singularity

Censorship

2012-01-17T23:45:00.000-08:00

1/18/2012 NOTICE NOTICE NOTICE NOTICE 1/18/2012

Under the provisions and authority of SOPA and PIPA this blog has been censored because the owner is rude, vulgar and just too damned independent for our taste. Adding this latest material to his FBI file, which was begun in the 1960s, we have also detained him for rendition under the powers granted by NDAA and DHS secret presidential signing order NNNN.

Good riddance, you snarky muthafuckah. Who's laughing now?

Sincerely,

The Man

Ode to Chione

2012-01-17T13:32:00.000-08:00

It's snowing. I was moved to bastardize some poetry.

~~Snowed~~Ode to Chione

with apologies to John Keats and his Ode to Psyche

O Goddess! hear these tuneless tones rung
By rough enforcement and remembrance drear,
And pardon that thy secrets should be sung
Even into thine own ‘cicle-frosted ear:
Surely I imagined, or did I see
The winged Chione with awakened eyes?
I wandered in my gard’n thoughtlessly,
And, on the sudden, cursing with surprise,
Saw two dour creatures, couched side by side
In deepest drift, beneath the whisp'ring flakes
On leaves and barren branches, where there ran
An alabaster mound, scarce espied:

'Mid hushed, cold-rooted flowers with fragrance died,
Blue, silver, and budded Tyrian no more,
They lay dormant with the bedded grass;
Their arms embraced, and their pinions blue;
Their lips touched not, but had not bade adieu,
As if disjoined by soft-handed Hypnos,
While ready to pass kisses unnumbered
With tender eye-dawn of Aurorean Spring:
The winged boy I knew;
But who wast thou, O frozen, fearsome dove?
His Chione true!

Love Post (blog carnival)

2012-01-16T14:43:00.001-08:00

Love Post

(No, that’s not what I call my penis. His name is secret. Don’t ask cuz I won’t tell.)

Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word. Arnold Toynbee.

In Te-Ta-Te-Ta-Ta, Ernie K-Doe says, "Every time I call your name, I get such a thrill I can't explain." Maybe I should just stop there and you should go listen to Ernie, maybe even a couple of his tunes. Then again, I committed to writing a post for the carnival, so here goes.

My writing style tends toward the didactic. My first thoughts about how to compose a post about love for this blog carnival were in the vein of opening with a dictionary definition, followed by some Greek literary allusion(s) and definitions of the four types of love (agape, eros, philia, and storge) as delineated by our soi-disant philosophical ancestors, the Classical Greeks, then on to some more erudite, pontifical, literary excursions into an intellectually superficial explication of the abstract meaning of “love.”

Ain’t dat a load of crap? Sometimes I forget that I’ve embraced a shit-free diet even though I’m far from perfect at sticking to it. I’ll be the first to admit that we in the Christianized West have gone to great effort to separate intellect from emotion, to the detriment of both. Mens sana in corpore sano. That’s the ticket. Our contemporary popular stereotype of segregating people into nerds and. jocks, one OR the other, makes me very sad. Integration of our various selves into our single self is the key. The ability to fully love starts with self-love and, for me, that’s a difficult thing. I’ve been working on it for a while now; I’m getting there.

Then again, there’s that “love languages” concept, which I don’t find totally idiotic. There’s a kernel of sense in there. Interpreting another person’s style of expressing or feeling love can be a tricky business. Lots of aphorisms apply here; I like “assume positive intent.” That covers a multitude of sins. Or miscommunications. Sin is such a pejorative term.

At a simplistic level, I could boil my comments on this subject down to the classic observation that actions speak louder than words. I know a guy who always says, “I love being a dad.” [N.B. This is an exact quote.] Under my concept of assuming positive intent, I take that statement at face value. Saying that is an expression of love. However, over time, I have observed his actions which sometimes seem somewhat at odds with that phrase. I’m privy to the inner workings of my own family; I’m only guessing when I speak of other families’ dynamics, so what do I really know?

I love being a dad. Saying that is an expression of love and I, too, say that sometimes. I know he loves his kids; but his weltanschauung or Platonic Ideal of “love” is perhaps not congruent with mine. And that’s part of what makes talking about love difficult. It’s awfully subjective and our intellectual concept of ourselves and how we assume we might behave in a certain circumstance, spoken blithely to a receptive audience at cocktail hour, is not necessarily the same as our actual expressions or actions when the metal meets the meat.

I would kill or die for my children. And I say that as a(n imperfect) pacifist. Saying that is an expression of love.

Then again, when I’m short on sleep and Chloe pops up at the foot of the bed at 2:00 AM wanting to discuss the whichness of what or how to unscrew the inscrutable, I am sometimes less than delighted to engage with her. Kill or die? Sure. Lose sleep to help her distill her thoughts about some concept she’s been digesting? Well, shit!, I dunno about that. Losing sleep to review some thought process I ran to completion in my own mind a half a century ago because it’s new to her… Well, that’s an expression of love, too.

Blather, blather, blather… I can drone on forever and ever. To paraphrase the line from the movie “The Princess Bride,” there’s not enough time for me to explain (to my own satisfaction), so let me sum up:

If another person is your TOE, that’s love. This is the poem I wrote for Ronnie for Mother’s Day 2009.

You Are

You are:

the sunlight warming my face, reaching me in a bit more than

minute minute minute minute
minute minute minute minute

after origination.

my beguiling moonlight, (reflected stellar luminescence)
illuminating me only a tick more than 1

ONE! A singularity althought not a singularity.

second after its reflection.
(angle of incidence equals angle of reflection)

my glowing starlight,
distant, imperious, seeming cold but originating from furious fusion,
impacting my existence in a timeframe varying from as little as 4+ years

lightyears, that is, frantic wavicles
streaming madly through dark matter on their way here

to quite a large number from departure.

my big G, difficult to measure quantitatively,
but preeminent as one of the essential components of my universe.
The big G stands for [whatever I choose from its multiexistence in superposition]

my e, both

Einstein's e, derived from mc^2,
and the e representing that exquisite physical value –
the elementary charge of a subatomic particle.

elementary, my dear Watson.

more constant than Avogadro's number
and I know you can make better (guaca)mole.
Avogadro and avocado are NOT congruent!
Only one relates to (guaca)mole,
the other relates merely to a (simple) mole.

beyond mere quantum mechanics

What's beyond the edge of existence?
What's beyond the edge of that?

in that you are both a dimensionful and dimensionless constant
simultaneously.

my Anthropic principle,
strong vs. weak becoming moot in this context.
No subjective valuation of strong or weak
only what is.

The Observer [watching!]
effecting and affecting my wave-particle duality,
as I am yours. [watching back!]
We achieve complementarity.

the Big Bang of
us=family{Maier}, transcending, somehow,

for OUR quantum

the uncertainty principle.
principles not rules, right?

my universe.
our universe and we're still just in its Planck epoch,
barely moving into our grand unification epoch.

my TOE!

Happy New Year 2011-2012

2011-12-31T12:39:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year from the Cap'n and krewe (and, of course, Admiral Ronnie!) of the Zombie Princess!

We're having our usual New Year's Eve party for the cousins. Amusingly, our own daughters are old enough now that they're going to their own party and Ronnie and I will be ringing in the new year with just the younger cousins and without our own daughters. What's wrong with this picture? (grin)

My best wishes to you and yours for the coming year. As for me,

Shiny! Let's be bad guys! Or big damn heroes! Or both and let history be the final arbiter.

Defending unschooling

2011-12-22T20:06:00.000-08:00

Our fabulous girls are 19 and 17 and we’ve been unschooling for quite a while now, not their entire lives, but quite a while. I’ve never really been one who wanted to discuss unschooling very much. I’m only on a couple of online groups and I rarely say much on those. I go to conferences and enjoy the experience immensely but I’ve never given a talk at one. I appreciate the fact that Ronnie interacts broadly and honestly with people about our lives and I’m willing to rest on her laurels. Thank you, my nonpareil wife!

There are also those long-time voices of unschooling, both online and IRL, who do such a thorough job of explaining, defining, and defending unschooling that they free me to just be an unschooler without having to spend my time discussing it. When someone wants to engage me in a prolonged discourse about educational philosophy, I just direct them to a couple of unschooling websites and go on about my merry way. I greatly appreciate the efforts of those who’ve BTDT for all those many years and made their efforts available to the proletariat (for free).

With our girls at peri-adulthood, I have my own internal, intuitive knowledge of their journey through learning in the wide, wide world. Part of that journey has been in parallel with and/or in congruence with other unschooling families of older teens and young adults and I see the same thing with those lovely people. These are exquisite human beings who make the world a better place just by virtue of their existence and who, I’m sure, will continue to do so throughout their lives. It has been a privilege to call them my friends.

So, when I see people asking those tired, old questions about homeschooling/unschooling, I just kinda shake my head and don’t understand why they just don’t get it. Of course, intellectually, I understand that I “get it” because I’ve lived it for all these years, day by day, week by week, year by year, adventure by adventure and they are speaking from their experience, which is completely different than mine, and from what they see or read about unschooling, which can be awfully misleading. Take, for example, what I saw recently on an unschooling site, which is the thing which prompted me to write this post.

The poster wrote this as his self-introduction:
i'm the father of 3 beautifol girls they are all home schooled [name] (7) and [name] (9) still sleep in cribs bottle feed and none of them are potty trained me and my wife never seen the need for it they are adorable runing around in their diapers [sic]

He then posted this:
hi my name is [deleted] and i'm a member please check out my page and coment on how i'm raising my children i'll let you know this our children are 7, 9, 14 years old and not potty trained me and my wife both decided never to potty train them they are more obediant thin other children there age if more parents kept their kids in diapers there would be less teen pregancy teen drug use exc [sic]

I read those posts and thought about a normal person reading it. Normal being someone who works hard at his job and pays to send his kids to a private school so they’ll get a good education, etc. Culturally indoctrinated, and I don’t necessarily mean that pejoratively. I further imagine Abby Normal reading that and thinking that it’s on an unschooling site and it is, therefore, something that all unschoolers believe in and do. Thinking about that, I feel less snarky about Abby asking the “same old” questions about unschooling. So, I’ll come out of my typical lurker mode to respond to Abby or anyone who wonders if that is how all unschoolers live.

Speaking only for my family and me, our girls did not and do not sleep in cribs; we coslept when they were younger and they got their own rooms when they wanted a private space. They were breast-fed, not bottle-fed. We did not actively pottytrain them but they were both out of diapers before their teen years… well before their teen years. Our girls are absolutely not obedient, or even “obediant,” and we’re very happy about that. As for sex and drugs (and I presume rock’n’roll), I like all three and I leave it to you to decide for yourself whether you do or not.

Make no mistake, leaving kids in diapers into their teens is not an official unschooling position. You can read about actual, practical, real-world unschooling here and here for starters. For a little sci-fi short story combined with my take on unschooling and other educational philosophies, go to my post from Christmas ’08 here.

I hope you had a wonderful 2011 and that 2012 will be even better!

Do your best!

2011-11-06T10:59:00.000-08:00

He tried to do his best
But he could not.
Neil Young – Tired Eyes

“Just do your best.”
“I give 100% (or, illogically but enthusiastically, 110% or 1000%) every day.”
“I tried my best.”
“Leave it all on the field.”
“Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.” -Henry “Red” Sanders

For some reason, I've been thinking about percentages lately. This ideal has been chewing my ass forever. I took it to heart as a child and have only recovered from it (a little) at an intellectual level; I still feel it at my core. Confession: I do not give 100% every day, in the way that those exhortations imply. Maybe I should state that “in the way that I hear these aphorisms”; but I think I’m hearing exactly what they mean. If you have any tendency toward self-doubt, or maybe even merely introspection, isn’t there always the opportunity to question your total commitment? Did I really give a full 100% to that effort? Isn’t there something I could have done… Better? Faster? Cleaner? Prettier? More? Whatever?

“Do you best.“ is not an exhortation, it’s an order, with an implied consequence for failure to do so.

As always, I only speak knowledgeably from myself and of myself, but I’ve known a lotta other guys over the years and I’m gonna bravely generalize from that experience and a Bergsonian intuition, ok? American boys/men are indoctrinated from their earliest age that life is a competition and ya gotta win, presumably by doing your best and giving 100%. The inescapable lemma of that is that you’re competing against others and the way to win is to beat them. They must lose. The very definition of a zero-sum game.

Happily, I got over that particular belief early on. I was never very comfortable with the zero-sum model for human interactions and I was smugly pleased with myself for not being suckered into an endless nightmare life of feeling eternally competed against in all aspects of my existence with the consequence of being the LOSER if I wasn’t the winner. That shit wears ya down. However, the competition model I did hold onto is competition with myself. Well, the “myself” which is actually the demon I allowed to possess me, lo!, those many years ago, the demon whose name is Legion and whose cognomen is (Asinine) Culturally Imposed Beliefs.

A while back I did a post where I referenced my delight with myself for being less interested in defeating my opponent than in bettering my own skills, in the example/metaphor of a tennis game. How superior and enlightened of me. Well, maybe. At a simplistic level, anyway. But let’s dissect that a bit.

In that post I said:
------------------
I'm rushing the net. My opponent just made a poor return which is floating toward me and which I can do anything I want with. I can choose to make the high-percentage put-away shot, which I can make 99 times out of 100 and which will certainly win me the point, game, set, or even match. It's the sure winner. Or I can try for the high-skill shot, the difficult one which I make maybe 30 times out of 100, the shot which challenges me but which doesn't really benefit my score in the game. Quite the opposite, by trying that shot, I have a 70% chance of giving away a sure point.

If the important thing to me is winning this particular game or, more generally, playing the game with an overall philosophy that winning is the most important part of the game to me, then I'll probably choose the 99% sure shot. However, if my philosophy is more inclined toward challenging myself rather than being concerned with a particular outcome of a particular game, then I'm thinking about trying the low-percentage shot.
------------------

Perhaps this is merely the ultimate egotistical version of “Do your best.” Is it possible that what I’m really saying here is that my opponent is so far beneath my level that he’s not really a factor in my game? He’s no more important or meaningful than a practice wall or ball machine. The true competition is against me, the incredible, transcendental, striving-for-perfection demigod incarnate, Frank the Nonpareil, Emperor of Eternity, Imperator of Infinity. Ave, Franko, morituri te salutamus!

In that context, I’m even more of an indoctrinated prole than the guy who follows “Do your best.” to the point of besting his opponents and stopping there. When he’s accomplished that, he can take a well-deserved rest and kick back with a beer and an entertaining football game on the tv, feeling like a winner. The competition against the self is literally eternal and infinite. It’s worse than a zero-sum game. It is the Kobayashi Maru of the soul.

I dislike that idea very much.

Come to think of it, speaking in populist postulates, why throw the baby out with the bathwater? When I wasn’t writing about tennis, I once wrote about perception. In that post, I wisely stated there that perception is everything. Everything. Is competing against myself necessarily a “bad” thing or is it just the psychological baggage I impose on it which makes it something it actually isn’t at its root? For the sake of my own sanity, and peace in my troubled soul, I choose to believe that striving to increase my personal body of knowledge/skills is not congruent with merciless competition against my (inadequate) present self to create a perfected future me.

Many of my friends have written lovely posts about being kind to yourself, as kind as you would be to a cherished friend. That’s something which I, again, accept intellectually, but have never really internalized. I can easily and happily do that for others but it’s difficult to do that for myself.

Maybe it’s as simple as that. If I choose to try/do something to stretch myself simply for its own sake, that’s not only ok, it’s delightful. If I feel compelled to compete against myself mercilessly and endlessly, that’s not the same thing and it’s not a pleasant way to live. I can choose to live happily with myself rather than always living in competition with my current self.

Today, I will NOT do my best or give 100%. Or maybe I will. If I feel like it. But I refuse to feel pressured to do so, especially at unrealistic levels.

The faces of Chloe

2011-11-04T14:41:00.000-07:00

Little Chloe snuggled with Ronnie.

Chloe's official camera smile when she was younger.

Chloe playing some bass (not her bass, Cornelius, but the one that lives there) with the Basement Boys.

When she was little, we sometimes called her "ti rouge." She's very red here.

Chloe and her pal Qacei ready to take the time machine back to the 80s.

Ready for the Zombie Apocalypse.

She no longer needs braces

2011-10-16T19:40:00.000-07:00

That's not just a metaphor but it is also a metaphor.

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Marjorie. She was usually called Marjie but sometimes she was know as Iggie.

She grew.

And grew.

She tried school. It wasn't a great fit.

She leapt into life with unbridled enthusiasm.

She had many adventures.

One day, she decided she wanted to be MJ, rather than Marjorie, and have some holes in her nose.

She had more adventures, including a nice visit to Europe.

And one day, she decided she needed some braces.

Then one day, she no longer needed them.

But in the Duchy of Metaphor, if you ever want some (more) bracing, of any kind, smallish or largeish, the Duke of Metaphor (aka yer dad, sometimes known as me) is always reachable and ready to assist. And the Duke is a stone-cold, awesome genius, yo! He can figure shit out like a motherfucker! Remember dat!

I love you, my little MJ!

Nonsense

2011-10-13T22:59:00.000-07:00

Really? Intellectually, I know some people are gullible and antiscience while relying on pseudoscience to legitimize their beliefs but this kinda shit drives me nuts.

Someone recently posted this chart on FB.

Direct comparison KIGGS study and vaccineinjury.info-survey (September 2011)

Damn! Sure looks like it's a LOT healthier to avoid vaccinations, doesn't it?

The original KiGGS study is abstracted at this site. I recommend reading the whole thing but I’ll quote some highlights here:

The lifetime prevalence of diseases preventable by vaccination was markedly higher in unvaccinated than in vaccinated subjects.

The prevalence of allergic diseases and non-specific infections in children and adolescents was not found to depend on vaccination status.

Protective vaccinations are among the most important and effective preventive measures in modern medicine.

The benefits, efficacy, and safety of protective vaccinations are widely scientifically proven.

Some parents—and doctors—fear that vaccinated children are protected against specific infections, but that their immune systems reacts less to non-specific diseases and that vaccinated children contract infections such as colds, bronchitis, or gastrointestinal infections more often than unvaccinated children. However, the KiGGS data did not show any notable differences in the numbers of infections.

Another fear associated with protective vaccinations is that they might possibly promote the development of allergies. The KiGGS data did not show statistically significant differences in the prevalence of atopic disorders in unvaccinated subjects compared with vaccinated subjects.

In recent years, a number of scientific articles were published investigating potential associations between vaccinations and allergies. In a review article by Bernsen et al. from 2006, which summarized study results about the association of diphtheria/tetanus/pertussis vaccination, measles/mumps/rubella vaccination, and Haemophilus influenzae type b vaccination with atopic disorders, the authors conclude that according to the available evidence, recommended protective vaccinations do not increase the risk of atopic disorders in children.

The current guideline for allergy prevention (as of March 2009) recommends vaccinations according to STIKO recommendations for children and adolescents with and without allergy risk.

In addition to atopic disorders, we further compared diseases—such as obstructive bronchitis, pneumonia and otitis media, heart disease, anemia, epilepsy, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)—in unvaccinated and vaccinated subjects. No relevant differences in the lifetime prevalences were found, neither for different age groups nor between girls and boys. Schneeweiß et al. conducted a comprehensive literature review of vaccine safety, the central part of which was the evaluation of vaccine critical arguments on the basis of the current state of scientific knowledge. None of the hypotheses were found to be valid.

The evaluation showed that vaccinated children and unvaccinated children differed substantially only in terms of the lifetime prevalence of vaccine preventable diseases; as is to be expected the risk of such diseases is notably lower in vaccinated subjects.

[End quotes from abstract of KiGGS study.]

Wow! That's kinda the opposite of what the graph shows, isn't it? It shows that there are significantly smaller values (lower incidence of illnesses and diseases) for nonvax kids than for vax kids but these statements quoted from the abstract say otherwise. What's up?

Yes, that’s certainly what the graph seems to indicate but if you read the label carefully, you’ll note that it says:

Direct comparison KIGGS study and vaccineinjury.info-survey (September 2011)

Let’s parse that.

The blue graph is the scientific study produced under rigorous conditions by KiGGS. It included vaccinated and unvaccinated children. The graph is their summary. The comparison results, and differentiation between vax and nonvax kids, are deciphered at that site I linked in ponderous, statistical detail.

The red graph is the compilation of voluntary parent comments from parents who subscribe to the beliefs of the website called VACCINEINJURY.info. This informal online survey, created by a rabid antivax site and populated by feedback from rabid antivax responders, is not only unscientific, it is antiscientific. And (Do I really need to say it?) worthless, fact-free, anecdotal crap.

To create the seemingly impressive graph at the beginning of this post, the ideologues at vaccineinjury simply took their anecdotal feedback from their true believers and stuck that alongside the actual, scientific KiGGS graph. Voila! Pseudoscience at its most heinous.

Idiocy.

Vaccinate. Don't vaccinate. The choice is yours. But, please, whatever choice you make, do it on the basis of facts not woo-woo.

First approximation

2011-10-11T15:20:00.000-07:00

In my post While we’re on the subject I talked about the difference between limiting and constricting knowledge into discrete “subjects” vs. accepting the reality that all knowledge and information is connected – somehow. Granted, the connection might be tenuous, to you, at this particular time, but at some other time, in some other circumstance, to someone else, it might be quite closely connected. Early in that post I referenced Eratosthenes and his ingenious – and simple – method for calculating the circumference of the earth 2200 years ago, with none of the resources we have today. Remembering Eratosthenes reminded me of another brilliant man whose life overlapped my own, rather than being from two millennia earlier, Enrico Fermi. If you’re not specifically familiar with him, you may recognize his name from the element named after him, fermium (Fm - element 100), or the fermion of quantum physics.

First, I’ll tell you the Fermi story which Eratosthenes’ story reminded me of, then I’ll fill in the how and why I wanna talk about it.

Fermi was one of the transcendental geniuses of his time who worked on the first atomic bomb, the Manhattan Project. All the lead-up calculations to the first test explosion were very blue-sky. They were even unsure of the order of magnitude they might be dealing with. AAMOF, there’s a story that prior to the explosion, Fermi was taking bets on whether or not it would ignite the atmosphere and destroy the entire universe, or at least the earth, maybe just New Mexico. (Yes, Fermi was a funny guy.) But that’s not the Fermi story I wanna tell. It’s this. Because they wanted to know just how much power they were producing, they set up lots and lots of sophisticated sensors and measurement devices to monitor the blast. It took quite a while after the explosion for the calculations to be completed but as the blast happened, Fermi dropped some torn-up pieces of paper and from their displacement, he quickly calculated it at about 10 kilotons.

Eventually, when the rigorous calculations were complete, the official measurement came out at around 18 kilotons. When your margin of error includes orders of magnitude, that’s incredibly precise, especially when your equipment is a torn sheet of paper vs. the most accurate, sophisticated, and expensive scientific instrumentation of the day.

Fermi was famous for his simple approach to any and all problems, even before his torn-paper A-bomb powerometer. He was so significantly know for this that nowadays it’s often called the Fermi method. You may have also heard this concept referred to as BOTE (back of the envelope) calculations, guesstimate, SWAG (scientific wild-ass guess), etc. The phrase I heard most often in my schooling was “first approximation,” thus the title of this post. Unfortunately, in popular culture, most of these phrases have lost the rigorousness and accuracy which the concept actually embodies. This is not something you pull out of your ass; if done properly, it should get you within striking distance of the ponderously-calculated answer.

Because the Manhattan project was a government/military project, a career officer named General Leslie Groves was placed in charge. In an unfortunate juxtaposition of personalities, Groves was a micromanaging, toe-the-line, precision-in-everything, engineering-mentality kinda guy. That’s not bad per se but most of the folks he was now in charge of were more, ummmnn, theoretical than that. Take the brilliant Leo Szliard who was responsible for many breakthroughs in this field. Leo did his best thinking in the bathtub or on long walks. To a guy like Groves, lying in the bathtub for half a day was not an effective use of time. Except, of course, that it was.

One of Groves’ first interactions with the scientists was when he watched them brainstorming in a room and throwing equations on the chalkboard as they talked. He was shocked to see that there was a (minor) mistake in one calculation and he was appalled that they shrugged it off when he pointed it out. Groves and Fermi had a number of interactions like this, based on their different approaches to life.

When I think about those personalities and interactions, I always see Groves as one (or several) of my math teachers. He’s the kind of guy who’d give you zero credit on a quiz or homework for making a simple mistake in your number manipulation when you had successfully defined the problem and attacked it with the proper solution. On an infinitely more significant playing field than a school math class, here were the greatest geniuses of the age, solving a problem which had never been addressed, which was possibly unsolvable, and his input to the process of saving the world from the NAZIs is to correct their arithmetic and complain about their undisciplined work habits.

The original code names for the two test bombs (two because they were experimenting with two different types of atomic bombs) were “Fat Man” and “Thin Man,” ostensibly for the Dashiell Hammett characters. “Thin Man” was later changed to “Little Boy” but “Fat Man” was retained. Despite the official explanation, scuttlebutt maintained that “Thin Man” was named for Oppenheimer and “Fat Man” was Groves, and the former was an homage but the latter was a studied insult, referring not only to Groves’ physicality but also to his fat-headedness.

One reason why we unschool, one of many reasons, each of which has its own significance, is that I hope my children will be free enough to be like Enrico Fermi or James Brown rather than Leslie Groves or Arnold Schoenberg. I know I somewhat emulate Szliard in my bathing habits and Chloe does, too. I guess that’s something.

While we’re on the subject…

2011-09-15T01:46:00.000-07:00

Yes, I’m doing a post on unschooling. Don’t get all wound up or anything; I won’t make a habit of it.

The subject of this post is subjects. What is a subject? What constitutes or limits or defines a subject vs. not-a-subject, more-than-a-subject, an ur-subject, a preter-subject, a super-subject, or real life? As a culture we are so used to the concept of curriculum dividing things into discrete subjects that we don’t stop to question the concept and we fall into that style of thinking pretty much by default. At the recent Good Vibrations Unschooling Conference 2011 in San Diego, a dad who said he’d been unschooling for 13 years stated that he felt the need to teach his 13-year-old daughter algebra and he was getting resistance in his house about it.

There are many unschooling-related posts I could write about that statement but here and now I’m gonna talk about *subjects*. The context of this man’s statement was clearly about sitting her down and doing algebraic formulae and cranking through textbooks/workbooks rather than *algebra* as a component of reality. Why limit algebra to such a dry and uninteresting, and useless, niche when it’s so much more than that?

Go out in the yard and build a shed or treehouse or something and figure out [HINT: There could be formulaic *algebra* involved!] how to cut the roof joists. For big fun, put a hip roof on that sucker. Based on your plan, determine how much of each kind of material you’ll need. Now, that’s algebra. Ya know what else is algebra?

We’ve had the following actual (approximately) conversations in our house.

Algebra, in the generally accepted (limited) sense of that word as a curriculum subject, is a way to discover something that’s unknown by using information which is known. For example, about 200 years B.C., Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the earth with great accuracy using some very simple measurements and calculating from them to determine the full circumference of the earth. (As an interesting addition, he also calculated the earth’s axial tilt, again, very accurately.) Now, a curriculum maven might put that in the subject of geometry. Fine, be that way. To me, it’s all of a piece and *algebra* includes the *history* (as well as other *subjects* which we’ll get to) of calculating unknowns, which in this case, I find pretty fucking amazing. That’s 2200 years ago. Without Googling it, can you think of a way to calculate the earth’s circumference just by being out and about in the world today? And old Eratosthenes had never even taken a class in algebra, or geometry, or calculus. Poor bastard didn’t even have a slide rule, much less a calculator, much less that wonderful series of tubes known affectionately as the interwebs.

A later conversation about *algebra* and history and Eratosthenes and faith vs. science and a whole bunch of other *subjects*, had us talking about Columbus. About 1700 years after Eratosthenes used straightforward, factual measurements to calculate the circumference of the earth, the religious fanatic Columbus decided against Eratosthenes’ conclusions because his Papally-vetted math used different values, which made the circumference much smaller than Eratosthenes’ original calculations (which were accurate), and his religious texts told him that the earth was 6 parts land to 1 part water. [N.B. As we now know, it’s more like 1 part land to 3 parts water.] Relying on these two incorrect axioms, Columbus concluded that he could reach Asia by sailing West and get there safely using the maritime technology available in his time. Why was Columbus so determined to ignore Eratosthenes’ calculations?

As we know from our study of *algebra* (or history or economics or politics or something), Portugal was the big dog in the Asia trade in those days. They were the guys who knew the sailing routes to Asia going East around the bottom of Africa. It was a long and perilous voyage but the payoff was huge and Portugal was fat and happy. The rest of Europe was jealous. They all wanted to have their own pipeline to the wealth of Asia. Columbus was one of many individuals, and governments, who wanted to cash in on that. Columbus finally got the Spanish monarchy to throw him a few bucks and some old boats. You can readily assume they figured it was a cheap investment. If he sailed into oblivion, no big loss; but if he actually made it, HUGE payoff.

See how interesting *algebra* is?

As we know, Columbus ran headlong into the Bahamas before he could get lost across the actual distance from Spain to China in sea miles if there were no landmass between the two. Columbus was extremely lucky in that the maritime technology of his time would not have gotten him across those distances and our current knowledge of *algebra* (or biology or medicine or something) informs us that they all would have died of scurvy even if their food and water and ships had lasted. Fascinating.

I love algebra!

And while we’re talking about the timeframe of 500ish years ago and sailors finding their way, one of the calculating aspects of algebra for them was limited by the lack of accurate time-keeping when determining longitude. The British government, for one, offered immense cash prizes for the invention of an accurate chronometer which would survive the rigors of a long sea voyage and allow navigators to determine a reasonably accurate value for their longitude. I guess that’s the political or financial part of *algebra*.

