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Every time you log on here, do me, and yourself, a favor and watch this music video first. Then ask yourself the question it asks and think of America then and America now. You won't regret it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpoudLoc8sY&feature=related

5 Feb 2012 - Decoding Mankind

The human animal is normally portrayed as a very complex creature. And women really are. They don’t come with an instruction manual and are damned hard to figure out. Men, on the other hand, are incredibly easy to understand because we leave an endless trail of clues for the world to see.

eBay Searches
Every time you log on to eBay it immediately puts a personalized menu on the left side of the page showing your “Recent Searches”. Whether you’re serious about purchasing or not is irrelevant. If you’re even window shopping, your personality is showing through. My current searchs are, in this order:

G3 iBOOK LAP TOP – This guy (me) is trying to avoid spending money: I killed my ancient laptop and was looking at how cheaply I could replace it. Finally decided I’ll eventually spring for a new Mac Air.
ANTIQUE SAFE – The same guy can easily get obsessed with useless stuff: even though I’m up to my butt in the safe I’m working on, I figure a man never has too many safes.
HUMAN SKELETON – Not sure what this one says but “sicko” comes to mind: I’ve always wanted a skeleton standing in the corner of the office so I keep searching. I found two this time.
ARISAKA– This guy is into WWII stuff: Arisaka was the standard Japanese rifle in WWII and I was looking for a specific variation of the type 38 stock.
KRAG BAYONETS – Krag? He likes borderline, transitional stuff and isn’t limited to only the most popular: I recently scored a terrific buy in an 1898 Krag and need a bayonet: damn but they’re expensive!

Internet Search History
This is another infallible reveal of personality traits: you search either what you “need” to search or what you “want” to search. The “wants” list says a lot. My recent “want” searches are:

BLASTOLENE BROTHERS – This search is a sure indication that a man appreciates imagination and craftsmanship: Randy Gibb and his friends operate as the Blastolene Brothers and create some of the most outrageously imaginative vehicles ever seen. Next week I’ll feature them.
AUSTIN BEHLERT 1911 Colt – An indication he admires old time custom pistolsmithing: I saw one of Behlert’s pieces for sale and was drooling over the pix, but at $3500 I’ll pass.
TREASURE HUNTER – This guy is a dreamer for sure: I’m a sucker for the word “treasure” and a salvor claims to have found a UK ship sunk during WWII that contains a billion dollars in platinum.

The V-173 first flew in November of 1942 and was testing the concept of low-aspect ratio wings. It's a miracle the prototype survived and is now restored. Photo: CJ Barrington

V-173 CHANCE VOUGHT FLYING FLAPJACK – This is a mind that appreciates “weird”: yeah I’m a sucker for oddball airplanes and the restoration of the “Flapjack” for the Vought Museum in Fort Worth has just been finished.
JOINT PAIN – When this shows up in searches you know a guy’s mileage is bugging him: I was looking for a better joint supplement and found this site that rates them: http://www.consumerhealthanswers.com/jointreliefproducts

Magazine stack next to the toilet
Okay, so some people live in a household where mom won’t allow the requisite porcelain parlor reading material, but not me. This is a dead giveaway of a guy’s interests. My stack includes:

ROD AND CUSTOM – Says the guy is probably an old school car guy.
HEMMINGS MOTOR NEWS – if it’s a current issue, he’s searching for old car parts. If it’s badly outdated, he just likes daydreaming. Mine is six months old.
JANTZ KNIFE SUPPLY CATALOG – he’s probably both daydreaming and parts chasing for projects.
ARCHEOLOGY Magazine– He watches Indiana Jones movies too much: if there were more money in it, I would have been an archeologist from birth.


Bottom of their sock drawer
Unless the guy is anal and actually has nothing but socks in his sock drawer, or mom says that’s all that can go in there, a guy often loads it with small stuff he doesn’t want to lose but doesn’t know what else to do with. Mine includes but is not limited to (and some of it has been there for decades) :

COOL DO-ALL POCKET TOOL – the guy likes gadgets and has some sort of a be-prepared hang-up.
M-1 GARAND CLIP OF ARMOR PIERCING AMMO- the guy is into old rifles and doesn’t want the A/P to get mixed up with other ammo. And he just likes seeing it from time to time.
MONEY CLIP WITH BUILT IN KNIFE – the guy either doesn’t travel much (TSA worries) or has a spare: I have a spare.

Car radio Buttons
Push each button on a guy’s car radio and you get a quick trip through his musical tastes, the variety of which says something about him. Mine include:

GOLDEN OLDIES STATION – Says he probably came of age in the ‘50’s/60s
OLD SCHOOL HARD ROCK – Says he’s still into music and enjoys the adrenaline.
COUNTRY STATION (two actually) – Says he’s flexible in his tastes
JAZZ STATION – Says he’s super flexible
NO NEWS, PUBLIC OR TALK RADIO – says he views his car as a refuge not to be penetrated by reality.

Do NOT share these observations with your wife or other women. They already know tons about us and we know nothing about them. Don’t believe that? Then, when was the last time you looked at a piece of jewelry or a dress and knew it was exactly her taste and it wouldn’t be returned? Case closed.

If you’re one of those rare guys who actually has figured out his wife’s taste, I’m not sure whether to admire or pity you. :-) bd

28 Jan 2012 - The Other Border Battle

How wide/thick is a national or state border? A foot? Maybe only an inch. Actually, I think a border has no dimension. It just “is”. It’s an invisible wall that in some cases defines thoughts, cultures and freedoms and nowhere is that more obvious than on the California/Arizona border: two totally different worlds separated by an imaginary line.

We were coming back from California yesterday and, as we came to the bridge over the Colorado River, one end in Arizona, the other in California, I marveled at the differences at the two ends. As I neared the middle of the bridge I could feel a form of psychic oppression roll off my shoulders. I was FREE! What ever happened to California dreamin’?

The Redhead and I have this routine we go through when going to California. A couple miles on the AZ side of the border there’s a rest stop and we take the obligatory pee and I lock the Glock into its California-approved hard side case in the trunk and tuck the mag into the console up front. Then we’re legal to proceed into the Republik of Kalifornia. When we come home we do the reverse. It’s sort of a symbolic ritual that epitomizes the difference between the two states.

I find California to be incredibly sad because I remember it so well back in the day. When I was in college in the ’60’s I couldn’t see myself living anywhere else. CA was where it was all happening. There was a terrific energy and freedom that gave birth to so much music, so many wonderful airplanes, so many forms of art and free thinking that it seemed as if the whole of imagination had moved and taken up residence there. It was where personal freedom was, if not invented, at least perfected. But no more.

On the one hand, much of California, the population, is still as imaginative and as free in their minds as ever, but that freedom is being squeezed hard by so many life-restricting regulations and runaway debt. The dreamin’ part of California is long dead. And much of that is because of politicians, do-gooders and a growing segment of the population that has forgotten that part of being free is taking care of yourself. Of depending on your own wits to do the undoable. And celebrating the difference between right and wrong. Somehow, the entitlement mindset, the oh-that’s-too-bad-let’s-lend-a-helping-hand crowd got out of control. We now have a state that’s larger than many countries about to go Tango Uniform. The really sad part is that the southern part of the state is going to take the northern and far eastern parts, which should actually form another state, with it.

It’s pretty wild to cross that river and know that on the east bank, the Glock wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow. In fact, very few things raise an eyebrow here. We’re pretty much free to do as we will, so long as we don’t infringe on the rights of others or break the law, most of which are pretty reasonable. On the west bank, the Glock would put me in jail so fast it would make your eyeballs sweat, were I to carry it in any but the prescribed, totally neutered manner. On the East Bank, a man is expected, and actually encouraged by law, to stand up and do battle, if necessary, for the things and those he loves. Fifty yards away, on the West bank, they don’t dare stand up for their rights or they’ll upset someone and wind up in the can. The thought is that the State will provide for them. They need no form of personal defense. An erroneous thought if there ever there was one.

I never saw the Berlin Wall, but it too was actually nothing more than an imaginary line that The Wall gave dimension. It was a manifestation of the loss of freedom for an entire people. And I can’t help thinking of it every time we cross the middle of that bridge over the Colorado. Both ends of that span are anchored in the most freedom-loving nation on Earth. But in some ways, the bridge might as well connect different continents.

As I’ve said before here, California has always been a trendsetter for the rest of the country. So, let’s study them closely as an example of how easily things can get out of control and how carefully we have to watch our own city governments, our state governments and our national government. California didn’t change over night. It was a slow, insidious, creeping grind of the kind that we can see all around us on all levels. It’s not too late to stop the erosion. We just have to decide which end of the bridge we want to live on and put our foot down.

22 Jan 2012 - Marketing the Apocalypse

The other day it dawned on me that, as a society, the concept of survival, the end of the world, and preparation for all that happiness is gaining serious popular traction. Doomsday has become an easy media sale and I’m not sure how I feel about that.

A couple of years ago they made a movie out of Larry McMurtry’s book, The Road. It is one of the darkest, scariest books I’ve ever read and even casting one of my favorites, Vigor Mortensen, in the lead in the movie didn’t make it any less so. It’s the tale of a post-apocalypse father and his adolescent son, trying to survive the collapse of civilization. This is the kind of thing that would drive anyone to buying out their local Costco and firearms emporium and stock piling everything in the world. The exact cause of their apocalypse is vague. Maybe volcanoes. Maybe nuclear. Maybe electing Democrats across the board…sorry…couldn’t resist. :-)

Then there were the movies Sudden Impact (Morgan Freeman leads the world in facing an asteroid impact), and Armageddon (Bruce Willis leads a bunch of lovable oil field crazies onboard yet another asteroid to blow it up). Both movies hit the theaters within months of each other. Asteroid threats sell well, as all the recent an-asteroid-collision-is-in-your-future programs filling the cable channels prove.

Day After Tomorrow has the Earth hit by an instantaneous ice age. Lots of frozen people and our hero trapsing through it to rescue his son who is holed up in the New York City Library. And don’t forget one that’s making the late-night TV rounds at the moment “2012.” The kicker on this one is the little touch of reality where China builds the super-boats that save mankind from The Flood. Yet another damn debt we’ll owe them. Just what we need.

Denzel Washington does a great job in The Book of Eli. The central theme is saving a copy of the Bible (GREAT surprise ending!), but the environment is what I think is the most realistic portrayal of what post-apocalypse America is likely to be.

The much-quoted Mayan calendar predicts the end of the world in late 2012. Hmmm…November is at the end of 2012. It’s uncanny that the Mayans could predict the outcome of an election that far in advance. I’m impressed. Or is that depressed?

The real confirmation that doomsday sells well is that one of the first shows produced for Glenn Beck’s new on-line TV network, GBTV, is Independence, USA. It’s a reality show that follows a family as they prepare for the apocalypse we keep talking about. How much more commercial can survival thinking get?

We all know that I’m more than just a little survival oriented, but, and this is a big BUT, I’m not going to let those thoughts ruin my life nor run it.

If one were to sit down and absorb all of the negative issues we’re being hammered with we’d be depressed to the point of just throwing up our hands. “Oh, my God, we’re doomed, what’s the use? Where’s my cup of poison to end it all?” Which, of course is BS!

We can’t do much about asteroids. We can’t do much to prevent Tsunamis and Earthquakes and their disruption of vital services (although moving to AZ isn’t a bad first move…forget I said that…we already have too many people). The possible collapse of our society because of political ineptitude, might be stopped by our political activism although we may be so far down that particular path, it may be that all we can do is blunt its effects with our votes. However, those are mostly moot points.

The above catastrophes are long shots but tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, snow storms etc. and the massive disruption of services each can bring are sure things. They WILL happen. They can hammer any part of the world at any time so we should prepare for those knowing the effort will also work when dinosaurs mysteriously takeover the world or aliens land and start cooking up people-kabobs, or whatever. That’s an important thought: preparing for one emergency prepares you for all emergencies and is borne of commonsense, not paranoia.

There is absolutely no doubt that bad things ARE in each of our futures. We just don’t know what. The question is, “What do we do about it?”

There is a basic, underlying thought that should be gleaned from all the foregoing discussion: bad things can happen and we should be prepared. Be prepared! That’s the single salient thought that applies to them all (and, coincidentally, is the Boy Scout motto). But, being prepared doesn’t necessarily mean moving to the mountains, building a bunker in the backyard and stockpiling 155 mm howitzer rounds and grenades.

Being prepared can be nothing more than looking around at our daily life and thinking “I wonder if I could do without this, or that product? If the electricity is out, how will I carry out this particular task? We eat so much a day, how much of that can come from cans and how many would we need? And once we eat it and our body processes it, what are we going to do with the resulting product?” Just think through every action during an average day, from brushing our teeth to curling up in bed and figure out how best we can prepared for a week, a month, a couple months, a year, without the grocery store or outside help. Then decide exactly how long a period and how prepared you want to be.

Truth is that a years worth of supplies takes up a helluva lot of space and, depending on what kind of foodstuffs and equipment we’re talking about, it can soak up a fair amount of money. But, what price do you put on piece of mind? And survival. A couple of months should be minimum and is affordable and storable.

There are dozens of websites dedicated to this subject although FEMA’s is probably the most productive and easiest to understand. Google Emergency Preparedness and Emergency Food and you’ll have more sites than you actually need.

Every home needs the ability to provide for
a) shelter
b) drink
c) eat
d) poop
e) protect health
f) defend the family.

It’s as simple as that. Just think through each of those factors and what we need to be prepared for them.

Here’s an important bit of info I dug out of a dozen websites and government studies that’ll help: Although canned goods have “sell by” dates, those don’t mean anything in terms of the actual viability limits of the product within. Studies have shown that as long as the deterioration within hasn’t bulged the cans, it’s safe to eat, but the appearance and nutritional value will start down hill from the day they are canned. And the length of time canned goods remain viable depends very much on how they are stored. If they get hot, the storage time goes down quickly. Kept at room temperatures it looks as if five to ten years is absolutely okay. Longer on some things. For a summary see: http://www.grandpappy.info/hshelff.htm

Another important fact: you don’t have to buy it all at one time. Buy a couple hundred dollars of extra stuff a month and it builds up quickly. The ideal route is the freeze-dried stuff like Mountain Home or Freeze Dried Guy sells, but it is wildly expensive and they are back ordered months and months. Because of apocalypse marketing, survival food has become a hot product. Canned goods, dried stuff like rice and beans, however, are available everywhere, especially Costco. And don’t forget bulk packs of toothbrushes, floss, etc. Especially don’t forget toilet paper. Why is it that everything with me comes back down to comfortable pooping?

Be prepared. How prepared you make yourself is your call. But, don’t let the media scare you or direct your thinking. Remember: every single program or movie/book you see on the subject was designed to first generate a profit, second entertain, third, pass along information. Don’t let them do your thinking for you. But, don’t ignore them either. Apocalypse movies/books sell well because we all know there’s a kernel of truth in each.

15 Jan 2012 - Life is an Unfinished Project

When doing three monthly columns (Plane and Pilot, Flight Journal, Sport Aviation), a weekly blog (okay, so more or less weekly…I miss a few), and sending out close to 200 e-mails a day, I sometimes can’t remember what I’ve said to whom. So, if some of what follows sounds familiar, just chalk it up to wordsmithing-overload. The subject this time is life, time, projects and reality. Is that broad enough for you?

When my son turned 40 last month, I told him that he was finally coming into the decades of his life that really counted. For most folks, the 20s and 30’s are nothing more than practice for what you’re going to do in life. From that point on, you can really make hay because your career is started, your family is well underway and you’ve learned a ton of skills and know how to apply them. You’re finally a fully functioning human being. Not a human being in training.

Lots of people fear turning 40, but so far, I haven’t hit a decade that I thought was worse than the last one. Each has actually been better. Okay, so some of the personal machinery is beginning to show mileage problems but they aren’t major and one of the skills you develop as you get older is how to compensate for body parts that don’t work as well as they used to. For instance, my back, which has been problematic since day-one (sound familiar?), is increasingly giving me fits. However, yesterday I found that by sculpting cushions and experimenting with their placement, I could repeatedly pull in excess of four G’s with neither whimpering nor screaming. And with no long lasting effects. That was a liberating discovery and that particular student got to see every corner of the aerobatic envelope as his instructor rediscovered his three-dimensional life. Damn that felt good!

All of this having been said, however, the truth is that it’s nearly impossible for each of us not to look down the road and realize that the end of our days is hiding somewhere out there just out of sight.

I guess this realization is what was bugging me as I was working on the drawers for my antique-safe-turned-gun-vault because I was complaining that they were eating up way too much time. There are a helluva lot more hours behind me than in front and those lowly drawers didn’t deserve such a big chunk of what’s left of my future.

I think most of us can hear a clock ticking in our life’s background and every tick of that clock warns us of a second, a minute, an hour that we’ll never see again. That’s why, for instance, I don’t stand in front of the microwave watching it count down the 90 seconds required to heat my coffee. I hit the “go” button and dash into the office to do something productive until I hear it ding. At some point in life, we’re all going to experience our very last 90 seconds and I don’t want to do so knowing I’d wasted that much precious time standing in front of a microwave.

As I looked at that pile of semi-finished drawers and glanced around at all of my other unfinished projects, I couldn’t stop myself from asking “Do I really have enough time left to finish all of this stuff? And how many more projects can I actually fit into the time remaining?” It’s an unanswerable question because we don’t know how much time any of us has left. And that’s tragic! If I knew how much time was available, there are dozens of projects I’d like to do.

I’d love to restore something like a Travel Air 6000 or Stinson Jr. Maybe build a Bearhawk, or a Knight Twister (Yeah, I’d love that!), or a replica of Betty Skelton’s Lil Stinker. I want to build a track-nosed ’29 roadster. A 1000-yard, tack-driving rifle (it’s already in the works). A Yugo with a flathead Ford engine. A small caliber Kentucky Rifle. The list goes on and on and on. Actually, I’ll have no problem doing them all. All I have to do is live to be 150 and do so in perfect health.

Do I have the time to finish my current projects? Who the hell knows? And why is it important? The primary reason it’s important is because I don’t want to leave my wife and kids with huge unfinished, unsalable projects. But past the major projects that WILL get finished (roadster and artillery piece), it’s not important that I finish everything. It’s only important that my time on Earth be invested in ways that I consider wise. And teach me something. This includes projects that result in artifacts of which I’m proud and which the next owner will remember who built/restored them. It’s also important that I invest my time in activities that leave good memories and skills for those who shared them with me.

If I check-out tomorrow, it’ll be a shame because the major projects won’t be finished. But, give me another few years and I’ll catch up with no problem.

Huh! As I typed that last sentence I instantly visualized the open spaces in my workshop that will suddenly appear when the bigger projects are finished. I’m smiling as I type this, because I know for a fact that empty workshop space HAS to be filled. It’s an incontrovertible law of nature. So, I guess some of those other dream projects probably will get started and who cares if they get finished.

With any luck, I’ll die with a smile on my face and a chisel or torch in my hand.

8 Jan 2012 - Narrow Niches, Sanity and Insanity

One of the ways in which I more or less guarantee my own sanity is by periodically visiting the insanity of others who are involved in the various oddball interests in which I mentally dabble. With all the gnashing of teeth and predictions of doom, I love that others are blithely ignoring it and doing their own thing. Plus some recent finds are perfect for next years Christmas list.

First something that falls under the category of, “There is no recession and someone always wants to buy neat sh*t!” And believe me, this is definitely Neat Sh*t!

I’m certain everyone here knows what the original Gatling Gun was/is: the multi-barrel, crank-operated .45-70 caliber weapon the movies love to work into western scenes. These are big weapons and usually pulled behind horses, or today the reproductions have their own trailers. Their size worked against them in terms of portability. Colt Firearms Manufacturing, however, had a solution for that: in the 1880’s they came up with a much smaller version, the Bulldog, that featured an unbelievably beautiful barrel configuration that had them mounted in a brass shroud and often fed from a circular magazine. The gun was mounted on a tripod, rather than a wheeled carriage. Legend has it that it was made for police departments, although I can’t imagine an 1890’s police department using one, although who knows.

I can't think of anything more artistic to sit in the corner of a home office or den, can you?

The fact is that it’s a highly sought after weapon and, in my mind at least, is the perfect gun to have artfully displayed in the corner of your office, or den. Or living room, if you’re single (it’s not a wife-friendly thing, although Marlene would love one…really!). I mean, who in their right mind doesn’t want a Gatling Gun sitting around their house as part of the décor, right? I have an unused free-standing fireplace in the corner of my office, that, when removed, would give exactly the right amount of space.

I’ve always wanted one but they are few and far between and bring something far north of $100,000. This week, in one of the more surprising e-mails I’ve received, I found that Colt had come to my rescue: it is reproducing the M1893 Gatling gun in a limited edition of 50!! Where do I sign up and how soon can they get one to my front door? And how soon is someone going to give me the $49,999 (actual price…God knows that in this economy you don’t want to price something at an even $50,000 and scare people away) so I can buy one? It is, however, the perfect Christmas gift for next year, so here’s the link on where to buy one for me. Don’t tell me ahead of time. Let it be a surprise. Gatling Gun

And then there is the steam engine (as is locomotives) bell thing. As narrow niches go, this one is pretty damn narrow, but wildly attractive. Again, at least to me it is. I’m a stone cold freak about steam locos and decades ago came really close to buying one before I came to my senses and realized that even if I got it for free, it would cost my entire life earnings (earnings, not savings) just to move it. So I didn’t. But, I’ve always thought it would be cool to have one of their big old brass bells sitting in the corner of the office. I could have a rope attached to it and, when I needed Marlene for something (our house is sort of long and narrow), I could just clang it a couple of times. Of course, in reality, all I’d have to do is ring the bell for her one time and she’d box my ears: she’s not a “come when I ring” kind of woman, believe me.

From a wood burning steam locomotive. About 16 inches in diameter. I think this is a classic piece of industrial art.

Anyway, in the vein of future Christmas gifts I ran across the mother lode of locomotive bells and learned a lot about them in the process. And they ain’t cheap! However, if none of you want to spring for the Gatling Gun for me, a bell would be much more economical and be greatly appreciated. Loco Bells

So many narrow niches to poke into, so little time.

FYI - I also don’t have an old hit-or-miss engine. Just thought I’d mention it. My birthday is just around the corner. :-)

31 Dec 2011 - Twas the Night before 2012
As I’m writing this, 2012 is only a few hours away. Part of me is excited: it’s going to be a wild year! And a critical one to our future. Another part of me just doesn’t give a damn. It just wants to deal with my own life and keep the rest of the world out of it.

We’ve had a lot of critical years in our history, but during my short time on Earth, I don’t think I’ve seen one quite as critical as this one in so many areas. Some of the critical areas are obvious. Others quite subtle.

The most obvious is what appears to be a government that is totally out of control and listening to no one but themselves. And I’m not talking about just Democrats. I look at that situation and get more than just a little overwhelmed. So much so that I think that deep in my heart I’m trying to make peace with the fact that there’s a very strong chance that we’ll see the incumbent re-elected: right now he has a huge financial advantage that can’t possibly be even remotely matched by anyone on the GOP side. That’s the benefit of having immensely wealthy friends (who somehow seem to avoid being defined as part of the infamous “One Percenters”). More important, the current POTUS has a political machine behind him that will concentrate on the segments that know which side their bread is buttered on: the unions and the entitlement segment which will be able to deliver the most votes. Plus, it’ll be down and dirty Chicago politics like we’ve never seen and the GOP just isn’t capable of dealing with those kinds of tactics. The GOP is far from being a bunch of nice guys, but they don’t seem to have the moxie or inbred vicious nature that comes out of Chicago. It’s not going to be pretty.

So, basically, I wish I could fast forward through the year and wake up a year from now with the election already over. Then I’d just have to cope with what ever comes to be, whether I like it or not. Watching people beat each other to a pulp for votes is just not a great spectator sport.

That having been said, I’d hate myself for missing the coming year. Among other things it’ll be another birthday for each of my grand kids. Something I wouldn’t miss for anything. Not even an election. Both my son and daughter have all sorts of new projects cooking and I wouldn’t want to miss a second of their lives. And Marlene and I have some plans that I’d have to fast forward through so as not to get mired in election stupidity and I don’t want to miss those either. So, although I fully realize that what is in my personal backyard is far more important than anything that happens on the other side of the nation or the world, I’m going to have to grin-and-bear my way through Presidential Election BS, 2012.

All that having been said, when 2012 draws to a close and we’re counting the things that have been accomplished, I’d hope the following are included:

A return to commonsense: there are very few people in any government at any level who can look at their area of responsibility and say that they’ve behaved in a way that fits the definition of common sense. It has been anything but.

A growth in national pride: I’m getting tired of America Bashing. Of running ourselves down. I want us to see ourselves as we really are, not as the press, foreign governments or the politicians say we are.

Personal responsibility is re-established: I’d like to see every man-jack amongst us stand up and take responsibility for everything we do, both right and wrong. This applies very much to our leaders. Of all the things I wish for, this is the one that is least likely to happen. No one seems to want to accept responsibility for anything.

Stop financing the Boogieman: China and foreign governments aren’t the only problems in our future—Debt is the real Boogieman. Let’s stop borrowing and stop spending until we get our personal and national houses in order.

Weed out the Bad Apples: There are some bad apples in the financing/banking/corporate/political world that don’t care for anyone but themselves and their circle of friends. Inasmuch as that circle includes a lot of very big politicians, a general house cleaning is in order.

Stop this Wealth-is-bad crap! How adolescent can we possibly be? Don’t denigrate those who are wealthy. If it bugs you that much, make being wealthier than they are a personal goal. Profit and wealth is what makes a successful world go around. They are goals not obstacles.

Stop beating the Capitalism-is-Evil drum. Where do the protesters think their tents, parks and sign making materials come from? The good fairy? Every thing they buy is a result of someone’s capitalism. It’s called being in business. Get real!

Get our social house in order: There’s too much BS floating around about class struggles within our society and the way we’re going to hell in a hand basket. The middle class is neither dead nor passé. And being on welfare is neither a reward, nor a punishment, nor a career. A person’s pride should make them want to depend on it for as short a time as possible. If they don’t think that way, they not only have no pride but are taking us all for a ride. Cut ‘em off.

Most important, let’s remember that we’re a Republic, not a Democracy: We were set up as a republic that is bound by the laws laid out in the Constitution. The majority doesn’t rule: the Constitution does. That’s what keeps mobs from taking over the country. We’re a nation of laws and without that, we’ll be just another third world country that’s headed down the tubes.

There’s a quote floating around that has been erroneously attributed to professors, philosophers, etc. But, regardless of where it came from the basics seem to fit. :
"…A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse over loose fiscal policy."

Sound familiar? That’s why our founding fathers set us up as a Republic run by laws, not a Democracy run by the majority.

I would really like to sleep through 2012, but since I can’t, I’d like to see the above points come true. And, although I know that’s not going to come even close to happening, I can at least apply them to my own little corner of the world and make it fit my view of what I think a country should be. And that’s all that actually matters.

Oh, yeah: Happy New Year!

24 Dec 2011 - Santa-Budd Has a Sensible Side?

It 'twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse…this is because we have three cats and a Colt (or three) standing guard. Wife is out like a light and I’m sitting here counting the gifts I didn’t buy for myself. So all is right with our world.

