This Is Phyllis Zimbler Miller Signing Off

I started blogging in March with two blogs and added a third blog in June. During those months I posted my blog here because I wanted to share my information with other online people.

And then the Web 2.0 bug bit me: I've just started an online company - Miller Mosaic, LLC - to provide online information to make people's lives easier. The first website is now live at www.estateplanningforyou.com.

Suddenly I've been inundated with internet marketing strategies, keeping up on social media sites, looking for joint venture partners, and all the other responsibilities of an online business. And posting to this site has had to fall by the wayside.

I hope you'll continue to read my blog posts on the original blog sites - www.flippingburgersandbeyond.blogspot.com, www.mrslieutenant.blogspot.com, and www.dogooderscrooge.blogspot.com.

And "friend" me on Facebook or LinkedIn (under Phyllis Zimbler Miller) or on Twitter (under ZimblerMiller). Be sure to tell me from where I know you.

And thanks for reading my blog posts!

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Your Husband was in a Helicopter Crash in the Bering Sea

The "Tell-Your-Own-Story" military spouse contest sponsored by www.YourMilitary.com in connection with Lifetime TV's Season 2 of ARMY WIVES has announced the contest winners. Their names and the winning essays can be read at www.YourMilitaryBlog.com.

Here's an essay by Rose, one of the five grand prize winners:

On Wednesday, 8 December 2004, my eight-month-old son was enrolled in the Kodiak, A.K.USCG day care, where I worked. My 10-year-old daughter had Nutcracker play practice every day that week.

Nights come early in December and it felt much later than 7 p.m. when we finally walked in the door after a full day. We were living on base and knew all the neighbors. Five of the six wives in our little cul-de sac of three duplexes were married to helicopter pilots.

On this night, my husband was the only one in our little fish bowl that was deployed. Most of the husbands had come home for dinner that night and rushed right back to work. We were so close to the air station that we could hear the Search and Rescue (SAR) alarm when it went off at all hours.

On this night, no alarms went off, but the air station was buzzing well after the usual quitting time. Everyone wanted to find out the fate of the crew. For a change, no one was calling to tell me the day's gossip.

We were so busy I didn't notice that I hadn't spoken to the other wives. I just knew that my husband was deployed for the week and I had to hold down the fort. He was scheduled to be gone and would miss our daughter's play.

We rushed in the door eager to get the baby in bed before he had a meltdown. The phone rang just after we got settled. The first words I heard were, "Hi! I am calling to let you know that David is up and walking around."

I think the operations officer was calling to relieve my worried mind. Everyone knew that there had been a helicopter crash at Dutch Harbor. Everyone but me!

I responded with something like, "I am assuming there is more to this story." He told me that David's helicopter was in the water, but the crew was fine. Then he asked me if I wanted to talk to a priest. To which I replied, "You just told me that he is fine. You tell me. Do I need to speak to a priest?" Nothing made sense.

David's helicopter had gone down in the Bering Sea. He and the crew were fished out of the water. Six had died. The details were sketchy but it sounded pretty serious. David called an hour later and in a very calm voice said, "Hi, Honey. I hope you didn't cash the check yet." I didn't get it. He meant the SGLI survivor check.

I still had no clue how close he had come to dying that night.

He was flown home in the admiral's plane the next day. Christmas was especially sweet that year. He even got to see Mad in her play.

You can see the whole story of the crash on the History/Discovery Channel story "Alaska, Dangerous Territory."

P.S. Check out the newest post at the official blog for www.eMailOurMilitary.com - http://snurl.com/3ccum.

Syndicated from www.mrslieutenant.blogspot.com

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Memories From the Daughter of a Vietnam War Veteran

I asked Anna Horner, who blogs at www.diaryofaneccentric.blogspot.com, to write a guest post after she talked about her father in the review she did of MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL on her blog (http://tinyurl.com/6z9cn6). I particularly appreciated her description of visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial because Sharon Gold visits this memorial in the epilogue of MRS. LIEUTENANT.

I was seven months pregnant, with swollen ankles, sore feet, and an aching back. I hobbled a mile or so around the city, my soon-to-be husband scolding me for not sitting down to rest. But I was on a mission.

Thousands of names stretched out before me, etched into the smooth, black wall. They were warm under my fingers, brought to life by the flowers, pictures, notes, and other mementos from the ones who will never forget, who wear the memories heavy around their necks. Come hell or high water, I said, I'm doing this for my father.

It was late spring 2000. My father, who was an MP in the Air Force during Vietnam, passed away unexpectedly a few months before without fulfilling his dream of visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and paying homage to his friends and all the others who did not survive.

