I Hear You!

Not mine. Just another article penned by a bored, retired Commander from Plymouth. A history of spying...

American Intell and the Birth of the Signals Intelligence Directorate/SIGINT

In June 1942, the bulk of the Japanese fleet sailed to seize the Island of Midway. Had Midway fallen, Pearl Harbor would have been at risk and U.S. submarines, unable to refuel at Midway, would have been much less effective. Most of all, the Japanese wanted to surprise the Americans and draw them into a naval battle they couldn't win.

The Japanese fleet was vast. The Americans had two carriers left intact in addition to one that was horribly damaged. The United States had only one advantage: It had broken Japan's naval code and thus knew a great deal of the country's battle plan. In large part because of this cryptologic advantage, a handful of American ships devastated the Japanese fleet and changed the balance of power in the Pacific permanently.

This -- and the advantage given to the allies by penetrating German codes -- taught the Americans about the centrality of communications code breaking. It is reasonable to argue that World War II would have ended much less satisfactorily for the United States had its military not broken German and Japanese codes. Where the Americans had previously been guided to a great extent by Henry Stimson's famous principle that "gentlemen do not read each other's mail," by the end of World War II they were obsessed with stealing and reading all relevant communications.

The National Security Agency evolved out of various post-war organizations charged with this task. In 1951, all of these disparate efforts were organized under the NSA to capture and decrypt communications of other governments around the world -- particularly those of the Soviet Union, which was ruled by Josef Stalin, and of China, which the United States was fighting in 1951. How far the NSA could go in pursuing this was governed only by the extent to which such communications were electronic and the extent to which the NSA could intercept and decrypt them.

The amount of communications other countries sent electronically surged after World War II yet represented only a fraction of their communications. Resources were limited, and given that the primary threat to the United States was posed by nation-states, the NSA focused on state communications. But the principle on which the NSA was founded has remained, and as the world has come to rely more heavily on electronic and digital communication, the scope of the NSA's commission has expanded.

What drove all of this was Pearl Harbor. The United States knew that the Japanese were going to attack. They did not know where or when. The result was a complete disaster. All American strategic thinking during the Cold War was built around Pearl Harbor -- the deep fear that the Soviets would launch a first strike that the United States did not know about. The fear of an unforeseen nuclear attack gave the NSA leave to be as aggressive as possible in penetrating not only Soviet codes but also the codes of other nations. You don't know what you don't know, and given the stakes, the United States became obsessed with knowing everything it possibly could.

In order to collect data about nuclear attacks, you must also collect vast amounts of data that have nothing to do with nuclear attacks. The Cold War with the Soviet Union had to do with more than just nuclear exchanges, and the information on what the Soviets were doing -- what governments they had penetrated, who was working for them -- was a global issue. But you couldn't judge what was important and what was unimportant until after you read it. Thus the mechanics of assuaging fears about a "nuclear Pearl Harbor" rapidly devolved into a global collection system, whereby vast amounts of information were collected regardless of their pertinence to the Cold War.

There was nothing that was not potentially important, and a highly focused collection strategy could miss vital things. So the focus grew, the technology advanced and the penetration of private communications logically followed. This was not confined to the United States. The Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, France, Israel, India and any country with foreign policy interests spent a great deal on collecting electronic information. Much of what was collected on all sides was not read because far more was collected than could possibly be absorbed by the staff. Still, it was collected. It became a vast intrusion mitigated only by inherent inefficiency or the strength of the target's encryption.

Justified Fear

The Pearl Harbor dread declined with the end of the Cold War -- until Sept. 11, 2001. In order to understand 9/11's impact, a clear memory of our own fears must be recalled. As individuals, Americans were stunned by 9/11 not only because of its size and daring but also because it was unexpected. Terrorist attacks were not uncommon, but this one raised another question: What comes next? Unlike Timothy McVeigh, it appeared that al Qaeda was capable of other, perhaps greater acts of terrorism. Fear gripped the land. It was a justified fear, and while it resonated across the world, it struck the United States particularly hard.

Part of the fear was that U.S. intelligence had failed again to predict the attack. The public did not know what would come next, nor did it believe that U.S. intelligence had any idea. A federal commission on 9/11 was created to study the defense failure. It charged that the president had ignored warnings. The focus in those days was on intelligence failure. The CIA admitted it lacked the human sources inside al Qaeda. By default the only way to track al Qaeda was via their communications. It was to be the NSA's job.

