There and Back Again

          That morning we hardly talked about it at all.  Robert already knew and we told Carson on the drive home from school.  We had planned a get together with friends and family for that Friday so when we got home we went into pre-party mode.  Food was already cooking, wine and tea were purchased and brewed respectively, and the inside table and the outside chairs were cleaned off.

            The children ate outside around the fire pit while the adults sat around the table.  There was no consensus of not talking about it; we just spoke of what we usually do.  People commented on the inclusion of cranberries in a salad or talked about being caught up on their favorite TV shows or what movies they wanted to see.  After dinner we examined wine labels like archeologists over shards of pottery like we knew what we were talking about, and decided which dessert we wanted.  Or just took a sampling of each.   

            People congratulated me on finally finding employment, said our house looked great with the halls decked, agreed that Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Riviera Paradise -which was playing in the background- was a pretty good tune, probably drank too much, definitely ate too much, and generally relaxed from a long week that got a little longer Friday morning.

            The kids were sent to bed and mom and dad crammed as much as possible in the dishwasher before following them.  Sleep came both gratefully and quickly.

            The next day Carson said simply, “I want to see The Hobbit.”  Our finances won’t swing a first run movie excursion right now so I told him maybe after Christmas.  Likely after the new year when paychecks start coming in again.  He wandered around the house muttering the cry of the pre-teen, “I’m sooooooo bored.”  I suggested he read a book, perhaps, oh I don’t know, The Hobbit.  He instead asked if I’d read it to him.  At first I was tempted to tell him he’s too old to have books read to him, but then I decided, why not.

            We lay down side by side on his bed.  I read about Riddles in the Dark and the escape from goblins.  By the time I was describing entering the dark and brooding forest of Mirkwood and struggling with the names of 13 dwarves -I think they are Fili, Kili, Thorin, Bombur, Dasher, Dancer, Groucho, Stucco, Romney, Speedo, Fantine, Prius, and Fiscal, but I could be wrong on a couple of those- Robert came in and lay down on my other side.  I caught a glimpse of Andrea in the doorway snapping a picture with her phone.

            There is something pure and simple about reading to your children.  Something that I know no matter how  many times I did it there still could have been many more.  I haven’t read to them out loud in years so it was nice to come back again.  I know that their innocence is a shadow of what it used to be.  I know they know the horrors of what happened last Friday, but for maybe a half and hour or so they were safe in their beds, warm in their beds, visualizing those forests and caves, and fat and silly dwarves falling asleep in enchanted streams, and a father and mother who love them and will protect them forever.

            I hope their last thoughts as they fell asleep were of fantastic worlds full of magic, where the good guys win and the bad guys always loose.  I know what mine were.

One Man's Ceiling is Another Man's Floor

“Dear Corinthians, how are you?  I am fine. Come down to Rome sometime.”

-Dave Thomas’ late night priest character from SCTV adlibbing one of Paul’s letters to the Corinthians when his Bible accidentally closes on live TV.

An Okalahoma teenager and his friend were drinking.  They got in a pickup and for some reason the driver swerved off the road and hit a tree, ejecting his friend who died.  Tragically commonplace.  The blood alcohol level in the driver was 0.07 percent, just under the legal limit for an adult, but far above the legal limit for a 16-year-old which is 0.00.

            He pled guilty and was sentenced to 4 years to life with parole.  But the judge said he didn’t have to go to prison if he graduated from high school, spoke about the evils of drug and alcohol use/abuse, took periodic drug tests, and oh yes, went to church every Sunday for 10 years.

I was raised Catholic.  It was pretty much expected that I to go to mass every Sunday until 18 or so.  I don’t remember the day my parents actually said I didn’t have to go any more, or if they ever did, but I do remember how much I grew to dislike church.  To me mass (church) was the same thing every week, literally, the exact same thing.  We would repeat prayers precisely as we said them the previous week, and the week before, and the week before ad nauseam.  Give me a few minutes and I could probably remember the Profession of Faith.  The priest would get up and repeat what he had probably said a thousand times, word for word before that morning, and then deliver (what was to me) an uninspiring sermon, most of which was reciting long passages from the Bible, Paul’s letters to Corinthians and such; I don’t remember a single point from a single one. 

I would watch the clock, daydream, flip through the hymn book or the missalette; anything to make the time go by. It got to the point for me that I would put off going until the final service of the weekend, 8:00 PM Sunday night, so I could sit in my dad’s car in the darkened parking lot where I would listen to the radio instead of going in.  I feel bad about that now with my parents gone and all, but I can’t change it.

Maybe it was and undiagnosed ADD, maybe the priests were just going through the motions, maybe I was lazy, but I feel I got absolutely nothing from the hours I spent in a church pew.  I was curious about God and faith though.  I joined the Christian group Campus Life in high school, maybe at first to see if I could meet girls rather than to build a strong faith, but I did show up and I did listen.  But my constant questions to the poor, under-prepared counselors about why they believe and how they knew, and my obvious dissatisfaction with their answers left both of us frustrated and eager to move on.  I quit after awhile, leaving both faith and those girls I wanted to meet behind.

There are people I love and respect for whom church is the greatest joy of their week, their lives.  I look at them and I get a little jealous.  What did they see that I didn’t?  Were the people working at their church better at conveying the message than those at mine?  Did/do I not have the intellectual chops to “get it?”  Why does something that brings utter happiness to them bring only boredom and frustration to me?  Why is their reward my punishment?

Over the years I’ve tried to find some form of faith that works for me.  I’ve prayed, I’ve talked to some of those loved and respected people from the previous paragraph, and I’ve read.  But I guess I’m still the kid sitting in his father’s car behind Sacred Heart Church on Clinton and Cedar in Fresno, listening to ELO or Led Zeppelin, waiting until it’s time to go home.

