my neighbors (like almost all houses here), it's important to keep the trees in check so their roots don't push through the retaining walls and their limbs don't threaten my home or my neighbor's homes.

After watching Typhoon Shanshan hit us head-on, and observing the up-to-90 mph winds from the windows of my house, I am very grateful for the Great Tree Massacre. Sure, I saw a few little branches and a lot of leaves on the ground throughout my neighborhood after the big winds, but I saw no downed trees, no big limbs on the ground, and very little storm damage. Bet there won't be much damage if we have an ice storm, either.

I think I'll remember this lesson!

A Brief Delay

Sorry about the delay between posts. Life's wonderful here in Japan, but things got busy, between FH being out at sea/no he's not/yes he is and my freelance work, and my first typhoon (ShanShan brought wind and rain and rattling houses, but no damage).

Life should be settling back down by the weekend, and I hope to get more Adventures posted...like The Great Tree Massacre...Visiting Rumi's Dead Parents...Imaemon the XIV...

You get the idea. More soon, I promise.

Ruby Slippers Held in Reserve...

...because it looks as if Typhoon Ewiniar would rather visit Korea and China than stop by Sasebo. So today, instead of having destructive force winds, we had sunshine and blue skies. I understand we'll have some wind and rain tonight, but nowhere near what was expected.

Meanwhile, Fearless Husband is floating around somewhere in the South China Sea--I guess because the Powers That Be decided they didn't want to let our husbands and wives just come home, and possibly "waste" all the provisions they brought aboard in such a hurry on Thursday.

After all, I'm sure powdered milk, powdered eggs and powdered potatoes must have a really short shelf-life.

Frustrated? Me? Nooooooo....

(But I did have a really wonderful day. I've got to get caught up as quickly as possible, so I can tell you all about meeting Imaemon the 14th in person! So...more ASAP, I promise!)

Where's Toto?

Well, we've got some...err...weather headed our way. FH was supposed to have a few more days at home before resuming normal work hours and then heading off to A School in San Diego. We think San Diego is still a go (at least as much as anything in military life can be "a go" until the moment it happens), but for now, everything else is up in the air--no pun indended!

We woke this morning to news that all active duty sailors were being recalled to the ship, even those on leave. Tropical Storm Ewiniar has decided to grow up into Typhoon Ewiniar, and is headed our way. It's no longer aiming directly at Sasebo (at least as they are tracking it now), but it's still coming.

I'm not worried about our home here, as we have big steel retractable storm shutters that "deploy" as easily as a sliding glass door. We're nice and high on a hill. And I've got a big Rubbermaid tote filled with candles, flashlights, batteries, a radio, rain gear, disinfectant, canned goods, etc., along with copies of all our important papers (in the case of an evacuation), a stack of books and a giant container of water. The worst that could happen here at home would really be losing power...we'll be hot and without Internet access. Not exactly a reason to panic. That is, I'm trying hard not to hyperventilate at the idea of no computer!

But...high winds and high seas can do some serious damage to a ship tied up at the pier. So the USS Essex is set to get underway tomorrow morning, and get out of the storm's way for a few days. They'll also be out there at the ready, in case the storm hits an unprepared area, like the rural Korean villages that now seem to be in the path of the storm.

There's absolutely no reason to worry about us, as we're all set for whatever happens. However, I thought perhaps you might hear about the storm and wonder or worry. We're just fine, other than FH being a little grumpy at losing some time off. You might want to keep those who still are in the storm's path in your thoughts and prayers though.

Check out http://www.npmoc.navy.mil/jtwc/warnings/wp0406.gif and http://www.npmodsasebo.navy.mil/welcome_2.htm for storm updates, if you are so inclined.

More news when we have some!

The Big Buddha, the Lucky God & the Goddess of Eloquence, Beauty & Wisdom

I'm sorry it's been so long between updates--it's been a busy few weeks! My trip to Yokosuka was a bigger deal than I anticpated, and I was a little sorry we hadn't taken the Navy up on their offer to let Fearless Husband come with me. However, we both decided it was better for his career for him to ship out at the beginning of May rather than have him stay home and travel to Yokosuka with me. So, off he went to Singapore and Thailand.

