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.

Ghost Ship

            “Of all the conveyances invented by the hand and mind of man, none captures the imagination as firmly as the ship, ancient or modern. We bless ships and give them names; we endow them with human attributes. They have courage, strength of will, pride, resoluteness, and nobility. Their character is often described as faithful, honest, good, or brave according to the quality and tenure of service. When ships die, we mark and remember their loss.”

                                                                           - I don’t remember who, to my shame.

            This week the battleship USS Iowa was towed from the mothball fleet in San Francisco Bay to L.A. Harbor (San Pedro) where it will be permanently moored as a floating museum.  The Iowa, an Iowa Class battleship strangely enough, has a long and both honorable and less than honorable history that started on August 27^th, 1942 when she was launched.

            The honorable came in moments like when she transported FDR to Casablanca for a meeting with Churchill and Stalin in 1943.  An elevator was installed on the ship so the President could travel between decks, making her possibly the first ship to that would have met the Americans with Disabilities Act had it existed.  And like when she served as Adm. Halsey’s flagship during the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay.

            The less than honorable moment came in 1989 when the number two turret was destroyed by a massive explosion.  The Navy in their original investigation put the blame on a gun crewman whose homosexual relationship with one of his shipmates, they said, went south.  That investigation suggested that the crewman deliberately set off the explosion as a suicide.  Later investigations cleared the now deceased crewman and an apology was made by the Navy to the crewman’s family.  The actual cause has never been determined.

            How much of both histories will be part of the tour when the ship opens for business this July 4^th?  We’ll see.

            A couple of years ago I toured the USS North Carolina, which to the untrained eye like mine, looks very much like the Iowa.  When I toured it I was taken back by the smallness of the compartments on such a big ship.  Even the bridge seemed little more than a standing room only place from which to command the great vessel.  I entered one of the 16-inch gun turrets and was hit with such a strong wave of claustrophobia that I immediately turned around and climbed back out. I can’t begin to imagine what it was like to the men sealed in there with the explosive force to launch 2,700 pound shells up to 25 miles resonating in the breaches and barrels around them.  One compartment that I found most interesting was After Steering.  It was there that the great posts to which the rudders were attached came up through the hull.  There were huge wheels that could be used to manually turn the rudders should the hydraulics fail in an attack.  On the deck in one corner were large wood blocks that crewmen and brought down so they could be jammed into the mechanism to keep the rudders in place so as to spell the men.

            The time when I was stationed on a ship was when I felt the most intense esprit de corps in any fellowship before or since.  Sure there were rivalries between departments; the deck force (Deckies) and the engineers (Snipes), but when it came down to it we realized we were all in the same boat, literally.  The bridge was (is) bigger than those on battleships and the engine room while smaller, still afforded you a view from one end to the other.  And that was with four engines.

Like suggested in the quote above, ships get into their sailor’s minds and hearts, and acquire human-like traits that leave a long lasting impression.  The ship I was on had a rubber expansion joint in the middle that would creak and groan in heavy seas as she bent like an arthritic knee joint, she had a port side door on the bridge that wouldn’t seal all the way, allowing water in, especially when heading north into the Pacific weather patterns, that would slosh on the deck making watch-standing a challenge.  Supposedly the port side was also haunted by the ghost of Freddy Swartz, a yard worker who, as the story goes, fell from mast to keel while the ship was being built.  His stomping grounds are pictured above.

            I checked on the Internets and found that my old ship is still on the job; patrolling the Bering Sea and even going through a dry dock overhaul in San Francisco.  She’s 42-years-old and younger cutters can sail circles around her.  But I’m sure the men and women, who maintain her engines, slap paint on her bulkheads and decks are as proud of her as their counterparts on the sexier ships in the fleet.  Just like the men who served on the Iowa from WWII on.

While there are many ships out to pasture from the Constitution in Boston to the Arizona in Hawaii, the vast majority of ships end their days in yards where they are scrapped. I think when a ship gets cut up like that, although it’s economically and perhaps ecologically smart, it’s a stab at the heart of her sailors.  There should be only two finalities for ships; as a lovingly maintained memorial or to be given up to the sea.  I hope I’m aware when the my ship (I consider it mine) is finally decommissioned.  It will likely be cut to pieces by men who never walked her decks, worked her engines, or slipped and slid while standing those late night Aleutian bridge watches.  Perhaps when the last few feet of cabling is wound up and hauled away, the davits and winches are sold off, and the steel down to the keel itself is melted down, the she will be gone from my memory as much as from the physical world.  Or maybe she will occasionally haunt me until I’m “scrapped,” like Mr. Swartz supposedly roamed the boat deck on crisp, Alaskan nights.

Burning Books Without Matches

“You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next.” 

                                                                                                        - Ray Bradbury

           

There used to be a library not too far from the house I grew up in.  The library was in a space on the northwest corner of the mall and didn’t face the interior, like it was embarrassed to share mall space with the Tandy Leather shop, so you had to enter from the back.  I was pretty young when I’d visit this library and I only specifically remember checking out one book.  I don’t even remember the title.  It was a book about a rocket to Mars or something where there were twin sisters; one going on the trip and one staying home.  Before the launch the staying home sister breaks her leg.  At the end of the story it is reveled that the sister on the trip was really the staying home sister and had switched with her twin because the going on the trip sister was the one who broke her leg.  I don’t remember why it was a big deal.  But I remember science fiction and rockets were a powerful force on me when it came to choosing books to read.

Last Tuesday Ray Bradbury passed away.  I know I read The Martin Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451, and Something Wicked This Way Comes, most likely checked out from that library.  I remember while reading them as a child I liked the stories and loved the images but was sure there was something in the stories I was missing.  There was something bigger, more important, and cleverer than my cognitive skills at the time could hook.

            Right after his death I read obituaries of the man. How he moved to Los Angeles when he was a kid, how he never drove, never went to college stating that “libraries raised me.”  Then later in the week I began to read essays on how book paper doesn’t really burn and 451 degrees Fahrenheit and how he was an icon of the Tea Party movement.  These people are missing the point.  They deconstruct the title of his most famous book as if they believed it was a science book on combustion temperatures. Have they ever looked past the title?  They shoehorn every offhand comment he’s ever made until they find the one that fits their preordained idea of his politics. They're burning his books.

            Ray Bradbury was about one thing; books.  He saved Southern California libraries from the budget axe and he only allowed Fahrenheit 451 to be put into electronic form when it was agreed it would be free to download at libraries. Self-serving?  Maybe.  But what other famous author gives away his most famous book?
            That strip mall from the top of the page is still there, but the library, and Tandy Leather, are gone.  Tandy Leather probably went out of business but the library moved to the next intersection to the south, leapfrogging my high school.  There are many other things from that intersection that are gone or going; the bookstore next to the fish and chips place to the east is gone, along with the fish.  The bowling alley to the south is to be torn down. On the day that Mr. Bradbury died, the building housing the library caught fire, prompting an evacuation.  Had the fire started at night, it's likely books would have burned.  I believe I'm the only person in town who caught the irony.
            My favorite book is his Something Wicked This Way Comes.  It's not the prose, although it is beautiful.  I like it because it's about an old and tired father who saves his son and his son's friend through love, laughter, and happiness.  While reading it as a boy, I was the boy.  While reading it as a father, I hope to be the father.