Jackpine Savage!

Fire Starter

2016-01-15T11:41:00.000-06:00

The older I get, the more I am interested in learning about things that didn't even register for me when I was even 40.

Growing up, I was interested in shooting, hunting and archery. I put time into these pursuits and got a lot of pleasure from them. In my twenties, a friend of mine got me interested in rock climbing and riding motorcycles, and I explored these hobbies with equal gusto. Then my time and energy was taken over with learning how to be a husband and father. That was plenty to keep me busy for most of my 30's.

As I got closer to 40, an old interest started to take over my thoughts. I had always wanted to be a writer. My goal was not particularly lofty. I wanted to be good enough to write a story that people would enjoy. I had no idea how much work would be required to get to that point but I did reach it and it was good. Like all the other skills I've picked up over the years, writing ability does when not used.

Now that I'm looking at 50, I find myself wanting to keep up with skills and not let them degrade and I don't have a lot of interesting picking up new ones. The shift has been less around new skills and more around new knowledge and capabilities.

Most of my friends and family found it odd that I wanted to learn how to make mead when I don't drink. I found the process of fermentation interesting years ago and just never pursued it, but last year I did and made a batch of mead. It was fun, interesting and satisfying. Now I know how and I'm sure if I continued to pursue it, I would get better, but my wife doesn't care for it and she would be my primary customer.

Recently, I've become obsessed with making fire. Not starting fires, I'm not a firebug, just the process of being able to make fire with primitive means. I'm not alone. There are several websites specializing in all kinds of primitive skills. There are also many YouTube channels dedicated to survival that include making fires and I learned a lot by watching them.

My journey is not over, but I have had a good time making fire kits for friends, family and myself. I chose the flint and steel method and put together all the necessary bits in leather pouches. If I was more dedicated, I would go out back and collect the deadfall and kindling and make a fire now, but this is Minnesota and I would rather not go through that in sub zero weather. True, that's when you need to be able to make fire the most, but I think I'll start in the spring and work my way up to winter survival.

I'm not sure what I'll pursue next, but I think it may be a new angle on an older and favorite hobby. I've loved archery since I was around 8, and I've starting to watch videos on primitive methods for making bows, strings and arrows. Who and I kidding, it's only a matter of time and that time is after winter.

The Jackpine Savage tries 3 Gun Competition

2015-05-24T15:52:00.000-05:00

As a proud Jackpine Savage, I've been shooting since I was barely a sapling. I took to rifles immediately and later pistols with equal relish. Shotguns, however, were not my favorite. That's an understatement. It's more accurate to say that I hated them for many years. My dislike started with my first encounter.

For those of you that knew my dad or have at least heard stories, you won't be shocked to find out that he had my shoot a 3" magnum from a seated supported position when I was nine. I remember the noise, and sliding backwards, then falling backwards. It took a few minutes to get feeling back into my shoulder. The moment left an impression. Later, when I found out that the best duck weather was in a cold downpour, I was further soured. Finally, shooting a shotgun at a moving object in the air requires to forget the opposite of the discipline of the rifle.

Shooting a rifle requires (as I learned from my father), 1. Consistent cheek to stock weld. 2. Sight picture. 3. Breath control. 4. Steady squeeze on the trigger.

A shotgun requires learning the lead distance and slapping the trigger. There is no luxury of breath control and no sight picture or a steady squeeze. It takes practice to switch from one to the other, and my hatred for the shogun drastically reduced my desire to put in the time.

Flash forward 30 odd years and I heard about 3 Gun matches. There is no false advertising, it requires 3 guns, a rifle, a pistol and... a shotgun. But, and it's a big but, there are no or at least very few targets flying through the air. In short, I could shoot it like a rifle against fixed targets. I can do that.

When it came to choosing my three, the pistol was the easiest decision. I already had a Springfield XDM .40, but for accurate fast shooting, I followed the online advice and got a 9mm XDM. The only thing it required were a few extended mags and a precision trigger kit. I went with the Powder River Precision trigger kit and dropped the pull down to around 2 pounds.

I had no idea how much I would actually like it, so I didn't want to go broke. I sold a few pieces I wasn't using. A Mini 14 and a couple of pistols and got a Mossberg AR15. It had good reviews, especially for the price. The trigger was the largest complaint, so I dropped in a Timney trigger kit. The stock also left something to be desired, so I upgraded that as well. At first I tried a red dot, but the fact is, my old eyes needed optics, so I replaced it with a 1-4 power. What I got is a bargain AR that shoots like a carbine twice it's price.

Lastly, I needed a shotgun. Since my dad passed, I made sure to take care of the shotgun he loved the most. With it, he won best in Bemidji in Skeet and Trap two years in a row. The Browning A5. His was made in Belgium int he 20's and besides routine cleaning, I wouldn't touch it. Even if I did, would it work for a 3 gun competition? I did some searching and found an article from a man that blogs as Major Pandemic http://www.alloutdoor.com/2014/04/23/browning-a5-12-gauge-resurrecting-legend-part-1/.

I was sold. I found a 50's era Twelve Light on Gun Broker.com for less than $400, and added the magazine extension, a synthetic stock and a Polychoke without the break (due to match rules), and I was ready.

My first match was a little rough. I had yet to install the trigger kit in the pistol. I had feed issues with my AR until I was told to load only 28 rounds in the 30 round magazines (go figure), and when I got to the last two shells in my A5, I also had a miss-feed that required a longer spring (only $6 dollars).

I also got sun burned and was very hungry and thirsty because I forgot to pack food, water or sunscreen.

Here's what I learned about the people that shoot in 3 Gun matches. They are good people. They enjoy it and they care. Technically, we are competing, though not for a prize, just for the lowest time, but it doesn't feel like a competition. You're just out shooting with new friends and learning. The main goal is the better than you were yesterday. I got a lot of advice and assistance. True, no one gave me half their sandwich, but they did have water and this is a shooting range not an after school special. But still, I felt welcomed.

I made adjustments to my gear and created a checklist of items I would need for my next match. There are several in the Twin Cities area during the summer and I'm sure all over the US. I can see how this could get very expensive for someone that was 20 years younger and had a serious chance of getting good. I am neither. My bargain basement gear works just fine for me. Now I just need to get out there and have fun.

If you enjoy shooting as a sport consider joining me, I guarantee you'll like it.

Grandma's House

2015-01-31T10:13:00.000-06:00

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One week each summer from the age of six until I was ten, I spent a week at my grandma's. She seemed so far away, a whole hour back in Deer River. She lived on Hanson Lake in the house her first husband had built. My sister got a week also, so we each got a two week break from each other.

The first night was always awkward. Grandma had fewer rules than I had at home but I was always tentative and a little afraid. I slept in an upstairs room and it was strange. The smell was comforting, but different and after living in a trailer, even a small house seemed large when it had an upstairs and a basement.

It might have been the different noises or because Amber wasn't there guard me until I slept, but that first bedtime was always hard. There were Peanuts books by Charles Shultz in the room and while I barely remembered the rest of the surroundings, those books were comforting.

The next morning there were always Leo's pancakes. Leo was my grandpa, but we called him Leo. Later, I understood that he was my Grandma's second husband and he never wanted to be seen as trying to take Grandpa's place. I never met my Maternal or Paternal grandfathers, both died before I was born.

Leo was grandpa enough that I never felt like I missed anything. His pancakes were delicious and unlike anything else I'd ever tasted. I had an important job watching the light on the grill and took it very seriously. More like a cross between a crepe and a typical pancake with bacon grease as critical ingredient, I put down more than my share. They also made their own syrup, the traditional way in a large pan outside on an open fire. The whole family would visit during maple syrup season and I would walk through the woods with Grandma checking and collecting buckets of the sap and when it snowed, Leo would make us hard maple syrup candy right from the pan.

They had a real bar in the family room and Leo would take my order like I was a grownup and serve up my kiddy cocktail with the flair of a real bartender. He was a gifted story teller and a man of mystery, with strange gravity defying devices carved from wood like tops and a thing that would suspend a belt on the edge of the table and bounce as if suspended by a magnet. He also polished stones and I loved to look at all them and touch their smooth surfaces.

Hanson Lake was a magic place. Near the dock there were large rocks that could be peeled off in sheets and almost seen though. Closer to the water, giant bullfrogs hid in the tall grass. Leo said he would cook up the legs if I caught one. I caught a few but let them go.

Grandma would take me fishing on the lake. First we would go get supplies. I would always get a toy from the store by the lake and usually lose it before I returned home. One year we got Worm in a Can Cola. The top had two holes, one to drink from and one to let in air. We would gather earthworms from the rich soil and go out near the lily pads and bobber fish for sunnies and then eat them that night, either in a cornbread or beer batter. Nothing tasted better.

One winter we were there when Grandma got a bunch of chicks. We played with them for hours; they were so cute and yellow. That next summer I got to see them all grown up. Grandma collected eggs and we went out to the pen one night before dinner.

"Pick one out."

I couldn't really recognize them all grown up but I convince myself I knew which one had been my favorite and I pointed it out. She picked it up and carried it back to the house. Halfway there, she stopped at a stump, grabbed the bird by the neck and swung it around snapping its neck with a quick twitch of her wrist. I stood by, eyes big and unable to speak. She chopped off its head and gutted it quick, handing me a foot so I could see how the claws opened and shut when you pulled on the tendons. Then she showed me how to pluck it and I helped. By the time it came out of the oven, I was done with my silent mourning.

The Long Walk

2015-01-11T22:26:00.000-06:00

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The memories of my time in the Army fluctuate. One day they seem so long ago that it must have happened to someone else and I just heard the story, and other times it feels like I just got back home from Ft Dix yesterday.

I wasn't an Explosive Ordnance Disposal technician for long, yet I was young and it left a permanent impression on me. I did the job back in the days before bomb suits and robots. We walked downrange without hat or blouse, because they could get in the way. We had a hero kit strapped to our legs filled with a blasting cap crimper, a demolition knife, a dive knife, a Leatherman and a role of electrical tape.

During the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, I heard the expression "the long walk" for the first time. It's what the EOD techs now call that lonely stroll downrange to either identify or render safe an unexploded piece of ordnance or Improvised Explosive Device. The Long Walk. It fits. It says so much in only a few words. Yet despite the inherent danger associated with even the most mundane of tasks like blowing up a faulty hand grenade with a block of C-4, I never once remember being afraid.

This is not bravado. I didn't lack fear. I was just under the delusion that I could handle whatever was at the end of my walk. They did a good job at school and later in the unit reinforcing this belief. Despite having lost 162 techs between 1941 and 1985, it seemed like those were things that happened to other people. We needed to believe that, so we did.

This is what I thought as I took another kind of long walk today. The elevator door opened to drab colors, worn carpet and a tired institutional smell. The building is quite different from the one my father died in seven years ago, but the feelings are the same. I was there to visit one of my favorite people in the world and had no idea if she would even know I was there.

Like most people, I had two grandmas. My father's mom passed away when I was eleven. We were never close. She was so much different than the person I thought of as my real grandma. Grandma Dora was always my grandma, and now she's in hospice. She's 95 and has had a full, rich life, but I am greedy. I want more. One more game of scrabble. One more meal shared. One more story told. I sound like my daughters when they were small but I don’t care, I want one more.

The elevator closed behind me and I was afraid. Like the walks I took to see my father in his final days, I feared that I was not ready for what was downrange. I feared that I would not be strong enough for Dora or my mom. Would this be the last time I saw her? Would she know I'm there? Was I already too late?

You're never ready. There is no ready. So I put one foot in front of the other and patted the spot on my hip where my hero kit used to rest and I tried not to think about what could happen. Those things happen to the other guys. Now at home, all I can think about is to hope I have another chance at the long walk, so I can hold her hand and look into her eyes, just one more time.

McCammon Didn’t Copy King.

2014-12-15T14:58:00.004-06:00

Let me start by being clear that I am a huge fan of both Robert McCammon and Stephen King. I've read all of their collective works and I love horror as well as many other genres. In both cases there are books I haven’t cared for, though they are the exception. I’ve also been able to see each writer mature over time to become true masters of the written word and it’s been one hell of a ride. Because I’ve loved both since I got into horror in the 80s, I was always irritated by flippant claims that Mr. McCammon copied Mr. King. There is no need to defend Mr. McCammon, but there has been an unfair criticism of his early work that are still making the rounds. The two most often used examples are the vampire novels Salem’s Lot and They Thirst and the apocalyptic novels The Stand and Swan Song.

Let’s first look at the vampire novel. Salem’s Lot and They Thirst were the same in the following ways:

They were vampire novels

They both had a “Master” that directed the mayhem

They both happened in the USA

How they were different:

Salem’s Lot had themes focusing on imbedded evil or evil calling to evil while They Thirst was more apocolyptic

Salem’s Lot was on a small scale with few characters or POVs unlike many others of King’s works while They Thirst was more on the scale of Swan Song including spending a lot of time on the Master’s POV.

The novels aren’t similar in scope or arc. There were very few vampire novels at the time. Before Salem’s Lot, there are only 38 works of fiction dealing with Vampires going back to the 1800s. It was not heavily trod ground. They Thirst came out in 1981, the same years as The Hunger by Whitely Strieber and The Keep by F. Paul Wilson. Only McCammon gets criticism for “copying” King by daring to write a vampire novel 5 years after Salem’s Lot.

As for the apocalyptic novels, The Stand and Swan Song are the same in the following ways:

They were apocalyptic fiction

Both dealt with evil

They both happened in the USA

Both were on a grand scale and involved traveling across the USA

Both had an avatar of evil walking the earth in human form

Both ended with hope

Both are long works

How they are different:

The Stand started with disease while Swan Song started with nuclear war.

The Stand covered approximately two years while Swan Song covered nearly twenty.

The Stand climaxed with a Dues Ex Machina and Swan Song resolved though the decisions made by its characters.

The Stand had two camps where good and evil people were drawn. Swan Song had no camps. It was a world of suffering where the evil avatar worked hard to eliminate hope in any form and people became concentrated version of who they were inside, later to be revealed in physical transformation.

When King released The Stand in 1978, there had been over a hundred fictional works dealing with apocalyptic themes, 17 of which were due to a disease. Though saying The Stand was only about a disease that reduced the worlds population until it collapsed is as much of an oversimplification as claiming that Swan Song was a copy of The Stand because it was a apocalyptic horror story that came out ten years after King’s novel.

But what exactly is the claim? Certainly not plagiarism since neither plot is either original or a copy of any other. Then what is the gripe? That Stephen King came out with his versions of these tropes before Robert McCammon? I fail to see how this translates into one copying the other. Neither man invented these genres and each brought something different to the table with their works.

Neither Salem’s Lot nor They Thirst were the strongest works from either writer, while The Stand and Swan Song are perhaps in the top five books each man has written. The genre was already well-tilled ground when both started their versions, yet each managed to bring something memorable with their efforts.

Stephen King’s first novel was published in 1974, while Robert McCammon was first published in 1978. Mr. King was more prolific in his first ten years and after creative differences with his publishers, Mr. McCammon stopped writing for a decade. Since his return, he has released 5 Matthew Corbett novels, a new collection of short stories about Michael Gallatin (The Wolf’s Hour), The Five, I Travel by Night and soon to be released The Border.

Mr. King just released the novel Revival, where the main character is a musician, and where music plays a big roll in moving the story forward. I won’t give away any spoilers, but only an asshole would claim that he copied Robert McCammon’s novel The Five from three years earlier because it was about musicians.

Both writers are masters of their craft and both have had books that have not been as well received as the bulk of their work. What I recommend is that you read them all, enjoy them all and forget about the claims. They are hay made by small minds at a time when Horror was in its hay day and Mr. King was crowned. King’s accomplishments do not detract from anyone else’s, and I can enjoy other works without performing blasphemy and so can you.

Mead

2014-11-23T13:25:00.000-06:00

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I decided to make mead.

For those that know me, this may seem a strange decision since I don’t and never have drank alcohol. But except for a few soapbox moments in my teens, I have believed that socially responsible drinking is a good thing.

It may be the only reason I exist.

My wife drinks but is what is commonly known as a teetotaler. So why make not one but two large batches of mead? Because the process of fermentation has always interested me, and because it is my way of being included in the process. I had a friend years ago, whose life's dream was to become a brew master. It became clear that beer is not simple to make and one needs to be able to taste and appreciate the many variables.

Mead is known as the ancestor to all fermented beverages, and was made under crude and filthy conditions as far back as 2500 B.C.. It is arguably the easiest to make, second perhaps only to prison toilet wine. While I'm sure there are some prison block masters out there, I'm not interested in following that process. Mead is fermented honey, made from water, honey and yeast. You can also use Acid Blend and Yeast Nutrient.

For as little as $80 bucks you can make your first batch. Since that first batch includes buying some reusable parts, subsequent batches will be even cheaper.

There are many types of mead. Like wine, it can be made dry, semi-sweet or sweet. There are also a huge variety of meads that are created by adding things like fruit, fruit juice and or spices. There are also a ton of recipes online by mead enthusiasts.

For my first time, I decided to make one five gallon batch of traditional dry mead (my wife prefers dry to sweet), and one five gallon batch of Acerglyn (no clue how to pronounce it), which is mead made with maple syrup. I won't take up space with recipes here but for dry mead, I went with eight pounds of honey and for the acerglyn, I went with six pounds of honey and two pounds of real maple syrup (no Log Cabin).

Both glass Carboys are in my man cave bubbling away as the CO2 is released through the airlock a bubble at a time. Because light is bad for fermentation, I cut holes in the bottom of two paper grocery bags to cover the carboys.

In 2-3 months, depending on how it progresses and how patient I can be, it will be time to bottle and hopefully they will both be palatable. I'll let you know.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mead

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-Mead-Honey-Wine/

Shame on China

2014-11-04T12:23:00.000-06:00

In September 2014 a protest started in Hong Kong. The groups known as the Umbrella Movement or Umbrella Revolution, objected to the fact that China’s Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC) announced it's decision to disallow civil nominations. The NPCSC instead opted to have its 1,200 member nominating committee select the candidates that the people would be allowed to vote for in the coming election.