The Navy gave me a plane ticket to Haneda Airport outside Tokyo, and instructions on how to get a train ticket to Yokosuka once my plane landed. After some confusion and the help of the costumed "airport helpers"--I boarded the train. The airport helpers are a particularly Japanese custom...young women in their early 20s drift around the airport, wearing powder-blue skirts, jackets, cute little hats with ribbons, and dainty white gloves right out of the 1950s. They're paid to look pretty and seek out confused tourists to aid. The helper who approached me had very little English, but more English than I had Japanese! She called out in her high, clear voice, and two more dainty blue-wrapped girls came running to join us (working women in Japan seem to ALWAYS run with tightly clasped knees and teeny little steps, giving the impression of eagerness and hurry even when they don't move particularly fast!) Between the four of us, we managed to navigate the train ticket machine. I'd found the button to convert the screen text to English, but the train line name I was given was not on the screen, nor was the station name I'd been told. I kept repeating "Yokosuka! Yokosuka!" in desperation, and the three girls figured out how to get me there, pushed the right buttons, and handed me the ticket that the machine spit out. All three were eager to show me the right escalator to find my train, and I was escorted like royalty to the train platform.

I struck up a conversation with a couple on the train--he was miltary, she was Japanese, and they were also on their way to the hospital at Yokosuka. I was grateful, as the wife was able to read the signs, of course, and told me I'd lucked out and gotten onto an express, and would not have to change trains. They showed me how to get to the base from the station, which saved me taxi fare, and I was grateful. Once on the base, I had to take a taxi though--it's a BIG base! The housing folks tried to put me in a shared room with a young female sailor, but I wasn't having any of that. I checked myself into the Navy Lodge (which is where I would've stayed if FH had come with me) and got permission for reimbursement afterwards.

The medical stuff went extremely well--I've never had such attentive, professional, courteous care in my life! I guess I expected the Navy hospital not to be on par with a private hospital, but I was proven wrong very quickly. I am so grateful to have such wonderful medical service available! I had a great time talking with the Lieutenant who was the head nurse. She and her husband have adopted two Japanese babies, and of course, I had lots of questions! The whole experience was great, despite being a lot more involved than I first thought. The doctor decided he didn't want me going home to Sasebo the day after the procedure, so my "orders" were extended several days. So...I decided that rather than make this a trip all about medical stuff, I would treat it as a mini-vacation and a chance to see a little more of Japan on the Navy's dime!

I arrived in Yokosuka on Wednesday afternoon. It poured rain on Thursday (and most of the day was taken up with medical stuff). My surgery was Friday, and then it poured all day Saturday. I was getting a little impatient! Luckily, Sunday was overcast but not rainy, so I headed back to the train station, armed with a photocopied map of Kamakura, directions to the Daibutsu (giant Buddha) and my meager handful of Japanese phrases. I got on the train to Kamakura (or so I thought!) A little worried that I couldn't find any signs on the train in Romanji (English alphabet), I spoke to a young man, pointing in the direction we were travelling and asking "Kamakura"? The answer was an emphatic NO! I'd gotten on the wrong train, going in the wrong direction!

So, I got off at the next stop, and figured I would just jump on the next train going in the opposite direction. While I waited, a little boy and his parents came onto the platform. He was running and laughing and jumping in puddles as his father chased after him, making sure he didn't overshoot and fall onto the tracks. The child's mother saw me watching her son, and smiled...and then spoke to me in great English. We talked, and I ruefully explained my mistake to her. I'm certainly glad I met Asoko! Turns out I could not just get on the train and go in the proper direction...I had to go back one stop, get off the train, and get on an entirely different train line! Oooops!

So...this young family offered to escort me. It wasn't until we'd gone back one stop, changed trains, travelled several stops and changed trains again that I found out they had changed their plans entirely, just to make sure I got where I was going! They left me there at the Hase train station in Kamakura, and promptly got on a train going back to where they'd come from. They all three hustled down to the end car, and waved and beamed at me from the back window of the train until it was out of sight.

Kamakura is a fascinating town. It's small--smaller than Sasebo--with lots of little restaurants and touristy shops. Their claim to fame is the plethora of shrines and temples, and the Daibutsu, which is the second largest Buddha statue in Japan. It's 13.35 meters high, of cast bronze, built in 1252. It was originally built inside a temple, but a tsunami washed away the temple walls and roof at the end of the 15th century, so now it stands in the open. Its official name is Taiisan Kotokuin Shojo Senji. One can pay to go inside it, but it was plenty hot enough without going into a giant metal windowless box, so I abstained.