Freeways of Tolerance

The City of San Ramon sits on Highway 680 between the Cities of Walnut Creek and Pleasanton, along the commute between the Central Valley and Silicon Valley, with workday traffic somewhere between bearable and infuriating.  I drove from Fresno to San Ramon and back on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, what arguably could be one of the busiest travel days of the year.   No, I’m not a glutton for punishment but rather a desperate job-seeker who had been granted an interview for that day only, and like the fisherman who gets strong nibble at a hole that he thought had long ago been fished out, I needed to keep my line in the water.

I hate driving on freeways.  I’m using the work “hate” here on purpose and specifically.  I really, really don’t like it.  I’m not a great driver.  Probably not even a good driver.  I get distracted, I get stressed, and I am quick to judge my fellow motorists, especially when they merge.  (Here’s a tip: the on ramp is designed so that a merger can get up to freeway speeds before he/she needs to commit to said merging.  Please do so.  Oh, and freeway traffic has the right of way.)

Weird things happen on freeways.  I once saw a convertible in North Bakersfield zip from the far left lane to the right shoulder, while the driver relentlessly beat something unseen in the back seat with the steering wheel locking device The Club.  I once saw a semi coming down the north side of the Grapevine with two wheels fully engulfed in flames, and a guy hanging out the passenger side door with a fire extinguisher waiting for it to slow down enough to jump.  And back in the early eighties when I drove LA freeways a lot, I saw this.

So here I was, driving the majority of a 165 mile, each way, journey on those hated freeways.  Fully expecting to be miserable for somewhere between three and much-greater-than-three hours. 

But that didn’t happen.

I started early, real early.  My appointment was at 10:00 but I left home at 5:30, well on the side of caution.  I arrived at 8:50.  Was there traffic?  Yes, there was traffic.  As I motored up I-5, there were so many RVs lined up at the rest stops they looked like dealerships.  Semi-trucks moved along in long convoys so close to one another that they might as well have had their bumpers tied together.  There were work trucks with and without trailers, SUVs with extra cargo pods strapped to the roof, and sedans with heavy and drooping trunks.  There was traffic and lots of it.

But I was among professionals.  Professionals seasoned by years of weathering Altamont Pass williwaws, Livermore construction, and accidents and breakdowns that pop up more often than Starbucks franchises.  Simple put; we moved along.  Sometimes we zipped down like leaves on a breeze, other times we clogged up like cigarette butts at a storm drain waiting our turn through the chute, but simply put, we kept on truckin’.

So a quick thank you to the drivers of the East Bay commutes.  I wouldn’t want to do it daily, but if that ever become necessary, I may abandon hate and replace it with… tolerable. 

Signs, Signs, Everywhere a Sign

             In September of 2004, Dad and I took a cross-country drive.  The high water mark for our trip was the Gettysburg National Monument (which ironically has its own high water mark).  That is where we turned back and where the Union turned Lee and the Confederacy around.  Somewhere along the way, after noticing that some cars motoring along the amber waves of grain sported Bush or Kerry bumper stickers, we decided to take an extremely informal poll about the then upcoming election.  We would count the respective stickers and figure who would win that election by using a complicated algorithm; whoever had the most bumper stickers would win.  John Kerry left George W. Bush eating theoretical dust.  Well, it was Kerry that ended up being the dust eater that November.  But I suppose we should have known that.  After all, there were far more stickers for “Shit Happens.”

            This recent election I noticed far fewer bumper stickers.  A couple of “NObama”s, a Romney here and Obama/Biden there, her Mitt, there a Mitt, but not everywhere a Mitt, Mitt.  That being said, there were a lot of yard signs.  I’ve always wondered who puts up signs for a political candidate in their yard.  No one I can remember knowing ever has.  Do they get paid for that?  Do they have to pay for them?  Do those signs work or do they have to a placebo effect; allowing the supporter to feel like they’re helping when in fact they may just be just pissing of the gardener who has to move it and put it back every week?

            Trying to determine the outcome of an election by yard signage proved unreliable at best.  In the more affluent neighborhoods Romney signs, where there were any, took the day, but in the less affluent burgs, there really wasn’t a dearth of Obama placards that I could tell.  There were few signs at all.  Taking the lesson I learned from the great Shit Happens debacle of 2004, when voting on Tuesday, I probably should have just written in one of the names I saw on the most lawns over the past year; For Sale, Price Reduced, or Bank Owned.

            When we lived in Auburn there is an interchange at highway 80 and Bell Road that sees a lot of traffic because 80 is the only route through the Sierras that is open all year.  Understandably during elections political signs popped up like dandelions at each corner of this interchange.  Except for one.  On that corner, the owner of the land presumably, put up a sign that said, “No political signs.”  There was however a piece of cardboard one day that had scribble on it, “No Carpool.”  I don’t know if this was a statement, lament, or informational.  If I found the person who put it up, my only response would have probably been, "Shit Happens."

Burning Flares

“Is there gas in the car? Yes there’s gas in the car.”

                              -Steely Dan, Kid Charlemagne

On Thursday I’m scheduled for an interview with the County for an IT position.  That would be Placer County.  Placer County stretches from the Sacramento suburbs though the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the Nevada State line.  The position would be in Auburn, the county seat, which as it happens is just about 200 miles from my front door.  Thankfully the interview will be over the phone.

Should I be offered the position, and should I accept, although I don’t see myself turning down any offer at this point, either my family and I would move to Auburn like we did back in 2006, or I would move by myself and continue to look for employment closer to home, hoping someday to return.  My likely tiny apartment would serve as a weekend getaway for the rest of my brood, or I would make the drive to Fresno on weekends to try and retain the family unit.

