I'm still not feeling that great, but now that I've started on the methylprednisone I'm feeling a bit better. But it seems that between doses I start feeling crumby again, including facial puffing.
But I have been doing a bit of looking for those MIA articles, and I think I'll just have to let it go. If I find them it will just be a serendipitous success. I've looked everything I can think of, most places more than once. I must have pulled them out for some reason, since they're so apropos to my autobiography. Be that as it may, I feel that I can't justify spending the time to look for them.
One thing I did try is online through my public library card, and they have the one journal that I'm sure one of the articles came from, but not far back enough. Since my dad retired in 1990, anything relating to the present wouldn't be all that helpful for my purposes.
So then the other tack I've been taking is going online and trying to find something that way. So now I have too many tabs open and Firefox is acting up (that happens when I have to many tabs open).
I still am having trouble finding someone who can help me with dad's DCII report. The last place I called said that I should call the agency that issued it. The document is not classified, but they don't list any of this kind of information on their web site - regarding the fields on these reports or the agency code acronyms. I assume that that's not an oversight, but intentional, which means that they might not want to be too helpful. In any case, even if I were to get the basic information, they wouldn't tell me the significance of it. I have another idea to try, so we'll see.
I wanted to post this quote that I found on another web site:
***
"Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God."
Thomas Jefferson (1743 – 1826), Third President of the United States and principal author of the Declaration of Independence
***
Well, you can just guess who Thomas Jefferson had in mind, but I'm thinking that in my case rebellion against the Vienna mission is a rather ironic fit. After all, the mission is supposed to be doing God's work, and but if the fit the description (if not exactly on the national scale) of "tyrants" then Thomas Jefferson, for one, would think that I was justified in not submitting very well. I didn't rebel very well, though, and Thomas Jefferson may not be the last word on this from a theological standpoint. Nonetheless, I liked the quote and wanted to share it for your consideration.
***
I have to go grocery shopping now because I'm out of my main dish for lunch, which is my main meal (like dinner for most people, at least in the USA). I'm feeling reasonably well after taking the steroid not long ago and the cooler evening is better for the rash as the heat aggravates it. So I should go out now.
~ Meg
Showing posts with label documentation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label documentation. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Friday, August 20, 2010
81. Documentation Issues
I've spent most of today trying to dig up whatever documentation I can find from my Vienna period. And I've also been trying to find someone to help me interpret dad's DCII report. And there's another article I know I had that I can't find. I think it was a Security Management article, and the only place near me that has it is a library that I used to work at. It was when I first came down here and promptly started getting sick, but it wasn't identified until after I'd already lost that job. It was a mess, really - I couldn't sleep at night, I was having intermittent troubles walking, etc., etc. and to top it off my boss was a witch. I was offered a severance package at least. But now I really don't want to go back there to look for it. If I had the reference, at least, I could try doing an interlibrary loan to get it, but I don't have the reference.
I'll keep looking here, though. I may have set it aside somewhere as being particularly helpful. It's certainly not a long article and as I remember it there was primarily one paragraph that was particularly enlightening. It was about the delivery of classified documents.
I've also found a few more things regarding my Vienna experience. This process is bringing back a lot of memories, but some things, like events in a calendar, I don't remember.
I still have a few more things in this file to review before we get to Vienna, but I am also developing a timeline of my time in Vienna to try to catch the major issues better and in sequence, if possible.
That's all for now though.
~ Meg
I'll keep looking here, though. I may have set it aside somewhere as being particularly helpful. It's certainly not a long article and as I remember it there was primarily one paragraph that was particularly enlightening. It was about the delivery of classified documents.
I've also found a few more things regarding my Vienna experience. This process is bringing back a lot of memories, but some things, like events in a calendar, I don't remember.
I still have a few more things in this file to review before we get to Vienna, but I am also developing a timeline of my time in Vienna to try to catch the major issues better and in sequence, if possible.
That's all for now though.
~ Meg
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
71. Documentation Issues
I've been looking through everything trying to find items from this period until my eventual return home from Vienna, and I'm finding hardly anything. I think I threw everything from this period out before my big move to Russia (this was just months after the 1991 putsch). I can think of a couple reasons for doing this, namely:
1) the memories were so bad that I just wanted to put them behind me; and/or
2) the current (at the time of leaving for Russia) situation so embittered me to the USA that I never wanted to return and when I couldn't bring everything with me, I decided that these materials were among the casualties to stay behind.
The problem with the first one is that it still results in a lack of documentation that would be helpful now and as such was short-sighted. The problem with the second one is in my thinking (granted, with not a lot of premeditation) that Russia would be any better.