As I have written, al Qaeda was a global, sparse and dispersed network. It appeared to be tied together by burying itself in a vast new communications network: the Internet. At one point, al Qaeda had communicated by embedding messages in pictures transmitted via the Internet. They appeared to be using free and anonymous Hotmail accounts. To find Japanese communications, you looked in the electronic ether. To find al Qaeda's message, you looked on the Internet.

But with a global, sparse and dispersed network you are looking for at most a few hundred men in the midst of billions of people, and a few dozen messages among hundreds of billions. And given the architecture of the Internet, the messages did not have to originate where the sender was located or be read where the reader was located. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. The needle can be found only if you are willing to sift the entire haystack. That led to PRISM (a mass data collection program) and other NSA programs.

The mission was to stop any further al Qaeda attacks. The means was to break into their communications and read their plans and orders. To find their plans and orders, it was necessary to examine all communications. The anonymity of the Internet and the uncertainties built into its system meant that any message could be one of a tiny handful of messages. Nothing could be ruled out. Everything was suspect. This was reality, not paranoia.

It also meant that the NSA could not exclude the communications of American citizens because some al Qaeda members were citizens. This was an attack on the civil rights of Americans, but it was not an unprecedented attack. During World War II, the United States imposed postal censorship on military personnel, and the FBI intercepted selected letters sent in the United States and from overseas. The government created a system of voluntary media censorship that was less than voluntary in many ways. Most famously, the United States abrogated the civil rights of citizens of Japanese origin by seizing property and transporting them to other locations. Members of pro-German organizations were harassed and arrested even prior to Pearl Harbor. Decades earlier, Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus during the Civil War, effectively allowing the arrest and isolation of citizens without due process.

There are two major differences between the war on terror and the aforementioned wars. First, there was a declaration of war in World War II. Second, there is a provision in the Constitution that allows the president to suspend habeas corpus in the event of a rebellion. The declaration of war imbues the president with certain powers as commander in chief -- as does rebellion. Neither of these conditions was put in place to justify NSA programs such as PRISM.

Moreover, partly because of the constitutional basis of the actions and partly because of the nature of the conflicts, World War II and the Civil War had a clear end, a point at which civil rights had to be restored or a process had to be created for their restoration. No such terminal point exists for the war on terror. As was witnessed at the Boston Marathon -- and in many instances over the past several centuries -- the ease with which improvised explosive devices can be assembled makes it possible for simple terrorist acts to be carried out cheaply and effectively. Some plots might be detectable by intercepting all communications, but obviously the Boston Marathon attack could not be predicted.

The problem with the war on terror is that it has no criteria of success that is potentially obtainable. It defines no level of terrorism that is tolerable but has as its goal the elimination of all terrorism, not just from Islamic sources but from all sources. That is simply never going to happen and therefore, PRISM and its attendant programs will never end. These intrusions, unlike all prior ones, have set a condition for success that is unattainable, and therefore the suspension of civil rights is permanent. Without a constitutional amendment, formal declaration of war or declaration of a state of emergency, the executive branch has overridden fundamental limits on its powers and protections for citizens.

Since World War II, the constitutional requirements for waging war have fallen by the wayside. President Harry S. Truman used a U.N resolution to justify the Korean War. President Lyndon Johnson justified an extended large-scale war with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, equating it to a declaration of war. The conceptual chaos of the war on terror left out any declaration, and it also included North Korea in the axis of evil the United States was fighting against. Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden is charged with aiding an enemy that has never been legally designated. Anyone who might contemplate terrorism is therefore an enemy. The enemy in this case was clear. It was the organization of al Qaeda but since that was not a rigid nation but an evolving group, the definition spread well beyond them to include any person contemplating an infinite number of actions. After all, how do you define terrorism, and how do you distinguish it from crime?

Three thousand people died in the 9/11 attacks, and we know that al Qaeda wished to kill more because it has said that it intended to do so. Al Qaeda and other jihadist movements -- and indeed those unaffiliated with Islamic movements -- pose threats. Some of their members are American citizens, others are citizens of foreign nations. Preventing these attacks, rather than prosecuting in the aftermath, is important. I do not know enough about PRISM to even try to guess how useful it is.