            Does applying for jobs hundreds of miles away make sense?  Is it logically sound to apply for a job from so far away when it’s likely that there will be local applicants?  In this day when relocation assistance is so far removed to have dropped into fable, is it wise to apply remotely?  Would a business consider looking at an applicant from so far away, running the risk that after the entire hiring process the prospective employee might decline an offer, prompting said business to start over from scratch?

            Yes I’ve heard the “we’ll retain your application on file should another position come up,” but I believe that like I believe the check is in the mail.

            But back to applying remotely and back to logic.  Logically it makes sense to stay in my yard when asking for work, but perhaps there are times when acting illogical is the logical thing to do.  In an episode of the original Star Trek show a number of the crew, including Spock, Bones, and Scotty among others, were marooned on a hostile planet when their shuttle threw a rod or something.  After the red-shirt crewman was killed by giant cavemen, Scotty used the group’s phasers to give the shuttle enough power to lift off.  But once out of the atmosphere, it was determined that they could not achieve orbit and would fall back and burn up.  In a move that smelled of emotional desperation, Spock jettisoned and ignited the remaining fuel in what the others thought was a last ditch effort to break away from the planet’s gravity.  It didn’t work.  Bones said something about Spock abandoning his strict adherence to logic but just when it looked like the red-shirt guy had been given the easy way out, the Enterprise appeared and scooped (beamed) them up.  Kirk had seen the trail of burning fuel.  Spock made some snarky comment about acting illogical being the logical thing to do and everyone had a good laugh.  Star Trek, is there nothing it can’t teach us?

I have to write in the names and contact information of six businesses I’ve applied to every time I fill in the form for unemployment benefits, but other than that no one other than me is tracking where I apply for work (I’m doubtful that anyone at the unemployment office reads those entries but they are all true and verifiable).  But I’m ensnared in a no quit scenario where I must keep trying to find work because the alternative unthinkable.  But there are days when there is nothing, absolutely nothing out there locally.  So that’s how I ended up interviewing at a small Catholic College in Oakland, at a broadband fiber provider in Utah, at a world class aquarium in Monterey, and with, believe it or not, a telecommunication company in Illinois.  I was this close to moving to Champagne. 

Then there is karma.  Will the employment gods bestow upon me a cubicle and paycheck if I only apply within the greater Fresno area?  I’m not taking any chances.  So every day I search first in Fresno then I expand my search.  It doesn’t always reach to Illinois, but as far as the Golden State is concerned, I’ve got it covered.  Now if only a passing star ship would see my flare of burning fuel.

Greater Marysville

We got an early start.  It was a 225 mile drive from our humble front door to the two very large brass doors on a building on 7^th Street in Downtown Los Angeles, and I didn’t want to risk being a minute late.  Three and a half hours later I was changing into my suit in the Macy’s parking garage.  I kept an eye out for paparazzi, because it seems like a decent, law-abiding person can’t take their clothes off in public these days without getting their picture taken.  This is a particular problem for celebrities in Los Angeles.   

After lunch in a food court (yum right?), found myself on the eight floor of a 1925 office building (pictured), begging for a job in what may be the last city in the country in which I’d choose to work. 

Los Angeles was founded by the Spanish in 1781 and either named El Pueblo de la Reyna de los Angeles (The Town of the Queen of the Angels), or El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora de los Angeles de Porciuncula (Our Lady of the Angles).  It’s not named after angels, but after Jesus’ mother, Mary.  Really it could legitimately be called Marysville.  The town was originally established as a pueblo, a sort of civic go between that separated the military presidios from the missions, in an effort to limit secular power over the citizens.  Pretty good beginning, but Los Angeles went from rich farming, to cattle and tallow, to violent racism against Indians, to violent racism against Chinese, to newspaper backed anti-union violence, to that all powerful greaser of the industrial economy; oil.  Oil and the railroad arrived in Los Angeles so close together that it created a perfect storm of migration, consumption, and soon questionable appropriation. 

The population exploded and when the aquifer under the San Fernando Valley dropped enough, the city leaders needed to find new water supplies or the growth of Los Angeles would slow and possibly stop.  Imagine Los Angeles as a ghost town, there are your angels.  So they tricked the ranchers in the Owens Valley, 250 miles north, into surrendering their water rights and tricked the citizens of Los Angeles with a fake drought, by well-placed false newspaper stories, and by emptying reservoirs into storm drains, into voting for bonds to build an aqueduct between the two.  An act of Congress allowed cities to own land outside their boundaries, which allowed Los Angeles to own the land, and the water on and under it, in the Owens Valley.  In a statement of extreme arrogance, the architect of this massive appropriation (theft?) of water, William Mulholland said when the water started flowing, “There it is.  Take it.”  He’s said worse.

I’ve met people from around the country and whenever I reveled that I hailed from California, I leaned to brace for the inevitable comments about how my Golden State is full of nothing but lazy surfers, gang-bangers, narcissistic actors and wannabe actors, one-person-to-a-car smog creators, plastic-surgery lovers, and generally shallow and dull celebrity-obsessed malcontents.  My answer usually was something along the lines of, “That’s just L.A., and the rest of the state isn’t like that.”

So when I found this job that paid well, was interesting, and fit very well with my skill set, I applied, even though I was about as eager to move to Los Angeles as the daughter in those Liam Neeson Taken movies is to get a phone call from her dad.  But I revisited my comment about how Los Angeles isn’t like the rest of the state.  Perhaps I was being  like those other 49'ers (People from the 49 states other than California).  Perhaps within the greater Los Angeles area, one neighborhood isn’t like the next, one group isn’t just like another, each person is a complete, complicated, individual and grouping them together makes about a much sense and saying a wine-sniffing Marin County yoga instructor is the same as a surf-riding Ventura County um…yoga instructor.  Perhaps that’s a bad example.