This may be the season for giving, but, as it happens, I/we didn’t buy many gifts at all. None for each other. Our buying power was pretty much sucked up by the comedy that is life: our mostly new roof, the on-going drama of the complex wood structure on the front the house, and miscellaneous previously mentioned expenses. But that’s okay. Actually it’s better than okay because we are blessed with a roof over our heads, bodies that are healthy, if a little weather beaten, and family and friends that love us as much as we love them. So, exchanging some rapidly inflating dollars for additional stuff we really don’t need has little meaning. Still, it’s fun to talk about the stuff I thought about buying but didn’t. And I’m proud of myself. More or less.

I have a terrific 1911 Colt Commander .45 so definitely don't need one of the little Defenders, still...

One Budd-gift that’s been creeping around the edges of my mind for a looong time and definitely qualifies as a self-sponsored “Santa” gift for under the tree is a 3” 1911 .45. Probably a Colt Defender. Or maybe a Paraordnance Warthog. Now let’s be honest: I really don’t need another .45. Actually, I don’t need another pistol of any kind. But…it’s Christmas and we’re not supposed to be logical. But I was. So I didn’t. There is, however, always next year. Actually, my birthday is coming up and I owe it to myself to be good to myself, don’t you think?

All steel, over three feet long! It's a miracle this didn't follow me home. Unfortunately, I got the guy's business card, so, if he still has it, I know how to reach him. This is probably not a good thing.

And then there was the tank! The Tiger I, to be exact, that I didn’t buy last week. But damn near did. I mean I came really close. Okay so it wasn’t a real Tiger, but, in today’s world, it’s about as close as you’re gonna get, considering there are only 6 surviving Tiger I’s scattered around various museums world wide and no privately-owned ones that I’m aware of. This one was a killer 1:6 scale model that stood out amidst all of the ordnance at our last monstrous gunshow. But, it wasn’t just any model: how does a motorized Tiger that’s over three feet long, is crafted in steel—not plastic—and takes two guys to pick up, grab you? Now THAT’S a model! I Googled it and the basic kit sells for $900 plus another couple hundred for “accessories” (shovels, spanners, etc.) and heavens knows how much for the motorization package. He was asking $600 for the finished model and I’m certain I could have carried it off…with some help anyway…for less than $500. And I had the money in my pocket. As I walked away, I could feel it burning a hole in the back of my brain.

I saw the Tiger on Saturday morning and literally counted the minutes throughout the weekend until the show closed at three the following afternoon. I was fighting to keep myself from running back down there every second of the time. I’m so frigging proud of myself! So much self-restraint! Dammit!!

And then there was the DoAll metal cutting bandsaw I saw on Craigslist this week. The location wasn’t even a mile away. And my own metal-cutting bandsaw had just eaten its innards. And I was working a lot of steel for the house woodwork. And The Safe Project had a lot of steel-slicing involved. But, I could live without one for a while. And it would have taken up too much space. And do I actually need that much bandsaw? And…and…and I think I’ll call him after the holidays, offer a silly low price and see if he takes it. Well…it can’t hurt.

Okay, so I don’t need any more “stuff.” Does any of us? If you’re reading this, you’re probably not spending tonight shivering in a cardboard box in an urban alley. Or sleeping on the floor in the corner of a crowded homeless shelter. If you’re saying “he should have bought the tank” or you’re crowing “I would have bought the bandsaw” then you’re a long way from the bottom. And you probably have a sizeable stash of toys, tools and other soul-satisfying what-nots of your own.

I’m certain that the majority of those who read Thinking Out Loud are as fortunate as I am. With similar goals. Similar achievements. And similar things for which to be thankful. Some of you may be out of work, but, if you have your health, you know you’ll find work eventually. Some may be separated from their family by oceans but you know the joy of the reunion will make up for the separation. Almost. Some may be having it tough, but, every single one of us know we have it better than so many others.

A few may be spending this week alone, but because they’re on their computer reading this, they aren’t truly alone. Unless it is by choice. They know they can always reach out and touch someone by tapping a few keys. That’s the beauty of the computer. It always keeps you in contact. However, if you don’t have someone to reach out to, drop me an “e” and we’ll chat. Talking is good for the soul. And it’s a gift that I not only can afford to give, but would be happy to give. You know how to track me down: buddairbum@cox.net.

Merry Xmas, y’all. Make a list, check it twice, of those you should have called recently but haven’t and call them. It’ll be the priceless gift that does you both some good.

In the mean time: anyone wanna go in partners on a Tiger tank?

17 Dec 2011 - It's Called Life

I’m tempted to talk about politics. But, we have a guy named Newt saying he’s better than a guy named Mitt and both say they re better than a guy named Barack. Even bad movie scripts have better names than that. And more believable plots. So, I’ll talk about life instead.

Well, it’s not exactly life I want to talk about but the way random events sometimes clump up and don’t seem random. Like when you get a bad roll going and can't seem to break it. Especially, when you have zero control of any aspect of it. Let’s take the week after our lucky fire a couple weeks ago as an example.

The fire really got our attention! As did replacing the wood burned up and having to go buy the exact same 115 2 x 4’s again. And I didn’t even get a discount as a return customer. Bummer!

I was ordering the new wood the day after the fire and was on the phone to the lumberyard. I turned and my elbow knocked my laptop off the counter onto a tile floor. Net result, a crack right across the motherboard. It now acts as if it had a frontal lobotomy. And is useless, so I’m shopping eBay for another of the ten-year-old machines.

That evening I went out into the shop to relax by cutting up some steel tubing for the drawers in The Safe Project. Fired up the metal-cutting bandsaw and a half-hour later, the blade stopped turning. Just stopped turning. No fanfare. No noise, no anguished screaming of mechanical pain. Nothing! The motor was turning. The belt was moving. Both pullies were whizzing around. The blade wasn’t doing anything. What the hell? Popped open the gearbox and the main gear is mostly oily bronze dust laying in the bottom of the box. Cheap saw, even cheaper manufacturer: they don’t stock that part but can have it custom made. Never mind!

It rained that night and the leaks in our roof got worse, so we decided to have them fixed. Next day: Oh, hey, look at this: the lifetime, industrial membrane roof we put on 5 years ago is disintegrating before our very eyes. No one wants to touch it. Finally find someone who knows the material. They’re on the roof as we speak. The quote to repair is twice what I paid for my first new car.

Next morning (four days after the fire), I’m busy drilling ¼ inch holes in steel with my trusty, high-end Milwaukee 3/8”, lithium powered drill. Sudden screech. Something jerks. Then the motor is still silently turning but the chuck is standing still: the clutch just ate itself.

The day after that Marlene is complaining about her computer not wanting to boot. And I can’t print because our printer is too old to talk to my computer, so I have to talk to it through hers. Our Navajo Mac Man shows up, runs some tests: mother board on that one is fried. What is it with me and mother boards?

That night our magic ice dispenser in our refrigerator door stopped working. Unfortunately, I live on soda and ice cubes. The fridge doctor shows up: the entire ice and water mechanism is kaput. All of it.

Damn but ice cubes are expensive!

That next evening, I’m semi-pissed at one of my step-sons because he flushed something down the toilet and it’s backing up. I’m plunging it as if I’m trying to suck an alligator out of the NYC sewer, but no success. Then I go in our own bathroom: our sunken bathtub has three inches of sewage in it. Sh*t! Literally! Our main sewer line is plugged. Again. This after spending $4200 last year having a section replaced. Roto-rooter shows up about 11 pm, runs 220 feet of snake down the clean-out and comes back with a wad of faux cloth facial tissues that aren’t supposed to be flushed. Those were very, very expensive tissues. This is where the saying sh*t happens came from.

When I look at Washington DC and Newt. And Mitt. And Barry. I have to laugh. They are a dark comedy. The whole thing: the government, the debt, the world situation are all grim scenes in a comedy that isn’t funny. They don’t seem real and I want to deal with reality. With stuff that directly affects my life. I’ve decided to base my thoughts for the coming week on my own realities, like keeping three inches of poop-flavored water out of my bathtub.

Past that, I really don’t want to think any more. So, I won’t.

PS – I think the one-word definition of the above is “life.”

10 Dec 2011 - You Can't Keep 'em Young

This past week my son turned 40. It’s a milestone for me as much as for him. I’d never considered how I would feel having a child who is an adult. What follows started out as an outline of thoughts but turned into something else. Not quite sure what.

On Growing Up

I miss my kids.
Maybe because they’re no longer kids.
They’re grown ups.
Adults.
With their own lives,
own concerns,
own opinions.

I want to be a part of their lives.
I want to experience what they’re experiencing.
Be the bug on the wall.
Be there for them.
With them.
If they want.
And they do want.
But they don’t need.

It’s unavoidable:
That a parent will no longer be needed.
But, a parent has his own needs.
One of them is to be needed.
To be part of.
To have a child “want” to share their lives with us.

And I thought of my own father:
How long it was
before the Sunday Morning Call became ritual.

Through those thoughts I understood those of my children:
Dad is of another world.
Sometimes he understands.
Sometimes he doesn’t.
We love him but…
We have so much to do,
so many places to go,
so many dreams to fulfill.
Yeah, I’ll try to call tomorrow.
But, tomorrow turns into the day after,
then next week,
then next month.

I'm frustrated.
So much of their life is being lived
without me knowing,
or sharing.
Just as it was with my own father,
until,
as my own kids grew,
I realized that hugs are important.
Calls are important.
Letting a parent know they are still needed is important.

We spend half a lifetime preparing our kids
to leave the nest.
We spend the other half regretting their leaving.

Contradictions are part of life:
A part of parenting.
As is the sure knowledge
that we are loved.
That we’re appreciated.
That they’ll be there, if needed.

Still…growing up, like growing old,
seems as unfair, as it is inevitable.

But parenting runs full circle.
Their time will come.
They’ll understand.
And the calls will begin anew.

In the meantime:
I really do miss my kids.

3 Dec 2011 - On Being Able to Do "Stuff"

This morning a friend was describing how his ten-year-old out foxed a video game so it would run faster on his older computer. That got me thinking: youngsters who are that comfortable with computers have become the norm but we’re raising kids who don’t now how to do “stuff” that doesn’t start with a keyboard. And I’m not too sure that younger grown ups are much better.

Let’s define “stuff.” I’m talking about the practical stuff. The kind that often involve getting dirty, skinning knuckles and, more important, solving the physical problems that surround us in our daily existence where a computer won’t help.

What’s happening right now is that the tail is wagging the dog. What was supposed to be a tool, the computer, has become a crutch, a life style, a form of social anesthesia that is potentially far more damaging than TV could ever be. It could well be that in the future we’ll trace the downfall of civilization (as we KNEW it, not as it is now) back to the Steve Jobs/Bill Gates generation.

For some odd reason, I remember an isolated incident when I was a freshman in college and was working at our local swimming pool as a lifeguard during the summer. Something went wrong with the water pump and I remember grabbing a note pad, making a couple of quick sketches of the system, trying to visualize it, and then coming up with a solution. As I was doing that, my boss, turned to one of the other young guards and said, “See, how he drew it out, looked at the various things that could be wrong, and visually worked out a solution. That is problem solving!”

He was trying to make the point that I had learned that in engineering school, but I hadn’t. It was nothing more than the same approach any farm kid (or hot rodder) of my generation would have taken. We’d grown up cobbling stuff together with what we had to solve a problem, e.g. propping up leaning barns, keeping crappy old cars/tractors/trucks running, whatever and we’d automatically developed the mental skills that problem solving demanded. I didn’t need engineering school to teach me that. That was nothing more than commonsense born of experience. Of getting my hands dirty.

I’ve some fairly intense formal education (BS in aero engineering, MBA in marketing/finance) but what did I actually get out of it? Not much. However, one invaluable aspect of it is that it added a depth of understanding to my problem solving because I now had the theoretical understanding of the principals involved. I knew WHY some things worked and others didn’t. But it didn’t actually change the basic problem solving approach to everyday problems that is typical of any but the most recent generations.

It is our kids that I worry about most. Every single narrow niche interest that you can think of, including, but not limited to, models of all kinds (airplanes, cars, railroads, etc) aviation, hunting/fishing, firearms, hot rodding, etc., are in the process of dying. They are “graying out” because there are no young folk involved. Why? It would appear that the computerized life style, both physical and social, is leading them around by the nose. It’s bad enough that almost every kid has a cell phone, but it’s almost comical that rather than calling each other, they’ll be thumbing the keyboard and texting. It’s tragic how much time they spend in their rooms playing games and socializing via keyboard.

There is no way this trend can be reversed, nor should it be: assuming that civilization doesn’t come down around our ears and the lights go out (which many think it will), if a kid is not computer savvy he’ll be left out of much of the world. Same thing for adults. God knows, I live on a computer, as do most of us (or you wouldn’t be reading this). Computers were barely in their electronic swaddling clothes, when I made them part of my life. However, by the time I got into them I already had the grease-under-the-fingernail basics down pat. Those who were in high school in 1980 (approximately), or later, when computers began to take over, didn’t have that background.

Today’s high school grad, when asked a question or presented with a problem immediately turns to their keyboard. They don’t sketch anything out and try to visualize it before making the computer part of the equation. They try to find a website (which are often not terribly accurate) where someone has already figured it out. Their brain, their imagination, their problem solving skills are that of the computer. It’s external to their thoughts. Not internal.

My fear is that if the sh*t actually does hit the fan and the lights go out, we’ll have a sizeable portion of the population bumbling around helpless because they won’t know what to do. This is especially painful for me because that includes my own kids. And, because of distance, I won’t be able to help them. That thought constantly haunts me.

If there is a good side to all of this, it is that it has built an increased community of trades people: the electricians, carpenters, handymen that still remember how to do “stuff.” Although there’s a sizable DIY movement (witness the DIY cable network), it normally doesn’t attract the computer-driven amongst us.

So, if you want your kid to be a success, make absolute top money and always have work, send them to plumbing school. Forget law school, etc. Besides having a guaranteed career, they’ll also learn how to use their hands, and that will never go out of style regardless of what happens in our future.

Latest Swap Mart Find:

I just had to share this: Twenty bucks at a local hotrod swap meet. 33" inches long, 24 pounds. Handles a 3 inch nut at one end and a 3 1/2 inch at the other. The welding helmet is a normal size. Screws with your perspective doesn't it? :-)

15 Nov 2011 - In Search of the Perfect Job

Okay, so the genie pops out of a bottle and says, “As your servant, I will grant you one wish: I will allow you to pick what you think would be the most perfect job in the world. All you have to do is scratch the itch in the middle of my back. I can’t quite reach it and it’s driving me nuts.” Seems like a fair exchange. One scratch for the perfect job. But, there’s a serious hitch here: exactly what would each of us see as the perfect job?

Two totally unrelated incidents kicked off this train of thought: one was the visit from a friend who flew fighters in the Navy for 20 years, not once getting stuck behind a desk. Three years ago he retired and the next day went to work for Boeing flying Super Hornets. Then, as if rubbing sugar in the wound, we had dinner because he was in town getting re-current in F-16’s, which he’d also be flying for Boeing. Sounds like a perfect job, doesn’t it?

The second incident was watching Myth Busters test the explosive qualities of sewer gas by blowing three manhole covers 150 feet in the air. Week after week, we watch those guys get their jollies through explosions, crashing cars and other wildly fun stuff. And they get paid to do it! Sure looks perfect to me.

But, does the perfect job actually exist? I know that every one of my fighter pilot buddies endured the regimented ground bound existence because they knew they’d eventually “get the gear in the wells” and that made it all worth it. Behind the exciting scenes of Myth Busters busting myths are weeks and weeks of planning, shooting, reshooting, scripting, long-long days waiting for stuff to get worked out, worrying about ratings and having the show cancelled, etc., etc.

From the outside, it’s easy for a job to look perfect, when very few are. However, is there a job you’d like to have where the pros out weigh the cons enough to make it the perfect one for you?

First, what constitutes a perfect job? How do we define it? Maybe we can quantify it by reducing it to a list of “must haves” and rate the job from one to ten (ten being best) on each point.

1. The work is so compelling that I’d continue doing it after hitting the lottery.
2. Every day is different with a lot of creativity involved.
3. Every day challenges me on many levels.
4. I love the people I work with.
5. It’s located in a part of the country where I’m in my comfort zone.
6. Some travel is involved.
7. It pays enough that I don’t have to worry about old age security
8. It pays enough that any college tuition in my future won’t kill me
9. It gives me 30 days paid vacation (any more than that ruins a person).
10. All weekends are mine.

If it’s a perfect job, your final score should be 100, right? Or, in my case, 90, because college tuitions are behind me (although I still have lingering payments on one). However, something is out of whack because, when I rate each point and total them up, my score only comes up to 60. I got perfect tens on the work, people, travel and location, etc., but zeroed out on the security, vacation time and weekends. So clearly something is wrong with this test for employment perfection because I feel as if my existence is as perfect as it can be.

Aha! There’s the difference! I said it without realizing it: I said my “existence” is perfect, not my “job”. That’s because, like so many other self-employed gypsies, I don’t actually have a job. Those of us who fend for ourselves, have many jobs, all of them self-motivated, most of them self-created, and some are more perfect than others. So, how do we judge the perfection of what amounts to a jig-saw puzzle of work and income? I can see only one way: ask the number one question in the checklist—if I won the lottery would I quit what I’m doing?

So, if $20 million were dropped on our doorstep, thereby making the income aspects of the “jobs” we have superfluous, what would Marlene andI change in our lives? We’ve played this fun game before and the only thing I’d do different is drop my advertising business. Otherwise, since the lottery would fix the long-term security issue, I wouldn’t change a thing although a weekend off now and then would be nice. But even there, it’s not as if spending five or six hours over the weekend slaving over a hot student in a cockpit or eight hours in front of a computer talking about neat stuff is the same as digging ditches.

I guess what I’m saying is that my “job” isn’t perfect, but it’s close enough for me. And that’s probably true for most folks. In fact, I’ll bet that there are more people reading this who like their jobs, than those who hate what they do. And I’m pretty sure that no one thinks that their job is perfect. Still, it’s fun to dream that such a thing exists. Besides, dreaming is free!

18 Nov 2011
Spontaneous Behavior Sucks,
When it Involves Combustion

“What was that?” An explosion right outside the bedroom had jolted us awake. Even as I launched out of bed I could see the unmistakable flicker of flames over the twelve-foot exterior wall beyond the French doors. They weren’t five feet away! Holy crap!

As I struggled into a pair of pants and sneakers, the neon numbers on the bedside radio read 0412. By now our doorbell was ringing frantically and people outside were screaming “Your house is on fire, your house is on fire!” Words I never thought in a million years I’d be hearing.

I grabbed a shirt and raced outside where four or five neighbors were milling around in harried circles: I yelled back at Marlene, “Call the fire department, find Shahn-deen and get out of the house.”

Marlene didn’t need encouragement and was already on the line with 911, dog in hand. She sounded incredibly calm. She was doing better than I was.

I sprinted around the corner of the house and couldn’t believe what I saw: yellow-red flames were racing up the wall 20 feet into the air. I could see the dim outline of the gas meter between the blazing stack of lumber and the wall: that’s what woke us up. The meter had exploded. Later I found it had blown a piece almost the size of a playing card out of its case. Although I’ve since been told that indicated it had a slight internal leak or it wouldn’t have exploded, that’s what saved us: its explosion woke us up while the blaze was still building. And boy, was it ever building!

The meter people they say won't explode. Please explain the missing piece.

The lumber was a roiling inferno, like something you see in the movies. Back into the house I grabbed two extinguishers and emptied them on the end of the roaring, waist-high stack of freshly stained, pressure treated 2 x 4’s: I might as well have been peeing on them for all the good I did. The flames were licking up the wall of the house as if it were half a chimney.

As I emptied the last extinguisher, a calm voice in my head said, “You’ve done all you can do. But, it’s going to be okay. Thank God there are no windows and it’s slump block. Even better, the blocks are filled with concrete. I don’t think much heat is going to get through the walls. But I sure as hell wish the fire department would get here!” All of that flashed through my mind in a nano-second.

Even though a major part of my life was being threatened, the practical, engineer part of me had analyzed the situation and calmed me down. Still, it was a scary frigging scene. Scary!!

I stood on the curb with the growing group of people, some from as far as two blocks away, who had heard the explosion, and watched the flames grow. I doubt if it took much more than four minutes (seemed like an hour) for the fire trucks to arrive (three of them!). Bless their little hose-dragging hearts!

This is what winning the lottery looks like. Some scorching, some mess, lots of luck!

It took two minutes for a 3-inch hose to knock the fight out of the fire and another half hour to pick everything apart and find the last embers, soaking them to death. The thermal imaging camera confirmed what I suspected: from the inside, it could find only a minor temperature rise. There wasn’t even the smell of smoke inside. Talk about miracles!

This all happened thirty-six hours ago and I’ve replayed it through my mind a thousand times, every time thinking of all of the what-if’s it represented and how every single one of them had worked in our favor.

If the lumber had been stacked five feet further back, it would have torched the over hanging, super-dried patio roof. If it had been stacked three feet to the left it would have been directly under a pine tree, which only got a minor scorching, something I don’t understand. If it had been stacked next to ANY other wall of the house, it would have come racing through windows and would have been curling around a roof overhang. The roof would have been blazing in seconds. If the meter hadn’t had a small defect, it wouldn’t have exploded and we would have snoozed soundly until it was possibly too late. If the weather hadn’t been so good, we might have stained and stacked them in the garage (what a disaster THAT would have been!).

Sum total of the disaster: $1000 worth of custom sawn beams and such turned to charcoal. A house wall severely scorched with a few stress cracks. We have just won the lottery!

This morning dawned beautifully clear and crisp. And we took advantage of it. It had been 24 hours since the fire trucks left and we celebrated the life left to us by spending an hour or so on the patio with tea and coffee. Mostly, we rejoiced in our good fortune and talked about all the things we were going to attend to. Many of which should be on everyone’s to-do list.
-Get a lock-box and bolt it to a wall in a hidden location so the fire and police departments have a key to our house: you can’t get through our security gates without it.
-Put up more smoke alarms and change the batteries in those we have.
-Come up with better ways of securing and protecting our toys and pets
-Get anything out of the workshop that is an obvious fire hazard (and there are a ton of them.)
- And the list goes on and on.

Oh, yeah one other thing: I’m going to pay special attention to what stain can labels say about spontaneous combustion. I’m here to tell you that it’s very real. The next time, we won’t be so lucky. So, there won’t be a next time.

PS
To those reading this who have suffered the loss of a house or anything similar, my heart goes out to you. I can't imagine how devastating it must be.

11 Nov 2011 - Veterans' Day and Me

Although Memorial Day has the stated purpose of remembering the vets and those in uniform, in reality it means different things to different people. For some it is the half-off sales that surround us. For me, it reminds me of one of those could-of-should-ofs that will always haunt me: I never served in the armed forces. Like so many others, some part of me is sorry that I didn’t. However, another part of me is deeply ashamed because somewhere in a far corner of my mind, I’m just a little glad that I didn’t.

I’m old enough to know that, although I should have shared in “the experience of my generation”, I also know that experience could very well have been life altering. Missing it was not necessarily a bad thing. My generation’s experience was called Vietnam and could have left me emotionally, and possibly physically, scarred for life. Still, forty years after the fact, I feel bad even thinking that way.

While ‘Nam was in progress I was a died-in-the-wool hawk (I lost an NROTC/USMC-option scholarship because they discovered that I’m colorblind) but it was obvious that the way the so-called war was being fought was the biggest example of governmental waste in history. Still, I felt as if I should have been part of it. I can remember driving down the Long Island Express during my first (and only) after-graduation job and coming upon funeral processions with flag-draped coffins: I’d choke up every time. Every damned time! I still do because kids are still serving. Kids are still dying. I feel as if haven’t pay the dues I should have paid for the life I’m living.

I can’t adequately explain the feeling I personally feel towards vets. Especially those who have been in combat. But, whether they were on the front lines or not, they earned the right to call themselves Americans in a way that so many others of us have not. The rest of us have been spectators and have stood around while they were, and are, living in God forsaken parts of the world, sweating in dust-covered hooches praying that some illiterate jihadist isn’t at that moment dropping a mortar round with his name or her name on it down a tube. Every second of their existence in-country, regardless of what country that may be, they know that their uniform makes them a target and they are surrounded by those who want them dead. I can’t begin to imagine what it feels like to know that you are continually surrounded by your own death.

My personal feelings about vets is so strong that I have tried to walk The Wall in DC several times. But, I can’t. I just can’t. Every time I wind up sitting on a bench trying not to make a spectacle out of myself by sobbing like a baby.

When I’m around combat vets of any war, and because of Flight Journal, I do that on a regular basis, I find myself being…I don’t know…uncharacteristically quiet. Maybe even contrite. I know that regardless of my relationship with those guys, and I’m quite close to some of them, I’ll never be inside “The Circle.” Regardless of how many interviews I do, no matter how many words I write about their experiences, I have not “been there” and I’m terribly conscious of what that means: those of us who have not walked through the valley of the shadow death can’t even begin to understand the meaning of those words. Those who have, speak their own language borne of the shared experience of knowing that any minute could be their last and their best chance of survival lies with their buddies on either side of them.

There’s another group I feel exactly the same way about an which, on this day, I think we should be remembering right along with the vets and active-duty soldiers: the wives, sweethearts, parents and kids of soldiers. No soldier is out there alone. He is invisibly and totally connected to those he’s left at home. And they suffer horribly. Often times much worse than the soldier. And the public basically ignores them.

There’s a lot of media hype about this day being 11.11.11: a once in a lifetime confluence of the calendar. Too many forget that Veterans Day, originally known as Armistice Day, comes from the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, when the Armistice took effect and artillery stopped firing in Europe during WWI. The fourth 11, is a curiosity, not something to be venerated.

November 11 stands on its own as a day when those who have worn, and wear, the uniform of the United States armed forces disserve to be remembered as something special. This is because they ARE something special.

5 Nov 2011 - Hollyween, Brand Names and a Friend Lost

Yeah, I know I missed last week. But, just so you know, I spent a portion of it looking like Peewee Herman getting ready to hold up a bank. Rubber mask and everything. And, take my word for it: it ain’t easy being green.

Being a grandparent automatically means you’re a sucker for anything having to do with your grandkids—Oh, she’s going to poop on cue just to prove she’s potty trained? And we’re supposed to lead the cheering section? You got it! We’ll be there. Pom-poms and all. It’s only 800 miles round trip! That’s nothing to help cheer on a good poop.

This time the hard copy invitation (not quite engraved, but close) said it was a Halloween party (read that as “Hollyween”, we’re in Hollywood, so it can’t be just a couple of balloons and a pumpkin. Has to be a production). Worse, the invitation said we had to come in costume. Aaaaarrgh! I DON’T DO COSTUMES!!! Except at fly-ins where I make believe I’m a pilot.

That having been said, I, however, remember how I went to one of our own Halloween parties (first wife) dressed as a hemorrhoid (head stuck through a garbage bag, face painted greasy brown). This may partially explain why she’s an ex (she was at this party too and we all get along great, as it should be).

Back to having to be in costume: remember the comment about being a sucker? I figured, what the hell: a flight suit, my 1953 jet helmet complete with O2 mask and my name on it, and I’m done. But, my daughter laid down the law: this is a kid’s party (attended by adults) and I can’t “cheat” and me going dressed as a pilot was cheating. We actually had to be in costume.

The things we do for our kids and grandkids! One of the first actions, in this case, was to willingly axe murder my dignity. And self image.

