Cadet Recruiting Video Contest 11/04/2009
Attention CAP Members!! Thanks to the e-mail that the Cadet Programs team sent out yesterday regarding NCSA's, I see that an idea of mine had finally came to fruition, and is up and open for everyone! After the 'Cadet Life Video ' slideshow came out I made the suggestion to our CP team at NHQ that I thought it would be a great idea if we gave our membership a chance to show us how talented they are in the realm of video creation. I've seen just about everything (available online anyways) in regards to 'CAP videos'....some bad, and some REALLY good, and I think if the right effort was made by the right folks, we could have a great recruiting video to use going forward and that video would be created by YOU, the membership! So, starting yesterday, through 31 Jan 2010, a contest is in place to see who can create the best 'Cadet Recruiting Video'. I'm not sure why the announcement was kept so low key, but I'm here to make some noise about it, since I think it's such a great idea and a great opportunity for our members. Here is the link to the contest information: http://www.capmembers.com/cadet_programs/opportunities/video_competition.cfm Make sure you pay attention to the content restriction rules, i.e. Copyrighted Materials. Yes, cool songs make for cool videos, but if we want to be able to use the videos 'legally', then you need to use original music or find royalty free music. Unless of course you have amazing abilities to convince a record label into letting you use their music for these purposes. Good luck to those of you who decide to enter! I'm looking forward to seeing what you all come up with! Oh...and remember this is a video contest, not a slideshow contest! ;-) AFblues.com Visitor Shoutout! 08/20/2009
 Hey ya'll - Just wanted to welcome all of the visitors from AFBlues.com! Feel free to check out the site. Sure it's not as interesting as Air Force Blues, but some folks enjoy my ramblings. :-) - Feel free to leave a message too! Oh, and since you're here, read the post below about Airman Colton Read below if you're not familiar with him and his situation. He and his family really need our help! Airman Colton Read Needs Your Help! 08/12/2009
 Airman Colton Read I had another blog post I was working on, but am putting that on the back burner for right now so I can get this information out. I'm just now catching up on my favorite online comic, Air Force Blues, and I happened across information regarding Air Force Airman Colton Read and how something very tragic had happened to him during what should have been a routine surgery. 21 year old Airman Colton Read went in to have surgery on his gallbladder, a fairly common operation; and now because of an Air Force doctor's mistake Airman Read has now lost the use of both of his legs! The Air Force doctor nicked Read’s aortic artery during the operation, shutting off blood flow to his legs. Because of this mistake, Colton has had his left leg amputated to the knee and his right leg to the thigh. Now, due to someone elses error, Colton's dream of an Air Force career is ending and because of a lot of bad policy & bureaucratic red tape, Colton and his wife Jessica, are looking at having to survive on a $1600 a month, medical pension. This is wrong and the Air Force & our government needs to do more to support him and his wife Jessica.  Jessica & Colton Read Colton is now at Lackland AFB in San Antonio, TX and is undergoing physical therapy. While Colton is now on the road to recovery, he and has family needs your support more than ever. Please visit their website, http://www.coltonread.com and then contact your congressmen and senators and let them know that he needs their support and that an investigation needs to take place to prevent further incidents like this from happening again to our other service members and their families. If you've read the 'About Me' section of my blog, you know that I can imagine, if even for a small part of what Colton must be feeling. While I still have my legs, having your dreams of an Air Force career yanked out from under you can be pretty traumatic; especially with it being someone elses fault! I can only imagine what his parents must be feeling at this time. As a parent of two children, who are looking at Air Force/Miltary careers, the thoughts of something like this happening to my kids makes me want to have them rethink their career plans. Jessica & Colton, if you're reading this, know that you'll be in my family's thoughts and prayers and I'll do whatever I can to get your story out there! Stay Strong! Third Time's a Charm? I Hope So! 07/16/2009
 Tomorrow @ 0600 3 CAP vehicles will start rolling towards Alpena, MI from Grand Rapids, MI; each loaded to capacity with Cadets and three daring Senior Members and a whole ton of gear. What the occasion you ask? Well now... that would be the 2009 Great Lakes Region - North/Michigan Wing Summer Encampment. This will be my third year in a row for me to make this pilgrimage; to what most people who've been there, call their 'second home'. This will also be my third and final year acting as Public Affairs Officer for it. This may come as a shock to some, I know, but it's time for me to move on to bigger and better things. What those bigger and better things are, will remain to be seen. Do you have ideas? NESA seems like a possibility, for what, yet...maybe Archer training, Il'l have to decide. I think it would be a blast to escort for IACE. But an important thing to remember is, no matter how much you plan for something, things can change with the beat of a heart. So who knows, right? I know it's not a Coppola, or Spielberg or even a Lucas quality video production... but I dig it, and I only put a few hours into it.  Stuff for Smart Masses... Anyone who knows me personally, knows I have quite the collection of goodies from Thinkgeek.com. I've got a dresser full of black t-shirts with all kinds of geeky messages to share with the world at large; With my personal favorite, that the younger crowd likes a lot, 'meh.'