At the same time, the threat that PRISM is fighting must be kept in perspective. Some terrorist threats are dangerous, but you simply cannot stop every nut who wants to pop off a pipe bomb for a political cause. So the critical question is whether the danger posed by terrorism is sufficient to justify indifference to the spirit of the Constitution, despite the current state of the law. If it is, then formally declare war or declare a state of emergency. The danger of PRISM and other programs is that the decision to build it was not made after the Congress and the president were required to make a clear finding on war and peace. That was the point where they undermined the Constitution, and the American public is responsible for allowing them to do so.

Defensible Origins, Dangerous Futures

The emergence of programs such as PRISM was not the result of despots seeking to control the world. It had a much more clear, logical and defensible origin in our experiences of war and in legitimate fears of real dangers. The NSA was charged with stopping terrorism, and it devised a plan that was not nearly as secret as some claim. Obviously it was not as effective as hoped, or the Boston Marathon attack wouldn't have happened. If the program was meant to suppress dissent it has certainly failed, as the polls and the media of the past weeks show.

The revelations about PRISM are far from new or interesting in themselves. The NSA was created with a charter to do these things, and given the state of technology it was inevitable that the NSA would be capturing communications around the world. Many leaks prior to Snowden's showed that the NSA was doing this. It would have been more newsworthy if the leak revealed the NSA had not been capturing all communications. But this does give us an opportunity to consider what has happened and to consider whether it is tolerable.

The threat posed by PRISM and other programs is not what has been done with them but rather what could happen if they are permitted to survive. But this is not simply about the United States ending this program. The United States certainly is not the only country with such a program. But a reasonable start is for the country that claims to be most dedicated to its Constitution to adhere to it meticulously above and beyond the narrowest interpretation. This is not a path without danger. As Benjamin Franklin said, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Say Hello!

3.5 Hours on the Phone

Marathon long phone calls. They're fun. The one I had tonight was with an old flame from 25 years ago. Talk about the internet and the ability to dig one another up.

What struck both of us, was the fact that so much time has passed. Yet it feels, at the same time, that it has been that long, and it hasn't at all. I think they call that ambivalence.

We filled in each other about what has happened to who, who's doing what and caught up with each other’s lives. Some of the people I knew from back then came to worse ends, some better, most the same. In each case though, the same personality reigns, yet it is subdued some by age. From what I could tell, most of us became smarter at life and bemoan the fact that “why didn't we have this information” when it counted, when we were young. Hence that old phrase, “Youth is wasted on the young.”

What you do during these calls is you subconsciously compare and contrast your life to the ones you used to know all those years ago. When you have a living witness to your life from waaay back then, it helps jog the old memory of who you were. When I hung up finally, I came away with the feeling of some satisfaction. I did fairly well so far. This isn't schadenfreude, where you secretly cheer the ugly ends and misery of another, but a feeling of fulfillment. From where and when I started and to where I find myself today, I've managed to nail a few of those dreams we have when we were young.

“So, what do you think the next 25 years will bring..if we live?” I asked her.

“We get OLDER!” she laughs.

“Yeah, I can see myself sunning myself, like a turtle on a rock, in Slater Park, half snoozing on a bench, watching the kids catch their first fish. I'd then tell them I caught a fish in the same pond in the ancient year of 1976 and they'd never believe it!”

Once in a while, strange phone calls from people I knew decades ago are great.  

My One Time Pets were as Important as your Kid

One obvious thing about being a single guy is that my idea of a “clean” home vs. that of a married female can be pretty different. Then again, I've been inside some married's home and thought to myself, “Gee, my home ain't too bad when compared to this rat's nest.” But overall when it comes to getting a Good House Keeping Seal for neatness, I fail. Then again, I'm a single guy, I can get away with anything! Did you know that you can use your floor as a shelf?

Cleaning a home is boring as hell. There's one reason why I hate it. So as I do it, my mind can devote the “duh-duh” part to the task at hand and I can think of other more entertaining things. Like you, my head does stream of consciousness, it jumps from one subject to another. What came up was a conversation I had in Mansfield a few years back.

M.says to me, “Yeah, I work a lot and they're early hours, but it's for her”. I then say that I understand, that I go out of my way taking care of the dog I have.

“NO! It's NOT the same!” he fires back.

Yeah, he just busted me in a conversation trick we all do to keep on the same wavelength as the other, you agree and claim you understand fully what the other is saying, even if you have zero amount of experience with what he's talking about. You fire off a cheap, white lie to keep the connection.