The story was covered here in the USA but it didn’t get a lot of traction. The coverage I did see focused on the disbelief over the unfair decision to have such a huge decision made by a group of hand picked people of the nations political party. This subversion of the democratic process caused some people that bothered to learn about the situation some real angst. What kind of country allows such a small group of people to select the candidates that the people can vote for and eliminates civil nominations?

On this election day, I just wanted to point out that the USA does the same thing, though we have the moral high ground since the Republican Party picks 2,286 delegates and the Democratic Party has 3,189 in 2012 in order to give us the two people to choose from.

“But Scott, there are other people on the ballot and we’re closer thane ever to having a viable third party.”

The first part is true. There is no law against civil nominations outside of our two parties, but there might as well be, because in practice, no other candidates are allowed the same coverage or right to debate. As for a viable third party, it is theoretically feasible, but practically implausible. What the third party has done in previous elections is take away undecided voters from the middle.

How dare China only rely on one party and 1,200 people. We have two parties and around 5,500 people making most of our decisions for us, proving our superiority.

I Am A Death Dealer.

2014-08-14T01:03:00.001-05:00

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I Am A Death Dealer.

I foolishly thought the war was over, but it's never over and will never be over. I just got complacent.

In 2008, I wrote a story called Jihad. It's a fictional story inspired by real events. In it, a couple's home is invaded by mice. At first the husband makes a halfhearted effort to kill a few while his wife takes the brunt of the invasion. In one scene, she starts the lawn mower and is covered with the chopped up remains of baby mice, poop and nest that was built above the fan on top of the machine. She ran a few feet and puked on the lawn. Only when the husbands Xbox cables were chewed did he kick it into high gear and start actively trying to kill the hoard.

If you ever get a chance to read it, know that all of the scenes that describe what the mice chewed up and all the interactions in the first part of the story actually happened, including the lawn mower scene with my wife. Only when the husband slips into madness do I go off script and into fiction. That one year, starting at the end of summer and going through the winter, I killed 54 mice over a nine-month period.

As I described in the story, I went to Home Depot and stared at the wall of death. So many choices and I tried them all, except for poison. We had dogs at the time that ate mice if the found them and were worried about unintended consequences. But every form of trap available at the time got a proper field test in casa McCoy. In the end, I found that the most successful trap was the traditional wooden based, spring-loaded mousetrap with peanut butter as bait. In the intervening years I've never had to set out more than five or six traps and mostly in the garage and almost always in the winter.

A few days ago, my wife noticed some mouse poop in the closet we built over our garage. I agreed to set some traps and went back to my old reliable set up. Just to make sure I nipped this minor incursion in the bud, I set out eight traps. The next day, nothing. The day after that, I had one dead and the rest of the traps licked clean.

It wasn't the first time I'd seen the peanut butter cleaned off a trap, but I’d never seen eight traps licked clean to the point where the copper catches shined brighter than when I bought them. It was a minor set back and I took it in stride. I tripped the traps and bent the catches where the holding bar hooks on so that they were much more sensitive and re-baited the remaining seven. The next day, I had another dead mouse, but the other six traps were at least partially licked clean. That was this morning, or technically yesterday morning as it is now after midnight. I'd hoped to catch more and it bothered me that the traps seemed so ineffective, but I shrugged it off and went to work.

At 3:00 PM, I got a text from my daughter saying she had a mouse in her room. A mouse. In broad daylight. Running around her room. I thought she was putting me on, but she assured me she was not. I told her I would take care of it when I got home.

Of course it was nowhere to be seen by the time I arrived, but only a few hours later at bedtime, my daughters caught it under a glass. They wanted me to let it go. I was irritated, but not angry and I agreed. I walked all the way passed the end of my driveway and chucked it into the neighbors yard and went to get ready for bed.

In the finale of my story, I had a huge mass of mice attack the main character by chewing a hole in the ceiling and dropping on top of him. The character was surprised, not expecting them to be Airborne qualified. Death from above.

At approximately 10:30 this evening, I woke to the my wife's cry of "It's on me!". She jumped up from bed and I followed, unsure what was happening. One of the damned things must have been climbing above her and dropped on her head. When she jumped up, it went down her shirt. She shook it free and it landed on the bed. By the time I was awake enough to react, it dashed to the floor and under the bed.

Only then did she tell me that after I had released the one little monster into the wild, the girls saw two more in their room. What the actual fuck! I wasn't mad at her for not telling me, but I was shocked at the number of mice so brazenly running around my house. The winter of my Jihad, when I racked up the 54 kills, I only ever saw one in broad daylight, and that was in the garage, never inside my house. Now in one night, we spotted at least three and possibly four with one little bastard making moves on my wife.

I felt a small piece of the madness creep over me that I had imbued my fictional character with back in 2008. The Home Depot was closed, but Walmart was open 24/7. After a quick consultation with my wife, we agreed that it was time for poison. The traps were just not getting the job done. These little insurgent bastards had been trained in counter trap warfare. Our two Greater Swiss Mountain dogs had been sleeping in our room during the attack and did nothing. At no time in their lives have they ever shown the slightest indication that they are willing to hunt anything, but after a quick Google search, I found articles that set my mind at ease. Even if they suddenly showed interest and actually found one of the dead mice, it would take a lot of them to make the dogs sick.

I got to Walmart at 11:00 PM. It's Thursday night and I was still groggy. The scene was surreal. There were over fifty cars in the lot and as I pulled up, a group of a dozen teens were walking away with bags in both hands heading to some unknown destination. I walked inside and was relieved to find that most of the people in the store were there to restock the shelves. There is no wall of death. It’s not even an isle, just the last one fifth of an isle, but it had what I needed. There were enclosed poison baits and sticky paper next to the traditional traps that had so recently failed me. I was through playing around and bought two-dozen of each. When I got home I placed four of the poison baits in the garage, one in a kitchen cabinet, four in the closet above the garage, one under our bed and one in my daughters closet. I also laid out glue traps, two in the closet and two under our bed and one in my daughter's closet.

It's now past one in the morning. I don’t feel sleepy. The thought of those little bastards crawling across my bed at night disturbs me. Mice have never bothered me beyond the desire to not have them destroying my stuff or poop in my kitchen. This is the first time I ever felt creeped out. I accepted the fact that spiders and other bugs crawl over me occasionally at night and while it isn’t a pleasant notion, it never kept me awake. But a mouse dropping on my head or crawling on my face? When the fuck did they get so brave? Even if they aren't afraid of us, they have no idea those two 90 pound carnivores are gentle giants.

So the war that never ends has made it’s way into my family's bedrooms, and I will bring pain and death upon my enemy for their trespass, but tonight, they have won the psychological war.

Mark Twain's Autobiography

2014-08-11T18:33:00.000-05:00

I've had the pleasure of listening to the audio version of the two-volume autobiography of Mark Twain. These are large volumes and not without repetition, yet I do not hesitate to recommend to every Twain fan and especially every person that calls themselves a writer to either read or listen to these books. I've pasted the following passage from volume two. It is a relatively short read and well worth your time. In it, Twain describes the effort required to secure author copyright law in the United States and his significant contribution thereto (I do not fail to see the irony). If the time required to read 3,600 words is too great, at least do yourself the favor of skipping to the Q&A portion at the end, you will not be sorry.

I went to Washington, a fortnight ago, at the suggestion of the Committee of the Copyright League, to help nurse the amended bill through its initial examination by the Patent Committees of the House and the Senate. Mr. Paine made the trip with me. We had the League Committee for company on board the train—a committee composed of two publishers, a poet, and Robert Underwood Johnson. The publishers were William Appleton and George Haven Putnam, fine men, both, and choice examples of their calling. The poet was Mr. Bowker. No, I am in error; it was two publishers and two poets, for Underwood Johnson is himself a poet, though that is not his regular line; neither is it Bowker’s; both of these singers earn their bread by surer handicrafts. They live upon salaries—Johnson as one of the editors of the Century Magazine, Bowker as something connected with a railroad. Both of these poets have published modest volumes of verse, and possess copies; both are hard workers for an enlarged literary copyright, and have given their steady and earnest labors to this cause in the Copyright League for years without salary, and without having any
pecuniary interest in the proposed lengthened term of literary copyright. I believe that if we could go back over the past two centuries since England waylaid the author, in Queen Anne’s time, and robbed him of his poor little rights, we should find that from that day to this the long struggle to regain those rights for the author has been conducted, almost exclusively, not by the authors who would be benefited by the restoration, but by minor poets whose poems were perishable and evanescent; poets who had little or no use for a copyright of any kind, let alone an extended one. These benefactors, so far as my knowledge and experience go, never get any real help from the small handful of authors who could be pecuniarily benefited by a liberal life-term for books. When I went to Washington sixteen years ago, to help just such a committee as this one in the nursing of an international copyright bill through the House of Representatives, James Russell Lowell, I think, was the only author who appeared there whose books promised to outlive the forty-two-year limit—except myself. At the hearing before the Patent Committee of the Senate, Mr. Lowell appeared just once, for fifteen minutes. He made a strong and striking speech, then disappeared, and was seen no more. Howells didn’t come; Edward Everett Hale didn’t come; Thomas Bailey Aldrich didn’t come; as I have already said, none of the ten or twenty authors personally and really interested in getting justice for American and foreign authors came forward to assist, except Lowell and myself. Underwood Johnson was of the League Committee in that old day. The international bill was passed, and became law. This victory was attributed to Johnson, and the grateful French Government decorated him with the Legion of Honor for it, and he still wears in his buttonhole that red thread which distinguishes the member of the Legion of Honor from that remnant of the human race who have failed to get it. It makes me jealous; it makes me spiteful toward Underwood Johnson; it embitters me against the French; for Underwood Johnson didn’t win that victory, I did it myself. When a legislative body is not acquainted with the interests and rights and wrongs of authorship, these things must be explained to the members before they can be expected to understand the situation; explaining by documents is not worth while; no member can find time to read them; explaining by speeches before a hard-worked committee is not worth while, for the committee cannot in turn convey the acquired information to the rest of the House otherwise than by speeches, and speeches are not effective when they concern a matter in which the House feels no interest. Copyright is a thing, which all legislative bodies are ignorant of and unfamiliar with, and there is only one way to get a copyright measure through Congress—that is by canvassing the Congress individual by individual, and enlightening each in his turn. I did that sixteen years ago. I did not go to the homes, hotels, and boarding-houses of the members, for that would have taken three months. Sunset Cox smuggled me in on the floor of the House, where of course I had no right to be and would have been turned out if the sergeant-at-arms had chosen to see me; but neither the sergeant nor the Speaker paid any attention to me, and so I got into no trouble. Sunset Cox supplied me with Democrats, two and three and four at a time; Mr. John D. Long supplied me with Republicans, and in three or four hours I had had personal contact and conversation with almost every member of the House. As argument I used only two or three essential points. It was not difficult to make them clear and comprehensible, and I made them so. The commonest remark that fell upon my ear, all through those hours, was— “I have had no time to examine this matter, Mr. Clemens, and I did not understand it before, but I will vote for the bill now.” The bill went through, and a grateful France decorated Underwood Johnson, the poet. However I suppose I ought to be fair, and for this once I will be. It was because of the existence and industries of Underwood Johnson that an international copyright bill was devised and brought before Congress. But for Underwood Johnson, there would have been no bill; but for the bill I should not have been there—and so, a fair and righteous distribution of the honors requires that Underwood Johnson get half the credit and I the other half. If he will give me half of his red thread I will withdraw from him all bitterness, all animosity, all spitefulness, all envy. This new bill proposes to change the present legal life of a book (which is forty-two years) to the author’s life and fifty years after. Underwood is working as hard for it as ever. He and Bowker appeared before the double committee on the first day’s hearing and made speeches; Howells was there also, not to speak, but in order that the ten or twenty American authors actually interested in extension of copyright might have a representation in the flesh. I did not attend that first sitting, but I attended next day’s sitting, at five in the afternoon, and spoke. The place was crowded, and the two committees had been patiently listening to reasonings and wranglings all day long, and they had listened to the like the whole of the previous day. When Congressmen perform their whole duty in this devoted way the spectacle furnishes the outsider a new light on the legislator’s life, and with it a very sincere admiration for men who can labor like that in causes which cannot interest them, and must, of necessity, bore them. I did not go to Washington to make a speech. The speech was merely an incident, an accident, and not a part of the committee’s previously arranged program. My business in Washington, and my desire, was to put in force a private project of my own—a repetition of my industries of sixteen years before: I wanted to talk to the members of the House, man to man. Mr. Speaker Cannon would not overstrain his powers by smuggling me into the House, but he said he would make a fair compromise in the interests of my mission; he would give me his private room in the Capitol, and also his colored messenger to run errands for me. This was very convenient. It was really better than exploiting my canvass on the floor of the House. The colored servant was Neal. I had known him sixteen years before, when I was lobbying for the international bill. Neal has served a procession of Speakers of the House, which stretches back without a break for forty years. He knows every member as well as he knows the members of his own family. Before I had talked with any more than twenty members I perceived that they felt no hostility toward the extension of literary copyright—that is to say, book copyright—but were not at all pleased with the bill’s attempt to intrude mechanical musical devices, and other things whose interests belong in the Patent Office and had no proper connection with copyright. As soon as I felt convinced that this was really and truly the attitude of the House toward the bill I ceased from urging the whole bill and thenceforth urged only the literary end of it. I talked with a hundred and eighty members of Congress that day, and satisfied myself that if the musical feature of the bill could be eliminated the bill would pass. Afterward I talked with the chairmen of the Senate and House Committees that had the bill in charge, and found that they were tired of the music, and were already considering a project to report the bill with the musical foolishness left out. I ceased from my labors then, leaving two hundred and six members uncanvassed, the temper of the hundred and eighty already canvassed convincing me that the temper of the House was friendly enough toward literary copyright and could be depended upon to remain so without any further persuasions of mine.

December 19, 1906 Mr. Clemens gives his reasons for insisting upon an extension of the Copyright Bill—arranged in the form of an interview with a member of Congress. . . . . That was an odd mission of mine to Washington. I arrive at this deduction by a critical examination of the matters involved in it. Instead of compacting them into a solid block, and thus confusing and dimming them, I will try to make them clear by separating them through the handy process of question and answer. I will imagine myself as undergoing examination by a member of Congress who desires to qualify himself to vote upon the Copyright Bill by inquiring into the particulars of the interests involved.

Question. Mr. Clemens, you are here to represent—whom? Answer. The authors.

Q. All authors? A. No. There are perhaps ten thousand American authors, but I have appointed myself to represent only twenty-five of them.

Q. Why only twenty-five out of the ten thousand? A. Because all but the twenty-five are amply protected by the copyright law now in existence.

Q. How do you mean? A. The new bill proposes to extend the copyright-life of a book beyond the existing limit, which is forty-two years. It is possible that the books of twenty-five living authors may still be selling profitably when they reach the age of forty-two years; the books of the other ten thousand, amounting to an annual output of five or six thousand volumes, will all be dead and forgotten long before the forty-two-year limit is reached; therefore of our ten thousand authors only twenty-five are pecuniarily interested in an extension of the existing copyright limit.

Q. Mr. Clemens, are there other persons interested in the making of books, and pecuniarily affected by copyright laws? A. Yes. To begin with, the publishers.

Q. How many publishers are there? A. About three hundred. They publish an annual output of five or six thousand new books, and presumably the result is an average profit of a thousand dollars upon each—say an aggregate of five or six million dollars; presumably also, they get as much more out of books whose copyrights are dead, and on which they pay no royalties to authors or their families, but filch the author’s share and add it to their own.

Q. It is not the authors, then, that get the bulk of the money resulting from authorship? A. No. Far from it! The ten thousand cannot be expected to produce, each, more than half a book a year. Authorship is not their trade. If one of these makes a thousand dollars out of his book—and sometimes he does—it takes him two years to do it; while he is making five hundred dollars out of his book his publisher may publish forty other books, and make forty thousand dollars.

Q. By this it would appear that authorship is mainly important to the publisher, not to the author? A. It is true. Pecuniarily, no one concerned is perhaps so little interested in authorship as are our ten thousand authors. Fortunately for them, they do not get their living by authorship; they get it in other and securer ways; with them authorship is a side issue, a pastime.

Q. Very well then, as I understand it authorship is worth several millions a year to publishers, and worth next to nothing to the main body of authors. Is that it? A. Yes, that is what I am meaning.

Q. Then it seems plain that authorship is one of the most trifling of all imaginable trades. I cannot call to mind another trade that matches it for pecuniary humbleness. Do you know of one? A. No—none except whitewashing fences; and even that would be a better trade, if you could exercise it in the winter as well as in the summer.

Q. There are still others who are pecuniarily interested in the making of books? Name them. A. At a guess, two thousand book-compositors, earning a wage of two million and a half dollars a year—

Q. Go on. A. Some hundreds of printing-press men and boys—

Q. Proceed. A. Some hundreds or thousands of binders,paper-makers and printing-ink manufacturers.

Q. Go on. A. Some scores of illustrators, photographers, and engravers.

Q. Go on. A. Some hundreds of box-makers, packers, porters, and employees of the railways and express companies.

Q. You have footed up a formidable army: Mr. Clemens, is there anybody in the country who is not pecuniarily interested in the making of books? A. Yes sir—the authors. The ten thousand.

Q. Let us now get back to the beginning and add up results. Some thousands of persons and their families are greatly and importantly interested in the making of books; you have granted that these thousands are all well protected by the existing copyright law—protected beyond possibility of hurt; you have conceded that all of the ten thousand authors except the specialized twenty-five, are amply protected by the law as it stands, since their books will never live out the forty-two-year limit, and could therefore not be advantaged by extending it. Now then, I wish to ask you a serious question. You have proven that in representing the twenty-five you represent the smallest interest, the poorest little interest, the most microscopic interest, that has ever intruded itself upon the attention of a legislative body in this age or any other. This interest has been intruding and complaining, persistently, for two centuries, in England and America, and in that period has wasted the valuable time of Parliaments and Congresses—time so valuable, so precious, that if you should reduce that valuable time to dollars and cents the aggregate would amount to millions and millions of dollars, and would build fifty battleships and equip for war a hundred thousand soldiers. Mr. Clemens, how do you excuse the continued and persistent agitation of this matter?