The war was over by the time he met my mother in late 1975, and even more time had passed by the time I was born in 1977 and my sister in 1979. But it was always there just beneath the surface.

The war was there every time my sister and I fought to get our father's attention, having lost his hearing from all the planes, or so he said. And it was there when my mother told us how she woke up with my father's hands around her neck in the midst of a nightmare.

My sister and I would stumble across pictures of our father in uniform and ask about the men standing beside him, or we threw out questions about his many tattoos or the tapestry and paintings he purchased overseas. He never said much, and we couldn't drag out any details.

One thing he said that stands out in my mind was how war protestors threw dog feces at them when they came home, how he was spit at and called "baby killer" and I'm sure many other things he wouldn't repeat to us.

He told me he spent much of his time on base, but I was only a child, so I don't know how much of what he said was to protect me. I never asked if he killed someone - I didn't want to know if the man who read us bedtime stories, took us to amusement parks, and bought us Barbie dolls was capable of that. I still don't want to know.

My father's participation in numerous VFW functions served as another constant reminder of the war, and there were many evenings where my father traded stories around the bar while my sister and I watched television or played ping pong.

Every Memorial Day, we went from cemetery to cemetery replacing flags and putting down geraniums. We handed out poppies to remind people to remember the dead soldiers, and our minivan was covered in stickers insisting that those who were POWs or MIA would never be forgotten.

When I turned 16, I joined the VFW Ladies Auxiliary, and I marched in numerous parades behind my father, showing gratitude for all the men and women who served our country during wartime.

My father and I never had a real discussion about the war until I took an English honors seminar in college - Literature of the Vietnam War. I would come home every weekend, hoping my father wouldn't be off at a VFW function so that I could tell him about the latest book we were reading.

I remember discussing the politics behind the war with him as I read Fire in the Lake by Francis FitzGerald. And when I pulled out my dog-eared copy of Tim O'Brien's If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home, my father burst out singing the song that goes along with the book's title.

He told me stories about escorting prisoners, one who slit his girlfriend from neck to navel, and another who jumped one of my father's friends in the shower. He reminisced about a baseball game and how the site was bombed only a few hours after the last pitch was thrown.

We did most of our talking during trips to the grocery store, and I'm sure he told more stories, though I foolishly didn't write them down. And I'm sure he took many more stories to the grave. I was only 22 when he died, and I thought I had all the time in the world to ask him more questions.

As I stood before the Vietnam Wall, watching people rub names on scraps of paper, I wondered what kind of person my father would have been had he not served in Vietnam. But I pushed that thought out of my mind as I walked along, running my fingers over names of people I didn't know, wondering if by chance I touched upon a friend of my father's.

As my swollen feet took me from one end of the wall to the other, I understood that my father had been willing to give up his life for his country. While I felt guilty that I was lucky and didn't know any of the names on the wall, at the same time I was grateful that my father had lived so I could do the same.

In memory of Edward Allan Bitgood, 1941-1999

Syndicated from www.mrslieutenant.blogspot.com

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Do Troops Need Cosmetics? A Unique Way to Show Our Gratitude

I asked Nancy Sutherland, sales director of Mary Kay, to write a guest post describing an important project that she is promoting. (She has her own blog at http://nancymkqueen.wordpress.com.)

Imagine it's hot, sandy with a nice breeze but you're not at the beach AND you are wearing up to 100 pounds of gear! You're an American soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan! Today is pretty much like yesterday except you are one day closer to coming home to your family.

It's the end of the day and your most anticipated activity is a nice shower and mail call. Your hands are weather-beaten, dry and chapped. Yet there's hope for your hands thanks to Operation Soldier Care.

Our troops frequently get care packages for birthdays and holidays, but what about "just because" we appreciate them now?

What is Operation Soldier Care? How did it come about?

I'll start by giving you an inside look of who these soldiers are who will be the recipients of this campaign and why you want to be part of it.

The U.S. has a total volunteer military so everyone who is serving our country willingly signed up to do so. Some of them are true patriots that come from a family with generations of military service going all the way back to the Revolutionary War.

Many of them are young men and women who come from a large family, small town, low income or other backgrounds that would not offer college as an option. (Enlisting for three to four years can give soldiers a chance for a better life afterwards with a college education.) There are also doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants and many other professionals who are reservists called up for active duty.

