Surviving Sandy…

Dear Friends,

I am writing to let you all know that I have survived Hurricane Sandy. Despite reports in the region’s papers and other media, I have not perished in a flood such as we have not seen in Western Mass in half a millennium. Indeed, it was touch and go with the unseasonably warm evenings and a slight drizzle. But, the full Moon peeking through the hazy clouds offered reassurance that the Universe had not ceased to exist and I still survived to ponder and distress at the dreadful news floating through the wires and air waves that still worked with the electricity that continued to surge miraculously to power my computers, cell phones and television sets proclaiming the horribility and certain doom that had beset me.

I enjoyed a cold seltzer from the fridge that amazingly still had a light on inside it. Between commercials on the cable news, I repeatedly checked on the status of that light. I finished the chicken salad and sat in the bath tub with a door torn from its hinges for some hope of safety in the ongoing apocalypse. Then it stopped drizzling and my wife knocked on the busted door and asked me to go to the store for some ice cream. I brazed the nonexistent storm to find a young lady from Pakistan tending the counter at the 7/11. She surely is made of sterner stuff than I. Yes, those people know the difference between drizzle and a monsoon.

Of course, I understand that folks just to the south of my home got a bit of a whacking from Mother Nature. I’m sorry for your troubles. I must, however, point out that if you live in a place with Ocean or Beach in it’s name, or if you are on an island in the middle of the second largest body of water on the planet, you will get wet and inconvenienced when a hurricane blows in. Oh, and try not to put your trains in tunnels next to rivers adjoining the 17,543,940,979,332,434 gallons of water weighing 170,543,940,,979,332,434 pounds (give or take an ounce or two). Don’t expect your power to stay on when your power stations are down by those rivers and in bunkers below sea level. If at all possible, try not to drive down a darkened street flowing with a torrent of waist high water as fallen electric lines spark and arc across the hood of your car. If you are in a basement apartment and tidal waves are crashing against your windows, pray later and run away immediately. These are just a few suggestions that I can offer in service to public safety.

Thirty-five folks perished as Sandy loped with predictable and lazy determination to expend her surfeit of global warming energy upon the East Coast. Meanwhile in the time she took to do her work, about a thousand folks died in America from less foreseeable circumstances; car and industrial accidents.

In conclusion, I will implore my many concerned friends across the globe to relax. I am safely ensconced in my lair one-hundred-thirty-eight feet above sea level and a good piece from the river. What we just experienced with this hurricane was not the worst storm in my own short memory of fifty-seven years on the planet. It was not even close. It was more an amalgam of poor engineering, poor preparedness and plain old dumbosity. Oh, and thank you to our regional and national media for killing millions of dollars in business and ruining the education of our kids for two days while you sold hemorrhoid medications and comfy soft toilet tissues every seven minutes between blasting the networks with made up news.

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

SCS

Ad Astra George McGovern

Dear Friends,

We lost George McGovern last night. The guy was a true hero in war and for peace. Like so many of his comrades, he did not speak much about what he did to earn his medals of valor in WW2. He did not, however. discount the record that he once brought home in one piece the crew of the B-24 Liberator bomber that he piloted with one engine shot off and another aflame, 110 bullet holes drilled through the craft. But, he did not make much of that.

He did describe his time in war a hell, and by his subsequent devotion to peace and giving food and care to those that suffered in war, in poverty, in hunger, I surmise that he was conscious of not only the hell he endured, but those caught up in all the world's wars.

He went on to endure a second hell, going toe to toe with the most ruthless President our nation has yet known. He dared a man with atom bombs and the world's biggest secret police to an honest fight. His opponent was so cowered by McGovern's courage that he resorted to dirty tricks and thievery to win the battle and thus ultimately lost everything. In the course of this domestic battle, of course, Nixon plunged an entire region of Asia into war and killed more than 4 million innocents. Nixon delivered the very hell that McGovern had warned of and knew too well.

But, George never expressed bitterness about that defeat. As in WW2, possibly the only war that we might generously call a good war in our recent history as a nation, McGovern was clad in the armor of humility and a good sense of humor as he returned from the battlefield. This guy George was, indeed, a hero and he dared against all odds. We lost a good one last night. I'm very grateful to have been around in his time.

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

SCS

Senator and Hero George McGovern

Kindness and Attention…

Dear Friends,

This has been a sort of heavy day. See, I've had a few folks pass on in the recent months; down and outers and bounders and such sort that I know perhaps too well. 

Anyhow, if you got some time, take a walk down the street and toss 

a dime or two to folks that might be asking. Maybe drop them a loaf of bread or candy bar. It doesn't matter if they are really vets or not, if they claim to be pregnant and are likely not or if they are how they got into such a fix. Whatever. If you live in a town with a Ferry Street (most do), head down to the river or the shore.

You'll see tents and sleeping bags in the scruff of the woods. Throw some more bread around if you got it to spare. Maybe give one of those folks down by the water some due; just a hello. That will matter even more than a quarter or a piece of bread. You likely won't get hurt and it will be the best thing you can do for yourself all day.

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

SCS

Spiritual and Cranky!