A. I excuse it for reasons, which seem to me to justify it. In the first place, upon the grounds of our moral law. Our moral laws endow us with certain rights; one of these is the right to hold and enjoy, unchallenged and unmolested, property created by our honest industries; and this endowment is not discriminated, but comes to us all alike, all in equal measure. It does not give this property-right to publisher, butcher, land-owner, corporation, shoemaker, tailor, and deny it to the author; it includes the author. It is every man’s right—his right, and not a benevolence conferred upon him by legislatures. The moral law existed before copyright, and in authority supersedes any usurping statute that can be inflicted by the legislature. Legislatures can by force of arbitrary power rob an author by statute, but no casuistry can keep that robbery from being a crime. It is lawful crime, legalized crime, but it remains crime just the same. The clause in the Constitution of the United States which denies perpetual property in an author’s book is a crime, and an excuser and defender and propagator of crime—and the fact that it is part of the Constitution in no wise relieves it from that stain, and from merited contempt. The publisher who withholds royalty from a book that has passed the forty-two-year limit under the plea that the Constitution and Congress have granted him permission to commit this degraded crime is not any less a thief than he would be if the property which he is stealing was protected property. In one of our cities there is a firm of publishers that make and sell copyright-expired books only. There are several partners in the firm, and one of them told a friend of mine that his share of the profits of this nefarious trade amounts to forty thousand dollars a year. That person ranks as a most respectable man, but to my mind he belongs in jail, with the other thieves. The late Baron Tauchnitz was the only publisher I have ever known who was above seizing and using property which did not belong to him, the only publisher I have known in whose reach the author’s widow and orphan could safely leave unwatched their poor little literary belongings. Yet the name he commonly went by, in an ignorant world, was “that pirate!” I personally know that he would not put upon his book-list a book which he had not bought and paid for, whether its copyright was alive or was dead. He knew that no Constitution and no statute can take away perpetual property-right in an author’s book, but can only act as a thief’s confederate and by brute force protect the thief while he steals it. I know of no American publisher who is not a pirate; I will gamble that if there is a publisher anywhere who is not a pirate it is Tauchnitz’s son. With your permission I will venture yet another reason for not being ashamed to come here in the interest of that grotesquely small band—the twenty-five authors who could be benefited by the requested extension of the copyright limit to the life of the author and fifty years after. It is this: almost the most prodigious asset of a country, and perhaps its most precious possession, is its native literary product—when that product is fine and noble and enduring. Whence comes this enduring literature? It comes from the twenty-five, and from no other source! In the course of a century—and not in any briefer time—the contemporaneous twenty-five may produce from their number one or two, or three, authors whose books can outlast a hundred years. It will take the recurrent successors of the twenty-five several centuries to build a hundred imperishable books; those books become the recognized classics of that country, and are pointed to by the nation with exultant and eloquent pride. Am I claiming too much when I claim that such a literature is a country’s most valuable and most precious possession? I think not. Nations pride themselves upon the splendors of their deeds of arms, statesmanship, conquest; and when they can point back, century after century, and age after age, to the far-stretching perspective of a great history, their pride is beyond expression in words; but it all exists by grace of one thing—one thing alone—the country’s literature. It is a country’s literature that preserves the country’s achievements, which would otherwise perish from the memories of men. When we call to mind that stately line— “The glory that was Greece, and the grandeur that was Rome”—we should remember with respect and with reverence that if the great literatures of Greece and Rome had by some catastrophe been blotted out, the inspiring histories of those countries would be vacant to the world to-day; the lessons which they left behind, and which have been the guide and teacher of the world for centuries upon centuries would have been as utterly lost to us as if they had never had an existence. It is because of the great literatures of the ancient world, and because of those literatures alone, that the poet can sing of the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome, and thrill us with the sublimity of his words. It is not foreign literatures that sing a country’s glories and give them immortality—only the country’s own literature will perform that priceless service. It were worth a Congress’s while to spend upon a copyright law time worth the cost of even a hundred battleships if the result of it might some day be the breeding and nourishing of a Shakespeare. Italy has many battleships; she has many possessions, which she is proud of, but far and away above them all she holds in pride one incomparable possession, one name—DANTE! I represent only twenty-five persons, it is true; only twenty-five out of eighty-five millions; considered commercially I represent the meanest interest that could ever intrude itself upon the time and attention of Congresses and Parliaments, in this age or in any future one, but I am not ashamed of my mission.

Twain, Mark (2013-10-05). Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2: The Complete and Authoritative Edition (Mark Twain Papers) (p. 317-324). University of California Press. Kindle Edition.

Poor Shaming

2014-07-11T19:31:00.001-05:00

Bashing the poor has become a popular pastime in the last few years. This surprises and saddens me.

For the purpose of full disclosure, I’m neither proud nor ashamed of my past. It happened and I’ve moved on, but my experiences are relevant to this discussion. Much more relevant than the most of the talking heads on the Fox News network, since they are from at least middle class backgrounds and most were even better off than that. The further complicate matters, the concept of what being poor means seems to be frozen in time and that time seems to be the fifties.

While my parents were married, we lived on a small piece of land in the country in northern Minnesota. While my dad had a good job as an electrician for a natural gas pipeline, he couldn’t afford to build even a modest house on the land, so they poured a cement slab and bought a singlewide trailer. Later, we were able to upgrade to a doublewide trailer. When I was eleven, my parents divorced and my sister and I chose to live with my mother. It was only when we acquired a new single wide trailer and had to move to a trailer court that I realized that not only had we been poor before, but we had just slipped even further down the line. For the majority of the next seven years, we hovered below the government-defined poverty line for the years 1978-1984. Just as a reminder, the country was in a serious recession and gas shortage just to spice things ups. Being poor sucks regardless of how the economy is doing, but it sucks worse during a recession.

The Right has elevated Reagan to near deity status, yet Reagan did not call poor people leaches, or lazy. He didn’t poor shame. He did start a few programs to help the poor to include giving away cheese and butter on a monthly basis. I can still remember the taste of that cheese that came in 10-pound blocks. We occasionally ran short of food at the end of the month and I do know what it means to be hungry, and I will always be grateful for that cheese.

When my mom realized just how bad it was going to be, it was the summer before my twelfth birthday. She came to my sister and I and asked us if we thought she should sign up for welfare and food stamps. She warned us that if we didn’t we would be in for some hard times. I thought about it very seriously and said that as long as I could find some kind of job, I didn’t want to go on welfare. She agreed and decided not to go on the dole. I started working part time at age twelve. It was illegal and the money was under the table, but I worked and we got by, but we did sign up for free school lunches.

While Reagan didn’t feel the need to poor shame, the schools decided to differentiate the color of the meal tickets. They had devised the meal ticket system to speed up the line by not wanting to take cash. Instead, family bought the tickets and the staff punched it ten times and then you bought a new one. The regular tickets were blue, but the free meal program tickets were pink. I think the school system was afraid that we would try to sell the meal tickets so we could by drugs and alcohol.

There was a recent article published on the Heritage Foundation website, authored by Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield, both of whom work for The Heritage Foundation and are allegedly experts on poverty, while seemingly never having experienced it. For those of you that don’t know, The Heritage Foundation is a right wing think tank that provides position papers and attempt to shape policy. There are both left and right wing think tanks. I am highly suspect of any position put forth from think tanks on either side.

I had a few different jobs while I was in the Army. One of them I had in the Reserve was Psychological Operations. Our job was to develop and deploy propaganda among other things, and these “think tanks” are propaganda machines.

Also for those that don’t know me, I have always been fiscally conservative and socially liberal, but my meter does fall slightly right from center. I’m strong on defense but not a saber rattler and think we need to rely on our military less than we have since 9/11. I prefer smaller government and less bureaucracy but I do believe in a social safety net. That may sound like a natural conflict, but I think it can be done. I also believe in programs that assist people in improving their financial situation and most of all, making sure that all children, regardless of what class they are born into, are given the same opportunities and in some case that takes level setting. We need to quit looking at fellow Americans as adversaries and start looking at start focusing on making our entire nation strong.

The main thesis of the article that you can read here, is that poor people have a lot of stuff that most ignorant, better off people think are luxuries, and that poor people today are far better off than poor people from the 1950’s and currently the US definition of “poor” is much different that the rest of the worlds definition. There are a lot of graphs, but the first one lists all of the amenities that are considered luxuries and it starts with a refrigerator. Fox news staff were uniformly shocked that 99.9% of the unwashed masses of poor owned a refrigerator. If you’re one of the middle and upper class that visualizes Oliver Twist asking for more porridge or perhaps Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp character, you are deluded. Poor does not mean homeless.

I will agree that a poor person in the US is better off than a poor person in Somalia. I’ll also buy into the idea that the poor in 2014 are better off than the poor of the Great Depression. But while I agree that things have got better over time, poor is still poor and the measuring stick they are using in this article is ignorant.

As an example, let’s go back to the shock over refrigerator ownership. In 1978, when my family was below the poverty level, which was approximately $7,000 a year, we were able to secure a loan for a single wide trailer and pay trailer park lot monthly rental. In 1978, all trailers came with a fridge, a stove and a washer and dryer. There were times when we didn’t have anything to put into the fridge or cook on the stove, but we had them. Most apartments, even in poor neighborhoods have similar appliances. When rich people hear that, they are aghast, likely because they envision their $10,000 plus stainless steel walk in refrigerator with built in water, ice and wine dispensers. What most regular people have is in fact a classic plastic fridge that retails (when not on sale) for about $350. A used fridge can go for $50. Even back in 1978, if for some reason our single wide trailer didn’t come with a fridge, we could have picked up a used one back then for $25 dollars, and boy did we feel like we were rolling in cash because we didn’t have to salt our pork or cut a block of ice from the lake to keep our free government cheese and butter from spoiling. People in Somalia may see it as a luxury, but they don’t have access to thrift shops and yard sales where cast off items from upper classes like fridges are common and don’t retain their retail value, but do continue to work for many years.

Anyone that doesn’t know that is so disconnected from the average American let alone poor Americans that they have more in common with warlords in Somalia than their fellow citizens.

The current poverty line for a four-person family is $24,000 dollars a year. A lot of other items on the list of luxuries I’ve already covered as being included when you buy a trailer or you can pick up for very little cash. The energy usage survey bureau didn’t ask if they had all new appliances, they just measured the fact that they were using energy. Number five on this luxury list is air conditioning. Back in 1978, AC was not included as standard equipment in trailers, but it is today, and again, the wealthy visualize central air and the entire dwelling at a cool 68 degrees, while the reality for most is a used window unit that helps but is just not the same. Cellular phones and cable television are in the top twenty and once again we have issues with scale. Fox showed one person that had an iPhone, but the energy usage survey asked if they had a phone. You can get a cheap phone included with a two-year contract for less than $40 a month. It’s a phone the wealthy wouldn’t be caught dead using in public so they can’t envision anything else when they hear cell phone. Also, the energy usage survey doesn’t say that all 4 family members have them, though that is what the poor shamers are assuming. An old school land line phone service cost about the same as a cheap cell, and most poor people no longer have them, especially if they need to move around for work, but a home phone is not listed as a luxury item. It would be seen even by the wealthy as a necessity, just like having a roof over their head is not listed as a luxury, but it is being called out that way due to a complete lack of understanding of how the poor live day by day.

The only item that shocked me on the list, as something that we didn’t have and I still don’t have, was a Jacuzzi. Allegedly, 0.6% of poverty level families had one. They must live in California and once again, there is no indication that they bought it new. I did a quick Craigslist search and found one in my area for $75 dollars in good condition needing a new circuit board. With the repair, I’ve got clean 6 person Jacuzzi for $150. I may finally fulfill this dream, but even if I made only $24,000 a year, I could swing $150 for a Jacuzzi if that was really important to me.

The other conditions that don’t show up in this type of survey are how people that make near or below the poverty level survive. People in rural America do a lot of hunting, fishing and even trapping to save money. When I worked for under the table wages as a minor, I worked in a restaurant and got at least one complimentary meal each shift. It wasn’t a lot, but even at 20 hours a week, that $3 dollars an hour went a log way toward making ends meet. It meant I went hungry less and didn’t have to make shoes out of old tires.

Later in the article they make a lot of hay about people not starving to death. These numbers are being used as an excuse to cut the food stamp and free lunch programs and the people making those arguments are completely missing the fact that these poor people are not starving to death because…wait for it…they have FOOD STAMPS AND FREE LUNCH PROGRAMS!!

How dare the poor not be starving to death! These bastards are trying to pull a fast one over on the rest of us. They aren’t even sweating their asses off in rat infested hovels. Instead, they are only mildly perspiring in rat infested hovels thanks to that used window AC unit. Sheer luxury! And they’re laughing their way to the food banks, those TV watching, clothes washing, cell phone owning bastards! It’s all a scam!!

No, it’s not a scam. Are there are some people manipulating the system and benefiting unfairly? Yes, and they’re called criminals. Feel free to find and punish them. I was considered poor for the first twenty-three years of my life, including the four I spent in the army. I broke above the poverty level in 1990 and I’ve never looked back. Are there people that are generationally still trapped in poverty? Yes there are, but I’ve been closer to it than these experts, and I never met anyone that was happy about it or worked at staying poor just to screw over the rest of the “hard working tax payers”. If you listen to this crap on TV and believe it, then it’s time you started thinking for yourselves and quit listening to talking head idiots that are exaggerating and misquoting flawed data to further the agenda of their chosen political party, or worse, spreading bullshit just for the sake of ratings. It’s time to wake the fuck up and think for your selves, because even if there were a huge conspiracy to live off the teat of hard working taxpayers, cutting those peoples benefits will hurt their children more than it hurts them.

Unless you’ve grown up poor, it’s hard to understand the challenges associated. I’ve also seen a lot of articles lately about white privilege. While I don’t disagree with the reality of white privilege, there are some false assumptions. The biggest is that poor white people can benefit from this privilege. America is not supposed to have a class system and if you’re middle class or higher and a decent person, you may not have any negative feelings for people in the lower income brackets, but if you’re honest with yourself, you likely have deeply embedded biases and prejudices.

I don’t share details of my personal life with everyone I meet. I’m not shamed or proud of it, it simply is. When the topic does come up, there is a very common response to finding out I was poor white trailer trash. Few say that out loud, but when you read earlier that I spent the early years of my life living in a trailer, what did the voice inside your head whisper to you? When I talked about getting free cheese and butter and free lunches, what images popped into your head?

Like the Irish at the end of the19th and beginning of the 20^th century, once they lost their accent and if they changed their name, they were just one more white European. They could blend in with people that still hated the Irish and were able to hide their ancestry if they so chose. No one that looks at me today either at home or at work could tell what my economic background was, so I can now blend and take full advantage of white privilege. The difficult part for the poor, regardless of race, is escaping. Even in my northern Minnesota town, which was as far from the “hood” as you can get, I grew up around the roughest and most at risk kids. Drugs and crime were prevalent and there was a lot of peer pressure to conform to those behaviors. That pressure came in slightly rougher forms like bullying, which seems less severe in retrospect but at eleven felt very real and scary.

The trailer court I live in was called Hillcrest Manor. Not sure why they feel the need to name them that way. I called it the place hope goes to die. Being poor in America regardless of where you live has always and will always feel hopeless. That lack of hope for the future expresses itself in many ways, usually though the use of tobacco and alcohol at a minimum, and often in more extreme way, causing a cycle of failure and frustrations that can’t help but imprint the children living in that environment. When a poor kid ends up in jail or working a manual labor job, no one is surprised. It’s expected, but why? Poor does not equal stupid. Gifted children are born into all economic levels. Opportunity and access do vary a great deal, but even if it was equal, the other factors that the poor deal with including poor nutrition put their gifted children at a disadvantage.

I consider myself extremely fortunate and lucky. I spent years five though eleven in the country and with two wonderful friends. They were brothers and their father was a doctor. We were close in age. The older brother knew when he was six that he would one day be a lawyer. It never occurred to him that he would be unable to achieve his goal. I had no idea what I was going to be and had no idea even then how I would achieve a goal once I had one, but that optimism and that healthy and positive example stuck with me though my formative years. Had I spent those years at Hillcrest Manor, I hate to think where I would be today. The luck of the draw genetically also helped, because despite having a learning disability that effects my ability to learn languages (including higher level math like calculus), I was blessed with a genius IQ. The Army then gave me the missing piece to the puzzle, which was the confidence to believe in myself. The Army also tested me, reinforcing what I would never be good at but allowing me the opportunity to discover areas where I excelled.

I don’t think there is any greater gift a person can get in the early years of their life than to come to grips with what limitations they have and gain the confidence not to focus on those gaps but to develop their strengths. But clearly, I am one of the exceptions. I know of a few others, people that have made it and escaped their past, but as I stated earlier, Hillcrest Manor is not the “hood”. Its gravity was easier to pull away from than other environments where the poor are concentrated and Minnesota is one of the most literate states in the country. My success is not miraculous, just not predictable, and that’s the problem. Our country needs to re-evaluate our priorities and start changing the bias we have that allows most of the country to write off children based on the circumstance they were born into. For strictly selfish reasons in order to compete with the rest of the world, we need to make sure that everyone has the opportunity to achieve as much as they can, or we risk being trapped in this cycle of poor shaming and perpetuating a culture that refuses to change the state that so many people spend time complaining about. Instead of whining about people on food stamps having the nerve to actually own a refrigerator, we need to close the gap between the classes by providing equal primary education, ensuring that all children have a healthy diet and access to positive role models and invest in the future of our country. Telling the poor to “suck it up” and to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” is not a strategy or a solution.

Finally, while I can understand the desire to find some scapegoat group of people to blame all of our woes on, our nations poor are not it. Trying to make them villains only succeeds in making those people look like a giant douchebags.

The Energy Debate

2014-05-21T13:42:00.000-05:00

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The Energy debate is irrevocably intertwined with the global warming debate. I believe this is a mistake because the Energy debate is already a complex and often misunderstood issue. For simplicity sake, the main issue around global warming is the impact on the planet from the introduction of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. First, I will tackle the global warning issue to get it out of the way since it is the easier debate.

Here are some facts.