This is clearly (to me at least) a case where two wrongs don't make a right. So in continuing in this endeavor I have a couple of options. I could just drop it here and simply provide the concrete evidence I do have without actually even trying to go into a chronological narration of my history, as the details against Russia will be inevitably more elaborate not only because they were more recent, but also because I have (lots!) more documentation from that period and those events.
Or I can continue knowing that this lack could work in the favor of the US, meaning they will come out looking a lot better simply by virtue of there being less evidence and fewer details.
Even so, however, there are some details that I have against the US that I don't have against Russia, such as my dad's security clearance and the FOIA response regarding SGA's possible/probable CIA income. I don't exactly have that kind of proof against the Soviets/Russians. However, even with these kinds of documentation, the claims made in my story do not necessarily follow as a logical end; they only give evidence that points to the possibility of my story, in whole or part, being true.
Another issue here, though, is that I am writing this in English in the United States, although anyone who has Internet access could read this, as long as the language wasn't a barrier. My experience is that in Russia there was more likelihood of the aspects of my story potentially damning of the USA were more liekly to be believed, and in the USA the portions of my story potentially damning of the USSR/Russia were more likely to be believed. That being said, however, there were more people in Russia also willing to believe part against their own countries than is probably true in the USA. The types of people in the USA who might be most likely to believe my story are, in my thinking, probably small subgroups not necessarily in the mainstream.
Some of the items I wish I could find now pertaining to the period 1986 to the first half of 1989 include the following:
* copies of prayer letters I sent out
* copies of detailed calendars of the time
* copies of individual letters I sent out (I had a typewriter, not a computer, at the time, so copies would not even be on my old floppy disks)
* detailed itineraries of my deputation trips
* a journal (which I didn't keep at the time, so it never existed, unfortunately)
I do have some documentation and copies of some correspondence received from others. Most of that correspondence would be about the writer, but I will scan through them and see if there are any pieces of information responding perhaps to something I'd written them, or other helpful information from those letters.
I'll continue on with my narrative with the next post, but I felt I should interrupt to explain these things.
~ Meg
1) the memories were so bad that I just wanted to put them behind me; and/or
2) the current (at the time of leaving for Russia) situation so embittered me to the USA that I never wanted to return and when I couldn't bring everything with me, I decided that these materials were among the casualties to stay behind.
The problem with the first one is that it still results in a lack of documentation that would be helpful now and as such was short-sighted. The problem with the second one is in my thinking (granted, with not a lot of premeditation) that Russia would be any better.
This is clearly (to me at least) a case where two wrongs don't make a right. So in continuing in this endeavor I have a couple of options. I could just drop it here and simply provide the concrete evidence I do have without actually even trying to go into a chronological narration of my history, as the details against Russia will be inevitably more elaborate not only because they were more recent, but also because I have (lots!) more documentation from that period and those events.
Or I can continue knowing that this lack could work in the favor of the US, meaning they will come out looking a lot better simply by virtue of there being less evidence and fewer details.
Even so, however, there are some details that I have against the US that I don't have against Russia, such as my dad's security clearance and the FOIA response regarding SGA's possible/probable CIA income. I don't exactly have that kind of proof against the Soviets/Russians. However, even with these kinds of documentation, the claims made in my story do not necessarily follow as a logical end; they only give evidence that points to the possibility of my story, in whole or part, being true.
Another issue here, though, is that I am writing this in English in the United States, although anyone who has Internet access could read this, as long as the language wasn't a barrier. My experience is that in Russia there was more likelihood of the aspects of my story potentially damning of the USA were more liekly to be believed, and in the USA the portions of my story potentially damning of the USSR/Russia were more likely to be believed. That being said, however, there were more people in Russia also willing to believe part against their own countries than is probably true in the USA. The types of people in the USA who might be most likely to believe my story are, in my thinking, probably small subgroups not necessarily in the mainstream.
Some of the items I wish I could find now pertaining to the period 1986 to the first half of 1989 include the following:
* copies of prayer letters I sent out
* copies of detailed calendars of the time
* copies of individual letters I sent out (I had a typewriter, not a computer, at the time, so copies would not even be on my old floppy disks)
* detailed itineraries of my deputation trips
* a journal (which I didn't keep at the time, so it never existed, unfortunately)
I do have some documentation and copies of some correspondence received from others. Most of that correspondence would be about the writer, but I will scan through them and see if there are any pieces of information responding perhaps to something I'd written them, or other helpful information from those letters.
I'll continue on with my narrative with the next post, but I felt I should interrupt to explain these things.
~ Meg
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