Besides my daughter, the biggest influence in Baby A’s life is Sesame Street, which I think is true of most toddlers: their marketing and ability to reach kids makes Steve Jobs look like a piker in that department. Although some part of me is bothered by the commercialism of it all, I have to give them credit: Elmo and his crowd do a better job of teaching toddlers educational concepts than anyone else is doing right now. In this specific situation, however, it made picking out costumes easy: I’d go as Kermit and Marlene would be Miss Piggy.

Miss Piggy never looked so good.

When I made the decision to say to hell with my image of myself, I don’t think I’d looked closely at the way Kermit was dressed (when he was dressed and not all-frog). With his bow-tie, etc. I really did look like Peewee Herman doing a bank job.

Incidentally, I don’t want a single person reading this to comment on how well Kermit matches their image of me: let me continue with my own self-delusions.

Marlene was stuffed into Miss Piggy’s trademark low-cut gown with lots of cleavage showing and made Miss Piggy look like she may be a hooker on the side. Very attractive!! Really! :-)

Anyway, a surprising thing happened at the party. Baby A and I don’t have a super close relationship simply because I’m not around that much. She doesn’t seek me out and more or less just tolerates me. However, the instant I sat down on the patio steps hiding behind Kermit, she immediately walked over, scoped me out, and nestled down between my legs: she was in her Sesame Street comfort zone. And I thanked them for that. It was very cute!

As soon as the heat and commonsense dictated I get out of the mask, she lost interest and wandered off. Like I said: being partially green isn’t easy. Seems as if it has to be all or nothing.

So, that’s why I played hooky last week. Sorry, but it was worth it.

On losing a friend:
As I prepared to write this I got the news that Andy Rooney had died. And, although I’m certain we were never in the same state at the same time, I feel as if I’ve lost a friend. We all have. In a world where every talking head on TV is doing it for the money and you know they can’t be trusted, Andy Rooney was the very embodiment of trust. You knew his observations, ramblings and criticisms came from the heart. He was seeing the world as he saw it and telling us about it. He was of the so-called greatest generation. And he showed his greatness right up to the end. He continued reaching out and touching us until he was 92 years old and still very, very relevant. How many of us will be able to say we’ve been relevant to the end? He died barely a month after doing his last (number 1,097) broadcast. So long, Mr. Rooney, you’ll be sorely missed.

Go to Andy for the details.

22 Oct 2011 - McGee and Me

I hadn’t intended on writing a Thinking Out Loud this week. Or next. I’m standing at the crossroads of Deadlines and Not-Enough-Time. I’m border line panicked because I’ll be out all week and deadlines loom. But, as I sat there at 0530 this morning enjoying a John D. MacDonald novel, while I took care of some biological business, the thoughts started flowing. And here I am. This’ll be a short one.

If you don’t know John D. MacDonald, you should. He is, to my taste, one of the, if not the, best wordsmith of the 20th century. During the ‘60’s and ‘70’s, he wrote two series of novels: one was comprised of about thirty covering random subjects. You may know Cape Fear, as it was made into a movie. Twice. SEVEN made it to the big screen as well. Masterful writing! Incredible!

His other series was built around an eclectic, P.I. type of character (and he IS a character), Travis McGee, who lives in a converted barge in Ft. Lauderdale and makes his living “…finding lost stuff for people.” Really fun stuff! Most of them have re-released and at $7/each are great investments.

I’m re-reading the first Travis McGee novel during my greet-the-morning porcelain respites. I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time, but Daughter Jennifer has optioned the entire Travis McGee series so it’s timely that I read them. She’s in the early scripting phase of making this one, Deep Blue Good By (all twenty-one of the McGee series have a color in the title) into a movie. Leo D. is supposed to star.

I turned her on to John MacD. during one of her visits here so I have a vaguely vested interest in the project besides it being my daughter’s.

As I sat there this morning, I was increasingly aware of the texture of his writing. In today’s world, the plotting is slower than usual. The violence only occasional. It’s purposeful. Not gratuitous. The observations on the human condition and the way society and our minds work are constant. And frighteningly accurate. And so smoothly integrated into McGee’s character. It’s written in first person, so, at all times, we’re directly privy to his thoughts.

As I was reading, I found odd little stirrings far back in dusty corners of my own mind. Friendly, familiar thoughts showed life again. Sam Tipton, my own fictional hero from equally fictional Pitacho, AZ started intruding on my reading.

When last seen, I had left Sam sitting uncomfortably against a tumbled down ruin in the rancid Guatemalan jungle. His hands are still zip-tied behind him, but he has cleverly foiled the zip tie and his hands are free. However, one of the villainous bad guys is still watching over him, his buddy, Longfeather, and a hysterical German archeologist with a cocked MP-5. Decisions, decisions. What to do?

Sam has been sitting in that exact position for nearly two years. He’s waiting for me. Long ago, he should have gotten free, conquered his captors and moved on to Iraq and then Libya, where he is tracking a historical impossibility. The title of that one is The Second City. And the cast is that of Cobalt Blue, my first novel. The stage on which they play expands from Tipton’s beautifully secluded valley in the Arizona high country, where Cobalt Blue took place, to cover half of the globe.

As I read MacDonald’s words, I began to feel Tipton’s frustrations. I began to see a way out of his situation. In spite of a crushing load of must-do work, I found long dead urges nudging me to save my hero. Or at least get him out of that stinking jungle!

I have to fly to Oregon on Monday to do a flight evaluation (pirep on an RV-10) for the EAA. Airports and airplanes are where I do some of my best writing. And all of my best planning. The timing may be good.

Who knows, maybe Tipton and Longfeather will get off their dead butts and start doing something about their situation. It’s about damn time. Maybe I can cleave an opening in what seems to be an impenetrable work schedule to get off of my own dead butt and give Second City a second chance. It’s about damn time for that too. bd

15 Oct 2011-Big Screws, Bigger Screwdrivers and Huge Catalogs

It doesn’t take much to amaze me. Ya’ll know that. And that’s what I think makes life so easy to enjoy: around every corner there is something amusing or amazing, or both. This week it was screwdrivers and catalogs.

First the screwdriver: or more correctly, the fact that being a tool-packrat paid off once again.

Did you know that lots of old safes have what’s called a “day door”? It’s a lighter door that’s inside the main, super-heavy combination-locked door. It’s maybe 3/16th inch thick and locks with a key. It’s called a day door because during the day, when you’re more likely to want in the safe to conduct business, you keep the main door open and use the key-locked one so you don’t have to screw with the combination.

Also, did you know that when you closely examine the day door, it’s impossible for us safe-newbys to figure out how to remove it? It’s hinged top and bottom with half-inch, protruding studs that have no visible means of attachment. And the door has no slack so you can’t move it vertically and dis-engage one of the hinge pins. So, what the hell? How does it come out? I had to get that door off to fit a new interior of skinny drawers to hold handguns. Incidentally, you can’t Google “removing the day door from a 100-year-old safe” and find anything. But, I had a secret weapon in the person of Guy Zani, Jr, safe collector and expert (go to his website Safe Collector, look at the photos, and you’ll see why I find antique safes so cool).

Look how big those screw heads are but the body of the screw is only 3/16"! The fat, old screw driver and a Crescent did the trick, however. This was all under ancient bondo and paint.

Following his advice I found two blind screws hidden under layers of turn-of-the-century Bondo and paint. But they weren’t regular screws. They were unbelievably big slotted screws. The screw thread itself was small, 3/16th inch, but they had gigantic counter sunk heads. No problem, I thought, I have lots of big screwdrivers. Unfortunately, what I thought was “big” in modern terms was barely half the width of the slots in the century-old screws. They were HUGE. I tried the modern screwdriver but instantly saw it deforming the slot: the old iron was really soft. I needed a MUCH wider screwdriver blade.

This is the size of your normal, 8 inch screwdriver but with a really wide blade. It is laying on the day door of my old safe. Old safes are characterized by gold leaf and pinstriping which are often early decals that I'm having remade by a company that does the same thing for the model airplane market.

Aha, my mind chirped with uncharacteristic glee! I have this really oddly proportioned, old swapmart screwdriver (cost a buck). A perfect application! Five minutes later, after leaning on the screwdriver for pressure and using a Crescent wrench for torque, I took the hinge pin pad off and lifted the door free. A small victory, but a victory nonetheless, and God knows we need all of those we can get.

And this, folks, is why we all pick up every oddball tool we can find. Sooner or later we’re going to find an oddball application for it. Count on it.

And now, the catalog:
The entire free world and half of the part that isn’t free, knows about “Grainger,” the hardware company. And we’ve all had our share of

Now, this is a catalog!

the smallishly, inch-thick catalogs lying around. So I knew Grainger. Or thought I did until I accidentally found an outlet not far us and stopped by for some metal cutting bandsaw blades. What a selection! Have ever you seen a 4-tooth per inch blade? Insane! What was really insane, however, was the catalog the salesman dropped on the counter after I nodded that yes, I’d like a free catalog. I’ve never seen a catalog like this. Not even once! How does over 4400 pages and 900,000 items (or so it says on the cover, I didn’t count them) grab you! It’s three inches thick. I measured it.

First, I didn’t know Grainger was such a big company, but that thought pales beside the thought that in the digital age I didn’t know ANYONE still put out a big catalog and, apparently, mails it out for free! In the “Age of the Website” I thought every company of that size had gone green (read that as going cheap) and avoided paper anything.

Catalogs apparently still have their place and it was amusing, when I asked for wavy edge, 24 tpi blades, and he gave up looking them up in his computer and grabbed a catalog. He commented that he almost always beats the computer with the catalog.

The same day that I struggled home with the Grainger catalog in both hands, a really nice catalog from Jantz knife making supplies showed up in the mail. As I snuggled up against the pillow in bed, the night light on, the Jantz catalog in my hand, I realized a basic fact of life: some of us just like browsing through catalogs and neither a lap top nor an iPad can offer the same experience and satisfaction. So, green be damned: bring on the catalogs! And the fat old screwdrivers!

8 Oct 2011 - Exceptionalism is a State of Mind

When I popped open my browser last week and a big photo of Steven Jobs, with “1955 to 2011” under it, hit me in the face, I was shocked. And saddened. Much more than I expected to be. But out of his death came something good: through their typical over-coverage, the press spread the concept of American Exceptionalism to the Nation and the world as never before. Jobs’ rags to riches tale couldn’t have been more dramatically scripted if it had come out of Hollywood. And it couldn’t have come at a better time.

I am of the class of 1960 so I came of age during that awkward period that bridged two cultural generations: high school in the ‘50’s, undergrad and grad school in the ‘60’s. I was a functioning part of some pretty tumultuous periods, but not even in the ‘60’s do I remember a national mood that was as depressed as what I’m seeing/hearing now. So many voices, many of them from Washington, are talking about the America that WAS but isn’t likely to be again. We hear our leaders speak negatively about our feelings of being special. Of being American. In fact, there’s a vague pall over everything, a subtle feeling that we’re not special and we are no longer capable of being special.

I’m not sure how it got started, but somehow, somewhere, the concept of being proud to be an American got twisted into a feeling that, if we say we’re proud to be an American and we feel special, it is saying that we’re better than anyone else. And that’s not it at all. Plus national pride is not unique to America, we’re just the ones who catch grief from other nations for it.

Being proud to be an American is a totally self-contained feeling: feeling good about yourself has zero bearing on how you feel about other people. In this case however, it pisses people off if they see us feeling good, when they feel like crap. But, you know what? That’s their problem, not ours. We’re generating too much internal guilt over our feelings, when we shouldn’t be.

Along with the negative’s being thrown around about the national pride many of us feel, we’re getting a message from too many quarters that we’ve peaked, and, as some law makers have put it, we have to get used to be second best and make do with less. I don’t believe that for a single frigging second. We still have massive natural resources. We still have the people. We just need our spirit rekindled by a different message from those we call leaders.

Steve Jobs was a unique combination of visionary creativity, technical excellence and marketing genius.

Steve Jobs death made it totally impossible to ignore one simple fact about America: as individuals or as a nation, we can be who and what we want to be. That is, and has always been, one of the driving factors that are unique to our country (and a few others). There are no socio-economic boundaries holding any of us back regardless of what some minorities claim: somehow the fact that we have a black president has escaped their notice. Or that Jobs was half Arabic (biological father was Syrian).

What follows is a cliché, but, as with most clichés, it’s true: You tend to become who you say you are, either to yourself or publicly. For that reason Steve Jobs story is one of inspiration: a couple of kids decided “yes we can” and they certainly did. I can think of no one who, in recent times, has changed more people's lives. That should be the message government is giving the people. For crying out loud, Jobs was put up for adoption at birth, dropped out of college, and had zero going for him other than an exceptional mind and even more exceptional drive, which never waivered despite his cancer. His story should be the “can do” example told in every school and every ghetto.

Look at any successful person in any field and the seeds of their success is ALWAYS rooted in their teenage years or early twenties. It may not bloom until a little later, but you can ask those around any successful person and they’ll all say that person’s success came as no surprise to them. The successful always exude self-confidence and an image of themselves that makes those around them know that they are going to really go some place. They believe it, so those around them do too.

We can dig ourselves out of this hole and we can once again become the people and the nation we’ve always thought we were. But first we have to believe in ourselves and our nation. Our leadership has to lead with the positive, not the negative. They have to let us know that they themselves are proud to be Americans.

Every leader could take a note from the Steve Jobs book of leadership: get out in front and be positive and enthusiastic about yourself and your people and that enthusiasm will infect those you’re leading and draw them in. Once that happens, you can’t be stopped.

Understand one thing: for those who value freedom of soul, opportunity and maximum reward for their labors, American is still the greatest place in the world to live. We ARE great and will continue to be so. But only if we believe in ourselves.

If you want to see how massive Apple is and put their $350 billion size in perspective go to Things Apple is More Than

2 Oct 2011 - Some Days Are a Week Long

Am I the only person who periodically has a day where you can’t stand to be inside your own skin? Everything on the planet seems to be wrong and specifically designed to irritate you? I had one of those yesterday. But, thankfully, today, is today.

When I have one of those days where I want to drop everything and go screaming down the street until I find a movie theater where I can lose myself for a few hours, I never have a clue what sets them off. I have one every couple of years. I don’t know how yours are, but I’m never angry. Or pissed off. Or anything. In fact, that’s it: I’m not anything. My brain is somehow in neutral and I can’t seem to get it in gear and point me in any particular direction.

Yesterday I spent the entire day beating myself up and forcing myself to make believe I was doing something, when I really wasn’t. I did manage to fly an hour of dual and not beat my student senseless. And I somehow managed to crank out a Homebuilders’ Corner for the EAA (I’m doing a monthly column for them…I guess I had two or three dead minutes, when they asked me and I gave in). But outside of that, my entire Saturday was me yelling at myself. Come on Budd, get your sh*t together and stop goofing off! You don’t get paid for screwing around. So, get with it.

Like everyone else, most of my days go by fairly quickly. Some are just a brief flash between getting up and going to sleep. One minute I’m looking in the mirror brushing my teeth and the next, it’s mid-night. Those days are over before I realize they’ve started.

I love days like that because I generally get a lot done. And then there are days like yesterday that move like a tree sloth smoking a joint: any movement is imaginary and the day dragged on and on. And on. By mid-afternoon, I was ready to pull the covers over my head and not move until the next morning. Aaargh! Pure agony. And incredibly frustrating.

I had so much stuff I had to get done and even more stuff that I wanted to do (I need to tell you about the antique safe I’m rehabbing) but my frigging brain just flat wouldn’t engage. If I’d had a lick of sense, I would have gone out in the shop and started cutting steel for something. There’s nothing like the tangible feeling of progress when sparks are flying. But, I couldn’t get myself to do even that. Generally, you have to tie me down to keep me from getting dirty.

It took about a week, but the day eventually ended.

I would really like to know what makes those days what they are and days like today what they are. It’s Sunday and I bounced out of bed at my usual time and was out the door on my three-mile endorphine-generator before I realized it was still very dark. I glanced at a clock It was 0515, a solid 15 minutes ahead of when I usually hit the street. But it felt good. And my brain was fully engaged and rock and rolling.

When I returned, I didn’t give my brain a chance to decide whether it was going to cooperate or not: I logged on and almost immediately found Grassroots (my Plane and Pilot column) cascading down the screen in response to the clacking of my fingerboard. A couple hours later, I heard part of my brain say “Hmmmm. That doesn’t read too badly.” Congratulations, Brain! Welcome back!

Quick out to the shop before my inner self knows what’s going on: whack, whack! I started shearing 12 gauge steel up into pieces the size of index cards: they were going to be part of a series of joining plates on the rehabbing of my front porch (don’t ask, it’s a long, frustrating story).

“Budd. You about ready to go?” Marlene was at the shop door and we were off to the Arizona Home Show.

The most interesting thing about this huge extravaganza was that it occupied the same five state fair buildings that our semi-monthly gun shows do. However, the gunshows fill the many-acre sized parking lot and all the surrounding parking lots to overflowing. The Home Show didn’t come close to filling the main parking lot. The reason I found that interesting was because everyone has a home but I guess a lot more folks have, or want, guns. Also, it has been my experience that homeowners are being hurt by the economy and are pulling in their horns while gun enthusiasts ignore it.

Then it was back home to pen these words. So, on balance, the weekend was in balance. I not only survived but consider the time well invested. We won’t talk about Saturday, however. That was embarrassing!

24 Sept 2011 - Is Anyone Actually Driving This Boat?

I made the mistake of sitting down and watching some talking heads I more or less respect discussing the various happenings in Washington, including the upcoming the-government-is-running-out-of-money-again-and-we-need-more-debt discussion/crisis. I would have laughed, if I hadn’t been so pissed off. And scared.

Two things came out of the conversation between the three CNN reporters and Anderson Cooper. First, after the fact, I realized I had made the mistake of forgetting that news people are reporters. Not experts. Not someone whose words are anything more than vaguely informed opinion. And I was letting them give me heartburn with their dire projections. However, it was what they were discussing that was giving me real heartburn.

In an uncharacteristically non-partisan way, they were talking about speeches made by our various “leaders” and they vocalized something I’d figured out for myself some time ago: just about every recent speech made by anyone, from the President on down, on both sides of the aisle, is aimed at one thing: saying what is necessary to get them elected again. While they’ve tried to make us believe that they have been developing solutions, all they’ve really been doing is currying our vote. In short, every single one of them is campaigning: if not for their own seat, for their party’s candidates.

One of the classically transparent attempts at gaining votes is the President’s sudden passion for attacking the rich, as if they are the cause of our problems and increasing their taxes will dig us out of a hole. That’s not only a diversion tactic, but it is BS and any thinking person knows it. It is estimated that if he taxed the “rich” at 100 percent, it wouldn’t run the government more than a few weeks at most and wouldn’t even take a nibble out of the debt.

By finger-pointing (and he actually does point his fingers) at the rich, he’s obviously going for the lower-middle class and poor vote. “Hey, I’m your guy because I’m going after the bad guys who put you where you are.” He doesn’t mention that those are the same bad guys who give the poor and middle class their jobs. It seems to me that kind of tactic is de-motivating: why become successful, if you’re going to be singled out by the government for “special” treatment. It, however, makes him a hero to some segments of the population. Segments that traditionally have lower voter turnout (minority, socio/economically depressed, etc.).

I fall somewhere around the middle of the middle class and, frankly, I’m glad there are rich folks out there. For one thing, it gives me customers who need my services. They “employ” me for short periods of time. Also, one of the reasons America is what it is is because there is absolutely nothing stopping anyone from applying blood, sweat and imagination to their life and becoming as rich as those who are being singled out as bad guys today. Although we’ll eventually be overtaken economically by India and China, they are so severely polarized socially that those born into the lower tiers will die in the lower tiers. The unabashed ability to succeed based entirely on your own initiative is very nearly unique to America (and a few other similar countries). Take away the goal of upward mobility and you wind up with a flat society. Something I’m certain a few in the government think is a good thing.

The talking heads mentioned something else we forget: even in its crippled state, America still has the strongest, most vital economy in the world. Regardless of how quickly China and India are closing the gap, at the moment we are the engine that drives world economy and a lot of the world is pissed at us because we’re doing such a poor job of taking care of our economy. The old saying “When America catches a cold, the rest of the world catches pneumonia” is still very true. We still lead the world and those who are leading us are doing a piss-poor job, no matter how you measure it.

Increasingly the majority of people in elected office may talk in the long term but they think in the short term. They think and plan in two and four year chunks. They aren’t looking twenty, thirty years down the line, as they need to be (and as the Chinese and Indians are). They are looking only as far as the next election. And the programs and plans they make believe they are concocting are shams: they are mostly crafted to win votes. Not guarantee survival.

We are in a fight for our survival and anyone who thinks otherwise is drinking their party’s koolaid, whether it’s Republican or Democrat makes no difference. They’re cut out of the same cloth. The color and weave may be different, but it’s the same stuff.

The 2012 election is pre-occupying too many minds. We need at least a six-month moratorium on that kind of thinking, during which time every second of every politician’s life should be required to be devoted to solving the economic crisis. In American history this is going to be a deciding moment because this particular economic crisis is so unique and far reaching that it has the potential of rendering every single other problem facing us moot because we’ll no longer have a country to worry about.

Right now there is a violent year-long fight in progress over who gets to drive the boat. All political eyes are on the seat behind the helm and no one is paying any attention to the not-so-minor fact that our boat is racing toward the rocks at warp speed.

To our President and our congressional leaders: get your heads out of the dark, moist place you seem to store them and study the frightening scene over the bow of the national boat. Do your freaking jobs! Think about your country for a change! Not your job, your special interest groups, your personal future. Your country needs you and you’re letting us down.

To the rest of us: make damned sure we get everyone we know out to the polls. This time it really makes a difference.

Now, if we can just come up with Presidential and Congressional candidates who are really worthy of the post…sigh!

17 Sept 2011 - Risk: It Can't Be Avoided, Only Controlled

My son was about ten years old, when my friend Jimmy Leeward offered him the back seat of his Mustang while he flew the show at Oshkosh. A few hours ago, my friend was all over the news: a crash like his at Reno makes great fodder for the ratings races between stations. Shortly after, I got a note from my son offering me condolences for my world being turned upside down. My response was a little odd. Maybe even cold.

I told him that, no my world isn't turned upside by Jimmy’s death. By the crash and collateral damage, yes. But by his death, no. Odd, but, although everyone who ever met him will hate having lost Jimmy (who I can’t stress strongly enough was one of the really great ones) I can nonetheless accept it because accidents are a natural part of the risk we all take when we do something that we know is dangerous. And I can't think of too many things more dangerous than Reno racing. However, when we lose someone in something like a traffic accident, which we all assume to be safe because we're around it so much, it really hurts.

When Jimmy was rounding the pylons, when I’m hurtling down final at a silly rate of descent with a student at the controls, it is a situation of our own making. Plus, it is a situation, which we fully control within the mechanical limitations of the beasts we’re flying. It’s just us, the airplane, and the environment around us. We know it can kill us, if we let our guard down, so we hone our skills until we’re as far ahead of the game as we can get. Now, think about driving to the airport and the risk involved there.

We’re going down the road surrounded by people of totally unknown proficiency, a good percentage of them on cell phones or fixing their make up, so their marginal driving skills are degraded even further. Here in the city I have two lanes going both directions, so I’m just one in a 50-mph stream of juggernauts. And the stream I’m in is lunging head-on at another stream coming right at us separated only by a painted stripe, which we assume will keep that other stream on its side of the road. The risk, to a disturbingly high degree is out of our control. And, unless we simply don’t drive, it’s not a risk of our choosing. So, when we loose someone in a traffic accident, it is invariably because of someone else’s actions and is arbitrary and senseless.

It has been interesting (and frustrating) watching the various news sources and how wildly divergent they are on their information . I'm certain it's that way with all news events. It's just that I'm watching this one closer because of the personal connection.

A few hours after the accident Anderson Cooper on CNN was saying 22 injured, then he presented a live press conference by the director of the air races who said emergency services said there were 54 injured. Then after the press conference was over, Cooper went back on the air and repeated 22 injured. Where was he while the director was talking?

He repeatedly said Jimmy was 80 years old, which a number of sources said, but in the press conference that he just dozed through, that was corrected, with an apology from the director: Jimmy was 74, which squared with what I thought he was. When Cooper came back on the air, he again stated Jimmy was 80. You watch: down the road people are going to lock onto that 80 number and it'll come back to haunt pilots in general.

BTW, the viewers' comments about the news report that were posted on MSNBC.com by idiots made me want to pull my hair out. I’ve always had huge doubts on the viability of the public gene pool but this cinched it.

The saddest part of this, and is what makes it a real tragedy, is that so many were killed or injured. Jimmy would have gladly put a bullet in his own head to prevent something like that from happening. If it had just been him, everyone would have hated it, but would eventually be okay with it. But this...? There's no way for it to ever be right for everyone involved. Innocent bystanders are just that...innocent. However, even there, just attending a high-risk, high profile activity, such as an air race, the spectators have knowingly accepted a level of risk themselves: you don't sit on the edge of a track, even at a NASCAR race, without knowing you're in a high risk zone.

I can’t guess what the long term fall out on this is going to be for aviation but, as I write this, less than 24 hours after the accident, the general focus is on “what caused this?”, which is really unimportant. It happened. Period. And what is important is that the lives of dozens of families have been drastically altered. Futures changed. And ended.

It is as if a large rock has been dropped in a still pond: the ripples will radiate out from those closest to the tragedy and will subtly change the lives of even those on the far shore, from racing mechanics to airshow attendees to even model builders. And the frustrating aspect of that horribly complicated fact is that no one can have any effect on the healing process whatsoever. Time will eventually take care of that.

I wish I could hit the “fast forward” button for those involved, but obviously can’t. And sending our hopes and good thoughts to them is a meaningless gesture. But at least it’ll make us feel better. So, let’s do just that.

9 Sept 2011 - Burial Kits and The End Game

The ad read, “Cemetery plot, concrete burial vault & granite grave marker (headstone) for sale. Installation included for vault and marker. Beautiful mature landscaping: West Valley location. $3,000 cash. Private owner. Please leave message.” What the hell? And did you notice they want cash? Like they’re going to get stiffed while selling a grave?

I’ve been haunting eBay and Craigslist lately looking for an antique safe and the above popped up, when I tried “vault” instead of “safe”: someone was selling a complete burial kit. All you need to supply is a recently-cooled cadaver and you’re in business. But, you just have to wonder what prompted the sale. Several scenarios immediately come to mind.

First, it almost appears as if someone has decided not to die. They just said, “To hell with ‘em. I’m not going to die just to spite my kids. 'Wonder what I can get for the burial stuff?”

I have a thing for tombstones. I own three. This one is made from the tailgate of a Conestoga wagon. I got it from a museum supplier and gave it to my dad in the early '70's. Now it's on my office wall. I love it!

Unfortunately, there’s another possibility: granny kicks it and junior decides, “Granny will never know the difference. I’ll take her down to my vet, who does cremation on the side, and scatter her ashes out there by the cemetery just to fool her. Or maybe I’ll save the ashes for when the driveway is icy this winter. She never liked me anyway. ‘Wonder what I can get for the burial stuff?”

Yet another possibility is that in a misguided, but well-meaning gesture, the kids wanted to take a load off of granny’s mind so they gave her the plot/vault/headstone package as a Christmas gift. They were thinking, “Granny worries so much about money. This should make her feel better knowing she doesn’t have to worry about the plot.”