1. The earth’s temperatures have fluctuated over time without humans help, sometimes radically due to solar, meteor and volcanic activity.

2. Since the start of the industrial revolution, humans have dramatically increased the unnatural amount of gases into the atmosphere that do have a proven impact global temperatures.

3. Some well meaning climatologists lied and falsified data to make the impact look more severe than they could actually prove (see Climategate and the Hockey Stick Scandal), which had the effect of strengthening the position of people who oppose the human impact to global warming argument.

4. Even if we eliminated all greenhouse gas creation in the United States (not possible but let’s say it is), we have no control over the two most populace nations, China and India, who are likely to mimic the West’s industrial revolution but on a radically larger scale since more people live in this two countries than all the rest of the world.

Many scientists and laymen have said there is not a Global Warming debate. That it is irrefutable. First of all, no scientist worth their salt would say this, but don’t be confused, I am not a “Denier”, so put down your torches and pitchforks. I do not need to be burned as a heretic and I am not stupid because I don’t passionately nod when one of the chosen speak.

My point with the facts isn’t whether or not man-made Global Warming is real or that it will cause harm to humans and other species. I agree that it will, the only question is how fast will it happen. Some scientists got caught lying because they couldn’t find the evidence that they needed to cause the change they wanted at the speed they wanted it. I understand their concerns. If they told us we had to worry about it but we had 50 years to fix the issue, we would ignore it for 50 years. These are smart people and they also know how irresponsible humans are when there is money involved. There really is a large mass of plastic in the ocean that is bigger than Texas. Do we give a shit? No we do not. Are we poisoning our planet? Do we give a shit? Only if it impacts our food or our water, and by “our” I mean mine versus yours. If your water catches on fire in West Virgnia due to fracking, but my water is not and I get my gas cheaper, then fuck you. That is the reality of how people view these issues, if they even bother to think about them. If it were otherwise, then no ones water would be catching on fire.

So they make it seem like it’s the end of the world today, and maybe it is. The problem is getting actionable data on such a complex issue. The way they make it sound, it’s already too late, which is self-defeating. But I would argue that while it isn’t too late to change the impact to our planet since it can always get worse, we will not make enough change to the entire planet from the United States.

The most recent data I could find for CO2 emissions was from 2010. China weighed in at 27% of global sources, while the US came in at 17%. A report from 2005 had both China and the US at 16%. That’s an increase for China of 9% over five years while the US inched up by only 1% over the same duration. India has been pretty steady at around 7%. The thing about India is that they are starting later than China, but there is every reason to believe that they will try to rival China not just in population (they will pass China in 2020), but also in quality of living. This will require energy. How many years before India passes the US in CO2 emissions? My bet is it will happen by 2025, even if the US stays at current levels, India will surpass us and China will be closer to 35%. Since it is a percentage of the whole, the US will go down in percentage even if our emissions stay level (and yes I realize that increasing by only 1% while China moved up by 9% means that the US increased it’s emissions more than that 1% implies).

Are you ready to go to war to prevent China and India from burning more coal? If you believe the planet is truly in peril from green house gases, you damned well better, because those two countries are increasing their release of these gases into the environment and will continue to do so even if the US could stop all of our output of the same gases. Unfortunately we share the same planet, so our good behavior will count for nothing. If you live in a coastal city, I would recommend shopping for land in what is commonly referred to as “Flyover Country”. The land is plentiful and cheaper and will not be submerged in eight feet of water within two decades. Either that or follow the Dutch and start building dikes now.

While we can’t control the rest of the world, we can try to address the environmental and economic issue within our territory and we should. The Energy debate is large and needs to be tackled in segments. The two main portions that are always combined into one argument are Transportation and Energy usage for homes and factories. While there is some cross over that must be considered, these are separate and complex issue.

As I mentioned earlier, our dependence on oil is often spoken of in the same breath as solar, as if solar could reduce our dependence on oil. This is not the case. Our dependence on oil is due to our transportation needs and we may never get to a practical solar powered car but currently no one is even suggesting that as an alternative. The only logical link would be to have solar chargers to support electric cars, but that is also not currently viable based on the power needed to charge a car overnight and the fact that most charging would be needed at night.

Solar usages within the grid are being discussed to offset the use of coal. We don’t import coal from the Middle East. We have plenty of coal. Likewise, the pipelines and usage of oil sands have nothing to do with the grid and powering your house and factories.

So let’s take on the grid first and come back to transportation.

The reason coal is still being used for 50% of all the power in the US, is that it is the second cheapest fuel. The cheapest fuel is Nuclear. Nuclear does not release any greenhouse gases into the environment, but there is an environment impact to using Nuclear. The fact the most people never hear is that while there will always be some waste, it can be safely stored. The other piece is the very realistic fear of a radioactive release or a plant going “critical” like in the Ukraine or more recently, Japan. The facts are that there are radically safer plant designs that we can’t install because of the anti nuclear lobbies. What we have are plants that were built in the 70’s with 50’s and 60’s technology. We have learned a lot since then and can build a plant that can be completely drained of water and not have it go “critical”.

But people are afraid of Nuclear, so we are trapped with the old unsafe plants. Crazy huh? We can’t just turn them off because we need the power they produce. We can’t shut down them and the coal or we would have to shut down America.

What else can we use? Natural Gas may be a fossil fuel, but it burns clean and new plants do not contribute to Global Warming. Getting the Natural Gas does cause other environmental harm as previously discussed, so it is not perfect, nor will it last forever.

Coal is dirty but cheap and plentiful so that’s why 50% of our plants burn it.

We do have wind turbines and we need to build more, but wind can’t be relied on as what is called “Base load”. Base load means it has to be there all the time or we need to get used to rolling blackouts while we wait for the wind to blow.

We also have some solar plants. The problem with large scale solar is location. I doubt Arizona would agree to make the entire state one large solar farm. We have no idea what impact to the atmosphere, the weather or the planet there would be having so such a large reflective area that by it’s nature leaks additional heat into the surrounding areas, but let’s pretend there would be no harm and Arizona and or Nevada are all for it. Transmitting the power from there to the rest of the United States is possible, but dramatically expensive and also not without environmental impact. Not to mention that energy is only gained during daylight hours. If we had solar only from a central location “where the sun is”, what do we do about our power needs at night? Batteries? Do we assume we only use half the power generated during the day and the rest can be stored in batteries for over night use?

The creation and disposal of batteries causes a huge environmental impact due to the toxicity of the materials involved and we currently don’t have enough raw materials to even create that many solar panels let alone batteries to power the entire country. It’s a fantasy that if ever pursued could possibly create new and interesting ways to kill us all besides increased temperatures. There is also some bad news for both batteries and solar manufacturing. Precious and rare metals are used in the manufacturing process and while it might sound obvious that rare metals are…rare, when I hear people debate the need for dramatic increase in the use of solar, they fail to consider that it is not even currently possible. It is possible on a smaller scale for now, but we need additional research and development to come up with new designs that don’t rely on rare earth elements, or our quest for solar power will be short lived.

So far that’s about it for the Grid. I realize that the talking heads make it sounds like a slam-dunk simple problem to solve, but I assure you it is not. Does this mean I think it’s hopeless? No, I don’t, but we need to quit allowing all of the special interest groups so much power in this debate and focus on what is best for the largest special interest group, the American people.

What we need is a realistic but aggressive new Energy Policy. As far as the Grid goes, there are two parts, supply and demand. I’ve discussed supply from a fuel perspective but we need to focus on reducing demand.

We are currently building houses the same way we have for the last hundred years, with small exceptions. Yes we have increased the required insulation rating and that is a good step, but houses are by their design, energy hogs that leak. A house can use natural gas for heat, which confuses the issue even further but the biggest impact across the US is electric consumption. We need to start building houses that take advantage of all sources of heating, cooling and electric generation and they need to be mandated. We have working models already that use geothermic (every house no matter where it is located could benefit from this if we just required foundations to be built with geothermic in mind). We’ve always had solar panels, but now we have solar shingles and solar windows. Even if solar generation by using windows isn’t practical on a large scale, we can certainly reduce the amount of heat windows produce in the summer which then require AC to cool off and take advantage of the limited sun we get in the winter to aid heating.

We also have the ability to put small but effective wind turbines on property where it makes sense. Making sense means having more than ¼ city lot and being in a part of the country where the amount of wind justified the cost of building the turbine.

There are many examples of homes that make more energy that they use and sell back to utilities. If this design were mandated over a reasonable time, say ten years, then all new construction and any exterior remodels could require the new design. Many states already reimburse people who add these features post construction, but the cost is dramatically reduced when it is factored into the original construction. We need to increase the Federal incentives for people to retrofit their homes to reduce demand.

Next, let’s discuss Transportation.

We do have an addiction to oil, but there is no 12-step program. Trucks and SUVs rarely get better than 25 MPG on the highway and do worse in the city, yet despite constant complaints about high gas prices in the US (yes I realize we get it cheap compared to everywhere else it the world), the number of trucks and SUVs seems to be increasing. Sure there are a few token hybrids out there and some very stingy diesel options as well, but most of the vehicles still drink regular gasoline.

Transportation is responsible for 28% of the greenhouse gases introduced into the atmosphere in the US. As I mentioned before, even if we got this number to zero, we have no control over the rest of the world. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, but it can’t be our only reason. The larger reason is that we are too dependent on foreign oil, both economically and strategically. If it is possible to come up with an alternate fuel source for vehicles that we can create domestically, we will be better off while polluting the planet less.

Many of these challenges are the same as the manufacturing of batteries and solar. We simply don’t have the raw materials to build any of the most viable alternatives, which are hybrid and electric vehicles. Additionally, I will remind you if the poisons that are released into the environment during the manufacturing process and disposal for these technologies. I’m sure some of you are thinking about Ethanol from biomass like corn and other sources. Instead of a lengthy debate on the topic, let me ask you one question. If Ethanol were such a viable option, why does the government subsidize it so heavily? And why, if it is such a great option do you see few gas stations in the US that offer it beyond Minnesota and Iowa?

Again, research and development into alternative fuel sources needs to be explored, but the scope for such research needs to be restricted in order to ensure that whatever solution is proposed is workable with readily available materials, minimal environmental impact and that it not require government subsidies to make it financially viable. In the meantime, we need to ramp up MGP levels to ensure that we need less fuel to cover the same distances and make sure oil company special interests don’t retard the aggressive approach we need to become oil free, which is possible within the next twenty years.

To Summarize:

1. The doom and gloom tactics by Global Warming groups is not only counterproductive but also irrelevant since the only people listening are in the US. It’s not that China and India are necessarily Global Warning deniers as much as they just don’t give a shit. They will drive their country forward to reach their rightful place as world powers and the easiest and cheapest fuels for that transformation are fossil fuels.

2. The Energy debate is currently scoped wrong and includes arguments for supply and demand that cross-streams between electrical production for home and industrial usage and transportation. If you ever hear someone start by bemoaning our dependence on oil and finish their sentence by looking up at the sun and claiming solar power will fix all our energy problems, kick them in the junk.

3. We need a new Energy Policy that focuses more on reducing demand and less on converting the supply chain. Yes we need to attempt to make coal emissions cleaner, but the best way to reduce coal emissions is to reduce the demand for electricity in the first place by making homes energy neutral and if possible energy negative. This will require different solutions for different climactic regions. Solar in Arizona will generate more electricity that it does in Minnesota, but the cooling needs are far greater, so we are not just talking about alternative generation at the house level, but also about the design of the homes themselves.

4. We need to invest in all forms of alternative energy, but we need the most focus on usable models for homes and alternatives for transportation. Passenger cars are the highest CO2 contributor with SUVs as second only because there are many more passenger cars. We also can’t ignore the fact that most material is shipped across the US by long haul trucks that burn diesel. We should consider not just more development of public transportation within cities, but intercontinental transportation by rail, preferably powered off the grid and not by diesel or gas.

5. People that currently live on the coasts should invest in land throughout the Midwest. I hear there are a lot of houses available in Detroit.

Leaves On The River

2014-04-26T10:47:00.000-05:00

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A river as a metaphor for life is not new. It could be described as a cliché. So be it, because today I feel like a leaf drifting down a river.

We know there was a beginning and we know there is an end, but we only know about the section we have traveled. Other parts exist only theoretically.

Today I have to put my dog to sleep. That is a kind turn a phrase. It gives us a small comfort and gives us distance from the guilt. Those that have pets know this day will come even as we pick them out as puppies or kittens, but we don’t linger on it nor should we.

When should it be done? There is a fine balance between keeping them with us as long as possible and letting them go before their pain or complications become more than an animal should bear. Because they would bear it. They'd bear it for us, anything for us.

So despite the pain it causes you, the decision must be made and the act carried out. The act is kinder for animals than people. Until that last ride in the car, they are allowed to be home. Then they are put to sleep with the first injection and their hearts stopped with the second.

It's April 26^th and I'm writing this in my man cave because I don’t want to cry in front of Ursa more than I have to. It causes her distress and she tries to comfort me. There are two hours before the drive and my daughters are spending time with her.

We will need to be careful in and out of the car. The bone cancer has made her left leg painful to the touch. Her decline has been rapid, yet she still is so full of love and kisses. Luckily she still has her appetite so we can spoil her with apples and watermelon, her favorite foods.

Ursa is Greek for bear and like the constellation that shows so bright in my northern sky, she is my Ursa Major. She's Labernese, black lab mixed with Bernese mountain dog. Her fur is glossy black with white spots on her nose, throat and chest. Her rear feet look as if someone ran a brush of white paint at an angle across her toes. Her chest is huge, required to hold a heart that is twice the size of most dogs. Her head is large and heavy and her tail is a solid and always thumping a greeting. There is a v shaped piece missing from her left ear tip, proof that she was a hellion as a puppy.

It occurred to me this morning that of our three dogs, Ursa is the last to have known my dad. He loved her as much as all of the dogs we’ve had, but didn't care for he constant need to kiss, especially our faces. Perhaps he loved her a little more since despite not liking it, he let her.

Six days from now is the sixth anniversary of his death. I put him down as well, though not as swiftly. For people it's called Hospice, an ever farther removed term that means letting someone die.

After eleven months of struggle and several complications that included strokes, double bypass surgery and the removal of his colon, he got an obstruction in his small intestine that refused to clear. After my last consultation, I agreed to move him to Hospice. The last thing he said to me was "quit crying, I'm not going anywhere".

What happened to him next was pamphlet. I've decided that if textbook can be a word then so can pamphlet, since in hospitals that's what they give you to explain complex or difficult issues. The pamphlet explained that when he was taken off all of his medications, he would have a day of euphoria. He would feel better than he had in months and be convinced that he could go home. The feeling would last a day, no longer, after which he would likely fall into a deep sleep, no injection needed.

I told him all of this before I left. I never saw him awake again. I was at work during his elated state, but all of his remaining friends chose that day to visit, most for the first time since he entered his first hospital. By the time I got there, he was sleeping. I'd seen him sleeping in a hospital bed dozens of times that year, but I'd never seen him so peaceful. On the day he died, I visited him, kissed his forehead and said goodbye. That night I got the call that his pamphlet predicted decline had started and that I should hurry. Before I finished dressing, the second call came.

His heart stopped, also without an injection. But instead of being at home, surrounded by his loved ones, with his boots on and eating his favorite foods, he spent eleven months being cold, poked, injected, cut on, reduced, humiliated and in a constant state of discomfort that ranged from moderate to agony. All the time we hoped. For hope I did that to and for my father only to end up in the same place as Ursa.

When my journey on the river stops, I pray that I will be at home. I pray that no one will love me the way I loved my father. Better to be loved as I love Ursa.

A Jackpine Savage Abroad

2014-04-14T15:59:00.000-05:00

I’ve heard a lot of chatter over the last few years about how people from other nations hate Americans. Or perhaps they hate America, though I’m not sure how you differentiate one from the other. I have no idea how true this is. I have no love for the French, yet my sole opinion is not likely to be enough for the French media to declare that Americans hate France.

In the last decade I’ve done a small amount of business travel. My primary locations have been the UK and India. Perhaps this isn’t a big enough sample size, but I have not felt hated in either country. Quite the contrary, I’ve felt welcomed and have made friends, no French, but a few Brits and Indians. While I’m not particularly fond of any travel, especially when it requires 24 hours of transit, I am glad for the opportunity to see these foreign countries and make new acquaintances.

I’m just a poor country boy from northern Minnesota, but it seems to me that I act the same as most Americans. By that I mean that I treat others as I wish to be treated and try to learn a little about the local culture. Who knows, maybe as soon as I’m out of sight, they spit on the ground and curse the day they laid eyes on me, but I think that would have more to do with my personality than my nationality.

This trip I got to spend a couple days in Bangalore and even got a few minutes one on one with my team members in between other meetings. Then we swung up to Mumbai to meet with an interesting part of the business and I was impressed for a number of reasons. Power is in short supply across much of India, especially in the summer months. Few if any exterior lighting exists in Delhi, Pune, Hyderabad or Bangalore, but Mumbai is different. Skyscrapers are painted in blues, greens and reds. Shops were decorated with string lights of all colors. There is massive construction and new buildings pushing though the desiccated corpses of old neighborhoods.

On my first trip to India a lady at one of the bazars in Delhi told me unsolicited, that all of the whores live in Mumbai. It may be true, but I saw no proof. There were women dressed in western style, and I think that was the basis for the old woman’s judgment. No matter, I doubt I will meet her again so I won’t have to face her judgmental stare.

Next I went to London. It was only my fourth trip, but it already felt like and old friend. I only got to spend a short time with my Britannic coworkers but I made sure I complained about the lack of Diet Dew anywhere on the island. Then I returned home feeling no more hated than normal.

This trip was unusual for the amount of places visited in six days. I made a post of FB about being in Bangalore and being afraid that I would melt. At the time I was dead serious. I remembered my first trip in 2006 when I went to Delhi and felt like I was always seconds away from heatstroke. It was the hottest month and even the short walk from the lobby to the taxi left my shirt soaked through. I’m a Minnesotan. I can handle cold, but not the heat, wet or dry.

Some of my FB friends apparently took my remark for a cloaked brag.

“Hey look at me, I’m traveling internationally and you’re not.”