It’s probably time to do some algebraic calculations now, students. Problem #1: If the population of the Bahamas before Columbus was 40,000 and the Spanish took them as slaves to work on Hispaniola at the rate of 2,000 per year, how many years did it take before the Bahamas became unpopulated? For extra credit, if the Bahamas remained unpopulated for 130 years after that, when did repopulation with African slaves to work plantations there begin?

The ecology part of our *algebra* also tells us that the early explorers described the Bahamas as lushly forested. They were denuded during the plantation period (Remember the African slave question above?) and remain so to this day. Hmmm, is this the sociopolitical-ethical part of *algebra*?

Shit! Sometimes *algebra* is kinda depressing. No wonder students dislike doing algebra problems. If a train leaves Seattle at noon doing 60 mph and I’m not on it, why the fuck do I care what happens to it? It can crash into the one leaving Chicago at stardate 69.666 doing ludicrous speed, or even plaid, for all I care. If you’re worried about it, send Denzel Washington after that motherfucker. I saw that movie. He can do it. Hell, he has the new Captain Kirk to help him. How can they *not* succeed?

Sorry, I got distracted. We were talking about algebra in all its radiant forms and glory.

I love algebra! Ask anybody who attended the Sunday SSUDs meeting at Good Vibrations, they’ll tell ya. But “subjects,” nah, I’m not so interested in subjects, unless maybe there are verbs and objects to go with ‘em. Of course, the verb might be intransitive, then what's the object? That's ok. It's all algebra.

Retro Suave

2011-08-05T20:31:00.001-07:00

I wonder whatever happened to Rico Suave? Ok, honestly I don't really care. I am going Retro Suave this Summer with the purchase of a blue seersucker suit. I haven't owned a seersucker suit in more than 30 years but it's an eternal style, right?

It should be perfect for my sister Chrissy's wedding in New Orleans later this month. Now I think I really need a white Panama hat, huh? As ZZ Top confided, every girl's crazy 'bout a sharp-dressed man.

Awww, yeah you right, darlin'! What's that you say? A bow tie? Bien sur!

Howzabout this one from these guys?

Letters to the dead: Tom

2011-07-19T21:47:00.000-07:00

My friend Ren has a blog where she collects letters to the dead. I've sent one for my friend Rich and one for my sister Marjorie. I have a couple half done, and occasionally worked on, for my mom and dad which I'll finish and send one of these days. This last coupla weeks, I've worked out my own sorrow about Tom by writing one of these letters to him. I'm not yet ready to put the whole thing up but I think I wanna share this part.

...

Tom was graced with a gaggle of granddaughters, so he naturally called ‘em his “boys.” “C’mon, boys, we’re going crabbing.” “You boys help get that stuff ready if we’re going waterskiing and tubing.” Etc. Naturally, they ate it up. Papa was Papa and could do no wrong. Our older daughter, MJ, and her close-in-age cousin Chelsea were Papa’s oldest granddaughters and his go-to boys. When he got a bit older, they’d go out with Papa to drop the crab pots, retrieve the crab-pots, and measure and sort the catch for him. Crab for dinner tonight! They were his clamming buddies, going for their limit and anxious to return home for some fresh seafood.

The bond between Papa and his boys was a wondrous, thick chain of links forged from love, unbreakable, unyielding, and untouchable. Their sadness is profound. I have had many a shirt soaked through with tears over the last couple of days and Papa hasn’t even died yet. Tom has had a long life and a good one. I desperately wish I could make these last days better for him but all that can be done is being done and I guess that has to count as enough. [Clearly, this part was written before Tom died.] It breaks my heart so terribly that I am unable to ameliorate the emotional suffering of our poor, sweet gang of “Papa’s boys.” Their sorrow is vast. Their grief inconsolable. And I am bereft of healing balm for their wounds. This train does not pass through Gilead.

I will not extoll Tom’s virtues here like a grocery list; I would find that demeaning somehow. They are best summed up in the simple sentence: Papa Tom was a good man. Really, when you strip away the chaff, the fluff, the frippery, if you can say that about someone, you’ve said everything that needs to be said.

...

Tom and some of his "boys"

I love you, Tom.

Tom's obituary is posted here.

VirginSSUDs2011 Trip Report - Day 12

2011-07-12T23:05:00.000-07:00

Fly Away Home

This is the end, beautiful friends. I never did like The Doors very much; I really don’t like them now.

We stroll down to the restaurant/bar for some breakfast. It’s another perfect Caribbean morning, comforting and supportive, promising an eternity of delights sufficient to satisfy even a Lotus-eater. We order some food and try to drink in a few final sense-memories. Unfortunately, writing this now, a coupla weeks later, that morning melds into all the others, which is perhaps not a bad thing. The one thing that stands out is the brainflash I had when I first tasted the watery orange juice which came with my breakfast.

Remember the Three Stooges sketch when they make chicken soup by pouring hot water over a chicken which they’re holding above the pot. That’s what my OJ tastes like, like they poured some water over an uncut orange into a glass and served it to me for a mere $3.95 or whatever. Oh well, I’m already melancholy, some watery OJ can’t make it much worse. So, that’s what’s stuck in my brain about that morning, a Three Stooges sketch, and I’m not even a Stooges fan.

Jon and I had a morning flight scheduled. Ben’s wasn’t until later in the afternoon but he thought he’d accompany us to the airport and see if he could talk ‘em into an earlier flight; so the three of us shouldered our burdens and trudged to the terminal. Jon and I checked in and said farewell and good luck to Ben, then we headed to the security station. This time it was Jon’s turn to have a role in Kabuki Security Theater.

When we caught our crack-of-dawn flight from SEA, they pulled me aside and swiped my hands (for explosives?). Made me wish I’d recently taken a dump without washing my hands after wiping. Rant! Now, leaving STT, they paw through Jon’s stuff, searching perhaps for some self-awareness. They are unsuccessful in their quest and release him to proceed with me to the gate. We settle in for a long day of flights punctuated by airport layovers. A protracted stay at the horrid and detestable SJU was long but uneventful.

Meanwhile, Ben uneventfully makes his way to his home. Good-bye, dear friend. It was magnificent.

A long flight to ORD with a decent layover is followed by a final flight to good, old SEA. Hooray! Ronnie and Chloe meet us at the airport as midnight Pacific Time approaches. We get to the house and crash hard. The next morning, I drop Jon at the Amtrak station in Seattle for his trip to his ultimate destination in Corvallis and the VirginSSUDs2011 adventure is completed, disbanded, and finished. For now.

In perpetuum, fratres, vale atque ave ab hinc iter nobis, olim futurumque.
(Brothers, goodbye and hello forever from here on for our continuing journey.) Fratres/brothers = Ben Lovejoy and Jon Gold

Do I have thoughts, feelings, concepts, action items, etc. which I distilled from this trip? Yes. Yes, I do. And perhaps I’ll share them as I distill them in my own mind into something tangible. For now, I’m content to hold them close and nurture them unspecified, undefined, undifferentiated, and undiluted. Meanwhile, I thank you, Dear Reader, for persevering. I thank the biosphere for sharing its incredible diversity with me. I thank Panthalassa for being and for breeding life. And I thank my incomparable friends for sharing themselves and this adventure with me. You inspire me to be a better person. You are marvels beyond compare. I love you.

VirginSSUDs2011 Trip Report - Day 11

2011-07-12T13:06:00.001-07:00

When shall we three meet again?
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
…or…
Squall, y’all!

Huh? Whazzat? Wow!

I wake in darkness as rain pelts me through the open hatch above my head. Big rain composed of gravid drops, not just a polite, short-lived, featherweight cooling drizzle. Lightning strobes the darkness and thunder follows. Iupiter Elicius bestrides our world in full command of his powers, revelling in their use. Aeolus is clearly off duty in deference to Iupiter as powerful, impatient storm gusts wring cries from our rigging and cause Kokomo to rear against her mooring ball like a frightened mare pulling against the post where her reins are tied. I hear Jon and Ben both up and about so I join them in the saloon. We are about to experience the full power of a classic Caribbean squall.

And, yes, I had been hoping the entire trip that we’d get one good squall so I could use that Shakespeare quote. Nature decided to cooperate on the perfect day at the perfect time.

After dogging all the hatches and ports, the three of us sat on the oval settee in the saloon enjoying the storm. We left the slider open to the cockpit, which was somewhat protected by the bimini, and that allowed us to smell the cool dampness and sharp ozone of the squall. Lightning cracked and strobed, followed by the boom of thunder in decreasing intervals as the heart of the storm blew closer, until the lightning and thunder were simultaneous and the glass ports and fiberglass hull rattled and vibrated sympathetically.

Hoo-boy!

We could see the other boats nearby in the bay, their crews all up and observing, just like us. There were several of those sad Sail Caribbean (or whatever their name is) monohulls crammed full of teens, bursting at the seams like overstuffed sausages, and one of the idiot counselor/leader types took the dink from one to the other. In this weather? Really? You just hadda go yourself, a VHF or phone call wouldn’t do when lightning is striking right here in the anchorage?

Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the timing between the lightning and thunder lengthens as the storm passes over us on its way to Tortola. The full, roiling blackness and heavy rain ameliorates to a light grey and sprinkly drizzle quite familiar to this Northwest boy. Of course, this grey drizzle is about 20 degrees warmer than any Northwest sprinkle.

We’re all awake and this is our day to return Kokomo so we agree to just get started now. We slip our mooing and point Kokomo toward Roadtown. I sit at the helm in just a pair of shorts as the gentle rain caresses my skin and the overcast eliminates the need for sunglasses. Heading in.

About a half-hour out, we call Conch on the VHF and inform them of our position. They ask for us to call again when we’re in the road. Will do. As we enter the road we call again and they send a dink out with a “harbor pilot” to drive Kokomo to the fuel dock. It’s kinda interesting that they don’t trust their customers to dock/undock from their own marina but allow them to run free around the rest of the islands. Whatever.

As we head for the fuel dock we see a monohull which has grounded itself in the sand by being a bit too casual about the channel. By the time we’ve fuelled up, they have managed to free themselves and are now sticking to the middle of the channel, other traffic be damned. Happily, our fuel bill is only sixty-something dollars. I had expected to pay at least twice that, if not thrice, because we were not penurious in our fuel usage. Hooray for that. Paperwork checkin and we are set until our ferry at 1430. We leave our bags at the Conch office and go shopping in downtown Roadtown.

(Jon Photo)

Roadtown is not Charlotte Amalie (the duty-free shopping mecca of the USVI). We wander a bit, finding a few interesting shops. After a while, we stop for lunch at Pusser’s. Yes, I think I will have a painkiller with my food, thank you very much. Eventually, we head back to Conch, grab a taxi to the ferry dock, and do the ferry thing. This time we remember to try the upper deck in preference to the horrid steambath of the lower. Of course, this trip the upper deck is like a meat locker and we retreat to the comfortable lower deck for our return to US waters.

US paperwork done, we grab a cab to our Best Western Carib Beach Hotel with thoughts of long, aggressively-scrubbed hot showers dancing in our heads. We hafta wait a bit before our room is ready, then we discover that the hot water in the shower is random and brief; but it’s the tropics and a tepid shower is ok. Not what I hoped for but ok. So we’re back in the US of A. Hamburgers are mentioned as a dinner possibility and we ask about a nearby good burger place. The front desk has some suggestions but when we run the numbers, it’s gonna cost us about $50 each to get a hamburger because of taxi prices and we can go eat at the upscale sister Best Western hotel’s nouvelle Italian restaurant for less. Ok, we take the free shuttle to the good Best Western (where the rooms are at least twice as much), and settle in for some al fresco nouvelle Italian.

Maybe we shoulda sprung for the expensive burgers.

All in all, it’s a fine evening, with lots of lovely reminiscences and we eventually return to our room for a good night’s sleep in an actual bed. Me, I missed having Kokomo rock me to sleep.

VirginSSUDs2011 Trip Report - Day 10

2011-07-09T12:35:00.001-07:00

I don’t want nobody to give me nothin’.
Open up the door, I’ll get it myself!

I love James Brown. Jon supplied most of our music from his player on this trip and there was a good bit of James in the mix. Good Gawd! Today we would embody the message of this song. With no openings available with any of the dive operators, we’d simply hafta take care of diving on our own. We don’t need anybody to hold our hands, just rent us some gear and we’ll take ourselves diving.

Yeeee-oooowww! Take me to the bridge!

Or the dive site. Whichever.

The three of us discussed our desires for our last two dives of the trip and consulted the dive guide for possibilities. The one that floated to the top for me was Carval Rock. This is an exposed seamount which breaks the surface as a small islet between Ginger and Cooper islands. It is on the Caribbean Sea side of the islands and is deep and exposed. Perfect for visiting pelagics which makes it a good possibility for us. Unfortunately, the SDC folks informed us that the dive balls had gone missing and had not been replaced. Sadly, this is not an uncommon occurrence.

There’s one dive site called Vanishing Rock. The author of the dive guide we’re using personally calls it Vanishing Boat because on one dive there he came up to find his boat a good way off. He swam hurriedly to the boat and when he reached it he discovered that the entire mooring system was still attached to the boat, having come free from the seabed.

Cross off Carval Rock.

We eventually settle on a site called Ginger Steps. This is a site on the Caribbean Sea side of Ginger Island. It’s a series of rock ledges and sand canyons starting at about 35’, where the mooring ball is, and descending to 100’ at the bottom of the last wall (“step”) whose top is at about 65’. It’s deep and it’s exposed. The potential for pelagic visitors is pretty good. We untie from our mooring and power up Kokomo’s mighty twin diesels, heading for exciting, new adventures. Alone.

It takes some careful looking but we eventually spot the ball for Ginger Steps and tie up. Yep. This site is definitely exposed. Even on our big, stable, wide-body catamaran, we are doing some rocking and rolling. We gear up and I take my role as Divemaster seriously for this experience. These are my wonderful friends whom I love. I do NOT want to lead them into trouble or danger or allow them to fall into danger because of my inattention or incompetence. This will be our deepest dive and we are responsible for our own dive plan and navigation. Safety and responsibility are my bywords for the day. Well, and fun. Fun is ALWAYS a consideration.

We tie a float to the end of a long dockline and stream it from the stern of the dink, which we allow to float at the end of its line from the stern of Kokomo. Now we have a nice, long connection downcurrent. If things get dicey and somebody gets caught downcurrent from the boat, too tired to make the swim on his own all the way back to Kokomo, he can grab the float line or the dink line and pull himself to Kokomo’s sugarscoop. Or in the case of extreme exhaustion, he can just hang on while we pull him in.

The navigation and dive plan are fairly straightforward. We drop down the mooring line and head West down the ledges/steps. When we hit the bottom of the last one at 100’ we turn South and follow the wall until we reach our limit on time or air, whichever comes first. Then we turn East and ascend back up the ledges/steps until we hit the ledge at the 35-40’ mark. Turn North and follow this one back to the mooring. A nice, simple rectangle.

Before the advent of dive computers, divers used “the tables.” These were originally bottom-time tables developed by the Navy which were later converted to something a bit simpler for sport divers. The PADI tables allow a total bottom time of 25 minutes for a 100’ dive. Take an extra 5 minutes and you must do a decompression stop of 3 minutes at 10’. The old-time tables are more merciless than modern dive computers. When you use the tables, you calculate your time for the absolute deepest you’ve been, even if you were only there for a brief moment and the rest of your dive was much shallower. For example, the tables allow 100 minutes at 50’ but if your dive is a mix of 100’ and 50’, you must calculate it as a 100’ dive. For the purposes of simplicity and safety, we were doing a table-style 100’ dive.

Gearing up in the chop required some care and effort but we helped each other and ultimately did giant stride entries from Kokomo’s sugarscoop transom. No backrolls today, folks. At the mooring ball we all agreed that we were ready so I started timing and we descended Ginger Steps. At the bottom of the mooring line, I switched my watch to compass mode and headed West down the steps. We crossed the first sand gully at 60ish’ and saw ray track but no rays. Dropped over the final wall and found the sandy seafloor at 100’. Time to turn South.

(Jon photo)

We cruised along the wall, enjoying the usual reef life but searching and hoping for some big pelagics to cruise by. There. Who’s that? A large, beautiful Queen triggerfish. Ahhhh, lovely. That’s a treat. Now what other unusual sightings will we have?

(Jon photo)

One unusual experience here is the random swirling cold current which occasionally flows over us. As we’ve coasted along this wall we’ve been hit several times with a chilly burst, varying significantly from the basic 85ish-degree embrace we’re used to. Felt like it was in the mid-70s. Brrrr! I looked especially carefully for pelagics when we were in the chillier flow but no luck.

Checking my watch for time and compass heading I discover that it has died. Well, shit. I catch up to Ben who’s near me and ask him to check his watch, indicating that mine is dead and he’s now our official timekeeper. I check air status on all three of us and figure it’s about time to turn East up the steps, now just an approximation because of my dead compass.

Ginger Steps decides to grace us with a fond farewell. A large spotted eagle ray comes cruising from the distance and flows up the wall not far from us. Magnificent. My breath catches in my throat.

(Jon photo)

Now we’re climbing the steps back to the 35’ level. When my depth gauge tells me we’re there, I turn us (approximately) North toward the mooring. As we cruise along this reef, I again check with Ben for time and both guys for air levels. Jon looks at me and cups his hands together which is SCUBA sign-language for “Where’s the boat, dude?” I shrug and indicate that my watch/compass died. We contour along the 35’ reef in a generally Northward direction. Eventually, we do come back to the boat and board successfully despite the chop.

(Jon photo)

We strip out of our gear and have a freshwater rinse. Phew. Time for some hydration and a nice surface interval rest before our second dive. The chop and surge here is not conducive to a pleasant experience, so we free ourselves from the mooring and head for a more-protected spot.

There’s a dive site called Alice’s Wonderland which is not very far from us and it looks calmer there. We motor on over in that direction. There are a coupla dive balls in the approximate area. We tie to the one in shallower, more-protected water and settle down to relax and enjoy our required surface interval.

While we rest, I’ll tell you about Alice’s Wonderland. At one time it was arguably the loveliest reef in the BVI. Sadly, the coral bleaching in recent years has turned this reef into a skeleton of its past glory. Word is that it’s still worth seeing and we’re here so this will be our second dive.

The depth sounder indicates only 25’ and the shallowest parts of Alice’s are listed at 35-40 so maybe we’re way off the tail end of Alice’s or on a different site altogether. Formulating a rigorous dive plan is impractical. We agree to just drop down and look around, staying together and monitoring our air and bottom time. Gearing up is easier in the calmer water and we’re soon all assembled at the mooring line. Down we go for our last SCUBA adventure of the trip.

We soon discover that this is a shallow reef and it’s clearly in sad decline. There are some clusters of living coral and their associated ecosystems but there are lots of dead areas. We peek and poke around, seeing the usual suspects. Then, a pleasant surprise. A large hogfish is cruising for snacks and he doesn’t mind if we tag along.

(Jon photo)

Jon and I swim with him for quite a while before I get tired of the pace. Sad, sad, injured ass. I call my gargantuan fins “turtle-catchers” but in this reduced state I can barely keep up with a grazing hogfish. Oh well, it is what it is and he was very sweet. Finally, it’s time to call it a dive and a day. We return to Kokomo, tired but satisfied.

Now it’s time to head back to the mooring field at Cooper Island to return all this rented dive gear and prepare ourselves for the following morning when we must return Kokomo to the good folks at Conch Charters and depart this island paradise. Thanks, SDC, you’ve provided us with a memorable final day of diving.

The Hesperides come softly, summoning their parents, Erebus and Nyx. With them comes Hypnos and, under his care, we float away on the river Lethe.

VirginSSUDs2011 Trip Report - Day 9

2011-07-08T15:21:00.001-07:00

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

I’m sure some of my dreams were sea-born as I rested sea-borne in my cabin, floating on that sea bourn. I woke slowly and languorously to another idyllic Caribbean morning. No AM diveboat today, an indulgent morning followed by an afternoon dive to the enticingly-named Wreck Alley. As we woke and became part of the day, Ben and Jon thought they might enjoy a snorkel in the area of Cistern Point, just South of our location. I was, again, more in the mood to rest my still-sore butt so I’d have sufficient energy for our afternoon dive and our two-dive adventure the next day; therefore I chose to stay on board and have a lazy morning.

The fellas geared up and hopped in the dink for a run over to Cistern Point. I told ‘em to look for the blue dinghy tie-up ball and waved them off on their adventure. Being a little bit in mother-hen mode, I watched them as they sped away, hoping to see them successfully tie up the dink and drop in for their snorkelling adventure. I saw them speed over the shallows between Cooper Island and Cistern Point. Too far, guys, the dink ball is on this side of Cistern Rock. But here they come, back toward where the dink ball lives. Then, they’re stopping. Ok. Guess they’ve found a spot they like and are happy to drop in there. Then they’re paddling. And paddling back toward Kokomo. Oh oh.

When I’m certain they are indeed distinctly paddling back toward Kokomo rather than some nearby spot to leave the dink while they snorkel, I power up Kokomo’s mighty, twin, three-cylinder diesels and head toward them. When we meet, they explain that the dink prop hit a rock and they now have no propulsion from the dink motor. Oops.

A brief examination confirms that the prop is only a bit deformed but it spins freely on the driveshaft. Clearly some sacrificial shear-pin or its equivalent has broken internally to save the transmission from damage in such an event and we are reduced to rowing or paddling the dink. An indulgent brunch would be a nice substitute for a snorkel, right? We move Kokomo to the mooring ball closest to the dive shop dock to reduce our rowing efforts for the coming afternoon and settle into a comfortable midday. Wreck Alley will be our deepest dive so far, being down at a consistent 85-90 feet as opposed to the maximum Rhone depth of 80ish, shallowing from there to 60 and less.

Lemme tell ya about Martini’s Law. Unlike Boyle’s Law, Charles’ Law, Gay-Lussac’s Law, and Avogadro’s Law, which are actual, scientific laws regarding gasses and pressure, Martini’s Law is more of a homiletic concerning the effects of Henry’s Law, describing the effect of partial pressure of gasses. Without going into the boring details about why, Martini’s Law warns the diver that every atmosphere of increased pressure, approximately every 33 feet, is like drinking a(nother) martini. So, at 33 feet, you’ve had the equivalent of 1 martini, 66 feet equals 2 martinis, etc. The actual effect is from nitrogen, in the form of nitrogen narcosis, aka "rapture of the deep." At the 90+-foot level, you’ve had the equivalent of 3 martinis. Just like alcohol, the effect is subjective. Some people seem to exhibit no impairment. Others seem clearly impaired. A person who experienced negligible effects one day might show significant effects another day. This information will be useful later in this narrative. (wink)

Ok, I’m back. I took a midday break to go to REI with Ronnie. She wound up with a pair of blue Vibram Komodos. (She’s partial to the periwinkle!) They’ve very cool; I think I want some. Anyway, back to the Caribbean.

So in the middle of the afternoon, the SCD boat pulls up to their dock and we row the dink over to meet them. Wonderfully, it will be a dive with just the three of us. A couple of other people tentatively signed up but then dropped out. How sweet is that? Our private guided dive of Wreck Alley. We had read up on this site in the dive guide I purchased at the shop. Our divemaster for this dive, Ria O’Hagen, was the illustrator of the guide and the cover is a depiction of the Beata, which was added to the site in 2000. Cool.

The three of us head over to the site of Wreck Alley in the SCD diveboat with the lovely Ria and her trusty assistant whose name I forget so he’ll be Igor for the purposes of this narrative. We arrive and tie to the dive mooring. As Igor gets us geared up (careful individual attention – nice), Ria gives us the dive briefing. She’ll be monitoring our air carefully because this is a consistently deep dive on multiple wrecks. Rate of air consumption is the key this afternoon. We all notice the excellent level of professionalism during this period. I don’t wanna denigrate BWD but their level of professionalism was a lot more casual than what Ria and Igor are showing us. For instance, Igor drops a long hooka airhose over the side; this is a very nice safety backup if someone runs short of air but still needs to do a longish decompression stop before final ascent to the surface.

I’m liking Ria and SCD very much. And the trusty Igor, too, of course.

Now comes the piece de resistance, the icing on the cake, the sine qua non, as Ria dons her Riasaur dive cap. OMFG! I needs me one of those!

(Jon photo)

Then we’re off to the bottom of the sea to explore four separate wrecks, from the 90-foot Marie L. to the much larger, multiply-named Island Seal/Joey D. The dive mooring is on a reef which sits at about 50’. We descend to the reef then drop over the edge of its wall down to the bare sand bottom at 90ish’, where we encounter the Pat and the Marie L. lying together. After some exploration of these two and the life they support, we swim North parallel to the wall, across an eel garden, to come to the tug Beata.

As we’re exploring the Beata, Ria asks us for our air status. We started with 3000psi. Ben signals that he’s at about 2200psi by flashing 2 fingers, then 2 again. I flash 2 then 1 for 2100psi, Jon signals 1 and 1.

Wow! Really? Jon has been good on air all week; I’ve usually been the low air guy, fighting against the debilitation of my twisted left knee and my damaged right buttock, but now Jon is signaling only 1100psi while Ben and I are still above 2K. Ria takes careful note and, as she confided to us on our return to the diveboat, she picks up the pace a bit to be sure we get done and back to the ascent line in a safe timeframe.

Done with our exploration of the Beata, we swim toward the Island Seal/Joey D. As we survey the length of this sunken barge we notice that she sank upside down and there’s a gap of maybe three feet between the deck, which is the downside of the wreck, and the smooth sand bottom. A bit past midway along the length of this wreck, Ria heads under it crosswise, a distance of about 60’. Oh my! Ben was first in line behind her and later confessed that he hesitated a moment (or two), imagining the possibility of a strong current or undersea quake shifting the wreck and eliminating that 3-foot gap while he was under the boat.

But, ultimately, how could he hesitate when a mere slip of a girl led the way under without hesitation? Ben took a deep breath and kicked his way into the narrow gap, following the rare Riasaur into the dark, constrained unknown.

Safely and successfully surviving our under-wreck passage, Ria queries our air status. Ben signals 1 and 5, 1500psi. Ok. I signal 1 and 3, 1300psi. Fine. Jon signals 1 and 2, 1200psi. Huh? Ria swims over to personally look at his SPG (submersible pressure gauge). How could Jon have gained air when the rest of us were sucking down an additional 700-800 from over 2K to mid-to-low 1K values? Jon’s gauge does indeed register 1200psi and Ria leads us back up onto the reef for some lifeform siteseeing after all our wreck experiences.

Finally, we make our way back to the ascent line, do a safety decompression stop, then clamber back aboard the diveboat, assisted by the enthusiastic Igor. As we chat about all aspects of the dive, Jon’s air reporting is the significant one. Remember Martini’s Law? Jon informs us that the first time Ria asked for air levels, Jon actually had 1900psi but was too narced to think of how to convey 1 and 9 and he just wound up raising his fingers in the 1 and 1 that he reported, rather than the 1 and 9 he intended to report. That was clearly the laugh of the day.

Unlike the cheap beer offered us post-dive by BWD, our hostess and host today offer us slices of homemade cake as we strip off dive gear and ready ourselves for the ride home. How very civilized. Back to the SDC dock and the friendly and customer-oriented staff agree to drop the 6 tanks right at Kokomo, rather than making us try to fit all that in the dink and then row it all back to Kokomo. With 6 tanks and assorted other gear aboard, we are ready for the next day and we wave goodbye to the SDC crewboat as they head back to Tortola for the night.

Thanks, y’all. It was a lovely and exciting dive. Tomorrow, we’re on our own.

VirginSSUDs2011 Trip Report - Day 8

2011-07-07T15:36:00.001-07:00

Once more unto the breach, dear friends...

Morning has broken, like the first morning. So sayeth Cat Stevens or whatever the fuck his name is now. We’re back to our regular morning dive routine. Wake, breakfast, prep gear, and wait for the radio call from the diveboat. Today we’ll be heading back to the Rhone; it’ll be fascinating for the guys to experience this wreck in the daylight after diving on it at night, a completely different experience. A voice from the ether calls out to us, “Kokomo, Kokomo, Kokomo…” and we’re once again welcoming the diveboat alongside for a journey of discovery.

This morning in the crisp light of day the translucent water beckons in a way its nighttime occult version never could. We are not the only seekers summoned here by Apollo’s chariot. There are a couple of other diveboats on the other moorings, all readying divers for their plunge into otherness. We’ll begin our morning with an exploration of the deeper bow section.

Backroll in and dump buoyancy from the BC, descending like a slow-motion skydiver, spread-eagle and eager with anticipation, losing color with depth in rainbow order (Remember ROY G. BIV?) until we exist in a blue world, only lightly tinged with hints of green and perhaps a bit of yellow-ish. If you cut yourself at this depth, the blood looks like green smoke. I recommend against trying it; the ‘cudas are watching closely.

The night shift entities we visited on our previous Rhone dive are somnolent and the day shift is out and about in the Babylonian hurly-burly of the morning. We ghost along the exterior for a while, then come to a point where we can penetrate the wreck. Single-file, we enter the mausoleum of those who perished here a century and a half ago.

Winding back and forth between the ribs and debris, all softened by a century and a half of marine growth, there is a small sense of claustrophobia which is mostly obscured by the intensity of the experience. Mostly. We spend a considerable amount of time enclosed in this sunken tomb before emerging again into the open water. Fascinating. Moving. Intense. All too soon, especially at this depth, our time is up and Boet gives us the signal to head up for a brief decompression stop before surfacing. We hang on or near the mooring line, looking down at where we’ve been, thinking private thoughts, and feeling private feelings.