My husband Alex retired from the army in 2003 as a major. That has given me an inside look as to what it is like to serve overseas. Alex celebrated his 40^th birthday unceremoniously in Bosnia. I put together a care package for him that I had worked on for a month, selecting just the right things that he might enjoy. And as a Mary Kay sales director, I also assemble gifts for many of my clients to send to their loved ones overseas.

At first I thought that providing sunscreens for the troops would be my best option. But as I got creative in adding other personal care items such as body lotions, shower gels, hand creams, shaving cream and other hydrating skin products, the response was overwhelmingly positive.

Here is one of my responses:

"Great idea! Having been a U.S. Army soldier in Kuwait and in Iraq, personal hygiene items and toiletries are such a luxury. To receive a Mary Kay care package would have been a DREAM for me! I highly recommend this because it is really something useful and much appreciated - even for male soldiers - a HUGE morale booster. When I sent my husband who was deployed in the Middle East special items for his skin, he was in heaven and so so happy!!"

So Operation Soldier Care was created. I teamed up with eMail Our Military (www.emailourmilitary.com) for this project because eMOM already had the systems in place to promote this and distribute the gifts. I am matching each donation 100% so your generosity will be maximized!

To learn how you can participate in this project, go to http://tinyurl.com/57qyjx. Or order directly at www.marykay.com/nancysutherland.

Syndicated from www.mrslieutenant.blogspot.com

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Young Soldiers Are Not Taught That Killing in Combat Is Okay

In my July 27th post (http://tinyurl.com/55zq2z), National Guardsman Big Tobacco (www.big-tobacco.blogspot.com) currently deployed in Iraq provided his response to my July 20th post about post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in military personnel (http://tinyurl.com/6eu789). In that same July 27th post I put forth an insight from my husband Mitch about biblical public ceremonies of expiation of guilt for killing in battle.

Here's Big Tobacco's response to this July 27th post:

Actually, I would think that some kind of public display like that would be, in the words of an NCO, "pretty f***in' stupid."

I'm not saying that you are stupid. It's just that I can already see the looks on the faces of my men, who just want to go home, being forced into some kind of quasi-Christian ritual when all they want to do is get drunk and laid.

The one thing I hate is acknowledgement of my service. I hate it when I am in uniform and people come up to me and say: "Thank you for protecting us."

"Yeah, dude. Don't worry, you'll get the bill."

That kind of ritual would be tacked onto all of the "thank you for protecting us" press conferences and parades. The fact is that people back in World War II DID have post traumatic stress; they just drank themselves to death or destroyed their families. And people didn't talk about it.

Also don't forget that A LOT more infantrymen died back then, even from simple wounds. By Vietnam, you had fewer casualties and better medical care (i.e., 30-minute medevac) so there were more people left around to be traumatized.

There is a book by a guy named Dave Grossman, who is a former Ranger and officer who studies "killology." He wrote a book called "On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Leaning to Kill." In this book he theorizes that PTSD doesn't come from exposure to danger, it comes from the physical act of killing itself.

Our society teaches that murder is wrong. Yet we take a high-school kid, cram 10 weeks of training down his throat, and call him a "killer." Sure, he might be physically able to kill, but after the target falls, he feels bad about it. Grossman's website is at http://www.killology.com.

Take a look at World War II. A study was done after the war and it was found that only 20% of combat soldiers ever fired their rifles. Why? Because they fired at bull-eyes and a human looks nothing like a bulls-eye. The soldiers were not just afraid to kill, they weren't conditioned to kill.

So we changed the training. We started to fire at man-shaped targets. By Vietnam, we got the weapons-firing ratio up to 90%. This is operant conditioning. Think of Pavlov's dogs. Bell rings, dogs salivate. Target pops up, soldier shoots. Stimulus, response, positive feedback. Stimulus, response, positive feedback. Now we taught them how to kill, and they react and do kill, but they are still afraid to kill.

We never teach these kids that killing is OK. So they gear up, go out, and kill. Then their lives are wrecked afterwards. Here's your 30% PTSD disability, kid. Good luck finding a job.

It's better to deal with the nightmares than go through life like that.

Syndicated from www.mrslieutenant.blogspot.com.

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U.S. Military Personnel Who Served 1972-1984 Re-Joins in 2007
originally posted: July 17, 2008

Here's a guest post from Specialist Neil Gussman - he has quite an interesting story to tell about his military service. (When he's not training with the Army National Guard, he writes about the history of chemistry at Chemical Heritage Foundation, a museum and library of the history of chemistry and early science located in Center City Philadelphia.) And to read more of his writing, check out his blog at http://armynow.blogspot.com:

When I first enlisted in the Air Force in January of 1972, General David Petraeus was a sophomore at West Point. When he threw his hat in the air at graduation in 1974, I was a sergeant recovering from being blinded by shrapnel in a missile testing accident at Hill Air Force Base, Utah.