On the way home we decided to visit a neighborhood where I might live, should I get the position.  Since I know very few people who live, or have lived in Los Angeles, we decided to just pick a place and take a look.  Since we didn't have a dart and map at our disposal, we choose by situation comedy.  We thought the view out the window on the show Big Bang Theory looked nice, so we chose the City of Pasadena.  It did indeed look nice as we cruised by the City Hall and a downtown farmer’s market, and as we accidentally found the Gamble House at the exact moment we started looking for it.  Apartments were priced higher than Fresno, obviously, but not that much higher and there is some sort of train that runs to downtown Los Angeles, just 11 miles away. One of the few people I know who has experience living in Los Angeles suggested I look for a home in the Chinatown area, where I could literally walk to Dodger Stadium.  I don’t know about that, after all, one does not simply walk into Mordor.

Here’s the deal.  I’ve been out of work for 14 months.  Seeing as how beggars cannot be choosers and seeing as how the job I interviewed for is a pretty good one, if I’m offered it, I’ll go.  I’d be giving up a city where I know all the streets, where I have a support system of family and friends, and where my commutes have been about as hectic as a stroll through park, to move to a city where the streets are all unfamiliar and expanded exponentially, where I know nearly no one, and where my commute might look like a parking lot at Walmart on Black Friday.  I’ll give Los Angeles a chance.  I’ll find the better places to eat than the Macy’s food court, I'll find the quickest route to the beach from wherever I end up living, and maybe I'll volunteer at a museum like I did in Auburn.  Who knows, I may someday “walk into Mordor."

Baseball Backwards

Painting the Black: Throwing pitches that catch the very perimeter of the strike zone over the edge of home plate, which is made of black rubber.

            What is the shape of a life?  Is it a straight line, where all events are laid out one after another, with no weight given to one over the next, other than chronology?  Is it an analog signal like sound with crests and troughs, and different story lines running alongside one another at different wavelengths? 

Perhaps it’s a baseball park.

            I don’t mean a baseball diamond but the whole park, from the plate spreading out along the baselines to the outfield wall, from foul pole to foul pole.  Perhaps if our lives are in this shape, we start not at home plate but instead out in the bleachers - baseball backwards - where our futures are as wide as the entire wall from the first base to the third base line, open and full of potential. We climb over the wall and drop down onto the warning track, an ominous beginning. 

            Ominous maybe, but the early part is easy, free, and forgiving.  These are warm days and cool summer evenings with nothing but open, grassy fields on which to run and play.  Experiment is the word of the day, every day.  Try something and if it doesn’t work try it again or try something else.  We get comfortable in the saddle, we work the clutch, and we learn where all the roads go and where the shortcuts are, both good and bad.

            Those who grow to love us and care about us root from the dugout.  The home team.  They cheer at our successes and groan at our losses, where we are obviously the victim of bad calls.  Those cheering from the stands want us to succeed but don’t love us as much as love the game.

            But when we reach the infield, the diamond, it’s all business.  There it’s warriors…um warring.  Mistakes are not often forgiven, the penalties for taking chances are harsher, but so are the rewards.  You might get caught off second, skittering back and forth in a rundown, a pickle, desperate to avoid being called out, bargaining, “I don’t really want third, hell, I’ll even go all the way back to first if you just let me keep playing.”  You might be standing on third with less than two outs, watching a lazy fly ball drop into the outfielder’s glove against the centerfield wall, allowing you to all but meander home.

            Somewhere along the base paths is where we supposedly peak.  But does everyone have a peak?  Does everyone have a point in their life where they reach the “Be All You Can Be” moment?  What if you peak out there in the outfield, just this side of the 325 foot marker on the short porch that is the right field wall? (Your son is very intelligent Mrs. Wright, he just needs to apply himself).  What if you peak over there at third, stranded?  Can you have more that one peak, an apogee cluster perhaps, go three for four in an MVP performance, jog down the baseline, toss your helmet and hop on the plate like you’re stomping the last piece of a perfect puzzle into place?

            Are there those of us who don’t peak, or have low foothill-sized peaks?  Humble successes like good parking spots or two yokes in an egg?  Can a life be a success if that life never reaches a point where it’s on anyone radar, where it’s just day after day of showing up and keeping the waters still?

            Does it matter?  After all every game ends.  And every game ends in the same place; home plate.  The vanishing point of the baseball field, the smallest dot of measurable ground rule, a tiny black corner of worn and abused rubber; dirt smattered, cleat chafed, umpire brushed, and clay stained.  A warrior’s shield discarded and as forgotten as the man upon whose arm it once hung.

Silent Rolling

"Well, that's pitiful. Pitiful! That's exactly the opposite of what it's supposed to be."

Bruce Dern's character from Silent Running commenting on a poorly maintained tree.

            A long time ago, right here in this galaxy I saw a move called Silent Running.  I know that by the title it sounds like one of those submarine vs. the enemy surface ship, war movies, full of depth charge attacks and holes sprung in hulls, but it’s not.  It’s about a future when all plant life on Earth is gone and the only specimens left are in giant greenhouses attached to spaceships floating out by Saturn, for some reason.  The conflict comes in the movie when orders are given to destroy the greenhouses and return the ships to Earth.  One caretaker kind of goes bonkers, refuses the order, kills his co-workers, and makes a run for it, in order to save the last plant life in the known universe.  At least that’s how I remember it.  Oh and the “unstable” caretaker is played by Bruce Dern so you know they got the crazy right.

