lookec

Scouting in America 9-22-06

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 01:35:23 GMT

Friday 9-22-06 6:20pm

The Caravan of Trust, Innuendo & Supposition

We, the campers of Troop 388, were to meet in the parking lot of South Main Baptist Church in Pasadena, Texas at 6:30pm. Mustering for a weekend canoeing trip down the San Marcos River about 180 mi. west of Pasadena, the idea was to caravan en masse to Camp Shady Grove in Martindale. Upon arrival at the destination, we would set up camp and get a good night’s rest before beginning the big weekend.

Derek, Iain and I turned into the parking lot at about 6:20. A few campers were already there. We were waiting for Darryl the assistant scoutmaster to show up with the troop’s trailer of camping equipment. The scoutmaster, Rob, may have already arrived, but not knowing him...?

“Class A uniforms only!” Iain had asked if they were supposed to wear their boy scout shirts.

“Dad! I forgot my boy scout shirt!” Iain announced not without angst. Derek’s eyes began to roll back, his eyelids slowly closing.

Iain had brought his football – a camping contraband item we were to discover later. Several of the scouts began to pass it back and forth over near the fence. The fence was a 7’ chain link topped by three strands of barbed wire strung slanting outward to greet any potential fence-climbers. It surrounded the inventory lot of a car dealership.

After a few minutes, one of the boys decided to (gently) punt the ball to the others, and they, of course, reciprocated.

I said to Derek, still sitting next to me in the car, “It’s only a matter of time.”

“Till what?” he replied.

“Till the football goes over the fence,” I said.

The trailer pulled in! We were about to leave, and it was only 6:45! So let’s gather up, coordinate, and shove off.

“Wait... where did everybody go?”

Seems the first order of business was to disperse and talk amongst ourselves. Derek was out scouting around the parking lot trying to determine if there was some sort of pre-consensus, and we were the only ones who didn’t know what to do.

Nancy had still not arrived. She was on a parallel task delivering the dogs to weekend dog storage. (The exigencies of that task and its attendant transportational stochasms had expanded so as to exceed the time imagined for their completion.)

As Derek returned to the car where I still waited in the air conditioning, Iain came up and yelled, “Dad! My football went over the fence and we can’t reach it!” or words to that effect. Dad told him the lot belonged to the car dealership, and he (Iain) would have to go ask permission to enter and retrieve the ball. Off went Iain and another scout, trundling forth on their mission. (Iain is a first-rate trundler.)

Derek meanwhile had noticed another possible information source gathering, and wandered over to it. During that tête-à-tête, I saw the panzer – that’s what Derek & Nancy call their huge and aging Mercedes – coming down the back fence line of the parking lot. She must have picked up Iain returning from the football-fetch. I further surmised that she and Derek must have been in cell phone touch because a few minutes later – about 7:10 – the scout trailer pulled out; Derek got back to the car, and we were headed back to home to pick up Nancy, Iain & the class A.

Back at home, Derek invoked a ruling by parental fiat that Iain’s skateboard and basketball were not to make the trip. (Good job, I thought silently.) After several false starts, we were On The Way – 7:30pm.

The “plan,” as near as Derek could determine, was for the caravan to rally up at the roadside park past Columbus to make sure everyone was entrained. Failing that, the next rallying point was the Chevron in Luling. Derek had asked if there were plans to get something to eat along the way.

“Yeah, we’ll probably do that I guess,” was the reply.

We were hungry, and we needed gas, so we stopped in Sealy for gas and a Whataburger. By eating in the car, the whole stop cost only about 15 minutes. Still, we wanted to catch up and make the Columbus rallying point because we weren’t real confident in the instructions we had on how to get to Shady Grove Camp. About 3 or 4 miles past Columbus, sure enough, there was a public rest area, but no caravan. “Hmmm. On to Luling.”

Found the Chevron in Luling, but again no caravan. On the other side of town Nancy & Iain made a pit stop at the “Food Store,” a gas/convenience store. I only mention this because the place was packed. All 8 gas pumps were being used, the car passageway between the pumps and the store was blocked by 3 more cars, and 3 cars were parked along snippets of curb at the corners of the property. As one would pull out, another would pull in. 10:35pm in Luling, Texas. I hadn’t expected this...

Back on the road. Finally arrived at an endarkened campground at about 11:00pm. No caravan. About 15 minutes later, it arrived. Seems they decided to rally up at the Chevron in Columbus (you can’t see it from the highway), and skip the one in Luling altogether. The Chevron in Columbus was substituted for the public rest area (which you could see from the highway). “Oh, well, we all made it didn’t we?”

“HORSESHOE!! PANTHERS! TROLLS! HORSESHOE!!”