He was right. I then said, “Yeah, it's true, if my dog were to cost me over $1,000 to save his life, out comes the needle! You M, would blow your entire fortune and retirement on her if she was in that situation. What do I know about that kind of attachment to children?”

We're stuck in our own perspectives 99.99% of the time. Even if we can manage to step into the other guys's shoes and walk a mile, it's a rare occurrence as the automatic, default state of our minds is ME ME ME. I do not disqualify myself from this at all.

Which is why I can stand there sometimes and watch, in amazement, husbands work a zillion hours a week and barely have enough time for themselves. Of course, at that moment, I'm thinking from the ME perspective. “Put out that kind of effort for what?” I think. Then I have to think of the time s I did devote that kind of attention to others. Instead of giving a kid a shot at a decent future, I fought like a cat to keep three family members from slipping over the cliff due to various terminal diseases. In that light, I guess I can understand that dedication, though it was for a losing cause.

So, when I see you parents out there clawing your fingernails bloody trying to get ahead, I have to remind myself why it's done.  

No kids and I can do this.  If I get more motivation I can get that aquarium into the shed and possibly get that wool battle jacket off the banister.  That thing near the ceiling is a skyline diffuser...No wife would allow me to disfigure the living room with such ugliness, but I have to break up standing waves.  The stereo is paramount! 

G Men

"The jig's up Rocky!"

A knock knock at my door one day years ago.

I open it. Outside is a well dressed man in his early 30's.

“Hello. My name is John Cotton, Special Agent for the FBI. Might I come inside and have a few words with you?”

And of course my alarm bells start going off like mad. I thought over every sin I may have committed in the past 20 years and wondering just which one he'd like to talk about. I then mentally start rehearsing my lawyer's firm number in my head.

So I let him in, amid the dog fur, the blaring stereo and blaring German Shepherd who wants to see him die very slowly. I get the dog safely into my bedroom and come back, offering him coffee or something to drink. He declines.

“Let me tell you why I am here today.” Here it comes!

“I and another agent are canvassing your street because one of your neighbors, Paul Sarmento, is applying for a job at Raytheon Underwater Warfare Solutions. We'd like to ask you a few questions about him.”

“You're doing a background check?” I ask.

“Yes.” (Thank God said my brain...you don't have to mention the farmland some of us had on the islands of a particular river a mile east of me.)

FBI agents, the younger ones at least, and this one, look like very healthy Boy Scouts. If fact, a lot of them look lik Mormons because the FBI loves recruiting Mormons as they have a annoying penchant for being honest nearly 100% of the time. Blond, blue eyed fit and trim Salt Lake City.

I was surprised at the thoroughness of the questions. I personally didn't know the guy really. I kept saying “I don't know” and apologizing for the lack of information. He said never to worry about it. But one theme he kept coming back to was drug use.

All I could say was that the guy, a 20 something kid, looked like he belonged in college. I suspected he may have dabbled but that's what kids in college do. That's all I could offer.

The agent filled out his form, thanked me for my time and also for stowing the “rather large dog you have there “ away.

**

A Secret Service story from my brother.

He had a friend from college he ran into years later at a coffee shop in downtown Providence. They went over old times and Ken asked what this guy was doing now. “I'm retired from a gov't job.” He said. My brother thought that odd as the guy was in his early 40's and a bit young to be retired.

“I was shot during a drug deal that had gone bad in NYC.” he says. This guy was employed with the DEA as a field agent and had apparently walked into a drug deal where the opposing members had information that unearthed this DEA's cover.

“Right in the abdomen. I got with a 9mm, but it turned wild and ripped through my guts. The surgeons re-sected about ten feet of my small intestine. I was told later that it was shredded.”

He went on to say while lying in the hospital bed, he rethought his career move about wanting to work for the DEA and thought it was time to find safer work.

“I was out of work for half a year, on TDI, when I was approached by some guys from the Secret Service who had heard that I was planning on leaving the DEA. They offered me a position as a body guard/prep man/trainer and what have you.” He said he thought about it but the idea of throwing yourself in front of a bullet to save the President was to, too much.

“I wondered to myself about the Secret Service's motives, since I was already shot once, that this experience would work to my benefit and theirs....I though otherwise.”

He went on to say how weird and insular the Secret Service is. They constantly train to protect ONE man.