Then it’s time to surface, climb the gravity ladder (Are you sure we’re not on Jupiter? Ack!), and rest, drink, and recuperate during our surface interval before our second dive. During the interval, our divemasters try to tell the story of the Rhone. They do their best but, bluntly, they are shallow and callow twenty-somethings and they stumble through it like unwilling actors in a high-school play, chewing and expectorating their lines without feeling or meaning. But it’s alright. I have my own internal narrative and apprehension of what transpired those long years ago and what it means in my greater scheme of things now.

Time flows away, moved along by the relentless current of the Great Temporal River, and we prepare for our second dive. This will be to the same sections we visited on our night dive so the comparison will be direct and specific. From their humble beginnings as newly-certified divers on their first actual dives, Jon and Ben are now old hands, after their week of living aboard a boat, snorkelling and diving. We gear up like pros and drop in.

Here now, revealed by the stark light of day, are the sights which were previously alternately obscured by darkness or harshly illuminated by divelight specificity. A large condenser. An immense boiler. Oversize steamfitter wrenches. A waterpump surrounded by dismembered grating. The aft mast and the long prop shaft. The remains of a once-proud mistress of the waves, now lying beneath that surface, broken and dead, her internals strewn over the seafloor, bow and stern sections akimbo, all the harsh lines, angles, and surfaces of a violent death softened and muted by lush, colorful sealife, extravagant in its promiscuous beauty. Wanton life, bred from death, not to be denied.

Once again, we’ve reached the limit of our stay in this realm. We ascend to the mundane surface world, divest ourselves of our survival gear, and Boed speeds us back to Kokomo, delighting in his post-dive beer.

Feel free, O Gentle Reader, to ignore my tone in these last paragraphs. It’s grey and rainy here after several perfectly lovely days and I’m feeling melancholy. It will pass. Diving the Rhone is a magnificent experience and one which can reflect and amplify whatever you bring to it.

A full rinsing of ourselves and our gear with the cockpit shower and we relaxed into a pleasant lunch aboard Kokomo. With only two more days available for diving, we decided to see what we could organize with BWD, hopefully something on the outside of the islands where we might have a better chance to see the big pelagics. Yeah, that mostly means sharks but it does not preclude rays, turtles, etc. Turns out the BWD is booked solid for Day 9 and only doing some shallow reefs on Day 10. Hmmmm. We’ll hafta think about that. There’s a dive shop right here on Cooper. Let’s talk to them.

I hereby confess, I’m still not completely sure who we talked to and wound up diving with. The dive shop proclaimed boldly "DIVE BVI" but the boats were all labeled "Sail Caribbean Divers." I think we were dealing with Sail Caribbean Divers, so I’m gonna call them SCD. Like everyone else, SCD was booked for the morning of Day 9, however, they were willing to talk about an afternoon dive that day and were not opposed to the idea of diving someplace more interesting, like Wreck Alley, for $80 each. Day 10 was no joy with them either, however (again) they would rent us gear for two dives for $30 each as long as we returned it before 1900 on Day 10.

I believe we have a deal.

And with that, we eased into the evening of Day8, tired but satisfied.

VirginSSUDs2011 Trip Report - Day 7

2011-07-05T23:51:00.000-07:00

Going to the Dogs

A traditionally-cultured person might say that three guys on a sailboat ~~marauding~~ wandering around the BVI for days on end uncontrolled and unrestrained by the ameliorating effects of any female presence would be a prime example of the phrase “going to the dogs” so we decided make it official. There’s a small grouping of uninhabited islands between Tortola and Virgin Gorda called generally “the dogs.” Ya got Great Dog, West Dog, George Dog (possibly named by George Foreman, I’ll hafta research that), West Seal Dog, East Seal Dog, and (You explain it cuz I can’t.) Cockroach Island.

So, with the coming of another perfect, soft morning, we slipped the bonds of our mooring, waved adieu to Marina Cay, and went to the dogs.

As you know by now from following this narrative, anchoring is restricted in the BVI to reduce damage to reefs. There are a few day-mooring balls on a couple of the dogs and a couple of diveboat balls, and that’s it. We saw an empty ball at Great Dog with just a couple of other boats there so we grabbed it. This little bay is lovely and I wish it were suitable for an overnight stay. Alas, it is not; day use only. Therefore, we put our best effort into using it fully.

As always, Jon prepped his camera while Ben and I simply put on our snorkelling personae and became bold, skindiving men. Aaaaarrr! We were getting good at this. As you may have noticed, we did not use SCUBA yesterday or today. I was tired from all the dives I did, and even the uninjured Ben and Jon decided that they wouldn’t mind a break from the hectic pace of two dives every morning. Therefore, days 6 and 7 were nondiving days, with a healthy substitute dose of shore activities and lots of snorkeling.

The three of us eased from Kokomo’s dual sugarscoops into the amniotic-seeming welcome of the Caribbean Sea.

Snorkelling the Indians was lovely, a magnificent introduction to what’s below the surface of the Caribbean for my newly-certified friends. The bay at Fallen Jerusalem was a delightful surprise package of abundant life, rich with photo opportunities for Jon and simple viewing pleasure for Ben and me. But Great Dog… Ah, Great Dog proved the saying, “Don’t mess with the big dog!”

The three of us scattered over the extensive reef system in pursuit of our own individual visions. Large schools of tangs, sergeant-majors, and yellowtails hovered off the deep side of the reef. Fat, silvery balls of baitfish shimmered in the shallows. Ever nook and cranny teemed with wrasses and basslets, bright and gaudy as anything from a child’s coloring book. Even better, a lovely special surprise awaited, which heightened things to a new level. As we met up at some point during our explorations, Jon said that he’d seen a couple of squid “over there” and they were just hanging out. Cool! I headed to squidtown.

Sure enough, when I got to the area, there were eight squid hovering in a group in midwater. They backed away a bit when I first arrived but then relaxed as I stayed quiet. We faced each other from a distance of just five feet or so. They hung there, cycling through several color changes, while I just floated and breathed, admiring their beauty, supported by my ancestral home, Panthalassa. Wanna feel connected? Snorkel Great Dog and commune with the squid. I believe there are secrets they know, which they’d love to share, if only we’d listen carefully enough.

I am, sadly, too civilized and too cynical. I left without hearing the Secrets of the Squid. It felt like a profound loss. Then again, what do some dumbass, less-than-a-foot-long cephalopods know?

Meanwhile, in the other direction, Jon was communing with a juvenile Great barracuda. He got some wonderful photos, both of the ‘cuda and of the other denizens of the Great Dog reef system, including a couple of shots of the squid. They may have been doing higher math or discussing philosophy but I suspect they were really just hanging around, shooting the shit, and looking for cute female squid.

After a long morning enjoying the pleasures of snorkelling Great Dog, we rinsed ourselves with the freshwater shower and settled in for some lunch in that delightful spot.

Having had our two-day break from diving, we were ready to do some more SCUBA on the following day, so we got on the radio and arranged another rendezvous dive with BWD for the next morning. Then we set sail on a delightful broad reach. We were headed back to Cooper Island with no expectation of getting ice but looking forward to being picked up the next morning by our little Dutch divemaster. On the morrow we’d be returning to the Rhone for some daytime exploration of the areas we’d seen on our night dive.

A very pleasant sail later, we dropped all our canvas and motored to a mooring ball at now-familiar Cooper Island. And at the end of the seventh day, we rested.

VirginSSUDs2011 Trip Report - Day 6

2011-07-04T23:22:00.000-07:00

Fallen Jerusalem
He beheld the city, and wept over it, saying... and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another.

On the far Southwestern end of Virgin Gorda there is one of those must-visit areas called “The Baths.” It’s called that because it’s a batholitic formation, although people usually mistake the etymology of the name for its many pools and watery nooks among the boulders. The trouble with The Baths is that it is a popular, must-see spot. It is heavily visited and the tourist load is increasingly larger every year.

The first time I visited the BVI, there were no park service balls, you had to anchor off, which is no longer allowed (You must use a ball.), and dinghy ashore. That, too, is no longer allowed. There is one little bay at the farthest end of the area where you could fit one boat with bow and stern anchors to keep you from swinging and make it your own private hideaway for a few daylight hours. The Baths is not a place to anchor overnight, too exposed.

But, as I said, it’s too crowded, too busy, and too controlled for those sorts of hijinks these days. Nonetheless, The Baths are a must-see so ya gotta go see ‘em and simply endure the madding crowd. Except…

The formation which constitutes The Baths continues above and below the water from Virgin Gorda to a separate small islet called Fallen Jerusalem. It is the same as The Baths but less accessible, except that the park service has put two, and only two, mooring balls at Fallen Jerusalem, making this site a lot like The Baths was 30 years ago, except perhaps even better in the sense that only two boats can ever be there at one time.

As we proceeded from Cooper Island (Good riddance, you ice miser bastards!) toward The Baths we could see, even from a distance, that the site was already crowded with boats. But what’s this? Despite the density at The Baths, I believe I see the bay at Fallen Jerusalem empty of boats, completely so, with no other boats on course for that area, and two beautiful mooring balls just waiting for us to choose the better one. Well, happy day!

We slipped quietly into Fallen Jerusalem’s Lee Bay and reveled in our private site. We loaded our snorkel gear and some drinking water into the dink and went ashore. Jon unlimbered his camera and we all set out to explore the fascinating boulder field in that transition zone between water and land. Alone.

After we tired of land exploration, we headed out to snorkel the area. It turned out to be magnificent. The Baths have had so much traffic over the decades that the small reef systems around them have been significantly damaged and degraded. Not so the reefs of Fallen Jerusalem. We saw a lovely variety and plenitude of reef life. We’d been there quite a while and were nearly done when another boat finally took the remaining ball, forcing us to share the area with four other people. Oh, woe! It was a terrible hardship but we held up like men.

We eventually decided we were satisfied with our exploration of Fallen Jerusalem and returned to Kokomo to zip into Virgin Gorda Yacht Harbor, and Spanishtown, to reprovision and maybe get some ice. We passed along the length of The Baths as we proceeded to Spanishtown and eyeballed the dozens of boats moored like cattle in a slaughterhouse holding pen. See ya, suckers! Tied up at Virgin Gorda Yacht Harbor and bought some water, $12 worth. We also spent $2 to dump our garbage with them, then took ourselves ashore to make some groceries, as they say in New Orleans.

A mostly successful shopping trip and grocery storage on board completed, we decided to pay for an extra hour at the dock to do some shopping and maybe eat a meal there. I had to stop by the chandlery to buy a new dinghy lock because I’d thrown the supplied one overboard. Oops. We all enjoyed shopping at the dive store. Jon found the ice cream shop I remembered from my trip with Ronnie and the girls in 2001. Hunger made its claim on our souls and we sat in the al fresco restaurant/bar to order a meal. Whaddaya know? It’s two-for-one painkiller time. Well, well, well. Happy hour indeed. Painkillers all around. Oh, and maybe some food.

Later, with bellies full and whistles wetted (and pain successfully killed) we left the upscale, soulless haven of the marina for something more elemental. The hour dictated that we should probably head to Marina Cay for the night. So we did. A mooring ball just inside the protecting reef and we were safe and snug for the night.

Tomorrow would bring new adventures but for now it would be the night and the stars and the companionship of good friends on a yare craft. Not bad. Not bad at all.

VirginSSUDs2011 Trip Report - Day 5

2011-07-04T21:38:00.000-07:00

Started Hummin’ a Song from 1962,
Workin’ on our Night Dive!
In the Summertime,
In the Sweet, Sweet Summertime.
Night Dive!

It was a day like any other day, assuming, that is, that your “any other day” is one where you’re on a large cruising catamaran in the British Virgin Islands with two other unschooling dads who are pretty much the most fabulous companions you could imagine for such an adventure.

No? Yours wasn't?

Well then, my day was not like your day. Neener-neener. Not that I’m gloating or anything but, well, yes, yes, I am. Sorry. Let’s move on and you'll get a little payback on me for gloating as today's story unfolds.

Because we had our big, exciting night dive planned for the evening, we left our day open, casual, and lazy. After an indolent breakfast, we decided to grab the dink and zip over to the bar to get some ice. Remember the whole ice thing from the previous afternoon where they didn’t have any available but maybe would this morning? Yeah.

So we jump in the dink and fire it up, back away from Kokomo, then, when we shift into forward gear, the engine gently expires. Ten million pulls later (Yes, I did count them and it was ten million at least. Ok?), we still had no power, so we paddled back to Kokomo and I put on my dinghy-engine-repair face. It looks something like this.

Here’s where you get your payback, O Gentle Reader.

Imagine Your Humble Narrator sitting in a dink in the merciless, tropical sun, with an inadequate box of tools, and the top off a small outboard which has been spray-painted flat black at some time in the past, apparently at least a coupla decades ago. Intellectually, we all know that an engine only needs three things to run: air, fuel, and spark. Realistically, we know intuitively that Voodoo is an unspecified but crucial component. I didn’t seem to have my mojo working that morning. With a coupla breaks in the shade of the cockpit with a cool drink, I did ultimately find a bad clog in the fuel line from the tank bulb to the engine connector. After clearing out whatever crud was in there, I continued up the fuel feed, clearing the line all the way to the carburetor. I also managed to remove the sparkplug and saw that it was a bit oily but not too bad. I tried to determine if I was getting a spark but that sun was so bright, I simply couldn’t see a spark if one was there. With the fuel line clear and the sparkplug replaced, I tried a coupla more pulls. With no joy from that, I elected to give up and call the base.

As it turned out, Jon had already called while I was out there messing around and we were expecting a callback from one of their shop dudes. Ok by me. Time for some shade and cool beverage. Phew.

Some time later with no callback, Jon called again and this time the message actually got through. So, with me in the dink with both hands free to play with the motor, and Jon on the phone talking to the shop guy, we began a three-way diagnosis/repair effort. Emergency stop lanyard in place. Check. Fuel bulb squeezed. Check with explanation of cleaning the fuel lines and checking the sparkplug. Give it a try. Ok. Nothing. Nothing. Sputter. Sputter. Start. Running rough but running. There’s my Voodoo. Scientifically, I’m gonna say it was the crap in the fuel line that clogged things up originally and the rest the carburetor got after I cleaned the lines and waited for their callback is what allowed the motor to run again.

You and I know it was really the Voodoo.

And your payback for my earlier neener-neener comes in the form of all that PITA time I spent messing with the dink motor under that merciless Apollonian glare, getting a splotchy, directional sunburn for my efforts. Ack! Oh well, we once again had a working dink motor. Hooray for that.

This is best photo I have of the dink, with Jon and Ben in the shot, and featuring that beautiful, clear, blue water.

But a newspaper person would say I’m burying the lead. This is the day of our night dive. That’s the significant part of today’s narrative, so let’s get to it.

The timing for this dive was to drop into the water as the sun was setting so that we still had some daylight while we geared up and listened to Divemaster Boed (Yes, we were with Boed again.) explain the dive plan. The diveboat arrived at Kokomo around 1800 and we joined a small group of intrepid souls for our adventure into the Stygian realm. A fast ride later, we tied to the dive buoy over the Rhone and geared up while Boed explained how things would go. We were the only boat there. We’d have the Rhone all to ourselves this evening.

As the last glow of orange and red tinged the darkening sky, we all turned on our divelights and dropped in. With everyone in the water and assembled at the descent/ascent line, Boed gave the signal and we dumped positive buoyancy from our BCs, descending into the India ink which had earlier been that lovely, clear cerulean blue we cherished during our daytime experiences.

Floating down into an abyssal darkness which is punctuated by insignificant cones of illumination from the individual lights of your small group of fellow divers, waiting for something other than the descent line to appear in your field of vision, is a deliciously tingly experience. Even an old Bertrand Russell hard-headed pragmatist verging toward an Amazing Randi style cynic like me feels that frisson of alert anticipation when embracing something this outré.

And now for one of my (in)famous brief asides.

Built in 1865, the Royal Mail Steamer Rhone was one of the early iron-hulled ships powered by both sail and steam. At just over 300 feet with a 40-foot beam, she was one of the first ships deemed “unsinkable” by the Royal Navy. Yeah, you know what that means; the proverbial kiss of death. In October 1867 she was in Great Harbour on Peter Island when, as we nautical types say, the glass started dropping. That means that the barometric pressure was falling, which usually indicates worsening weather, or even a storm. In this case, it started dropping like the proverbial rock and the Rhone and her fellow ship the RMS Conway prepared for an unexpected late-season hurricane.

Both ships survived the first half of the hurricane by running their engines at full power to help the anchors keep them in place. When the eye reached them, both captains decided to make a break for it, the Rhone’s captain opting for deep water, which is, counterintuitively, a safer place to be during a storm. Because the Rhone was deemed the worthier craft, all passengers from the Conway were transferred to her and tied in their bunks, as was the practice at the time during storm conditions.

The Conway chose to head for the safety of Road Harbour and steamed away. She was a bit too quick to leave and was caught by the final blasts of the leading edge of the hurricane. She foundered near Tortola with the loss of all hands.

Meanwhile, the Rhone had to drop her main anchor and all its chain because it was snagged. It is now a dive site right in Great Harbour, Peter Island. Freed from her anchor at last, the Rhone steamed for the open ocean just past the cut between Salt Island and Dead Chest Island, the site mentioned in the famous chantey, “Fifteen men on…” Unfortunately, the eye was now past and the hurricane winds slammed the Rhone from the opposite direction, driving her onto the rocks at the end of Salt Island. The ship broke apart, cold water hit the raging boilers causing a massive steam explosion and the unsinkable Rhone went down quickly in two major pieces. Twenty-three crew survived. The passengers were all still tied in their bunks.

Now, the Rhone lies in essentially two sections, the stern in 30-40 feet of water and the bow at 80ish feet. Our night dive would concentrate on the shallower stern and middle section.

There are basically two types of wreck dives that SCUBA users can engage in. The first type is the derelict or defunct boat which is sunk on purpose to hopefully be a starting point for a new coral reef and a fun dive site. This kind of wreck is carefully prepared before it’s sent to the bottom in a pre-chosen spot. Clutter and debris are removed, hatches and ports are removed, access holes are cut into the hull sides, and lots of other prep is done which will make this wreck a safe and fun environment to explore. Even after such a wreck has sat for decades, attracting all sorts of interesting marine life, it is still essentially a safety-engineered divers’ playground.

The other type of wreck is the “natural” wreck. Often, a loss of life was associated with this type of wreck. It has certainly not been cleaned and prepared for divers’ safety and fun. There are damaged sections which could collapse at any time, shifting cargo or bulky material, rotting superstructure which finally drops to a lower level after decades of decay, or any of a thousand other potential deathtraps. Diving a natural wreck can be a dangerous thing. Also, as I mentioned first, when there was an associated loss of life, it has that added emotional element which a diver feels very intensely. Especially at night.

All of that runs through my mind and my emotions as I descend, first into the pure, disorienting, inky blackness and then into something recognizable as landscape as the bottom begins to appear in my divelight along with the scattered wreckage from a tragedy of a century and a half ago.

How can I describe night diving to you when you haven’t done it? Even a brightly-lit day dive feels very much like being an interstellar explorer floating in your antigravity suit over an utterly alien world, breathing your own bottled air because the aliens’ atmosphere is deadly to humans. The lifeforms are at once oddly beautiful and extremely bizarre. They do unexpected things. They burst from their camouflaged hiding place right before your eyes, startling you. Fight or flight? Oh, ok, neither. He’s just zooming away because he was startled by my appearance. I can relax. Temporarily.

Now add darkness to that experience. A profound blackness, relieved only by the small, narrow, pathetically yellowish cone of your hand-held light. Is that its natural wavelength or is it failing? Eek. No, it’s fine. I’m sure it’s fine and my fellow explorers are all close by with their (pathetic) lights if need be. And the bizarre landscapes and odd creatures begin to appear in my cone of vision.

The stark, broken ribs of a dead ship, illuminated in relief by another diver’s light. Immense lobsters peering from beneath a twisted bulkhead. Tools once used by a steamfitter now long-dead, whose remains are perhaps still here with us. A large dog snapper hiding near Jon and using his light to find and devour prey. Devious bastard. Sleeping parrotfish cocooned in their mucous sacs. And on and on. New visions appearing as previous ones fall behind and out of my cone of visibility, disappearing from my ken. Familiar creatures in an unfamiliar reality.

I don’t have the words to describe for you all the thoughts and feelings I experienced on this exquisite night dive. Remembering and mourning all those souls lost during this tragedy, while exulting in the infinite delights of such a wonderful, alien experience.

Go to Jon’s flickr page and look at his photos. Here, starting with the one titled, appropriately, “night dive.” There are only a few from that dive but that’s a few more than I have to show you.

After that dive, we returned to Kokomo for some dinner and a contemplative evening.

VirginSSUDs2011 Trip Report - Day 4

2011-07-03T11:26:00.001-07:00

Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide, wide sea!

Another perfect Caribbean morning with breakfast smells wafting from Jon’s labors over the propane boat stove. Today would be the second day of planned diving but I was opting out and sending the boys off on their own with the pros from BWD while I lazed indulgently on the boat. Remember when I mentioned that on Day1 I had fallen through an open hatch? Well, the fuller story on that is that I was probably lucky I didn’t actually break something. I went through the hatch with my right leg, twisting my left knee and landing hard on the hatch edge at the spot where my glutes meet my lower lumbars, mostly on the right side.

(Jon's photo)

That left knee is the one I’d damaged a coupla times in the past and finally tore the meniscus a coupla years ago, resulting in ‘scope surgery which made it lots better but not perfect. Now that poor, old thing was twisted and swollen. My buttock/lumbar area which had slammed into the hatch edge was very swollen and sore. The first coupla days, I stuck a constant stream of ice packs into the rear of my waistband and borrowed a coupla Vicodin from Jon to help me sleep. Given all that, our two snorkels on Day2 and our two dives on Day3 had really worn me out because I use all those muscles significantly when kicking with fins. In addition to the dives scheduled for this day, we were planning a night dive the following day. I decided that I’d rather skip these day dives and have some energy for the night dive rather than wear myself out so completely from three days of kick-cycles in a row that I’d be too sore to do the night dive.

Night dives are exciting and we were planning one on the wreck of the Rhone. Remember the movie The Deep with Jacqueline Bisset in a wet T-shirt? The underwater scenes for that movie were filmed on the Rhone. I didn’t wanna miss that. It’s a very cool wreck. And did I mention this would be a NIGHT dive? Oh yeah!

So, when BWD showed up, I waved to the boys from the cockpit of Kokomo as they sped off to dive without me. Sniff. They grow up so fast.

I basically spent the morning napping, icing my ass, reading a bit, and just enjoying some quiet time in a beautiful, little anchorage. From what I hear, the fellas dove Soldier’s Bay and Black Forest, famous for its dense colony of black coral, which is now endangered as a result of its popularity as jewelry. I do wish I’d gotten to see that. But as for specifics, you’ll hafta bug Jon and Ben because I wasn’t there.

I sit here now, on the morning of 3 July 2011, with a house full of still-sleeping teens, preparing for our annual Fourth of July festival at the beach, breakfasting on a miniBabyRuth, planning our food contribution for tomorrow’s extravaganza, thinking about making brunch for the gang, but nonetheless, calmly at peace within myself, revisiting that lovely, quiet morning on the water, smelling the salt air, listening to the wind whispering to the rigging and the waves caressing the hull with gentle slaps, seeing the blue of the sky, the green of the land, the blue of the ocean, and the white of the beach sand, and feeling infinite and eternal.

Now would be a good time for me to mention that Jon has blogged about the trip here and posted his photos here. I highly recommend that you visit both places.

Once the boys returned, showered off both themselves and their gear with fresh water, and had some lunch, we decided to head to Cooper Island for two reasons: 1. Little Harbour is a VERY protected anchorage, a little too protected from the cooling breeze, and 2. We needed ice and the guide books said Cooper had ice for sale. We could have obtained ice around the corner on Peter but that complex is currently owned by the Amway assholes and I didn’t wanna give them any business, even the price of a coupla bags of ice. Besides, I had really enjoyed Cooper during past cruises through the islands and was looking forward to sharing a painkiller with the guys.

So we hauled anchor, smoothly and competently I might add, and raised sails, still smooth and competent!, and headed on over to Cooper Island. A bunch of tacking later, we dropped sails and motored to the mooring field, looking for an open ball. Hmmm, pretty damned popular here today. Finally spotted the last available ball and put the pedal to the metal to beat another boat to it. Sorry! Settled in.

Cooper used to be just a beach shack kinda bar run by a coupla guys and their large Rhodesian Ridgeback; but that was a decade and more ago. Now, it’s trying hard to be an upscale resort. We ambled up to the fancy bar to pay for our mooring and buy ice. Barkeep said, “No ice. Maybe in the morning.” I’ll tell you now, out of chronological order, that there was no ice on the morrow, either. Fuckers. Therefore, we didn’t grace them with any of our dollars for their damned yuppie painkillers. We’d get some somewhere else.

Not much else to say about this day. Another lovely dinner by Jon, some pleasant alcoholic beverages, a beautiful sunset, and the coming of Mother Nox with her entourage of stars.

Tomorrow would be our night dive on the wreck of the Rhone, first ever night dive for the guys, first night dive for me on the Rhone. Something to dream about.

VirginSSUDs2011 Trip Report - Day 3

2011-07-02T14:48:00.000-07:00

Take Me Down, Blue Water Divers, Take Me Down

Happy Father’s Day to us! What better way to celebrate this day than on a (Virgin)SSUDs(2011) adventure? Ok, maybe with our families but we do that every year. This was the perfect nonfamily, unusual way to do Father’s Day, with my wonderful SSUDs fellows! I started the day by opening a card Chloe had included in my luggage, a lovely, hand-made one.

The morning tingled with excited tension for more than just Father’s Day. Today we’d do our first SCUBA dives of the trip. Jon and Ben had both just been certified and their only dives had been their checkout dives for their certification classes. This morning’s dives would be their first real-world dives. After another wonderful breakfast prepared by Jon, we powered up the VHF to listen for BWD’s call and began gathering our gear.

I fought my way into the lower half of my skinsuit and left the arms tied around my waist, throwing my long-sleeved white wicking shirt over my upper body, SCUBA booties on my feet, and my bejeweled CAPTAIN’s hat on my head. Mask, fins, snorkel, regulator, gloves, shortie wetsuit, and plastic laminate dive tables and fish id charts in my net bag. Towel and dry shorts ready to hand and valuables in the drybag. Ok, ready for that radio callup.

A short eternity later, we heard the radio call “Kokomo, Kokomo, Kokomo…” Once they knew to look for the catamaran with aqua sailcovers and a LARGE pirate flag flying from the spreaders, they pulled alongside and we boarded the diveboat.

We were greeted there by a disparate group of divers, hip 20-somethings, fat middle-aged guys, a skinny older guy who turned out to be from Ashland, Oregon where Chloe will soon do her Shakespeare Festival internship, and we three oddballs. The captain/divemaster hmmmed at Ben’s and Jon’s newly-minted C-cards then hmmmed again at my ragged Divemaster C-card which was (probably) older than he was. A quick ride had us tied to the diveboat mooring in the area between The Indians and Pelican Island. A short briefing in Dutch-accented English from our Divemaster, Boed (casually pronounced as “Boots”), and we started gearing up to spend an hour or so under the ocean’s deceptive surface. The silent world. The secret world. The crepuscular revealed. Yeah, baby!

Gearing up on a crowded, pitching diveboat is, let’s admit it, a pain in the ass. Eventually, you’re encumbered in what seems like a ton of gear, with awkward, long flipper-feet, and your vision obscured by the mask on your face. Then, ya gotta lean over backwards from your seat on the gunwale and trust that you’ll fall into the water uninjured, with your regulator supplying fresh air to you and your BC inflated to keep you at the surface instead of empty which would allow you to continue to plunge, backwards and upside down, to the seafloor.

You did remember to turn on your tank to allow your gear to work, especially your regulator!, and you did fill your BC before you backrolled, right?

In the same way that we laugh at penguins on land but admire their agility in the water, once you’re in the proper environment, you are, like the noble penguin, no longer awkward and limited. You are weightless, and sleek, and free in three dimensions.

Once everyone is in the water, Divemaster Boed gives us the go-ahead to descend. Everyone raises his/her left hand into the air, grasping the BC control tube, and dumps positive buoyancy. We descend into Mother Ocean, the Panthalassa of Classical Greece. All saltwater in the world is connected; once you enter saltwater you are simultaneously in your particular place but also connected to the entire world. Both comforting and a tad scary.

Floating down into the comfortable, blue world, the awkwardness of the surface disappears; you’re now a creature of the ocean, a three-dimensional being, moving freely and smoothly in a lovely, supporting medium. Fellow swimmers come to greet you, yellowtails, tangs, sergeant-majors, grunts, parrotfish, and on and on. Fans and other soft denizens sway in the gentle current. We explore this new universe, supported and embraced by our original home, Panthalassa.

A timeless time and a distanceless distance later, we’re back at the mooring line, ready to return to the world of gravity. Hand over hand, up the mooring line, following our bubbles to the silver surface. Fins off, and it’s grunt up the boarding ladder with the now-heavy gear pulling you endlessly toward the center of the earth. Resistance is temporarily successful and with gear shed and stripped back to just me in my skinsuit, I sit and breathe ambient air for the first time in an hour. And blow lots of salty snot from my nose. A quick drink of fresh water to clear the palate and I’m ready to head to our second dive.