My favorite part of Kamakura was not, surprisingly, the Daibutsu, but instead was the Hasadera Temple. Of course, one enters the temple grounds at the garden level, and begins to climb (anything worthwhile in Japan is worth climbing to reach...) On the first "level" there were literally hundreds and hundreds of little statues called sentai jizo, maybe 12 inches high. Each represents the soul of a child who was stillborn, miscarried or aborted. The men mostly kept moving up the stairs, but it seemed that every single woman had to stop here, to pour water with a bamboo dipper on the head of a child-like Buddha statue, and pray before the ranks and ranks of sentai jizo. Another, larger statue sat in the middle of them all, wearing a red cloth cap and cape on its stone head and shoulders. There were many candles being lit, and lots of incense, and more than one woman walked away weeping.

There was a tiny little temple with a wooden statue of Buddha inside, with the usual grid-topped box for donations...but surrounding the box and the feet of the Buddha were piles of toys and candy and sodas. A woman saw my puzzled expression and whispered to me "for the children, because they never got to play and be happy on this earth." So much for no tears!

Once I got myself together and stopped sniffling, I made my way further up the hill to the main temple halls. The Hasedera temple is of the Jodo sect of Buddhism, and is famous for its statue of Kannon, the goddess of mercy. The statue shows Kannon with eleven heads, each representing a characteristic of the goddess. The gilded wooden statue is over 9 meters tall, and is regarded as the largest wooden sculpture in Japan. It was so serene and cool in the temple hall, and though there were plenty of tourists, almost all were Japanese, and everyone was very quiet and reverent. It was really beautiful! Go to http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~qm9t-kndu/hasedera.htm for more info about the temple and the statue.

I really wanted to take a photo of the statue of Kannon, and there were some tourists doing so, but there is a sign that specifically asks visitors NOT to take photos. I thought about how I'd feel if someone came into St. Peter's in the middle of a service and started snapping photos and talking, and I decided to respect the request. I did take a photo of the huge bell, and the giant tree trunk that is swung against it to ring it, and several photos of the gardens, the temple roof, the statues for the children, and of some of the toys and offerings for the souls of the children. I also took a photo of the revolving kyozo, which is a carved wooden storehouse for the sutras--the Issaikyo, which are all the scriptures of Mahayana Buddhism (100 volumes, 900 pages each!) The whole thing revolves on an axle, like a huge, ponderous top. There were several very solemn-faced people struggling to push it around one complete revolution--an elderly couple, then two plump housewife-types, then three teenagers. If a pilgrim pushes it around in a full circle, he or she gets the same spiritual benefit as reading all the scriptures!

I really enjoyed the Daikokudo hall, the home of the Daikokuten. He's a fat, funny god with a huge smile, a bald head, and fat, pendulous earlobes. He stands on a sack of rice with a treasure bag over one shoulder and a mallet or mace over the other shoulder. He supposedly shakes his mace and treasure and goodies fall out, showering the good people. He used to be the god of grain, but is now considered one of the gods of good fortune--one of the seven lucky deities. In a little alcove off the Daikokudo sat a solemn priest. His job was to carefully paint beautiful calligraphy in the "pilgrimage books" of visitors, and to sell little trinkets. I bought a little Daikokuten charm, and he smiled and handed me a little tiny brass statue of the Daikokuten as a gift. While I was there, several people came in and rubbed the statue, including two very serious old ladies who approached the statue chanting something as they rubbed him all over, using both hands with great purpose, seriousness and intensity--his swollen earlobes, his knee, his fat cheeks, his eyebrows...and between his legs! I had a hard time keeping a straight face, especially as the fat statue was shorter than both women, but much wider, and his grin was so huge!

On my way back down the hill, I followed two elderly women from New Zealand (mostly so I could listen to their Japanese guide/friend!) They passed a little tatami-matted, glass-walled building filled with people kneeling in front of low desks, busily writing. The guide/friend explained that they were copying from an ancient sutra, which gave them spiritual benefits. Past the building, there was a torii in front of a little tiny cave. The NZ ladies stooped over and went straight in, so of course I followed. Inside the cool, low-ceilinged cave carved out of the hillside, water dripped and shadows loomed. The one large Benten statue (goddess of eloquence, music & wisdom--of course she's female!) was followed by 16 relief carvings of her followers and messengers. I was confused...the torii is Shinto, but the Benten statue is Buddhist. The guide/friend explained that this was an example of the overlap of the two beliefs, but I'm not really sure I understand. More reading for me, I guess.