            The movie came out in the early seventies, between 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars, and because of that is a child of the ecology movement.  At that time in my life, as a Boy Scout who was taught to respect and protect the outdoors that I enjoyed, to take only pictures and leave only footprints, I had aspirations of becoming a forest ranger.  I imagined that future science would find a way to protect the great forests, jungles, and deserts of our planet to insure they would be there for future generations, and that they would need rangers, maybe even space rangers (Buzz Lightyear anyone?).

 

            It has been announced that a real spaceship, the Space Shuttle Endeavour will spend its out-to-pasture years permanently housed at the California Science Center in Los Angeles.  The shuttle will make the majority of her trip on the back of a 747 where there will be low level flyovers of cities like Houston and San Francisco for photo ops before the final landing in LA.  Once there, the spaceship will travel the final leg by rolling along surface streets on a two day trip at a scant few miles per hour. 

            The shuttle is too tall to take on freeways because she won’t fit under the overpasses, cannot be taken apart for some reason, and she is too heavy to lift by helicopter, so thus the surface streets option.  Probably still making better time than most freeway traffic during commute times.  One gloomy consequence of moving something like the space shuttle in this manner is that anything too tall to fit under her wings will have to be removed.  So power lines are going to be rerouted, streetlights are going to be temporarily taken down, and hundreds of trees are going to be cut down.  Over 400 trees by the estimate of the people doing the cutting. As you can see from the LA Times photo above, it's already started.

What American city needs trees more than Los Angeles?  The California Science Center has promised to replace every tree with two more, but those will be saplings.  Most of the people who will lose the trees on their streets have agreed that it’s a decent trade off to get something the quality of a space shuttle in their town, but lament that during their lifetimes, the new trees will likely never reach the maturity of the ones they are losing.

            I guess no one involved in this process saw Silent Running or else they might have found a place to store these mature trees until they could be replanted back in those Los Angeles neighborhoods.  There are companies that move large trees.  Seems like an idea that could work, if it’s not on space greenhouses out by Saturn.  They could even get Hollywood icon Bruce Dern as a sort of spokesman and re-release Silent Running to drum up support.

Saint Joe to Fresno

This was the closest I’d come.  Nearly there.  For the past two weeks someone was conducting a background check on me for a job where I had interviewed twice and had two tours of the workplace.  E-mails and phone calls had gone back and forth and I was waiting to see if I would return to the world of the employed. 

I’ve had interviews before.  I’ve “toured the facility,” met potential co-workers, taken tests to determine if I can do what I say I can do, and been questioned about everything from how a network switch might improve an aquarium patron’s experience to where do I see myself in five years.  Hate, hate, hate that question.  Now, for the past 14 days, someone was checking my work, education, and criminal history or lack there of.  Hadn’t gotten that far before.  I wasn't worried because there are no lies on my resume.

The job was to be with Disney, and no it didn’t involve walking around an amusement park with a dust pan and broom or putting on a giant cartoon head.  It was a networking job in Fresno but for Disney/ABC Television.  Good pay, benefits, perks (free admission to all parks for my family), and interesting work.  The man who just vacated the job is a friend of mine and not only recommended me on the way out, but admitted that I knew more about the systems there than he did.

Prayers were offered by those I know who feel that works, wishes were made, fingers were crossed, and hope was pulled out from under the couch cushions next to the remote, dusted off, and put in a prominent place over by the TV.

Today ironically, as I was leaving an interview in San Jose for another job, I got the call.  The recruiter at Disney, named Donald if you can believe that, said thanks but no thanks.  They “went with another candidate” but would keep my information on file in case any other opportunities came up.  I’m curious, in the history of well, history has anyone ever been hired because someone kept their information “on file” and just pulled it later when the mythical job popped up? I asked if it was my resume or the background check and he said neither, they just felt the other candidate was better qualified.  Good for him.  Andrea said, “I hope the guy they hired instead of you has really bad breath.”

So no dream job for me.  At least not yet.  Okay, that’s the way it goes right?

Wasn’t meant to be. 

These things happen for a reason. 

When a door closes a window opens.

Good times are just around the corner.

Six of one, half dozen of the other. 

Righty-tighty / lefty-loosy.

You can lead a horse to water but who gives a shit?  Okay, I changed that last one. 

Sure I mind not getting the job but what ate at me on the drive back from Saint Joe to Fresno is that fact that now it is reset time.  Again.  The odometer rolls back to zero.  The stopwatch is clered.  There is no tally of how many jobs I’ve applied for, other than my own, that pops up when some company gets an application from me.  No one cares how many interviews I’ve had.  It’s not like someone is going to say, “Oh, I see you’ve applied for 372 jobs in the past year.  I think it’s time you were given one.”  Every day is a reboot.  Every day I’m starting from scratch.  No one is counting.  As far as the employer world is concerned, I lost my job yesterday and they are the first place I’ve turned.

This is not a battle of attrition.  The castle wall is as unscathed as it was when I laid siege in July of last year, because every day it’s a new castle.  Tomorrow I’ll get up, get the boys ready for school, wave to one as he rides off on his bike and drive the other, then sit down and look for work.  Bring on the trebuchet. 

Locked in Irons

            Have you ever said something stupid?  Ever blurt out some opinion or discombobulated fact that’s been rattling around in your assemblage of knowledge and immediately realized you were about as wrongheaded as you could possibly be?  And have you further attempted to shore up your already completely collapsed position with more bold statements from that same flawed train of thought until you find yourself stuck on a rail of outrageous pronouncements and fuzzy logic, and you can’t get off?  Have you continued to chatter uncontrollably like a parrot on Red Bull until you finally realize all  you really want is a cracker and to have the hood put over your cage?  I know I have.