It never even occurred to me. I may have been looking for a little sympathy since I was dreading the heat, but I don’t think of business travel as a positive thing. The only place I ever traveled for a vacation on my own dime internationally was Mexico, and I think I just finished paying for that trip. It was a good time, but it was a vacation. Business travel is the same whether it’s Dallas or Bangalore. I see the airport, the taxi, the inside of the hotel, another taxi, the office building, the taxi again and so on. Rarely is there any time to see anything else and usually, you are too tired to truly appreciate it.

On this trip I woke up at 2 AM on my first night in Bangalore knowing something was very wrong. I spent the next three hours in the bathroom. Mumbai looked interesting and different from other India cities, but that was only from the view of my taxi or hotel window. London on this trip was no different and then I was on yet another 9-hour flight heading home. The weekend I left was shot and the weekend I got back was mostly recovery for sleep and my digestive track. Some people may still yearn for the experience even as I’ve described it, but don’t think it even comes close to resembling a vacation.

I will say that I’m glad for the opportunity regardless of the discomfort and inability to explore the countries I visit. The reason is the people. I go to these places because people from my company work there, either on my team or from another part of the business. I’m fortunate to work for a great company filled with dedicated and intelligent people. Even though I fall on the side of introversion, I enjoy meeting new people and visiting with the people I already know. Whether it’s learning about a new part of the company or a short one on one with my team members, it makes all the discomfort and time away from my family worthwhile.

Some day, I might even be able to swing some vacation time to see the sights up close and not just through a cab window.

The lowdown on Russia and the Crimea

2014-03-21T20:06:00.000-05:00

I am not claiming to be an expert on Russia or even of the former Soviet Union. I’ve never liked the word expert since there is no clear definition as to the level of competence or wealth of knowledge a person needs to qualify. Some people reach a state of recognition in their chosen field where such a declaration seems obvious enough to all concerned that there is no argument, but those people rarely refer to themselves as experts. Usually it is the people the are envious of those established professionals and are attempting to imbue themselves with such recognition to that point in time is not self evident, much to their dissatisfaction.

Russia is not my current field so I’m not placed anywhere on this scale. My chosen field is Security, and I have spent all my adult life in its service starting in the Army and working to a place in upper management responsible for corporate security. Through interest and I dare say aptitude, I transferred to IT Security, finding it more rewarding and discovering that my past experience dealing with questions of Risk Management and creating regulatory compliant programs gave me a unique perspective in the field of IT Security. One shared by few and therefore valuable to whomever employs me.

But Security didn’t start out as my career of choice. When I was young, I wanted to be a stunt man. Unfortunately, I had no desire to live in California and there is precious little work for a stuntman in Bemidji Minnesota, though I made of for that by doing stunts pro bono. Next I thought I would follow in my father’s footsteps, not in practicality but in ambition and become a helicopter pilot in the Army. He’d been an electrician in both the Air Force and Coast Guard, and in the latter was able to test fly the aircraft he repaired. He had time in all manner of fixed wing and even rotary aircraft, but lacking a degree, he was never able to do it full time.

My eyes betrayed me, but in retrospect I’m glad for it, since had they been as perfect as my father’s vision, I would have been forced to face the truth that my poor performance in High School would have served as a backup to sabotage that dream. I joined the Army and that is a long tail and told elsewhere, but the main reason for my service was to escape my hometown and pay with my time for a chance to attend college.

When I hatched this plan at seventeen, it seemed like a fairytale. Four years was a long time and my goal was poorly defined. It was simply put the quest for a degree. The nature of the degree never occurred to me. But as fate would have it, I found myself at the end of my four-year tour and when faced with the choice of re-enlisting, I stuck to my plan and returned to Minnesota in search of the mythical degree. I spent my first two years in school blissfully unaware how I would declare, sure that when the time came, I would be struck by inspiration. And so it happened and I once again had the Army to thank. On active duty, I served as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal technician. That job didn’t exist in the Army Reserve at the time and eventually when it did, wasn’t located in Minnesota. The first job I took was as an Intelligence Analyst. I worked in that capacity one weekend a month and two weeks a year in an OJT status. My region was selected for me and was Eastern Europe. My first contract ended after six years and I became a civilian. I enjoyed being able to grow my hair out and lamented my inability to grow a decent looking beard. It came in black at that time, what little of it there was, and since the hair on my head was blond, people assumed I died one or the other. This isn’t true I just have weird hair.

I was in my second year of college and the pressure was building to choose a major. Luckily Desert Storm intervened and I felt compelled to sign a new eight-year Army Reserve contract. I was still in my heart and mind a soldier and the idea of sitting safely at home while my brothers and sisters were put in harms way was more than I could stand. I signed up with the 13^th Psychological Operations Battalion and took the only Interrogator slot in the 19^th PSYOP Company. After getting back into the system, I eagerly waited to be deployed, either as an EOD tech again or with my PSYOP unit. Neither happened because despite the fact that Iraqis speak Arabic and we had no Iraqi interrogators, that spoke Iraqi, I couldn’t go because I lacked a language.

The ground war was over in about 100 hours and I never saw a minute of it. Instead, in early 1991, I was sent to the Defense Language Institute to learn Russian. The Soviet Union was still a thing back then, at least for half the time I was at language school. Over Christmas break in died to be replaced by The Commonwealth of Independent States, and you all know how well that did.

But I was not deterred. Oh, quite the opposite. You see, the Soviet Union had been the big bad for all of my life and there was no way that would even change. When I cam back from my year of submersion into the Russian language, graduating in the lower part of the lower third of my class, I forgot about 1 vocabulary word a mile as I drove my Camero back to Minnesota. Of the eight grammatical cases that those twisted Ottoman monks devised to enslave and torture the primitive Russian people, I barely retained Nominative a year after my return.

Armed with the ability to order beer and ask the location of the bathroom, I majored in Russian Area Studies with a minor in Russian Language and Literature. I have the rare distinction of being one of the few people besides Tolstoy to have read War and Peace. It was one whole class and I think I got a B.

I knew my path would be paved in gold. After all, I had a degree designed for Intelligence Analysts for the most important country besides our own in the world and graduated in June 1995. I went home to wait for the job offers to roll in sure I would need to order an unlisted number so that I could get some sleep at night and perhaps a new wheelbarrow to get the mail.

Who could have predicted that for nearly twenty years, no one either in our government or in private industry would give a damn about Russia? No seriously, I want to know who the bastard was and why he/she didn’t tell me. But never mind them, they were in the minority if they existed at all. Most of them shared my view that the government would always be interested in Russia and that private industry would boom. There were billions to be made in this newly formed free market, except there weren’t. A few companies rushed in and were soon after the struggling Russian government seized them and companies lost millions. The US government had other issues in other lands and arrogantly considered the matter of the Soviet Union closed. We had won, and no one that had an opposing viewpoint was taken seriously. There were hundreds of articles and books discussing the shift from a bi polar political landscape to a multi polar model. There were a slew of predictions about the new unstable landscape and some of them even came true, but neither the government nor private industry cared enough about Russia to invest much time and effort into it. Those that did had a huge pool of radically more knowledgeable and experienced people to choose from. It has been this way with few exceptions for over twenty years.

Don’t shed any tears for me, it all worked out for the best. I’m now an executive in the IT security field and not only do I enjoy the work, but it pays the bills.

While I’m not an expert on Russian affairs, I did get an A on my thesis, so suck it. I even paid attention after I graduated and watched Russia and it’s former states change over time and become a Democr….Sorry, I tried to type if but was over taken by a laughing fit. I also realize I’ve made you wait long enough for my in depth analysis of the current situation with Russia and the Annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. So without further ado:

Putin is batshit crazy.

There you have it folks, the former head of the KGB, now perpetual President of Russia (who never had to read War and Peace cover to cover I guarandamntee you) is batshit crazy.

Or if you prefer a more detailed analysis, please read the following response to an FB post where even pacifists were wondering if perhaps militaries had uses after all.

Anyone sane is antiwar, especially soldiers. A soldier hopes their country is right and just in the use of force.

This is a case of a bully using force to take what he wants from a weaker nation. The United States has been the week nation in need of help and the stronger nation offering help.

We have entered into wars for terrible reasons and refused to offer assistance where it was desperately needed. I think we need to offer our assistance in conjunction with NATO. This is not some ambiguous terrorist threat that is hard to describe and debate in terms of borders, but a nation state attacking another nation state.

This could be Putin's Poland. Forget the old domino argument between the USA and USSR that polarized people for or against action in other countries like Vietnam, where the USSR's influence was up for debate, this is a probe from Putin to see how much resistance there will be in his attempt to regain all the former Soviet territories.

Lack of action now from the International community will embolden Putin and endanger former Soviet countries.

There you have it, my opinion about Putin’s motives and the price of doing nothing but watching Russia steal the Crimea from Ukraine. Like that perky little kid on Pokemon Putin’s ‘gotta to catch em all’ or die trying. The question we have to answer for ourselves is do we care? Do we care when a stronger country picks on a weaker country and no one does anything because they are afraid of the consequences? Should we care and if so at what point should we care? Who knows, maybe if we let Putin take Crimea, he’ll go away and leave Ukraine alone. Maybe he won’t do anything else. Throw a few sanctions on him, it’s clear sanctions work, just look at North Korea.

I’ve read a lot of critical stories over the last decade about how the United States is trying to build an Empire. I could go on for several pages about how that is bullshit, but I don’t need to. The United Kingdom was an empire. The Soviet Union was an empire. If the US is really trying to be an empire, we’ve been going about it the wrong way. We sure as hell wouldn’t care what anyone else said in the international arena and we wouldn’t struggle about what to do when any of our interests were threatened. Accusations of Empire are an old chestnut that is trotted out any time we engage in any military action.

But despite being the most incompetent empire of all time, we have engaged in wars that we shouldn’t and our war fighters suffered the most. They join for many reasons, but they depend on our government to use them wisely. Most times that means not using them at all, just making sure they are the best equipped and trained force on the planet. Other times that means using them in such a way that their objectives are clear and achievable. We’re still waiting for the later to occur, but I have hope.

Do we use them against Russia? That’s the wrong question. Is the cause just? That is the right question. Few became and remained a country for many years because other stronger countries wanted us to. Forget the propaganda, the reality is that without help from France and Spain, we wouldn’t have made it. Even with their significant help, we shouldn’t have made it. The revolutionary war is barely covered in public schools. You can learn more about it from the old Schoolhouse Rock programs than in a school today. Unless you get a degree in American History, you aren’t likely to learn much more in college. If we are to believe the hype, it was a slam-dunk. Washington crossed the Delaware River in the winter and kicked some British ass. Done deal. End of story. Oh and it was cold and most of the soldiers didn’t have boots and stuff. Wow, it’s all flooding back. Couldn’t have taken more that a year or two. I saw that Patriot movie and I didn’t see the seasons change more than once or twice and that little girl never aged so the war couldn’t have take that long.

England wanted us to remain as part of their empire but luckily France and Spain lent us a hand. FRANCE, for fuck sakes. We would have lost our ass and been part of the British Empire to this day except for France. How fucked were we? Pretty fucked. There was no reason for anyone to believe that we could actually win our independence from Britain. Technically we didn’t win in that we didn’t concourse them or destroy them, but we did make it too expensive for them to make it worthwhile and they quit. In 1812, Canada almost put an end the American experiment. CANADA!!! We were not quite the super power we would eventually grow into, but we had allies. In WWI, we hesitated far too long but eventually assisted our allies to include England. Most of our bragging rights revolve around WWII and while fighting two wars simultaneously was an impressive feat, we never face the full might of the German Army. Russian had that distinction and they lost millions of people.

Now we’re stronger. It isn’t likely that we need to worry about defending our soil from Canada again any time soon. We might be safe from China and even Russia, despite its proximity to Alaska (insert Palin joke). Other countries aren’t so lucky. We are now the big strong country that is able to assist others. Do we use that military only in retaliation when we are attacked? Does we have to wait until their is another global conflict that directly impacts our bottom line?

There are many dubious excuses for past use of military might. Our liberal elite have ridiculed most of these and they were right to do just that. What though do we do when there is a legitimate need from a country too weak to defend itself from a bully like Putin? Make statements that we can’t be the world’s police? I agree, we can’t. The UN can, it’s kind of in their job description, and we can assist the UN. Action should be debated within a reasonable time and taken by a unified force. We have a part to play in an action deemed justified. Not just by one of the political parties for political gain, but of the free nations of the world, for they are ever mindful of the fact that they could be next.

Marvel Agents of SHIELD

2014-03-13T14:25:00.000-05:00

The most recent episode of Marvel Agents of SHIELD was disappointing. The episode in question is entitled: Yes Men and features SIF come to earth to retrieve Amora, a sorceress that has the ability to enslave men with her words and the enslavement is guaranteed if she can touch them. My problem isn’t with the bastardization of Norse mythology or even deviations from the original comic. I’m taking this show as a stand-alone effort and so far I’ve enjoyed it.

My problem with the latest episode is lazy writing. Either it is lazy writing or a crappy premise that they had to write around. No, I take that back, it is still lazy ass writing. It’s lazy because it wasn’t consistent within the confines the show had set up. Forget external consistency, I rarely make those arguments for that way lies madness, especially with all of the remakes and reimaginings going on throughout the land.

I do hold a television show or movie accountable for keeping true to the characters they have set up and consistency in their actions. I’ll even cut them brakes for different seasons and make an exception within a given season if there is sufficient motivation like some life changing event.

There were two huge and one minor inconsistency in this episode that I can’t overlook and they ruined it for me. I’ll give them another chance, but if this is a trend, I’m out.

Warning!! Spoilers Ahead!!

#1.

This is when Ward is out back of the biker bar and Amora lands behind him. Earlier in the episode, they spent time covering two pieces of new information. The first is that they have new updated weapons that disable, not kill that are three times as powerful than their predecessors and even managed to lose the “extra ounce”. They took these new weapons along with the express purpose of disabling Amora and any man she turned. Would it work on Amora? We never got to find out. The second piece of information was when Sif briefed the entire team on what Amora could do with her voice and her touch. The message? Don’t even let her talk to you but you sure as hell better not let her touch you.

So what does the most lethal and effective agent on the team do when he turns around and sees Amora? He begins a dialogue. His new fangled pistol is pointing right at her and he knew how dangerous she was and he starts chatting her up and of course she walks closer as she talks. Ward is not yet under her spell but lets this Fem Fatale get within touching distance without giving her the old non-lethal double tap. Of course she touches him and that drives the crappy premise forward.

Amora could have just jumped on top of him and touched him before he could react. She is Asgardian after all. But nooooooooo. They have to make one of the strongest and most lethal agent in SHIELD a dumb ass because they are lazy.

#2.

When Fitz is taken over and he lures Sif into the cell with the promise of the fixed collar that is used to prohibit Amora from speaking. Once on, not only is she unable to snare new men but all previously snared men are instantly freed. It is critical for Sif and SHIELD to fix and then affix the collar on Amora. It would be Amora’s #1 priority once she was back on the plane to destroy it completely. She wore it by her own account for six hundred years. She hates it, precious, hates it!!! Fitz knows this yet apparently before he was enslaved, he fixed it. Then after he was taken over he left the fixed and fully functional collar in the cell to lure Sif to her death (though Amora would know that the fall wouldn’t kill Sif). Either Amora herself or Fitz as her devoted new pet would have destroyed the damned thing. Of course if it was destroyed, we couldn’t have our simple episode wrap up. Even if Fitz didn’t destroy it, he could have damaged it. Sif couldn’t fix it, only Fitz could. So why not at least re-brake it and leave it in the cell for Sif? Again, because the only way to free Fitz was to put the collar back on Amora, because apparently Simmons (Fitz’s female science partner) lacked the skill (this could actually be a forth inconsistency).

#3.

The minor inconsistency was the fact that the collar, a device of Asgardian design, was broken by a shotgun blast in the first place. Amora, who is wicked strong, is unable to cause it any damage. But fine, they could have had a scene with Sif and Amora fighting over it and leaving it bent or Sif’s sword could have damaged it if only they had the fight scene earlier between the two. There are probably a dozen better ways to tell the same story and hit the same main points and yet remain consistent to the storyline set forth in the first 14 episodes. Instead, the writers seemed to have phoned this one in, content that two very attractive new women would distract the viewers from the fact of just how bad the episode was.

So what's your vote? Crappy premise, bad writing or both?

Ok, Nuff Said.

Radically Invasive Projectile

2014-02-03T14:13:00.000-06:00

There have been more advancements in the quality and variation of ammunition in the last twenty years than in the entirety of human history. This is true for many types of technology, but fewer have as obvious of a kinetic impact on the minds and bodies of Americans. My beliefs on weapon ownership are my own. My goal is not to sway people and frankly I doubt such a thing is possible. I want only to make my position clear before I get into the details.

I believe strongly in every persons right to own firearms for the purposes of hunting, sport shooting and self-defense. Each pursuit requires different types of weapons and ammunition. If your goal is hobby long range shooting, you will want full metal jacket(FMJ) ammunition made to exacting standards. There are several calibers for this hobby so people have options. For hunting, you may be able to use the same rifle, but odds are a rifle used for long range target shooting is not the best option for hunting, and the ammunition definitely has to be different.

When you’re hitting paper targets for accuracy, a common choice would be match grade 168 grain weight .308 caliber. This has become common so it’s a good choice for target shooters because so many different companies make a version. For deer hunting, .308 is still a good caliber, but you would likely want a slightly lighter weight bullet and definitely one designed to expand on impact.

I meant what I said about not trying to change anyone’s position on weapons. What I will say is that making uneducated posts about the details of weapons and ammunition may actually be counter to whatever point you are trying to make. If there is to be a debate, get off your high condescending horse and at least learn enough about the basics so that you don’t go into a debate intellectually unarmed. Also, while you may wish to eliminate all firearms from the face of the planet, until someone creates a magic wand, they are a reality we need to deal with.