Once everyone is back aboard, we zoom over to our second dive of the morning. We chat and Divemaster Boet gives a dive briefing while we count down our required surface interval between dives. This one is called Angelfish Reef. Boet jokes that, just as we saw no pelicans at Pelican Island, we’re not likely to see angelfish at Angelfish Reef. We do, however, expect to see a spotted drum, which is kinda rare, and, even cooler, a coupla spotted drum babies. Excellent.

Surface interval done, we once again do the gearing-up process and drop in to the welcoming blue. It feels like going home. Once again we see a wide variety of vibrant reef life and we do find the baby drums. Very cool. And then again we are suddenly out of bottom time and Boet signals us to surface. Sigh.

This time, back aboard the diveboat I strip out of my skinsuit completely and put on my dry shorts and long-sleeve wicking shirt for the ride back to Kokomo. Some fresh water to cleanse my salty palate and I can see Jon and Ben vibrating with excitement and delight. They don’t need to speak to tell me that they now know intuitively that SCUBA is truly a heart’s desire for them. Their faces say it all.

Back at Kokomo, we had some lunch and revisited/re-lived our experiences of the morning. After rinsing all our gear with the fresh-water shower on the port transom top step, we rested a bit then freed ourselves from our mooring to sail to a new overnight spot, anchored in Little Harbour (British spelling, of course) at Peter Island. A pleasant sail took us to Little Harbour which used to be watched over by Percy Chubb III from his house on the hill. He was infamous for shooting his high-powered rifle through the mainsail of people who irritated him by doing unseamanlike things, like dumping their garbage in the bay. Nowadays, his house, which formerly would have been marked on sailing charts as “conspic. white house”, is just a ruin. Tempus fugit. My crew and I completed a smooth and successful deployment of our anchor and we were settled in for the evening, ready for BWD to visit us again the next morning.

And the morning and the evening were the third day. Or fourth, depending on how you count.

VirginSSUDs2011 Trip Report - Day 2

2011-07-01T19:55:00.000-07:00

Pirates and Indians and Cap’n Ben. Oh my!

After our first night’s sleep onboard, I woke to the smell of frying bacon. Ahhhhhh. I don’t think any of us slept well but on the boat on the water you fall into that natural rhythm and Jon was up and at the stove. Following a lovely breakfast, we decided to motor around the corner to the “treasure caves” which were located in the next bay of Norman Is.

Gold coins have been found there over the years, as recently as the 1950s. Historically, pirates used the Virgin Islands as a hangout and scouting area to prey on passing ships and many a rich cargo was kept, at least temporarily, on these islands. It’s widely reported that Robert Louis Stevenson wrote Treasure Island based on the caves and anchorages of Norman Is.

We untied from our mooring ball and motored around the headland to see if we could luck into a spot with the big boat because there are only a few big-boat mooring balls at the caves and they get occupied early. If we couldn’t get an open one, we’d hafta return to our mooring at the bight and dinghy back to the caves because there’s a long dinghy tie-up area where there’s always room. Happily, there was a big-boat ball open and we grabbed it.

Time now to introduce my boys to the joys of Caribbean snorkeling. Ben and I started pulling on our skinsuits. If I were a woman I would detest wearing stockings. Pulling on that damned skinsuit is a chore but I finally got it done. Jon elected to go with a shorty wetsuit and had decided to be an underwater photographer for this trip so he had to prep his camera and housing as well. I was the first to be fully suited and ready so I grabbed my mask, fins, and snorkel, and I settled down on the bottom step of our port transom.

I spit in my mask like a good Neanderthal, cuz only weenies use that fake spit from a bottle, strapped on my gigantic fins, adjusted my mask, put my snorkel in my mouth, and eased into that lovely 85-degree water. A quick scan showed me that the very first fish my pals would see on this trip would be the Great barracuda who was ~~lurking~~ hovering just between our hulls. I quickly raised my head out of the water and said, “Dudes, ‘cuda!” and pointed to his position. Ben was not far behind me and soon joined in, followed quickly by Jon with his camera at the ready.

Once we tired of the ‘cuda, we headed on over to the caves, doing a little fish spotting on the way and seeing the usual proliferation of Yellowtail snappers, Sergeant majors, Blue tangs (Don’t ever ask Chloe about Blue tangs!), several species of parrotfish, and all those cute little wrasses and basslets. There are several caves and all can be entered with snorkel gear. We explored them in turn, going all the way through one, and entering the total dark of another where the smell of bat guano was distinct. Finally, we exhausted the cave experience and returned to Kokomo.

Our next intended stop was a rocky coral-encrusted system just off Norman Island called The Indians. Like most of the good snorkelling/diving spots in the Virgins, it is controlled and administered by their national park service. Anchoring is prohibited, to prevent coral damage, and you must use one of their mooring balls. During busy times, there can be a wait before someone leaves and makes a ball available. We headed directly for The Indians, intending to have lunch en route and/or there. As it turned out, we did hafta circle for a while before a ball became available but when it did we grabbed it and settled in to have some lunch before going for a snorkel on this densely-populated reef.

Naturally, you’re not supposed to feed the fish but we did anyway. Feel free to lambast me. I can take it. The reef system of The Indians is very alive and features a wide variety of fish species. We snorkelled around, occasionally releasing some chopped up meat to those brave souls who swam right up to us. The sun was high and bright, the visibility was good, and the reef displayed its magnificence to us. All the usual fish species were present and most were willing to come right up close for some snackage. Jon snapped and snapped, saving memories for the future. We essentially circled The Indians and returned to Kokomo, tired but delighted.

Some rest and hydration refreshed our energy to the point that we were ready to go for a little sail. Hoisting all our canvas, we went hard on the wind on a starboard tack. Ben took the helm and kept Kokomo in the groove. After a while, I decided this crew was capable of tacking so I gave a short explanation of how it works and then Ben called the tack.

We came around smooth and easy and settled nicely onto a port tack, pretty as you please. Nicely done, boys!

After sailing around a while just for fun, we decided to head back to the bight cuz that’s where Blue Water Divers expected to find us when they arrived the next morning for our first Virgin dive. (Is that redundant? I don’t think so.) Dropped sails like pros and motored to a mooring ball. Hooked up and we were settled for the night. Lovely dinner, beautiful sunset, and some exquisite memories.

Diving tomorrow.

VirginSSUDs2011 Trip Report - Day 1

2011-06-30T15:55:00.000-07:00

Bomba Charger. No, Speedy. No, Island Patriot. Yes, Island Patriot, Conch Charters, Kokomo, and Cap’n Jon. Phew!

Yawn comes the dawn. After hotel checkout, we humped all our gear out to the taxi and took the long, mountain route to the ferry terminal. Free sightseeing because of an extra passenger on our ride. Eventually, however, we worked our way back down to the waterfront and the ferry terminal. Bureaucracy is the universal human constant. Flying to St. Thomas counts as a US internal connection but now we were going international on the ferry ride to the British Virgin Islands and there was paperwork to be done.

Our ferry was scheduled for 0830 so when the Bomba Charger pulled up for an 0825 departure, we lined up. Wrong boat. Ok. The large, beautiful power catamaran Speedy was just down the dock and one of the workers pointed us there. Cool. Much nicer boat than the ancient Bomba, which I had ridden in the late 80s when it already looked old and tired. However, we were not on the lovely Speedy either. Finally, we were approved for the decent-looking, fast catamaran Island Patriot. Boarded and sat on what turned out to be the hot, stuffy lower deck. A one-hour steambath with some Spiderman videogame storyline playing on the tv. Ack!

Jon later confessed that he was distressed by that ride to the point that he feared that our sailing experience would be similarly unpleasant. Happily, that was not the case; but I’m getting ahead of my story.

An hour later, we arrived at the Roadtown ferry dock and got in line to clear customs. A hot, endless time later, we made it through that particular bureaucracy and boarded our special Conch Charters taxi. Our charter was scheduled to begin at noon and we were early so we left our bags at the charter office and walked next door to the pub for some brunch and liquids. We drank and snacked and watched them do final prep on our boat.

At the appropriate time we did a buncha paperwork then started a boat checkout with the delightful Emma. For a decade-old charter boat, Kokomo was in fine shape. Simultaneously with our ongoing boat checkout, our grocery delivery arrived and we loaded all those supplies under Jon’s supervision. While all this wonderful, efficient prep was going on, I managed to step through an open hatch, twisting my left knee and bruising the shit out of my lower lumbars and buttocks, mostly on the right side but with some effect on the left, too. Ouch.

Finally, we were all checked out, food put away, and dink attached. Ready to leave the close, stuffy marina and get out on the lovely, fresh, open water. Despite their lack of sailing experience, Jon and Ben were very efficient at getting the mainsail hoisted and then unrolling the jib. Engines off, we became a sailboat. W00t!

I pointed out our course to Jon and he took over the helm. Cap’n Jon on duty.

A pleasant couple of hours later, we rolled up the jib, dropped the main and motored into the bight at Norman Island to pick up a mooring ball for the night. By radio, we arranged for a rendezvous SCUBA dive for day 3 and settled into our first night aboard. Jon prepared a wonderful meal and we enjoyed our tropical sunset and evening from the cockpit of Kokomo.

VirginSSUDs2011 Trip Report - Day 0

2011-06-30T09:57:00.001-07:00

Leavin’ on a Jet Plane

Our flight to Paradise, aka the Virgin Islands, was scheduled for 0600, so rather than force someone to wake up at oh-dark-thirty to drive us to the airport, Jon and I stayed in a hotel airport the night before. After a nice dinner with our families (cuz Mary and Qacei had driven Jon up and were gonna hang with Ronnie and Chloe for a coupla days), we got dropped at the lovely Running-Hot-and-Cold-Hookers Motel for some sleep before a 0400 shuttle to SEA.

To make a very long story short, our flights were uneventful and we eventually arrived at STT, St. Thomas, USVI. Ben was already there, having arrived on an earlier flight from his home, and he met us at the terminal to help carry our extensive array of luggage to the nearby hotel we’d booked. Luggage dropped in the room, we hit the outdoor bar and sucked down some rum punch refreshment while interacting with the tropical barflies. They seem to be a more interesting class than your typical New Orleans barfly. From the cool, chill of the Northwest, we’d come to the warm, sultry decadence of the Caribbean where the air smells like ancient sins and the wind whispers lascivious secrets to the careful listener.

Paradise.

We were all fairly tired so we hit the sack early in anticipation of a 0730 cab ride the next day to the ferry dock where we’d make our final connection to Roadtown, Tortola, British Virgin Islands, the actual starting location of our tropical adventure.

One Word Meme

2011-06-13T10:45:00.000-07:00

Stolen from Mary

Yourself: anticipatory
Your partner: nonpareil
Your hair: fleeing
Your mother: demanding
Your father: passive
Your favorite item: brain [Sorry, Woody Allen. In your context it is also true that it's my second-favorite organ.]
Your dream last night: forgotten
Your favorite drink: (Zombie Princess) cocktail
Your dream car: Tesla
Your dream home: Caribbean
The room you are in: cluttered
Your ex: forgotten
Your fear: failure
Where you want to be in ten years: relaxed
Who you hung out with last night: family
What you're not: ordinary
Muffins: sugary
One of your wish list items: spacetravel
Time: enough
The last thing you did: cleaning
What you are wearing: smile
Your favorite weather: Caribbean
Your favorite book: yes
Last thing you ate: taco
Your life: lovely
Your mood: happy
Your Best Friends: delightful
What are you thinking about right now: Caribbean
Your car: sticky
What are you doing at the moment: daydreaming
Your summer: busy
Relationship status: perfect
What is on your tv: life
What is the weather like: Seattle
When is the last time you laughed: recently

LIFE is Good Unschooling Conference 2011

2011-06-08T13:42:00.000-07:00

A retrospective in photos.

I am Aeolus, with the assistance of Jon Gold, under the supervision of the uberrobot Gort.

Chloe sez, "You're too loud!" Jeeze, Chloe, maybe you're too old!

The gang's all here. Greybeards and Hot Backup Chicks.

The fabulous Hot Backup Chicks.

Hanging in the park with Ronnie and Kimya Dawson.

Smiling faces.

Happy birthday to me!

2011-04-27T00:13:00.000-07:00

I'll be celebrating my 63rd birthday with family, friends, and music. On my actual birthday, I'll be enjoying a jam with the Basement Boys at the home of my cousins Mary and Steve. MJ and Chloe will probably tag along to help me party. Then, starting Friday, the Greybeards and Hot Backup Chicks will spend the weekend at our house for some more loud, heartfelt rock 'n' roll!

Keep on rockin' in the free world!

Easter 2011

2011-04-23T14:06:00.001-07:00

Today we'll be dyeing Easter eggs. In researching the origins of this tradition, I came across this:

Now, it kinda makes sense.

------------------
Awwwww, Frank, why do you always pick on Christianity?

Well, I pick on Christianity the most because we are mostly a Christian country, most of our holidays are Christian-related, and it's what I was educated in and know best. When Rama-lama-ding-dong rolls around, I'll pick on Islam. When it's the feast day of the angle, I mean, "angel" Macaroni, I'll zing the Mormons. When it's the day to celebrate some multi-armed, part-animal god, I'll essay a jest against Hinduism. I try to stifle my laughter when someone tells me that the problems of humanity are the fault of the Galactic Emperor Xenu for dumping his garbage thetans on earth. I try really, really hard not to laugh. Honest. When I hear that someone is vibrating in alignment with attracting a new car for their household, I just hafta do a little shimmy-shake while imagining myself as a beta particle or even a tachyon and pretending that I have an imaginary friend who spouts banal cliches as spiritual insights.

Being "open-minded" is a somewhat subjective phrase. For me, it means I have no intention of stopping you from following whatever religious or spiritual inclinations you have. However, I don't feel the need to accept silliness without contradicting it. If someone tells me that his god has decreed that the sky is green, I'm not at all interested in changing his mind but I don't want to let that statement go unchallenged. If we point a mutually-agreed-on spectrum-measuring device at the sky and it comes back reading 4500 Angstroms (or 450 nanometers), you can not realistically say that the sky is green. By scientific convention and English usage, that value is labelled "blue." Period. Feel free to believe for yourself that it's green but you're wrong. And you might find me making fun of your belief. I am not so "open minded" that I let every crackpot idea or belief take up residence in my mind.

I leave you with Bertrand Russell and his infamous teapot:

If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

We will call him Clark

2011-03-13T18:12:00.000-07:00

With apologies to Dr. Seuss.

Our kitchen refrigerator is dying. We got it used for free 20 years ago, so it has certainly provided good value! A combination of reviewing Consumer Reports, price shopping online, and real-world shopping, resulted in today's purchase, a GE GSF25IGZBB.

Chloe, who hates any and all changes in and around her life and was reluctant to consider side-by-side fridges at all, walked past many top-freezer models and many similar side-by-sides before clutching almost magnetically to this one which she promptly named Clark.

Welcome to the family, Clark.

Tennis, anyone?

2011-03-11T11:22:00.000-08:00

I used to play tennis somewhat regularly in school and in the years after school before I moved to Seattle. The weather is too inclement here to play outdoors much and I am WAAAAY too cheap to belong to an indoor tennis club. To give you an inkling of how long ago that was, my favorite racquet was my Wilson T2000. Yes, I usually had two or three racquets in my bag, but they were all, at most, normal-head-sized racquets, unlike those hypercephalic things people play with now. In contrast, the T2000 is microcephalic.

Contemporary fat-head racquet:

But this is not a post about the varying morphology of tennis racquet head styles over time, although I can't understand how anyone could ever miss the ball with a head that big. This is mostly about choice in style, life, and lifestyle, I guess. You'll hafta decide for yourself what you think I'm trying to say.

Lemme talk about decision-making at a significant point in a game, tennis being the game in this particular scenario/analogy. I'm rushing the net. My opponent just made a poor return which is floating toward me and which I can do anything I want with. I can choose to make the high-percentage put-away shot, which I can make 99 times out of 100 and which will certainly win me the point, game, set, or even match. It's the sure winner. Or I can try for the high-skill shot, the difficult one which I make maybe 30 times out of 100, the shot which challenges me but which doesn't really benefit my score in the game. Quite the opposite, by trying that shot, I have a 70% chance of giving away a sure point.

If the important thing to me is winning this particular game or, more generally, playing the game with an overall philosophy that winning is the most important part of the game to me, then I'll probably choose the 99% sure shot. However, if my philosophy is more inclined toward challenging myself rather than being concerned with a particular outcome of a particular game, then I'm thinking about trying the low-percentage shot. Yes, it will most-likely lose me that point at that particular time in that particular game; but it will increase my overall skill because simply trying the shot increases my experience with the shot, even if I miss making a point with it that particular time.

That was almost always my choice in tennis and in most aspects of life. At the time I didn't consider it a philosophy; but in retrospect, it was. I would rather improve myself, define that how you will, than simply win whatever game I happened to be playing, whether it's a tennis game I elected to play, or a school class I was required to take. Unlike the typical American high school experience, my high school was intensely competitive and grades were hotly contested. I remember guys arguing with the teacher over a point or two on a daily quiz which would ultimately count for about one-millionth of one percent on the final grade; but that might mean the difference between first card and second card in that subject for the grading period and they wanted that first card because second place is just first loser. I found that approach alien and very tiring.

I would much rather pursue knowledge for its own sake than work to a test. By digging deeper into wave-particle duality to satisfy my own curiosity, maybe I neglected focusing on the specific (limited!) factoids that would be on the physics test and I would fail to regurgitate those factoids to the satisfaction of the tester. No first card for me. Oh darn! Half a century later, I still remember what I learned then and have increased my body of knowledge on that subject. The guy who got first card for that grading period? He's a lawyer who wouldn't know a wavicle if it bit him in the ass or gave him skin cancer. I'm happy with my way. Maybe he's happy with his. After all, he understood the rules that were imposed on him, he chose to play by those rules, and he played to win. And he did. He clearly met the expectations of our society's definition of success.

I chose to play the game differently, just like I played tennis. By societal definitions, I never lived up to their expectations or my potential, and never won the game or even played to win. I was a quitter. However, living by my own standards, I've had a lovely, overall successful (in my own terms) life.

It seems to me that unschoolers tend to adopt a weltanschauung more like mine than like the default societal expectation of accepting the "normal" game rules and playing by them, specifically, playing to win, under the parameters defined by the game itself. Clearly, you don't have to be an unschooler to reject society's game but unschooling in general and unschoolers in particular seem to inevitably gravitate toward the position of inventing their own game. Me, I think life is more fun if you're playing a game of your own choosing rather than one which has been imposed on you, but that's just me.

And I'd still rather go for the challenging shot than the easy winner.

LIFE is Good Dads' Panel 2011

2011-02-24T12:40:00.000-08:00

At unschooling conventions, dads get their very own private time to kick things around without needing to filter their comments to propitiate a possibly-wary audience. This exclusive boys' club is called SSUDs, the Secret Society of Unschooling Dads, and a SSUDs meeting can be a boon for those guys who maybe feel like they're getting the emotional version of a swirly and don't quite know what to think or do about all this unschooling stuff their family is up to. This is a good thing cuz one of the notable exemplars of sexual dimorphism in humans is that the males are generally not real big on sharing their feelings and it's nice to have an opportunity to do so. And sometimes they maybe even get some useful, practical, male-type advice in return.

Because men tend not to share, other types of humans are invariably curious about what and how they think. Therefore, Mary Gold, the Conference Diva herself, has scheduled a Dads' Panel for LIFE is Good 2011. We did one in 2010 and I think it was helpful to a lotta people. This panel will feature several dads who are willing to share their thoughts, feelings, and opinions with others. Anyone and everyone is invited to attend and ask these dads whatever they want, whether it's a philosophical inquiry concerning the unwritten De Rerum Natura of the essence of dadness or a question as to why men like to watch football on tv when they could, instead, be enjoying the pleasures of gardening. (Ooooh, I have a ready-made answer for that one! See #4 here.)

Here's the writeup from the LiG website:

Do you have a burning question for the dads among us? Do you wonder what goes on in the male psyche when the subject of unschooling is the topic under discussion? Have you been curious about what goes down in those SSUDs meetings besides beer and strippers? Here’s your chance to visit that undiscovered country called What Goes On in Dads’ Heads. Join a panel of unschooling dads for a Q&A session. Discover their challenges and inspirations as they answer your questions and share a glimpse into the XY perspective. Moderated by Frank Maier. [Ha! That's me!]

EVERYONE is welcome. That's the point of it.

That includes you! Come to LiG 2011 and bring your questions. See ya there.

WABAC Week

2011-02-23T22:10:00.000-08:00

It's Flashback week on Facebook. FB does some things well and other things poorly. I'm going to gather my week of photos here because it would be difficult to do on FB and it would be difficult to find later if I did manage to do it there.

In terms of flashback week, I've lived in seven decades, actually I'm moving into my eighth; but this is not the Beatles "8 Days a Week," so I have seven photos, one for each day of the week and each of my completed decades. I'll throw in an eighth at the end as lagniappe.

Sunday started with the 40s.

Monday was for the 50s

Tuesday took us to the 60s.

Wednesday led to the 70s. Well, close to the 70s; this is actually from the late 60s.

Thursday brought the 80s.

Friday finished the workweek with the 90s.

Saturday broke the chiliast barrier into the 00s.

And the bonus for the beginning of the 10s.

Aviation and education: Homebuilding and homeschooling

2011-02-04T15:08:00.000-08:00

I love flying in much the same way that I love to learn. That's convenient because ya gotta learn a lotta stuff to fly a plane. There are the intellectual aspects of it and the physical aspects of it. Aviation and education. Lotsa parallels. Even in the sense of school vs. homeschool.

There's a subset of aviation folks who are homebuilders. That means pretty much what it says. In the general world of aviation, there are lots of commercially-available aircraft, from little, one-person planes to the big stuff that the ATPs fly. [Amusing aside about big stuff. The B-52 was called the BUFF, for Big Ugly Fat Fucker. When the 737 came out, it was immediately dubbed the FLUF, Fat Little Ugly Fucker.] But there are some folks who'd rather go it on their own. They don't want to just buy a ready-made, one-size-fits-most plane and fly; they wanna build their own. They're homebuilders, by crackie.

Homebuilders are interested not only in flying per se but also in the design parameters of aircraft and which aspects are most suited to their personal style of flying. Once they decide on that basic concept, they then might look for a kitplane which suits their needs; that's an aircraft which is not commercially certified but which has been designed and made available in parts or as a kit for the homebuilder to put together. Maybe they're more "rugged" than that and they choose a paper design which they then build from scratch. Maybe they have such confidence in their own abilities that they start from the very beginning and design their own plane, then build it.

The best-known example of this breed is Burt Rutan who, from his humble beginnings doing "wind-tunnel" testing with a design mockup on the top of his station wagon, has become the first individual (or, at least, private company) to design a craft which took a man into space. In conjunction with Virgin Galactic, he'll soon be sending passengers into space. Now, *that's* a homebuilder!

The homebuilding universe, like most subcultures, hosts a full spectrum of individuals: living-on-a-shoestring to enormously-wealthy, Marxists to Anarchocapitalists, shy to sociable, etc. Most of 'em get along most of the time because they are identical in their love of homebuilt aircraft and the rest of that stuff is abstract and only worth arguing about at cocktail parties or on the internet. But occasionally, instead of the happy homebuilders' punchbowl being enhanced with a nice splash of 100LL avgas, some big, nasty roach hops in there; and I ain't talking about marijuana debris.

Enter Jim "Captain Zoom" Campbell. The roach in the punchbowl. The fly in the ointment. The snake in the garden. You get the idea.

"U. S. Aviator" magazine hit the stands and Zoom hit the homebuilding circuit, appearing at all the EAA fly-ins around the country, hawking his magazine and his personal credentials as an aviation expert in general and a homebuilding guru in particular. People in the homebuilding community welcomed this new periodical devoted to homebuilts and kitplanes and welcomed the amusing and sociable Zoom to their ranks. Zoom talked up homebuilding. Zoom extolled homebuilding and homebuilders, especially himself. For a few years, he was a self-apotheosized leader in the homebuilding community. Then, reality started showing through the cracks.

His magazine failed to issue on a number of scheduled publication dates. Customers complained. Several kit companies who had advertised with him dropped their advertising. In followup issues which did make it to publication, he excoriated these designs as dangerous and unflyable, whereas he had before praised them. Those manufacturers were also surprised to find bills for continued advertising in their mailboxes from Zoom, for dates long after they had informed him that they were dropping his magazine. He began suing everybody left and right. Anyone who complained about him, mostly on the Usenet homebuilding group, was threatened with police action and the requisite lawsuit. It got to the point where it became an amusing badge of honor to be "Zoomed," that is, to be told that you were being reported to your local police and that a lawsuit was being filed against you. Even I got a low-intensity "zoom," one minus the direct threat of lawsuit in action, merely the threat of *potential* lawsuit for speaking out about Captain Zoom in public. His many public supporters turned out to be mostly sock-puppets, although he maintained a few, genuine, die-hard fans. I can't for the life of me figure out why.

As the court actions piled up and U.S.Aviator folded, folks started digging into the actual background of Jim "Captain Zoom" Campbell. Interestingly, many of his credentials were bogus, as were most of his claims. He had his certificate revoked in 1980 by the NTSB, during which hearing his Narcissistic Personality Disorder was cited. By 1999, his behavior was so disruptive that he was banned from Sun 'n' Fun, the second largest fly-in in the country. Of course, he sued. And, as usual, lost.

But Zoom is still out there, representing himself as an aviation guru of the first water. He now has a web magazine, which I assume is a lot cheaper to provide than an actual paper-and-ink periodical, and still responds to anyone who disagrees with him by calling them libellous, slanderous terrorists (literally!) and threatening them with repercussions, usually police action and a lawsuit. I guess you just can't kill roaches. You certainly can't have a useful discussion with them, especially if they're NPD.

Why are you wasting my time telling me this story, you ask?

It's because I think unschooling has grown and spread enough that we're in a place now where the unschooling versions of Zoom are showing up, offering us their soi-disant expertise and their YouTube videos and their tv appearances. I dislike it. I want to get to the point where they're generally found out to be the con artists that they actually are, who are in it purely for the celebrity and profit, and can be mostly ignored; but I really dislike the thought that they'll probably still hang around after that, eternally selling their snake oil to the new and ignorant.

I'm happy that the unschooling world does have a lot of nonbogus material available online at a variety of sites which have been providing help and support for n00bs for almost two decades.

MLK 2011

2011-01-17T11:01:00.001-08:00

Today I'm motivated to express reason #735 why I dislike Ron Paul's sociopolitical positions. [I'm not even gonna touch on Rand Paul and his stated opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.]

Ron Paul says he's not racist cuz he just wants a "level playing field" for all. Disingenuous at best. I'm old enough, and I know he's old enough, to remember segregated water fountains, etc. He says a collectivist mindset and the government are at the heart of racism and the government is ill-suited to combat bigotry.

I call "bullshit." This is just another example of his John Birch position that socialism is responsible for everything evil in the world and anarchocapitalism would bring us Utopia, like in Somalia. Racism, antipathy to the other, has been with us at least since we've been Homo sapiens sapiens, and probably longer. Blaming it on a "collectivist mindset" is idiotic.

Laws have never been intended to effect a change in peoples' hearts; they're meant to effect changes in behavior, whether it's a law against stealing others' property or a law against refusing to serve people because of their skin color. Therefore, laws are required to combat (acts of) racism. Governments pass laws. Therefore, the government is the PERFECT way to combat racism. QED.

Happy New Year 2010-2011

2010-12-31T21:25:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

2010 featured a lot of wonderful events and feelings but now it's time to look forward to the future. Things we already have scheduled:

January - New Orleans trip for my sister Judy's wedding. Visiting with family and friends, reconnecting with old friends, and eating.
February - Greybeards get-together. Music!
March - Chloe turns 17. Party!
April - I turn, ummmnnn, waitaminit, lemme do the math... 63!
May - Ronnie turns 46. What a PYT she is! She's the best ever! LIFE is Good conference! Sister Judy and her husband, Gary, plus brother Chuck and his wife, Karen, visit Seattle.
June - Sailing and SCUBA in the Virgin Islands with "the guys" while Ronnie keeps the home fires burning. I told you she's the best ever!
July - Annual 4th of July at the Priest Point Beach Club featuring the Priest Point Pirates! Aaarrrrggghhh!
August - Hopefully another trip to New Orleans for my sister Chrissy's wedding.
September - Partying in San Diego at the Good Vibrations Unschooling Conference. MJ's 19th birthday! Wow! Ronnie must be getting old!
October - Halloween, toujours Halloween.
November - Thanksgiving, of course.
December - Christmas!

That's what we have hardcoded into the schedule so far. Hope you're looking forward to a fun and fabulous year yourself.

25 Random Things

2010-12-18T00:21:00.000-08:00

Jake Hessel tagged me on Facebook for this. There may be some duplications from similar things I've done before on this blog.

Before you read my revelations, here are the rules:

Once you've been tagged, write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about yourself. When you're done, tag 25 people, plus the person who tagged you. To do this as a Facebook note, go to "notes" under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions at the beginning, type your 25 random things, and then tag 25 people.

Anyone who knows me knows that I don't tag, so we're just ignoring that part of this little exercise. Here are 25 random brainfarts from me.

1. Death is an old friend; I look forward to it, although I’m not in a hurry to get there.

2. I have more friends than I admit to.

3. My best friend lives in New Orleans and I'm in Seattle. I'd like to hang out with him more often. I'd especially like to take a(nother) long sail with him, like maybe taking his boat from New Orleans to the Caribbean. Ahhhhhh!