The cave startled me, as it got so low at one point that we practically had to crawl to get through to the next part. There was a room with hundreds and hundreds of teeny tiny wooden Buddha figures about an inch and a half tall--tucked into nooks and crannies in the wall, on rock shelves, on the floor, teetering on the metal pipe through which the wires for the few electric bulbs run. The guide/friend said people bought these little figurines and left them, often with prayers written on the bottom. I asked her why these things were in a cave...was there persecution in the past? She smiled and said "it means more if your prayers are private and quiet, and not showing off for your neighbors." Made me think of "And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men....when thou prayest, enter into thy closet and when thou has shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret...." (no, I don't have it memorized--I had to look it up).

I was so glad I made the effort to go to Kamakura. I wish FH had been with me, but maybe we'll get a chance to head in that direction together at some point in the next two and a half years. If you're anywhere near Tokyo for any reason, don't miss the little town of Kamakura.
More adventures to come. I still have to give you the lowdown on cousin M's visit...we went to Kumamoto, Arita, Fukuoka, Kashimae Pier...it was great! But it will be a day or two, as FH is home (YIPPEE!) Seems they got halfway to Indonesia, and Indonesia decided they didn't want help. So they headed home. His hours are truly crazy right now, as the ship is doing some sort of important excercise/qualification/I don't really understand it, and so even though he's in port, he's on the ship more often than not. Though I won't see much of him (and nothing at all during the week!) at least he's close, and he gets to be home a few evenings in the next two or three weeks. He's working insanely hard and I'm really in awe of him right now.

A Little About Life at Sea

March 2, 2006

Here is a little from FH...I asked him to tell me about the ship and about his life aboard, so he will be sending bits and pieces to add to my rambling posts.

Walk down the pway (known as a hall in ordinary English) of any ship and you'll see the following: Arcane numbers and letters in enigamatic arrangements on the bulkheads (walls), a wide panolopy of elecrical boxes used for a variety of things, brackets holding everything from a plain wrench to a 4x4 wooden beam to a strecher made out of metal and chicken wire, and clusters of pipes and wires running through the overhead (ceiling) to their destinations.

Every fifty feet or so a door blocks the hall which latches that easily com down to make a watertight seal. Each of the doorways is a oval that rises above the floor, guarenteed to bang the ankle of the unwary. Some lucky doorways known as kneeknockers come up a little higher. Every ten feet a smaller door leads into a space (room) to handle one of the many things needed to run a ship. These doors are also sealable and have locks. In fact the only ordinary doors on the ship are the head (oops I mean toilet) doors.

There is nothing pretty about the way Navy builds its passageways. Things need to be accessable at a moments notice. Instead of pretty, we go for clean. Clean is defined as a fresh coat of paint without any dirt or dust on it. The bulkheads are often painted white and blue, while the overheads are painted over with grey...and by that I mean everything is painted including the wires and pipes. Every day for an hour in the morning and a hour in the afternoon people are sent out to clean up, sweeping up the accumulation of dirt on the floor and wiping down every single horizontal surface, polishing the brass and sandpapering the steel.

FH in the Philippines

February 18, 2006

Just a little note from Japan...Fearless Husband's ship, the USS Essex, is in the Philippines now, and will be arriving at the village of Guinsaugon on the island of Leyte at daybreak on Sunday morning (our time--Saturday night your time) along with the USS Harpers Ferry to help with the devastating mudslide you may have read about. This is what he wrote to me this morning:

"We were pulling into port in the Philippines and just as the ship was ready to cast the lines to dock we got the word and pulled out again. We shut off last night (to stop rumor central) and didn't open up again until today after we got our marching orders. Go ahead and read the news for Philippine mud slide this week. We had to evacuate the spaces last night at 11:00. Being on a ship we have to be self sufficient which means we carry all sorts of stuff onboard--stuff like chemicals which sometimes leak. Nobody was in serious danger and we all got out in an orderly way."

FH is safe and sound, and he and his shipmates are glad they were already close, so they can help the disaster victims. The estimates are that around 1,800 people are feared dead, including 250 kids, mothers and teachers, who were celebrating "Women's Day" at a local elementary school. Please keep those in the Philippines, FH, and his shipmates in your thoughts and prayers.