Alison Jerabek.Com

Earthquake.

2011-03-18T01:15:00.001+09:00

They say tornadoes sound like a giant freight train. Or a massive swarm of bees. A loud, vocal warning of highly destructive power. Hurricanes lash out, pulverize towns like a garbage disposal, washing lives down the drain with a flood of water. A funnel drops from an ominous, boiling cloud, but there are signs before it carves its deadly path into the earth; the uptake of vapor into the greedy storm cell, the unease in the atmosphere. We can study the sky, watch for the hints that earth has decided to declare war on humanity once again, and then, marshal our forces against nature...or retreat.

We are given a choice in our destiny.

I didn't get that choice. My son, my newborn daughter, they didn't get a choice. The hundreds of thousands of Japanese who now are missing their lives, children, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, villages, they didn't get a choice. The earth buckled under our feet and there was nowhere to run to.

It's a funny thing, an earthquake. Certain things, things like a blue sky and snow in winter and gravity, aren't certain anymore. The universe laughs at our assumptions. Solids stay solid, liquids stay in oceans and we move the earth. The earth does not move us. The earthquake, an earthquake, leaves us shaken, cracked, battered. Faced with the truth of our flawed world, exposed and raw.

Truth is ugly. There is nothing uglier than the truth that you are alive, and someone else is dead. Your beautiful daughter will grow up and change the world, but someone else's beautiful daughter will not, and somehow, the world spins on and on and on.

I know much of Japan's story is written with shock, horror, and fear. But the beginning of this tale does not have to end the way it began. We can still reach out and take back some of the certainty, the control the earth stole from us that day. You can change the ending of this story, erase the words that the cruel winter weather has already begun to etch in the frost blanketing northern Japan. Please take the time to donate to the Red Cross. We cannot just sit back and let earth collect more casualties. Help save the children who survived.

Someday, they might be our salvation.

9-11-01, LTCDR Eric Cranford Died a Senseless & Unforgivable Death.

2009-09-11T09:14:00.009+09:00

09.11.01.

"Something happened. Something has gone into the World Trade Center. Oh my god!" the newswoman sobbed, her rational monotone cracking into the foreign squeak of a terrified little girl.

I blank after that, a gray fuzz of pain and fury cloaking my brave new world.

More 9-11 memories and LTCDR Cranford's story-->>

I do remember the announcement of both attacks on my kitchen radio. It was flimsy plastic, a jaundiced white. One of those screwed-into-the-underside-of-the-cupboard AM/FM only radios, with a crappy speaker that blurred, distorted, the soundtrack to my nightmare--the nation's nightmare. I do remember how personal the rising death toll felt. And I definitely remember the tears, the knowledge that nothing would ever be the same. I guess I was scared. I don't know for sure. I had nothing to compare this to, this tingly, hollowed-out emotion swirling through my gut--except for that time we hid in my bedroom closet after a bullet came through our living room window, but that was five minutes, five fixable minutes that the police could and would resolve.

This, these attacks, you couldn't fix that. You can't fix that.

Like a dehydrated, discarded corn husk, my insides were shucked out.

Eight years later, I don't need to remember those tears. Truth is, I've never forgotten them. Every September, I still cry tears of anger; tears of loss--for those who were senselessly lost in 9-11's horrific attacks; tears of gratitude--for the sacrifice of those still fighting terrorism. Today, my tears are for one of our servicemen lost at the Pentagon, Lt. Commander Eric Allen Cranford, USN. Thanks to the remarkable efforts of the 2,966 Project, I have the honor of remembering LCDR Cranford and shining the spotlight on his sacrifice, his irreplaceable life.

On September 11, 2001, LTCDR Cranford was struck down in his prime, 32 years ~~old~~ young. He is remembered as a talented aviator, as a dedicated Navy officer with a distinguished career and a keen mind, but he is also remembered as a husband and a friend. Born in the small town of Drexel, North Carolina, his childhood passion for school, church, country, and flying compelled him to choose to pursue his dreams via military service in the U.S. Navy. No slacker, he chose a double major (political science and economics) and the ROTC program at North Carolina State University as his route to getting a pilot's wings. As a helicopter pilot, he spent two overseas tours flying missions in the Persian Gulf. After being assigned to the Pentagon, he continued to work towards a master's degree. In light of his many years of service, he received several awards posthumously, both civilian and military honors, including the Order of the Long Leaf Pine (the highest service award given to civilians from his home state) and an MBA degree from the university he was attending.

I wish I could give you a better glimpse of who Eric Cranford really was, not just the cold, hard-edged statistics. Reciting his resume feels shallow, unfair to those whose lives he touched, whose lives he shared. I do know that he lived a life of selfless service. I do know that we lost much more than just a vital cog in our military. We, you, me--America--lost a man who is remembered as sweet, funny, and honorable (which, admittedly, is a pretty rare combination). A friend remembers a high school Mardi Gras celebration where " [Eric] dressed up like his French teacher, complete with corduroy pants, blue V-neck
sweater and drawn-on mustache..." Unfortunately, I wasn't able to contact his wife, Emily, in regards to this tribute, but I'm sure she will appreciate your thoughts and prayers this September. I cannot imagine her loss, her pain, her scars.

