Torture

Q: How do you waterboard a fish?

A: Practice catch and release.

This is not a joke.

The Breast Stroke

I wonder if anyone could tell me of any other human activity that is less significant than determining who in the world is the fastest practitioner of the breast stroke. Go ahead, think it over and then add a comment below.


I have misused quite a large amount of the past ten days watching stuff that lacks importance, but commands enormous resources, both human and physical. What amazing effort and investment goes into the Olympic Games. And what does it all mean? I must say, from a collective stand point, not much. Really, what does it matter? Of course it matters to the individuals involved. Fortunes are made. Fame is earned. Adulation is reaped. Power is exercised. And even though by its nature there are far more losers than winners, in the long run a whole lot of self esteem is generated. I guess that is where the virtue of the Olympic Games is to be found. They do make people feel good about themselves – even the breast stroke.


I nominate the breast stroke for the least significant human activity award because of all the events I have wasted time on, it is the least beautiful. Beautifully honed human bodies running, jumping, throwing, lifting great weights, vaulting through the air while twisting and summersaulting, standing perfectly still on one’s hands 3 stories above a pool of water, all of these have an aspect that pleases the eye. Alas, the breast stroke completely lacks this vindication. Swimming in general is mostly out of sight but what can be observed of the breast stroke is particularly ungainly and slow. For my money the best thing about the breast stroke is the name; the breast stroke. I guess it would be good to be able to say, “In my youth, son, I got the gold medal in the breast stroke.”

First Impressions - An Anecdote

I was pedaling along on a popular Seattle bike path when I heard a cry of anguish and frustration. I turned my head just in time to glimpse a young person seated or kneeling on the curb just off the path. There was a moment of indecision as I checked my instinct to go back and be helpful with the awareness that I could be getting into something I would later regret. A bad drug trip seemed perfectly plausible, but there by the trail I thought the trouble would most likely be some kind of bike problem. In a few seconds I hit the brakes and leaned into a looping turn that brought me back to the spot of a fellow human being in some kind of distress.

“What’s the trouble? Can I help?”


A young girl, fighting back tears replied, “I dropped my bone and it fell into this street drain. I’ve been trying and trying to get it out with this thing, but now it is broken and the drain cover won’t come up and I don’t know what to do.” She held up a grabbing device about two feet long.


So it wasn’t a bike problem, but it didn’t appear to be drugs. I climbed off my bike and pushed it to a safe place a few feet away. Maybe, I thought, it is some kind of middle school or high school fad in which kids carry a bone around with a grabbing tool. Maybe they can do tricks with them or something. I might mention at this point that I am not above a little odd behavior myself now and then. In fact one of the reasons for my current ride was to drop off in some wild place a young rat who had come to my rat restaurant the previous evening, where the patrons get something to eat and a new place to live – fairly far from my house. The restaurant is portable and at that moment was on a trailer on the end of my bike. The disposition had already been accomplished. The interested reader will find a fuller explanation of this practice posted on this blog on January 30, 2011.


Reaching for the broken tool I said, “Let me have a look at this.” I began to manipulate it and sure enough, though I squeezed the trigger as hard as I could the pinchers at the working end remained about two inches apart. So I tried a few more times, carefully scrutinizing the mechanism. I twisted the handle which rotated relative to the shaft, but nothing seemed to unscrew. Then randomly I pulled the handle away from the shaft and lo and behold the pinchers closed. I tried it a couple of more times before showing, a bit proudly I must say, what I had discovered. I said, “May I try it?”


“Sure. See it down there? It is covered with eyes.”


I could see it about fifteen inches below the grate, within easy reach of the tool. I reached through a gap and began to work the eye covered bone around on the floor of the drain. I pushed it over to one side and managed to get it up onto one end, leaning against the wall of the cavity. Then I got the pinchers in position and pulled the handle back from the shaft. The pinchers closed and in a second the bone came up to the grate. About half way through this exercise my theory of the situation changed. Once it was up near the top of the drain the young lady reached in, grabbed firmly and pulled it out.


It’s hard to say which of us was happier, me, proud of my work, or her, restored to her phone. We hugged and she offered to buy me a drink. I gave her a few strands of Mardi Gras beads I had found on the road about half an hour earlier. She gave me a Day of the Dead key ring she had brought from home in Baltimore, for reasons she knew not. We hugged again and went our separate ways.

