What was the biggest boondoggle of 2009?

The worst mistake?
Who made the most self-serving comment?
What was the largest looming disaster?
By the same token, what was the best public policy decision?
Who said just the right thing at just the right time?
What was the best solution to what had been a lingering problem?
Who most obviously put the public good ahead of the politically expedient?
We have some ideas, but what do you think?

Around this time of year, newspapers all across the country start looking back over the events and people that made news during the passing year.

We cobble them into lists or retrospective pieces to publish near the first of the year.

This year, we’ve decided to attempt enlivening that old newspaper tradition a little by going to you readers for ideas.

We’re going to roll out this new annual feature in the next issue of Coast, our monthly magazine.

We’re modeling the effort loosely after the Bum Steer Awards in Texas Monthly.

We’ll figure out what to call it eventually.

Perhaps we’ll play off the local Dickens connection and call it simply “The Best of/The Worst of.”
You’re welcome to offer suggestions about that, as well.

In the meantime, call it “The (Fill in the blanks) of 2009.” As in “The Most Astounding What Were They Thinking Moment of 2009” or “The Least Appreciated Good Idea of 2009.”

You get the picture (The Least Gotten Picture of 2009?).

The idea is to achieve some reader interactivity, which the brains in this industry say is important, and perhaps achieve that old-school newspapering goal of afflicting the comfortable while comforting the afflicted.

It may also be fun.

Post suggestions here.

We’ll pick the ones to publish in the traditional more or less arbitrary fashion.

I may have had a hand in the birth of new Texism — those sayings particular to the Lone Star vernacular such as “That dog won’t hunt.”

It happened like this:
Me: “Friendwood’s having a barn raising?”
Reporter: “Yeah.”
Me: “Is it some sort of fake barn?”
Reporter: “No. It’s a real barn.”
Me: “What are they going to keep in it?”
Reporter: “A fake cow.”
Me: “It’s a real barn for a fake cow?”

I have not figured out exactly what this potential Texism might mean, but it sounds good, and that’s the first test.

I can hear a mean Texas tort lawyer saying it. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that’s a fake cow in a real barn!”

Or a county judge describing somebody else’s pet project as “building a real barn for a fake cow.”

Most attempts to coin new old sayings fail, for obvious reasons.

My friend John is master of it, though. Many of his best ones, sadly, cannot be recounted here.

A few can:

John on fast things: “It went faster than the coffee at an AA meeting.”

John on being distracted by small things: “When you’re setting in a ant bed, you think about ants.”

You have to say “ain’t bed” to get the full effect.

Few have John’s talent. People, especially screen writers, typically come up something like: “It was cold as a road-killed armadillo on the highway between Lubbock and Amarillo during a whistlin’ blue norther on San Jacinto Day.”

Such counterfeiters should be forced to move to Colorado.

We do need some contemporary expressions, though. Farm and ranch people coined most of the authentic ones.

Some still hold up.

“All hat, no horse,” for example, may be more useful today than ever.

Most get less familiar with each generation off the land, though.

What kid knows when the cows are supposed to come home or what exactly hog-killing weather feels like?

What are your favorite sayings (recall that this is a family publication)? Do you have any contemporary candidates?

Recently an old buddy of mine talked me into joining a social networking Website for people who’ve been in the Army. It’s Facebook for old guys who want to reminisce about The Day.

When you sign up, the thing asks for a nickname. Some of these guys have picked some doozies. I say picked, because there are two kinds of nicknames: Real ones people pick for you, and bogus ones guys pick for themselves in hopes they’ll stick.

They seldom do.

There are a lot heroic names in the site — Comanche-this and Apache-that, Rattler and Warrior and Eagle and Cobra.

These just don’t ring true.

“Have you seen Comanche?”

“Yeah he’s in the mess hall with Rattler and Cobra.”

I don’t see it.

I knew a sergeant once named Rosser. He tried to vote himself the nickname “Rock.” “Rock” Rosser is very cool, but the name just would not stick, no matter how hard he worked at it.