4. Many of my/our friends are into vegetable gardening and even ranching-type stuff, at least things like having some chickens. I'm a city boy. That stuff creeps me out. CREEPS me out. Vegetables are in the vegetable section at the grocery and meat is in the meat section, in delightful, clean packages, too, not hanging from a hook as a blood-soaked carcass waiting to be butchered. It'll be a cold day in Hell (Dante's ninth level, as always, being the classic exception) before you see me gardening and we'll be scooping up pails of frozen oxygen to melt for our continued ability to breathe before you see me butchering an animal. I'll have a couple of nice, packaged, boneless, skinless chicken breasts, thank you very much, Mr. Meat-counter Guy.

5. Observers tend to view me as brave, adventurous, and outgoing. Internally, I'm actually afraid of everything, especially other people. My chosen response to fear is to face it, therefore, I engage the thing I fear, which looks like "bravery."

6. I'd like to have a source of methaqualone (Quaaludes) so I could take a couple once in a while for fun. That would be my drug of choice over others I enjoy to a lesser extent, although a nicely-aged red wine is pretty good.

7. Belief in any sort of supernatural woo-woo befuddles me. Organized religion is obviously one of the biggies here but I do not exclude any form of magical thinking. Law of Attraction? Please! Gimme a break. Might as well join a cargo cult.

8. I'm a grammar fascist. We all mistype occasionally, me more than occasionally, and we get colloquial when chatting on the 'net. I accept that kinda thing. However, when I see execrable grammar, Greek syntax (or maybe it's Martian), phonics-inspired spelling of words or phrases which the user mispronounces (and therefore spells very strangely), etc., it makes me cringe. Big-time cringe.

10. I want to go into space. Desperately.

11. I went to a military prep school run by the Jesuits and the U. S. Marines, was a National Merit Finalist, and went to college on a NM scholarship. I figured that was better than relying on one for gymnastics, although I was offered a coupla those, too. BTW, the prep school experience sucked bigtime. It's therefore almost inevitable that I've become an atheist and a pacifist.

12. I was such a rockstar in my youth that my band's 45 rpm single sold on eBay for $1685 a coupla years ago. That's right. One copy of a two-sided single for almost $2K. Yowsa! You can find some info about my group here. We're #31 on that list. Or check the "BHD" label on ZombiePrincess for several links.

13. I was the first person in the world to do a double front sommersalt over the vaulting horse in competition in men's gymnastics.

14. I pick at my toenails when I'm distracted and/or focused, sometimes to the point of pulling a nail completely off.

15. When I was growing up in New Orleans, I started doing European fencing with a French master at about age ten. I continued with him and also had other coaches at school. My college coach had been an Olympic gold medalist in saber. When I moved to Seattle, there was only one master in the entire metro area. I continued fencing off and on but I was attracted to kendo (and iaido) because there are a lot of kendo/iaido dojos in the Seattle area, probably more than a dozen. So, nowadays I do kendo and iaido. If swordplay ever comes back into vogue, I'm gonna be a BAAAAAD motherfucker.

16. I had to edit that introductory paragraph; I just couldn't leave it in its original state.

17. I'm a SCUBA Divemaster, a sailor, and a pilot. I can piss money away underwater, on the sea, or in the sky! I desperately want to go into space (See #10), preferably in a Burt Rutan-designed craft, so I can add "space" or "vacuum" to my list of places where I can waste money.

18. I used to dislike myself. I've gotten better about that.

19. Some people think I'm stuck-up because I'm often quiet and withdrawn. That's actually because I'm shy. Once I push past that, or if you bring up a subject I'm fond of, then it's difficult to get me to shut up.

20. I'm really short for an American male.

21. Music is a significant part of my life. I need a soundtrack to my personal movie.

22. I’ve never lost my childhood sense of wonder at the mysterious magnificence of the universe. Sometimes it’s overwhelming enough to make me stand still for a minute just to accept it. I’m incapable of digesting it; but I can get to a place of acceptance.

23. I have historically been a slow writer. I *had* to edit, rewrite, reedit, rewrite many times before I allowed my scribblings to be read by others. If I produced 500 words in a day, that was incredibly prolific. I've recently been trying to overcome that perfectionism and one of my efforts was to participate in NaNoWriMo 2010. I produced over 17,000 words and did not edit/rewrite any of it. That didn't make the NaNo threshold of 50K words but it was damned impressive for me. I intend to finish that novel.

24. I don't drink coffee. I don't drink beer. I like Ovaltine. I like lemonade-tea. I'm addicted to Coke (the carbonated beverage not the drug).

25. Ronnie, MJ, and Chloe amaze me.

No tag. You're not it. Unless you wanna be…

Thank you, Sister Rosa!

2010-12-01T12:22:00.000-08:00

I'll let the Neville Brothers tell y'all all about it.

Thanksgiving 2010

2010-11-24T15:14:00.000-08:00

I've been too ~~busy~~ lazy to do much other than NaNoWriMo this month, so I'll do a thanksgiving post by linking my thanksgiving series from last year.

Gratitude 1
Gratitude 2
Gratitude 3
Gratitude 4
Gratitude 5
Gratitude 6
Happy Thanksgiving!

See it before it's gone

2010-11-18T10:14:00.000-08:00

Coral bleaching has been increasing in the Caribbean as well as elsewhere. 2005 was a bad year and they're talking up 2010, too. I flip-flop on whether this talk is alarmist or realistic but I'm glad I'm gonna get to visit there this June.

Significant quotes:

In the study, experts from 22 countries reported that more than 80 percent of surveyed corals bleached in 2005, and more than 40 percent of the total surveyed died.

The researchers noted that other testing had found that the Caribbean's reefs had been stable for at least 200,000 years — until the 1980s when bleaching started to happen more often.

More info here and here.

Out, out, damned demons!

2010-11-14T00:36:00.000-08:00

Is that redundant?

A long, long time ago in this very solar system, for shits and giggles, Ronnie and I used to listen to a radio show called "The Bible Answer Man" with Dr. Walter Martin. What was fascinating about it was that, when he was criticizing some heterodox (to him) Christian individual or group, he was pointed and precise in eviscerating their faulty logic, nonsensical thinking, and ridiculous beliefs. So, I'd kinda relax and start thinking of him as a regular sorta guy, instead of a religious zealot, like the callers he sliced and diced. Until...

Then, he'd get a caller complaining that their waterbed was possessed by demons, and I'd be waiting with great amusement for him to rip 'em a new one; but, instead, he'd say, "Ah, yes! That's a fairly common problem." And I'd have this initial reaction of What the fuck? until I remembered that he was as demented as the callers he excoriated, just with a different flavor of theology.

I hadn't thought of him and his how-to on dealing with possessed waterbeds for a long time, until today, when a high school classmate posted about this weekend's exorcism conference, held in Baltimore by and for the Roman Catholic clergy. Yes, the current pope, and former(?) NAZI, Benedict the 16th, has been pushing for a return to a more classic form of Catholicism and this is yet another result of that effort.

I don't really have much that I want to add here beyond stating the simple fact that the Roman Catholic Church is having a weekend seminar on how to decide when an exorcism is appropriate. In 2010.

I do have a favorite quote I'll share with you. The organizer of this shindig, Bishop Thomas Paprocki, said, "Not everyone who thinks they need an exorcism actually does need one."

I disagree, Bishop Paprocki. I'd say that everyone who thinks they need an exorcism, probably does.

Chapter 4 et sequitur

2010-11-12T22:46:00.000-08:00

The Lost Century

Chapter 4. What the Fuck Was That?

...and everything that follows...

[If you want to start at Chapter 1, it's here along with my explanation of what I'm doing and why.]

I don't mean to be a tease, but I think I'm taking up a lot of bandwidth and just dumping more noise into the poor, clogged 'net and my quirky little blog by endlessly posting completed chapters as I finish them. Therefore, I've decided to stop doing that. Here's what I plan to do instead.

If you'd like to read this raw version of my NaNo novel, I'll send it out to interested parties as an email. So, if you wanna be on that list, drop me a line with two pieces of information:

1. Your e-mail address.

2. Tell me if ya wanna get each chapter as soon as it gets written, or if ya wanna get whatever material I've written as of December 1 (my official NaNo effort), or if ya wanna get the finished product (still a NaNo-quality, pre-rough-draft version), estimated completion maybe mid-January. Or any combination thereof, huh? I'm flexible.

My thanks to the folks who've commented on what I've produced so far. I appreciate your feedback on this literary lump of coal. If you can see the potential diamond hidden inside, you're more generous to me than I am to myself.

SPQR!,
Publius Vergilius Maro (sometimes known as "Frank," but not for this effort)

------------------------
Despite what I said above, here's Chapter 4. One of the NaNoWriMo gimmicks is "the travelling shovel of death." I added it to this chapter.

Chapter 4. What the Fuck Was That?

"What the fuck was that?"

The aggrieved tone and Tits' unmistakable accent and style erupted from among the legionaries who were standing in the middle of the chamber. Their view of the action had been limited to backlit slices of motion near the Optio and the Centurion, the clearest of which had been Rock's thrust to the second creature's neck as Flavius bent for a new pilum and the resultant spray of arterial blood, a glossy dark rope with variegated beads, shining dully against the night sky as they leapt free of the throat which had previously confined them. The grouped legionaries' aural apprehension, however, was as clear as that of those at the mouth of the cavern. They heard everything.

The preternatural ferocity of the screams which had echoed across the battlefield and rebounded from the rock walls of their cavern chamber made their neck hairs stand at attention, their goosebumps rise, and their blood run cold in their veins, trite stereotypes made manifest by the reality of a night attack by unknown creatures in a land more alien than any they'd ever served in. Those screams possessed an insane, feral quality none of them had heard before, even during their most horrid experiences in years of battles against a variety of enemies. More than one of the clustered legionaries heard the undertones of a soul in eternal agony in those primordial yowls. Tits' comment reflected a general feeling of disquiet among the men, which was amplified as Blue spoke from near the cavern mouth.

During his watch period with Ibby, Blue had been the first to see the shapes moving among the dead on the battlefield. He'd seen many types of scavengers on many battlefields, from those of his frozen home North of the Republic to those which haunted the sands and wastes of Asia Minor, and he knew instantly that these were different, despite his limited ability to observe detail. Their motions and activities were simply wrong, just generally unlike all other scavengers he'd seen. He and Ibby had discussed this in whispered phrases and sentence fragments as they watched the shapes harvesting their way through the corpse crop toward the bluff where the legionaries resided.

Ibby was resistant at first, but after watching the creatures progressing toward them, he agreed with Blue that they should wake the Third and spread the responsibility by kicking the decision uphill. In this man's army, just as it was, is, and will be true of all armies everywhere and everywhen, decision-making shit violated the usual military, and general life, rule that shit flows downhill and it began its uphill course. Third Gus watched for a while, then roused the Optio. Optio Rock listened to what the watchers and the Third had to say, watched for a while to make his own assessment, then went to wake the Centurion, completing the shit river's connection to its headwater. On this occasion, the eternal Uphill Shit River completed itself by emptying into this current, particular Shit Lake, which took the form of the two speared creatures hitting the ground and being carried off by their fellows, leaving the legionaries confused in their cavern, emotionally echoing Tits' thoughts, expressed in his exclamation.

Blue knew he was already on the Centurion's and the NCOs' shitlist for screwing up and probably causing the creatures to notice them and attack their position, but his mouth seemed to connect straight to his hindbrain, completely bypassing his self-preservation faculties. His disgust and horror were evident in his tone and no one noticed his toothless whistling timbre as he uttered, "Draugr! Aptgangr! Glamr's spawn! They're the blood-suckers who stalk by night. We are completely fucked!"

These legionaries had been together a long time and, from quiet evenings sharing stories around an endless string of campfires, the others knew that Blue was talking about horror stories of the blood-drinking, reanimated dead monsters which owned the nights of his frozen homeland.

Ibby felt compelled to support Blue because of their shared experience while observing the creatures. He, too, felt that the things they'd seen on the battlefield were not natural. "We Basque call them the children of Basa-Jaun in my mountains in Iberia. Blood drinkers and flesh eaters. They hide in the day and hunt at night. They're demons from the old time before the gods."

Gus was uneasy himself and the strong reaction from these pragmatic, realistic legionaries added to his disquiet; but this kind of talk was psychological death for a combat group and he knew he had to clamp down on it, even if he had some personal inclination to agree.

"Awrite, that's enough of that. You can stow that shit right now or I'll break my demon-possessed, blood-drinkin' foot off in your ass."

Rock, too, knew they had to get the men thinking about the practical, real-world aspect of the night's actions and the probable course of the next day. "You chickenshits gotta be kidding me. Did you or did you not see us spear and kill those climbers, just like any enemy or any animal we've ever faced before. Ya stick 'em, they die. Regular, normal stuff. Now, I can't say they're animals and I can't say they're men. It was too dark and the action was too fast. But what I can say is that they ain't no night-runnin', bloodsuckin', demon-ridden, undead corpses. Maybe they're some kinda local night monkey. Y'all have seen some of those different kinds of monkeys they bring up from down in Africa. Some of those things are even bigger than men. That's all this was – some tribe of primitive people, livin' like animals in this ass-end of creation, or some big, smart night monkeys. We stuck 'em and they died. Do ya get that? I don't think ya can do that to no supernatural undead demons."

Flavius held back, allowing his NCOs to control the situation. It looked like they were taking a good approach to quelling the terror rising in his somewhat superstitious troop.

"But, Optio," Pinhead said stubbornly, "when I was growin' up, my folks and the priests warned us about the lamiae and the empusae and the striges. And them things Blue and Ibby are talkin' about, they're just the same thing with a funny foreign name. And like where we was servin' before we started hikin' straight East, they talked about the Lilitu doin' all those same things, walkin' at night and drinkin' blood and stuff. That proves they're everywhere and they're as real as Jupiter and Mars and all them other gods, so it could be them we saw tonight. And I remember the priests tellin' me that there were two things all them demon bloodsuckers was afraid of, stuff that would hurt 'em, and that's iron and wood. And what's a pilum made of, huh? Iron and wood. It's got both things that can kill them demons. So, even if you did kill 'em, that kinda don't prove nothin' about them not being unnatural."

Murmurs of assent rose from the group and Miller spoke up, "My aunt was killed by one. Some other people in my village, too. They all went missing at night. The people thought it might be some kinda night demon so they got together and tracked it down. After a coupla days of searching, they found it sleeping in a cave one day. They stabbed it with iron and wood, just like Pinhead said, then they cut out its heart and burned it, then cut off its head and buried the head and body in separate places. It never killed anybody again. I think these things tonight might be like that. I don't like the way they screamed, Optio. I don't like it at all. It's unnatural. That's all I'm sayin'."

Flavius decided it was time for him to add his authority to the discussion and turn down the tension level.

"Men, I hear what you're saying and I don't want to tell you what to believe. But here's the thing. Tomorrow morning, those barbarians we fought today – Remember them? – will probably be back to kill us. They outnumber us by a huge margin and they'll succeed handily, if they're serious about it. I plan for us to take a lot of them with us but you know as well as I do that they'll have no trouble finishing us off. If that happens, we won't have to worry about another night and what might attack us in the dark. We'll be comfortably dead long before dark.

"Ah, but what if we somehow survive tomorrow? Then we do have to worry about what we'll face after dark, don't we? In that case, we're looking at two possibilities.

"One. If those things are just some kind of monkey or a tribe of primitive men, they'll die as easily as any other flesh-and-blood creature we've faced. Holed up in this cavern, we have a great tactical advantage. They have to come at us just a few at a time while hanging on a vertical cliff. We can kill them by the hundreds without breaking a sweat. Right?

"Two. If they're some supernatural scourge, like all of you seem to agree, then what do we do? Well, you also agree that they're susceptible to iron and wood, right? So tactically, we're in the same advantageous position. They have to come at us just a few at a time while hanging on a vertical cliff and our weapons are made of iron and wood. They'll die and fall, just like those two tonight did. Tactically, it doesn't matter what they are. If they attack us, they'll die.

"We're in a good position here. Grow some balls and quit whining like little girls afraid of the dark. You're legionaries. If something tries to kill you, you kill it back. It doesn't matter what it is. What is for when you're bullshitting around the campfire with a liberated amphora of good wine.

"Besides, if you've heard all those stories about all those kinds of night-haunts, I'll be you've also heard the stories of the secret legion whose sole job is to hunt and kill unnatural creatures. Why is Caesar's Legion X called the 'twin legion' but there's no record of another Legion X anywhere in the Republic? It could be that there is another such legion but it's a secret one: Legion X, Demon Hunters. I say, if those legionaries can kill demons fulltime, then we can kill one stinking tribe of demons from our stronghold here, because we're as good as any legion in this man's army. Aren't we?"

A decent "Yes, Centurion!" came from the group. It wasn't enthusiastic but neither was it completely dispirited. Under the circumstances, Flavius considered that a win, so he finished things up.

"We have a lot of stinky, day-hunting barbarians to kill tomorrow and the dawn isn't far away. Get some sleep now." Then, to Gus, "Third, set the watch."

With that, Flavius headed to his own bed to strip off the blood-soaked cloak he was wearing and exchange it for a warm, dry one. Blood-sucking night demons! How the fuck can people believe in that shit? He might have thought more about that but sleep overtook him.

Gus called Miller to sentry duty and told Ibby his watch was over and he was relieved. Ibby started for the sleeping area and Blue tried to quietly follow him.

"Oh, no, Blue, old son. You stand fast. Miller, we're gonna chat about your aunt in a while; but first Blue and me, we got a lot to talk about. Quite a lot, you blue-eyed demon. Oh, 'demon.' That reminds me…"

And Blue winced in the dark, hoping the Third couldn't see his expression.

As the legionaries who were not on duty returned to their beds to settle down for the remainder of the night, Rock stopped by his sleeping site, retrieved his shovel, and headed for the secondary cavern which contained their latrine space. When the Optio passed the area where the common legionaries were, Pinhead cocked his head and said, "Hey, Optio, why do you always take you own shovel to the latrine? I mean, ya know, there's always a common one there, but seein' you right now makes me remember that I ain't never seen you use the common one. You always use your own shovel, don'tcha? Why do ya do that?"

The Optio was not in a desperate hurry to get to the latrine and his immediate mood was calmly fatalistic, so instead of simply shutting Pinhead down, as he usually and typically would have done, he responded to him instead. Any other time and place and it wouldn't have happened, but Pinhead would never know how perfect his timing was in this instance.

"How many years have you served under me, Pinhead? And you're just noticing that? Bloody Mars!, you're a dumb shit and a poor excuse for a soldier."

Pinhead knew that the Optio's words were generic trooper talk but he also felt their sting against him, specifically. He was far from the best legionary in the century and he was painfully aware that he was about the tenth smartest guy in any group of eight. He offered a dispirited, "Sorry, Optio."

Rock hadn't meant to insult the boy or hurt his feelings. This time. He shook his head and decided to make up for it by sharing a story he'd never shared with anyone. Not that it was especially secret or anything and it wasn't like it was embarrassing or demeaning. It was just something he'd chosen not to share. It was a private story, kept in his personal storehouse of mental treasures. But they were destined to die together. Tomorrow, if not tonight. Or soon, if not tomorrow. So, Juno's luscious nethers!, why not tell the boy, and the other attentive pairs of ears perked up in the dark, a story which might amuse and calm them. For tonight at least. It had been one distinctly fucked-up day and they all deserved a break, even if it was only a little one.

"This is Vergil," he began, and he sensed the callous legionaries settling quietly into their bedrolls, like children nestling down in anticipation of being told a story by their father at bedtime. He'd had that passing thought on previous occasions over the years but, for the first time ever, tonight he truly felt paternal toward these men. He eased into a bedtime story appropriate for his professional killers.

"Ah've been a soldier for more'n a decade. This knife on my waist? I got that bad boy when I joined the legions. The sword at my hip? Had that nasty bastid jist as long, too. I rely on 'em and trust 'em completely. I know some guys who say they've kept count of their kills. Really? Me, I don't know how ya could do that and be accurate. I do know that this knife and this sword have a pretty damned high body count to their credit, no matter what the exact number might, or might not, be. But ol' Vergil," he continued, raising the shovel from the ground as if he were saluting an officer with a parade-quality javelin, "he's been with me since before I joined the legions and I trust my pal Vergil more than my knife, more than my sword, an' maybe even more than a fresh-from-the-depot pilum.

"When I was younger, I used to make a living shovellin' shit from the streets of Rome herself. Vergil had been with me a coupla years by then but I hadn't named him yet. One evenin' I was workin' kinda late, catchin' up on a crazy day. There'd been some kinda of feast or celebration, I forget now exactly what, and I was tryin' to get done and get home. Then along come these three young patrician studs... in their white tunics, ya know?... and they're drunk and they decide they're gonna fuck with the plebean guy, cuz if the dark tunic don't give me away, they fact that I'm shovellin' shit definitely does. So they start in with all the usual lame-ass shit drunk assholes have been slingin' since before the Egyptians built the pyramids. And I just ignore 'em, hopin' they'll get bored and go lookin' for somethin' more interestin' to do.

"But it goes the other way. Insteada gettin' bored, they start getting' mad. And mean.

"'Hey, you fucking shit shovelling nobody, you can't just ignore us. You and your girlfriend there,' one of them said in his snooty accent, pointing his chin at my shovel, 'better stand to attention and listen up or we're going to teach you a lesson about minding your betters.'

"The second rich prick chimed in with his two denarii, 'Yeah, boy,' cuz they were a coupla years older than me, 'You two look like you were made for each other. What's her name, huh? Aphrodite?' And, naturally, they all cracked up big time at how smart and funny and just-plain-better-than-me they were.

"It wasn't smart of me, so they were probably kinda right, and I knew better, but I was tired and they just pissed me off. I stopped scoopin' shit and turned to them, brandishin' my shovel, and said, 'This is Vergil and HE don't like you and he don't take shit from any three drunk assholes. Now ya better move on before ol' Vergil decides to teach you a lesson.' I hadn't thought it out beforehand and I don't know where that name came from, really, but it just sorta popped out and ol' Vergil kinda twisted in my hands like it was real and he really was kinda spoilin' to school those fellas about their manners.

"That third white-tunic dude, the one who'd been quite til then, reached into his tunic and came out with a fancy dagger. 'Now you've done it, boy. You've threatened my friends and me and we'll have to defend ourselves.' And I took a careful look in his eyes and saw that it woulda come to that, no matter what I did. He had a fever down in there, and maybe the wine stoked it some, but it was obvious that it always lived there, in his deepest soul. Some things might stoke it, or give him the excuse that it was being stoked, but it was him. Always had been, always would be. It was just the way he was born.

"His friends grinned and drew their own blades. They'd been lookin' for an opportunity and it turned out that opportunity's name was Titus Petronius Catullus, know to you boys as your friendly Optio. They seemed comfortable circlin' me, and it sure smelled like they had some experience at this game. But they were drunker than they thought. Or overconfident from their previous adventures pickin' on young, low-class guys. Or somethin'. Anyway, they were kinda clumsy and they weren't careful, and they were just kinda playin' around like they was cats and I was some gimpy little birdie, floppin' around on their ground, waitin' for them to finish their playtime and just put me out of my misery.

"So, while they was takin' their time tryin' to torment me, grinnin' and gigglin' and shufflin' and brandishin' their fancy daggers, I shoved the business end of ol' Vergil into Young Equestrian Badass Psycho's throat, just below his chin. All but took his fuckin' head off and the blood spray squirted sideways off the bottom of Vergil's blade, paintin' Junior Senator Two Denarii's tunic with lotsa red spots. I pushed and, just like tonight with that second wall crawler, Psycho Dude collapsed backward, limp as Pinhead's dick.

(There were some snickers in the dark and an offended Hey!)

"When Vergil's head came free from that one's neck, it stopped blockin' the blood flow and the spray exploded like a fuckin' volcano eruptin'. Two Denarii Toughguy went from bein' speckled with red to bein' drenched in it. He shuddered and goggled at Psycho's body fallin' to the street, then he bent over and started pukin' like he was preparin' for the next course at one of them rich people feasts where they gorge and puke and gorge and puke all nite long, 'cept he wasn't never gonna be doin' no gorgin' ever again.

"I skipped over him right then cuz he wasn't no immediate threat, what with all the attention he was payin' to empytin' his delicate tummy, and I swung Vergil sideways in a slice at the throat of the one who first started jawin' at me. That one had sobered up some, seein' me practically behead Badass Psycho, and he tried to duck. He was fast enough to make me miss his neck but ol' Vergil caught him upside the head and his duck turned into a collapse as he just kept goin' down. His grip relaxed and his dagger clanked on the street. He was fuzzy but not unconscious and he wobbled around, tryin' to sit up. He stopped doin' even that when I shoved ol' Vergil into his right kidney.

"Now, y'all are smart, tough legionaries, all trained and shit, so you know that a kidney strike will shock yer victim into silence and immobilize him; and after that, you can finish him quick with another strike or just let him bleed out. Killer's choice. Me, I didn't know that back then but I saw him go limp and quiet and that was good enough to let me return my attention to Two Denarii who was still worshippin' Bacchus, if ya know what I mean.

"Except for the moderate, clunky whang! sound as Vergil bounced off Number Three's skull, the gaggin' noises from Two Denarii's pukin' efforts was the loudest sound on the street. Tongueless Laruta!, that was probably part of why they chose this street and me, cuz of the quiet. Anyway, The Last Living Rich Prick is standin' there, all bent over in his red and white tunic, splashin' my recently-cleaned street with all the nasty shit he'd been eatin' and drinkin', so I got Vergil to make that nice, kinda hollow whang! sound again; and Two Denarii flops down into his puke puddle and I'm thinkin', whoa!, nobody's ever gonna get that tunic white again. Vergil figures the guy needs one more just to be sure, so we repeat the whang!. Then we turn and give Kidney Dude another whang!, just cuz it is a really interestin' sound and maybe he needs it. I can’t really even pretend Psycho Eyes could possibly use a whang!, so I take a deep breath and just stand there for a minute. It's over.

"Now my brain is happy, lookin' at those three lumps on the street, cuz they was for sure gonna cut me bad, at least, and probably they figured to kill me; so killin' them was righteous. It was self-defense, pure and simple. But my gut disagreed. I started shakin' and my head was poundin' and before I knew it, I was addin' to Two Denarii's lake of vomit. I donated a coupla times before my insides settled some.

"Yeah, yeah. Again, y'all are hardass legionaries and you know that that shit happens to everybody. Now, you know it. But you all had your first time and that was mine.

"But, like I said, my brain was still workin' ok and I knew I was pretty much fucked. Me gettin' out of killin' three swells was about as likely as me becoming a swell myself and having nymphs throwin' themselves at me. I decided I hadda just make it go away, like it never happened. So, I loaded those fellas and those beautiful, expensive daggers onto my shit cart, threw the cover over 'em and put Vergil on top of 'em so's he could help keep the cover on and so he could also enjoy riding on those guys who thought they were better than us.

"I knew where I needed to go and started pushing the cart that way. I wanted to keep those fancy daggers and sell 'em real bad but I knew that'd get me arrested for sure. Me with one dagger like that was a crucifixion waitin' to happen. Three of 'em? Shit! Forget it. The daggers got left in three different alleys in a hard part of town. If I remembered to make a small offering sacrifice to her, Laverna would take care of shiftin' the blame to folks other than me, if the bodies were ever discovered and identified. Might work that way even without the divine intervention. When I got where I was goin', I stripped them fellas and buried that stuff, although I did empty the purses first. Coins got no provenance, right?

"I dropped my three dance partners into the Cloaca Maxima. I knew they wouldn’t be lonely there. The chance of them bein' discovered was so small it was like a sure bet on a fixed race. Even in the odd circumstance where they did get dragged out of the Tiber or somethin', the chance of them bein' identified was, again, small enough to bet a lot of new-found denarii on. I headed back to my part of town and abandoned my shit cart along the way. Durin' the trip to the body dump site, I'd decided that me and Vergil would sign up for the legions the next day. We were tired of shovellin' shit and we'd discovered we were good at killin'. The legions seemed like a sensible choice.

"That was a long time ago and it's been mostly good times. I started out a common grunt, just like y'all, but after a while I got promoted to Third. Now, I'm the Optio. I like where I am. I'm happy in the legions. Vergil is, too, even though he ain't been promoted. From the day we signed up til now, he's just been Vergil, the Travelling Shovel of Death. But rank don't matter, nobody fucks with Vergil.

"Now, y'all get some sleep. There ain't much more night left and we got some killin' to do in the mornin'."

Chapter 3: Quiescus Interruptus

2010-11-09T11:46:00.000-08:00

The Lost Century

Chapter 3. Quiescus Interruptus

[If you want to start at Chapter 1, it's here along with my explanation of what I'm doing and why.]

"Easy, Centurion, it ain't an attack. Yet. But there's somethin' strange goin' on. The sentries woke me cuz they didn't know what to think and after I watched and listened a bit I figured I needed to wake you up so you could check it out yourself and see what you think. I don’t like it. I don't know exactly what to make of it but I don't like it."

Flavius took a deep breath to clear his head. He needed to shake off those unpleasant dreams and make sense of what the Optio was saying. As he levered himself up, his exhausted body resisted with aches and pains from abused muscles, ligaments, joints, and old injuries. In addition, his fresh wounds spoke to him with sharp agony from a myriad of sites. Another breath, sharply inhaled through his nose and hissed out between his teeth into the frigid night air, helped him adjust to getting his worn body vertical.

"What is it, Rock?" he whispered, as he twisted left, then right, to loosen his back. His legs quivered and almost failed to hold him up. Jupiter!, this was no-contest the worst he'd ever felt in a long career of combat and death-dealing. Making it to the mouth of the cavern to see what was up might be more than he was capable of. He rubbed the nearly-frozen sleep glue from his eyes and tried to concentrate on what the Optio was telling him. Ignoring the clamors for attention from the various parts of his damaged body was an effort.