. Which has been my stock outlook and response to most things as of late. This has to be, without a doubt, be my favorite internet retailer of all time. Sure Amazon.com has EVERYTHING, but ThinkGeek is the most unique, as far as I am concerned. Especially when it comes to geeky little gadgets, toys and clothing. There is always something new, and most times it'll leave you laughing...that is, as long as you get the joke. My personal favorite 'joke' being "There are 10 kinds of people in this world, those that understand binary and those that do not." ;-)  SurvivalStraps Survival Bracelet One thing I have really come to appreciate from the fine folks over at ThinkGeek is their appreciation for small, kitschy and VERY useful survival gadgetry. I would probably go bankrupt if I wasn't careful. With so many wonderful things for sale at ThinkGeek, I think I'd be broke by now if I didn't show some constraint. Now for us CAP, SAR & Emergency Services types, the new euphemism, 'GEARdo' can be a quite fitting term; and the GEARdo in me approves of everything ThinkGeek serves up to the Smart Masses. A simple search on their website for 'survival', will bring up a whole host of geeky goodies. Anything from the ingenious Swedish FireSteel, to the very sexy Van Hoy Snap Lock 2, to the ever so clever 'Survival Kit in a Sardine Can'; you're sure to find something that piques your inner survival 'gadget-<censored>' attention. One thing I found quite interesting is what is pictured above and to the right. The SurvivalStraps Survival Bracelet. This bracelet, for all intents and purposes could be the best thing you can have on you in the event of an emergency. Think of the possibilities, yep....limitless, that's what I was going to say too! I could sit here and go on and on about all the neat stuff at ThinkGeek, but I've got some other geeky things I need to be doing today! ;-) If you do intend to shop at ThinkGeek, I would kindly ask that you mozy over to my 'Secret Links' page and follow the link to ThinkGeek from there. Doing so supports this website and my bad ThinkGeek habit. Thank you...thank you very much! :-) Michigan Wing GTE - Good Times in A2! 07/01/2009
 Your's Truly, Right Seat on a Highbird Sortie Well, I had this blog post cued up to publish two days ago, but the computing gods saw fit to blast it into the ether for some reason; so here I am again, lets hope I have better luck this time. As I mentioned in my previous posting, I said I was going to be in Ann Arbor this past weekend for Michigan Wing's Guided Training Exercise, or GTE for short. This is where our CAP-USAF overseers come in to work along side of us during a Search and Rescue Exercise and point out areas of improvement for next year when we have our 'evaluated' mission and actually get scored on how we do things; and if we keep doing things the way we are doing them and improve a few little things here and there, an Excellent rating is surely ours to have. Everyone at the mission should be proud of the efforts they put in. It would have been nice to have seen a larger cadet presence at this SAREX. Not sure if it was vacations or what, but they really missed out, I think. For the cadets who were there, they had a ball, and actually seen two real ELT missions, one on Saturday evening and the other Sunday afternoon. Our Region Commander, Col Charles Carr flew in for the day on Saturday. It was good to see him again and have a chance to talk him about my new assignment at region. It's nice to have your efforts recognized, and it's even nicer to have a new fan of this blog! Thanks Col Carr! :-) Click the "Read More" for more info and photos!  Marie Cady (center) with two CAP volunteers So as I sit here trying to prepare for this weekends Michigan Wing Guided Training Exercise, I thought I'd dig into my unit's squadron history file; aka, the plastic tub with 'stuff' in it, and see what's interesting. As I rifled away at different papers, I came across the following article that was torn out of a local Grand Rapids, MI magazine. I carefully cut away the torn edge of the page and taped the crumpled bottom edge of the paper to further preserve this history. The article described the actions and accounts of one Marie J. Cady, one of Michigan Wing's founding CAP members. This was the first I had seen this, or had even heard of, Marie J. Cady. So I decided to scan the article into a PDF to share with all of you. I have also ran OCR (Optical Character Recognition) on the article to include in this blog entry for 'Teh intarwebs' to forever index and keep a record of. I hope you all enjoy it. As my unit's new historian, I will do my best to create 'YACAPB History Moments' to share with you all. I look forward to your thoughts, comments and insights on what I post here. Click 'Read More' to get the text of the article and to download the PDF file.  Cadets Seath & Curtis get thier first CAP Flight The first attempt at "Operation:GO!" was relatively successful! Especially when you take into consideration all the factors that were in play; a short lead time for planning, a conflicting date for other events, the weather, etc. The weather was really the biggest factor affecting us, as it had been raining/storming off and on for the better part of the week leading up to the event. We had the mother of all storms blow through the night before that dumped many, many inches of rain on the area; flash flooding of areas that I can't recall having ever flooded before, were going underwater, quite wild. The rain pretty much cleared out in the early AM.  (Hopefully) A Future CAP Cadet! :-) The storm system was still trudging east; which presented another issue for us, our glider tow plane and pilot were still in Flint, and the glider was in Marshall. Flint was IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) and Marshall was MVFR (Marginal Visual Flight Rules). So unfortunately, the glider flights had to be scrubbed. The weather almost caused an issue for our change of command for our group commander. Two of our color guard cadets were getting an O-Flight in from KGRR (Grand Rapids) and by the time they made it into Sparta, they had all they could do to get changed from their BDU's into their blues!  Well, in less than 24 hours from now, I'll be at the Paul C. Miller Airport (8D4) running around like a 'chicken with his head cut off', most likely, or at least I hope, with a big smile on my face. Tomorrow is "Operation:GO!" a Civil Air Patrol (West Michigan Group 703) Open House and 'Fly Day'. This event was a culmination of a few really great ideas that came together at light speed.  The idea, originally, from my end anyways, was to have an open house with a few other closer CAP squadrons and use our 'strength in numbers' to help raise awareness of each of our unit's; as in the past, trying to get anyone out to a unit level open house is like pulling teeth, especially with regards to the media. At the same time, the group senior squadron was planning an O-Flight (orientation) day with the wing glider. From a planning perspective, both of these events were set to be on the same day. Coincidence? I think not. |  Mark L. Curtis, 1st Lt, CAP
|
RSS Feed