Meanwhile, a sergeant named Montgomery was dubbed “Rock” without ever asking. The name fit and it came as if issued along with his boots.

My nickname was inevitable. I’m not sure that a military formation legally can exist without a “Smitty” on the rolls.

There are other inevitable nicknames. All medics are called “Doc,” for example. Most first sergeants are “Top,” for top sergeant.

Others got more creative and elaborate nicknames, which was not always a boon for them.

A good buddy of mine was called “Baby Huey,” because he looked like the comic book character. Not very heroic, and it stuck forever.

A soldier named Burkle had the most elaborate nickname I have ever heard — “Baby Burkle the American Dream.” I have no idea where “Baby” came from, but the rest was because he drove a hopped-up Chevy Camaro. That’s pretty deep for a nickname, when you think about it.

Edwards and Alberts seem to get nicknames more than people with other first names. There’s always a “Big Ed” and a “Weird Al,” or a “Big Al” and a “Crazy Eddie.”

Sometimes the nicknames were pretty blunt. There was a sergeant named Dan whose hands shook enough to notice all the time. He was “Shaky Dan” all the time, even to his friends.

Some got nicknames and may not have known it.

There once was a sergeant major whose left leg was shorter than his right. The troops, very quietly, called him “Thumper.”

Likewise, a staff sergeant had lost his top front teeth and wore a dental plate, which he had to take out and put in his pocket whenever he made a parachute jump. He had rather pronounced incisors. He was called “Fang.”

Some people had earned nicknames that none of the younger among us had earned the right to speak or speak about.

I recall a sergeant first class who had been in Vietnam with the 25th Infantry Division. He had stenciled “Rat” on his gear and had it engraved on the blade of his K-Bar knife.

I always wondered about that name, but it was clear to me that I had no business asking about it.

I had no trouble imagining this man disappearing, rat-like, down a hole with that K-Bar knife in hand.

And there was a first sergeant once who, company legend had it, emerged from the Battle of Ia Drang in Vietnam with the nickname “Ice Pick Willie.”

None of us youngsters in the company dared say it above a whisper as we speculated about what on earth he must have done to get such a name.

The first sergeant was small and quiet, easy-going as far as first sergeants go. He could look at you in a certain way, however, and you could imagine how he might have gotten a name like “Ice Pick Willie.”

I try to imagine how a person might get a nickname like “Eagle” or “Warrior,” and I just can’t do it.

People from elsewhere I run across here and there always are asking:

“Has Galveston come back?”

Or

“Will Galveston ever come back?”

Or

“When will Galveston be back?”

I have no idea how to answer. What does it mean for a city to “come back?”

It’s a rhetorical lead slug akin to one a former mayor used to always be dropping.

He would say “we need to move this island forward,” as if that were a detailed statement of policy. Every time I heard it, I’d imagine the island moving forward at about 15 knots, running aground on Pelican Island, and sinking.

I would file the “back” questions with “how ya doing?” and “what’s up” except all the other cues — the earnest tone, the steady glaze — indicate my interrogators want a real answer.

I suppose “back,” like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

So, I put it to you: What does “back” mean, and how will you know when we get there?

While the idea of spending a lot of money to study the feasibility of building some sort of dike around some part of the island is all well and good, as far as it goes, it lacks the vision needed to be a truly first-class boondoggle. And in these times of trial, first-class is what we need.

Consider that we’re not talking about something that’s actually going to be built, but something to be studied to appease a constituency, then shelved.

In the first place, the project would cost a vast amount. I don’t know how much, but the number would contain more zeros than a political convention.

And thanks to the combined effects of George W’s War on Terror, and Barack Obama’s efforts to pull Free Market Capitalism from the hungry maw of Free Market Capitalism, the country is broke. We’re writing checks now that your great-great grandchildren will have to cover.

Second, for good or ill, the age of grand civil engineering projects has passed. Based on my rough, preliminary calculations, the environmental impact assessment alone would require between 15 years and 400 years to complete, more or less.