Granny, on the other hand is sitting around the tree Christmas morning, rips the wrapping paper off of a slab of granite with her name on it, smiles a thankful smile while she’s thinking, “Those miserable, f**king kids! The little bastards can hardly wait. I’ll show ‘em! I’m gonna take their inheritance and move to ‘Vegas. That guy I met at the Alzheimers convention last month lives there and we’ll screw our brains out until we both die. Sh*theads every one of ‘em! I wonder how much I can get for the burial stuff?”

An outside possibility is that the ad is a scam. Maybe this guy has worked up a package of beautiful images, most shot in a cemetery just outside of Hollywood, with phony looking grass (well it IS Hollywood!), a marvelous view of the smog-shrouded Hollywood Hills, complete with the slightly leaning sign, and celebrity tombstones on both sides. The view from the headstone of the plot he’s actually selling isn’t so grandiose: it is dominated by thousands of seagulls fluttering around on the slopes of a monstrous landfill mound that forms the edge of the weed-covered cemetery. He won the plot from an old guy in a card game (he was cheating) and, as he upped the ante, forcing the wrinkled card player into tossing the deed for the plot into the pot, all he could think was “Screw him. He’ll be dead. I wonder how much I can get for the burial stuff? And, how many times? ”

I rescued the pieces for this one about a half mile from a semi-abandoned cemetery where vandals had broken it against a tree. I reassembled it and tried to give it back to the cemetery board and they could have cared less. I hope someone takes better care of my marker.

This, of course brings up another point: never buy a burial plot over the Internet. We all know how real estate agents can make a swamp look and sound good. Who wants to buy sight unseen, then discover at their own funeral that the graves are dug with a telephone pole digger and are vertical, not horizontal. Who wants to stand up for eternity?

On the other hand, who wants to go visit your own burial plot? But, maybe that’s not such a bad idea. And probably not that difficult. It’s not as if we don’t know we’re going to die (btw-we die, we don’t pass on, we don’t ride over the hill, we don’t make our last takeoff…we die). So, for those who are going to be planted (I’m going to be cremated and have succotash or something…maybe brownies…made with the ashes) getting a look at where they’re going to spend eternity may have a calming effect. Or it may piss us off. I’m not sure which.

One thing that I haven’t come to grips with yet is the concept of having a single place where your kids and grand kids can come visit. My brother’s ashes have a headstone. And I visit every time I go back to Nebraska. But, if I go ahead with the plan of spreading my ashes in several places, “my place” won’t exist. Also, since Marlene and I plan on having our ashes blended together in the same urn along with the ashes of all the dogs and cats we’ve loved in our lifetime, spreading my ashes seems just a little self centered. I’m not thinking about those I leave behind.

Hopefully I have a lot of years to work this out. In the meantime, I’m NOT going to call on the aforementioned burial kit. I don’t think I want to know what’s behind the sale.

26 Aug 2011 - Irene, Part I: Saturday, the wind-up to the pitch

Today is Saturday, which is my write-the-blog day. Sometimes I do it on Sunday. And I have dozens of subjects straining to break out of my mind and onto the written page. But they are all being beaten into the background by one subject: Irene. She dominates the national mind at the moment and for good reason.

Irene looks as if she is going to be either one of the most severe weather episodes in my lifetime, or one of the most over-hyped episodes of my lifetime. Right now it is mid-day of The First Day, so there’s no solid way to tell. All she has to do is change heading one way or the other by a few degrees and the rest of The First Day will be drastically altered.

Like most folks out of the danger zone, when they see Irene’s increasingly ugly portrait on the weather map, my eyes go to a specific spot on that map. In my case, it’s north Jersey, where my son and his family live. For you, it may be Delaware, or Long Island or any one of a thousand places in the area. Something like 25 million people live in the NY metro complex alone, so the old seven degrees of separation concept says that every one of us has someone in that immense stretch of coast line that we are worried about.

Because of the foregoing, we all take this kind of event personally. It is as if Irene is purposely putting those we care about into harms way. And there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. The intense TV coverage has made us spectators to a possible disaster starring those we love. Personally, I’d rather trade places with my son, daughter-in-law and grand kids. I’d be perfectly fine with them sitting in the sunshine by my pool while I sweated out the wind, rain, flooding basements, falling trees, lack of electricity and everything else Irene has in her bag of tricks.

This whole thing started for us Friday morning: my son had taken his wife and kids on a surprise birthday trip to Newport, RI. So, he was 200 miles from home, feet up on a deck chair, while I was eyeing the weather maps. And sending him increasingly pushy text messages. I wanted him off the roads and home loooong before the weather service said Irene would arrive in the NYC area. But, he was on vacation. A hard earned one. And he didn’t want to listen. Dad always exaggerates, we know that. And I was going crazier by the hour.

I will gladly admit that I’m an incredibly conservative person by nature. I ALWAYS expect the worse and plan accordingly. I build margins upon margins. I show up for airline flights two hours early. I take the first parking spot I see so I’m guaranteed of having one. I over pay my taxes, just in case. I already have my landing spot picked out before the throttle goes forward on an engine I’m certain is going to quit. It’s just the way I think, so having him wait too long to drive home was driving me nuts. Thankfully, he started watching TV AND the hotel announced that, as a precaution, it was closing Saturday morning. So, he got the message and he drove home late last night. And I relaxed.

So, now, we sit and wait. It won’t hit his area (NYC) until late tonight. I’ll finish this late tomorrow evening. In the meantime, we just hide and watch. Not much else we can do. Frustrating!

Irene: Part Two
It's nearly noon on The Second Day and Irene has turned out to be a tired old woman with no stamina. Thank God!

Lots of good came out this huge false alarm. For one thing, all the national agencies got to test and debug the organizational and communications changes they've made as the result of Katrina. The debrief on this one would be interesting to sit in on.

It was also interesting to see how every politician and emergency commander erred on the side of safety: no one wanted fingers pointed at them after the fact as happened after Katrina.

On a personal level, my son got to see how being prepared can be a good thing and it brought all our conversations about him getting a generator to power his sump pump to a head. This time they didn't lose electricity,but after their last big rain he could have raised catfish in his finished basement. Ugly!

The single worse thing to come out of this is going to be the attitude on the next one that, "Oh, they blew the last one out of proportion, so nothing will happen on this one either." People are going to get complacent. And I'm going to have to worry about my kids again.

I keep thinking they'll grow to the point that I don't have to worry, but that ain't gonna happen. Once a parent, always a parent.

20 Aug 2011 - Grandkids, Exhaustion and Paranoia

This past weekend we were immersed in, what for us, is a landmark event: the first annual (hopefully) LA family reunion of the Clan Davisson. It has been two years since the East Coast Davissons (my son and his tribe) and the West Coast Division (Daughter and Baby) have been together and it was a glorious four days. And it was exhausting.

Some random observations from my short tenure as patriarch at a family reunion (read that as ring master at a Family Circus).

First let me put this in context: the week before I’d had four Aussie students and logged 5-6 hours a day, Pitts dual in the pattern, in 105-110 temps. My MUCH younger students were totally wilted after only two hops. I, on the other hand, bounced along, finished flying and buckled down to write a couple of articles at night. My stamina astounded everyone. Including me. However, playing Granddad for four days knocked me flat on my butt. It was exhausting! It took most of the first day back home to get back on my feet. Damn! Grandparenting can be a lot more work than it sounds like.

The fantastic part of the weekend (there were lots of fantastic parts) was the way the three cousins interacted. Melded would be a better adjective. The age differences—they are 18 months (a very rock ‘n rolling 18 months), 8 (precocious and beautiful) years, 10 (intensely sports oriented) years—didn’t seem to exist. The two older kids practically took over the younger and the energy the three generated could have lit three city blocks for a month. They were constantly chanting “Ooh, ooh, baby, baby A. Ooh, ooh, baby, baby A.” It’s been a week and that refrain is still the first thing to cross my mind, when I wake up.

Baby A versus the world. A photo by mom.

It was also fun to watch my daughter (35 years) and my son (39 years) interact: it was as if they were still teenagers, with the same sensitivities, conflicts and humor they’d always had. Both run their own multi-multi-million dollar companies (he in software, she in movies) but as soon as they got together, the age and position disappeared and they were older brother and younger sister again. The same sibling bickering, the same affection that teetered on humorous conflict, the same everything, as if zero years had passed. Their kids were blissfully unaware that their parents had regressed to their own childhood, which I’m certain is the way it is in every family. Since I have only one family to be periodically reunited, I have nothing to compare it to.

There was/is one new indescribably sad factor to be mentioned here: note that although between the bunch of us we shot at least a thousand photos, none accompany this little essay. Also, notice I’ve refrained from using everyone’s names. This is at the request…no make that “direction” not request…of my kids. They don’t want their families identified on the web. This is the result of so many weird things that have happened on the internet that range from photos being pirated and used in extortion schemes, e.g.“This is my missing daughter and I’m trying to raise funds to get her back,” to fears of predators targeting them.

It’s a tragic commentary on the human condition, when you have to fear the public. However, with the internet, in the form of Google and other search engines, being able to so easily invade every aspect of our lives, it’s a valid concern, and I can see where my kids are coming from. I don’t like the fact that any who want can see how my backyard furniture is arranged and can track practically everything I’ve ever done. Privacy is a thing of the past.

Although the digital age has reshaped our future in almost all-positive ways, it has also developed a dark side because of those who have perverted it to their own nefarious ends. So, although I’d love to chronicle the lives of what are three of the most beautiful, most personable children you’ve ever seen through pictures, in good conscience, I can’t.

Anyway, since my ex is moving to LA to be with our daughter, my NJ-based son has decreed that their spring break vacation will always be a sojourn to the Southwest. So, last week’s fun will be repeated on an annual basis and we’re really looking forward to it.

There is simply no substitute for family. None!

11 Aug 2011 - What the Hell?

This has been a very disturbing couple of weeks and it doesn’t appear to be letting up. The entire damn world is going nuts and mostly for the same reason: debt and out-of-whack welfare segments of the society.

England is scary as crap right now because it appears to be a harbinger of what we, and many other, western nations can expect. We’ve allowed ourselves to be taken over by legions of do-gooders who feel it is the responsibility of entire nations to make sure that those who aren’t working are cared for. This is a noble thought, but every manjack amongst them has forgotten some basic facts.

First, they’ve forgotten that for every person whose taking money from the government, there has to be another person who is making the money for them to live on. You’d be surprised how many people on welfare think the government somehow “makes” money. That they are a business and the money they are giving out is theirs to give because it has come out of their “business.” Welfare folks don’t understand who is actually supporting them. Of course, the majority don’t care. And if this isn’t “redistributing the wealth”, I don’t know what is.

The government does indeed have a business—they take money from taxpayers and spend it. Although it looks like robbery, it’s not. It’s the way governments work. Supposedly they are spending our money to provide infrastructure and government for the taxpayers. However, that’s not what is happening right now. With barely half of the population paying any kind of federal tax at all, it takes the taxes from the other half to support them.

Second, the do-gooders in Washington have a strange way of looking at foreign aid. Foreign aid is really nothing more than another entitlement program in which foreign governments and foreign populations are the beneficiaries. Trying to put numbers to it, I Googled “Foreign Aid” and came up with tons of statistics, but couldn’t make enough sense out of them to even estimate a total. But there were columns and columns of monies sent overseas many of which were in the area of $50 billion. This included millions and millions sent to Chinese entities for “Development Programs.”

Now let me understand this: we borrowed money from China so we could send money back to China, the strongest nation on the planet, and pay them interest for the privilege! What the hell are we thinking?

Do other governments spend vast amounts on foreign aid or are we the world’s only patsies?

And those idiotic budget debates?! Both sides were thinking about their side, not their country. They didn’t accomplish a single damn thing. It is now calculated that, if government doesn’t spend another single dime, it will still take them 389 years to pay off the debt. 389 years!!! Holy sh*t!

We are truly screwed and I can’t even guess what the outcome is going to be. The entitlement riots in Britain show us who are going to be the first to breech the walls: those who have been suckling from the gov’s teat and don’t want to even think about having it taken away. So they throw tantrums and destroy the businesses of the very taxpayers who have been allowing them to live in the first place.

Actually, going back and reading that last line, “…So they throw tantrums and destroy the businesses of the very tax payers who have been allowing them to live…” I could be talking about the politicians we’ve elected to run our country. Isn’t that exactly what they’ve done? They regularly throw tantrums when they don’t get what they want. Then it is as if they think money just magically appears. So, rather than promoting a strong business atmosphere, they try to tax those who provide the jobs, take their businesses over, create regulation upon regulation and hamstring the very job makers who could bail this country out.

Another one of the facts the do-gooders don’t understand is that they can’t possibly reduce spending enough to solve this thing. They aren’t businessmen and don’t understand the concept of surviving a tough situation by combining saving with a pedal-to-the-metal push to develop new markets, new businesses, new technologies.

Even the smallest entrepreneur today (and I’m including myself) is spending enormous amounts of energy looking down the road and trying to re-invent themselves and their businesses. We’re constantly asking, what kind of new business can I create that will generate cash flow that will grow into something worthwhile. The government doesn’t seem to understand that concept. They can’t see that huddling in a corner while pulling your horns in and hoping the bad men go away won’t work. They don’t understand that survival should always include busting your butt while selling your way out of trouble. Work longer hours. Work smarter. Think outside the box in every way possible in an attempt at coming up with something new.

I’m not sure which is the more ignorant group: the entitlement scum who are burning businesses and trying their hand at anarchy or the scum who call themselves leaders then do anything but lead. And I’m talking about both parties here. Not just Democrats.

Don’t get me wrong, we need to help those poor souls who are down on their luck and really need help, but we aren’t helping anyone by letting ourselves go down the drain. This is the same thought pattern the airlines use when they say “…first put the oxygen mask over your face, then your child’s.” You aren’t going to save the child, if you pass out while trying to take care of them. To save the system that saves people, some really hard decisions are going to have to be made and some folks are going to suffer, but I’m not convinced anyone in Washington has the balls to make those decisions.

Our priority should be surviving. Not feeling warm and fuzzy about working two hours at the local soup kitchen on Saturday afternoon.

Right now, we could be sitting on Armageddon’s doorstep. Or we could be staring at the dawn of a new age that will rise out of the ashes as something even better than we had at the beginning. However, I have a sinking feeling that we’re going to spend a few years plowing through ashes before anything rises out of them.

Sorry to ramble on. But, as I’ve said before, keep your pantries stocked and your magazines loaded. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

6 Aug 2011 - Oshkosh, Etc.

This has been a butt-buster, will-I-survive-having-so-much-fun, two weeks. The first was Oshkosh, the second, which is still in progress, involves flying six student hops a day for the entire week in 108 degree temps. I don’t remember the last time I was so exhausted by something I love so much (Sorry! Forgot about Marlene).

First, about Oshkosh: Every magazine worthy of the name is going to do a knock-down issue covering everything that needs to be covered. So, it’s highly doubtful that I’m going to mention anything everyone hasn’t already mentioned on-line or will be mentioned in a magazine. And I didn’t shoot a ton of photos, so I can’t do a photo essay on it. Still, I can let you know my impressions of it.

Because of surrounding weather, the show got off to a slow start, but it finished up with an award winning bang: most airplane categories were at least a match for last year’s and some were noticeably up. Antiques, however, wasn’t one of them. It was way down. Lots of guesses why that was the case, but no viable explanations.

My favorites included the Fairey Swordfish, only the second I’ve ever seen, and the little-biddy Knight Twister biplane. Any who know me know that the ‘Twister gives me a serious woody.

The Knight Twister is TINY! The top of the wing is shoulder high. It makes a Pitts look like a Stearman. 15 foot span. Hard to believe it's a 1929 design. This one was originally built in '53 with a C-85, now has 150 Lyc. A butt kicker!

'Thought I was exaggerating about its size, didn't you. My buddy and KT owner, Mark Holliday, shows how little his airplane is.

The Swordfish is HUGE! The top of the roundel is head high. It makes a Stearman look like a Pitts.

I can’t explain my fascination with the Swordfish. It might be the role it played in history (see “sink the Bismark”). It might be the fact that it had to be the most anachronistic, aerodynamically crude, yet wildly effective weapon of WWII. It might be that it is the aerial personification of the word “funky.” And who doesn’t like funky? Still, I think about bearing down on something like the Bismark right on the wave tops, hundreds of machine guns, cannons, hardguns and sling shots firing at me and the best I can do is about 90 knots. Doesn’t look like fun to me!

Something about a taildragger Colt makes so much sense to me.

I also can’t explain why I so liked a converted taildragger Piper Colt (underpowered, two-place Pacer/Tri-pacer/Vagabond type shortwing). Maybe it’s the concept of taking what is one of the cheapest airplanes on the market and, over a long weekend with the STC’d landing gear mods in one hand and a welding torch in the other, creating a semi-classic. I think there’s a 150 hp STC for the airplane that could make it a real honker (the original is 108 hp).

And then I came home to a house full of Aussies—what an incredible kick that was! These four guys often travel together and they all went to Oshkosh. Then they stopped over here for a week of fun and frivolity, most of which included throwing a little red biplane at the runway and inventing ways to challenge my abilities as an instructor. One had 18 hours total time. Another 30. The other two were mid-time pilots. To a man, their enthusiasm and passionate desire to conquer the Pitts drowned out any doubts their logical-selves may have had. I’m positive I’ve never flown that many back-to-back hops (right at 30 hours of flying in six days) in such high humidity and such high temperatures (108 and 40 percent, or so) with students who all but refused to let the situation make them wilt. They got a little brown around the edges, but they were as game as they come.

The most important thing to come out of their visit is that I’ve decided I love Aussies. Prior to their onslaught, I’ve developed close relationships with a couple of other Aussies, but you can't really appreciate their kindred feelings for one another and their wacky, but loveable, way of looking at the world until they live with you for a week. Marlene and I should have been paying them for bringing so much joy into our world, rather than the other way around.

Anyway, the above is why Thinking Out Loud skipped a week. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. bd

23 July 2011 - The Great Germ Conspiracy

"I am afraid that the experiments you quote, M. Pasteur, will turn against you. The world into which you wish to take us is really too fantastic." La Presse, 1860. You tell ‘em Presse. For once I agree with a Frenchman. Germs!? Ha! What does Pasteur know?

Louis Pasteur is at the root of my increasing germaphobia, and no, that’s not an irrational fear of Germans. It’s my increasing awareness of germs, caused partly by the rabid medical shows Marlene seems driven to watch. Louis Pasteur proved germs actually do exist and now the frigging little things are EVERYWHERE! And people like Dr. Oz absolutely LOVE to repeatedly point that fact out to us. The net result is that I’m getting to where I’m afraid to touch anything. Howard Hughes was right. Of course, with that much money, you can obviously be right about anything regardless of how nutty you are. But, I AM saving my Kleenex boxes.

We would be so much better off emotionally, if Pasteur hadn’t discovered germs. We could be floating through life blissfully unaware of all the teeny little assassins around us just waiting for us to make a wrong move, so they can leap up and do us in. Of course, if we didn’t know about germs, the global over-population problem wouldn’t exist. So, we can blame Pasteur for there being too damn many people in the world.

If we knew nothing about germs we’d be doing really stupid stuff like opening public bathroom doors with our hands, rather than hooking our elbow in the handle. Or, if forced to do it digitally, using a seldom-used, least-valuable finger. Probably the little one on the left hand (if right handed).

I’m not sure: do they teach Restroom 101 in school these days? Skills like flushing a public head with your foot, keeping the paper towel in your hand after washing and using it to open the door are survival skills every kid should know. Next time you open a public bathroom door, think about the last guy who opened it and where his hand had just been. Drives you nuts doesn’t it?

Also, if we didn’t know about germs, trips to the doctor’s office would be a helluva lot less stressful. The only reason those other people are in the waiting room is because they’re sick. And, being sick, they’re regular fountains of germs. They don’t even need to sneeze, cough or fart to get us. Just breathing will do it. For that reason, anyone caught breathing in the waiting room should be immediately removed and quarantined. As far as that goes, a doctor’s waiting room should actually be a series of phone booth-like containers with crackling UV tube/ozone generators in their ceilings and stainless steel chairs that are steam cleaned after each use.

Next time you’re in the doctor’s waiting room I want you to think seriously before picking up a magazine. Do you think they de-bug those on an hourly basis? Of course not! For several months, they’ve been soaking up germs. Those magazines are the equivalent of the smallpox-infected blankets really cruel Indian agents handed out at early reservations. However, waiting rooms and their magazines do serve a purpose, diabolical though it may be: doctors depend on the magazines to generate more business. It’s not unlike the fact that many MacDonald’s franchises are owned by cardiologists. They’re creating their own markets.

And then there’s money. Talk about a ready-made terrorist device! Have a camel breathe on several dozen twenty-dollar bills, put them into circulation and before long you have thousands of people growing humps. Or whatever disease camels have. Think about that the next time a strange lady at a restaurant hands you your change.

Enough! I’m depressing myself. I’m going to go inventory my supply of Kleenex boxes now.

FYI-I’ll be very late doing Thinking Out Loud next week because I’ll be at Oshkosh trying to cope with Port-a-Potties.

16 July 2011 - On Being a Functionalist

A couple minutes ago I printed something out and just for the helluvit, looked at the back of my printer to see when I bought it. I was not the slightest bit surprised to see I’ve had it since 1995. 16 years is several lifetimes in the computer world but practically brand new in my world.

I have a tendency to use things until they are totally used up. As in totally. “New” means nothing to me and, as I look around at my friends, I see that I’m far from being alone. There are lots of aging pick-ups, Winchesters with the corners worn smooth and workshops filled with tools that have lived a lifetime being handled by the same hands.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but as far as I’m concerned if something is still doing it’s job, there’s zero reason to replace it. None. So I don’t. I also have what some people see as an unreasoning attachment to things, once they’ve woven themselves into the fabric of my life. I resist change in the small items that I touch often and rebuild them until there’s nothing to rebuild. By that time, they’ve become friends and you don’t replace friends just because they’re old.

Case in point: Marlene is constantly bugging me because I won’t wear a watch she recently gave me except on special occasions. This is because she gave me a Seiko (a middle of the road watch) right after we met just short of 20 years ago and, with the occasional cleaning, it’s still doing its job. It was originally gold but is now worn mostly silver and every couple of years I have to polish the crystal (I’m really hard on watches). But I like it. And she gave it to me, when she couldn’t really afford to: you don’t change out something like that just because “new” is better looking.

I’ve mentioned my 1990 Honda Civic hatchback before: 21 years old, 224,000 miles and still running great! Last year I decided to drive it the rest of my life and replaced every hose and piece of rubber in the engine compartment, everything that rotates and anything that’s remotely worn. The body is next and I’m trading flying time for hammering out dents and a paint job. It is the single most practical car I’ve ever owned. I can carry 8 foot lumber with the deck lid closed and carried the frame for the roadster to and from the powder coater completely inside the car with the deck lid only open about a foot (the frame was upside down with the kick-up going down). At 33 mpg in the city with the A/C on, why in God’s name would I replace it? Besides, it’s “my” car. I struggled to buy it as I was getting divorced while I tried to cope with two kids in school, financial disasters right and left, a move, yada, yada. It carried me through the Dark Period and is an old friend. So, it’ll carry me to the end.

The radio in the Honda is an aftermarket JVC with a cassette tape player that my kids gave me to put in my 1980 Honda. It’s been in two more cars since then. It works well, so why think of replacing it? Besides, every time I turn it on, I think of my kids.

Pallet skid scrap lumber vice blocks have served me 30 years. The round dots are where I had to glue dowels in them full width to stop some splits. The back one is rounded on the back so it'll pivot and grab odd shapes.

When I’m out in the shop, I’m surrounded by well-loved tools, some of which have been with me since I was in high school. One of the items I use almost every day are now-beat-up wooden vice blocks I made when I started building Kentucky rifles in 1980. They were made out of the skids of a shipping pallet (great sources for hardwood scrap!) and have grooves in them to hold different sizes of tubing (for when I was building an airplane), with slots for cutting 90 degree and 60 degrees (for scarf joints). The back of one block is rounded so it’ll align with odd shaped pieces. The blocks are burned and cut and glued and spliced and really showing their age. But….they still do the job and I love sensing the personal history told by the scars.

I’m positive the majority of folks reading this can identify: if something works, if we like something, chances are it’ll live with us for the long haul. I think it has something to do with a comfortable feeling that comes only after something has been worn down by our lives so it has conformed itself to that life. Like a well worn pair of boots. Or jeans.

“New” just doesn’t feel right until it’s no longer new.

10 July 2011 - Sloppy Isn't the Same as Disorganized

The Fourth of July taught me something really important about myself. I had an epiphany, of sorts, and came to grips with the fact that I’m a sloppy kind of guy. But, in my defense, I’m really good at it.

Like most folks, I have a laundry list of relatively mundane to-do projects that I never seem to get at. One of those is building a floor to ceiling shelving unit for the shop that would replace the piece-of-crap shelves I got at a knocked-down furniture store for about $7.38.

The shelving unit to be replaced is part of an island in that it sticks up in the middle of the floor. I have a pretty small shop and am super space-critical, so the back of the piece-of-crap-shelf is the backstop for my radial arm saw. I thought that by building a unit that runs up to the 8-foot ceiling, I’d have more storage and it would tidy up that part of the shop.

First, let’s discuss the concept of “tidying up my shop.” I know most guys reading this have a “real” workshop that features a workbench, probably with a peg board back, outlines of what tool fits where, overhead cabinets that hide all sorts of little treasures. The overall ambiance is helped by painted sheet rock walls, storage units and an obvious attempt at organization. That’s definitely not my shop. Nor my style, apparently.

My shop is bare studs, hand-me-down shelving, benches, and stuff crammed into the many nooks and crannies offered by a sub-sized double garage left in its underwear. It is stuff-upon-stuff. I can afford to sheet rock it and gussy it up, but somehow never felt the need.

When it turned out that I had the entire Fourth off, I immediately said to myself, “I’ve already got the ¾ inch birch plywood. I can easily knock this shelf thing out, including a coat of finish today. Then I remembered what I had imagined doing that day.

I wanted to show progress on something that was important to me. Specifically, I wanted to make progress on the little desk knives I was making for my kids and my step kids for Christmas. I wanted them to have something tangible, with my name on it, that, should they chose to, could be handed down to their kids as having “…been made by grandpa.”. To further that project, I had wanted to spend the day teaching myself how to grind blades out of strips of 1/8” 440 stainless. But, the shelves would eat up the entire day. And at the end, I’d have a pretty shelf, but I still wouldn’t know how to grind blades. I was trying to organize something that didn’t need organizing. Trying to beautify something that isn’t supposed to be beautiful.

I sat down on a stool and swiveled my eyes around: okay, the roadster dummy dash and handmade slobber pot for the radiator is hanging right there, the floor panels are on nails on the other wall. The boxes between those studs hold Kentucky Rifle parts. My various little sledge hammers hang on the stud just under the blacksmithing tools above the sheetmetal brake and next to the cannon parts.

I looked up in the rafters at the 3-inch thick slabs of highly figured Claro walnut along with the obscenely-figured English walnut slab (18 inches by 6 feet!). Those were next to the two hundred-pound practice bombs and not far from all the finished subpanels and the dash for the roadster hung in the rafters out of harms way.