The Year You Were Never Bored

I'd like to suggest, dear reader, that there was a period in your life, of at least six months and maybe even a year when you were never bored.  You may have been frustrated because you couldn't get the people around you to understand that you were hungry, or tired, or not tired, or that you were carrying a very unpleasant load in your britches, but you were not bored.  Every thing around you was incredibly interesting: hair, a button on your clothes, the invisible force field between the warm inside of the house and the cold outside that you could touch but could not see, the thing the big people gave you to play in your food with, the thing they put the food into, the grass and all the other stuff to be found on the floor and ground.  It was your year of being a scientist.  Your first birthday was in there sometime.  It was all so very interesting.  And every once in a while you found something unforgettable - like ice cream. Whatever bad thing might have happened from time to time, you were never bored.

An Amazing Gift

My son-in-law has just returned from six months in Afghanistan working for the US Defense Department. He didn’t like it. Although he was not involved in any combat situation, the living conditions were minimal, he worked long hours, he worked every day and he was away from his family, friends and the comforts of life in this country. As a civilian he did not have to accept the assignment. He had the legal right to simply quit his job and stay home. Given that the unemployment rate is quite high these days and finding a good job is not easy I suppose that there were real economic incentives to deploy, but I believe that he accepted the task in good measure out of a sense of duty. When he accepted the job with the Defense Department several years ago the contract stipulated the possibility of being sent to Afghanistan. To have walked away when his number came up would have been shirking his duty to the government and his sense of obligation to provide for his family. He has not said as much to me, but I believe this to be the fact. While he was gone our daughter brought her 1 and 3 year old children here to live with my wife and me.


I have a dream that recurs about every six months. It’s not a nightmare. In fact I call it my sweet dream. In it I am again a young father – about 30 years old. My children are little tykes and we are reveling in the pleasures of life at a time when all is promise and potential. In my dream the children do not fight or misbehave. In my waking memory I know that was not always the case, but so it is in my dream.

Our son was born to us when we were 31 and 29 and our daughter came along a couple of years later. In the sixties that was sort of late to be starting a family. One of the side effects of starting a family is that you tend to meet a lot of new people who themselves are parents of young kids. You make friends and start hanging out with these folks. I remember thinking at the time that one’s children do a lot to define one’s age. Though I was in my 30’s, I felt much like a 20 something.

I think a lot about age these days. When people recount to me some incident that they witnessed or heard about on the news I usually ask how old were the people involved? I am keenly aware that most of my life is behind me. I often cogitate on how long I may live, what public works projects, what scientific advances, what political developments will I see. Who of my friends and family will I see pass? In our culture of youth fetish and devotion I am a confirmed and shameless acolyte. And here at the age of 74, my son-in-law has given me six months of living like a 30 year old. I have been living my dream.

Bless you my boy.

July 1, 2012

There was rain this morning.  The clouds hung in an undifferentiated grey blanket not far above my head.  The drops were small, just more than a mist.  They dampened the grass, the trees, my dog, me and even what little sound there was in the park, early on a Sunday morning.  It was what people around Seattle refer to as, a perfect day.

Mildred and Milton

Mildred and Milton Mallard appeared in our yard one afternoon several weeks ago to our delight and that of our 3year old grandson who is staying with us. There’s a pond, but it must be hard to see from above, hemmed in as it is by the house and a bunch of large cedars and maples. I don’t recall any visits by wild ducks in the 40 years we’ve been here. It was around 4:00 PM and we called off whatever it was we were doing outside to leave them undisturbed. Later it became clear that such respect was entirely unnecessary. Walking within a few feet did not trouble them in the least. They stayed into the evening and over that first night, alternating between feeding and floating on the pond and preening and resting on the ground nearby. After a couple of days they flew off taking in their bellies the 20 small gold fish I had put in the pond just a few days before. But they came back. And then they came and went nearly every day as it pleased them. We put some straw near the water’s edge and they slept on it, but never really formed a nest. We never saw any conjugal relations unlike various domestic ducks who have lived with us from time to time. The domestics made a habit of going at it night and day. Millie and Milt got on fine with the chickens who free range in the same space, sometimes even going into the chickens’ pen, but they had a bit more feisty relationship with the pair of crows that seem to be nesting somewhere nearby. For a while they came for the night and were off to work before we were up in the morning. Then their schedule got very random. They’d drop out of the sky like rocks and could take off with an equally sharp flight path. I was very surprised to see it. Then one afternoon, after several weeks, Millie appeared alone. We can only speculate on what happened to Milt. Did he get hurt? Did Millie send him off. Did he find another girl friend and dump her? She certainly seemed forlorn there alone on the water. And now Millie has stopped coming too. I think it was just too painful to go alone to their old familiar places.


As the old song says,



I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places,

That this heart of mine embraces all day through

…

In everything that’s bright and gay,

I’ll always think of you that way.

I’ll see you in the morning sun,

And when the night is new,

I’ll be looking at the moon,

But I’ll be seeing you.