“DINOSAURS! PARALLEL HERE!”

Tent layout instructions blasted through the tranquil river bottom night. Parents are dinosaurs. I’m falling in line as best I can. Derek and Nancy have a tent. I have a tent. Iain is a panther and is sleeping in the panther arm of the horseshoe. It’s dark. And hot. And still. And very humid.

I have never seen my tent in its deployed state, but there is a picture on the tent bag. Thank heaven for the head-lamp Derek brought. Thank Derek, actually. With some help from him regarding the basic structural idea, it finally goes up. Midnight. We’re here, we’re hot; we’re sweaty and tired. Let the fun begin!

Saturday 9-23-06 12:20am

Hot Nights & Slippery Skin

Zzzzzip! In the tent, I am wet with sweat. Whatever breeze there was in the river bottom is effectively stilled by the tent. If there is a disease where the symptom is sweat glands which don’t function, I don’t have it. Mine work great. In fact, they wouldn’t stop. Got out and removed the rain fly trying to increase the chimney effect. Could be it worked on a grand scale, because shortly thereafter a light, intermittent, but very blessed breeze kicked up. Saved my life I think.

Saturday 9-23-06 1:30am

The Scout Serenades. A long-distance night.

Another hour or so of listening to pre-pubescent and pubescent males trying to force each other to be quiet, and I fell into a fitful gooey sleep.

After a couple dozen awakenings, I realized the sky was getting light. I had made it! Night was over; I was nearly dry, and only a little warm. I had come to expect the worst and had calibrated by comfort meter to register from Very Uncomfortable to Misery. I’m happy to report that it wound up a little off the scale on the Very Uncomfortable side.

It's amazing what sunshine & breakfast can do for the soul...

Sat, 30 Jun 2007 18:25:17 GMT

Uh, turn your sound up loud and check this out:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k08yxu57NA

Michael Griffin's interview on NPR

Thu, 31 May 2007 21:08:38 GMT

(I originally wrote this in response to a USA Today Online article, but to post it I had to join their their little group, and I didn't like their Privacy Policy.)

Regarding the recent NPR interview by Steve Insky with NASA chief Michael Griffin:

I believe any questions involving the state of the Earth should necessarily involve NASA, and perhaps NOAA, perhaps often in a combined role. No other elements of our government, have global perspective combined with a mostly unbiased point of view (though NOAA's position in the Department of Commerce renders it more likely to be tainted by short-sighted politically-motivated assertions).

As we move forward from the initial "shock" of learning that mankind's actions are having an impact on global weather, the next well-reasoned debate topic appears to be forming as "Is this the best climate for us? If not, what is?"

Regardless of the answers evolving from those questions, the one following them is very likely to be "What can we do about it?" Whether we are talking about halting global warming, controlling it to another, different status, or learning to live with a system more highly variable and "tippy" than we previously realized, a thorough knowledge of how the global weather system works - "weather laws" interacting with random elements of the system - is essential. Primary research, theoretical studies and practical modelling of the global environment becomes of increasingly high priority as our global industry increases, our human population increases, and perhaps random major events shape the relatively near future of our environment.

Even if the current major priorities of NASA are lunar habitation and human exploration of Mars, a significant and large portion of their research budget should be in support of our understanding of Earth's response to both long and short term influences. Some examples of each are

Industrial effluents
Solar disturbances
Direct injection of particulate matter into the high atmosphere:
- Major volcanic activity
- Above-ground detonation of nuclear devices
Agricultural practices (deforestation)
Cultural practices (burning of hydrocarbons)
Increased release of methane clathrates in arctic regions

To be clear, NASA is properly a research organization, and should have no responsibilities for attempted management of or position advocacy regarding the global environment. Their job must be to measure, hypothesize and test. We need to keep them healthy and focused, and as unfettered as possible from evaluations by politically-oriented entities.

Mr. Griffin's remarks were on target, even if they seemed to fly in the face of current knee-jerk worries. We must allow science to be science, not an agency for manufacture of justifications for emotionally charged responses to new data. Clearly there is a role for emotion - to galvanize us into action - but it is not a good basis for directing the action. We should act based on fact, not fear, and if there is indeed a threat, to fill our hearts and bodies "full with the charge of the soul,"* and get to work.

* Thanks, Uncle Walt

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 21:21:41 GMT

By my reckoning, the modern era began in 1969. Prior to that, the American Zeitgeist had it that tomorrow, next year, the year after… would be better than today, last year, the year before… That era seemed to peak on or about July 20^th. I know it sounds like geezerspeak, but things really haven’t been the same since. It wasn’t a “sudden” peak by any means, but rather like hiking to a rounded dome, so large that it’s hard to tell exactly where the highest point is. Ten years or so earlier, the sense of general improvement followed a much steeper curve. (For you math types, the slope was positive and at its maximum, but the 2^nd derivative had become negative.) The modern era was under way, I guess. What happened?