If I had a pretty, sheet-rocked shop, with lots of pretty shelves, where would I put all that stuff? Most wouldn’t fit in cabinets and, if it did, I wouldn’t be able to periodically look at them and enjoy the moment. It’s a real kick to look at a four-way fiddleback English walnut slab knowing how rare and beautiful something like that is. It’s fun to look at my little Lawrence radial engine hanging on the wall and all the other neat stuff on that wall. Ditto the wall with the cannon wheels hanging on it. It’s just fun.

I can honestly say that I’ve mastered the stack and pile way of living and have raised it to a higher art form, while, at the same time forged what amounts to a live-in museum. Better yet, most of my life is spread out around me and I know exactly where everything is within that seemingly disorganized existence. The stacks and piles are my filing cabinets.

I know there are lots of guys reading this who live the same way I do. On the other hand, I have a friend who is wildly organized and breaks out in hives almost as soon as he walks in our door. Of course, I do the same thing, when we go to their house. I ask myself, “How can anyone live without having stuff that pleasures them spread within reach? And how can they find anything if it’s all neatly tucked away in files and closets?

I guess it’s different strokes for different folks. We have to remember that one man’s mess is another man’s…mess…but he learns to make it work for him. Better than that, it makes him happy.

PS
I finally got to mess with some steel. Here's my first attempt.

These are tiny knives with 2 inch blades and designed for desk use. My daughter wanted the one I made for myself so I decided to make them their own as "heirlooms". This is my first attempt a blade grinding. The .40 SW is for size comparison. These are made out of 1' x .100 440C stainless strips. I'll post pix, when finished.

2 July 2011 - Swap Meets and the Oxide Addiction

There are swap meets and then there are swap meets. And I’d like to say that I love ‘em all. But I don’t. There is, however a swap meet for every personality, and God knows too many of them appeal to my personal character flaws/addictions.

I mentioned last week that I went to the LA Roadster show last week primarily for the swap meet and that is no exaggeration. That swap meet, along with all others that cater to folks with a nuts and bolts mentality, are my meat and you can’t pay me to drive past one without stopping. I’m not sure why. But, I know one thing: if it’s the kind of swap meet (or junky antique store) that features lots of iron oxide, be it tools, unidentifiable mechanisms, or simply lumps of rusty iron, I’m there. And first in line. If it caters to the antique lace doily and cranberry glass crowd, forget it. Zero interest here.

It is important however, to realize that when I go to a “theme” swap meet, such as a car swap meet or a gun show, which really is a swap meet, I’m not looking for anything having to do with the theme: I didn’t go to the Roadster Show swap meet looking for car stuff any more than I go to gun shows looking for guns or gun accessories.

The reason I’m attracted to swap meets like these is to look for bargains on items that are out of context. They should be at antique, military or some other special interest swap meets but they, for some reason, show up at the car and gun swap meets where the value is almost always understated.

For example, some of my best antique saddles (including my oldest – early 1870’s) came from gun shows at thirty cents on the dollar. My brand new, 1944 computing gunsight out of a B-17 ball turret (which is a BIG mechanism) came from another gunshow: a hundred bucks well spent. At these kinds of meets, you absolutely NEVER know what you’ll find. Remember the human skeleton I photographed at the last one? Alas, no skeletons at this one. It’s a treasure hunt where shoe leather and cash are your shovels.

To me, cruising these kinds of swap meets is as if you took a couple dozen museums of all kinds, scrambled them together in a shaker, spread them out in a haphazard fashion in a parking lot and put price stickers on everything. Except the price stickers are just starting points. Haggling is expected. And always friendly.

Incidentally, it does no good to think you need a shopping list, when visiting these foot-flattening events. If you’re looking for something in particular, you’ll never find it. You just keep an eye open for anything that blows your skirt and, if the price is right, you buy it. And you should buy it right then and there because, if you really want it, it’s guaranteed to be gone, if you wait and then come back. And that’s assuming you can even find that particular booth again.

Take a look at the photos. See if there aren’t a few items pictured that you couldn’t live without had you been there.

Swap meet Photos

24 June 2011 - Love, Levees and Thank You's

Miss me? This is one of the very few times since starting this little tirade over four years ago that I missed a complete week. Sorry. I was on the road. I was in Nebraska and California re-discovering part of my history, watching a slow motion tragedy in progress and having one of the best Father’s Day ever.

My trip to Nebraska had a very definite purpose to it: I wanted to go back and say thank you to one of my old high school teachers for the influence he’d had on me in some very subtle ways. I’m going to do a full-blown, blow-by-blow on this trip in my Grassroots column in Plane and Pilot, so I don’t want to get too deep into it here. However, I would like to say that, as a WWII Mustang pilot (354th Fighter Group, the Pioneer Mustang Group), the times Fred Deeds and I spent looking through his Fighter Group yearbook, him talking about his time as a fighter pilot, had a far reaching impact on me. It was already a forgone conclusion that I was going to be a pilot and had already started flying while a junior. Those conversations, however, made it clear what kind of flying I was going to want to do: it wasn’t going to be straight and level or run of the mill. I wasn’t going to be confined to Cessnas. So, he’s partially responsible for me spending most of my now-54 years in the air bouncing off the edges of the aviation envelope.

Did I just say 54 years? DAMN! Even I didn’t know I was that old! I don’t know whether to be shocked or proud. Oh, well. It is what it is.

A central part of the Nebraska trip had me watching the weather and the Missouri river closely. This was the first time in my life that I had to consider a river in my travel plans: the Missouri was, and still is, threatening to flood Eppley Field, Omaha’s airport and the major airline hub in the region. It’s an interesting feeling to be sitting by the windows in an airport restaurant watching them building sandbag berms around the terminal and wondering if you’re going to get out before the water comes crashing through the levee that surrounds the airport. As I ate one of the best deli sandwiches I’ve ever had, the levee was clearly visible on the other side of the runway. The knowledge that those long piles of landscaped dirt were all that stood between me and water that was at least five feet higher than the airport was “interesting.”

The threat to the airport is just a tiny part of the tragedy-in-progress that surrounds the Missouri from one end to the other, which is something like a thousand miles. It is absolutely unreal what’s happening out there and you have to see it with your own eyes to believe it. Unfortunately, it’s going to get a helluva lot worse before it gets better. And, if the earthen dams upstream, which are already full with flood gates releasing water at the rate that reportedly would cover a football field four feet deep EVERY SECOND, were to let go, the area would be devastated. But the worse is yet to come because snowmelt from Wyoming and Montana will keep the dams full even with the flood gates open and it’s anyone’s guess as to whether they will hold. Incidentally, this is the first time in history that some of those floodgates have even been open. This is history in the making.

Right now the main interstate linking Omaha and Kansas City is shut down and many small towns, like Hamburg, Iowa, along the Missouri are totally wiped out. It’s hard to believe but they say that the water levels may not come back to normal until October or later! Some of those towns will never come back from this. Never! See the link at the bottom for amazing photos of the area.

Still, with the tremendous tragedy unfolding, it’s not knocking all other news off the air like Katrina did. You don’t see residents rioting, looting or sticking their noses into reporters’ cameras demanding this or that. To a very large extent, the area is taking care of its own and doing what needs to be done with a minimum of hoopla or media attention. I’ve always been proud to be a Nebraskan, but I’m especially proud when I see my people, and those of the area, behaving and coping the way they are.

I put in a 20-hour day on Thursday, between traveling and trying to get Flight Journal finished, then put in another one on Friday that had me doing magazine stuff early and driving to California (400 miles) that afternoon (you have to earn those days off).

On Saturday, it was hit the LA Roadster show swap meet at 0700 (yeah there were cars there too, but, although numbering in the many-1000’s, they are a minor sideshow compared to the swap meet). I measured it: I walked 5.2 miles. Half of those miles were particularly arduous as I was carrying little treasures I couldn’t pass up. Next year I bring a folding shopping cart and I’m not kidding one damn bit. More on swap meets next week.

That night and the next day were all about family and being a dad and granddad. And I’m certain I’ve never had a better father’s day. Nor have I ever eaten more deserts at one sitting. Actually, I’m certain I haven’t eaten that many deserts in any two-year period as I don’t normally eat desserts. But, the Roadster Show saved me: I didn’t gain an ounce over the weekend even though I tried. A miracle!

So, that’s what made me skip blogging last week. Am I forgiven?

Click FLOOD to see what's happening out there. Pull your browser window to full screen so the photos stack up in columns.

11 June 2011 - Living Life in the Cracks

Wow! It suddenly dawned on me that I have no students booked, so technically I have this weekend off. It’ll be the fourth one this year. Unfortunately, I know a challenge is about to hit me in the nose: what should I do with it? And I know the other question that I ask myself entirely too often: how many more weekends do I have left?

When the supply of sand in the top of life’s hourglass is getting smaller by the hour, try as we may, we can’t ignore each individual grain of sand as it cascades downhill, gaining speed as time gets its teeth into it. This weekend is one of those grains of sand. I can see it slipping out of sight so what will I do with it to make sure its passing is well invested because when it’s gone, along with all the rest before it, it’s gone. And there are a hell of a lot more weekends behind me than there are in front of me.

Just for the helluvit, let’s say I live another 20 years. Given my family gene pool, that’s not a totally unreasonable assumption, although that would be an outside number. Being an even number, however, it's easy to make the following calculations. This, by the way is NOT a healthy way to be thinking, but it’s educational nonetheless.

I scanned the rest of this year’s calendar and found that I average about every fifth weekend off, which sounds below average, but maybe not. So, how many free weekends does that mean are left? That’s about ten a year, or 200 for the rest of my lifetime. If I’m lucky, that is. Although this may sound awfully low to some, I doubt seriously if I am much different than everyone else. Including you. Let’s analyze it.

I’m calling a “weekend off” two days where I can do what I want to do: work in the shop, hammer on the next novel (yeah right!), work on the roadster (double yeah, right!). In my case, flying and magazine articles that always seem to be due on Monday are what pollute my weekends. However, although I don’t have the time to myself, it’s not as if I’m digging ditches or going to PTA meetings (I’d prefer the ditches). I’m doing something that I enjoy even though I’m not working on my own stuff. So, it’s not drudgery. Look around: how many of your weekends are devoted strictly to you? No little league games, no honey-do’s, just you, your mind and your wishes. I’ll wager that weekends like that are few and far between for any who are living a normal life.

Normal people, meaning those who are not independently wealthy, have kids, and are working for a living don’t get big blocks of time just handed to them. In fact, most don’t get even little blocks of time handed to them. They have to work damned hard for them. Most lives are lived in the time-cracks that exist between the must-do’s of life: we have an endless stream of things that “must” get done. So, we spool up our energies, take care of one of those, then there’s a brief lull before the next one hits us, and we can relax a little. Then, almost immediately, we have to spool up again. That’s how life is generally lived, regardless of the number of weekends someone has off. Life isn’t a smooth continuum (what a funny word!). It’s more like skating across a corrugated roof, a series of highs and lows with life lived in between.

Oh, sure, there are plenty of twenty-somethings out there, who aren’t married, are making an obscene amount of money on a thirty-five hour week, and flit around the country or spend their weekends on their boat, in their hot tub or recovering from both Friday and Saturday night. Of course, the rest of us look at their seemingly enviable life style and smirk knowing full well that they are about to be knocked flat on their butts, when real life catches up with them. And it will. Guaranteed!

If real life doesn’t catch up with them, and they continue their lifestyle of unfettered freedom, we should be pitying them. The real character of life, the grit that gives it its flavor, comes from the fact that we don’t live our lives alone. We can’t go through life being totally self-indulgent because others count on us. And we count on others. And those relationships, whether it be family, friends or community, place demands on us. They take our time. They make us do things we wouldn’t normally be doing. But, they pay us back hugely by making us part of something. By making us feel needed and by making us need others.

Having relationships always means we won’t get as much time as we want on our hotrod, our hunting, our partying (or so I hear), etc. However, speaking from a personal point of view, I get more done when I have a day that is broken into time-splinters by interruptions, must-dos and other of life’s distractions than I do when I have a day off. We need the demands of others. We need schedules. We need deadlines. We need a reason to be efficient.

Most folks run faster, get more done, and feel better about themselves, when they’re dancing around the roadblocks life tosses in the road. The really nice part about that kind of approach is that if I keep filling in the cracks between the must-does with tiny steps on projects that mean something to me, my projects will eventually get done and the progress, slow though it may be, makes me feel fulfilled in the process. So, I don’t really need weekends. Or big blocks of time. What I need is the determination to make what little free time I do have pay for itself.

I believe the cliché that fits here is that we have to make hay while the sun shines.

4 June 2011 - Measuring Odd Anniversaries by Colt Time

It’s rather inconvenient, when history happens on an odd year. Like an 11. Or a 12. Even-decades are so much more convenient to remember. However, odd year or not, we’re celebrating anniversaries out the ears this year, but it wasn’t until I noticed this month’s issue of NRA’s American Rifleman that I put some the anniversaries into a personal context. A 1911 .45 Colt was on the cover.

The 1911 Colt: hardly a precision piece, it nonetheless does it's job admirably. It is the '32 Ford of the pistol world: it responds really well to hotrodding and becomes one accurate SOB!

If you want to start a major urinary competition amongst gun enthusiasts all you have to say is something like, “The 9mm is plenty of cartridge for self defense.” That’s an invitation to a catfight and the .45-is-better thing will instantly erupt. That one concept separates pistoleros into two unyielding camps: on the one hand is the 1911 Colt camp while every other soul on the planet is in the other. There is no in between. The 1911 .45 Colt is the hands down winner of any competition, whether it is based on idol worship and/or serious pistol shooting. And it is also celebrating its hundredth anniversary this year.

It’s hard to believe something a century old is still kickin’ butt and takin’ names and is held in such high esteem in so many parts of society. Plus, it is being re-issued to special operations teams by the Army and Navy. Talk about long-lived love affairs! As far as that goes, one of my prized possessions and favorite shooting irons is a highly worked, 1911 Colt Commander.

Another anniversary that is underway is the 150th of the beginning of the Civil War, or the War of Northern Aggression, the title depending on where you live. I won’t get into that argument, since I had kin on both sides, but I will point out that I remember so clearly when the 100th anniversary of the beginning of that particular bloody conflict was being remembered, if not celebrated. I was in college during that orgy of remembrance. That was (and this is hard to believe) fifty years ago. That sounds like a long time, when you say it, but when you live a fifty-year chunk of time, it’s virtually a blink of your mind, during which you live a lifetime. But, some things just don’t change.

The 1860 Colt was the standard sidearm of the North during the Civil War and one of the more artistically designed revolvers: they didn't have to work all those finely shaped curves into it to make it functional.

During that time the 1911 had already been THE target pistol forever and was the official US service sidearm. I had a 1911 (later stolen by a college “friend”), and my 1860 Army Colt, which I still have, was celebrating its own centennial birthday. Fifty years have passed since then and plenty has changed. Years have evaporated, wrinkles developed, some graying has taken place, and society and civilization have been drastically altered. But, one thing hasn’t changed a bit: the 1911 still reigns supreme in many minds.

When we visited my grand daughter a couple weeks ago, it occurred to me that when I was her age, 14 months, WWII was just over a year old and the 1911 was being carried on hips world wide. It was already 30 years old and had proven itself in WWI, the war that was supposed to end all wars, but didn’t even come close.

If you were to continue going back in fifty-year chunks, you’d wind in 1892. The shameful massacre of the Lakota (Sioux) at Wounded Knee was barely a year old and the year would see the replacement of the legendary Colt M1873 single action (the famous six shooter, which itself is still in production and dearly loved—138 years!) with the “new” double action Colt M1892 in .38 Long Colt. The new pistol was hated by almost all who used it, especially when it was found it barely slowed down charging Moro tribesmen during the Philippine campaign. This lead to the .45 LC M1909 revolver and then the, you guessed it, John Browning’s ever-lasting legacy, the 1911.

The 1836 Paterson Colt, named after the town it was built in started Colt in business. Incidentally, the group pictured was shot at 60 feet. Not bad!

Another 50 years back and it’s 1842, and, if we continue measuring things in Colt-time, we’d be talking the first commercial repeating pistol, the Colt Paterson. It established the concepts and held the patents that virtually all later revolvers were based on. Sam Colt patented the Paterson in 1836, exactly 60 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, when everything was single shot and the concept of mass production of mechanical contrivances was out of the grasp of all manufacturers. Everything was hand fitted and files were the Bridgeports of their day. Then, in 1798, Eli Whitney (inventor of the cotton gin) perfected the concept of interchangeable parts on muskets and Sam Colt carried that concept to the extreme on his revolvers.

Both concepts: the ability to accurately produce interchangeable parts, and the repeating revolver, proved to be foundations for both an industrial and social revolution (for better or worse). Suddenly, items could be more easily produced en mass, and warfare, self-defense, crime and western expansion had a valuable tool at their disposal.

The famous "fifty cal" is likely to be with us for many generations to come. It's hard to imagine anyting doing its job with such elegant simplicity.

So many forget that the firearm gave birth to America’s industrial development and has been an invaluable tool throughout our history. Plus the firearm gave us the genius of John Browning and amongst the dozens of outstanding designs he gave us are the Colt 1911 and the Browning .50 caliber machine gun (designed 1918), both still doing their job a century later.

Okay, so the world would have continued without either the 1911 or the Fifty, but it’s seldom one man’s design work leaves such a long lasting mark on history. This year is the 156th anniversary of John Browning’s birth. The 85th of his passing. Seems like we ought to be recognizing at least one of those.

Sorry to ramble: it’s early and the second cup hasn’t kicked in yet.
:-)

29 May 2011 - Memorial Day Musings

Memorial Day coincides with the newsstand release of the August issue of Flight Journal of which I am Editor-in-Chief. In our continued celebration of the Navy's 100th anniversary in this issue, we focus on the role of the Navy in WWII and, while preparing that article, I stumbled across the photo below. It reminded me what Memorial Day is all about, something we can't forget. The photo had a profound effect on me and everyone on the staff and we thought we'd be remiss if we didn't share it with the Flight Journal Readers. And I thought it important that I share it with all of you. Go to MEMORIAL DAY.

21 May 2011 - Early Morning Paranoia

I’ve been getting a subtle message from my knees that they don’t like the tight radius turns necessary to do laps around the pool (34 laps/mile, 3 miles/morning). So, a couple months ago I started walking the neighborhood amongst real people and noticed an interesting trend. It may be just me but I think younger people are more paranoid (or anti-social) than older generations are.

I’m generally walking the neighborhood, logging miles and time via my trusty Garmin GPS thingy (looks like Batman’s watch), between 0530 and 0615 (psychologically, 45 minutes is all I can force myself to commit to, which totals right at 3.2 miles). All things considered that covers a lot of suburban territory. And this time of year, when it’s starting to get warm and the sun is up at that time, a surprising number of people are out and about. And they are broken into three basic categories, almost all involving dogs.

The first includes young, professional looking thirty-somethings, with nifty walking/jogging suits and a carefully coifed Shepard, Setter or a couple of long skinny dogs I can’t identify. The dogs’ haircuts generally match their owners’. I’d never seen a dog with a razor cut before. The dogs cost more than my car (not saying much) and every two days they poop more than my little dog weighs. These folks are very serious about what they’re doing and usually have a finger to their neck artery and are looking at their watch (I don’t tell them my Garmin super-thingy does that automatically).

Incidentally, if they don’t have a big dog on a leash, it’s a slick looking young woman in spray-on exercise clothes with firm boobs and tight gluts jogging with one of those over-the-road baby carriages in front of her. The baby has a razor cut too.

The second group is made up of couples, often in their late forties or early fifties, judging by the slightly graying hair and the bellies they are fighting, (The first group has disgustingly flat bellies). The second group, the middle-aged folks are much more comfortable with themselves and are walking briskly, not jogging. The guy often has a knee brace left over from when he was a thirty something and jogged. Their dog is a graying version of what the thirty-somethings had and the dog is walking too and not all that interested in sniffing around for other dogs’ pee. Like their masters, they’ve been around long enough to know that, if you smell pee once, it generally smells pretty much the same the second, third and hundredth time. So, they don’t give a damn and ignore the trace evidence left behind by other dogs.

The third group includes a mix of aging couples who talk quietly, smile a lot and wear their lives on their faces, and lone individuals with a vaguely strained look. They weren’t always alone, and don’t like it, but they’ll be damned if they’ll let time drag them down.

The familiarity the older couples share betrays the decades they’ve seen together. They are ambling slowly along, a little rat dog of some kind, often showing its mongrel-mix breeding and has a happy-to-have-been-adopted air about it. They, like their owners, don’t give a rat’s ass about what the world thinks of them. They are enjoying their own world. Their own existence.

I’m usually the odd ball in the group mostly because I’m not ambling, but chugging along like I really need to pee and can’t wait to get home. I also stick out because I never pass anyone without a distressingly (for that time of the morning) cheerful, “Good morning,” said in that chirpy voice reserved for customer service types at Disney world. The response I get is totally age related. As is the general attitude.

The up-and-coming thirty-somethings stare straight ahead and act as they didn’t hear me. I can see a little flicker of fear in their eyes as my words hit them. Some day I’m going to wait until the last second as I pass them and yell “BOO!” Nah, bad idea: I’d get a face full of Mace.

The middle aged couples invariably react, but not always in the same way. The guy will usually return a tentative “Hi!” The wife will often look at their husband in disbelief. As if he had broken the code of solidarity in which no one they aren’t related is allowed into their world, much less their space. She’ll eventually mellow. Maybe.

The older category, both the couples and the singles, most in their late 70’s and beyond, invariably turn and look me straight in the eye and smile. “Why good morning to you too. It’s a wonderful one isn’t it?” is a common response. Of course, there was the little old lady, who was a stick figure in sweats who replied, “The hell it is!” Her scruffy looking rat dog growled at me too.

In this thoroughly unscientific survey I’ve concluded that paranoia reigns supreme until you reach middle age and decide that it’s just possible that no one is out to get you, so it’s okay to interact with people around you. Then, once you’ve out lived the dozens of near-death experiences that seem to populate a lifetime, you reach a point that no one can adequately threaten you. Eventually impending death becomes such a constant companion to those who have lived long enough to have floated in an out of its clutches that they no longer fear it. And, when you no longer fear the end, you lose the fear that prevents people from looking strangers in the eye and smiling. After all, what can they do to you that isn’t going to happen sooner rather than later. So, they smile and say good morning and enjoy yet another of life’s free rewards: a returned smile.

Of course, while all of this is going on, I have pepper spray in one back pocket (I pass a lot of seriously barking dogs) and a S & W snub nose in the other, just in case that young jogger isn’t a jogger.

I guess paranoia lasts longer for some than for others.

Y’all have a good morning, hear?

13 May 2011 - Alzheimers by Computer

This week was topped off by me calling the doctor to schedule an Alzheimers test. And no, I’m not joking. It had been one of those kinds of months and included some really worrisome memory lapses. REALLY worrisome!

I think everyone over the age of forty starts self-analyzing to see if they are going uphill or downhill (don't try to tell me you don't do the same thing.). I’m definitely in that category. However, over the past year or so I’ve been having trouble remembering things I could always remember, mostly celebrity names or the occasional obscure reference. But this month, it got ridiculous. And scary.

I have always been fairly nimble with words. Especially when making wisecracks. The right word pops up like ammo in a properly maintained magazine. As this month wore on, however, I found myself grasping for words, often using one that didn’t work as well, but I could think of it, so I used it. And that scared the bejeesus out of me. Was “IT” finally happening?

To put this in context: my absolutely beautiful and wildly intelligent mother started drifting out into the ozone layer in her very late 60’s until she was totally gone in her late ‘70’s. I’ve often thought the diagnosis on her chart would make a good name for a novel. Or a rock band. They decided she had “unspecified dementia.”

At the beginning, mom was forgetting words, places, names. And as this month wore on, that was me. Then I had an incident happen that was so profound, I knew I had gone over the edge and it was time to call in the medical big guns.

I have been a serious practitioner of the art of computing almost since they became commonly available in the late ‘70’s. I spend, on average, six to eight hours a day at the keyboard. This includes all forms of writing, high-end graphic design, financial/structural analysis, goofing off, etc. and I’m absolutely hell on wheels with it. Everything about it is simply part of my being.

Part of that familiarity is that I almost never open a drawdown menu. I know all the key commands by heart and can key them in without even thinking. Or at least I could until last Monday.

Suddenly, I found that some of the most basic series of commands, like replying to an e-mail (Alt R, if just replying to one, Shift-Alt R, if replying to all) wasn’t working for me. I thought “Huh, must be hitting the wrong key.” But, I looked down and was on what I thought was the right key. But, it didn’t work. I then tried varying combinations of keys and found that I needed the key next to the Alt key. Moving over one key was a solid inch difference for my thumb and might as well have been a foot. My fingers just didn’t want to do that. I could barely make them do it. That’s when I knew I was totally screwed. Something in my mental wiring had ceased to work and was telling me to hit the wrong keys. My universe had been drastically altered. So, I called the doctor and made the appointment.

The Davisson kids, all three of us, constantly wonder who of us got Mom’s mind and who got dad’s. We are always asking which of us will falter early. Unfortunately, it looks as if it will be me.

I soldiered on through the week and two days ago came home from flying and found my computer switched off (I’ve been flying four times a day in incredibly nasty turbulence in addition to getting an issue of Flight Journal out the door and writing three articles for various magazines. Four solid weeks, 7 days a week, of 16-hour days including 68.3 hours of Pitts dual-given.). It turned out that the power company had asked Marlene to shut everything down while they installed new electric meters.

I fired the old Mac back up and started working. Immediately I found I was having keyboard problems again. I couldn’t do any of those normal key commands and I had been working hard to retrain myself. Damn! I’d gone even further downhill!

I looked down and my fingers were on the new combination of keys all right, but why didn’t it work? So, I tried the old version and “bingo”, it worked instantly. Eeeyow! The two keys had once again reversed and were working in their original way. I hadn’t imagined this change. It was my keyboard, not my brain that was screwed up.

I can’t explain what happened, maybe I had hit some magical combination of keys and reversed their default functions earlier in the week, but, when I rebooted it (Generally I never turn my computer off), everything came back to normal.

The day before I had found that words were coming back to me. Of course, at the same time I had gone back to walking my 3.5 miles/day (I had dinged a knee) AND had gotten the new issue of the magazine finished so I was sleeping my usual six hours a night instead of four. Apparently, by coincidence, I had rebooted myself at the same time as the computer.

I didn’t have Alzhiemers, my computer did. So, I called my doctor and canceled the test. Now that I think about it, I’ll never take that test, regardless of what happens. How many of us really want to know if our brain is going down the crapper or not. When it happens for real, I just want to coast off to oblivion and not know its happening.

I’ve started turning my computer off at night. Even it needs the rest.

7 May 11 - Osama/Obama Oh Brother!

This is my obligatory comment on this week’s news: To me, the single most amazing aspect of the entire Bin Ladin thing was, if you could believe the President’s announcement on TV, that he did it single-handed. I lost count of the number of times he said “I” and I’m not sure he ever said “we.”

The above is especially interesting considering the amount of insider information coming out about the decision process leading up to the actual operation: The hard chargers were Hillary Baby and Leon Panetta. In fact, it appears they already had the operation rolling before Obama stopped his long term hemming and hawing.

The Prez also managed to make it sound as if the entire search had been conducted on his watch. He did, however, show some restraint in not saying something to the effect of “Bush didn’t do sh*t.”

