Decommissioning

While the new frigates get all the media attention, the 1st Generation Navy missile gunboats are getting ready to be decommissioned.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

I borrowed the passage below from wikipedia that describes how Dylan Thomas tries to use this poem to motivate his father who was a former militant man. The passage is especially relevant.

Thomas watched his father, formerly in the Army, grow weak and frail with old age. Thus, the speaker in his poem tries to convince his father not to give up to death without a fight. The speaker addresses his father by using wise men, good men, wild men, and grave, or serious, somber men as examples to illustrate the same message: that no matter how they have lived their lives or what they feel at the end they should go out fighting. However, we are subtly reminded throughout that their rage will be ineffectual in the face of death. It is one of his most popular, most easily accessible poems, and implies that one shouldn't die without giving death a battle or fighting for one's life

Busy.