“They're like attack dogs. They've been trained to act on instinct and save no life at all but the President's. I swear, if it meant running over a seven year girl with the limo to save the President, they'd do it in a heartbeat. They are an odd breed with a very particular skill.”

“I declined the job offer...I wasn't into getting shot twice.”

“What do you do now?” my brother asked.

“I manage security for a Connecticut pharmacological company, sort of part time.”

Safer indeed!

The Power of Happy Horseshit Thinking (Apologies to Norman Vincent Peale)

“...death is programmed into our DNA. Nature seems to want us to reproduce and then fall by the wayside. Yet the Boomers want to hang onto its youth well into its 80s, on the theory that if you have enough time, maybe you can get your life together.”

--by someone, probably a biologist.

*****

I was chatting away with an acquaintance at the pub last night, who was near my age and she commented on the young ones who were standing near us. “They're so damn lucky. They have time, health, good looks...and look what's happened to us!”

“Yeah, true, we spent through our 20's long ago.” I say.

I tell her though they aren't blissed-out happy in Nirvana either. I ask her to remember when she was that age and if she was always bitching, complaining about “not having this” or “if only I had a better job/partner/stereo/apartment/house..then my life would be great!” I did. She did too. I tell her today's youth is no better and does the exact, same thing. I see it daily. The fact is no one is completely satisfied forever.

I've known young women who fell on the Earth pretty. They were born with a Royal Flush. The eyes, skin, subtle curves and from family backgrounds that whispered of old money...and still I found them to be wanting. Even with all life's nicer facets, they never were satisfied.

There are moments, even months of more satisfying times, then of course, life interferes with good amounts of slop to besmirch your cheeriness. In fact, if you look at it, most people are neither happy nor miserable, they tend to float around neutral most days. If I could be eternally elated I'd sure choose that, but while I'm dreaming, I'd like a pony too. The simple fact is life isn't perfect and things change all the time.

Now back to that quote from the beginning.

I've been guilty of it, as most of my generation has been. We came from the Era of Self Improvement right after the 60's spent itself out. If we couldn't change the world, we could change ourselves instead.

Primal Scream Therapy, Est, “I'm OK, You're OK” and “Looking for Mr. Goodbar” books, Lose Weight, Gain Muscle, Sy Sperling toupees, Rogaine and Viagra. The woman’s movement of “Having it All,” Equity mortgages and Montessori schools. Our generation really did take to heart Jefferson's Pursuit of Happiness to the extreme.

But there is a problem at times...REALITY.

I don't care how much you try, you cannot become a dolphin, nor turn back the hands of time to when you were 19. Even if you fake it. If you wear lycra sports pants, moonboot sneakers and have an iPhone strapped to your arm with buds in your ears, the younger generation will never fully accept you into it's ranks. As you pass from one age to another, you are forever banned from the previous one.

The funny thing is each generation has to learn this. Ponce De Leon, in some stories, searched northern Florida looking for the Fountain of Youth. This back in 1513.

So, where does this leave our Boomers?

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can,

And wisdom to know the difference.

I have a theory I've toyed with that may be proven out. The day Paul McCartney dies will finally herald to the Boomers what they actually are...old. When this reality sets in, perhaps they can manage things they can manage, and leave up to nature and time what they cannot.

And if you did have this in the beginning, then what?

My Note Excuses Me From Gym. Chin Ups Make Me Dizzy.

I've mentioned this before, but when you drive around, you fly by most of everything and never notice the details. Today, while the car was in the repair shop, I had to walk around. That's OK, I've walked all over everywhere and am used to it and in fact can enjoy it.

To get to the local Quickie Mart across from the Jet Tours travel agency here, I had walked past my old Goff Jr High school. I saw kids walking the perimeter of the grounds, in gym clothes, some not. I forgot I used to be their age, 13-14 then...they seem so small. I then wondered, “If they're in gym, why are the just walking around the grounds in a big square. I pass the gym instructor, who was telling some of the kids to “C'mon...walk faster!”

“Walk faster?” I think.

I stop for a moment to ask the teacher if Mr Such 'n' Such was still a gym teacher and was told no. He had retired several years back. I then ask what the kids are doing, he say’s it's gym class.

“Walking in a giant square around the school, is gym?” I ask

“You won't believe how hard it is to motivate these kids to do that he tells me. “It's different now. Back then all you kids were playing outside, burned calories and didn't eat at McD's five nights a week. So a major part of “gym” now is just getting these kids to move around some. I bet you never had “food awareness” classes in gym when you went...did you?”