His announcement was not only uncharacteristically haltingly delivered, as if he didn’t really believe what he was saying, but was so blantantly a campaign speech that it was painful to watch.

Of course, the next day, people like the idiots on The View were saying things like, “Boy, I wouldn’t want to be a Republican now. They don’t stand a chance.” Yeah, right.

If this had happened a couple weeks before the election, I’d say they were right, but the rosy glow over the White House is going to quickly fade when the population gets back to business and realizes the country is still in the tank. Unemployment is super high and everything about us is screwed up. Given all that, I’m surprised Hillary didn’t lobby the decision-making team to hold off the hit until it would do their party more good.

As it happens I had an odd reaction to the announcement that SEALS had capped Osama’s ass. For a moment or two, it felt out of character for the US to assassinate someone like that. The Mossad yes, the US no. Then my logical self kicked in.

How could I think that killing someone in cold blood (which this actually wasn’t) is bad, when that person had orchestrated the cold-blooded murder of 3,000 Americans? I guess it’s the “good guy” complex Americans seem born with. And which often slows us down. This time, thank God it didn’t and they whacked him.

If Bin Laden had been brought back alive we would have had an international sideshow of momumental proportions. It would have turned into a courtroom circus beyond belief and it would have done more harm than good. I wouldn’t have put it past the Administration to want to try him in our courts by our laws, when in point of fact, not a single one of our laws apply to him or his type. It’s our morals that get in our way, in cases like these, not our laws.

For once, we did it the Israeli way: kill the SOB, take heat from the international community for a while, and then get on with your life. And for once, the operation went down the way it was supposed to, although, with the loss of the one helicopter, we came close to another Carter-like botched rescue attempt.

As for the long-term effect of killing Bin Laden, I don’t think there will be any. Al Queda and their ilk are so decentralized that terrorism will continue as before.

I think a much bigger effect on terrorism will come from the way in which the Jihadist movement is being drastically altered by events in the Arab world. Many of the youth, those who traditionally jumped behind Bin Laden and willingly gave themselves to the Jihad, are finding their energies focused within their countries as they revolt against their own administrations. This is going to have long-term effects. Capping Osama won’t.

I may be wrong, but it looks as if there’s a high probability that terrorist organizations, in general, are going to find recruitment is down. The Face Book Generation of Muslims is looking closer to home and seeing how they can change their own world and they don’t have to strap a bomb to their chest to do it. Yes, they still hate the Satan America, but that’s been shoved to a back burner, while they tend to business in their own neighborhoods, cities and nations.

Make no mistake, the old school jihadists that live to kill Americans are still out there, but they don’t have the power they once had over their people. Yes, we’re going to see some retaliatory strikes on our soil. Yes, Americans are at risk. But, I’m hoping global events will blunt their ability to deliver at the level they did ten years ago.

Incidentally, the best lateshow Bin Ladin comment was by Craig Fergusen, “Those SEAL team guys are tough hombres. They eat bugs and poop freedom.”

Well said, Craig (one of our favorites)!

30 April 11 - In praise of garage door openers

Every single time I back out of the garage, click a button on my visor, and watch the door come down I think “This is truly one of mankind’s greatest inventions. I should be thanking someone for the positive effect it has on my life. But who?” The garage door opener makes our existence so much easier we should know the inventor’s name as well as we do Thomas Crapper (Giblin’s design) and other personal convenience icons.

For whatever reason, I’m periodically overwhelmed by the realization that many “things” that are so basic that they don’t even qualify for “gadget” status have impacted my life more than I know. And I’m not talking about big deals like the Mac I’m typing on and the Internet connection that is letting you read this. That whole concept is so totally amazing that it has been world changing: not long ago, it would have been credited to aliens, rather than a bunch of energetic techno geeks. But, as I sit in front of this gigantic 30” screen and glance over at the 22” monitor next to it with probably 15 files open between the two, the thing that catches my eye is the rows of yellow sticky notes going up their sides: another of man’s most useful inventions and one on which I totally depend.

We’re all surround by super-simple, everyday inventions that, on a daily basis, have more personal impact than more magnificent inventions like the artificial heart or the Space Shuttle. Take the paper clip for instance. What a brilliantly simple concept, yet so inexpensive and useful! I’ve always been amazed by paper clips (remember, it doesn’t take much to amaze me) so I just did some research: it turns out that there’s an international controversy over the paper clip’s origins. The original design, which we still use today, was never patented, but showed up in the UK being produced by the Gem Manufacturing company as early as 1890, which is why paperclips are often called “Gems” over there. However, in 1899 a Norwegian, Johan Vaaler, patented a different version that didn’t work as well as the original, so it died. However, Norwegians doggedly cling to the Norwegian-invention of the paperclip as a point of national pride.

Yeah, I know: more than anyone needs to know about a paper clip, but now, knowing something about its history, I feel better every time I see one.

Not to be left out of the things-we-forget-about race, the USA can claim the lowly safety pin as a good old American invention. Kinda makes your chest swell with pride doesn’t it? Patented in 1849 by Walt Hunt, he apparently sold the rights to it for $400. That was a lot of money in those days (especially for a safety pin), but, it would pale beside the gross revenues that little gizmo would have brought him. Great inventor, questionable business man.

And in another spontaneous exclamation of national pride, it has to be pointed out that the US can also lay claim to the first commercial production of toilet paper. This, by old Joe Cayetty in 1857. Scott Paper marketed the first rolled paper in 1879, but, when Sears started putting out a catalog in the early 1890’s, most rural families ignored toilet paper and hung a catalog in the outhouse. This is why Sears catalogs of the period had a hole in the upper, left corner. It was a classic case of recycling. Or of multi-purposing a product. When Sears went to glossy paper, it raised a storm of protest. Note my restraint in not saying sh*t storm of protest.

There are literally thousands of common products around us that make our lives more civilized and easier. Unfortunately, virtually every single one is taken for granted to the point that they are almost invisible. However, somewhere, sometime, someone had to invent them and we owe them a huge vote of thanks. If you don’t believe that, think of life without toilet paper and you’ll understand.

Go to http://www.edinformatics.com/inventions_inventors/ for a long list of those whom we have to thank for an even longer list of life’s necessities.

All the above having been said, I still don’t know whom to thank for the garage door opener.

26 April 11 - We're Good-Guying Ourselves To Death

How much longer can we afford to play the good guy knowing what it’s costing us? The time has come to get down to business, recognize that we’re in a fight for our very survival, and decide that we can no longer afford to support everyone, everywhere, every time.

This week two almost unnoticed announcements crossed my desk: first, we apparently now have “advisors” on the ground in Libya (we all knew that was coming, right?) and, second, the cost of internal entitlement programs reached the point that the amount of money given households and individuals exceeded the total amount of tax revenue pulled in by the federal government (see http://money.msn.com/tax-tips/post.aspx?post=63c403d6-0a2f-4506-a8b8-25124d49889b&ucsort=3). Let’s look at those two things separately.

First, Libya: I’m a pretty gung-ho military supporter and really believe in kicking butts, when they need kicking, but dammit, we have to be smart about what we do with our military. It’s there to protect our national interest, not be a neighborhood security force for the entire world. Besides, unless there is a clear threat to us, is it wise to be spending billions of dollars that we don’t have plus putting our young people in harms way just to sort out someone else’s civil war? I say no it isn’t. That’s a bad investment of our dwindling resources.

Beltway Bleeding Hearts are screaming about how badly the Libyan people are being treated and I totally agree. Gaddaffi (or however he’s spelling his name this week) needs to go. But, where do we get the right to do that? How would we react if a foreign government started attacking us because of internal strife? That, however, is a debatable political concept. What is not debatable is how stupid we are to borrow money from China and then spend it protecting civilians in a country that would spit in our face, if given a chance.

The same thing applies to all foreign aid: we’re going deeper and deeper in debt and much of the money is going to foreign countries that are our avowed enemies. We have plenty of folks starving on this side of the pond. If we’re going to go deeper in debt, at least let it be invested in our own people.

Now, if we were to say, “We’re wading into Libya because we can’t afford to lose their oil,” fine. Be honest about it. It may sound a little imperialistic but at least we’d be getting something for our money and lives lost wouldn’t be totally wasted.

If Obama doesn’t really pay attention to what he’s doing in Libya, it's going to blow up in his (actually “our”) face. At the very least, it would cost him the election, and he’d disserve it. Hmmmmm…lose the election…maybe I’ve been looking at this thing all wrong. There may be a bright side to it. :-)

One of our better character traits, as a nation, is our willingness to throw our arms around all the world's downtrodden, ours and theirs, and try to make their life better. But playing the role of the “good guy” isn’t cheap. In fact, it’s damned expensive because, when money is being spent in a purely altruistic gesture, we can’t expect to see a dime in revenue from it. We can’t continue doing this indefinitely. Not in the condition we’re in.

If we expect to survive this century, we’re going to have to do something that runs contrary to that streak of goodness that makes us who we are: we’re going to have to get control of our good guy tendencies and become self-centered. We’re going to have to draw the wagons into a circle and actively defend ourselves against everything that challenges our financial survival. Everything! And we’re going to have to be uncharacteristically brutal in our decisions, most of which are going to be aimed at entitlements and foreign aid.

The days are gone where the US can run down the world’s Main Street throwing candy at the children. Not only is candy expensive but it’s only a matter of time before the candy barrel is empty. The situation we are in is quite possibly fatal and personally, I think it’s better to be known as an intelligent, tight-fisted Grinch that is still alive and kicking than be remembered as the country that good guyed itself out of existence.

16 April 11 - Cat Litter and Consideration

Cats are some of the most marvelous, difficult to categorize, impossible to understand, creatures on Earth. They are also amongst the cleanest animals on Earth. Usually. Meet, Smoki Joe. My big, gray, almost-panther, who, in a massive show of inconsideration, absolutely refuses to bury his poop. In that regard, he reminds me of far too many people.

Having a cat that requires you to periodically swing by the litter box and brush a little very expensive processed clay over his recently processed cat food takes a little of the glitter out of his looks. He’s huge, muscled, a color I call not-quite-black, and has exquisite taste in people: he studiously avoids every breathing soul but me and is constantly pestering me for scratches. But, damn! How can something so sophisticated looking have such lousy bathroom manners? I’ve never heard of such a thing. It reminds me of a startlingly beautiful date I had once who forgot to flush my toilet after a serious use. Really took the shine off the evening. But, then, that general lack of consideration for our fellow beings seems to be a major part of civilization.

There is, for instance, the movie/concert talker. They never shut up and almost always have this 120-decibel stage whisper and always decide to pontificate at a critical moment during the movie or concert. One of my favorite moments in my personal history was at a Jimmie Buffet concert, when a friend, one of the most polished, mannerly women I’ve ever known, and middle aged to boot, totally lost it: she turned around and belted an ever-talking woman right in the chops. I mean really nailed her! I think the move surprised the belter as much as it did the beltee. It also earned her a round of applause from the surrounding audience. A person can only take just so much rudeness.

The way people treat public restrooms is another of my pet peeves: is this the way they behave at home? How hard is it to flush? Or get all the paper in the john? Or generally behave as a civilized human. It’s hard to believe there as so many animals in the world.

I feel the same way about those cretins who park right on the line or at a sloppy angle so you can’t use the next space. Usually it’s an SUV or a truck. Parking on the line isn’t a sign of individualism or rebelling against society’s rules. It’s a sign of being a lousy driver AND being flat out inconsiderate to your fellow man.

The absolute height of inconsideration are those who think nothing of being ten or fifteen minutes late to a meeting. If you want to see me steamed, keep me waiting for fifteen minutes. Again, how hard is it to allow just a little extra time so you’re not rushed or screwed up by traffic, etc.? I don’t want them showing up a half hour early, but, at the very least give me a shout, when you’re going to be late. That’s one of the real reasons cell phones were invented. If we know someone is going to be late, it’s one thing. If they don’t give us a heads-up, it’s quite another. Grrrr!

Speaking of calling: how about the texter at dinner! No way! Absolutely no way! Incidentally, my word processing program on this computer isn’t with it yet: it flagged texter as a misspelling. Another of those words that will work its way into the dictionary before long.

This is to the guy who either can’t ignore his phone (or turn it off) during dinner, answers it then carries on a conversation (a loud one) right there at the table: if you have a habit of doing that that, it would be a good idea to always use a regular old flip phone rather than a PDA or any of the new smart phones: older phones are smaller and don’t hurt as much when someone shoves them up your butt to teach you some manners. Smaller flip-phones are more sphincter-friendly.

I know for a fact that I’ll unintentionally do things that show some form of inconsideration to those around me, but if I do, I hate myself later. I really don’t like doing things to folks that I hate them doing to me. I only ask that they treat me the same.

Now, does anyone have a hint on how you train a cat to cover his poop?

I didn’t think so.

An amazing eBay moment: stirrups
I just have to share an odd eBay thing with you. I mentioned that for years I’ve been searching for old cavalry stuff to outfit my 1904 McClellan saddle with items that would have been on it when Pershing went after Pancho Villa in 1916. In fact, this week I finally scored a M1913 Patton sword, blade-dated 1914 at a very, very attractive bid price. About 50 cents on the dollar. Cool, but not as cool as what I’m about to mention.

Standard issue cavalry stirrup. Brown makes it 1904, earlier ones were black. I've never seen just one available.

My saddle has the wrong stirrups: all steel as used on artillery saddles rather than the wooden ones with a big leather hood that covered the trooper’s feet. In 15 years, I’ve seen exactly one set of those for sale and, like an idiot, didn’t buy them. Then, early last week one of the proper stirrups showed up on eBay. Not a pair. Just one.

I figured, “Oh, what the hell. I’ll try for it so at least I can sit it on a shelf and look at it. Who knows? Maybe I’d run across another single in this lifetime.” I said that, but didn’t believe it for an instant. I got it at $51, which I considered to be a real deal considering its rarity and condition.

Two days after the auction, eBay was pinging me with their persistent “Things you might be interested in,” e-mails and I’ll be damned if another single stirrup, identical to the first, showed up. The first was in Kansas. The second in Florida. Totally unrelated. I wasn’t about to let that one get away so Auctionsniped it at a price five times what I paid for the first one, to make sure I got it. When the dust settled, I paid $51 for that one too.

What are the chances of two such odd, rare artifacts surfacing at the same time? How about next to zero? So, at this point, I’m a happy McClellan camper.

Doesn’t take much to get me excited, does it?

9 April 11 - A New North American Map?

Last week someone made a casual comment about what’s wrong with this country that was so logical, that it knocked me on my butt: if you look at Canada and the US, as a unit, and study both of our countries’ problems and our mutual internal regional differences, it becomes clear that the border should run north and south, not east and west.

Think about how much easier life would be for both countries if we were to recognize that much of our heartburn comes from the fact that we are run by a government that is out of touch with much of the country because of its location and mindset. We in Arizona, for instance, are run by folks who are cloistered in ivory towers 2,500 miles away. They don’t know or understand the west. In fact, DC isn’t really in touch with anything more than a few hundred miles inland from the Atlantic. Canada has a similar problem with Ottawa.

I say we get together with Canada and redraw the borders north and south and do it so like-thinking people are grouped together. Let’s face it, folks in Nebraska and the mid-west, for instance, have more in common with Albertan Canucks than someone from the Big Apple or DC.

Re-orienting the border would actually mean creating two north and south borders that would create three countries that run all the way up into our brother country to the north. There would be a long, fat country on the east, a wide one in the middle and a really skinny one on the west coast, where we let California do its own thing and we do our best to keep it from polluting the rest of the country. The liberals would govern the Eastern Seaboard, the conservatives the middle, and whatever Californians call themselves (not all of them but those who voted their increasingly weird government into office) could continue to screw things up in their fairly smallish country to their hearts content.

The names of the countries, east to west, would be Liberalistan, Commonsensitovia, Insanctuaria (say them out loud…they really work!).

Functionally, each of the countries would be sovereign nations and totally independent of one another. Citizenship would be interchangeable and the magic “open border” policy that many in the East say should exist between Mexico and the US (the MX/AZ/TX border, by the way, is nearly 3,000 miles from those who want to create that policy) would exist between the three new countries. If you want to cross a border and change residence, have at it. However, the governing body in each new country could have no say as to how things are done in the other country.

Drawing up the borders, however wouldn’t be easy. In fact, when looking at the East, you can’t just arbitrarily whack off three or four hundred miles north and south. I’m pretty certain Georgia or the Carolinas, for instance, wouldn’t be too crazy about being within Liberalistan’s borders. So the border wouldn’t be a straight north and line.

In the north, the border should swing far enough west to pick up Chicago and Ottawa, but would have to immediately cut back due east, maybe along the southern border of Illinois. But, what about Pennsylvania? I doubt it would want to be part of Liberalistan. In fact, Liberalistan might turn out to be the northeastern corner of the country. But, who knows what VT or NH would want?

How about we let each of the states vote as to which country they’d want to be associated with? But, doing it state by state wouldn’t work either. Some vary too much internally. Given that cities seem to think entirely differently than the surrounding countryside, the selection process would have to be done county by county.

If you do it by county, however, you’d very likely wind up with a map that looks like polka dots: major cities would be islands of Liberalistan territory afloat within the new country of Commonsensitovia. This is pretty much what they are now. Now, however, cities have the power to tell the surrounding area how to live their lives. Under the new system, they couldn’t do that. This would ruin a lot of their fun, but that’s just too bad!

I know this isn’t going to happen, if it did, think how much stress would be eliminated in so many areas of our lives. Our problems aren’t so much cultural or racial as they are liberal versus conservative, region versus region. There’s a seemingly impenetrable wall between the two groups that smacks of the man/woman, Venus/Mars syndrome. We’re speaking different languages altogether. And to make matters a whole lot worse, when our elected representatives go to Washington, where they’re supposed to represent us, they suddenly forget their native tongue and start speaking a language that is 100 percent unique to DC.

As I look at that last sentence I had an epiphany that is super obvious: our problem isn’t caused by regional differences, it is caused by politicians and the way in which they suddenly forget who elected them and why they were elected. However, short of pulling a Tom Clancy, where he had a pissed off Korean 747 captain dive his bird into a joint session of congress and wipe the slate clean, I don’t have a solution.

If there is a solution, it is us, the voters. We have to let our voices be heard and it’s going to take more than votes. What has been happening in Egypt, where normal people got out in the streets screaming that they’ve had enough, may be what it takes. I don’t know, but somehow, if we want this country to endure, we have to get the DCAH’s (DC A** Holes) under control.

Dammit! I hate it when I burn up so many words and come right back to a conclusion that was so obvious from the beginning. Oh, well. It’s only electrons.

4 April 11 - A Really "Serious" National Threat

I’ll have to admit that many of my friends are more concerned than most about the national condition. And yes, I suppose “paranoid” would probably describe us. However, I just discovered, and have been infected by, something of a far more serious, insidious nature than any of the most paranoid conspiracy theories: I’m talking about eBay eAddiction.

Okay, so I’ll also have to admit that I may well be the last person on the planet—possibly in the universe—to start doing the eBay thing. However, a couple of weeks, and many hundreds of dollars, ago, I made the mistake of a lifetime: I decided to look for an M-1 Garand bayonet through what has become the now-universal shopping method: eBay. Holy crap! WHAT HAVE I BEEN MISSING!?

In just a couple of key clicks I was looking at probably fifty bayonets for M-1 Garands. Further, here I was, someone who thought he had some knowledge of such things only to find I didn’t know a single damn thing about something as simple as US WWII bayonets. In about five minutes I realized there were at least two different blade lengths during WWII, (10” after late ’43, 16” from WWI until then). Further, some of the ten-inch models were clipped down from the earlier long bayonets by various vendors. At least two diffent shaped points were produced by at least five different vendors. What a smorgasbord of hardware trivia! And it was all just begging for me to bid on them.

1908 M1905 top, shortened for WWII	Fuller grooves run off the end of the shortened one

All I wanted was to buy a frigging bayonet and suddenly I’m finding myself all hot and bothered about this new field of interest. Damn! This is neat! And it’s so easy to indulge myself. It’s too easy! In less than week I found myself leaving sticky notes to remind myself when auctions were going to be over. I’d be sitting there, finger poised over the “send” key, counting down to the last ten seconds to increase my bid. Like I said: insidious!

In a week, I wound up owning five bayonets, all different, all representing something important to me, and I’m not done yet. I still need a pre-WWI, M1905, 16” model dated before1916 to go on my 1904 McClellan cavalry saddle that I’ve been outfitting for years with the right stuff to have possibly gone to Mexico after Pancho Villa in 1916. Up until now, I’d been flipping over rocks looking for the right gear. Now, it’s all right here in front of me. NIRVANNA!

The bayonets, however, were just the introduction. I think this is like getting your first little shot of heroin: the high is incredible, and delicious, and you can hardly wait for the next. The concept burrowed under my skin and began nagging my beleaguered brain: keep looking, keep bidding, keep track, don’t let someone ace you out, look for the deals. I was absolutely and totally hooked. Soon, I was looking, and am still looking, for everything. EVERYTHING!

Funky looking 1911 Colt holster from the '50's. For fifteen bucks, how can you pass it up? Did I mention eBay is addictive?? Wonder who "Turk" is.

I fully realize that a good percentage of people reading this are eBay eVets and are probably handling the experience better (meaning more restrained) than I am. But for those who have never played this particular buying game, I’m here to tell you that eBay is the single most intelligent, most pervasive, most addictive and best managed concept of any kind in the world. They are even more amazing than Amazon.com in the way in which they know how to continually pick at you, via random e-mails to keep you bidding, enticing you with new listings. (“Here, little boy, try my cocaine, it’s not addictive”). It’s taking over the nation and for lots of good reasons.

Now this little tool is flat cute! An early version of a Leatherman?

This whole concept is ready-made for a junk junkie like me. In the past few weeks, I’ve gotten seriously hooked on indulging my previously latent interest in old tools, specifically broad axes (hewing axes), hammers, fighting knives, and anything similar. I now have a pile of old hatchets and such on my desk and some really cool old tools.

Every bit handmade by an in-theater machine shop for Lt. Arvyn Linde, B-24 pilot in the 456th in Italy. He was from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, just south of Oshkosh.

Two WWII theater knives (those custom made for frontline troops by in-theater machine shops that were usually part of motor pools) popped up. Of the dozens listed these were unique in that they were identified with a specific WWII airman, Lt. A. Linde. I now have the knives, which have his name and service number on the sheaths. I also have copies of newspaper accounts of when he returned home (a B-24 pilot in the 456th in Italy) and digital photos of his dog tags. Provenance is everything but this gives me a positive personal connection to a long gone airman. To me, it’s touching and I plan to shadow box it all.

While all of this has been going on, I’ve been keenly aware of a sad change that’s taking place across America. And how it’s changing me. “The Search”, the pleasant hours we’ve all spent prowling through antique stores, junk yards, gun shows, swap marts and such, are now spent sitting in front of a computer: we’ve reduced the curious lifestyle that’s unique to the advanced crap collector to buying from a catalog.

Case in point: I’ve run across exactly three M1913 “Patton” swords for my cavalry saddle in the last ten years but have bought none. Today there are THIRTEEN listed on e-Bay! Kind of takes the serendipity and anticipation out of treasure hunting doesn’t it?

For guys like me, eBay is an enormous, ever changing, on-line museum where everything is for sale. And, of all the factors that I’ve run across that redefine life styles, this is right up there with the invention of the personal computer in terms of changing everyday life. Or at least making it more expensive. And more fun.

You don’t suppose this is another mind control plot do you? If so, it’s working! And I love it!

26 March 11 - Poop, Pipes, Petunias, Politicians and People
The past week or so has been incredibly interesting both personally and worldwide and it has given me an appreciation for personal poop-pipes, residential poop-pipes, doctor differences, good PR and amazing events.

Marlene, AKA The AZ Red Head, AKA The Love Of My Life spent all of last week in the hospital getting a foot whacked out of her colon. This was preventive maintenance brought about by a stay in the hospital six months ago during which she was on IV antibiotics to sanitize a golfball-sized abscess on her colon, the result of diverticulitis. The doctor, the head of surgery for one of the best hospitals in town and one of those doctors every other doctor says, “Ooh, you had Dr. XX work on you!” Their respect and admiration is obvious. After the hospital stay, the super-doc said, “Don’t need to have a CT scan done, you’re fine, you can now ignore the abscess.”

Marlene got nervous about six weeks ago and went to a specialist. He heard her tale, also got nervous and ordered up a CT Scan. Last week the area, which the super-doc said to ignore, turned out to be wildly inflamed, diseased, rusty, corroded and about as bad as a human sewer pipe can be and it had to be cut out. A scheduled two-hour operation turned into a three-hour drama that has had an amazingly good end with even better unintended consequences.

I’m telling all this for a reason, hang in there.

For nearly two years doctors have poked and prodded her because of her having to pee so often and because of so much bladder pain. It’s constant and she’d get up 12-15 times a night. Often more. The pain was serious and she couldn’t take normal pain killers because of intestinal considerations. It was a chronic syndrome diagnosed as Interstitial Cystitis, one of those conditions they can’t directly diagnose, don’t know what causes it, for which there is no cure and the two medicines, which they freely admit “might” reduce the pain, was costing us nearly $500/month. Ouch! The phantom disease would be there for the rest of her life. Only it wasn’t.

Since the colon surgery she only gets up only once or twice a night (I do more than that) and has zero pain. The effect on us has been dramatic. It is as if she has been reborn and me by extension. Our quality of life has skyrocketed.

Lesson No. One: doctors don’t even come close to fully understanding how the human body works.

Lesson No. Two: second opinions can be life saving. It certainly was in this case.

Sewer systems, human and otherwise can be problematic, and as Marlene was having hers worked on, there was a crew in our backyard using a high pressure water jet and a gigantic truck-mounted vacuum cleaner to to replace a piece of the main sewer line from our house. The company was Roto-Rooter (Marlene’s surgeon did NOT wear Roto-Rooter scrubs, but he could have) and they were one of the best service companies I’ve worked with. However, they got more impressive after the job was done while our surgeon got less impressive.

Marlene came home after having a chunk whittled out of her colon and numerous portals and drains cut into her abdomen and not a soul from the doctor’s office called to follow up and see how she was doing. When we have anything done to any of our animals, the vet has someone call to see if everything is going okay and if the service was up to their standards. Roto-Rooter carried the follow-up thing a notch or two further.

When was the last time you got flowers from your sewer company? Roto-Rooter, my hat's off to you.

The day after our back-yard surgery, someone from Roto-Rooter called and questioned both the level of their service and how the job had worked out. Then Marlene got a flower arrangement FROM ROTO-ROOTER with a get-well card and a handwritten note from Frank, the supervisor on the sewer job, wishing her well! Now, that’s a class operation!

A high class doctor can’t follow up to see how a major surgical patient was doing but Roto-Rooter can not only check on their work, but go above and beyond on a personal level. I was impressed! Actually, I was astounded.

Lesson No. Three: this is aimed at doctors’ offices—you’d do well to treat your patients at least as well as veterinarians and sewer companies do.