That’s not counting litigation from people up- and downstream of the project who may not sit quietly while their flooding is worsened for our benefit.

So, since the topic at hand is a study, rather than a project, why half step?

The flaw of the dike plans is that they presume to study only how to stop flooding. What about wind? We don’t want to end up like the proverbial generals who planned to fight the last war, rather than the next.

That’s why I’m proposing we study building a giant glass pyramid to enclose the entire island, and such adjacent land as necessary for the design. Think of it; we could study not only ways of controlling occasional immense wind and water events, but also the very climate itself. We could study the possibility of incorporating a retractable roof and erosion-control devices.

My associates and I can produce this study for less than $500,000. Not a lot less, you understand, but less. Collectively, we’d employ decades of skill and experience at stringing words together so that they appear to mean something. We’d use a computer to sham up some pictures and charts — pie, graph and bar. We’d even implement all of the most impactful, world-class, cutting-edge, mission-critical words and phrases.

We’d think globally, act locally, embrace community buy-in, be user-centric, print the whole show on eco-friendly paper and deliver a seamless PowerPoint display.

Act now. This is a limited-time offer.

A reader noted Friday that the name “Galveston” is part of D-Day history in at least one instance. One of the missions assigned during the Allied invasion was code-named Galveston.

The code referred to a mission assigned to the 325th Glider Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division. The 325th is still around today as an airborne infantry regiment in the 82nd’s 2nd Brigade.

Back in the 1980s, one of its battalions kept live chickens as mascots; I forget which or why. By “kept” I mean hens roamed around at large in the battalion headquarters, the floor of which in spots was scattered with chicken feed.

I know this because I was billeted just north along Ardennes Street at Ft. Bragg, N.C., with the 2nd Battalion of the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment. One day I was assigned to drive a jeep for somebody in the 325 who rated a jeep and driver. I never did find out who that was. I had just made corporal and was a fire team leader in a rifle squad, not a jeep driver, so I really resented the assignment.

The 325 had been put on alert for an annual “readiness” evaluation, the sort of dog-and-pony show that makes or breaks the careers of officers during peacetime. When I arrived, the HQ was encircled with concertina wire and enveloped in a dense cloud of paranoia. A major (majors, as far I could ever tell, exist solely to aggrieve enlisted men) met me at the wire and decided I was some sort of spy sent to end his career.

He quizzed me for the details of my orders, which consisted of something like “Cpl. Smith, take that jeep to the 325, A-SAP.” I finally was allowed though the wire and about 2 feet inside the headquarters building and told to sit on a wooden bench right outside the sergeant major’s open door so he could keep an eye on me.

And he did. I sat on that bench with two Leghorn hens pecking around my jump boots and that sergeant major staring at me for a long time. He was tall and lanky and had a huge wad of chewing tobacco in his cheek. He would stare at me for awhile, then slowly pivot his head toward an open window, keeping his eyes on me as long as possible, then quickly turning, spit and snap his head back around toward me. I suppose he expected to catch me working a spy camera or tying a coded message to a hen’s leg.

The intense scrutiny began to wear on the sergeant major. His eyelids drooped and gravity pulled him farther and farther back in his desk chair until he was in full recline, like a man in a dentist’s chair. He began to snore. This probably was not indicative of the sergeant major’s character as a soldier. He probably had not been asleep for a long time. In fact, sleep deprivation may explain everything about the 325 that day, except the chickens.

One of the main roles of Army NCOs is to teach other soldiers. From the sergeant major that day I learned that sleeping head-down while snoring and chewing tobacco is ill advised. The snoring soon changed to an odd hacking. Even the hens stopped pecking to look. The hacking changed to full-on gagging. The hens moved to the back of the building. I sat wondering which would be worse — saving the sergeant major with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and maybe winning the Soldiers Medal, or letting him die, being court marshaled and sent to the stockade at Ft. Leavenworth. I still haven’t decided.