I got out of the Air Force that year, joined the Army the following year and served as a tank commander in Germany from 1976 to 1979. Our alert area was the Fulda Gap, right where the prophet of all things NATO, Tom Clancy, said World War Three would begin.

World War Three didn't happen on my watch, so I got out and went to college, and served in a reserve tank unit in Reading, Pennsylvania, until 1984. I got out for good then (I thought.) and got a job writing ad copy.

Last August, I re-enlisted after 23 years as a civilian. Writing this post I am 55 years old and have 196 days and a wake-up until my unit deploys to Iraq.

In the past year, a lot of people asked me why I joined. But the more fun question to answer is what is different about serving then and now. I can feel myself smile every time I answer that question.

What's different? I grew up in Boston. The difference is like being a Red Sox fan in the 1970s and being a Red Sox fan now. In fact joining now was the difference between playing for the 1972 Patriots (3-11) and the 2007 team (16-0).

In the mid-1970s, the sergeants who really had their shit together were in their late 20s. They were young, tough, motivated and were not combat veterans. The worst senior NCOs (not all, but a way more than there should have been) had combat patches on their right sleeves and had picked up a serious dope smoking or drinking habit in Vietnam.

I am currently in an Army National Guard aviation brigade. In the 1970s the National Guard was notorious for being badly trained. Today's National Guard is part of the total fighting force. On soldier skills, attitude, and combat readiness, my current Guard unit is better than the tank unit I served in on the East-West German border. The men and women with the combat patches on their sleeves in this army are leaders.

The difference certainly continues outside the gate. In the 70s no one wore their uniform home on leave -- at least not those of us who were going home on leave to the Northeastern US. I was proud of my uniform, but the few times I wore that uniform outside the gate, I felt hostility, like I was a foreign soldier in someone else's country.

But today if I stop at Starbucks on the way home from a drill, someone might offer to buy my coffee or the clerk might just give it to me. People walk up to me in restaurants and thank me for my service. I really wish some of the other guys I served with in the 1970s could join up for just a month or two now and get the gratitude they missed out on back when long hair was in style and we were not.

Of course some things are exactly the same:

-- O-Dark-30 is wake up time for everything - even if all we do is stand around.

-- My weapon in 1972, the M-16 rifle. My weapon today, M16A4.

-- All through the 1970s if we went to the field for training, it was crammed in the back of a "Deuce-and a-half" 2 1/2 ton truck. My "ride" at pre-deployment training this year -- the M35A2 Deuce-and-a-half truck.

-- The Army has all records on computer. So when I went to Aberdeen, Maryland, for two weeks of training, the e-mail said "Bring 10 copies of your orders." I couldn't believe it. I brought five. When I got there, I needed more. But all of the processing was in one room. Didn't matter. Every processing station needed a copy of my orders so they could collect all my records in one folder at the end of the day.

But even if I have to make 20 copies of my orders and hand them to a guy who
has a PDF of my orders on a computer right in front of him, I am happy to be
back.

Syndicated from www.mrslieutenant.blogspot.com

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Guest Post from Iraq: People Like Him Don't Do Things Like That
originally posted: July 9, 2008

Here is a guest post sent today from Iraq by U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Big Tobacco (check out his own blog at http://big-tobacco.blogspot.com):

"Don't take this the wrong way, but people like me don't do things like that. So why do you?"

I'm confused by this statement. I look across the table at my date. Her face is as perfect as a Russian doll. Her blond hair falls in ringlets around her shoulders. She is so beautiful that I am willing to forgive the question.

Yet the question haunts me. What does that mean?

Why did I release my attachments? Why did I learn to suffer? Why don't I feel special?

And don't do things like what? Serve your country?

I was like her growing up. My father spent four years in the Air Force so that he would not get drafted into the Army for two. Rich Jews from the suburbs didn't join the Army and they certainly didn't join the Infantry. Other people did that.

"Gabora tells me you are in the Army," her mother says when we finally meet. "When do you get out?"

"I'm thinking of making it a career," I say.

She almost chokes on her brisket.

I had a book in my bedroom years ago: "The Story of My Life" by Moshe Dayan. I went to sleep dreaming of thundering across the Sinai in my APC, giving the Egyptians a run for their money. I crossed the Suez Canal and set up a hasty defense as the mortars plunked into the sand. Moshe Dayan, now that was a life. If someone wrote a book about my life, would anyone want to read it?