Rock's return whisper was quieter than one would have expected from so rough-looking a specimen but staying alive in the legions required more than just loud, frontal assaults every time. Sometimes a little stealth went a long way toward obtaining an objective without wasting men and Rock, for all his apparent hardness and lack of guile, was capable of being a very subtle fellow. Stupid, brutal men did not reach the rank of Optio; they died on the front lines. "Centurion, if I coulda figured it out, I wouldn'ta woke ya.

"The guys on watch had it quiet until this last pair. They saw movement down on the battlefield and heard noises. Movement and noises that don't seem like normal scavenger animals. Being dark like it is, they couldn't really see much so they watched a while and listened real careful like you ordered and they decided it wasn't animals or, at least, not regular animals. So they decided it was time to wake me up and find out what I thought about it.

"I watched for a while myself and that's when I decided to get you up to see for yourself. I'm sure it ain't animals. Not normal animals, anyway. It's more like people but it's so damned hard to make out any detail in this moonlight. They're kinda whispering to each other but they move real quiet and they ain't wearing clothes, or not much clothin', anyway. And, from what I can tell, they're as pale as the bodies down there on the field. And they ain't just strippin' them bodies for their gear. I think they're… um, feedin' on 'em. Or maybe butcherin' 'em. Or both. It's weird, sir, and I don't like it. You need to take a look and make a command decision. This shit's above my pay grade."

Flavius indicated his agreement with an inclination of his head and they ghosted their way toward the mouth of the cavern. As they neared the opening, Third Gus turned from his kneeling position on the right side of it and nodded to acknowledge their presence. Flavius could make out the subtle gesture because the Third was backlit by the moonlight coming from beyond the cavern's opening. Based on the Optio's cryptic remarks and the fact that both his NCOs were awake and watching the scene and worried about it, combined with the fact that they were willing to wake him, Flavius decided that this was something distinctly out of the ordinary. His NCOs were hard, experienced men, who were not loathe to take responsibility, even in difficult or complex situations. Something had them worried, maybe even scared, and if those men were worried, and maybe scared, then Flavius was smart enough to know that he should be, too.

He recognized the silhouettes of Ibby and Blue as the sentries on duty, standing to the left of the cavern mouth. They saluted silently and moved back into the cave to give the Centurion room to observe the area which had been their battlefield that day. Flavius knelt near Gus and stared out over the field, opening his senses to the night.

The sound was the first thing he perceived clearly. They were being quiet, all things considered, but they were definitely whispering to each other down there. The soft, sibilant susurrus flowed left and right and front and back, like lethargic waves easing their way up a sandy beach. The scavengers were without a doubt communicating with each other. But were they human?

The moonlight on the harsh topography and soft mounds of corpses created scenes which were alternately stark with sharp contrasts, and conversely, dim and soft with fuzzy contours and borders. The creatures' movements were indeterminate as to their species characteristics. They appeared man-like in general but they moved on all fours as often as they walked upright. Their motion also appeared swifter and more fluidly graceful than the kinds of humans Flavius was used to being around; but that was perhaps an effect of the dim moonlight or the fact that Flavius was usually with legionaries for whom elegant gracefulness was not a survival characteristic.

Flavius surveyed the scene and guessed that there were twenty or thirty of them down there, although it was difficult to be specific because of the faint illumination and the subtlety and speed of their movement. They had apparently started at the far end of the battlefield and were working their way toward the bluff where the legionaries stood watching. Flavius considered his options.

The last thirty yards or so of the land before the cave was bare ground. It was where his surviving group had formed that last turtle and no soldiers had fallen there. The corpse garden, whose opposite border began perhaps one hundred fifty yards farther down the canyon where the battle had begun that morning, ended at that space. Whether these were some unknown animals or a group of feral men, would they stop, in either case, at the last of the corpses and forego exploring the bluff which held Flavius' cavern? As Flavius considered the possibilities, Gus whispered to him.

"Just to the right of center, about fifty yards out, you can make out what they're doing. They're feeding on the corpses there. I couldn't tell for sure when they were farther away but you can see it there. Two of 'em look like they're butchering a body but those other two are definitely chewin' on that other body. Right there."

Flavius swung his attention to the area Gus described and tried to focus on what he was seeing. He used the old night trick of looking slightly to the side of where he wanted to see and he could tell Gus was correct but he was glad that the light was dim enough that he could only barely see enough to agree with his Third. He nodded in agreement with the decision he'd made even before Gus pointed out that demonic scene.

He turned to the legionaries waiting behind him, "Ibby, Blue, go to the weapon pile and bring back an armload each of heavy javelins. All heavy ones. I don't think this is a night for light javelins."

Blue had glanced in the direction his superiors were looking and hissed in horror and disgust at what he saw, the sound whistling between his missing teeth, a common phoneme in the "accent" of many legionaries due to the relative hardness of weapons and fragility of human teeth. Ibby elbowed him into silence and they stalked off to retrieve the javelins.

Rock asked quietly, "Should we wake the men?"

"No," came Flavius' ready reply. "Not yet. I want you here in front with me. Third, you and the two legionaries stand behind us with the weapons cache. If it turns into an attack, you'll wake the men and get them organized."

"Sir!" Gus responded quietly and moved back to allow Rock to take his place.

Rock moved up to kneel beside Flavius as Gus moved into position behind them. Out among the bodies, the activity of the scavengers continued. Flavius was unable to determine whether the beings were using knives or claws to butcher the corpses. It seem apparent that the ones eating the corpses were simply leaning in and biting away but they, too, may have been using knives to separate the meat into mouth-sized pieces. Flavius spoke his decision to Rock and Gus.

"We'll sit tight and celebrate quietly if the ignore or bypass us. If they come at us, the Optio and I will meet them with the heavy javelins, Third, you and the sentries will form a second line and pass us new javelins as needed. If it becomes a full-fledged attack, wake the rest of the men and prepare to make a stand. They're gonna have a lot of trouble coming at us up that bluff."

They went back to observing the scavengers and soon Ibby and Blue appeared with the required javelins. As they piled them at the sides of the entrance, Blue fumbled a bit and caused a muffled clatter from his load of javelins. The four scavengers that the legionaries had been observing nearest the cavern turned in their direction and froze.

"Sorry, sir!" Blue said at a normal volume, compounding his error, the whistling in his speech exacerbated by fear and cold.

Third's glare made him feel like the temperature had dropped another ten degrees. "If we live through this, you might be sorry you did, shitbird. You're on my list. "

There was a shrill scream from more than one scavenger throat which rent the soft, black fabric of the night. The legionaries had seen and heard a lot of men die and in the course of that experience they'd heard many, varied noises, some of which a civilian would have said could not come from a human throat. But the legionaries had heard them, chilling and horrible in their import. These screams were something else again. Something deeply vile and soul-wrenching. The four creatures near the cave began to streak toward the bluff as the rest stopped what they were doing and turned in their direction.

Similar insane screams echoed from other voices around the battlefield, each unique but all equally horrific. In the back of the cave, the sleeping legionaries startled awake.

Flavius settled into battle mode, "Gus, organize the men. Ibby and Blue, close up and be ready to assist the Optio and me." He glanced at Rock, who replied to his unspoken query, "Ready, sir." They each placed two javelins on the ground nearby to lie ready for future use and then each took one javelin in hand. It was a comfortable feeling. They were legionaries and this was one of their favorite weapons. They were as ready as they could be.

Gus strode to the middle of the cave to inform and prepare the remaining legionaries, as the night runners reached the base of the bluff. Even at that close range, Flavius couldn't make out any details of their features because of the low level of moonlight but he had seen that they were fast and smooth coming across the field. The rest of the creatures stayed where they were and most even went back to whatever tasks occupied them. The original chorus of responsive screams had stopped but there were still occasional, random outbursts from around the field. One of the four at the base of the bluff looked up and screamed, seemingly right at them, then began to climb.

The other three twitched and moved about almost spastically in random jerks and hops, in contrast to their smooth sprint toward the bluff, releasing occasional grunts and indecipherable noises while they watched the one who was climbing toward the legionaries. It, or he?, was climbing quickly and efficiently, making much better progress than any of the legionaries had made earlier that day during their own ascent. Flavius leaned out to keep track of its progress. Soon, very soon, this new menace would reveal the extent of its potential impact on the weary legionaries.

The creature climbing the bluff stopped some ten yards below the legionaries and stared up at them. It then looked down and squalled something at its fellow night haunts on the ground. After a moment of shuffling, jostling, and indecipherable noises, one of them faced the almost vertical wall and began climbing. The one on the bluff face angled to its left, clearly intending to be at the side of the cavern opening when it reached that level. The one below was climbing as swiftly as the first had and it angled to its right. The creatures, whatever they were, were clearly intelligent enough to flank their prey, rather than coming straight at it. Predators, then, and cunning ones, rather than simply scavengers.

Damn! Flavius thought. Having them be mere scavengers would have been a lot more convenient. Scavengers were one thing to face. Predators, pack predators upped the ante quite a bit. Once again, the legionaries were the game pieces in a gamble for their lives in a high-stakes game at what seemed to be a rigged table. The gods were rolling loaded dice against his eviscerated century, while they drank their nectar, nibbled their ambrosia, and seduced and cuckolded each other in their endless efforts to stave off an eternity of boredom. Bastards! Flavius added, unsure if he was directing that opprobrium at the attackers or at the gods.

The first pale night haunt on the bluff face slowed his ascent to allow the second to catch up. The intention was clearly to mount a simultaneous approach from both sides of the cavern mouth. Flavius turned to Rock and used hand signals to indicate the climbers' intent and his desired response to it. Two attackers. One on each side. You take the one on your side. I'll take the one on mine. Thrust, push, and release. Got it?

Rock nodded a distinct Yes! in response and stood up from where he'd been squatting, stepping forward to take up a combat-ready position. He placed his hands on his javelin in an attack grip, unconsciously giving himself the appearance of a recruiting poster embodiment of the perfect Roman legionary.

Given the climbers' exposed position on the bluff wall and their apparent lack of armor, it should be a simple matter to give a fatal thrust and push, ensuring the creatures' deaths with the addition of the fall from forty feet onto the rocky ground below, especially when impaled by the deadly Roman pilum, the "heavy javelin." Weighing in at approximately eight pounds, it was six feet long overall, the first two feet of which was composed of a pyramid-shaped iron head and thin neck which was attached by tang and binding to the remaining four feet of hardwood shaft. It was an exquisitely designed machine of war. The iron was forged to be hard enough to penetrate a shield, as well as armor and flesh, but soft enough that it would bend once it had penetrated. This design feature left the enemy holding those eight additional pounds, which dragged down on the arm which was trying to support the penetrated shield. An enemy so encumbered became easy meat for a second thrust by javelin or sword.

If the pilum penetrated armor and flesh rather than a shield, the effect was, perhaps, less kind and less cleanly deadly. Even if an enemy managed to remove it from his body before a secondary thrust could finish him quickly, the pyramidal design of the head prevented the wound from closing on its own and the victim soon bled out. In the demesne of Mars and Pluto, the pilum stood out as an elegant and superior work of deadly martial art.

Flavius was confident in his weapon and in his Optio standing at his right hand against the two climbers. No matter how tough they were, no matter how fast they were, in a few minutes they'd lie dead at the foot of the bluff. The question was, would the rest of them attack?

The legionaries all listened carefully to the approaching creatures' sounds as they scrabbled up the rocky face. Flavius, from his ready position standing slightly back from the cavern mouth, smelled them before he saw the one he was waiting for on his side. The noxious odors from the battlefield had been greatly reduced by the cold. They remained at a level which could mostly be ignored, but the effluvium from the attackers was something new and strong to Flavius' heightened, battle-ready senses. He inhaled and was starting to try to catalogue the components of the attackers' scent when he felt Rock's movement beside him.

Rock grunted as he made a short lunging step to thrust his pilum into the night haunt on his side. His aim was true and the point of his javelin entered the creature’s abdomen just below its ribcage. He felt the initial resistance as the javelin’s head penetrated the pale, dirt-encrusted abdominal muscles, then the randomly varied levels of resistance as it passed through a series of internal organs on its way through the climber's body, and finally the muscle and skin resistance as the point passed out its back. When the wood shaft hit the thing’s stomach skin with a thud, he added an extra push and released the javelin as the night stalker was thrust from the bluff face and plummeted into the dark, screaming like a lost soul.

The creature had not expected the swiftness and intensity of the attack by the man in the cavern and, as the javelin entered its body, it screamed in pain and frustration at a volume which dwarfed the screams it had released earlier in the night. A guttural grunt joined that scream as the thicker wooden shaft struck its midsection and pushed it away from its hold on the bluff face. It took a futile swing at its attacker then clawed for a fresh grip on the bluff but the force of the thrust was far too strong and, as it peeled from the rock face, its scream increased in volume in a final cry against its fate.

As Rock bent to grab another javelin from his pile, the climber on Flavius' side reached the level of the cavern. Seeing and hearing its companion's fate, it approached more cautiously and was, therefore, partly able to avoid Flavius' thrust. But not completely.

Flavius heard and felt the action on his flank but as an experienced veteran he was not distracted from his task. When the creature on his side appeared, he aimed and thrust for the sweet spot just below the sternum, but the gods-cursed thing was fast. It swayed back and turned so that instead of the javelin taking it in its midsection, Flavius' point penetrated low on its left side near the hipbone. Its initial scream of pain joined the dying echoes of the final scream from the one speared by Rock.

The night haunt tried to draw farther back and twist free but Flavius continued his thrust and that deadly pyramidal point tore a path through its side to emerge from its back just above and behind the iliac crest. Flavius struggled to keep from losing his javelin to the torque produced by the creature's twist but as the point emerged from its back, his javelin tore from his hands before he could use the impact of the shaft against the creature to push it from the bluff face. As the pilum came free of Flavius' hands, the length of the shaft flopped against the creature's abdomen then rebounded away into the space to the creature's left. The fresh pressure against the wound from a new direction wrested another scream from the night stalker, then, as gravity began to pull at the weight of the mass of the pilum's shaft, the creature screamed yet again as its insides were mauled by the head's movement in its guts.

Flavius bent to grab a new javelin as the wounded creature took a left-handed swipe at him, barely missing Flavius' head which was moving down toward the cavern floor and his weapon pile. The creature hung awkwardly from the bluff face, supported by its feet and a one-handed grip, pulled into a contorted position by the javelin shaft hanging from its left side, torquing its lower body left and away while the swing it had taken at Flavius twisted its upper body to the right and toward the bluff face.

In that suspend moment while Flavius reached for a new pilum and the creature strained to overcome the various forces working on its tortured body, Rock stepped toward Flavius and thrust with his freshly-obtained pilum. He caught the wounded thing in the throat and a horrid gurgling noise replaced the previous prolonged scream. Arterial blood spurted in a broad spray, painting Flavius' back because of his bent position and splattering the Optio's face and chest in increasing pulses as he pushed home his thrust. When the pilum's wooden shaft hit the thing in the throat, it lost its solo handgrip and as Rock leaned into a final push and released the shaft, the creature fell silently to the rocky ground below, joining its companion with an audible thud in the momentary silence following the end of the final scream of the first creature to fall.

Flavius stood with his new javelin and looked down on the scene below, waiting for the night haunts' next move. Rock picked up a new javelin and stood with Flavius, using the bottom edge of his cloak to wipe the recently fallen one's blood from his eyes and mouth.

The two remaining creatures at the foot of the bluff bent to examine their fallen comrades. They shook the bodies and then tugged harshly at the three javelin shafts, pulling them free and tossing them quickly away after only a brief grasp. The screamed as one, shrill ululations which were matched from various points around the field, then abruptly all the screaming stopped and silence blanketed the valley. The living night stalkers flopped the dead ones over their shoulders and started away from the bluff. Figures from around the field joined them and soon they had all disappeared into the dark distance.

Gus squatted to rest on his haunches. "This is some weird, fucked-up country," he said, confusion and disgust coloring every syllable. Flavius made eye contact with both his NCOs and offered a small shrug. He couldn't disagree with or improve on that sentiment.

Chapter 2: Past as Prologue

2010-11-06T13:11:00.000-07:00

The Lost Century

Chapter 2. Past as Prologue

[If you want to start at Chapter 1, it's here along with my explanation of what I'm doing and why.]

The sun was below the horizon and the distant hills were painted in a chiaroscuro of light and shadow under the beautiful, sweeping colors of the twilight sky. Flavius and his men were settling into their position for the night. He'd found a cavern which had a small opening, easily defended by only a couple of men, especially since it sat about forty feet above ground on a steep, crumbling bluff, but the interior opened up into a room sizeable enough for several times the number of men he had left. As an added benefit, there was a pool or spring near the back of the chamber and the fresh water was extremely welcome to the exhausted and dehydrated legionaries.

The waterskins, provisions, and weapons they'd gathered from the battlefield were separated into three piles in the middle rear of the chamber they occupied. The legionaries were clustered near the pool, drinking their fill and wiping themselves free of the accumulated grime from today's battle and the marching they'd done to this point since the last time they'd had access to a good supply of water. The men had spread their cloaks, plus extras from their foraging on the battlefield, around the perimeter of the chamber in anticipation of the night temperatures. They'd learned that things chilled down quickly in this region once the sun disappeared.

Flavius and his two NCOs sat at the mouth of the cavern wrapped in their cloaks, drinking methodically from their waterskins, and chewing quietly on some of their recovered provisions. Between sips and bites, Optio Rock and Third Gus worked on bandaging the Centurion's wounds.

"This forearm slash is pretty deep but it looks clean," offered Rock.

Gus responded, "Yeah, that's the worst one. The rest ain't too bad, except that there are a lot of 'em."

Flavius took a gentle swallow of water and chewed gingerly on his ration. He'd been hit in the mouth at some point and his teeth hurt. They hurt more when he chewed. "What about you two? The parts of you not covered by armor look like corpses that have been flayed by incompetent anatomy students."

"We'll patch each other up as soon as we're done with you, Centurion," replied Rock, "Don't you worry. We're good."

Flavius did begin to feel better as he filled his stomach and his NCOs finished ministering to him. As they began tending each other's injuries, Flavius decided it was time to talk about their situation, "Do you think the men can hear us?"

Without looking up from wrapping a gash on Rock's leg, Gus said, "They're pretending they can't, sir." Rock nodded in agreement.

"Doesn't really matter," said Flavius, "I'll be sharing our plans with them as soon as I decide what those plans will be. We'll pretend we don't know they can hear us and we'll all ease into this night feeling smugly superior."

"For now, let's assume that Rock was right about the barbarians being afraid of the dark. That takes care of us for tonight but the morning will be a different story, unless they've started some religious holiday where they aren't supposed to kill anyone for a week or so. And we aren't that lucky."

"Hades!, sir," Gus blurted, "We're on Fortuna's shit list. All of our luck is bad luck."

Rock countered, "Quit yer bitchin'! We're still alive after that battle we fought today. If one of the Centurion's poetical-type Equestrian-class friends had seen that shit, we'd be immortalized in an epic poem, by the gods! It could end with me getting my dick sucked by Fortuna herself and I'd be the most famous legionary of all time."

Rock glanced guiltily at Flavius, "Except, of course, for you, sir!"

Flavius smiled despite himself. "Optio Titus Petronius Catullus, if we get out of this alive and our story makes it back to Rome, I will happily take a background position in the narrative and let you be the protagonist who becomes the most famous legionary of all time. Who knows? Maybe Fortuna will even take some time out from her godly duties to give you a divine blowjob. Or, you can at least hire a street girl to do the job and call her Fortuna while she's going about her business."

"But first we have to survive. In the very short term, for tonight I propose two-man watches. Of the men we have, who's too injured to stand a watch?"

Rock thought a minute and glanced at the men in the rear of the chamber. The light had faded to a dusty purple but he could see enough and he remember enough about what he'd seen as they climbed to this cavern to respond, "Pyramid's bad, sir. River, too. They might not make it through the night. The rest are more or less ok." Gus nodded in agreement.

Flavius ordered, "Make up a sentry roster for tonight, then, not including River and Pyramid. Two-man teams. That will take us to tomorrow morning. We don't have anything to make lamps or even torches so the men will have to rely on unaided eyesight and hearing. Remind them to listen carefully while they're on watch."

Rock nodded and Gus asked, "And tomorrow morning, Centurion, what about tomorrow morning?"

"Why, tomorrow morning the sun will rise, the birds will sing, we'll all awake well-rested, clean and refreshed, and Fortuna will smile a wide, sultry smile and come give us all excellent, goddess-level blowjobs!" Flavius declaimed and winked at Rock, whose jaw dropped as he sat stunned into immobility.

"Well, either that or the barbarians will return and kill us all." He turned to wink at Gus, who frowned deeply, more confused than he'd ever been in his time with this officer. "This is a good defensive position. I plan to charge these barbarians a great deal for our lives and I intend to make my way to Hades carried on the backs of all those enemies I've killed in the past and will kill tomorrow."

Flavius took a last look at the barely-discernable silhouette of the hills in the distance. "Set the sentry roster and turn in. I want you two to be as rested as possible for tomorrow's slaughter." Flavius finished speaking, gathered his gear, and turned toward the side wall of the cavern to wrap up in several cloaks for a night's sleep. He did not see his NCOs behind him stand to attention and salute as they chorused, "Yes, Centurion."

Before he settled down, Flavius raised his voice to the men, some of whom were beginning to drift away from the pool in search of a spot to lie down and sleep, "Legionaries, you earned your pay today. It was an heroic effort and I'm proud to be the Centurion of such a group of legionaries. Tomorrow, we'll send a cohort of these dirty barbarians to pave our way to the Elysian Fields. Sleep well tonight. Die well tomorrow."

With that final task done, Flavius removed most of his armor and piled it next to his sleeping site for easy access if he needed it during the night. Then, he lay down on two of the cloaks recovered after the battle, rolled another as a pillow for his head, and pulled two more over him for warmth. His exhaustion turned a slab of rock and two ragged cloaks into as comfortable a bed as he'd ever had while serving in the legions. His general muscle aches and the pain from specific injuries was perhaps offset by the lethargy brought on by the blood loss from those wounds. Or maybe he was simply as tired as Hades.

Flavius succumbed to Hypnos and Morpheus like a boulder falling to the Earth from a great height.

Two valleys to the North, the Khan had led his troops over a stream which would never be considered a river by any stretch of the imagination and through some scrub growth which couldn't possibly be mistaken for anything even resembling woods but they had safely returned to the collection of yurts housing any and all grandfathers who had managed to stay alive long enough to achieve that status in such a harsh and violent environment. He had been seething with frustration the entire return trip because of the outcome of the day's battle. He had expected to complete the slaughter of the invaders before midday, then use the afternoon to loot the enemy corpses of valuables, especially their armor. He desperately wanted a set of that damned armor. By the Five Elements, it was incredibly strong, almost magical. But they fought using techniques he'd never seen before, surprising and confusing him. A mere hundred men, without horses, had fought his four hundred to a standstill, killing half his warriors and dragging the battle out so close to sunset that he'd finally had to break off before his men mutinied and forced him to do so. That would have been even worse than having to leave the damned invaders alive.

Well, not many of them were still alive, he consoled himself. There was only a handful left when he turned his troops for the safety of home. He half hoped that the dreaded night stalkers, pale haunts of the dark, drinkers of blood and devourers of human flesh, would finish them off. He simultaneously half hoped that the night haunts would be satisfied with the nearly three hundred fresh bodies left on the battlefield and that they would leave the invaders for him to deal with when the sun returned to the world and the night demons returned to their hidden places to sleep while avoiding the sunlight they feared because of the injury it caused them.

The Khan took a final glance around his village in the purple dusk, then retired to his yurt, exhausted from the day's efforts but ready to extinguish some of his frustration in the newest addition to his harem. She was young and strong; he'd let her do most of the work. It's good to be Khan!

The Khan's three senior leaders sat in a nearby hut, expressing their own frustrations, but lacking a suitable outlet to extinguish them. They wanted, no, needed more than a romp with a woman to soothe their spirits after the battle with the alien troops.

The youngest and simplest complained, "Two hundred men, lost to one hundred unmounted beetle men, hiding inside those metal skins, afraid to fight like men. It's not right."

The most manipulative replied, "Just what do you mean? Are you saying the Khan is losing his ability to lead?" His intent was, of course, to put that idea into the minds of the others while conceptually attaching its origin to the youngest.

The youngest was quick to reply, "I didn't say that!" But the bait was in the water and the fish were hungry.

The strong one knew what the manipulative one was up to but he no stomach for games. More honestly, he didn't have the patience for them. "Who'll be Khan, then, huh? You?" he asked, looking at his manipulative cousin.

"I'd be willing to take on that responsibility, with your help, of course," came the smooth reply.

The youngest started to feel like he might have more in common with the worm on the hook than his fellow fish. "I'd be willing to help, elder cousin."

The strong one was not as smooth as his manipulative cousin but he was experienced and could sense the hook inside the worm. "A triumvirate? You making policy decisions, me making combat decisions, and our youngest cousin here contributing to all discussions?"

The smooth one believed he could take the next step to sole rulership of the tribe once things settled down after the death of the current Khan. "Yes," he agreed.

"Agreed," the youngest hurried to include himself, knowing that when he got a bit older and stronger he could wrest sole power from his aging cousins.

"Agreed," echoed the strong one, thinking that accidents often happened in battle and neither of his cousins was an especially good fighter. He could return from some future battle lamenting the freak, accidental loss of his fellows in the Triumvirate. "At the bottom of the night, the three of us will enter his yurt and send him to the Ancestors."

The youngest visibly twitched in his discomfort and the manipulative one's mouth turned down in a moue but neither one demurred or complained. The night stalkers rarely came into the village and the embryonic Triumvirate would only be outside between yurts for a moment but that exposure bothered the manipulative one the most. The youngest wasn't self-aware enough to fear the night demons as much as he should and he'd killed men in battle but felt some trepidation about stabbing his uncle while he slept in his own yurt. At the ultimate decision point, however, the desire for power trumped everything else for all three.

They settled down to wait for the middle of the dark. The youngest was consumed by thoughts of wealth and access to the best women. The manipulative one was already scheming the next steps in his path to sole rulership. The strongest, although not as politically complex as his scheming cousin, thought more deeply about realities and repercussions outside of his tribe than the manipulator did. He chuckled mirthlessly, realizing that the settling of internal affairs and relationships after tonight's dark deed would take days to resolve, which would keep everyone in the village and leave the metal-armored invaders unmolested for all that time. If they were at all efficient, and they'd certainly shown their capabilities during the day's battle, they had plenty of time to escape the tribe's vengeance.

The strongest was overwhelmed by the irony of it and began to laugh lustily. The other two cousins shared a concerned look and wondered if their strong cousin knew something they didn't.

While the three cousins schemed, the Khan spent a delightful span of time with his newest concubine and fell happily asleep with his head on her luscious young breast. He had successfully pushed away his negative thoughts about the events of the day. Tomorrow, things would be different.

In the mouth of the cavern, legionaries Miller and Squid stood wrapped in their cloaks, their breath steaming into the night, staring out into the darkness which was lightened only somewhat by a waxing moon rising above the hills. Happily, the cold had settled the effluvium from the battle's aftermath and the air they breathed was fresh and clean-smelling with only the slightest undertones of dusty rock, drying blood, and decaying flesh. They hoped they were just marking time until their relief took over and allowed them to return to their bedrolls. The thought of a night attack unmanned them. Dying under Apollo's aegis was one thing. Being snuffed out in the dark seemed unholy.

Miller wished he could make a sacrifice to Mars, or Apollo, or both. He was a vegetarian but he knew and accepted that the gods were carnivores, unparalleled apex predators, and they had to be appeased regularly; but animals were scarce in this wasteland and there had been no opportunities recently and certainly none in the here and now. He knew this was his last night on Earth, so he chose to pray quietly to the goddess he'd never acknowledge to his fierce bretheren but whom he held most closely in his secret heart. "Oh, Ceres, please be with me tomorrow!"

Squid wished, not for the first time since becoming a legionary, that he'd stayed on as his father's apprentice, fishing the Tyrrhenian Sea from their home near Gaeta, instead of joining the Roman Republic's military machine. Adventure! Good pay! Great retirement package! Travel to wondrous foreign lands! Meet the fascinating citizens of civilizations outside the Republic! …and kill them, he added bitterly. "Great Neptune!" he thought, "I know I'm far from your domain but you are the god of my first and best hopes in life. If you could stretch your arm out just a little to find me here in this land which feels like the front yard of Hades, I'd appreciate it. And please watch over my father. I've come to realize he's a much better man than I ever imagined. Here at my death, I admit he's a better man than me. Be kind to him as he fishes your seas. Thanks."

Inside the chamber, the rest of the legionaries slept, occasionally stirring from a bad dream or a twinge from a fresh wound. All slept in a state of deep exhaustion, some closer to a final, prolonged, permanent sleep than to an ordinary sleep from which they would awaken in the morning.

The NCOs, who had bedded down near the mouth of the cavern, trusted their men to know when to change the watch and they were certain these men would not fall asleep on duty. No legionary did that more than once and all of these men had years of service behind them. Nonetheless, both NCOs slept soundly but lightly because that was part of their job description and they were excellent at their job and had been doing it for a long time.