After awhile, the sergeant major shot to his feet, spat his chew out the window and clung to its frame dry heaving. I diligently observed the ceiling, my boots, the hens and the little piles of chicken feed. When he regained his bearing, and the power of speech, the sergeant major inquired about why I was just sitting there and suggested I do something useful such as sweep the floor.

So I swept, even though the broom really didn’t fit my hands anymore since I’d been promoted to corporal. I swept little piles of chicken feed into bigger ones, swept those here and there and occasionally got to smack a hen with the broom. As I swept, the battalion assembled and began boarding trucks bound for Pope Air Force Base and a place called Green Ramp from which the 82nd launches airborne operations. The major returned and he and the sergeant major collected their helmets and packs and made to leave.

I asked whether I might also leave. The major looked at the sergeant major, who looked at the major and then they both looked at me with my broom among my neat piles of chicken feed and harassed hens. Both major and sergeant major looked uncertain and suspicious, as if the success of my whole plot hinged on that answer.

“No,” the major said. “Follow us to Green Ramp.”

So I did. And I sat there in the jeep for three or four hours while troopers of the 325, the major and the sergeant major, minus the hens, boarded C-130 Hercules transport planes and flew away. And then I drove back to the 508th.

After I parked the jeep, the sergeant first class who’d sent me on the hen-chase asked how things had gone.

“Fine,” I said.

Some supporters of controversial SB 2556 are asking for the public’s trust, while acting in ways that inspire the opposite.

For example, James Kelso, charged with keeping the University of Texas Medical Branch and the Galveston National Laboratory in compliance with freedom of information laws, told me and a Daily News reporter, and apparently told a Dallas Morning News reporter, that someone had requested “door access codes” for the laboratory.

That phrase conjures images of a keypad on a secure door and at least implies someone sought information about how to enter the laboratory.

That’s scary. It’s also not true.

What Edward Hammond, formerly of the watchdog group the Sunshine Project, requested was “door access logs."

Not the same thing, of course.

While Kelso implied some one sought to breach the laboratory, what Hammond pretty clearly wanted to do was document who was coming and going from it.

Medical branch officials have used that request as justification for the sweeping change proposed in SB 2556.

It’s interesting then that the Texas attorney general denied Hammond’s request for logs, a mere list of names, using the existing law.

Likewise, state Sen. Joan Huffman, in defending the bill she authored, said someone had requested the routes and schedules of trucks carrying deadly organisms to and from the laboratory.

That’s scary, too. It’s also not true.

Hammond asked for copies of material transfer agreements, which are contracts between the national laboratory and other facilities with which it shares research material — the viruses and bacteria — and research data.

Even if those contain such security sensitive information as truck routes and itineraries, they also certainly could be withheld under the existing state law, which exempts from disclosure:

“Any record, including security plans or code, the release of which would jeopardize the security of an individual against physical injury or jeopardize information or property against theft, tampering, improper use, illegal disclosure, trespass, unauthorized access or physical injury.”

Medical branch officials said the attorney general’s refusal to exempt Hammond’s request for material transfer agreements cost them an important collaboration with the University of Pittsburg.

Pittsburg officials were worried that honoring Hammond’s request would disclose the names of their researchers and breach security, medical branch officials said.

But in a letter to the attorney general objecting to Hammond’s request, University of Pittsburg officials never mentioned security, nor ever sought to redact the names of researchers.

Instead, they were very interested in protecting a proprietary interest in data they wanted to patent.

It could be that the state law needs tweaking to better protect proprietary information of third-parties, but that’s not what Senate Bill 2556 would do, and not what the medical branch has claimed is its intent.

From the beginning, medical branch officials have argued they need this change to bring state law in line with federal law.

Doing so would afford their employees better privacy protection and enhance security.

But state law already exempts:

“Information confidential under other law. Any record that is confidential or exempted from disclosure under a state or federal constitutional provision, statute, or common law ... .”

That’s about as aligned as laws get.

Could it be that Senate Bill 2556 is so vastly broad because the medical branch wants exemptions beyond even what the federal law affords?