Another View of World Events

Libya
This is a classic example of a knee jerk reaction with little or no thought given to it by a leader who would just as soon have ignored it, if he could have: it’s a sad state of affairs when France’s actions spurs a US leader into action, then he ignores protocol concerning whom he is supposed to get approval from before committing US forces and doesn’t clearly analyze the situation at hand. First, it’s a civil war and how smart is it for us to get involved, when we don’t have a clear end game in mind or a mission that’s well defined? Second, no territory has ever been conquered or freed strictly with airpower (nuclear strikes not withstanding). It ALWAYS requires boots on the ground. Warfare inevitably comes down to one guy with a rifle shooting at another guy with a rifle and I don’t think our leadership has thought this scenario all the way through. The “rebels” are storekeepers and farmers, not organized insurgents and even if we pound Gaddafi’s forces senseless from the air, they will still overpower the rebels. Then what do we do? This has the capability being an incredibly complex quagmire. We’re going to have to either fish or cut bait: make decisions we don’t have the right to make (kill Libya’s existing leadership), or get involved in a long, drawn out wrestling match with no clear winning goal defined.

Japan
They’re doing an incredible job in an incredibly difficult situation. What I’m amazed at is how badly the media is performing and how much phony science is being bantered around by talking heads. The Internet has more concise, technically-correct information about reactor science, what is actually happening and what the consequences can be. To summarize: it doesn’t look as if the situation is as dire as the media makes it out to be. They are sensationalizing it (Really? What a surprise!). Incidentally, we tend to forget that Japan has already had two major nuclear events, both uncontained and totally vented to the atmosphere, and the effect on the rest of the world was minimal. That was in August of 1945.

There are a lot of lessons to be learned here, not the least of which is how poorly prepared most of us are for centralized services to be disrupted. Marlene and I are stocking food as this is being written. Not because of any expected effects from Japan, but just because it makes sense to be prepared. Events of that magnitude can happen anywhere, anytime courtesy of Mother Nature.

19 March 11 - Brain Teasers
It goes without saying that the human brain is frigging amazing in the way that it manifests such different personalities and gives us so many capabilities. Still I’m curious. We all have a brain. So, why is it that some do so much with it, while so many others do zilch? Our late friend Jack Cox is a case in point.

As this is being written, aviation’s good friend, my close friend, Jack Cox has been laying cold in the soil of NC for two weeks, which is an unbelievable, and painful, statement! I have lots of mixed emotions, one of which is the realization that what his brain had given us for all those years and what it contained that made him the person that he was is gone. Lost forever. I can’t help but ask what, in that particular brain, made Jack the unique individual that he was?

Jack will probably be best remembered as an aviation writer, which is such a shame because he was so much more than that in so many ways. And I can’t help but ask what within the brain gives a man like Jack a personality that is so likable and a mind that is so sharp and loved life so much? What in our brains makes some folks so special while others are so despised and useless? Both Jack Cox and Muammar Gaddafi came equipped with brains about the same size. See my point?

I know next to nothing about how the human brain works. But, I’m fairly certain that the most learned researcher out there only knows just a hair more. And the more experienced they are, the more likely they are to freely admit that they know very little about “why” the brain does what it does. They can tell us that varying combinations of the same neurons and nerves that made Einstein pee also enabled him to come up with the Theory of Relativity. They can tell us that most of our logical thought is in the left half and our creative thought is in the right. They can tell us that our belch mechanism is in one lobe and our ability to love in another. They can draw out a map that tells us exactly where different types of thoughts originate. But—and this is the hooker— they can’t tell us “why” those thoughts originate. They can’t tell us, for instance, what it was within his brain that gave Jack the ability to suck in knowledge and hang on to it and then be able to spit it back out faster than Google can find matches for the word “sex.”

Jack (and Golda by extension) were very important people in first my, and then Marlene’s, life. And we shed plenty of tears at his passing. There was the editor/writer part of our relationship, but there was also a strong emotional attachment as part of a firm friendship. Having those kinds of relationships is normal for most people. What is not normal is that so many hundreds, actually, thousands, of people who met and associated with Jack and Golda can make precisely the same statement and most shed similar tears. The duo had probably the widest circle of close friends of anyone I know. No, let me amend that: I know of no one who had more friends than those two. A good percentage of that is because of some sort of unique brain chemistry possessed by Jack that, through the personality created by that chemistry, made a close connection with others so immediately. And so permanently.

Reread and think about the last paragraph: then think how many people you’ve met that the instant you meet them, you’re repulsed. Or irritated. Sometimes outright angered by their very presence. Why? What is the process in their mind that comes out as an irritating personality? At the same time, what is the process in our minds that makes that personality irritating to us? I’m fairly certain the biggest brains in the world can’t answer that question. For the rest of us, when we meet someone like that, simply stating “an a-hole is an a-hole” is explanation enough.

When we lose someone like Jack (and there damn few like Jack, BTW), the single most puzzling question to me is what happens to the energy generated while we’re in the process of generating thoughts? There are a lot of electrons dancing around up there while we’re thinking. And one of the more concrete dictums of science is that there’s a balance in the universe that says you can’t destroy matter without creating some form of energy and vice versa. Jack spent his life generating and storing thoughts. His brain was a dynamo of activity constantly releasing all sorts of energy. So, where did it go?

It’s one of life’s never-ending tragedies that everything a man learns and everything he experiences disappears almost the instant blood stops flowing to his brain. In a single heartbeat the experiences of a lifetime are gone. And there’s no way to reboot the system in the hopes of retrieving the hard drive contents. It is up to successive generations to live their own experiences, learn, and usually re-learn, what those who went before took for granted. Something about passing along what we’ve learned before its too late fits here.

Another of life’s tragedies is that who we are and what we did are generally only remembered for one generation. Two, if we’re lucky enough to be close to our grand kids so they remember us. Because of proximity, I’m not that close to my grand kids, so only my kids and my generation of friends will remember me. After that, I’m gone, which is the case with most of us.

Jack will be remembered by countless generations courtesy of the hundreds of thousands of words he has left to remember him by. And because of the enormous impact he had on so many lives through his support and development of sport aviation. Still, he was so much more than that.

For the rest of my days I’ll carry the image of the always smiling, always enthusiastic, always helpful person that shared my life and, in so doing, made it better. Much better. And it’s unnecessary that I understand the processes in his brain that made him what he was. I only need know that we called each other “friend” and that’s one of the highest accolades I’ve ever received.

12 March 11 - This Old Hammer Meets Little Red Riding Hood

A blog in two parts:The hammer: It’s no secret that I like junk. All kinds of junk. It’s almost as if I have an aversion to shiny and new. I also love mechanical mysteries. And I like sharing them. So, take a look at what I picked up at the Good Guys Swap Meet today and let’s come up with an explanation. Or at least some theories.

This is what I call a well-used tool!

That didn't happen in one afternoon of hammering

Look at it again. Look at the incredible mushrooming (did I just make a word up?) of the head. How can you possibly do something like that? And how long would it take?

Looks almost brutal, doesn't it? It's heavily pitted but looks as if was used for a long time after the pitting took place.

Look at the back of the mushroom. How can you get metal to curl that far back? This is not a big hammer. In fact, it’s a rather small claw hammer so it has very little mass to it and this means most of its impact power came from the strong arm of the user. Imagine how much pounding that took.

It gets curiouser and curiouser

Now look at the claws: bent down and flattened. What the…?
 
This poor little hammer saw a really hard life that, judging from the rust pits, ended up buried somewhere to be exhumed and immediately put back to work. It was at that point, sometime a long, long time ago, that the current handle was put in place.

The handle isn't original, but it's been there a loooong time.

And, what’s the white stuff in the old rust pits on the top of it?
 
I’ve picked up a lot of oddball tools in my time, but this may well be the oddest. Don’t you wish it could talk to us? Tell us where it’s been and what it’s done. But, then, that would just spoil part of the mystery.
 
The Red Riding Hood Experience. Last weekend I went to my first honest-to-God movie premiere. It was for my daughter’s latest (for which she got lead producer credit), Little Red Riding Hood. First, the movie, then the experience.
 
The movie is essentially Little Red Riding Hood meets Werewolf of London: a dark, medieval tale that’s aimed mostly at the teen and 20’s crowd. Incredibly high production value with some good plot twists. Lots of ghoulish scenes aimed at younger minds: ever seen a mentally challenged individual broiled in a cast iron elephant and used as barter for witch information?
 
The Premiere Experience. I had to giggle as the driver got out of the big, shiny black town car and opened my door to let us into the leather covered back seat. His name was Arthur, he was ours for the evening, and I had to wonder if he was also giggling internally as he picked us up at the Roadway Inn. Not his usual haunts, I’d wager.
 
Jennifer had gone all out to show us her side of Hollywood. The town car dropped us off…let me clarify that…Arthur smartly opened the doors and helped us onto the red carpet. Yeah, THE RED FREAKING CARPET!!!  Just like in the movies. Oh, wait…this was the movies. People milling every direction, phalanxes of photographers and flashing strobes. Voices yelling “look this way. Smile! Who the hell are you?”
 

When it was opened in 1927, Grauman's was the height of Art Deco Chinese. Today, it's a national landmark.

Making it all the more surreal, this was happening at Grauman’s Chinese Theater and we had to walk down the Sidewalk of the Stars to the Red Carpet, then down a hallway with names like Gary Cooper, Buster Keaton, etc., scrawled into the pavement.  GRAUMAN’S FREAKING CHINESE THEATER!!! THIS IS INSANE!
 
Grauman’s is THE historic theater in Hollywood where heavyweight premieres take place and I’d been there once with my folks, when I was about nine years old. I never, ever dreamed I’d be there seeing a movie produced by my daughter. Totally amazing!
 
Movie over, we milled around for a while watching folks crowd around the stars and shaking my daughter’s hand. Then a quick call to Arthur, a dash through the crowds and another leather upholstered ride to The After Premiere Party.
 
I’m not sure what we were in, but it appeared to be a big sound stage attached to the back of a restaurant: it had gaggles of lighting gear secreted in the ceiling as if it could be reconfigured for any kind of event. The gigantic space was lined with leather couches/eating areas (what’s with Hollywood and leather?) and full-sized copies of Grandma’s house festooning the walls.
 
We spent several hours gorging ourselves at one of the finest buffets I’ve ever seen, stuffing down deserts we normally wouldn’t touch and having fun with friends and family. My ex, Naomi, and her husband were there and Marlene and she had a terrific time together, which they usually do. We all had fun.
 
Then the next morning at 0600 hours, we dragged ourselves out of bed, jumped in the old Maxima and raced 7 hours home just in time for me to fly a Pitts dual hop. And life in the real world began anew.
 
Tinsel town is a great place to visit but…but, I’m not sure what. Right here I’m supposed to say something disparaging about Hollywood, but I can’t. The entire town is all about entertainment and this trip I got to see a little of how that entertainment comes to fruition. And I got to see how the entertainers entertain themselves. And it was fun. Nothing wrong with that.
 
And I got to see my little girl in her element. That was terrific! Almost as terrific as biting my granddaughter’s nose. And a good time was had by all.

5 March 11 - Last Man Standing

It’s a sad statistic that we hear all too often: we’re losing over 1,000 WWII vets a day. How long before the last of over 5 million are gone? With numbers like that, it could be expected that the death of a single vet, corporal Frank Buckles, would receive little public notice. But it did. That’s because, when he passed on Feb 27, Corporal Buckles was the last surviving US veteran of World War One. He was 110 years old.

Buckles lied his way into the Army in 1917, when he was 16 years old.

We all understand mortality. Actually, the time we occupy on Earth is amazingly short, when measured against the big scheme of things. So, when a single man or woman dies, it’s just part of the fabric of life, and we all know our time is coming (easier to talk about than actually comprehend). History, however, is ever lasting. The events live on and artifact freaks like me celebrate them by amassing piles of silly hardware that we somehow think connects us to that history. But, it was the sweat, the blood and the anguish of the Frank Buckles of the world that made that history. And when they are gone, our true connection to that time is gone.
 
As a kid I remember the vets sitting around during Veterans’ Day and both the Civil War and WWI were represented. In fact, some of my fondest memories have me playing with Uncle Sky’s WWI gas mask, helmet and a piece of trench art in their basement. I’m certain my memories have probably been warped by the passage of time, but I seem to remember that both the Civil War and WWI were a functioning part of our small town consciousness. I know that the tombstones of Civil War vets in our cemetery all had (and still have) very identifiable bronze stars on a separate little stake over each grave, so you can gaze across the stone garden and immediately pick them out.
 
If I remember correctly only the Yanks are so marked (GAR, Grand Army of the Republic). Probably because the Daughters of the Revolution (or what ever it was named) put the stars in place. A little political prejudice at work? Although I met a number of aged Civil War vets, as I was growing up, I don’t remember ever meeting even one vet that was identified as a Reb, This, even though I’m certain some helped settle our part of Nebraska right after that conflict. That makes me more than just a little bit sad. I would have liked to have shaken the hand of some who who had been wearing gray, as if through the subtle transfer of DNA, I could have absorbed a little of the horror and the honor they had experienced: a feeble attempt at understanding something that can only be understood by having been there.
 
Those of us who have never been in combat (which is almost all of us) can’t possibly understand it. I’ve never asked a combat veteran about it, but I’m certain that no matter what their age, they have a connection with warriors long gone that no one else shares. I’m absolutely positive that a kid just back from Afghanistan can look a WWII vet in the eye and there’s a connection. I’m just as certain that when they see paintings of Gettysburg, Meuse Argonne, Peleliu, Chosin, An Loc, that they are seeing more than the rest of us. It’s more than history to them. It’s a part of their personal experience that was lived by others of their age at a different time. But the experience was the same. And, when any vet passes, theyfeel it differently than the rest of us do. And, when the last man is no longer standing, they feel the passing of the era more acutely than the rest of us.
 
As this is being written, there’s a urinary contest going on in Congress as to whether Frank Buckle’s remains will be permitted to lie in the Capital Rotunda and be honored. Amazingly, it’s the Republicans who seem to be dragging their feet this time. I hope that just once the politicians get their heads out of their partisan butts long enough to do the right thing. And recognizing the last man down from any era is the simply the right thing to do. Politics have no place in it.
 
So, here’s a salute to Corporal Buckles. You can be proud of a life well lived.
 
To everyone else: google him. His life story will inspire you to do better with your own.

27 Feb 11 - Fiction Meets Reality

Because I’m constantly helping my son write scripts by being his sounding board and because I’m always trying (unsuccessfully) to write novels, I’m sensitive to ideas for fictional plots. And the last couple weeks have given us a bumper crop of plot possibilities.
 
One of the absolutes necessary for any kind of a fiction plot, be it a novel, a movie or a barroom lie is that it has to sound feasible. It has to sound as if it could actually be true so the audience will buy it. As we’re sitting here right now, the chaos worldwide, is getting so crazy that it makes almost anything you come up with in that field sound possible. It opens up so many what-ifs, because leadership vacuums are popping up on the world’s map like weeds, that you can spin yarns all day long about the possibilities. The big question about these vacuums, is who is going to step into them and what is, or can, America do about it?
 
One of the things that makes these kinds of things so spooky in my mind is a line out of an old John Wayne movie,The Shootist. As an over-the-hill, terminally-ill gun fighter, he says to a young Ron Howard (so young, he still had a full head of hair), “It’s not the professional shooter you worry about, it’s the civilian you’re not watching that’ll get you.” And true to his warning, after the main gunfight was over, a barkeep with a shotgun got him in the back.
 
Right now, we’re all looking at obvious questions: Will Ahmedinejad of Iran (the single most outspoken American Hater out there) move his people into Tunis, Yemen or, worse, Egypt? Or how will Bin Laden try to capitalize on it? Or what about the Muslim Brotherhood? The possibilities are endless. And none are good.
 
And, of course, Kadafy’s little fiasco in Libya is still playing out and the bad guy scenario there is so obvious that our fearless (!?) leader finally worked up the nerve yesterday to make a solid, declarative statement (one of his few) saying Moammar baby should step down. But, what happens, after he is gone?
 
And we can’t forget our own little stateside fracas, which, thank goodness, for a change, doesn’t involve Arizona: Wisconsin’s fight to regain control of its budget. This could eventually have more impact in terms of national precedents than anything overseas. And for those Wisconsin Dems who fled to Indiana so they wouldn’t have to vote: shame on you! Stand up and do what’s right for your state, not for the public service unions you so clearly love (and apparently love you).
 
Re-reading the above paragraphs its hard not to think the world is catching some sort of freedom fever and is going nuts. Maybe a good thing. We’ll have to wait and see.
 
So, we’ve all got our noses stuck to the screen soaking up everything we can about the dramatic focal points around the world. What a perfect time for some little two-bit, edge-of-the-stage country or personality to sneak in under our radar and do something that really IS dramatic. What would it take to do that?
 
First, I find it hard to believe that there aren’t surplus Soviet nuclear warheads floating around the back alleys of parts of the world. Too many were produced and too much has happened in the Soviet states to keep every single one of them under lock and key. I also find it hard to believe that in my lifetime, at least one of them won’t find their way here. The only question is how.
 
I say our bad guy doesn’t even need to try to bring them onshore. There are lots of ways to deliver them without braving the borders or going the ICBM route that we’re afraid Ahmedinejad may be purchasing or developing.
 
Okay, so our nutcase bad guy is from some shit hole country no one cares about and he’s pissed. And he’s relatively rich. So, he buys a rust bucket container ship. Making a few mods, like removing some of the derricks and such on the fore deck, welding the sides of the outermost containers together, so they form walls, he guts the inside of what appears to be a huge cube of containers on a normal looking container ship so it is all empty space. So, what does he put in that empty space? He has lots of choices.
                   -a couple of C-182’s with rudimentary catapult systems (not perfect but cheap)
                   -maybe a sizeable artillery piece capable of firing large nuclear shells (as above, not perfect)
                   -maybe a tired old Iraqi surplus Russian Scud missile launcher (perfect for the job and plentiful)
 
All he needs is something to carry a warhead up as high as possible so he can get an airburst (the higher the better): supposedly the EMP (electro magnetic pulse) foot print of a nuclear device in an airburst is many times its destructive foot print, if detonated at ground level (this is me blue-skying with minimal research). So, he parks his innocuous rust bucket in the ocean just outside of the international limits, rolls back the top of his container ship and fires a nuke as high as he can get it over DC. Or maybe NYC. Boom! Every single piece of electronic apparatus from super computers to your wristwatch ceases to work. Every vehicle newer than about 1980 stops. Communication of all kinds in and out of an area conceivably hundreds of miles across is totally gone.
 
If he’s really, really pissed (rather than just normal pissed), he has a number of Russian missile launchers on board, punts three or four nukes up across the US and shuts down the national power grid AND all electronic stuff, effectively returning most of the country to the stone age. The really scary thing about this is that with everything electronic destroyed, WE WON’T HAVE THE MEANS TO FIX THE STUFF THAT’S BROKEN, which is everything. We’re helpless. The official estimates if such a thing were to happen is that 90 percent of the population would be dead in two years because we’re just not capable of dealing with such a total shut down. Maybe enough foreign countries would come to our aid with electronic help, but most of it would be too little, too late. And that's if they were willing to help. Most wouldn't.
 
Do I think this is likely? Nope! But, it’s possible. Do I think that we’ll see a nuke go off in the US at some point? Almost certainly, but it’s likely to be a ground detonation with local devastation, not national.
 
The simple fact is that far too many nuts around the globe hate our guts. And far too many of those nuts are gaining strength in governments far and wide. We’re even seeing a few in our own government (and no I don’t mean the President…I don’t think). That being the case, we’re well into the fabled “…valley of the shadow of death” and had better be watching around the edges of the crowd for the nut jobs that want our scalps.
 
Well, now that I’ve cheered myself up, it’s a nice day with no mushroom clouds on the horizon, so I think I’ll go flying.  :-)
 
PS
A warning!
There’s an interesting reality TV series that just popped up called Sons of Guns. It’s sort of American Chopper with firearms. It’s interesting and fun, but in one segment they made a gift for the “old man” of a “pepper gun:” a double barrel shotgun cut back to about 14 inches. Not once did they make mention of how illegal it was to do that and how file papers to make it legal. It’s a fun show, but don’t anyone do what you see them do. That’s an invitation for a less-than-fun visit from the BATF, who aren’t fun guys to begin with.

20 Feb 11 - Number One Isn't Always the Best

One of the surest ways to win a war is to keep your enemy in the dark as to your plans and your technology. Secrets are the intangible fuel that drives combat. A sure way to lose a war is to give our enemy every one of your secrets. And that’s exactly what we’re doing with China. We’re giving it all away. What in the hell are we doing?
 
In the course of many recent conversations about the world, flying, political messes and other seemingly obligatory subjects, a number of different friends from major coporations mentioned that their companies had plants in China, two of which employed in excess of 5,000 people, while others contracted with Chinese companies to produce their products. Several said that part of the agreement with China’s government was that in exchange for helping them set up their plant, much of the technology involved (some of it aerospace related) would be given to China. Others admitted that they knew China would reverse engineer their product and would probably start competing with them. So, not only have all those jobs gone off shore, but many of our secrets went with them.
 
Many of us look at China as a major threat for so many reasons. The paranoids amongst us fear their growing military capabilities. That however, in my eyes, is the least of our worries. They aren’t going to attack us: we are too much of their bread and butter because we buy too much of their stuff, so they’d be scuttling their own boat by hammering us.
 
China’s real danger is their economic power and the fact that they hold so much of our debt. There’s not a soul amongst us who disagrees with that statement. So, why do we insist on giving away the farm just to do business with them? Think about it: would even the smallest mom and pop business willingly give their competition down the street all of their most closely held secrets and not expect those secrets to be used against them? All of the numbers say China is going to take over our seat as the world’s super power, so why help them at our expense?
 
The truth is, that in the who-is-on-top-race, China, despite their tremendously polarized (rich to poor) population, is going to pass us by simply because of population math. The same thing is true of India.  The numbers don’t lie. And don’t try to tell me neither country is capable of doing this because they aren’t smart enough. Their whole population doesn’t have to be that smart. But, assuming China has close to the same number of geniuses and intelligent people per thousand that we do, they have nearly four times the population, so it stands to reason that they’d have four times the intelligent people. Ditto for India, which has 2.5 times the population.   Of course, both countries have a growing middle class that is based entirely on a working class that slaves in deplorable conditions. They are not nice countries for the average Joe to live in.
 
China, however, has built themselves a house of cards that may prove to be even more rickety than ours and that too is because of its population. On the one hand, it has been reported that they have to produce 32 million new jobs a year (not verified). On the other hand, they are just now entering a phase where their thirty-year old, one-child policy is starting to bite them in the butt because the percentage of 24-34 year olds is plummeting while the percentage of 60 year olds is skyrocketing. Hey! That sounds familiar. Oh, yeah, it’s the baby boomer effect on our social systems. The difference is that the American baby boomer thing is a temporary spike. The China Elderly Syndrome is not.
 
So, what we have in China is an explosively expanding country that has already imported 160 million migrant workers, with a dwindling labor supply, a rising cost of labor, a growing demand for old age services and an absolutely critical need to keep their economy red hot so their growing population has work. Gheez! And we thought we had a lock on those kinds of problems.
 
We keep hearing that there’s going to be a revolution in our country. A civil war of some kind. I, however, don’t believe that for a minute. Not a second. Yeah, we’ll have a bunch of pissed-off people yelling about this and that, but it’ll get worked out because we’re nowhere nearly as polarized economically as China is. China on the other hand, is sitting on a possible time bomb.
 
Eventually, their economy will slow down, when it does, what happens when millions and millions of workers don’t have jobs? If they decide to revolt, even if they all have nothing but pitch forks, there will be so many of them that the totalitarian Chinese government would have resort to desperate measures to beat them. It’s the numbers thing again.
 
Then, to make things a whole lot worse, as their bazillion old folks live to ages they’ve never before experienced (a product of their own advancements in nutrition and medical care) they’re going to have a burden that’s unimaginable. Don’t forget that they have had nothing like Social Security withholdings or contribution plans in place: the entire load will fall on the government alone. Again, the numbers work against them.
 
Sometimes big isn’t better. And sometimes it isn’t necessary to be number one to be the best. So, even if China and India wind up in the global catbird seat, America will still be the place everyone would rather live. And this isn’t likely to change.
 
Now, if we can just get our politicians and our debt under control, so we aren't continually messing our own nest, and stop giving away our technology, everything will be just hunky-dorey.

PS - Just for spite, don't hope that China stubs their economic toe: if they start to have serious problems, the entire world economy is going to go in the tank. Regardless of how varied world cultures may be, our economies are so tightly tied together we're all in the same boat.

13 Feb 11 - Snowbound and Other Absurd Observations

It takes only about five minutes of watching the news these days to remind me why so many of us have moved to the Southwest: the scenes of the terrible pounding winter is giving the rest of the country reminds us how tough others have it. At the same time, and this sounds a little perverse, I somehow miss being snowbound.
 
Most of my time back in Jersey was spent living in what I considered to be my dream house site: high on a secluded, steep hillside over looking a valley full of farm land, surrounded by trees, deer and the occasional bear. My main floor was mostly glass, as was one wall of my office, and, when it snowed hard, we had a beautiful panoramic view. And I actually enjoyed being snowed in. Invariably, at those times, you’d hear John Denver’s, “Rocky Mountain High” playing throughout the day. Those days had that kind of feel: high in the Rockies and a million miles away from Jersey, which definitely appealed to the westerner in me.
 
On those days, it was illogical to hit the road and try to make it to my office, 63 miles away through some of the toughest traffic and roads the country has to offer. On a normal day I could make it in an hour and fifteen minutes. A little drizzle would make it an hour and a half or more. Rain, would push it to an hour-forty five. Light snow was good for two hours and a serious snow as long as four hours. The snow was bad enough, but it was the bazillion other people out there who also felt they absolutely had to be at their jobs that made the mess a real mess. So, hard snowfall was welcome. It was like a snow day in school. And I’d develop a totally different, enjoyable mindset. At least for a little while (more on that later).
 
Knowing I couldn’t logically be expected to do regular business stuff, I’d slide into hermit-writer-stuck-in-the-high-Rockies-working-on-the-world’s-next-great-novel mode. I’d crank the heat up in my little office, stoke the wood burner in the living room (I heated 3100 square feet with a home made wood burner) and settle down for a day of writing. And I was at total peace with myself, a feeling I have captured only a few times since. At least I was at total peace for a couple of hours until the real world came to visit. Sooner or later, I was going to have to leave the house and return to reality. And I couldn’t wait for someone else to solve the problem of egress.
 
First, visualize my driveway: u-shaped going up and down the hill with a pig-tail going from the middle of the “U” up to the garage. The U-shaped part went up and down at a twelve percent (12%, I’m not kidding) grade. The pigtail went up to the garage at eighteen percent (18%, I wish I were kidding). To those not versed in grades, that is super-steep and ridiculously-steep. Total length about 300 feet to the garage. Picturesque, but a real pain in the butt.
 
Shoveling was an adventure. And I had to have at least tire tracks clean-shoveled down to the asphalt before I let a snow plow up it because their tires would compress residual snow behind the blade to ice. Then, I’d be totally screwed. So there was a lot of backbreaking shoveling involved.
 
Envision, shoveling on an 18% grade. I once slipped and fell on my butt (I was wearing a snow mobile suit) and started sliding down the drive on my back. The surface had iced over and I couldn’t reach anything with my hands to stop me and I accelerated down the hill like a turtle on its back. I was doing an easy 20 mph, when I hit the bottom, which was a totally blind drive. It was going to spit me ten feet out into a busy road and, if anyone was coming, I’d be road kill at the bottom of my own drive way. Not a fun ride. Another U-Tube moment!
 
The grade was steep enough that twice in the years I lived there, friends parked on the drive, only to have their cars slide backwards down the hill and off into the ditch. This with parking brakes on.
 