I’ve recently seen arguments from intelligent people claiming that expanding bullets should be outlawed, citing that the Geneva Convention bans them so they must be bad. This logic is flawed and made out of ignorance. In point of fact, it is not the Geneva Convention but the Hague Accord of 1899 (a document the USA abides by but didn’t sign). Expanding bullets were banned in war because of the horrific wounds they cause to the recipients. In war, anyone that follows the rules (mostly UN countries) uses only ball or full metal jacket rounds. A soldier is more likely to survive a wound from a full metal jacket round. If given the option I think most soldiers would prefer to stay with the FMJ rounds because they can shoot the enemy through doors and walls, putting themselves at less risk.

This is because the FMJ round doesn’t expand (much, there is always some distortion upon impact, the thing isn’t magic), so it doesn’t transfer its energy to the target. It punches a hole about the same size entering and exiting. The problem is that the bullet doesn’t magically disappear after it exits the target. It keeps much if its velocity and energy and keeps on going, through wood, sheetrock, or the flesh of another person until the gravity and friction act upon it enough that it comes to rest. This is good news if you’re the target (because it causes less damage to you), but bad news if you are standing behind the target.

Outside of warzones, this is a horrible idea regardless of whether it is a police officer or someone defending themselves. Hollow points and frangible ammunition are designed to do the opposite. They are specifically designed to transfer all their energy to the intended target and not exit the body. No sane person wants to protect themselves and their family at the cost of the family next door or in the case of hunting, wants the animal to suffer.

Quick side not. About twenty years ago, one round that was designed for elk mistakenly got into our hunting ammo can we used for deer. In the dark, I loaded my rifle with deer rounds in the magazine but the loose round I put in the chamber was the “Super Slammer” elk round. I shot a buck at about 250 yards away. It dropped like the strings were cut, which is the reaction I’m used to. You may hate the idea of hunting, but you must agree that if it occurs, the animal should not suffer. I believe this strongly enough that I don’t take risky shots. When I went to field dress the deer, it was still alive. The elk round wasn’t a full metal jacket, but it was designed to bring down a much bigger animal. The exit wound made it look like it had been an FMJ and the deer suffered. My fault and I was sick to my stomach. The deer rounds I used expanded similar to a pistol hollow point and all the deer I ever shot with those rounds died instantly because of the amount of sudden damage. Those bullets exited, but they didn’t go far or have much velocity left.

I understand the reaction and the desire of rational people to recoil from the idea of causing other people harm. I share this sentiment. I will be happy to die of old age having never killed another human being. However, if I am ever stuck in a situation where my only two choices are to either cause harm to another or die or worse see one of my family die, then I vote for that other person to die instead.

Some people don’t share this belief and they are as incomprehensible to me as I’m sure I am to them. While it’s easy to try to dehumanize or denigrate anyone that has different views than you, I respect pacifist beliefs. I don’t need to agree with them that it is better to die and let their families die than to cause another person harm, I just have to accept that they have the right to their beliefs and it is not ok for me to call them stupid or suggest that they need to be weaned from the gene pool (as a few people on FB did about gun owners).

My belief is that I live in a world and specifically America where people do harm to others without cause or justification. Until that changes, I will do whatever I feel is necessary to protect my family and myself but I will not have any self defense weapon in my house loaded with a round that will punch through multiple walls and cause unintended consequences.

People love quoting statistics about gun owners being a greater threat to themselves than external threats, and I certainly admit that there are plenty of people that own guns that lack wisdom and or the sense to use them responsibly. All I can do is make sure that I’ve taken the steps I need while ensuring that I don’t introduce more risk to my family. Gun safes, training and awareness and the proper ammunition that won’t travel through concrete blocks are just the basics.

The reason for the latest outcry is a new round called the Radically Invasive Projectile, or R.I.P. It is being touted as the last self defense round you’ll ever need. Based on my stance, you may jump to the conclusion that I can’t wait to buy a few boxes. You’d be wrong.

This ammunition is not technically “dum dum” or a hollow point or even traditional frangible ammunition. This is the worst, not the best of both worlds. Not only does it spread out like a frangible round on impact, but it is designed to punch through barriers including sheet rock (not that hard to do), windshield (because shooting at people in cars is so common) sheet metal (much harder to do), cinder blocks (god forbid the person you want to shoot is cowering behind cement) and hints at being able to defeat bullet resistant vests that lack ceramic plates if you read between the lines and boasts 18 inches of penetration. The average body thickness is only 9 ½ inches, so this ammo is designed to kill two inline people, and that is with their current 9mm pistol round. They plan to make larger caliber rounds including a 12 gauge shotgun version. I shudder to think what the penetration through concrete will be for these larger rounds.

This is a terrible idea just like using war required full metal jacket ammunition for self defense is a terrible idea. The reason is the penetration that they are bragging about. This ammunition is only suitable if you are the only person in range that you care about. So it’s great for a zombie apocalypse or for any sociopath. If I was ever scooped up and dropped on one of those islands you see in the movies where I had to kill every other person to “win”, I’d want this ammo, otherwise, WTF?

I don’t consider this responsible gun ownership or usage and can’t condone it because of the potential for collateral damage. I’m not advocating outlawing it, but some people will. Or more correctly, people will think they are creating a law to ban this type of ammunition and end up banning something else by mistake because they believe themselves so above gun culture that they won’t bother to do the research. If your plan is to create new laws then you need to educate yourself so you pass a law that causes the least harm when eliminating all harm is not practical. “Dum dum” or hollow point bullets should be mandated, not outlawed, for self defense. But legislation for one brand or type is foolish because they will just change it slightly to get by the law. An example of this was when San Francisco outlawed Black Talon ammunition. They were so specific in their language, that the company slightly changed their product by removing a coating to the bullet and the law no longer applied.

The best option would be to use language that can’t be misinterpreted. Specify that self-defense ammunition that will punch through the body of the initial target and travel through the neighbor’s house and into someone else is illegal. Ownership of different types of ammunition should not be made illegal, but discharging dangerous ammunition in a self-defense situation should carry a penalty.

Full metal jacket ammunition has it’s place outside of war, specifically for target practice. Educating people that get concealed carry permits as to the type of ammunition that is best for self defense just makes sense but isn't currently mandatory. If you want to make new gun laws, quit dreaming about total bans and make recommendations that are possible and would be beneficial to law abiding citizens.

Honey Toast

2014-02-02T12:42:00.000-06:00

Those of you that have lived through one know that a divorce doesn’t just happen between two people when theirs is a family involved.

It happened to us when I was eleven. My mom told me years later that from the moment she asked for a divorce until the day we moved out was around three months. Three months under the same roof with a man that knew I'd chosen to live with my mom.

My father was many things during his life. Before he died he was my friend. He grew emotionally and even spiritually more than most people do once they pass forty. The change wasn't easy for him, but he worked at it and for that I'm very proud of him.

But this is not a story of the man that I grew to respect and love, this is a story of a man that hadn't yet reached rock bottom. He was not a good father or a good husband, a fact that was a surprise to him. After all, he fulfilled his duties, provided for his family and was faithful, and in his book, those were all the bases. Unfortunately for him, he lived in the later part of the 20th century and not the later part of the 19th.

I spent my childhood working hard to become invisible. I got very good at it. Children were meant to be seen, not heard and not often seen. Even before the divorce was a tangible reality, our family was unhappy. Dinnertime was the hardest for me, because I couldn't remain invisible. Nothing I did was right and I was a common target. Starting at age eight, I would imagine building walls of brick in the pattern of Tic-Tac-Toe game so that no one could see in front of them or even to the sides. I would visualize the wall being built, brick by brick and then will it into existence. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t.

My father called me boy, never Scott, not until I was eighteen and back for a visit from the Army. If he started a sentence with "Boy", it was never good. It meant I was visible and that I'd done something wrong. There were so many rules to remember. I ran through them, adding to the list as new ones were created, usually after I'd done something wrong that he hadn't anticipated. Invisible was better and my room was a refuge. I was out of site and therefore out of mind, and I would spend most evenings playing or daydreaming. I wanted to lie on my bed, but it was against the rules before bedtime and I feared being caught. I used to love when my mom read me stories, but that was for little kids, not ten year olds. As much as I loved the stories, it was better not to get them than to be the subject of another fight.

I blocked out most of those three months from notification to moving day. In my memory, it was a long week. Only within the last few years, did some of the memories from that time surface. They rose like abandoned ocean mines, broken loose from their moorings without care for where they floated or what damage they caused. Some came while my father was in the hospital and some came after he died, as if his death freed me to remember. There were fewer than I feared, because while the atmosphere was more tense than usual, one day was painful in the same way as the day before and the day after. We all fell into our routine of agony, with few deviations.

One such deviation came at the dinner table. For once I was completely invisible, but I wanted nothing more that to be seen, anything to divert his attention from my mother. The fight had been building for hours. I wished it away. I prayed and wished and devised Faustian bargains in my mind to stop the rage that boiled over in my father. I'd seen them yell and scream and in some ways the worst of all was the silent, cold rage, but that night was different. I didn't hear or perhaps I didn’t want to hear what was said, but they were cruel, hateful words. Words you can't take back but can only apologize for, a thing my father never did.

The fight moved from the table to the kitchen, only three feet away in our doublewide trailer. My mom was backed into the corner and my dad was working himself up into frenzy. I'd been in that corner at school, watching a bully getting ready. They always seem to need something. Some trigger in their mind that justified the physical attack. My mom could see it coming too. I saw fear in her eyes that betrayed the rage on her face. I was sitting in my chair, afraid to move.

"Do it! Hit me, I know you want to!"

He raised his fist and I was out of my chair, a steak knife in my hand. He would not hurt her. I swore it. I couldn’t act without a trigger any more than he could, but my trigger was his fist. If he struck her, I swore to god I would shove that knife handle deep into his kidney. I was still invisible and I knew I could do it. Nothing existed but my mother's tears, my father's fist and the knife in my hand. I pictured the blade entering his lower back just above the belt and remembered from a story I’d read that I had to twist the blade to get it back out. God help me, but I wanted him to do it. I wanted to end the screaming and the tears and I wanted to stop being afraid all the time.

Something in her posture made him hesitate. The trigger he was waiting for didn’t come from her face or lips. He stormed out of the room and as soon as he was gone, my mother's will collapsed into more tears as she sagged to the floor. Still invisible, I put the knife back on the table and went to my room, unable to comfort her because I didn't think she could handle knowing I'd seen them and afraid she would know what I was so ready to do. I was eleven again, alone and afraid.

Time passed with my father sleeping on the couch and me going to school. I played with my best friends and tried to do anything but think. I remember the day he left. It was actually the day we left, but he had to go to work and we would be gone by the time he got back. My sister and I were at the front door. The sun was not up yet but I could see him on the front steps in the false dawn. He was sad. I'd never seen him sad and it looked strange on his face.

"I love you kids you know."

Then he gave us a hug and walked away. The first time the word love had escaped his mouth and it was divided by two and followed up with his departure. I couldn't watch him leave. I went back inside and waited to go to school among a maze of cardboard boxes. We were going to be late, though I can’t remember why. I’d missed half a day and my mom wasn't sure if lunch would still be served. Most things were packed away and all that was left was bread, butter and honey.

She gave me the toasted treat on a paper towel, honey soaking into the fibers. My throat was tight and the bread went down hard. I couldn’t taste the honey. I used to the towel to blow my nose and wipe my eyes. The smell of butter was faint. She dropped me off at Horace May Elementary and I walked through the empty halls to the cafeteria.

"Your mom called, so I saved a tray for you. Would you like some chocolate milk?"

I nodded and took the tray with a quiet thank you. I’d never seen the place empty before. I ate the fish sticks on automatic pilot, dropped off my tray and went to class. All of the other 6th graders turned to watch me enter and I was sure they knew. Not just about the divorce or moving to a trailer park, but all of it. I'd never felt so visible. I took my seat and the teacher began to speak again. One by one the eyes returned to the front. I opened my book and turned the pages. They stuck to the honey left on my fingers, but the thought of licking them clean repulsed me.

Facebook Prison Blues

2013-10-31T10:17:00.003-05:00

I was recently blocked from sending friend requests and then chastised for it on Facebook. This is apparently a routine occurrence based on the feedback I got from my post that pasted at the end of my rant for your enjoyment. For those of you that don’t recognize it, the song is Folsom Prison Blues by the legendary Johnny Cash. I’d like to think if he was still with us that he wouldn’t be offended.

What bothers me about being chastised and blocked is the hypocrisy. Facebook is taking the position that users should only send friendship requests to people that they know in the physical world.

I have a personal problem and also a logical objection to this apparently contrary opinion. My personal problem is that I have developed many friendships with people solely through electronic means. People I trust and have done business with and collaborated with yet never met in person. Despite knowing them at this level before I sent them a friend request on FB, I am still in violation of their rules by sending the request, and that is just plain stupid.

My logical objection is that FB puts a limit on friends at 5,000 people. If you have a page, it can be liked by significantly more people, but a users personal page has a limit that is radically higher than anyone could every maintain in the real world.

A British anthropologist named Robin Dunbar proposed that there is a cognitive limit to the number of 250 people with whom any human could maintain stable relationships. Her theory further speculates groups of people fall into three categories equivalent to bands, cultural lineage groups and tribes. The upper limit of tribe ranges between 500-2,500 people. So a maximum number anyone could realistically “know” in the real world is 2,500, yet the FB limit is twice that at 5,000.

I’m not the most extroverted person, but I’d bet that the realistic upper limit is actually around 500 with an average closer to 250. Regardless, not only is the limit dramatically higher but FB acts contradictory by posting friends suggestions directly on the peoples feeds. Worse, they recommend people with few friends in common. I’ve received suggestions for friends with only 1 other friend in common. Now I appreciate FB trying to help me out by suggesting I may know someone that I may want to connect with and yet am apparently too incompetent to find on my own, but in the “Real World” I have less than 250 in my personal and professional circle and I can find them all on my own.

What would be really cool is of they could mine my data, and not just use spyware on my browser to determine what products I’m interested in buying, but real data mining so they could find people that I used to go to school with or served in the Army with back in the day. Now that would be useful and I really know or at one time knew those people so there would be no need to chastise me if those people refused my friend request. Because if I’m completely honest, I haven’t had positive relationships with everyone I’ve ever met.

So why does Facebook go through this dance, especially when despite their instance, neither their customers nor even they themselves believe FB should only be used to communicate with people you already know in the real world? Great question, I can only speculate that it’s to cover their ass. Friend requests are sent and sometimes they are rejected. Some customers will undoubtedly complain. Perhaps they are on FB to only share information and pictures with their closed circle and one of the people in their circle is a little more social so they show up the suggested list of friends FB sends to others.

I think a better solution than FB Prison would be for customers to be able opt out of the whole mess. If they only send and want to receive requests from people they already know well, why would they want to be on a list sent to strangers? This seems like a simple solution, so why didn’t they think of it? Perhaps they did, but that would run contradictory to what Facebook as a company wants, which is people having the most friends they can possibly have. More friends mean more posts. More posts means that they will stay on FB more often which in turn exposes them to more advertising. Even when they get you hooked on games, they design the games in such a way that the players are rewarded for getting more people hooked on those games, hence all of the damned game requests.

You best friend from high school doesn’t care of you play the game he or she is hooked on, but to get a bonus level or some feature unlocked, they are willing to pimp your ass out to FB. If you get hooked in the process so be it. I get irritated at the requests, but these folks are game junkies and need our help, not our anger. A twelve step Farmville program would come in handy, because I AM NOT GOING TO WATER YOUR FUCKING CROPS WHEN YOU GO ON THAT CRUISE MOM!! Sorry, lost my mind there for a second.

You see, they make money from outside advertisers, but they also charge people to advertise their pages throughout FB. Pay them enough, and even though some people may have no desire to see your writer’s page, they will get a recommendation to like it. If you pay enough, everyone on FB could potentially get your page as a suggestion.

I send out friend requests for a variety of reasons. First, I get a kick out of many of the post. There is a lot of great content out there and I see more of it the more friends I have. True there are repeats and occasionally I get a new friend that ends up being a bigot, but I can un-friend those few exceptions.

If I am likely to see a fellow horror writer at a convention, and especially if a person I already like tells me he or she is “good people”, I’m going to try and friend them. If people are fans of horror I want them to read the stuff I write and also the stuff I publish through my small press. I have a page for Stygian Publications, but without paying FB to advertise, I can only get likes by sending invites to my friends….

By George, I think I got it, or at least another reason why they put people in jail for sending out friend requests. At least I would like to think that they are sophisticated enough to put two and two together, but I’m not able to test my theory. It would be interesting to know if people that had pages they were trying to drive traffic to were put in jail more often that people that only have their personal page.

I would also like to know how many is too many when it comes to sending out friend requests. Does only one person have to click the box saying they don’t know me and that is the reason they are denying my friend request or is does it take ten? If I have ben in jail once, do I have a record? Am I considered a convict? When I am able to send requests again (the block lasted about a week), am I on double secret probation or does the counter reset to zero?

I’m afraid I have only questions and will likely not get them answered. I do know that the punishment is not that severe, just irritating and if FB’s goal was to rehabilitate me, then they failed. I’m back out on the street and they are baiting me with tempting new friends and I am only human. I’m going to send out more requests, it’s only a matter of time.

Posted on FB Oct 30^th, 2013:

Apparently, this establishment frowns on sending friend requests to people that I don’t have a relationship with in the “Real World”. I think this is a mixed message since they post a link on my newsfeed suggesting friends. I was put in Facebook Prison and it gave me the blues, so I wrote a song about it called “Facebook Prison Blues” and goes a little something like this,

One, two, one two three…

I got my bad boy notice

While I’m sitting in my den
And I ain't sent a friend request since I don't know when,
I'm stuck in Facebook prison, and time keeps draggin' by
But those people keep a posting and sharing stuff I like
When I was just a baby my mama told me. Son,
Always be a good boy, don't ever play with guns.
But I shot a man in Farmville just to watch him die
When I get those game request, I hang my head and cry..

Soooey!

I bet there's strangers posting some cool new Vader memes
They're probably getting lots of likes and sharing all their dreams.
Well I know I had it coming, I know I can't be free
But those people keep a posting'
And that's what tortures me...

Well if they freed me from this prison,
If that Facebook page was mine

I let people meet each other without having to do time

Far from Facebook prison, that's where I want to stay
And I'd let my new friends, post my blues away.....