"Is that a ninja star on your neck?" one of my Army buddies asks while I am in the shower.

"It's a Magan David," I respond.

"So it's like a Jewish cross."

"Close enough," I say.

I progress. I carry that damn Dragon anti-tank missile up and down the hills of Germany, waiting for enemies that never appear. I drive a track through the mud, relishing the feeling I get when all of us come up on line, guns blazing, dismounts screaming, shell casing tumbling to the ground. Someone thinks I am a leader. They give me a fire team.

"Hey, sarn't. Is it true that Jews have sex through a sheet?"

"No," I say. "Years ago, people would hang their tallit out to dry on clothes lines. There is a hole in a tallit for your head. Non-Jews saw the hole and made their own assumptions about its purpose."

"So you just put your head in it when you're going down?"

"Yeah, private, all the time."

I have no menorah so I kick sand over at the pistol range until I turn up nine empty shell casings. I glue them to a paint stick. We turn death into life. We use birthday candles from the dining facility. The three Jews in the battalion light the candles on the second night of Hanukkah.

"Did you see the chaplain's t-shirt?" one of my soldiers asks.

I squint at the paunchy chaplain as he orders a double hamburger in the short-order line at the dining facility. His shirt reads "Repent or Die."

"Repent or Die?" I say. "Should read repent or diet."

I realize that if my religion believed in hell, I'd probably be first in line for the elevator.

Towers fall. I step on a ribcage at Ground Zero and nothing funny comes to mind about that. I have a child and swear that I will keep Moshe Dayan's biography under lock and key. I stand at a bridge wondering how I am supposed to stop a 747 with 10 rounds from a rifle.

New wars start. The deployments come.

I get promoted to squad leader. I live at a checkpoint in the middle of the desert, wondering if something, anything is going to happen. I sit and have hot, sweet tea with the police. My G-d, no wonder everybody here is diabetic, this is like liquid sugar. We discuss music and movies. They tell me how much they would love to come to America and meet a nice American girl. They ask if I am a Christian. I know that the truth would make my squad a target of opportunity.

So I tell them that I follow the Phillies religiously.

I come home.

I break the fast on Yom Kippur with Air Force airmen after patrolling the mud-caked streets of New Orleans. My second son is born. Life returns to normal.

"So you can get out of it, right?" My neighbor asks after I tell him that I will deploy to Iraq. I live in a Jewish neighborhood in New Jersey and am the only soldier in my synagogue.

"No," I respond. "You can't get out of it."

"But you have kids?" he says. "Maybe if you talk to them, they will let you get out of it."

"It doesn't work like that."

Learn to suffer. Release your attachments. You are not special.

Some idiot makes me a platoon sergeant. Now I have 32 men and women. Many of them are poor Puerto Ricans and blacks from places like Camden, Jersey City and Newark. I'm the first Jew many of them have ever met.

They drop pennies on the floor of the barracks when I walk inside. They leave "The Passion of the Christ" on my cot. I watch it. It's a good movie, but "Braveheart" was better. They are joking, pushing me to see how much I can take. It really is endearing. As long as they are making fun of me, they like me. The day they stop making Jewish jokes is the day I better start looking under my cot for grenades.

I live a life of meetings and lists. I am on call by my lieutenant 24 hours a day. Soldiers wake me up in the middle of the night because they have a problem. I get my new rifle and now my body is whole again.

"Is that pork or turkey?" I ask the dining facility worker while pointing at a brown patty of something for breakfast.

"It is uh?" The worker says in broken English. He doesn't understand the question. "It is sausage patty."

"Thanks, dude. I'll just have some eggs."

I sit down to eat my eggs and cereal. My first sergeant comes over to my table and sits down.

"You know, I can get you a kosher meal," he says.

"I'm not special, Top," I say. "You'll never hear me complain. People like me don't do things like that."

Oh, and by the way, the blond at the beginning of this story? I married her.

And I still don't know the answer to that question.

Syndicated from www.mrslieutenant.blogspot.com

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Phyllis Zimbler Miller -- a former Mrs. Lieutenant -- is the author of MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL and the co-author of the Jewish holiday book SEASONS FOR CELEBRATION. She has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a B.A. in Journalism from Michigan State University. She has recently written the teen success guide FLIPPING BURGERS AND BEYOND: FIND YOUR OWN PATH THROUGH HIGH SCHOOL, COLLEGE AND LIFE, which is based on her coaching of young people (www.flippingburgersandbeyond.com).