Wasn’t a “happening,” I don’t think, but perhaps more that the accumulation of people on our soon‑to‑be‑tired little planet reached a tipping point. On “the Day the Music Died,” there were about 2.5 X 10⁹ of us, give a take a few tens of Megapeople. We were still relatively spread out, but frontiers were closing fast.

Frontiers – the place where there ain’t nobody gonna give you no pain – had been with us since the beginning. If we didn’t fit in, we could split for virgin territory. Geographically speaking, frontiers are just about gone, though others – science and music immediately come to mind – are, thankfully, still with us. Our physical frontiers have fallen to our numbers.

Social misfits don’t have the frontier option any more. Not only that, but our increased numbers probably serve to cultivate whatever misfittedness may come with the individual as original equipment. Our collective experience with overcrowding – urbanization in the 3^rd world, prisons, ghettoes – characteristically shows social maladjustment and to some extent psychotic tendencies in proportion to the level of crowding and time of exposure.

We’re now at about 6 Gigafolks. Another consequence is the greater number of statistically rare people in existence, i.e. the number of statistical outliers is also increasing. The probability of encountering a true 5σ item is very close to .00003%, or about 3 in 10 million. (How ‘bout that Yao Ming! that Lew Alcindor! that Wilt Chamberlain!) For the US, that means several hundred hyper-super-crazies are out there. Add that to our increasingly efficient incubator of poor behavior, and you get VaTech, or Charles Whitman, or perhaps worse.

And now for the sharp break on the long, slow curve: this is why we need a space program. Not so much for “Space. The Final Frontier.” in its direct aspect, but for the opportunity to place humans in environment where at the individual level, we have frontiers again. Mars is evidently pretty inhospitable, though not unworkably so, but does represent a place with some elbow room for the folks who make it there.

As for our earth-bound contingent, can we learn to get along? Hope so. The jury’s definitely still out on that, in fact it may not have even gone to jury yet. Can we replace geographical frontiers with those not quite so physical? perhaps even with the spiritual?

One thing’s for sure, we’re going to have to get over what got us here: the you or me mindset, and replace it with you and me...except if the you is George W(ar) Bush.

Ho! Dat buggah bodda me beeg time!

Hipshot

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 18:48:17 GMT

Years ago in South Texas, about 40 miles NNW of Laredo, my friend David and I were out plinking at his family's ranch. Don't know how widespread the word "plinking" is; in Texas it means, generally, playing around with .22s & shooting at whatever. I had a Ruger "Buntline" model - Wyatt Earp, dawg! (or at least Hugh O'Brien). Its holster was a hand-tooled special made by a leather artist in San Antonio. Embossed with the Ruger logo , only stained in black, it was a beauty. I loved that pistol & holster, too bad it wasn’t mine.

We were out near the rubbish pile a hundred yards or so behind the camphouse when David spotted an old, black-eyed potato we had thrown out a few days earlier. It had rolled off the pile and onto the path. David said, “Bet you can’t hit that potato.”

To which I responded, “Too easy. Throw it up in the air.”

David rolled his eyes, but went over and picked it up and I shot him – no, just wrote that for its surprise effect since you know what’s coming anyway. He rared back and threw it high and far. Sure enough, I drew the Ruger, fired from down near the scabbard, and square-dabbed the ‘tater at about 50 yds. The hollow point I was using caused it to explode spectacularly. A fine particulate ‘tater mist rained down on the mesquite below, its gentle spattering audible in the ensuing silence.

David looked at me with surprise, wonder, amusement and a little awe. “Do that again,” he said.

“No,” I replied.

Return to the motherland

Sun, 10 Sep 2006 21:28:46 GMT

Leaving tomorrow for Texas. Here, in the post-career wind-down of my working life, I am, for the first time ever, being funded for a career-supporting trip to a national conference. Sweet irony! Maybe funny irony. The ASBDC National Conference in Houston awaits me!! The tension! The excitement! The opportunity to take a no-plane-fare vacation in the homeland and see folks I don't get to see much.

Gonna be a lot of driving. I'm really looking forward to it. We don't drive much here on the Big Island, and I kind of miss road trips. My rent car is supposed to have a satellite radio and get good mileage. Cool. For you mainlanders, satellite radio is probably no longer anything to even blink about, but we don't have it here, being only a 1.2 million audience 2,200 miles from the nearest continent.