Flavius slept apart, as befitting an officer, although he found it rather silly, given their current strength and situation. The fierce fighting of the day and the fact that he survived it took his dreams to echoes of past glories when his century was one of six making up a full cohort of which there were ten in the legion. His dreams melded comfortable victories of the past with the day's desperate battle. He single-handedly led his century to victory against the Parthians and was promoted, but his new cohort, which should have been composed of six centuries, was made up of only a single squad of eight men. General Crassus, richest man in the Republic and famous for his spendthrift celebrations, threw him a victory and promotion party but the wine tasted like a poorly-cured waterskin, the food felt like dirt on his tongue, and the women were all distinctly undesirable and clearly diseased. Despite his obvious distaste for them, one of the women continued to pursue him. She kept backing him up, while speaking rapidly to him, although he was unable to make out anything she said. She became more insistent and pushed closer, her diseased flesh plainly apparent, even beneath a heavy application of Egyptian-style makeup.

She reached to touch him and he shuddered.

Flavius startled awake, roused by strong fingers digging into his shoulder and a calloused hand over his mouth. Optio Rock's voice spoke quietly at his ear.

Chapter 1: The Last Battlefield

2010-11-05T10:10:00.000-07:00

My sole purpose in doing NaNoWriMo is to minimize my internal editor. Yes, I tried to pick a story concept that I'd enjoy writing and, given my personality, I cannot be totally uninvested in what I'm writing; but the majority of my effort is to write without overthinking. If something is big, I just call it "big" and move on without worrying, as I usually would, about being more precise. Is it "big" or is it "imposing," or "sizeable," or "immense," or "towering," or "capable of blocking the sun," etc.?

In that context, it is not sufficient for me to simply do it in private, hiding my lack of precision from the world. To fully commit to writing copiously but not elegantly, I must allow others to see the product of that effort. Therefore, here is the first completed chapter of my NaNo novel, just as it appeared from my fingertips, no editing, no rewrites, no fucking spell checker, even. Shudder!

The Lost Century

Chapter 1: The Last Battlefield

"Turtle! Turtle! Turtle!" Flavius croaked roughly, his voice hoarsened by a full day of yelling commands at battlefield pitch, trying to be heard over the fierce roaring of the enemy and the piteous cries and screams of the wounded and dying. The remaining Roman legionaries formed up, falling and stumbling together from exhaustion as much as moving purposefully into formation. They positioned their shields to form the "turtle" in preparation for deflecting the flight of arrows which was about to fall on them from the barbarian archers.

"You gotta be kidding me. This is it?" The distinctive rasp of Ibby's Iberian accent sounded even whinier than usual. And, maybe, for the first time ever, a bit fatalistic.

"Fuck me!" came the unmistakable urban-Roman gutter accent of Tits, perennial shirker when it came to noncombat duties but truly efficient and skilled when it came to the primary purpose of a legionary, combat and killing. "There's nobody left! Mars' buttfuckin' uncle! This isn't a turtle, it's a gods-cursed hatchling, a cocksuckin' egg, fer shit's sake! We're, like, one fuckin' squad."

"Be quiet and do your duty or I'll kill you before the barbarians have a chance to!" ordered the Optio.

"Steady, now. You're legionaries. Stand like legionaries. Fight like legionaries. If ya gotta, die like legionaries." the Third added.

Tits persisted. "Maybe I'd rather have Optio Rock just fuckin' kill me. At least I know he'd do it right, quick and clean. I dunno about these fuckin' barbarians. They look like fuckin' cannibals. I hate asshole cannibals. If I gotta get eaten, I don't wanna be eaten by these bastards. I want it to be some luscious Nubian hooker sucking my huge Roman cock while I suck down expensive wine and munch on pheasants' tongues at the Amalfi coast."

A couple of low-energy sniggers bounced around under the roof of their turtle. There may even have been a sotto voce "Fuckin-A!" but Optio Rock couldn't be sure. He was sure that someone muttered, "Huge my ass!" because Tits responded clearly, "Yeah, bitch, thass rite, you do got a huge shit-chute cuz I hear you're worse than that ass-bandit Caesar when it comes to takin' it in the rear. That's why nobody ever hears you when you fart, dickwad."

The Optio touched the tip of his sword to Tits' lower back, under the edge of his armor, and pressed firmly. "Shut up. Now. Stand firm and die like a citizen of Rome, like a legionary, you gutter bastard, or I will do you."

Tits heard the truth in the Optio's voice and clamped his teeth shut. He stood quietly, like everyone else who remained alive to form their desperately tiny turtle, dripping as much blood as they did sweat, the result of a day of hard fighting and numerous small to middling injuries. The pitiful remains of a full century of legionaries numbered only a dozen now, all panting, sweating, and bleeding, stinking of exhaustion and death.

Flavius heard all that was going on behind him but ignored it, knowing that his Optio and Third would control any internal problems. He was only concerned with the external situation. That morning they'd been a full century. A good century. Possibly, even, one of the best. Tough, disciplined men, experienced in the Roman army's strategies, tactics, and teamwork combined with individual fierceness. But they were far, far from home and long past the days of supply trains and reinforcements. They were foragers now, living off the land they happened to find themselves on, more a band of roaming ruffians than a branch of the dreaded Roman legions, relying only on themselves.

Flavius used the back of his sword hand to wipe his eyes and peered between the shields of their pathetically small turtle at the host arrayed before him. This was a harsh, arid land, populated by small, swarthy people who were the very embodiment of what Flavius thought of when he thought about non-Roman barbarians. They were dirty, dressed in skins and ragged furs with astonishingly primitive helmets and breastplates, and even those were few and far between. Most wore no armor or, at best, leather chest protectors; but there were a lot of them and Flavius had to admit, they were fierce and skillful fighters. Ordinarily, he'd have no qualms about facing two-to-one odds, even three-to-one against an unskilled enemy.

Unfortunately, this was not "ordinarily," this enemy was far from unskilled, and he'd started the day down by what seemed like nearly four-to-one. Now, at the end of what looked to be his last day on earth, he'd lost 90% of his men. While losing that many men, he'd eliminated perhaps twice that number of enemy forces, about half of their original contingent, but that still left him with odds which weren't worth computing, although he couldn't stop his brain from determining that he was operating in the neighborhood of twenty-to-one.

A flood of overwhelming emotions threatened to swell up and drown him but he pushed that into a storeroom in a rarely used area his mind and brought forward his combat mentality, cold, calculating, and unemotional. What was he facing? How could he best defend/attack/survive? Look for the options. Look for the advantages.

He'd done the best he could all day and the horrid terrrain had aided him in that. This country was all canyons and bluffs. Cliffs and caves. Rock and rubble. He'd positioned his century in a V-shaped canyon with their backs to apex of the V. The enemy had to come straight at him and had no high ground advantage within range. Without the terrain advantage, they would all have been dead before midday; but here they were, within an hour of sunset, and still standing. Down to 1/10 of their original strength, a reverse decimation, but still fighting.

A bit more than a javeline's throw away, the barbarians were lined up for their archery assault. About a third of the remaining enemy had bows and were getting together to release a salvo. Flavius heard a shrill barbarian voice and the archers all nocked an arrow and readied themselves.

"Steady!" Flavius cautioned his men.

A second barbarian phrase and the archers drew, followed quickly by a third and final phrase and they loosed their arrows as one.

"Incoming!" warned Flavius, almost unnecessarily because the simultaneous release and flight was loud enough to be heard over the wails and screams of the maimed and dying. The turtle tightened up as the men braced for impact. There was a collective intake of breath and slow exhalation, then the rain began striking their roof, demanding admittance.

When the last shafts finished falling, the Optio asked, "Anybody hit?" and got a full tally of negative replies plus a gratuitous "Fucking barbarians!" from Tits. Ibby added, "Optio, I am not happy with our situation."

The Optio would never admit it, but he felt better after weathering the archery assault because he'd feared it might be effective,and he allowed the bitching to persist without clamping down on it. Hell! They were all gonna die, anway; it was a soldier's gods-given right to bitch. He offered, "Here's our next move. Ibby will rush out alone and distract the barbarians while the rest of us hightail it up this bluff behind us and leg it our for parts East. Ready?"

This time he distinctly heard the "Fucking-A!" along with other chortles and amused mumbles.

"Not funny, Optio!" Ibby sputtered. The amusement got louder, with a distinct tinge of relief and a touch of acquiescence. They'd survived a lot of shit in their day and put up a helluva fight in this battle but it was inevitable that they'd die here. And soon. They accepted it ultimately. They were legionaries, by the gods, and they'd die like legionaries. It was either that or die like a coward. Not even a choice, really.

"Bring it on, you fuckers!' an indeterminate voice challenged the barbarian group from beneath the turtle. The remaining legionaries all joined in. "We are the legions of Rome, you shit-eating, sheep-fucking, ignorant cocksuckers!" "Come and die, assholes!" "I'm gonna make you watch while I rape your bitches to death but first I'm gonna cut off your nasty barbarian equipment! Then, after they thank me for giving them some good Roman cock, I'll fuckin' kill ya! SLOW!"

Flavius ignored the survival banter and challenges because he was busy peering out again to see what the barbarians were working on to end their survival. He expected to see the archers preparing another salvo and they were. What he didn't expect to see was the remaining barbarians working their way across the battlefield, recovering their lightly wounded and killing the hopeless, along with killing off all the wounded legionaries. Why start that now?

The second salvo got underway and Flavius warned "Steady!" followed soon thereafter by "Incoming!"

Again the turtle tightened up and endured the pounding from above. And again, they came through with no injuries. And Flavius once again peeked between shields to see the barbarians hurrying to finish policing the battlefield. What could it mean? He considered it as the third flight was launched against them.

"Steady!" preceeded "Incoming!" and the turtle once again kept the stone-tipped rain from rending legionary flesh. Flavius peered through the shield gap to see the barbarians getting very close to his turtle. Was the battlefield cleanup a ruse of some kind? Why not just charge? Ruse or no ruse, nothing would happen until they were in close-combat range. A line of perhaps twenty-five barbarians formed, facing Flavius' turtle as the enemy got closer. Behind that line, the rest of the enemy continued their efforts to separate the quick from the dead or to turn quick Romans into dead ones. There was nothing Flavius could do about that which wasn't suicidal; but he thought about it, considering that they were going to die no matter what. Ultimately, he held steady and let the barbarians finish their work. Time enough to die when the final attack was lauched against them.

For the first time that day, the battlefield was quiet. Certainly, not perfectly quiet. Inside the turtle, sounds were amplified as the Romans breathed and grunted and their armor creaked when they adjusted positions. Across the battlefield, the barbarian horde chattered and made all the noise usually associated with that large a group of men and horses. But compared to the fierce yells of battle and horrible screams of the injured which held sway for most of the day, the quite seemed profound.

The stench, of course, had not abated a whit. The iron tang of blood scent cloyed at the back of their throats, especially after a battle like this, where water was scarce. The vomit fumes of those who'd empited their stomachs, for whatever reason, floated on the still air. The ammoniac nasal pinch of urine and the sewer effluvium of open bowels either from intestinal wounds or from those who'd voided at death was the strongest smell, overwhelming all others; but the underlying tingly, fecund hint of ejaculate from those who'd spewed their seed at death's call added an uncomfortable reminder of the fullness of the losses one suffers at death. But the legionaries were all hardened men who'd served many years in harness to Rome. They'd experienced it all before.

As the barbarian gleaners finished their task and withdrew toward their lines, the archers prepared another salvo. Flavius now saw this effort in a new light. It was not meant as a serious attack but simply as covering fire to keep the legionaries in place while the death squads did their work.

He was almost casual as he ordered "Steady!' and "Incoming!" and the men picked up on his emotional state and treated the latest salvo as a kind of realistic but boring drill rather than the opening notes of the final movement of their death symphony.

When this shaft shower ended, Flavius again looked to see what the enemy was up to. Once again, the archers were preparing a salvo but the rest of their force seemed to be leaving. Flavius was stunned. Could it really be possible that they were withdrawing? Now? When they had the legionaries down to a handful of men, grossly outnumbered? It was ridiculous. It made no sense at all. But it was what he was looking at. They couldn't be planning to sneak around behind him because they would have done that hours ago, if it had been possible. They were simply leaving. Oops, but it's time to go heads-down for a minute.

"Steady!' and "Incoming!" and a tight turtle because they were by-the-gods Roman legionaries and when they did something, they did it right. The rain fell harmlessly all round them and bounced of their roof like air-borne Spring flower petals bouncing off the sturdy slate roof of an architecturally superior Roman villa. Even the usually laconic Optio was moved to comment, "Good work, men! We'll show 'em how legionaries do it!" And Flavius took yet another peek at his adversaries' antics.

There was no mistaking what was happening. The barbarian troops were retreating over a hillock and the archers were peeling off to follow. Flavius told his men what he was seeing but cautioned them to hold. Half the archers turned at maximum bow range and loosed another volley.

Steady. Incoming. Harmless clatter.

When Flavius looked again, he saw the last of the archers disappearing over the hillock after their fellows and the Romans were alone on the battlefield with the dead.

He told the men what he saw but ordered "Hold!" because he didn't understand what was happening and didn't trust the possibility that the barbarians had actually left the field of battle, leaving the remaining Romans alive. It didn't make any sense. However the enemy were clearly out of sight and well out of range and he knew his remaining legioaries were brutally exhausted so he ordered, "Down turtle. Form ranks."

The legionaries gratefully lowered their shields and shuffled into a semblance of rank, given that they were only ten percent of their original and usual force. Flavius looked them over and chose the two who looked least wounded. "Blue, Pinhead, take perimeter lookout duty. The rest of you sit and tend to your wounds. All of you drink whatever water you have."

Blue and Pinhead exchanged a look which would have been understood by any pair of grunts from Ig and Ug, cave warriors, to Melma4829 and Borth35, plasma fodder of the Glalctic Empire; but they trudged off up the V to take up their stations and watch over their brothers in arms, slurping what little water they had left and feeling the specific pains of their battle injuries and the deeper, general aches of bodies used beyond reasonable limits. The rest collapsed and began addressing their various wounds, either singly or with the aid of a fellow legionary for the more serious ones.

Flavius moved over to stand near his NCOs. "Optio Catullus," he inquired, "what do you make of it?"

The Optio, who was used to being addressed as simply "Optio" or "Optio Rock," was uncomfortable with the Centurion's use of his proper name. It was unusual and, therefore, disquieting. Nonetheless, he offered his best opinion. "Some barbarians are afraid of the dark. Won't fight in it. Want to be home and closed in during the night. Maybe these are like that."

"Third Naso?" Flavius sought the input of his thoughtful and pessimistic secondary NCO.

Gus, as he was more usually called, or, even more commonly, simply "Third," because of his rank, was also cautious because of Flavius' use of his proper name. He therefore responded in kind. "Centurion Maro, these bastards are tough and sneaky and I'm pretty sure they've been shadowing us for a couple of days. Somebody certainly has and they've explored and tested our perimeter at night. I know it. They could be just over that hill, resting up, and preparing to creep in later tonight and slaughter us in our sleep." He still couldn't accept that he was alive after the battle they'd fought. It was a silly notion that the barbarians would resort to a plan so complex when all they had to do was march up and slaughter the remaining Romans like temple sacrifices; but could it really be possible that the enemy had departed, leaving them alive. That didn't make sense. Maybe Rock was right. Maybe they were terrified of the dark and were simply hurrying home. Please, Mars, and Hades, if you're not too busy, let it be so!

Flavius nodded at his NCOs and squatted next to them, positioning himself where he could look over his remaining troops, while he thought about their situation. He swallowed some water from his waterskin and relished the stale, going-slighty-foul taste of it. He'd survived. Gods curse it all, he was alive, somehow, after being between the jaws of the death givers. The how of it was a mystery and what to do next was questionable but he was alive right now, with these men, and that was a lot better than standing empty handed on the bank of the River Styx, waiting for Charon and wondering how to deal with that situation.

"How long until dark?" Flavius spoke for his NCOs ears.

They both looked up, then looked at each other and nodded. Optio Rock responded, "Half an hour. Maybe three-quarters, if we're lucky."

Flavius nodded. "Get the men to finish up their bandaging and police what you can from the battlefield within the next half-hour. I'm going to scramble up this bluff and check out the caves above us. That's our best bet for surviving this night. I want everyone still alive to be up there with me and ready to establish a defensive perimeter by dark. Questions?"

"That's not enough time to do anything significant. Maybe gather some waterskins, rations, and a few weapons. Not much else." said the Optio, inquiringly.

"What about burial detail?" added the Third, specifically.

Flavius squared himself to them and said the hard thing. "Waterskins, food, and weapons. There's no time for anything else. It'll be dark in less than an hour. One way or the other, those of us who are still functioning have to be in position and ready in that timeframe. If we're still alive in the morning, we can make more sophisticated plans then. For now, we are in minimal survival mode, gentlemen. Understood?"

Neither man liked it but they both understood the harsh reality they faced. Long habit made their simultaneous response automatic, "Yes, Centurion!" They got to their feet and moved closer to the men to start them moving.

Flavius also rose on pain-drenched knees and aching thighs and eyeballed the bluff. In his current state, it was gonna be a ball-buster.

*Chapter 2 is here.

Foreword

2010-11-05T01:00:00.000-07:00

The Lost Century

Foreword

[If you want to start at Chapter 1, it's here along with my explanation of what I'm doing and why.]

In the 1950s I was a tween who devoured SF novels as voraciously as I devoured candy and crawfish bisque. There were only a couple of SF authors from the 50s, and 40s and 30s, whom I didn't especially enjoy reading. I liked most of them, I loved many of them, and I adored a few of them. Andre Norton was one of the brightest stars in my literary universe.

In 1953, she (Yes, she. Andre Norton was the nom de plume of Alice Mary Norton.) published a novel called Star Rangers. She was one of those SF authors I adored and when I got this novel from the library I expected to inhale it as I had all of her other works. Unusually for me, however, I only read a couple of pages and then put it down, uninterested in continuing. I returned it to the library unread.

Some time later, on another library trip, I took this novel home again, and again stalled out after just a couple of pages, and again returned it to the library unread. I remember doing this a couple more times. For some reason at that time, I simply couldn't get into that novel. Until I could.

Finally, there came a time when I took it home and began reading and found myself drawn in. Now, more than fifty years later, I still reread that novel every year or two. It's one of my all-time favorites. What does that have to do with this introduction to my novel? Well…

Ms. Norton opened Star Rangers with a prologue which tells the story of a Roman Emperor who commanded a legion to march East to find the Eastern edge of Asia, simply because he had the power to do so. She then imagined that legion's fall to a barbarian horde on an unknown battlefield, somewhere in the vastness of Asia. This is the historic parallel to the plight of the crew of the Central Control Patrol ship Starfire in her novel. That legend of the Roman legion intrigued me as much as Ms. Norton's novel itself and I wondered if there was any historical validity to it.

Roman history was a significant component of my prep school curriculum and we learned about the Republic, later Empire, as we read various Latin authors. Caesar's Commentaries were part of the first year of Latin studies and part of Caesar's history is his interaction with Crassus, the richest man in the Republic and calculated by some to have been the richest man ever. For our purposes, however, the significance of Crassus is not his wealth but his military history. Crassus wanted to make a name for himself as a military man in order to compete with Pompey and Caesar, so while Caesar was running around killing people in Western Europe, Crassus decided to head East and conquer the Parthians in what is now approximately Turkey.

In 53 B.C., Crassus lost to the Parthians and was beheaded by them. As a result of that campaign, many legions were lost, both to the Romans as useful troops and to history. The Parthians would typically have sent prisoners and/or slaves to the Eastern realms of their empire. A couple of decades after the campaigns of 54-53 B.C., there are stories in China of a group of Caucasians who fought with what are apparently Roman armor, weapons, and tactics. This story, which is potentially historically factual, is probably the basis of the legend related by Ms. Norton in her prologue to Star Rangers.

In the half-century-plus since the original publication of Star Rangers, it has been reprinted several times and also reissued under an alternate title, The Last Planet. No matter which printing or which title it comes from, it was Andre Norton's mention of this legend which inspired me to write my novel.

Therefore, I dedicate this novel to the memory of Andre (Alice Mary) Norton, and to my nonpareil wife, Ronnie, and my exquisite daughters, MJ and Chloe.

Dum spiro, disco! Dum vivimus, vivamus! Dum, dum, dum, dum!
Frank Maier, Pacific Northwest 2010

Here is Andre Norton's original prologue to Star Rangers:

There is an old legend concerning a Roman Emperor, who, to show his power, singled out the Tribune of a loyal legion and commanded that he march his men across Asia to the end of the world. And so a thousand men vanished into the hinterland of the largest continent, to be swallowed up forever. On some unknown battlefield the last handful of survivors must have formed a square which was overwhelmed by a barbarian charge. And their eagle may have stood lonely and tarnished in a horsehide tent for a generation thereafter. But it may be guessed, by those who know of the pride of these men in their corps and tradition, that they did march East as long as one still remained on his feet.

In 8054 A.D. history repeated itself – as it always does. The First Galactic Empire was breaking up. Dictators, Emperors, Consolidators wrested the rulership of their own or kindred solar systems from Central Control. Space pirates raised flags and recruited fleets to gorge on spoil plundered from this wreckage. It was a time in which only the ruthless could flourish.

Here and there a man, or a group of men, tried valiantly to dam the flood of disaster and disunion. And, notable among these last-ditch fighters who refused to throw aside their belief in the impartial rule of Central Control were the remnants of the Stellar Patrol, a law enforcement body whose authority had existed unchallenged for almost a thousand years. Perhaps it was because there was no longer any security to be found outside their own ranks that these men clung the closer to what seemed in the new age to be an outworn code of ethics and morals. And their studdorn loyalty to a vanished ideal was both exasperating and pitiful to the new rulers.

Jorcam Dester, the last Control Agent of Deneb, who was nursing certain ambitions of his own, solved in the Roman manner the problem of ridding his sector of the Patrol. He summoned the half dozen officers still commanding navigable ships and ordered them – under the seal of the Control – out into space, to locate (as he said) and remap forgotten galactic border systems no one had visited in at least four generations. He offered a vague promise to establish new bases from which the Partol might rise again, invigorated and revived, to fight for the Control ideals. And, faithful to their very ancient trust, they upped-ship on this mission, undermanned, poorly supplied, without real hope, but determined to carry out orders to the last.

One of these ships was the Vegan Scout – Starfire.

Thank you, Ms. Norton, for this story and all the others you wrote which inspired me over the years. And thank you, dear reader, for being here. I hope you enjoy yourself.

The Lost Century

2010-11-04T11:35:00.000-07:00

Here's the opening paragraph of my NaNoWriMo effort.

Chapter 1: The Last Battlefield

"Turtle! Turtle! Turtle!" Flavius croaked roughly, his voice hoarsened by a full day of yelling commands at battlefield pitch, trying to be heard over the fierce roaring of the enemy and the piteous cries and screams of the wounded and dying. The remaining Roman legionaries formed up, falling and stumbling together from exhaustion as much as moving purposefully into formation. They positioned their shields to form the "turtle" in preparation for deflecting the flight of arrows which was about to fall on them from the barbarian archers.

...

Plot synopsis:
In 53 BC, the Roman general Crassus got his ass handed to him by the Parthians but the Parthians kept his head. During and after that campaign, a lot of Roman legionaries were "lost." There are rumors and hints of legionaries in China and other points East, and current DNA research is underway in central China to test for this. This is the story of an East-bound centurion, his century of men, and their encounter with a mysterious group of pale-skinned, bloodthirsty night-hunters in the foothills of the Himalayas.

Read the complete first chapter here.

NaNoWriMo startup

2010-11-01T10:16:00.001-07:00

It's November and that means NaNoWriMo. I'll have my head down, doing my impression of Philip K. Dick.

See y'all in December.

The Alpha and the Omega

2010-10-28T14:51:00.001-07:00

This is my first, last, and only political commentary for this election.

Big fun tying up some virgins!

2010-10-19T19:10:00.000-07:00

I mean, Virgin-Bound Excitement!

Yeah, that's it. Forget that other one; it's not as accurate.

I've signed a contract with a sailboat charter company for ten days on a Lagoon 380 and sent them a deposit. I've bought plane tickets there and, unfortunately, back. Next June, if you're looking for me, you'd better catch me early in the month because during the last two weeks of June, I'll be in the beautiful Virgin Islands with some friends.

Yep, friends. My exquisite wife and boon companion, the inestimable Ronnie, has agreed to hold down the fort here at home while I have some boys-only time. And, unlike the first several decades of my life, I actually have enough male friends to need more than a two-man daysailer for such an adventure. Hooray for me!

Friends are good.

Fun is good.

We might be doing something approximately like this:

My friends are the shiznit and this is gonna be the most fun you can have with your clothes on, even if we're occasionally in a state of deshabille or, possibly, even complete nudity. Sun, sand, warm water, tropical fish, rum, trade winds...

But I refuse to talk about the donkeys.

NaNoWriMo 2010

2010-10-16T23:23:00.000-07:00

or...
Oh!, Deities of spacetime, save me from myself!

I've signed up for something which promises to be worse than the deathmarch to finish my part of Win95. And I still shudder about that experience. I have an Author's Page on their site. I have writing buddies. What the hell are they good for? I'll just bet they aren't gonna help me write a chapter or anything useful like that. I have a badge. Do I need a stinking' badge? I am an "Official Participant."

Ack!

I must find my inner Philip K. Dick, but without the drugs he favored. Speed is not my friend. Well, next month speed will be my friend but not "speed." Ya know? I just hope I don't dream about electric sheep.

Long Facebook ABC Meme

2010-10-12T13:22:00.000-07:00

I dislike many aspects of Facebook, so I'm doing this meme here on my blog.

The Rules are: You enter the letter into the search box on Facebook and using first name to appear (or at least one of the first), you answer the associated questions. If the same person comes up twice, use next down the list. Tag each person you mention. Let's begin.

I don't tag but here's mine.

A – Ren Allen
1) Do you love this person? Yes.
2) Is this person your enemy? No.
3) Would you kiss this person? Yes.

B – Bob Collier
1) What do you really think of this person? Brilliant, even if he does cheer for the fucking Yankees.
2) What's their favorite color? No idea.
3) Ever danced with them? Not yet.

C – Chloe Maier
1) Do you have a crush on this person? I love her infinitely.
2) Have you ever had a crush on them? Loved her before birth.
3) How old are they? 16-1/2.

D – Kimya Dawson
1) How long have you known him/her? Since LiG2009.
2) Biggest regret? Not singing with her… Yet!
3) Do you hate this person? No way.

E – Laura Flynn Endres
1) Have you met their parents? No.
2) Worst thing about this person? Her fitness, despite being a middle-aged woman!
3) Best thing about this person? Her blunt honesty.

F – Behan Favrel Gifford
1) Have you ever dated this person? No.
2) When is the next time you will see him/her? When they finish their circumnavigation, unless we go visit them in Fiji or something.
3) Do you go to school with them? No.

G – Mary Gold
1) Are they a good listener? Excellent.
2) Have you ever lied to this person? No.
3) Is this person nice? The best.

H – Laureen Hudson
1) What grade are they in? Grade A Prime.
2) Is he/she your best friend? No but she's one of the good ones.
3) Ever done something illegal with this person? I plead the fifth and demand my lawyer.

I – Idzie Desmarais
1) Is this person in a relationship? I don't think so.
2) Where do they live? Canada, eh?
3) What color hair does this person have? Dunno.

J – Jeff Sabo
1) Do they have any siblings?
2) Do you know their favorite song? Anything by The Greybeards.
3) What would you do if they confessed they liked you? I fucking hope he likes me!

K – Kelly Dunlap Lovejoy
1) Did you ever like this person? Always.
2) Ever danced with this person? Yes.
3) Ever kissed this person? Yes.

L – Lori Lewis Wedgeworth
1) What would you do if you had never met this person? Be short one niece.
2) Do you like him/her? Yes.
3) Would you go to Disney World with this person? I wouldn't go to Disneyworld for all the tea in China or, at least, anything less than $10K cash up front. I hate the Disney universe.

M – Michael Mangiapane
1) When is the last time you saw him/her? At our band reunion in 1991.
2) Have you been to his/her house? Not his current one.
3) Do you like this person? Been pals since high school.

N – Nick Maier
1) Who is this person? First cousin once removed.
2) Have you seen this person cry? No.
3) Do you know this person's favorite sport? He's a Maier so it hasta be sex.

O - S. Peter Oddo
1) Do they have braces? No.
2) When was the last time you saw each other? Sometime in the early 60s?
3) Have you ever liked each other? Oh, yes, and I plan to visit him in January.

P – Patrick Lohkamp
1) Have you ever been to the mall with this person? No.
2) Are you fairly close to this person? First cousin once removed.
3) Does this person have a job? Starting back to school.

Q – Qacei Gold
1) How did you meet this person? At the LIFE is Good Unschooling Conference.
2) Is he/she single? Yes.
3) Are they nice? Yes.

R - Ronnie Maier
1) Have you heard this person sing before? Yes. She's a Hot Backup Chick with The Greybeards and has even sung lead.
2) Do you think this person will repost this? Maybe.
3) What’s one thing you would change about this person? I'd clone her.

S - Stephanie Marr
1) Is this person taller than you? Everybody's taller than me, except some of the women in my family.
2) Do you enjoy spending time with him/her? Yes.
3) Do they live close to you? No.

T - TJ Phillips
1) Is this person older than you? No.
2) Is this person single? No.
3) Have you ever gotten caught doing something bad with this person? No. I've never been *caught*. And define "bad" please.

U - Unschooling Group
1) How long have you known this person? Various.
2) Have you ever had a crush on them? Not the whole group.
3) Is this person single? Various.

V – Mary V. Canonica
1) Do you see this person a lot? Yes.
2) When did you meet her/him? She's my MIL.
3) What is this person's favorite food? Anything not spicy.