            A few days ago, wannabe Republican Senator Todd Akin from Missouri said that during a “legitimate rape” a woman’s body “has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”  He was suggesting that during rape the biological process recognizes the difference between consensual and non-consensual sex and prevents pregnancy.  This statement from Akin, who is not a medical professional in even the most liberal definition of the term, has caused uproar, as it should, from all corners.  His grasp of science is disconcerting to say the least but it’s his opinion that there is a “legitimate” rape that begs the question, what exactly is illegitimate rape?  Some of the synonyms of legitimate are; normal, accepted, appropriate, correct, customary, and rightful.  Drop any of those words in front of rape, as Mr. Akin dropped legitimate and see how that looks.  Correct rape?  Accepted rape?  Do those sound right?

Mr. Akin’s idea that there are categories of rape is not new.  There are some that have suggested that non-consensual sex between a husband and wife is not rape, but that it’s the wife’s duty to engage in intercourse with her husband regardless of whether she wants to or not.   It’s not as a popular idea as it used to be, but it’s out there.  When asked what he meant by legitimate rape his answer was “forced rape.”  Again a question is begged; is there an acceptable rape as long as it's not forced?  Statutory rape is not "forced," does that make it acceptable?

Rape can be defined very easily.  Here we go; rape is when one party wants to have sex and the other doesn’t so the first party forces them to, either through violence or intimidation, or when a statute makes the sexual act illegal as in when at least one party is under-aged.

With both Democrats and Republicans criticizing Mr. Akin and with some Republicans calling for him to drop out the Senate race he is currently running, he is doing some back-peddling and offering apologies.  But unfortunately he is drawing his rhetoric from the same pool of ideas that got him where he is in the first place. His first apology wasn’t an apology; it was him saying he misspoke.  Apparently the wrong (ignorant and hurtful) words just popped into his mouth spontaneously.  Kind of like a woman’s body knowing she isn’t having consensual sex and shutting down the reproductive process I suppose.  Boy, pseudoscience is a bitch.  His second apology was pretty much a mirror of his first, but his third apology wasn’t an apology at all.  That third one was him fighting from the trench in which he’s put himself.  He said he “…misspoke one word in one sentence on one day…” and is vowing to continue his run for the Senate even though he has no support or money from his party.  But that trench is deep and he has a long and difficult climb out of it.

 There is a term that mariners use in very heavy seas.  It’s called Locked in Irons.  What it means is seas are so high that a ship gets caught in the trough formed by parallel waves and can’t climb out.  The most powerful ship’s cannot really climb uphill for too far.  We're talking really big waves.  These ships become slaves to current, wind, and waves, unable to steer in any direction other the ones that those forces take them.  You’ll probably never see a super tanker or aircraft carrier in this predicament but pretty much every other ship or boat can find themselves there if the weather is bad enough.  (In the book Halsey’s Typoon, it is described how nearly an entire WWII U.S. Navy fleet found themselves in this exact phenomenon.)

So Mr. Akin is locked in the irons of waves created by his blurted comments that likely represent his real feelings about rape, abortion, and where the decision making for women’s health should lie. Now Mike Huckabee, a fellow conservative Republican, and Chick-fil-A spokesman, has sailed his own ship right down there next to him with his recent comment about how some great people can be from raped mothers.  As if to say hey, rape ain’t so bad after all. These two can only look up at the crests of the waves and wait for the storm to end.  That's physics.  Real science is a bigger bitch.

Quote I couldn't fit in the blog:

     Comedian W. Kamau Bell said, "Chick-fil-A missed the perfect opportunity when they didn't simply change the name of their restaurant to Right-Wing."

Dodged a Bullet

            It was about three weeks ago a man shot several dozen and killed one dozen in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado.  Yesterday a man dropped a handgun he had brought into a movie theater in Sparks, Nevada where it discharged, injuring him in the seat of his pants.  Between the shooting in Colorado and the accidental shooting in Sparks, I took my two sons to see the movie from the former shooting at the theater of the latter. 

            Soon after the Colorado shooting many gun/second amendment supporters suggested that if there had been armed civilians in the movie theater the night a mad man came in, the death toll would have been smaller, perhaps even restricted to the mad man himself.  Maybe that’s what the Sparks man was thinking when he walked into the theater with a handgun in his pocket.  I suppose the attraction to be a hero who stands up and guns down a possible murderer is pretty powerful.  Imagine the entire country finally seeing a killing was prevented by a man who legally owned and carried his weapon on the national news.

            Unfortunately what happened in Sparks was far more likely because statistically the chance of a gunman bent on murder entering the same theater as a legally armed civilian is very unlikely, but instead it’s statistically more likely an owner’s gun causing harm to himself and those around him.  This man is also very lucky that when his weapon fell out of his pocket the bullet didn’t hit another theater patron.

            Others will argue that more and more civilians should carry guns all the time, bringing the odds of the murderer and the hero being in the same place at the same time, allowing them to be Harry Callahan or Jack Reacher. But personally I don’t want to be in the theater/classroom/church when the gun battle starts, especially if the caliber of the “good guys” doing the shooting is represented by the gentleman who dropped his gun in Sparks yesterday.  (By the way, how likely is it that a dropped handgun discharges?  I’m just asking.)

For two years I wore a M1911 .45 pistol in a holster on my belt while I was a boarding officer in the Coast Guard.  I remember it was nicknamed simply the Forty-five.  (Pictured above)  I qualified on it every year, twice a year.  I also went to a three week law enforcement training in Modesto where we went to the range every day.  I was expected to be able to un-holster it, click off the safety, chamber a round, and hit my target if the situation required it.  During those qualifying days I had all the time I needed to hit a target 25 yards away.  I usually qualified on the lower end of the scale.  Meaning I wasn’t a particularly good shot.  I can’t imagine my aim would improve with someone shooting back at me or others.