And then there was the firewood ritual: it took six cords to see me through the winter, all of which had to be located, trucked in, find their way up the hill, be split, carried up the stairs and into the living room. I’ll never be in that kind of physical condition again in my life. And I don’t care.
 
And then there were the ice dams that would form on the edges of my roof. Even though the roof was steep, pooling water would find it’s way under shingles and down the walls. Not a lot of fun.
 
So to you folks stuck up north, I know I make fun of you, but don’t kid yourselves. I feel your pain. Been there, done that, not going back. Yes, I periodically miss the magical moments, but I’m content to sit on my patio on February or walk out to my backyard and pick an orange, and contemplate how tough it is up north while I peel it.
 
I’ve paid my dues and not owning a snow shovel is one of my rewards. Yeah, summer here can be a tough, but the eight to nine months that surround it are another part of my reward.  I’ve earned it.

5 Feb 11 - Does Financial Security Actually Exist?

Security, as applied to our personal finances, is often thought to have a single definition. I, however, think the concept can be defined a lot of different way, which is why the independent business types see it totally different than those with a W-2 income.
 
Because of our B & B, Marlene and I share our lives with an endless procession of people, every one of whom has been wildly interesting in one way or another. And, in the course of the week they spend with us, we always wind up having deeply philosophical discussions that cover every aspect of their, and our, personal lives. During those conversations, comments they often make about the way Marlene and I have crafted our life style reveals their feelings about security.
 
Some of their comments are prompted by the fact that we seem to be doing stuff that looks like fun. Writing, flying, photography, etc., all seem like fun jobs to have (and they are, we’re not kidding anyone). Some will then say, “Man, I’d love to strike out on my own and do (your favorite dream job goes here), but I just can’t. I have kids, a mortgage, college bills, retirement…” they smile wistfully and finish with, “…so, I just can’t take the chance.” And right there, without meaning to, they’ve made a summary statement about their view of security. “…so, I just can’t take the chance,” speaks volumes.
 
It never occurs to them, as they look around our place, that we too have a mortgage, kids we put through college, the baggage of worrying about “old age”, etc., so we have the same worries they do. But we approach them differently. That having been said, I often wonder why it is so many people like us, who are in business for themselves, view the concept of security differently than others do. We look at security as a) something we have to craft for ourselves and won’t come from anyone else, e.g. a regular job and b) we accept the fact that our financial security will NEVER be guaranteed and, in fact, doesn’t really exist, and that knowledge doesn’t drive us nuts. Many people can’t deal with that kind of uncertainty. Why?
 
I would like to see a study done that surveys people who are in business for themselves and determines what percentage of them were brought up in a family that was in business for themselves. I say “…a family that was in business for themselves” because, when you’re in business for yourself, it’s a family affair. It’s not a job you go to in the morning and leave at night. It’s a job you live 24/7, and because of that, your family lives it too.  This is one of many possible downsides not seen by outsiders. The boundary between life and job is blurred, the two being merged into one existence.
 
I’ll bet money that, if such a survey were done, we’d find that a large percentage of independent business types came from a family that had the same life style. The reason I say that is because, when you’re brought up in that kind of atmosphere, as I was, your concept of security is different. Without it being drilled into you, it becomes obvious that no one is going to make you secure. That is part of your personal job description. If you want a steady income, you’ll have to do steady work. There won’t be paid sick days. There won’t be days you can mindlessly cruise through when your brain isn’t functioning. There won’t be vacations in the normal sense of the word. What you do becomes who you are, and vice versa.
 
You also find that the word “no” seems to have disappeared from your vocabulary: it becomes very difficult to say no to a revenue-producing endeavor, assuming it fits your personal profile, which is another part of being in business for yourself. Lots of us flat won’t do something that doesn’t “fit” us regardless of what it’ll pay.
 
Another thing that separates the independent types from the other is just that: independence. They can’t work for someone else. It’s not that they can’t play nice with others, it’s some form of built-in desire to avoid schedules laid down by others. This, of course, is silly because the only way you succeed as an independent is by being wildly committed and this includes imposing much more stringent schedules on yourself than any boss would think about doing. But, there’s a subtle difference to rolling out of the sack at 0500 to do your paperwork before you start the day’s work, when it’s “your” work and “you” make the decision that forces you out of the sack. Truth is that most people in that category are chronically unemployable. They/we have no choice but go our own way.
 
There’s another subtle thought underlying those who forego having a regular job: they won’t trust someone else with the reins of their life. They know jobs come and go. They know pensions and other long term security measures have become largely illusionary and totally undependable. And they see all of that as the ultimate form of insecurity.
 
If you talk to those kinds of folks today, you’ll also find a good percentage of them have removed another word from their vocabulary—“retirement.” First, they don’t have it in their make-up to totally quit working and second, they know their financial security is the ability to keep working until the first shovel full of dirt hits them in the face. And most don’t mind that.
 
The independent lifestyle is definitely not for everyone and, at times, is pretty damned stressful. But, for some personality types, they’d have it no other way.

30 Jan 11 - The Dirtiest Four-Letter Word

George Carlin used to have a marvelous routine in which he took about ten of the most socially unacceptable words and put them into one long, wonderfully obscene, four-letter rant. He, however, missed what, to me, is the most bedeviling and nastiest of all four-letter words.
 
To me, the nastiest four-letter word is “time.” And just as the most-used, four-letter word, “sh*t”, when combined with common modifiers, lends itself so brilliantly to so many various applications, e.g. holy-sh*t, dumb-sh*t, hot, etc.), so is “time” modified to fit specific uses and excuses. “No-time”, “outta-time” “good” “bad” and so on. Time, however, because it is more or less intangible (as opposed to sh*t) is not only taken for granted, but its true meaning and value is too often overlooked.
 
It’s a cliché to say that time is the only truly non-renewable resource: given enough time even diamonds and gold can be re-created. We all know that. We all know that once a minute is gone, no matter how hard we rush to catch up, we’ll never see that minute again. And we are then one minute closer to the floating deadline that signals the end of that time period we call “life.” And it is that deadline that gives time both a tangible meaning and value.
 
I supposed that in some ways, my critics (they are minor critics and include my kids and wife) who say I’m obsessed with time are right. It is as if I can hear The Big Clock of Life ticking away in the background, knowing each tick signals time that is gone and something that won’t get finished. For instance, when I toss a cup of coffee in the microwave for 90 seconds, I can’t force myself to stand and wait for it. I rush back in the office and do something productive rather waiting for it to ding. It drives me nuts, when I’m nuking something for thirty seconds to warm it up, because I can’t logically do something constructive in that short of time. But, I usually try.
 
When I started writing this, I didn’t mean to get off on a rant about time. Rather, I wanted to mention something about time that I was recently reminded of and which I thought was valuable enough to pass on: it is a concept that, if understood and utilized, can make a day more efficient. Twenty years ago, when I ran across it, it not only made my days more productive but told me a lot about the human animal, myself included. 
 
This sounds like bio-rhythms, but isn’t, and I didn’t invent it. I picked it up out of The Science Newsletter. It explains why some of us are morning people and some are nighthawks and it makes it easier to plan our days. As you read this, I’m certain you’ll see yourself in it.
 
It turns out that each of us has two energy peaks per day about six hours apart and, depending on where those energy peaks fall, is what determines whether we’re morning or night people, or somewhere in between. This is important because, when I was made aware of it, it explained why I did certain things better at certain times of the day.
 
When I sat back and looked at my days, it became obvious that I had energy peaks at about 4:30 and 10:30 pm, which explained why I was always a nighthawk. I’d do most of my writing, building, etc. at night, usually after everyone else went to bed. And I didn’t roll out of the sack until 0700. This, by the way, was a marital problem in my other marriage because she was a definite morning person, bright eyed and bushy tailed, while I was still face down and incoherent: it was irrational to expect me to be capable of carrying on a conversation at ungodly hours like 0600. That wasn’t even civilized. Then I moved to Arizona and things changed.
 
When I came out here, I was running a manufacturing company and the first shift started at 0530. When I’m running something, it’s my rule that I’m the first one in and the last one out. So, I started blasting myself out of bed and mainlined coffee for the first couple of hours to make sure I was there and functioning at 0515. This wasn’t easy. As a matter of fact, it was damn painful. But, since I was divorced and had no life other than that “job” (I was actually on contract, not an employee) I made it work. My nighthawk habits, however, didn’t change other than shortening my nights from mid-night to 11:00.
 
When that contract came to an end a year later, I found my body was perfectly happy with an 0430-0500 wake up and a 11:00 pm sack time. More important, I noticed that my brain had very definite cycles (you get ridiculously introspective, when you’re by yourself after a divorce) that, if I followed them, made everything easier. I mention this, because I’m absolutely positive that everyone’s brain works about the same and these are points worth considering.
 
First, I found that during the periods of my energy peaks, late afternoon and evening, my brain was (and is) naturally more creative and is much better at handling the “soft” tasks of life, e.g. writing, conceptualizing, etc. In the morning, even though I may feel ready to rock, I’m much better at the “hard” tasks: anything having to do with the technical side of life, from editing what I’ve written to accounting, engineering, design work, etc. I’m guessing it may be a right-brain, left-brain thing and the different sides function better at different times of the day. What ever it is, I’ve found that if I schedule my days so I’m not challenging my right brain in the evening with hard-edged tasks like structural analysis or editing, those tasks get done better. In other words, I don’t create worth a crap in the morning and it’s generally a waste of time to try. By the same token, I’ve learned to stay away from mechanical/technical stuff in the evening or I wind up redoing them in the morning.
 
It’s actually fun to look at your days and try to identify your energy peaks and those times when you do different kinds of tasks better. I guarantee that the peaks are there. The functional differences too. I’m always amazed at how much better I utilize my time, if I’m not fighting my natural rhythms.
 
It’s a first class pain in the butt to think this way, but like it or not, life is a race to get things done before we run out of time. Unfortunately, we don’t know how much time we have. So, it only makes sense that we haul a** on the theory that any given minute might be our last.

PS
Everytime I hear myself say, "I don't have enough time," I remind myself that Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo had the same 24 hours a day, I have. So, I quit bitching and start working.

23 Jan 11 - A Vegas State of Mind
 
As I’m typing this, the musical tinkling sound from behind me, punctuated by the occasional cheer and lots of groans, is the unmistakable sound of slot machines. And, even though I’m sitting in departure lounge A12 at McCarran International on the way home, it’s obvious I’m in Las Vegas: this town doesn’t give up trying to hook your last dollar until the airplane door is locked and you’re strapped in. Maybe not even then because most folks can’t wait to return and do it again.
 
This trip to Vegas, which started barely 24 hours ago for us, will last for a long time. At least in our minds. The trip was a birthday present to Marlene and is a direct assault on one of her more important bucket list items: she has always wanted to see Cher in concert. And now she has. Another item checked off. And I enjoyed it at least as much as she did. Maybe more.
 
First of all, to the few of you reading this that haven’t been to Vegas: you owe it to yourself to go at least once. Although the Chinese are trying to duplicate it in Macao, this is one project in which they are doomed to failure. They’ll come no closer to cloning Vegas than the Disneyland that was built in France captures that magical “something” that is Disneyland. And Vegas has an adult version of the Disneyland “something” in spades.
 
One of America’s interesting traits, whether good or bad, is that we are able to manufacture fun experiences in the silliest of circumstances, Vegas being the silliest: who in their right mind would build a neon city that is at the ends of the Earth? If this isn’t the middle of nowhere, I don’t know what is. It gets 4 inches of rain a year, is surrounded by sand and barren mountains, is a solid 200 miles from any kind of civilization, yet it is a mental magnet for people worldwide. And, when you’re there, you see why. It is a world unto itself.

Actually, each major casino is a world unto itself and might as well have its own zip code and time zone.

It's intimidating to be staying in a place knowing its total population is much bigger than your hometown.

First, for those who have never been, it’s important to understand that for us to say that we’re staying at a casino is grossly over-simplifying the description. The actual “casino,” in this case, Caesar’s Palace, isn’t a casino: it’s a wild series of big casinos crammed under one enormous roof. They are connected by blocks and blocks of indoor phony boulevards lined with exotic restaurants and major shops, each of which bears a name we’d all recognize but can’t afford from Armani to Tiffany. I’m certain neither Sears nor Walmart were invited to join the retail extravaganza.
 
The net effect of the streets, combined with three-story vaulted ceilings, which are painted and lit to look like a dusk sky, is that you totally forget what time it is. Or where you are. You could be in a foreign country—or on the moon—and never know the difference. Time and location cease to exist. Period.
 
We checked in around 11 o’clock, had lunch with my son, who happened to be in town, then walked around looking at the totally manufactured incredibleness before going up to our room. When we opened the door and sunlight came through the windows and hit me, I was disoriented for a few seconds: I had been convinced that it was evening and was surprised to find it wasn’t dark outside: it was just a little past 3 o’clock. 
 

She's reportedly had a lot of Bondo work done, but this ain't bad for 64 years old and she's still making hits.

And then there was Cher: in all honesty, I’ve always enjoyed her attitude and her music, but she’s never been anyone I thought a lot about. She’s just always been there. And it wasn’t until last night that I put her career in perspective: from teen sorta-hippy singer, to TV star, to well-respected movie star (including an Oscar) to Vegas superstar. It’s a helluva mix. In fact, less than an hour before she went on stage one of the songs she sang in the current movie “Burlesque”, (which we  recommend for any musically inclined readers) had won a Golden Globe award. And she was flipping out over it in a really funny/cute sort of way.
 
At 64 years of age, I’ve got to tell you that she’s still kickin’ butt and I couldn’t detect a single change in her voice or her attitude. Maybe that fabulous body is just a little, and I mean very little, thicker around the middle, but she’s still strutting her stuff and puts on a purely Vegas, razzle-dazzle show based 100% on serious vocals. I especially liked the way she belted out a couple of my favorite Bob Seger numbers. “Fire down below” and “Old Fashioned Rock and Roll.”  Besides her enormously long line of killer hits, she can nail pure rock and roll better than anyone I know.
 
She came off as one of the most genuine, fun-loving, give-a-damn entertainers I’ve ever seen. And she looks as if she’s really having a good time doing it. What a hoot!
 
So, in a few minutes we’ll be back in the plane, and in an hour, we’ll be back home again. We spent a very short period of time making some very long-term memories. I’d call that a good investment. Wouldn’t you?

PS- Cher-ing a few facts (some of which are pretty damn amazing).
At the risk of sounding like groupie, I ran across these facts and though I'd share them because some are amazing, considering none of us ever took her serious.
• Only female artist to score a number one hit in six consecutive decades
• Her song "Believe" was the biggest hit of 1999 at 10 million copies.
• She currently has a number one hit, 'You Haven't Seen the Last of Me, from her current movie "Burlesque" which is another record in that the span of 44 years between her first No. 1 and this one is the longest ever.
• Sold over 100 million records world wide.
• She's had two Oscar nominations and won for "Moonstruck" plus a Grammy, an Emmy, three Golden Globes, a Cannes Film Festival award and others.

Not bad!

 

15 Jan 11 - ...and the crazy shall inherit the Earth?
 
It happened a week ago today in Tucson and it already seems as if we’ve lived a lifetime since hearing the news. At least it feels as if there has been a lifetime of finger pointing and talk that’s at least as crazy as the nut who made the news. There’s so much talk about new laws and regulations that we have to ask ourselves: are we going to let Loughner and people like him dictate what our future is going to be?
 
Truth is, I’m not certain who is the craziest. The mad man Jared Loughner, who shot photos of himself wearing a red G-string while holding a Glock near his crotch who later shot 19 people, or the idiot sheriff immediately spouting off about talk radio causing it, those who pointed fingers at Sarah Palin, Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh, or the media who immediately decided beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was a Republican/Right wing supported effort. I loved the news magazine that a day after the event said they, “…wouldn’t be surprised to find that Loughner was a Glenn Beck fan…” Give me a frigging break!!
 
For whatever reason, a portion of the population acts as if this is the very first time there has been a mass shooting of this type. And the first politician to be targeted. Like it or not but democracies are violent. Get used to it. In fact, part of freedom is the freedom to be as crazy as a loon and not much can be done about it until that craziness takes a form, as it did last Saturday, where a law is actually broken. Then people jump up shouting, “Let’s pass a law that says it’s illegal to be crazy.” Actually, the proposal by a Representative that’s being presented to  the House that will make it illegal to carry a gun within 1000 feet of a political figure really is crazy: like every other law aimed at this kind of tragedy, it assumes that outlaws, terrorists and nut jobs will follow the law and not carry a gun where it’s illegal. They seem to have forgotten that there are already lots of laws against murder and we all know how well that works. Laws do not exist for those people, so passing a few hundred more won’t even faze them.

I don't know the source of this, but it pretty much summarizes my thoughts

How violent is the democratic process? Well, nearly 10 percent (4 of 44) of our presidents have been assassinated and that would have 50% higher if Hinkley hadn’t used a .22 and Squeaky Fromme knew how to take the safety off a 1911 Colt. Plus there have been hundreds of other, non-presidential killings, 100% of them by certified nuts or extremists that are so extreme that they are far outside the bounds of any recognized party. And speaking of parties: those who point out how most similar acts of violence come from the right haven’t noticed that of the four presidents shot, only Kennedy was a democrat and even he would be considered a border-line conservative today. Being crazy is non-partisan, interdenominational, and crosses all cultural, race and gender lines.
 
An unfortunate fact of life is that we can’t protect ourselves from crazy people. To a certain extent we can react to, and control, terrorists, but not the individual whacko extremist. Plus, for those on the right who say that if everyone carried we wouldn’t have this problem, they need to look at the facts of this shooting: if every person in the Tucson crowd had been carrying, everything happened so fast that at least Representative Gifford and four or five others would have been hit by the time they unholstered and whacked the guy. Also, as was proven by Joe Zamudio’s marvelous on-scene restraint, even civilians can act wisely with a gun: when he reached for his Ruger he realized the man who appeared to be the shooter was holding a locked-back, empty Glock, and he decided to take him physically rather than shoot. Only then did he find the gun-holder was an innocent bystander and a tragedy within a tragedy was averted by proper gun training and experience.
 
European observers, like the Russian reporter who challenged Press Secretary Gibbs about America’s inbred violence, love to tout Europe's “civil” nature, totally forgetting that when their nations were the same age as ours, 220 years, beheading of wives, raiding your neighbor for his land, sheep and women, and other fun activities were just part of their civilization. In Russia, they no longer behead folks, but they are a long damn way from being civil. They have less similar violence because they don’t have the freedom and they jail anyone who is even slightly off center, not just crazy.
 
As is always the case after an episode like this, the usual right-left cat fights ensue, with the left thinking they can solve the problem with more laws. Lots of them. The right crouches down in a defensive stance, ready to take on all comers. And the gulf between them, already huge, creeps just a little wider.

Life is NOT a totally warm and fuzzy entity. Nor can the left regulate it into being that kind of an entity. Tucson is part of our reality and reality sometimes sucks, but that’s all we have so we have to deal with it. New laws, finger pointing and chest thumbing of the “we didn’t do it, you did” variety aren’t going to solve a single thing. Not one. We should be honoring the dead and comforting the living. No more. No less.

This should NOT be an excuse to remove even more freedom from a people who have fought too hard for that freedom to give it up. And, if the government or any other group tries to capitalize on this crisis to remove some of that freedom, they may find that they cause more trouble than they cure and it won’t be society’s individual crazies who rise up against them but a crazed society. And THAT’S the character of freedom.

PS
If we stopped making these guys instantly famous and feeding their ego problems, these kinds of incidents wouldn't be as frequent. If they were all called "...an unidentified gunman," they wouldn't get the gratification most are seeking.

Is this really someone we want to influence national policy?

8 Jan 11 - Davisson's Theory of the Two-Percenters

What follows is my own personal theory about how the human species is separated into two very clear segments by very clear traits. And these traits explain a lot about people we know and why they are the way they are. This could also be pure BS, but at least its fun to talk about.
 
First, the concept of trait identification. Lets say we examine a stack of firewood and build a single pile based on specific identifying characteristics of each log: say everything under six inches in diameter that are also between 16 and 18 inches long, are oak and have one dark growth ring in the end cut.  In so doing we have separated a handful of logs out of a much bigger stack. We haven’t said they are better. Just that they have shared characteristics. And that’s what my theory of the two-percenters is based on: shared characteristics.
 
The reason for the foregoing discussion is that it’s important to understand that I’m not building a case for elitism because shortly that’s exactly what it’s going to sound like.
 
Another caveat: I call it the Theory of the Two-Percenters, but that’s an arbitrary measurement. It could be one percent or five percent. I don’t know. But I do know the way we’ll slice and dice the population based on the following characteristics results in a tiny piece of humanity. And a lot of you reading this fit into that category or you wouldn’t be reading this. The reason I feel that way will become clear as you read on.
 
Incidentally, when I decided to expound on this subject this morning, I scanned back through the last three years of Thinking Out Loud and was amazed I hadn’t touched on it before because it’s one of my favorite subjects.
 
One of the strongest identifying characteristics we’ll use in culling the herd is “interest.” My mother always used to say “…an interested person is an interesting person,” and without realizing that, we all agree without having to think about it. So, how do we identify those types of individuals?
 
Let’s say we’re driving down a country road with a two-percenter and a 98-percenter. We drive a few miles then ask, “What did you think of the stone house back there?” 
The 98-percenter is likely to say “What stone house?”
 
The two-percenter will say, “Yeah, and did you see the way the barn had so many gables? And did you see the rusty ’57 Chevy pick-up behind it?”
 
As they go through life, two-percenters spend as much time watching what’s around them as they do watching life’s road, physically and mentally. Their scan is very wide because they have a high level of interest in things around them and, without realizing it, are always scanning back and forth unconsciously filing away what they’ve seen. They are interested people.
 
Because of this innate interest in everything around them, two-percenters are also very “lateral people.” This trait was explained to me by a psychologist friend of mine. People are often separated into “vertical” and “lateral” personality groups. Those with vertical personalities will start an interest, say tennis, get into it for a while, then totally drop it in favor of something else.  Lateral people will start doing something, get good at it, then look over and spy something else that interests them and they’ll start doing that new interest BUT they won’t give up the old one. They go through life doing a whole bunch of different things at the same time. If you look around at those who are the best at what they do and get to know them well, often (not always), you’ll find they are almost just as good at a lot of other things, but we know them for this one interest.
 
Two-percenters aren’t good at small talk. Period. They are lousy at social gatherings and are likely to be off in a corner watching the group. Or keeping an ear open for snippets of conversation that reveals someone with a special interest with whom they can identify. All you have to do is say a sentence out loud in a social gathering that goes something like “…yeah, and the crosswind was gusting 20 knots and the sock was straight across the runway…” and any pilot within earshot will hear the words “crosswind,” “knots,” “sock,” and “runway” and gravitate in your direction. Ditto with words like “30-06” “Hopewell culture” (Indian stuff), “Cheops” (archeology), etc. People without specific interests don’t use specific, identifying terms like that.
 
About small talk: after one of her teacher social get-togethers, my ex-wife complained about me not interacting. After the next one she complained, “Listen, when they say something about their floors squeaking or anything similar, they don’t want to hear a long-winded discussion about what makes floor squeaks. They were just making a comment. Let it go.”  Small talk sucks!
 
The tendency to stick closely with people with whom they can identify is one reason two-percenters sometimes appear to be loners. Or at least perfectly happy to be by themselves. It might also might explain why so many are self-employed rather than put up with bosses.
 
Two-percenters also seldom tell traditional jokes but humor is still a major part of their conversation. They don’t need the jokes because they pull humor out of the situations around them.
 
An ability to shift focus quickly is a common result of the wide spread interests of two-percenters. Because their mind is often tripping from one interest to another, in what could almost be considered a form of controlled A.D.D., they have no problem changing subjects quickly.
 
An unfortunate side effect to some of this is that two-percenters are often not as successful as you’d think because they can’t always develop the single-mindedness required to bob to the top of a given field. It’s as if they don’t want to give up the fun of living a lateral life style just for success. They usually do better than the average, but often not as well as those who focus on a single goal to the exclusion of everything else. But they have much more fun than those with a single goal. For the most part, these individuals know that and embrace it. To them, the destination doesn’t seem as important as the journey.
 
There are a few other identifying traits, but these are the main ones. Now, look around at your friends and you’ll see a lot of what we discussed here. And you’ll probably figure out why you like them and call them friend.

Heads Up for the week! This is REALLY Different!
You have to click on this LINK and look at these photos. Just shows we really HAVEN'T seen everything.

1 Jan 11 - First Day blues

The sun hasn’t broken the horizon yet and 2011 isn’t yet six hours old. So, how’s your new year going so far? Mine has me gimping around with a bad back (not an unusual situation) and trying to function with a mind that refuses to focus (a very unusual situation). I hate this. Yesterday I had decided I’d start 2011 off by braving the freezing temps (actually freezing, 31 degrees!) and going flying, but my back says that would be a really dumb idea. So, now what? Am I going to let 2011 start off on a down note? Good question.
 
All of us have days, when we have trouble getting it together. When we have big plans that are thwarted and we’re suddenly faced with a time-vacuum. Today, that vacuum found me sitting here with my brain going a thousand different directions at the same time. I especially hate that. It’s like when I had to catch a hummingbird that was loose in our living room: just when I think I have it cornered, it flashes off in another direction before I get there.
 
I suppose part of my mental meandering has to do with the fact that I often use this day to make plans for new ventures, or devote the day and the weekend to kicking off new energy-spurts on existing projects (roadster, guns, etc.). This is usually done in the futile hope that the spurt-inspired progress will continue for the year, which is almost never the case. As soon as the real world arrives in the form of Monday, I know the realities of making a living will take precedent and my progress will again be, if not short lived, at least severely challenged.  I’ll have to push hard to make it continue. .
 
The difficulty this year is that someone decided that Christmas and New Years would be on a Saturday, which I think was really bad planning. For one thing, Saturday is supposed to be a free day anyway. And both Christmas and New Years day are universally accepted as those days on which no one is supposed to make business calls to you so you have those days off too. But, putting the two BIG holidays on a weekend, means we’ve just wasted a day off: instead of getting four-day weekends, we get three-day weekends. And the self employed (me) only get a two-day weekend (how many of you self-employed actually took Friday off? None of you right?). So, the project progress that’s based on the holiday energy spurt only lasts for two days. A normal weekend. And that sucks.
 
The discussion of “normal” weekends doesn’t take into account the fact that the self-employed of all types almost never take a full weekend off. And those whose work includes supporting recreational activities, like flight instruction, skiing, etc. work when our customers have time off, which is the weekend. So, weekends don’t exist in the usual way. But Christmas/New Years normally does. And sometimes those holidays give rise to as many as four days when we can legitimately take the time off. But not this year. The self-employed got screwed again. And we can’t blame politicians for this one. :-)
 
Wait a second! While I’ve been sitting here babbling, the sun has come up on a bright blue day. And the combination of the Celebrex taken a couple hours ago is starting to work with the heat pad, so I can move around with a minimum of grimacing. And the outside thermometer just broke freezing.
 
Oh, to hell with it! Maybe a couple of brisk trips around the pattern is just what my brain needs.
 
Happy New Year, ya’ll. This will be a pivotal year for all of us, so, whatever our personal challenges may be, let’s make it happen. No one can do it for us.
 
See ya! Time to go freeze my butt off.

19 .