LTCDR Cranford's legacy of service lives on with a scholarship Emily established. To the best of my knowledge, you can still contribute to this scholarship fund.

Sources:
pentagonmemorial.com
legacy.com
arlingtoncemetery.com
washingtonpost.com
wikipedia.org and wikisource.org
rhsmith.umd.edu
history.amedd.army.mil

So, please, whisper a prayer today, for Eric Allen Cranford, for his family, for all those who have lost friends and family in this travesty, for all souls lost, for our brave new world. Even if you're not quite sure God is even listening, whisper a prayer, a thought, a vow, to support those who continue to fight the evil bastards who senselessly killed our countrymen eight fateful years ago.

Never forget. Never surrender.

I'm a Blogging Ninja...

2009-06-19T14:41:00.007+09:00

and a drive-by tweeter. I would apologize to my lovely tweeps and blog readers about my wayward propensities, and promise to never stray again, but we all know that I'm dirty, low-down, no-good, procrastinator.

It will probably happen again.

More-->>

P.S. Life is very purposeless without internet access! I hate moving and being forced to wait to get my ~~internet access~~ life back. :(

P.S.S. I'm in Japan now and it's kickass! Photos are forthcoming.

Redeemed: This Blog's Journey

2009-03-09T17:28:00.003+09:00

Once, long, long ago, there was a silly little soldier who liked to argue about politics, her hair, and whatever else lit the fire under her own personal hot air balloon. She annoyed the piss out of her co-workers, her family, her friends, and even the occasional boyfriend (when she wasn't busy finding a new one). One day, she was bumming around on Google, and stumbled across this novel idea known as the Blog.

Read the full story of how I made my internet fortune-->>

Never one to pass up a opportunity to start a [verbal] fight, she quickly signed up for a Blogspot account and crafted MySpace worthy ~~debacle~~ blog complete with a cheesy name and URL. [She was such a noob that she didn't know that Wordpress even existed.] Words like 'social networking,' 'SEO,' or 'RSS,' now liberally sprinkled throughout her daily vocabulary, were unknown to her virgin tongue. Hell, she didn't even have a Facebook account.

She wrote her heart out for several months and never received the teeniest bit of attention. Defeated and bored, she deleted most of her posts, set the blog's permissions to author-only, and went on an indefinite hiatus to ~~South Korea~~ a lovely tropical island with blinding white sands and endless umbrella-ed drinks.

Well, maybe not so indefinite.

The blogging world sucked her back in when she was pregnant with her son and she launched a mommy-driven blog that was centered around fashion and beauty topics. After struggling to find a good name (and floundering around without a whole lot of focus), the blog was christened Make Me a Hot Mama. It wasn't any more successful than "Love2Fight" was, but she kept on posting. Due to the fact that she ~~didn't have a dime to her name~~ was ~~permanently~~ temporarily unemployed, she then attempted to niche blog (albeit in a poorly researched and engineered niche) with Blab 'n Bytes (now Blab 'n Flab) Freak News Daily .

She made a dime. And then two. To be precise, she's joined the ranks of the many successful internet millionaires with a whopping yearly income of 240 dimes, and if Google ever gives her that money, she plans to gleefully flip FDR's shiny little head into a scummy mall fountain two hundred and forty effin times. She is a very charitable person. Thankfully, she will not waste anymore of her already wasted life throwing money in mall fountains because, as we all know, she will never pry her well-earned coin from Google's dastardly clutches.

Twitter swooped in to protect her chutzpah from, and I quote, perduring damage. Google it. Still, it was inevitable that her blogging would slowly decline from its pinnacle of bloggy correctness as she quit reading Problogger daily. She decided to screw SEO and search engines as hard as they had screwed her, and made the dubious decision to quit writing content and start writing stories. Or something like that. Most of the time.

Which brings us back to AlisonJerabek.Com, the newest old blog on the block. What's a girl to do? Blogging and Alison go to together like Rihanna and Chris Brown, in a totally healthy, mature sort of way, of course. Those posts that say they were published in 2006? Bona fide, my lovelies. Yeah, a nearly 2-year hiatus in posting is fishy, but that's how she rolls. Suck it, Google. The legend of the internet's most discombobulated and inconsistent blogger shall live on.

And all the people said,"Amen."

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When she's not busy talking about herself in the third person, Alison (AJae) twitters, mismanages Make Me a Hot Mama Magazine and Blab 'n Flab Freak News Daily, and plays mommy to an adorable little boy. In that order.