What am I saying?  I think while a hero standing up and taking down a man intent on murder looks great in books and movies, in real life it’s far too risky that innocents would be injured or killed.  Let’s not add more guns to daily public life, let’s instead rest safe in the statistically unlikely chance that a gunman will try to kill us as we watch movies, or go to school or church.  At least for now.

Writing With Anger

          Twelve dead.  Twelve lives over, forever.  Twelve families irreversibly changed.  This is the work of one man in a few minutes.  His tools; an assault rifle, a shotgun, two pistols, gas canisters, an innocent and captive victim pool –an audience really- , and the ability to acquire pretty much any weapon he needed under the protection of our national laws.  News accounts describe it as, “...one of the deadliest mass shootings in recent U.S. history.”  Where it falls on the list of our other “mass shootings” I don’t know but I’m sure I can find out with little effort.  We have so many of these that they’re not just chronicled, but parsed and sorted by the number of victims.  To be honest, I can’t remember if any of those other “mass killings” took more lives.*

Update: I found that 12 murdered is not even close to the top of this list.  That honor goes to an Anders Behring Breivik who killed 80 at a summer camp on the Norwegian island of Utoya in July last year.  Here is a list if anyone is interested: http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Some-of-world-s-worst-mass-shootings-3722783.php

            I’m sure in the coming weeks a call will be made to take a solemn and honest look at our gun laws.  That look will degrade to podium pounding on both sides where blame will be laid, beliefs will be challenged, and advantages will be gained and lost, especially with this being a Presidential election year.  Will anything change?  Maybe we’ll see (more) armed guards at movie theaters or maybe we’ll see metal detectors where the tickets are torn.  That might make us feel safer, until the next guy takes his rifle, shotgun, and two pistols into a water park or football stadium.

Eventually the outrage will fade, as it always does.  And you will probably be able to track our interest by how far will live from Aurora, Colorado.  The rest of the country can get back to figuring out which chicken restaurant approves or disapproves of same-sex marriage.

            The shooting took place during a midnight showing of the new Batman movie.  It’s too bad there isn’t a real Batman who could have swung in and saved these lives and captured the murderer.  But Batman, Superman, and Spiderman are restricted from helping a single soul by the fact that they don’t exist.  But maybe we could change that.  I’m not suggesting that we create a superhero to stand watch over us, because according to millions, we already have one.  So let’s call on him.  I’ll start:

Dear Heavenly Father,

            Please disappear all the guns. Please get rid of every pistol, rifle, shotgun, forty-five, 357 Magnum, AK-47, M16, Uzi, Saturday Night Special, and Walther PPK.  I humbly ask you to remove gun powder, bullets, shells, and firing pins from existence.  Use your power and love to erase our collective memories of these things and how to create them.  We regret having invented them and then delivering them upon your beautiful creation that is this Earth.  We most humbly apologize and hope through your loving grace you will forgive us.  In Jesus name we pray.

If this works, how wonderful.  If this doesn’t, at least we know where he stands.

Nocked Up

“Bury me where my arrow falls.”  Traditionally the last words of Robin Hood as he shoots his final arrow through a window into the forest, from his deathbed.

Arrows are flying everywhere.  The heroine of Pixar’s Brave is a Scottish girl who is an expert archer.  She displays prowess with the bow from a running horseback and during a tournament where she provides the movie-required split arrow that would make Mr. Hood proud.  (By the way, why is it that the guy, or girl in this case, who splits the other contestant’s arrow is the winner?  Wouldn’t that just be a tie?)  In The Hunger Games, Katniss is an equally crack shot, downing a bird on the fly early in the film, although I would have like more arrow work during the rest of the movie.  Even the massive summer movie steamroller The Avengers has one hero (Hawkeye) who is as manly as a man can be while carrying something called a quiver.  Although after his arrows are spent, he doesn’t provide much of a “Superhero” skill set.

Right now bows and arrows in movies are where vampires were when the first Twilight movie came out; the books have been read and the films are queued for critique.  While that movie/book series has reduced what was formally a terrifying monster capable of seducing and murdering his way through Eastern European hamlets and castles to a whinny teenager who sparkles in the sunlight, it at least brought readers to the books and moved crowds of people through the snack bars to movie theaters.  I read once that Titanic was such a huge success because it attracted young girls to the theater.  They brought young boys and went to repeat viewings.  I suppose, with two female archers in two hit movies, it is hoped that that same demographic can be captured.  I think it may be working.

For his twelfth birthday we took my youngest to an archery range to shoot for an hour or so.  We brought along his older brother and a friend who happens to be a 12-year-old girl.  While we were shooting, the range manager, after watching the girl shoot, said something like, “You’re a regular Katniss.”  Which I’m sure is something he mentions to every girl who draws a bow at his business.  Will archery ranges see an explosion of business in the coming years?  Would this be a good time to open a business like that?

While watching my older boy shoot, I noticed how strong and rigid his arms and upper back looked when he held the nock of the arrow against his cheek.  His shoulders looked broad and his arrows, when released, thudded into the target with a very satisfying twack, often in tight groups near the center of the target.  He looked strong and with the bow bent and the arrow as still as a crouched panther, somehow noble and heroic.  Maybe I’m beginning to understand the appeal of this Hawkeye character a little bit.

Back when I was in the Boy Scouts, my troop went through a period when we did archery at most meetings.  We even went to an archery camp up in the foothills for a weekend.  For awhile I had a bow and some arrows at home and I would go to a friend’s house and practice shooting into bales of hay in his backyard.  I figured if I practiced enough, my archery aptitude might even become impressive to girls; anecdotal evidence suggests it wasn’t.