Stygian Publications Website Now Live

2013-09-29T10:40:00.002-05:00

http://www.stygianpublications.com/

The website for Stygian Publications is now live. We will start accepting Submissions on November 1st for Novellas and Novels.

And now for something completely different

2013-09-26T11:56:00.002-05:00

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I love British bathrooms.

There, I said it and I’m glad.

Before I explain why British bathrooms are superior to those in the US, let me first do some level setting.

I’m not a rabid anglophile. I do appreciate much of the history, though only from a military perspective. I like Dr. Who but I’m not a rabid fan. I love Sherlock Holmes. That’s it, no qualification around that, I love Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s collective works and don’t care who knows it. So while I do appreciate some things British, I never had an overwhelming desire to travel there any more than anywhere else with the exception of Africa. Sorry Africa, but while you have a lot going for you, if I wanted to be hacked to death or burnt alive, I’d insource that job domestically and go to Detroit.

To be fair, as a child it never occurred to me that travel was even in the cards for me beyond the occasional trip to Wisconsin and the dream of some day seeing the Twin Cities. I dreamt of being Spiderman, knowing it was a dream. The cruel truth of economics and logistics prohibited me from dreaming of things I thought were firmly out of my reach. So England became no different than Narnia. Places I read about, but as far as I was concerned, I had a better chance of finding a portal in a wardrobe.

Then I grew up and achieved more than I thought possible. I dared to dream of cruises and foreign travel. England, Scotland and Ireland were at the tope of my list. So my company sent me to India in 2006. What I found is that except for the jetlag, I liked it. Two jobs and a bunch of travel later, I finally arrived in the UK for the first time.

This is my third trip and all have been for business. I haven’t been able to do many tourist activities, but I have seen a few sites. I did get to see the relatively new 221 B Baker street museum and gift shop. I did get to see Big Ben from a taxi window. Those were cool, I won’t lie, but they pale in comparison to my greatest UK discovery, the British bathroom.

For those of you that have never traveled between these two countries, let me explain. The entire bathroom isn’t necessarily superior, though most have a better design. The key feature that makes them superior are commode the stalls. Urinals are about the same, though the Brits do seem to space them out a bit more and have better dividers. I’ve also never seen a sink design in the UK with a flat counter top and over pressured faucets that cause water to pool so that when you lean forward to wash your hands or check something in the mirror, the water absorbs into you pants in the groin region.

While not all British bathrooms are so well equipped, I have to share this pic of a this brilliant vending machine that takes care of all of the man's and woman's needs and manages to address some of the most common excuses as well.

If only they had these a century before, though I'd rather not meet the man or woman that needs the giants 100 pack of tic tacs.

And now back to my story.

First I’ll describe the British stall. Have you ever heard the term “water closet”? Well, that is appropriate, because each stall is a small room with a solid door and no gaps or cracks. It shuts and you have true privacy. I’ve been in a few now and they don’t skimp on wall thickness either. The guy next to me could be suffering from a trip to Chipotle, but I would not hear his screams. Added bonus feature in case you’re not sure of the door is shut by accident, most have a lock on the inside that triggers an “Occupied” sign on the outer door similar but not quite like they have on airplane bathrooms.

The US stalls on the other hand are poorly crafted from sheet metal and painted horrific colors. They are designed poorly and quickly thrown up so most have larger than planned gaps and are about 18 inches off the floor and top off around six feet high, leaving plenty of gap before you reach the ceiling. Because of poor alignment, many of the flimsy slide locks do not fully seat and a large percentage open when any of the connected walls are bumped. Worse, since almost all of them shut as their default position, you have no way of knowing if they are occupied by looking at the door. There are several slick moves used by men across America so we aren’t mistaken for some pervert trying to catch a look. There’s the quick duck down to look for feet, but this move is rarely done when someone is at the sink or at a urinal. You can walk by as if uninterested and glance quickly through the ½ inch wide crack to see if there is a shape in the gloom. A more patient person can hang back by the door and listen for movement or breathing, but if detected that might only narrow it down to one of the two being occupied, not definitively identify which one.

Desperate or impatient men just grab hold of the door and pull. This only works if it is empty. If not and the lock miraculously holds, most occupants feel the need to say something like. “I’m in here” or “be done in a minute”, as if the locked door weren’t a giveaway. Sometimes the door gives and you’re face to face with someone in one of several stages of completion.

You may argue that the British method is more expensive, but I challenge that assumption. Post construction work would be, but if it were part of the plan, the increase per building would be negligible. We broke away for many reasons over two hundred years ago, but we have bonded since then and it’s high time we recognize we can still learn from our brothers and sisters across the sea. I call on all of my fellow American’s to rise up with me and demand a better bathroom experience.

Who’s with me?

It's been quite a year

2013-08-27T15:14:00.000-05:00

I started this blog thinking that I could be a blogger and that I would have something interesting to say on a regular basis. That has clearly not been the case. What I discovered about myself is that I need time to reflect on something before I share it. When I hit a creative dry spell in 2010, I gave my poor neglected blog a reboot by posting short stories of my life. I posted the stories that I easily remembered and thought that readers would find entertaining.

After several posts, I decided to capture those stories in a memoir. My fiction was not flowing so I wasn’t sacrificing yet I had no idea how much if anything there was to say. I wanted to only select memorable stories that had some impact on me, whether it was positive or negative.

I’m not sure how many of you know your parents. I mean really know them, not just as they are now but also as they were as children, young adults and early parents. My parents didn’t volunteer a lot of information beyond a few choice family stories, but I’m persistent and over the years I got what I consider about a 30% insight into who they were and perhaps 75% insight into who they are as adults. The more I thought about it the more I wanted to leave that gift for my girls. For better or worse, I wanted them to know not just who I was and who I’ve become, but perhaps why.

I ended up with 110,000 words. Twice as long as any fiction I’ve ever written. It wasn’t a day-by-day, blow-by-blow account, I assure you. I hit only the highlights and some of the stories were years apart. Years where I plugged along and little happened of note. When I was done, I thought that I should publish it. The draw back is that I’m not famous. I’ve also never used drugs or alcohol. Many of the memoirs that get published are either coming of age stories or rehabilitation stories. I’m not sure mine qualifies for either. I only submitted to one publisher, so it isn’t like I gave it a serious go, but the more I thought about it the stranger it felt.

One thing that it did do for me was to break the logjam in my mind. I was writing again and I turned my eyes back to fiction. I got my short story collection, Hunter’s Moon: Visceral Tales of Terror, published by Omnium Gatherum. Then something odd happened. I got laid off from ATK.

I knew it was possible after five consecutive years of cutbacks and in a moment of clarity in 2011, I even predicted it. Yet the reality was too unpleasant to focus on and I believed in the company and the importance of the job to the point that I kept my blinders on. Five years after leaving Xcel Energy for a new opportunity, I was out on the street with 5 weeks severance and no clue what to do next.

The next five months were unpleasant. For those that have been through it, you know. For those that haven’t, it isn’t something you can imagine and I hope you never find out. That same month the Masters program I taught at St Mary’s was redesigned and a new program manager was hired. I was not officially informed that my services were no longer required, but I was also not contacted to write up a new lesson plan.

For those of you that were fans of Necrotic Tissue, you know I had to shut the magazine down for financial reasons in 2011. In less than a year I lost my magazine, the part time job I used to help fund my magazine and my full time job that pays all my bills. Good times.

On the plus side, I did get to spend the summer with my family. Job hunting takes persistence and patients, but there was rarely more than two hours of work needed per day unless I had an interview. You’d think that I would have been able to write at least one full-length novel in those five months, but the reality is that I felt guilty doing anything besides job hunt and family time. No writing and no Xbox and not that much TV.

August 2012 started out rough. I’d been short listed for two jobs that hadn’t panned out and I’d had five interviews at Thomson Reuters. It was starting to feel like the last two short list situations, but I kept being called back for more. Then I got not one, but two very special birthday presents.

The first was a great job offer from Thomson Reuters, which I took, and the other was a blog post by AJ Brown. I’ve never met Mr. Brown, but I did publish him in Necrotic Tissue. His blog post can be found here. It was posted just two days before my 46th birthday and one week after I started my new job. Despite being incredibly relieved to have such a great new job, I was far from “whole”. Mr. Brown’s unexpected post did more for me than he will ever know and I thank him for taking the time.

Since then, it’s been a very busy year. I didn’t get to spend as much time with my family this summer, but we also didn’t lose the house. I began a project with a good friend of mine, Jimmy Pudge. We just completed the first draft of a novel, a first collaboration for us both. We plan to have it ready to submit to unsuspecting publishers in September. Regardless what happens it was a great experience. I may even dust off the memoir and get serious about submitting it to unfamiliar memoir markets.

After all, it hasn’t just been quite a year, it’s been quite a life and I hope there is plenty of track left on this roller coaster.

Sledding, Innocent Beginnings

2011-09-23T07:20:00.000-05:00

In my memory, my childhood is broken down into three sections. In many ways, these are three different people that seem almost strangers to each other, yet all of their memories are mine. The first are the early years that ended when we moved to Bemidji. These memories are spotty and disjointed, but the ones I still recall are very strong. The next phase is when we moved to Bemidji the summer I turned five until the divorce when I was eleven. The final stage starts after the divorce in the final months of the 6^th grade, until I joined the Army 25 days after I graduated High School.

While the months leading up to the divorce were the worst of my young life, most of my time at the house on Lake Plantagenet was wonderful. We were only about eight miles outside of town, but in the 1970's for a kid under eleven, we might as well have been in the middle of nowhere. We were surrounded by more acres of woods than we could explore and had a lake and river within walking distance.

What made that time even more special, were my friends. Tom Wilson was a year older and his brother Dan was a year younger. They had two younger sisters, Becky and Sally that we would harass from time to time. The three of us were inseparable and this is a story about one of our favorite pastimes, sledding.

The Wilsons lived right across the road from us. Their house was on a steep hill that overlooked the lake. That hill was perfect for sledding and every winter we spent the majority of our time doing just that.

The bank of the lake was between three and four feet above the water, which made for a cool jump onto the ice at the end of our run. When the snow was thick on the lake, it was like hitting a pillow. When it was wind swept, it felt like our vertebra was being compressing. Of course, that didn't stop us. But as we got older, the hill lost some of it's power to thrill, and the three of us came up with more elaborate death defying games to feed our need for adrenalin. One such attempt was on their long wooden toboggan. It was large enough for all three of us, but it wasn't a sled you could steer. You had to aim it and hope for the best. Under normal circumstances, that would be fine, but of course, that was too boring for us. We took it about one hundred yards into the woods parallel to their house and aimed it downhill. Then we climbed in, said our feeble prayers and pretended we weren't scared so the other two wouldn't think less of us.

I read years later about phenomenon called Groupthink. This was a classic example. We pulled our legs in and pushed off. The sled was slow at first because of the deep untouched snow. My fear turned into disappointment as it seemed we wouldn't even get started let alone get up to dangerous speed. We rocked back and forth, digging our hands into the snow trying to get down to solid ground for purchase.

Without warning, gravity overcame the surface tension, and we went from grunting incremental frustration to an express freight train headed straight for hell via large trees that sprung in front of us so suddenly, we didn't have time to scream.

Tom yelled out instructions from the front and we tried to comply, shifting our weight right or left to avoid a head on collision. We bounced off the side of a couple of larger trees and went straight over the top of some brush all the while picking up speed. I was sure we were dead meat when finally we were through the trees and shooting up the ramp shaped bank. There was a feeling of weightlessness and we all had time to look around as we sailed through the air above the snow free ice.

Tom tensed. He seemed to have figured out what I hadn't. The bank on that section of the hill was a couple feet higher than where we normally sledded, and the solid wood toboggan had no shock absorption. We hit flat and hard on the ice. Pain shot up my spine and I saw stars. Momentum carried us a good twenty feet and then we came to a stop. I fell to my right trying to catch the wind that had been knocked out of me.

Still, we were all smiling like idiots as we stood up and looked back at the path we'd taken. Groupthink or not, we all decided that once was definitely enough.

The rest of the year, we stuck to our normal hill that lead down to where their dock was located in the summer. It was a well-worn path and plenty fast, especially in the early spring when the snow would melt a little during the day and freeze into a nice ice coating as the sun headed for the western horizon. Of course, once the ice started melting on the lake, we were supposed to stop sledding down the hill. After all, shooting down a hill directly toward a receding sheet of ice in March was not safe or particular wise.

Yeah you guessed it. We didn't just try it, but we soon created a sled version of chicken. We wanted to see which one of us could get the closest to the end of the ramp shaped bank without bailing off. To make it more interesting, we were using their metal discs because they were faster on ice and supposedly easier to bail off. It was getting dark and we'd all gone down twice. As you might expect, we ditched very early at first, but then we got gutsier, not wanting to bail inside the last person's mark.

I was wearing a pair of knitted mittens my grandmother had made me. We were all a little soaked from the melting snow, and it was getting cold as the sun sunk deeper. The sky looked like it was on fire as the sun eased behind the lazy clouds that dotted the sky like rows of white puffy tombstones. I gripped the two handles tight and swore I would beat Tom's mark. He'd bailed at the bottom of the hill, right before it started to go up again, barely three feet from open air. I gritted my teeth and shoved off. Each run, the surface became more ice than slush and my run was fast. I figured if I bailed right when I reached the bottom of the hill, my momentum would carry me past Tom's mark. Halfway down, my disc hit a bump and spun me around so I was going down the hill backwards. I couldn't see when to jump off and chickened out. I opened both of the hands and dove to my right.

Nothing happened. I was still sliding backwards and Tom was yelling something. My mittens, so caringly knitted with Grandma love, had frozen together, locking me to the handles. I was going to scream, but then I shot passed Tom's mark and was flying through the air as I had done countless times before. This time however, I didn't land on snow or ice, but skipped across the open water like a rock. One, two, three, then I was submerged as I fell back and the disc filled with water. I had just enough awareness to take a deep breath and I was under the surface and heading for the bottom. The water freed my frozen mittens, but my momentum and weight dropped me like an anchor.

I looked up as I sank and saw I had continued out as I went down and was now well under the shelf of ice. When I hit the silty bottom, I pushed away from the disc and tried to swim up to the surface. My water logged boots and coat held me down. I'd become disoriented and started heading the wrong way but I noticed it was black as death and I remembered the sun. I looked around and saw it was lighter to my left. I started to walk in that direction. I leaned forward and pushed with my legs as hard as I could, digging into the muck with my hands.

After an eternity, I was out from under the ice and there was light and open water above me. It was hard to think, but I knew I had to keep moving. A few more steps and my head broke the surface and I blew out hard and then sucked in the fresh sweet air. Tom and Dan were there to help me up the bank. I sat down to catch my breath.

"I'm sorry I lost your disc."

They weren't worried about the disc but we were all worried about getting caught. How in the hell were we going to hide this? I told them I would just head home and chances were good I could get past my mom and dad and into my room without being seen. Most times, I could do it. Dad would be watching TV and Mom would be making dinner. Half the time they never turned around when I came in. I thought my odds were pretty good. Tom and Dan looked dubious, but I was determined, so I started up the hill. From the edge of the lake to my front door, was about four hundred yards, mostly uphill. By the time I got to the end of the Wilson's driveway, I wasn't cold any more. I was sleepy, but not cold. It was full dark and my clothes had frozen hard. I couldn't bend my knees anymore and was forced to just shuffle ahead.

When I got close to my house, our front door opened and both my mom and my dad ran out toward me. I'd been in trouble before, but my dad had never run at me in order to give me a whipping. Instead of swatting my ass, he scooped me up like a sack of potatoes and took me inside. They were both chewing my ass but they also seemed scared. I'd never seen them like this and I thought I should be scared too, but I just didn’t care.

They finished stripping me naked and then they shoved me into a bathtub of what I thought was boiling hot water. I screamed and thrashed, begging them to let me out. My dad held me down. There were tears in my mom's eyes.

After another eternity of agony as all my nerves felt like they were on fire, they finally let me out and wrapped me in towels and rubbed me hard until I was completely dry. They explained that the water was room temperature. My dad had learned about frostbite and hypothermia in Kodiak Alaska when he was in the Coast Guard. Then they put me in bed with an electric heating pad and extra blankets. It was strange, but with all of those blankets and the pad, I felt cold for the first time since I'd left the lake. I shivered so hard I was sure I would shatter my teeth. It felt as if I would never be warm again. Sometime later, my dad said it was ok to let me sleep. I didn't think it would come, I still shook, but eventually it did. Before I drifted off, I heard them talking. Dad didn’t think I would lose any of my fingers or toes, but he would know for sure the next day if any of them turned black.

I dreamt of black, dead fingers.

Billy and the AC, an EOD Adventure

2011-09-16T18:58:00.000-05:00

Billy was his name. Come to think of it, Billy is still his name. A couple of years ago we reconnected on Facebook and I was shocked that he was still alive. He was a few years older than me and made partying a lifestyle. In an Army full of people one bubble off center, he was bat shit crazy. He was a musician, an orthodontic technician and several other things that I can't discuss due to statute of limitations. I'd hoped he was still alive, but considered it a low probability with prison being a strong second to organ failure.

Billy Hays started sometime around 1986 at the 6oth EOD at Ft. Dix, NJ. We were told he was our clerk. He was a bit more, but that is a much longer and different story. He was also one of the most unique individuals I have ever met in all my days.

I haven't seen him except in photos since 1988, so my description may be a bit off. That's okay, because this blog is about memories, not exact facts. I remember Billy as being about 5'6", thin and wiry. He chain smoked as if he needed them to survive and drank beer like it was water. Billy was and still is from Mobile, Alabama.

Before I reconnected with him, my strongest memory was his laugh. It was infectious. He truly loved life and wanted to share the joy as often as possible. We hit it right off.

The 60^th EOD had a maximum number of 14 members, and I think we often had only 12. There were only 3-4 of us single guys and we were all on the first floor of the same building. Army barracks are Spartan. These were brick cinder block, painted some baby puke yellow and had no light fixtures. The only light in those rooms came from lamps plugged into outlets. There were bunk beds and two lockers per room, though over time, I ended up being the only one with a roommate, despite the fact that I was a sergeant. Of course Specialist Billy fucking Hayes had a private room across the hall.