Houston. San Antonio. Austin. Rockport. Houston. Don Key's! Once I get back to Houston, I'm really looking forward to seeing my grandson. Gonna visit, play, and on the weekend go sleep in the dirt (not in the mob sense, though).

Two weeks should be about right before I begin to pine for my ancient and present home. Till then, "I'll see miles... and miles... of Texas..."

Horizons

Sun, 20 Aug 2006 17:36:35 GMT

Had my horizons expanded yesterday.

Listening to Weekend Edition on public radio, I caught most of an interview with a Brooklyn area band named Oneida. The band member names I remember are Kid Millions, Hanoi Jane, Fat Bob and Double Rainbow. Even though I was on a mission from god (fetching Breakfast Burritos (burritoes?) from McDonald's for Mom), I was immediately arrested by these guys' charming and intelligent interview.

A few cuts of their music were played. Reminded me very much of Velvet Underground circa 1967 - "Sweet Jane" for example. Had I not listened to what Kid, Hanoi, and Mr.'s Bob & Rainbow had to say, however, I might have just dismissed the music as more high-volume-makes-the-band-feel-good-to-play-it-music without much in the way of unstoned listener/participant interest. BUT, I did listen to them, and as a result of them, their music. Very good stuff. Too bad my truck radio couldn't do volume justice to it - I think Oneida demands a lung-collapsing listening level. Visceral, not heady. Definitely shaken, not stirred.

Made me wonder how much not only I but all of us routinely exclude in our lives because of our habits, routines, preconceptions, filters, . . . A lot of that stuff gets created in our waking persona, I think, under circumstances that aren't recorded along with the decision. What I mean by that is we make valid distinctions under a particular momentary configuration of the universe, then later apply that distinction/decision/evaluation as though it were always valid. You have to; otherwise, the world just gets too busy to deal with, particularly as you get older and your personal experience log takes longer and longer to scan. (Maybe the classic forgetfulness of the aged or brilliant is really a mind-survival tactic?)

Whatever. It felt really refreshing to open a new (-ly re-discovered) window.

Also learned two new words: tole and bathetic. Tole I can understand missing out on all these years - it relates to something we blue collar Texan country boys don't talk about much. But bathetic?, how could I have missed that and been married to a thespian arts type for over 20 years. Hmmm, unconscious filtering in action again, I bet.

On Forgiveness

Wed, 02 Aug 2006 00:34:09 GMT

A friend asked me yesterday, “Who am I to forgive someone? Isn’t that God’s prerogative?”

Certainly God is going to do whatever God is going to do, and we don’t have to delude ourselves that we must be God’s stand-in at the level of divine forgiveness – the kind where God decides whether you need it or not.

Down here on Earth, though, if we ask ourselves, “Should I forgive him/her?” we would do well to observe that a requirement to forgive exists only in the presence of a corresponding resentment.

Forgiveness is generally something that is asked for, and given in return, not something that is dispensed proactively. If we’re not being asked for forgiveness, then communicating it may well result in further disharmony.

Most likely, our resentments have directly damaged us much more than those we would forgive, and our motivation to forgive may well be a desire for inner peace more than the righting of a wrong. Forgiveness under these circumstances, then, is properly an inside job.

So whether or not we can or ought to forgive is more effectively replaced by the release of, or least processing toward the release of, our resentment[s]. Some resentments are harder than others to work through, so we may not be able to erase them simply by saying to ourselves, “I forgive him/her.”

It’s worth noting that in many instances our negativity about someone has in fact injured them, as, for example, when we spread the negativity to third parties. Speaking to them about our forgiveness of someone we have previously resented then becomes more of an amends step than an act of forgiveness. As such, it carries with it the need to do no further harm.

To err is human, to forgive, divine.

- Alexander Pope

An Essay on Criticism

Choices

Sun, 30 Jul 2006 00:19:07 GMT

Rainy day in Hawaii (ooohhh POOOR Hawaii!). Supposed to be working on all this extremely important crap for our accreditation, but lost my momentum after looking at the important crap.

Trying to do a good job here is like making high cuisine for your dog; he may love you for it, but dog food would do just as well. Ah, sweet disillusion you are my faithful companion.

Yet here I am, feeling guilty for blogging rather that slogging. Why?Why?Why?Why? A not very powerful question I know, except knowing the answer might help blow the whistle on it the next time it moves to the front.

Seems like I make the same choices over & over, but keep struggling not to. There are moments of false clarity where I own the choices I've made, but later, they look uninformed, and really a repeat of previous ones. One thing I am clear about -- analysis leads to paralysis.

Well, back to important crap. It lies, steaming, stinking, and, much like the owl, calls my name.