W – Stephanie Rebel Waldron
1) Is this person quiet or loud? Yes.
2) Name a friend that both of you are close to? Deanna Brees Piercy.
3) What color eyes does this person have? Unknown.

X- Xbox live
1) How long have you known him/her? I worked on the first release of the Xbox.
2) Biggest regret? Not getting a free Xbox after working on the damned thing.
3) Do you hate this person? I enjoy it quite a lot.

Y – BVI Yacht Charters
1) How long have you known him/her? Since 2001.
2) Biggest regret? Not using theri services more frequently.
3) Do you hate this person? I like them very much.

Z - Joni Zander
1) Do you have any nicknames for this person? No.
2) How did you meet this person? Through unschooling.
3) Ever been to this persons house? No.

Life imitates art

2010-10-07T21:44:00.000-07:00

I have several friends who could joyfully debate this and/or its mirror, art imitates life, for hours on end. Intellectual masturbation at its finest. I wonder if Christine O'Donnell considers that a sin. She probably thinks it's two sins: masturbation and being intellectual. I'd be willing to bet the rent money on which one of those she finds more offensive.

However, I'm not interested in any kind of masturbation just now, thanks. Later on, well, who knows what the future will bring, eh? I have, instead, a specific reason for the title of this post.

In the movie Sister Act there's a scene where some nuns swarm into a bar, select songs on the jukebox, take over the dance floor, and just kinda infest, I mean *invest* the place with a distinctly non-bar vibe. One of the patrons comments, "If this place turns into a nuns' bar, I'm outta here."

Recently, life imitates art in that the familyrun.ning site has been similarly swarmed by a couple of wear-it-on-your-sleeve Christians (Does the phrase "whitened sepulchers" ring any bells?) who misunderstand unschooling as badly as they misunderstand the Koine Greek of their own Bible's New Testament.

I empathize with the emotions of that bar patron and I feel like saying (even though I wouldn't actually do it in reality) in parallel solidarity with him, "If this place turns into a(n inept) Christian apologetics site, I'm outta here."

Oh, and my resolution of any discussion including the concepts life and art is that my life is art!

Beauty!

P.S. On a slightly related note, I'm thinking about doing nanowrimo to help me really break from my obsessive editing/rewriting habit. If I do nanowrimo, I wonder if my result will rise to the level of art. I guess we'll see.

Chloe's Texas Adventure

2010-10-04T21:23:00.000-07:00

It's October. Here in the Seattle area, that means 50ish degrees, grey, and drizzly. Time to switch from shorts to sweatpants, for the heater to kick on at night, for indoor sports. Chloe, on the other hand, is in Texas.

All photos courtesy of Jihong (Joy). Thanks!

Odd little meme

2010-09-29T19:46:00.000-07:00

A meme I found while cruising the 'net.

1) When you were in the womb, what was the weird food your mother craved?
I dunno what specific pregnancy cravings she had, but mom typically started her day with a cigarette and a Coke and usually added a slice of her "special bread," which was pound cake. She spent the rest of the day keeping the tobacco industry solvent.

2) If you had to kill a fellow blogger, who would it be and why? And no shrinking from this question.
There's a guy I wrote about in my post titled Faux Unschooling. I'd be willing to kill him.

3) Do you own a pair of cargo pants?
Not specifically. I have shorts with extra pockets but no actual cargo pants.

4) Which resident of the blogosphere would you sleep with and why?
Ronnie! And I do! Cuz it's fun!

5) Which present from a prospective suitor would most impress you?
a) jewelry
b) flowers
c) shoes
d) a book token
e) an erotically shaped vegetable
f) other...(please verify)
Ummmm, I guess jewelry would be the most impressive.

6) Which acting parts were you forced to play on stage back in school?
In high school I did some duelling (fencing) coaching for a coupla plays but was not in the Philalectic Society. In college I helped out a friend or two in the drama department by being in their plays.

7) What totally fucking freaks you out and leaves you whimpering for your mother?
Roaches.

8) Which great opponent of Cartesian dualism resists the reduction of psychological phenomena to a physical state and insists there is no point of contact between the extended and the unextended?
Honest, this question was actually on the original meme I ~~stole~~ borrowed and I just happen to be pretty sure that it's looking for you to answer Henri Bergson. Now ask me about Hedonism. Or Calvin. Or Hobbes. Or Calvin and Hobbes.

9) How many fluffy, rubbery, plastic wind up, edible or just plain strange creatures inhabit your personal workspace and what are they?
When I was working, I had a couple of the little plastic guys who'd walk when you wound 'em up. I used to tie a carefully-measured string around their necks and have 'em commit suicide by walking off the end of my desk. Their frenetic vibrating at the end of the string was quite remarkably grotesque.

10) Do you personally find your own genitalia attractive?
Sure. I can't tell you how often I stand naked in front of the mirror and exclaim, "Nice dick!" Don't you?

11) Naked, greased, and sent up to your room: Mark Spitz or Michael Phelps?
Clearly this question is not aimed at me. I'll substitute Salma Hayek and Emmanuelle Beart and answer, "Both!"

12) Great on-screen love affairs. Fess up. Which one gets you hot/moist/whatever?
William Powell and Myrna Loy in the Thin Man series. Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby.

13) Who would play you in your biopic?
Younger me: what's-his-name, the fat hobbit.
Older me: Richard Dreyfuss

14) What is your regular coffee shop order?
I don't drink coffee and definitely don't do coffee shops.

15) Give it up with two of life's great mysteries.
1. Women.
2. Men.

16) What is the most disgusting thing you have ever eaten?
Green vegetables.

17) Clowns; do they make you: a) laugh b) shudder c) horny.
Absolutely shudder. Ick!

18) Who was the last person that you told to "fuck off"?
MJ

19) Who's the best:

a) Bond
Sean Connery, but who really cares? The Bond series is SOOOOOOO lame.

b) Batman
None.

c) Monster in Gojira movies
Gamera, the children's friend.

d) Member of the Village People
None.

e) Member of the Banana Splits
No fucking idea.

f) Simpson's supporting cast member
I don't watch the Simpsons.

g) Beatle
John Lennon.

h) Magnificent Seven character
I'll substitute the original movie, Seven Samurai, and answer: Heihachi Hayashida, samurai of the "wood-chop" school.

i) Frasier or Niles
I don't care enough to differentiate on this one.

j) Character in Doonesbury
Tough one. I'll say Cutter John.

k) Osmond
None.

l) Disney baddie
Hades from Hercules.

m) Bond girl
Ursula Andress is the only one I can think of offhand.

n) Bond villain
I don't care enough to differentiate on this one.

o) Member of the Partridge Family
Didn't watch it.

p) Radio deejay
Cap'n Humble, New Orleans DJ who now runs a poboy shop.

q) Non-monotheistic deity
Ma'at. I'm ready for my weigh-in, motherfucker.

r) Fictional deity
Flying Spaghetti Monster. (They're all fictional.)

s) Monkee
I don't care enough to differentiate on this one.

t) Witch
Kim Novak in Bell, Book, and Candle.

u) M.A.S.H character
Spearchucker Jones.

v) Flintstone
Barney, I guess, but I don't really care enough to differentiate on this one.

w) Tom or Ray off Car Talk
Don't watch it.

x) Jackson
Miss Jackson, cuz I'm nasty.

y) Jedi
They're all pretty dipshit.

z) Member of your household
Ronnie.

20) Who's the crappiest

a) Bond
Who cares? The Bond series is SOOOOOOO lame.

b) Batman
Michael Keaton, cuz he sucks in everything except Night Shift.

c) Monster in Gojira movies
MechaGodzilla.

d) Member of the Village People
I don't care enough to differentiate on this one.

e) Member of the Banana Splits
No fucking idea.

f) Simpson's supporting cast
I don't watch the Simpsons.

g) Beatle
Paul McCartney.

h) Magnificent Seven character
Again, from Seven Samurai not "Mag7": Katsushiro Okamoto, the ingenue.

i) Frasier or Niles
I don't care enough to differentiate on this one.

j) Character in Doonesbury
I dunno. Maybe Joanie Caucus? Not a heartfelt choice.

k) Osmond
I don't care enough to differentiate on this one.

l) Disney baddie
Gaston from Beauty and the Beast.

m) Bond Girl
I don't care enough to differentiate on this one.

n) Bond villain
I don't care enough to differentiate on this one.

o) Member of the Partridge family
Didn't watch it.

p) Radio deejay
Casey Kasem, what a doucehbag.

q) Non-monotheistic deity
Philomenus, Greek god of the plow. Seriously. Oooooh, impressive.

r) Fictional deity
YHWH, cuz they're all fictional, and this one did a lot to fuck up Western civilization.

s) Monkee
I don't care enough to differentiate on this one.

t) Witch
Any in that worthless fucking Harry Potter universe.

u) M.A.S.H character
Ho-Jon.

v) Flintstone
Fred, I guess, but I don't care enough to really differentiate on this one.

w) Tom or Ray off Car Talk
Don't watch it.

x) Jackson
So many to choose from. Michael, I guess.

y) Jedi
Anakin before he became Darth Vader. What a fucking emo whiner.

z) Member of your household
Me.

Olet vel non olet? That is the question.

2010-09-27T13:32:00.000-07:00

There's a Roman saying: Pecunia non olet! Money doesn't stink. Where does it originate? Well…

Once upon a time, before Christianity plunged the Western world into the Dark Ages, there was a Roman emperor we call Vespasian (Titus Flavius Vespasianus). Good old Tit Flava, as his friends might have called him if they were contemporary rappers, had his own ideas about money. He's the guy who initiated construction of the Flavian Amphitheater, aka the Colosseum, along with other huge, expensive public works. He's also the guy who imposed the vectigal urinae (piss tax) on Rome's populace. For the record, piss creators did not pay this tax, the people who bought the collected piss for use in tanning, laundry, and other chemical businesses paid it.

When his son, who later became the emperor Titus, complained that it was kind of a disgusting idea, Vespasian held a gold coin under Titus' nose and declaimed, "Non olet!" But this post is not about Vespasian, or his son Titus, or even about piss or a tax thereon, it's about money and whether or not it has, for lack of a better descriptor, provenance.

I have friends from all across the various spectra of life, political, philosophical, religious, etc. and I'm sure there's a complete spectrum of opinion on this topic. I'll state directly here, in diametric opposition to Vespasian, that I firmly believe that money does have provenance. For example, back in the dim time at the dawn of history when we did programs on punch cards, I worked for Boeing Computer Services. I was working with the commercial airplane division when I was offered a position with a military project. Woulda been good money (and pretty easy work) but I declined. I would not work for and take money from a military project. Like I said, I firmly believe that money has provenance and some money does stink.

But that's just my opinion and I'm curious as to your thoughts about this topic. Olet vel non olet? (It stinks or it doesn't stink?) Whatcha think?

I'm Pregnant

2010-09-19T23:38:00.000-07:00

Most things in life exist within a spectrum. The human visible spectrum ranges from about 4000 to 7500 Angstrom units or 400-750 nanometers, which is preferred nowadays, but I'm old. I like Angstrom units. My favorite color, cadmium red, is one specific point on that spectrum - 6438.4696 Angstrom units. And the human visible spectrum is itself merely a subset of the fuller electromagnetic spectrum.

My opinion about any particular piece of art ranges within a spectrum from wonderful to terrible with every possibility inbetween. I adore Waterhouse's "Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses."

We speak dogmatically about the political spectrum. We range in our religious beliefs from utter surety that there is a Deity, Which keeps Itself busy watching sparrows fall, to hardheaded certainty that the metaphysical plane is an intellectual construct from the mind of Man and is complete bunkum. We live a spectrum-rich life.

But there are some things in life which are binary. Yes, you're reading this on your computer so you inevitably thought immediately of binary code. Coins are binary, head/tail. Most normal light switches are binary, we'll just ignore those pesky 3-way switches (A 3-way? Perversion!) and rheostats, which are spectrum devices (And clearly deviant!). Etc. And that brings us to the title of this post.

You all know the old saying, "You can't be a little bit pregnant." Pregnancy is binary. Either you are pregnant or you are not pregnant. Binary. No spectrum effect for this type of situation. If you tell me you're pregnant, I understand that statement and I'll accept it at face value. If you tell me you're not pregnant, I understand that statement and I'll accept it at face value. If you tell me you're pregnant except for X or Y or Z, I cannot parse that statement into something meaningful. What we've got here is a failure to communicate, my dear Semiotic Cool Hand Luke.

I'm pregnant, except for X or Y or Z.

I unschool, except for math or bedtime or sugar.

I'm sure you're a wonderful person, Cool Hand, and I know you love your kids but are you really pregnant?

Eight is Enough

2010-09-10T14:04:00.000-07:00

No, not the tv show, the meme. From Bonnie.

8 Books I've read recently or am reading now:
Egypt's False Prophet, Akhenaten – Reeves (a study of the first monotheist)
The Glass Rainbow – James Lee Burke (I love Burke)
The Grand Design – Hawking and Mlodinow (Starting soon)
Paul is Undead – Goldsher (Zombie novel of the 60's music scene)
Ready About – Hoyt (examination of sailboat design and thoughtless adherence to tradition)
Truman – McCullough (bio of Harry S., my birth-year president)
The Vegetarian Myth – Keith (Sadly illogical and vitriolic)
Worth Dying For – Child (upcoming Jack Reacher novel)

8 Songs or Albums I listen to all the time:
AWB – Average White Band
Boom Boom – John Lee Hooker
Fiyo on the Bayou – Neville Brothers
Good Old Boys – Randy Newman
Greatest Hits – Van Morrison
Legend – Bob Marley
Rock & Roll Gumbo – Professor Longhair
Wcyaya - Osibisa

8 Things I love:
Family
Flying
Friends
Reading
Roadtripping
Sailing
SCUBA
Space

8 Things I've learned this year:
My children are adults
It's possible that I, too, am an adult
20 years of marriage and child-rearing goes by in an instant
Confirmed that there is no end to human stupidity
Confirmed that there is no end to human magnificence
I have a lot of friends
That ain't 8 but it's what I have to offer

8 new recipes I want to try and make by the end of the year:
Bobotie (Family cookbook)
Oysters Roffignac (Commander's Palace)
Pigeonneaux Paradis (Antoine's)
Red Sonya cocktail (Family cookbook)
Redfish Nicoise (Arnaud's)
Schwarzwalderkirschtorte (Family cookbook)
Shrimp Mariniere (Antoine's)
Tournedos Royal (Brennan's)

8 Favorite online hangouts:
AeroTrader (planes for sale)
Expedia
Facebook
Familyrun.ning
Friends' blogs
Snopes
Yachtworld (boats for sale)
Yahoo!Groups

8 Projects I need to work on:
Exterior house painting
Finish work in master bath
Varnish touchup on livingroom and diningroom wood floors
Regular cardiovascular exercise
Run to the dump with large junk items
Install toilet in basement
Repair/reinstall kitchen planter/windowbox
New base mouldings on porch columns

8 people I think should do this:
I don't tag

Free Speech

2010-09-08T21:41:00.001-07:00

I hope most of you recognize this. It was Article III in the original document but the first two were not ratified so it became the first amendment. I like it. I am an American and a Constitutionalist. Here it is in more legible form.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Therefore, I support the right of ~~fundamentalist fanatics~~ soi-disant Christians to peaceably assemble for the purpose of burning Qur'ans as an exercise of their free speech rights as described above.

I also support the right of my fellow citizens to voice their opposition to a new Islamic community center which will be the same distance from Ground Zero as fast-food joints, strip clubs, and porno shops. Sacred ground, indeed!

And I cherish my right under this beautiful First Amendment to speak my piece freely:

Fuckin' assholes.

Unconscious mutterings #396

2010-08-31T11:06:00.000-07:00

I think I've done this once or twice before but here's the latest one.

Bangs :: hurt when they slap you in the eyes when you're bouncing trampoline if they're too long. Ouch!

Diaper :: No more, thank you very much! And never again!

Coffee table :: useful but a bit old and tired

Cops :: necessary evil for a society. Amybody who wants to be a cop shouldn't be allowed to be a cop.

Matches :: My ass and your face. (Sorry. That's the first thing that came to mind.)

250 :: 69, dudes! I once had a nice Yamaha 250 dirtbike.

Hurricane :: Katrina. What else?

Bad :: to the bone!

Confirmation :: Pedophile priest slaps you to make you a soldier of Christ. How bizarre is that?

Fiber :: No, thanks.

Frank and Ronnie on the Zombie Princess after Katrina.

Tool of the Oracle: Your True Nature

2010-08-29T13:28:00.000-07:00

A meme stolen from Sara McGrath.

Instructions:
1. Delve into your blog archive.
2. Find your 23rd post.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.

My result: It's like he's channelling Torquemada.

From my three-part math rant Part 3.

What does Torquemada have to do with math? Ha! What does anything have to do with anything when I get started ranting?

Katrina +5

2010-08-26T12:58:00.000-07:00

Five years ago, we had the Zombie Princess just about ready to leave New Orleans for the deep blue and the family sailing adventure we'd talked about for a while. However, somebody named Katrina was occupying most of the Gulf of Mexico and coming to visit New Orleans. Five years ago today, we began emptying ZP and tying her up in anticipation of a Category 5 storm. When we were done with the best preparations we could think of, we drove to my sister Chrissy's house to ride out the storm. Having done that for other bad 'canes, including Betsy and Camille, I hit the bed and went to sleep.

The next morning, Ronnie and Chrissy, who had stayed up all night watching the news, woke me saying, "C'mon we're leaving. This is gonna be bad! We don't wanna stay." So we packed the car and headed out, our little nuclear family in our car and Chrissy with my dad in hers. My brother Chuck lives in Houston, although he was out of town at that time, and he graciously told us over the phone that we could go crash at his house. After spending teens of hours in a drive which usually takes 5 or so, we arrived. In retrospect, I'm so glad we evacuated.

The Zombie Princess after Katrina but before Rita

Her logo

ZP after Katrina, in the middle of the photo with the blue sailcover, still afloat unlike most of her neighbors

Less fortunate marina neighbors

I still hate that fuckin' storm. And I detest the inept response of FEMA; I will never forgive them.

Happy anniversary, Ronnie

2010-08-24T00:01:00.000-07:00

Love Is

Enjoying the good times. Persevering through the bad times.
Revelling in the times of joy. Holding on during the times of sorrow.
Refusing to let go when you feel like you just can't hold on one minute more but you tighten your grip anyway. Then you manage to last for another minute. Then another. And another.
Until, like Eos' mist burned away by Apollo's advent, the need to endure evaporates and Sol's bright face warms your gnarled knuckles and returns warmth and light to what was a dark world.
Bright and shining and comforting.
Agape and eros. And storge and philos.
And more. Love is broad and deep and possibly infinite (I think it might be. I choose to believe it is so.), while words are prisons, limiting boxes, coercing and restraining the reality to fit into the mouth of Man.
Not the incidents or events which can be reduced to fact(oid)s, 8/24/90, 9/15/92, 3/11/94, but the underlying fullness which is more than the sum of discrete things.
Twenty years of marriage. An eternity of love.

Time is the Hunter

2010-08-21T13:23:00.000-07:00

The stealthiest predator of all is the ravening beast we call Time. We, Its credulous prey, know It's there but we're unable or unwilling to grasp Its true approach speed or proximity. It's as if Time has, as part of Its predator skill set, the ability to delude us into a Heisenbergian fallacy where we are able to ascertain neither Its location nor Its speed. That just seems unfair. Shouldn't prey animals have a bit of a chance? Couldn't we at least have one accurate factor a la Heisenberg?

Huh? What's that? Oh, it's Time; but it's ok, It's way over there. Oh shit! No, It's not sitting still over there; It's accelerating and almost here! Now! And we're once again surprised and once again consumed by the apex predator of the universe and once again His stalk begins anew. Time disdains Hypnos and Morpheus; he respects only Thanatos.

There have been occasions when Time struck at me like a Carcharodon carcharias, sneaking in to take a single bite while I was otherwise distracted, leaving me to come to the realization well afterwards that I'd been struck and that a piece of my life had been torn away without my noticing. There was a day when I realized, after the fact, that both girls were out of diapers and would never need them again.

The skulking shark, Time, had sped in, bitten away that milestone, and absconded with it, while I lay oblivious on life's surfboard. Looking back from the beach at that missing chunk of my life is not the same as apprehending the event when it happened.

I am, of course, partly to blame for this. Just as Time can do naught but fulfill Its nature as the ur-predator, I'm afraid that my essential nature is to live in the past, the future, or the possible, while rarely inhabiting the now; so, I tend to miss things which are going on right under my nose, like being stalked by rapacious Time. Of course, Time is not limited to a single tactic, It is polutropos to the extent that Odysseus himself, described in the first line of The Odyssey as "andra polutropon" would feel like a one-trick pony. Yes, The Great Hunter Time is a wily beast, always taking from us like a hateful Harpy, but seemingly never satisfied, like Tantalus.

Ronnie and I have been talking casually for a while now about that mysterious demense called Empty Nest. We knew of its existence and we knew it was not all that distant from us, with MJ turning 18 in September and Chloe only 18 months behind. It seemed to me some sort of anomaly/curiosity of mathematics, an interesting variant of 18-squared, fraught with hidden, nonEuclidian meaning. We could sense that Empty Nest was within range, in the same way that when you're on the open ocean you can see clouds forming over an island which is itself still below your visible horizon but the clouds are a distinct adumbration of its existence and proximity.

In this instance, Time did not surface as a shark from the stygian sphere, silent, swift, seeking satiation. Eschewing subtlety, Time arrived like Dick Butkus jamming the A-hole by plugging it with the crushed body of the ball carrier. [Ok, I know it's usually referred to as the 1 hole and/or the A gap but c'mon! I couldn't pass up a cheap shot like that!]

There I was, the metaphoric running back knowing that my number had been called, staring across the gulf called the Line of Scrimmage at the flat, soulless eyes of Dick Butkus, Time incarnate; but I felt that I had some control, some input, something to contribute to the upcoming play. I had a plan. I had blockers. I was in a short-yardage situation and I knew where I was going. I knew Butkus/Time would eventually get me but I was confident that I could cover some ground that I wanted to cover before He did.

The ball is snapped and I take the handoff, ready to accelerate out of the backfield and gain those few ~~years~~ yards before He can get a grip on me. I'm looking downfield to my intended goal. Catch me if you can, Butkus!

Then I'm looking up at the clear, blue sky, still deep within my own backfield, and groaning as Dick Butkus levers himself off me, smiling and drooling thick spittle onto my now-empty hands as He takes the ball from my impact-numbed grip. Prey, meet Predator.

Captain Williard to infantryman, "Soldier, do you know who's in charge here?"
Infantryman replies, "Yeah."
(Dialog from Apocalypse Now)

Time is a Great White shark, striking quietly from below. Time is a pack of Compsognathids, striking multiply and endlessly. Time is the Spanish Lady, striking from within your own body. Time is motherfucking Dick Butkus jamming you in the A-hole.

My babies are adults and I thought I expected it but I guess I didn't really. I like it but it's requiring a little internal adjustment.

Kitchen kids

Sophisticated women at Lake Garda, Italy

Planning ahead

2010-08-17T21:47:00.000-07:00

I need a good obituary photo before I need it, ya know?

Whatcha think of one of these:

LIFE is Good 2011

2010-08-06T12:13:00.000-07:00

No, it's not too early! Mary has just opened registration. Yahoo!

Go here now and I'll see you there in May!

Video shamelessly stolen from Craig the Magnificent

Let me explain.

2010-08-05T13:00:00.000-07:00

No, there is too much. Let me sum up. [Princess Bride quote.]

Ya know how they say a picture is worth a thousand words? I think this picture does a nice job of summing up.

Chiara is a college graduate!

2010-08-03T16:40:00.000-07:00

I hafta take off my unschooler hat for a minute.

Our erstwhile exchange student/daughter, Chiara Baldo, is officially a college graduate! Congratulations, sweet Chiara, sometimes known in America as K-Dogg! We love you!

Chiara with her folks outside the Flavian Amphitheater, aka the Colosseum.

Cocktails with K-Dogg, rockin' it Italian style at Lake Garda.

Chatting in Italian. Well, chatting in Italy, anyway.

If ya wanna go an' take a ride wit me
Chillin' in the back of the 7-series B(mw)
Oh, why do we look this way?
Hey! Must be in Italy!

I'm that dad redux

2010-07-27T16:59:00.000-07:00

Just cuz I had to share this old photo Ronnie rediscovered. MJ when she was "ti" Marjie and Chloe when I sometimes called her "ti rouge" in the observers seat of our old MasterCraft 205 "TI MORT." Destin, Florida 96-97.

I'm the dad of those two exquisite ski babes!

I'm that dad!

2010-07-26T14:59:00.001-07:00

An impromptu blog carnival started by Ronnie based on a post by Flo. Got all that?

Traditional parents look at weltanschauung unschoolers and only see crazy levels of indulgence, a constant flow of socially unnormal behaviors! Oh, dear God! Yes. That's right. I'm that dad. I truly understand that from a traditional perspective it's crazy because traditional American child-rearing is all about control. I'm not. The phrase "my kids" is not the conceptual equivalent of "my bicycle."

My kids are practically adults now but even when they were younger, they would:

Stay up til all hours or even all night, because I'm that dad.
Eat whatever, whenver they want, because I'm that dad.
Watch R-rated movies, because I'm that dad.
Use all the interesting words English has to offer, because I'm that dad.
Do dangerous things, because I'm that dad.
Hold hands and hug me in public, even as older teens, because I'm that dad.

I'm that dad because they are those kids, bright, eager, interesting, and still fully possessed of their never-lost sense of wonder at this incredible universe.

Dags?

2010-07-26T00:30:00.000-07:00

Oh, *dogs*! Sure, I like dogs.

In the wonderful movie "Snatch," Tommy suffers an amusing confusion with Traveller (Pikey) accents and the animals called "dags." Or "dogs." Well, I like cats.

I've long enjoyed small cats but I haven't always liked big cats. However, around twenty years ago, design, engineering, and strength of material came together to make big cruising catamarans palatable to my refined tastes.

Stop laughing! I mean it. This is probably a good place to put the general disclaimer that this post is my opinion. YMMV. Especially if you have no sense of aesthetics. Oh, and did you really think I was gonna do a post about dogs? Or kitty-kats? Snicker.

As is common in the first generation of a new(ish) thing, there was a proliferation and profusion of a great variety of designs and, sadly, quality. One of my favorite of the earliest generation of viable cruising cats from the early 90s was a lovely French design by Van Peteghem/Luriot-Prevost, offered by Jenneau, and built by my favorite US builder, Tillotson-Pearson, now TPI Composites. The Lagoon 42.

My strongest criticism of this design is that big rounded cabin front. Those huge windows let in way too much light and HEAT in the tropics and too much wetness when they leak in any locale. Any seal between different materials on a boat will leak eventually and those sucker expose a lot of opportunity for water to enter your saloon. But it was head and shoulders above most other designs from that time and much better built than any other similar cat. Fast, too. Speaking of head and shoulders, tall people didn't like it. Not a problem for me.

Also coming in the early 90s was a boat which is still one of the sexiest designs in the world of big cats, brought to you from the pens of Joubert and Nivelt and the facilities of Fountaine-Pajot, the boat my pal Bob owns, the 38' Athena.

Now it's 2010, almost twenty years since those boats moved from the drawing board to the production line to a marina near you. In twenty years, there must have been some fabulous improvements, right?

Lagoons are still being produced and the newer ones have swapped that sloping panoramic brow for a tugboat-style series of windows.

A distinct functional improvement and I find the aesthetics ok but they've seriously compromised their performance. The new generation Lagoons are not quick. Let me hasten to add "for a catamaran." It'll still eat the lunch and dinner of most monohulls.

Fountaine-Pajot cats still look pretty much the same but they've given in to the current rage for hardtops rather than a soft (foldable) bimini.

So, yes, there are some great new innovations out there but, sadly, there are some creations which, if they were living things, would be considered mutants. And not the good kind. The nasty ones like in I Am Legend or Strange Brew. Remember the opening for that movie? Loved it!

Twenty years after the TPI-built Jenneau Lagoon 42, with its slight flaw, and the near-perfect Fountaine-Pajot Athena, South Africa has offered us these horrors.

Leopards of various sizes all pretty much look like this:

Twenty years later, they've adopted the hydrophilic rounded cabin trunk and seemingly added even more glass. And that hardtop is just... shudder! I'd be embarrassed to be seen on that boat. Beyond the mere, abysmal aesthetics, they've gone backwards in function, too. In the Lagoon and Fountaine-Pajot photos, you should be able to see that there's a good bit of space between the water and the bottom of the middle of the boat. This is called bridgedeck clearance.

With reasonable clearance you avoid a condition called, onomatopoetically, "slap." Slap sucks. Note the bridgedeck clearance for this Leopard. Practically nonexistent. Slap. Slap. Slap. Slap. Mile after mile. And it's not like a tv or movie face slap. It's like hitting a garbage can with a baseball bat.

Moorings, one of the original charter companies, has its own line. Moorings cats of various sizes look like this:

Now there's a cat which is a dog! I don't like these dogs.

I'd be embarrassed to be on a Leopard but I would not set foot on this Moorings cat. Period. This photo doesn't show the boat's stern but I can tell you it's a slap magnet. And did I mention how ugly it is? Blech!

Maybe it has something to do with the Southern hemisphere. Here's an offering from Australia; the Seawind company sells this model which I believe is properly called the Fugly, although some call it the Seawind 1160. (It's about 38' or 11.60 meters.)

Put me on that old Athena and set me free on the sea.