The Army is a strange place. They have rules that defy logic and in some cases seem to be created intentionally to contradict logic. One such rule dealt with heating. There was no air conditioning in the barracks, but there were heaters. Regardless of what the weather conditions were, the Army in its infinite wisdom decided they would set dates for when the heat came on in the winter and when it turned off in the summer. It didn't matter to the officers in charge that it often got extremely cold before the start date, any more than it mattered that often times in the spring, it would get too hot outside for boiler operated heaters to continue to run. The dates were the dates, period.

The lack of air conditioning was especially cruel in the months of July and August. One of Billy's favorite stories of me was when he found me one day, sitting in front of a computer in my underwear, dripping sweat into an increasingly large pool on the floor. I was playing one of the first PC computer games and I was hooked. I had the window wide open and a fan going full tilt, but 95 degrees with 90% humidity is going to just plain suck.

One day that first summer, I heard from another soldier that he'd been to a place about an hour away that sold used air conditioners for less than fifty bucks. I asked Billy if he wanted to come along. He said sure and off we went. About ten minutes into our trip and I heard the very distinct sounds of a bottle being opened. My head spun hard to my right and there was Billy, drinking an ice cold bottle of beer. He looked at me and smiled.

"What the fuck are you doing?"

"Drinking a beer, Gus, want one."

"No, I don’t fucking want one. I don’t drink and even if I did, I wouldn’t do it in a moving vehicle in the state of New Jersey."

We then got into a debate over the legalities and I informed him that not only would I lose my license, but I would then get busted down to slick sleeve private. He considered the people that made such laws "savages". At that time, drivers in Alabama and Texas could have beer in their hand as they drove, with a rifle on the rack behind them.

He finished it fast and chucked the empty out the window.

"What am I supposed to do with the rest of them?" He asked, displaying three more bottles, the amount he estimated needed for the one hour round trip.

I told him to hold on to them and we would put them in the trunk when we got to our destination. He then proceeded to take out a cigarette and a lighter.

"Nope. Not in my car you don't."

"Jesus Christ, Scott. First I can't drink, now I can’t smoke? What the FUCK?!"

He only called me Scott when he was pissed, all other times, I was "Gus". I gave him the stink eye, and he rolled down the window. I wasn't sure what he was going to do, but I wasn't prepared for him to lean out at over 60 miles per hour and smoke. Sure, it took him awhile to light it, but he managed. I wasn't sure if he was really that angry, or if it was just the wind disporting his features, but either way, he didn't look happy. From that day on, if we went somewhere we took his car.

We got to the place just as a column of vehicles was leaving. All the drivers had Ft. Dix stickers on their windshields and they had picked over the less expensive inventory. Only two larger and more expensive units remained. I looked them over and asked the man how much they were. $65 bucks for either unit was the answer. I had exactly $50 dollars left until payday, which was only a two days away.

"Billy, do you suppose I could borrow $15 dollars from you."

"Sorry Gus, no can do."

I told the man I'd have to pass and without skipping a beat, Billy said, "I'll take one!"

He broke out a wad of cash and paid the man. The window unit was almost as big as Billy.

"Do me a favor, Gus and help me load this big mother into your trunk."

I was too stunned to react, so I picked up the other end and loaded up the unit. We couldn’t close the trunk and had to tie it down. We got back to the barracks and he needed help getting in the room and into HIS window. I went back to my room that was even hotter than when I left and stripped back down to my undies, sweat dripping into an ever growing pool.

About two hours later, there was a knock on my door.

"Jesus Christ, Gus, it's cold in there. Can I borrow some long johns from you? You could hang beef in there. I don't even need to ice my beer."

It was times like that that allowed me to live with the guilt of duct taping him a foot off the ground to a pole in the boiler room that was situated facing the street out from of the 60^th EOD. What are friends for?

Lemon Bars, A Tale of Misspent Youth

2011-09-10T11:07:00.002-05:00

My wife asked me a while ago how I was doing. It was a beautiful summer day and I was at the grill flipping burger and cooking brats. I didn't put a lot of thought into my answer but I meant what I said.

"Baby, as long as there aren't wheels on my house or crackers in my burger, I'm good."

That sums up my view of success. I want to make sure my children are never hungry and they have a stable home with stairs on the inside and no wheels on the outside.

After my parents divorced, my dad moved to the south side of town and we moved to a trailer court on the north end of the lake. My mom knew that she would be trapped working crap jobs the rest of her life unless she got a degree, so she went back to school. She also worked a crappy job. I was a latchkey kid at 12 before I'd ever heard the term.

Money was very tight. Paydays happened, as they often do, every two weeks. By the end of those two weeks, there were times when the cupboards were bare and the fridge was empty. We were around $5,000 under the poverty line and one day my mom sat me down and asked me if I thought we should take welfare. We could get money and food stamps. I could tell that she hated the idea and even though I was not quite a teenager, I had been raised by a man that didn't believe in asking for help to do things you could do for yourself. I told her no. I told her I could work and she seemed relieved. She also told me it would be hard. She was right.

There were two exceptions to our decision not to take a hand out. The first was free lunches at school. I got a pink meal card instead of the blue ones other families bought with cash. During the school year, that one meal made a huge difference and I would often stay late and take advantage of the seconds that were offered at the end of mealtime. Most often these seconds were burgers or pizza, and on rare magical days, there were pizza burgers.

The other exception was butter and cheese. This was a program started by Reagan. The cheese came in five-pound blocks, and the butter in one-pound squares. Each family that qualified got one of each per month. I would like to believe that their choice of distribution locations was unconscious. I would like to but I just can't. They handed out the free cheese and butter at a building right next to Paul and Babe. We waited in a long line that stretched into the parking lot next to the main road that ran north and south through the town. People that didn’t need the free dairy handout would stare and sometimes honk, pointing. I hated that line, but I loved the cheese. I still have occasional cravings.

For those of you that are too young to remember, the recession back in the late 70's and early 80's was a real ball buster. We also had gas shortages and a long line of cars at the gas station was a common site, even in Bemidji. Those were scary times in America and the first major wake up call we'd had since before WWII.

That summer, I got my first job. It was at a restaurant washing dishes. I started off working mostly weekends, but got up to forty hours a week by the time I was fifteen. They didn't have a machine, and all dishes had to go through three large stainless steal sinks, the first with a harsh cleanser, then a rinse and finally plain water. My hands peeled down to the meat from the cleanser and I always smelled like a combination of detergent and grease. I would get a meal and minimum wage, which wasn't too shabby. Still, there were times, especially during the week in the summers, were food got a bit scarce.

Those were the days when I would visit Bill's house around lunchtime. Bill's was a regular hang out regardless of the time of day and I don't remember ever making a conscious choice to go to Bill's in hopes of being fed. It wasn't a plan or a strategy. Or perhaps, I just wouldn’t admit it even to myself at the time.

There were no wheels on their house. It even had stairs, both up and down. That vision of "home", has stayed with me for the rest of my life and it is what I have tried to replicate for my family. We fall short of course, we aren't like Bill's mom, but even close is good enough. Bill's mother is one of the kindness, most generous women I have ever met. Her house was always meticulous and the overall sensation of her home was like being wrapped in a warm blanket of love. In retrospect, it's obvious that she knew about my situation. There are no secrets in a town like Bemidji, but she never let on that she knew and I'm pretty sure she never said anything to Bill.

It seemed that she was always baking or had just finished baking. There were always leftovers in the fridge along with fruit, snacks, cold cuts and Cranapple drink. The pantry was stuffed full of pasta, soups, crackers, cookies and chips. Bill's mom was always smiling, always welcoming and always offering me something to eat, especially her world famous lemon bars.

There was one small problem. Bill was not exactly appreciative of his friends coming over and eating his food. You see I wasn't the only one. Jason would also show up at opportune times. We seemed to be able to sense or perhaps we could smell the lemon bars from miles away. Bill loved those bars more than life itself, as did we all. Resentment began to build, though it was never malevolent. Bill's mom insisted that he be a generous host even if she wasn't around, but she never said he couldn't play dirty. We all loved games, war games especially, and at some point, Bill invented his own game. The goal was simple. Find something that Jason and I didn’t like to eat. This wasn't a fast game, oh no. This was a strategy game that spanned years.

While he mounted his campaign to find food we would refuse, he tried to achieve smaller victories, some that succeeded and some that failed. It was common for him, to hide the tray of lemon bars. Like bloodhounds though, Jason and I could track the scent and find the tray. His love for Cranapple drink was legendary, and there was always a gallon jug in the refrigerator and a back up in the pantry. His mom made it clear that he couldn't refuse our requests to share the tasty beverage, but she wasn't always in the room with us, and on those occasions, he would pull out a juice glass so small, that it was just the next size up from a shot glass. Then he would fill it just over halfway.

In the larger campaign, Jason was the first to fall. His Achilles heal was Raman noodles. Bill was not put off by his earlier failures. Instead, he evolved his tactics. He read the ingredients to Jason. They included pig intestine. Jason said "No thanks." And Bill smiled. Every time Jason came over near a mealtime after that, Bill made Raman noodles. He'd won his first round and I could tell by the look on his face the next time I showed up that he was sure he had the magic bullet to take me down too. I hadn't heard about Bill's victory and came over while he was preparing the noodles. He asked if I would like some.

"Sure."

He smiled and read the ingredients.

"Sounds yummy, serve em up."

It was a small loss, but he took it well, sure he was only one or two food choices away from finding my weakness. Two years later, and it was the summer after our senior year. I'd forgotten about the game and my mom and I were doing better financially. We still qualified for welfare, but we had figured out how to make ends meet and how to stretch the food budget. Our meals were basic, with cod and rice being a staple. When we splurged on burger, it was what is now called 80/20 with a higher fat count and even then only when it was on special. Those were also the days of cheaper generic brands and our house was filled with them, which is one of the reasons I love the 1984 movie Repo Man. A half-pound of burger, mixed with a lot of generic brand crackers, stretches into a pounds worth in size if not actually by weight or substance.

The point was, that I had made a tactical mistake in a strategy game that had lasted more than five years. I literally wasn't as hungry for victory and I'd gotten lazy to the point where I believed I’d already won the game and it was over. But it was never over for Bill. It was a day much like other days, except that I had about a month before I went off to basic training. It was lunchtime and with a resigned sigh, Bill offered to share his tomato soup with me.

"No thanks, I can't stand tomato soup."

He smiled, and there was a look in his eyes that I didn’t recognize. That is until I came over two days later. He offered me some lunch as a gracious host does, as his mother insisted that he always did. He offered to share, his tomato soup. The look was there and this time I recognized it. It was victory.

He'd bested me at last, and just in time. He savored his victory as much as he savored his soup that he ate with brand name crackers. Right then, in that kitchen a month before basic training, I knew.

Most times we don’t appreciate what we have when we have it, especially in our youth. I was as guilty as everyone else for most of my youth, but at that moment in time I knew I would miss that kitchen. I would miss the love and the smells and the comfort. I would miss watching Bill practice the piano while I waited impatiently to hang out. I would miss listening to Garrison Keillor and The Doctor Demento show on the radio. I would miss his basement and the games of chess, miss making his normally reserved father laugh out loud and miss his mother's beautiful smile. I would miss feeling like I had a brother and was part of a family where the mom and dad were still married.

And I would miss the lemon bars.

The Way Home, a DLI adventure

2011-09-04T10:10:00.004-05:00

I’m not sure exactly what is wrong with me, but after the most monumental life achievements, have always been followed by a hallow feeling. This was never truer than when I finally graduated from the Russian basic course at the Defense Language Institute. The battle was won, honor regained, but now the question loomed. What next? This was especially true because the outcome had been so unsure. I didn’t expect to graduate any more than I expected to fail. I knew I had to try and I hoped I would succeed, but I was realistic enough to know that the odds were against me. I knew going in that it would be hard, though even then, I underestimated the difficulty.

Just to be clear, I didn't dominate at Russian language school. I scrapped by in the lower third of my class, my fate in question every one of the 52 weeks including the last. I am not a gifted linguist. In fact, my learning disability inhibits my language abilities, specifically in the case of rules. Grammar rules as well as mathematic rules that are required to solve equations starting in algebra. My specific disability is that the neural pathways that people build up over time through rote memorization in the area of mathematics and language simply don't hold for me. If I manage to keep at something like language, where it’s an immersion course as the one at the Defense Language Institute, I have a chance. I can maintain the pathways with daily work. Once abandoned, even for a short length of time, and they degrade.

I knew this going in, though I didn’t fully understand it the first time I went to DLI in 1984. Even with this obstacle, I managed to survive for 5 months. The second time, in 1991-92, I crossed the finish line just before they took down the tape. Was it vanity that drove me to try again? I've asked myself why many times, before, during and after. The answer that I came up with was this. I felt as if I needed to correct a mistake. I wasn't prepared the first time to meet the challenge. This was my fault alone. I screwed off in high school and failed to learn English grammar because it was hard for me. Before I returned in 1991, I’d finished two years of college and learned what I needed to know. I went back, prepared. I needed to right a wrong I had done to myself. I’d damaged my confidence in myself and needed to get it back. Not to feel as if I had gained or accomplished something great, not to boost my ego, but simply to get back to a state of even. To be able to start fresh without the shame I felt for the initial failure.

After walking across the stage in Monterey in the spring of 1992, I drove back home to finish my Bachelors degree in Russian Area Studies and hopefully move on to a rewarding career. Two things about my trip home were very different than my trip out a year earlier. First, I decided to take the safer southern route as to not temp fate in the mountains again, and second, I wasn't alone. A good friend of mine had been to DLI a few years before and a friend of his had road tripped back to Minnesota with him. He wanted to pay that favor forward by traveling with me. He had friends and family in California so he got a one way ticket and after his visit, I picked him up and we headed home via the southern states.

This trip was going to be different. No blown tires, no deadly mountain passes, no 1,000 mile days, just a leisurely cruise home with a stop off to see the Grand Canyon. The Camaro of Death had a sweet sound system to entertain us on our journey. I had an Alpine tape deck/radio with one of the first 6 disc CD changers in the trunk, 6x9's in the back and an amp under the passenger seat. The sucker would shake the whole car and couldn't be played at full volume without ear protection. Mark had come prepared. He brought a lot of great tunes that I’d never heard before, my favorite being "Jesus Built my Hotrod" by Ministry. We stopped when we wanted to and did take a side trip to see the Grand Canyon. It was a canyon and I guess it was grand, but without the time to really explore, it only added to the anticlimactic funk I was in. Only seeing home again would buoy my spirits, so even though I had the time, I picked up my pace and focused on eating away the miles.

We followed a simple path, staying on I40 until we hit Oklahoma City, then we swung north on I35 all the way home. After our side trip to the Canyon, we spent the night in a cheap motel in Flagstaff, under the names Harry Canyon and Peter Schlen. Schlen being Russian slang for penis and Harry Canyon was a character with a funny sounding name from the movie Heavy Metal. We left the following morning after a greasy truck stop breakfast, and it wasn't until that night when I popped out my contacts that I realized I’d left my glasses at that motel.

Somewhere between Flagstaff and Albuquerque, I got caught behind a convoy of truckers. After watching Burt Reynolds movies, I thought truckers pushed the speed limit, but these boys seemed hell bent on going about five miles under the limit in multiple lanes. When I got an opening, I moved to pass the flat bed. Just as I got close, a large chunk of 2x4 came loose and landed right in front of me, too close to avoid. I could see the nails that decorated the wood and prayed my tires would miss them.

No such luck. I guess I should be grateful that it wasn't a blow out like my trip to California the year before. My rear tire was punctured, but managed to stay inflated as long as I was moving. We pulled off at the next exit. Luck was with us, since not all exits are equal. We pulled into the first store, one of the many variations of Gas and Go's that peppered the landscape. I could just make out the sign of a real garage a few blocks away and went to work jacking up the car to remove the tire. Mark went in for some pop, or soda as it's known in other parts of the country. He came back and it was my turn to use the restroom and clean up a little.

Halfway to the door, I was blocked by a group of five Native Americans. They seemed friendly enough and asked if I had any spare cash. They said they needed some gas money to get back to the reservation. I didn’t hesitate or even give it much though, I just reached in my pocket and pulled out a five dollar bill that was left over from my last purchase and handed it to man that spoke for the group. I went inside, cleaned up, grabbed some road food and went back to the car. I caught the last part of the conversation where Mark was informing them that he was sorry, but he didn't have any cash. It was true and for that matter, I had just barely enough to make it home and cover gas and cheap motels. The group voiced their disbelief and unhappiness with Mark for not donating. The mood was getting ugly until I came up to stand next to him. I hoped the fact I had given them some cash and Mark and I were riding together would be enough to take away their steam. It didn't. They started to get very aggressive and began to threaten us with bodily harm. The trunk was still open and I reached in and pulled out my S&W model 645 and handed the .454 casull revolver to Mark. That was enough to make them leave, but we were pretty sure they would be back.

I got the flat off, tucked my auto in my waistband and rolled the tire down to the garage. It was a sidewall leak and the mechanic didn’t want to patch it, but I begged him. He told me it wouldn’t last for the life of the tire and there was a danger of a blow out. I assured him it would be fine and he did the job in about ten minutes. I could just make out Mark keeping watch at the car. He was still alone when I rolled the repaired tire back as fast as I could and pulled pit crew record time getting that sucker back on the Camaro. I started her it up and aimed for the highway entrance ramp.

Just as we left the quickie mart parking lot, we spotted two pickups approaching fast on a dirt back road that ran behind the main drag of the exit. Each truck was loaded with at least five shooters in the back, all carrying rifles. Our welcome had expired and I leaned on the small block 350 and launched onto the highway. I exceeded posted speed limits and didn’t let off until a hundred miles later when I was sure the two trucks were no longer in pursuit.

The rest of the trip was uneventful with the exception of some negative physical reactions to truck stop chili. A week later I got a small package in the mail. It was addressed to Peter Schlen and contained my lost glasses from the motel we'd stayed at in Flagstaff. I was home, and I was whole again.