They say that the great English archers of medieval times started their training at 7 or 8 years old.  I read that by the time they were grown they could pull a bow of 80 pounds, and “deliver an arrow through the armor” worn by the knights of the time. You gotta like that word “deliver,” as if UPS where simply placing those arrows inside armor like a tip slipped into the pocket of a maitre D’.  Skeletons of longbow archers that have been dug up are recognizably deformed, with enlarged left arms and often bone spurs on left wrists, left shoulders and right fingers.  During the birthday shoot I picked up a bow and shot a handful of arrows.  But my arthritic shoulders and wrists wouldn’t let me hold the arrow still enough to aim properly.  My arrows thumped into the target on one side and the other, and in their flight, pitched and yawed like a skinny ship heading into fat swells.

Maybe this archery craze is a good thing.  Kids pulling bows are strengthening their bodies, and improving their hand-to-eye coordination.  Plus every minute not playing video games and being outside is a better minute the other way around.  Let’s hope archery takes the place of angst-ish vampire worship and new shops start popping up like tattoo parlors and hookah lounges have been over the last few years.  Besides, after the zombie apocalypse, we’ll need someone who can hunt for food.

Quote I couldn't figure out how to get in the blog:

"I shoot an arrow into the air, where it lands I do not care: I get my arrows wholesale!"

-Curly Howard

Forest Fires, Fireworks, and Flares.

            There be fires and then there be fires, as the pirates might say. 

 

One is a forest fire in a steep and deep canyon, carved out by the north fork of the American river over a scant few million years.  That fire started on a hot Wednesday afternoon in Shirttail Canyon some 40 miles east of Auburn, and four or five miles north of Foresthill.  When I lived in the former I worked in the latter.  The fire has been named, as fires are, The Robbers Fire after an outcropping of rock that had been called The Robber’s Roost when a group of outlaws holed up there after, well, robbing.  The name has been around the area for awhile.  There was even a long time out-of-business restaurant in Foresthill named The Robber’s Roost that the telephone company I worked for took over as offices.

Firefighters are hoping that the temperature drops, that the wind drops, and that the fire drops instead of climbing those steep canyon walls.  If that happens it would move faster than a man can run on flat ground, much less uphill, and would threaten homes in either Colfax or the aforementioned Foresthill, depending on which direction providence or God chooses it to go.  To say that the people in these mountain communities appreciate those who fight these fires would be like saying a drowning man might appreciate a boat.

There was a fire of a different kind in San Diego on The Forth of July.  Thousands were gathered around the bay, waiting for a fireworks show they all expected to be within spittin’ distance of spectacular.  It wasn’t.  In a computer glitch that was described, a bit snarkily if you ask me, as a “premature ignition” all of the fireworks went off at once.  I’ve seen the video and basically it’s a bright white light for maybe 15 seconds and then nada. 

When I was a young teen, my friend Mark used to get firecrackers by the brick.  If I remember correctly there are 1,000 in each brick and one day we decided to light off all of them at once.  After a couple of hundred or so went off, we got bored and decided to stop the train of popping and crackling and started stomping on the fuse ahead of the fire.  Kind of like those pirates might kick a line of black powder out of the way to keep that fuse from setting off further explosions.  I learned from this that good fireworks shows, like multi-course meals, need to be delivered slowly for complete enjoyment.  I don’t think stomping was an option for the pyrotechnicians in San Diego but I wouldn’t be surprised if next year’s show was triple-double checked, to borrow a phrase from basketball.

The third “fire” is extra-terrestrial in nature.  The fallout from a solar flare, a solar storm, is bombarding our little blue planet as I write this.  Part of the solar flare is known as a coronal mass ejection – a phrase that would surely provide more joke fodder for the headline writers of the San Diego fireworks articles – that sends a wave of solar plasma our way.  What does this plasma wave (solar storm) mean to us?  Not much.  For those in the northern parts of the Northern Hemisphere it means some more impressive aurora borealis.  To the 2012’ers who are expecting an end of the world Christmas present, this is just one more step to untying the ribbon.

Scientists are obligated to tell us not to worry, like parents proving there are no monsters in the closet.  Solar flares while given a fiery name do not send fire our way; they send a magnetic field that “interacts” with the Earth’s magnetic field causing the prettier northern lights and possibly reaping havoc with satellites and perhaps power systems.  Those same scientists are telling us that our satellites will remain in orbit, beaming down ESPN and Ice Road Truckers uninterrupted, and our lights will stay on.

I’ve not read the resolution of the Robber’s Fire, the “Big Sputter” (my name) in San Diego will likely be rectified next year, and the solar storm, while passing through my body right now, has had little if any effect, although I wouldn’t mind superpowers.  Fire is a daily event on and around our planet since it was stolen from the gods and given to us by Prometheus.  We have choices on what to do with it: fight it, harness it, or endure it.  Probably the only thing we can’t do is ignore it.

Dear Mr. Zeus,

It’s been a pretty long time.  I was wondering if you might release Mr. Prometheus from his punishment of having his liver eaten by an eagle, then being regenerated only to be eaten again, over and over, for eternity.  I’m sure he’s been a model prisoner and is sorry for stealing fire and giving it to us.  Besides, look at all we’ve done with it, aside from the San Diego fireworks fiasco, gunpowder, and nuclear bombs.  On second thought, maybe that argument isn’t the way to go.  How about this?  Perhaps your eagle isn’t thrilled with an extremely steady diet of liver?  Have no field mice offended you?

Sincerely,

one human.