“Nope”

“We do here.” He goes on to tell me that 13-15 year old kids here are protected by the law, cops and psychologists if they want to walk the hallways hand in hand, with their same sex boyfriends/girlfriends.

“You're kidding me?”

“No, I'm not.” he says.

(Not to sound like a homophobe, I ain't. My attitude towards everyone else is this: If you like to rape sheep, go ahead...do it...rape them all! Just do it in you own yard and leave me out of it. And please extend to me, that same convenience, if I prefer to rape llamas.)

“It sure wasn't like that when I was a kid!” says the bitchy old guy in me. I think in Jr High school, some of us dared to even ask a girl out then. LGBT issues? They were non-existant except for the revelation that Billy Crystal played a gay man on the 70s TV show “Soap.” I don't think too many of us even knew of horses of different colors then. Well, insular blue collar working class neighborhoods of Irish, Polish and Italians of the 70s weren't all that welcoming...not just yet at least.

What struck me, were seeing 14 yr old kids huffing and puffing from walking. I was no paragon of athletic abilities then, not by a mile, but I could walk all over the woods that extend into Seekonk. I could spend a blazing summer day down in those sopping wet humid wetlands with my friends, bolting sweat out of our foreheads as we rode our bikes or tried to tree a raccoon.

Well, I guess it's something if you can get these kids to walk around in a giant square of the school property. I didn't see any texting occurring either. No cells in gym!

You Can Hear Them by the Hundreds

I heard peeper toads today at sunset, finally. This is the first harbinger of spring really for me. Sure, the robins return but they don't follow a set schedule, the peepers are better at that. Very few people have seen a peeper and neither have I. They're tiny, shy and disappear soon after the first warm days of spring to do whatever peepers do under the leaf litter. The other sign is skunk cabbage, which pokes it's disgusting head out of the mud of marshes early on. You don't want to get too close to a skunk cabbage for the reason it's named. Up close they reek to God Almighty. But I have to acknowledge the fact these bizarre things are another sign.

Winter. Each one that passes I always say “I'm done with it.” There are the obvious physical pressures you have to deal with but the mental tension of chronic cold and snow are worse. After taking out the heavier clothing, re-learing to walk on craggy ice and the quiet bitching I do is all I can do to endure it. I can deal with winter but the defenses to it aren't healthy. Hiding and escaping under a quilt at night, copping out of a social event due to “ah, it's too cold to go out” and generally rolling up like a squirrel in his nest does nothing to keep me united with the rest of humanity.

One winter I once saw a nest of field mice accidentally uncovered by some EPA men at the woods bordering my town who were surveying the river banks. There were three tiny balls of grey fur, slightly stiff and cold. Once exposed to the sunlight they started to stir slightly. In a way I understood how they felt. Hunker down and survive!

But, spring is here now.

As a teen, young man in my 20's spring was a huge relief. It helped to uncover my energy and optimism. And then there were the girls, who tossed off those layers of clothing and now sported stuff that showed those all alluring curves. Life has returned.

“Spring is one, giant, big fuck.” This was said to the entire class of Biology 101 at the Life Sciences building at RIC one time. I sat in attendance while the gray hair professor tried to connect and explain to his class how life on Earth responds to spring. “The first thing is to produce energy producing leaves, the next is to sperm the entire atmosphere with pollen to awaiting flowers!” This analogy wasn't lost on the 19 year olds in the classroom.

It was never a pilgrimage of mine but it became one incidentally. I would walk around the East Side by Brown and RISDI on warm days and eventually come to the “beach” by Waterman and Benefit. These grassy commons had people lying out, playing Frisbee and I'd stop by, to gawk at people and peruse the girls from behind my knockoff Raybans. All the time warmed by that sun. It was very relaxing.

Soon enough my windows and doors will be open all day to let that breeze in. Music will waft from my stereo to the street. I can stop wearing the now ragged (and possibly slightly stinky) sheepskin sweater/jacket I have on while in this house. In enough time, I'll be barefoot as much as I can till early October.

I can now let go of that steeliness of mind one needs to tolerate -5 degree mornings. Liberation has arrived and it's about time. So I will say once again,

“I'm done with winter.”

Spring Peepers. You Usually Never See Them and They are This Tiny