Dear Friends,

I got pretty cranky yesterday morning when I encountered a commentary by this yutz, Alan Miller, on CNN calling folks who were "spiritual but not religious" lazy and timid. Hey, boss, you take a look at a Universe that stretches from before the beginning of time and all the way to the end of time. See a universe that is one of an infinite variety and multitude but has perfected itself to create Human eyes and Human minds that seek to comprehend it and all the other possible creations in every possible dimension within and without time. Look into the near emptiness of space and see Reality being born out of that emptiness adjacent to dark stars that drink up even the aether of light born out of nothingness.

In this Universe matter is mostly unseen and most light dark, most truth must left be unspoken about the hidden mysteries on worlds beyond our dreams begging to be revealed in a place where Space and Light bend and few so-called facts can be trusted from our vantage. We cannot know where and how fast It becomes new or old or not at all; no more than that cat in a box that has puzzled us since those cats Heisenberg and Schroeder dreamt it up or not. The end of the story of that cat does or does not forever live in a book that has no beginning nor end.

So, stand there at the edge of a sky with new stars birthing new planets and look at them. Stand alone without some old man in a throne above the clouds of our piece of lint in the Cosmos, this pale blue dot, our home world circling an unremarkable star at the tenuous fringe of one galaxy swirling amongst a trillion others. Now, tell me that I am lazy and timid. Brother, what I just described is where I live and it is not a place for the timid. To you I say, welcome home.

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

SCS

Tasting Comets…

Comet Kohoutek Seen from Earth in CE 1973

Dear Friends,

Have you every tasted a comet? I bet you have. When you were a little kid, did you ever stick your tongue out as a snowflake fell in a blizzard? That tiny bit of water melting in an instant upon your tongue was from a comet. Have you ever mopped your brow after an afternoon of playing in the sun? That salty and sweet flavor of sweat came from a comet. Have you been to the sea? All those gazillions of tons and 1.3 sextillion liters of water and much of the stuff of our own beings and every living thing we know came from countless comets falling through ancient winds in an orange sky of nitrogen and methane and ammonia to deliver us water and the chemistry of life. When you inhale that breeze on the surf, you are breathing a comet.

That surf you feel vibrating at about one and a half cycles per second is the vibration of our Home World’s Moon bouncing around Terra as it wobbles about old Sol. It is also a cerebral sound; it is the frequency of our Human minds at rest and in meditation. It is no wonder that we can sit for hours or lie with our eyes closed under the Sun listening to that beat. Listen long enough without distraction and your own pulse cleaves to that rhythm. It slows. You are at Home under the arc of a heaven that once rained down comets.

Hic Finis Est,

SCS

Paul Ryan's Mind…

Dear Friends,

I am not a mental health professional, but I am a writer. Thus I know and can explain the narrative of this sick punk's story clearly. He's a hurt little puppy who has seen all of the older men in his family, including his dad, die in their mid-fifties. He resents his mother who had to adopt the role of authority in his life as he was tutored by priests on the inferiority of women.

He deeply fears growing old and thus perversely worships his own male body by torturing it to excess. In the disguise of perfecting it, he self-flagellates like the celibate monk that he is not and can never be given his obsession with sex and the unknowable power in a woman's womb that he strives unsuccessfully to control. He is hiding behind the smile of a man terrified of his mortality as he bargains with the very devil of his imagining that he seeks to defeat. He is doomed and lashing out against the unstoppable future. This dude's way in life makes the deal that Faust struck look like a good bet.

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

SCS

Neil Armstrong, Ad Astra

Neil Armstrong, Ad Astra

Dear Friends,

One of my heroes died yesterday afternoon. You might have heard of him. He might be one of your heroes, as well. That is likely if you were a thirteen year old boy on July 20, 1969. His name was Neil Armstrong. He was the steely eyed missile man who flew a space ship clear to the Moon and was the first Human to touch its face, to trod its dust under his boot heels and come back home with a trove of dumb old, very old rocks.

Armstrong had previously shown his mettle flying fighter planes over Korea, blasting toward the edge of space in rocket planes that nobody was sure would real work, and safely landing a crazy contraption called the Gemini 8 that spun out of control one hundred and four miles from Terra Firma. It was spinning at one revolution per second while coupled to another craft. He and his crew mate could barely see straight, their eyeballs bulging and heads swimming from the force of the gyrations. Armstrong could hardly lift his right hand and hit the small button to turn the damned machine off. He worried that he might vomit into his space helmet and thus suffocate, but did manage to do what a real test pilot always wishes to do. He got himself and his partner back down on the ground in one piece.

About three years later on Armstrong faced a couple of other challenges not anticipated in his training to make a landing on Luna. First off, there were then no really good maps of their intended place of touch down. As they, he, the Commander, and Buzz Aldrin, Armstrong’s pilot, descended to the surface they found that the supposedly safe terrain was littered with boulders and craters. They had overshot their place of supposed safety and were running low on fuel. Neil and Buzz, saying not a word to each other as they kept mission control a quarter of a million miles away apprised of the mess, morphed into a four armed, quadruple-eyed single pilot. One took control of the altitude of their little craft, and the other manned the joystick controlling its forward motion. With less than half a minute of fuel left, they made a safe landing. Had they not, their craft made with a skin as thin as a foil wrapper on a piece of chewing gum, would have become their coffin… and not a very fine coffin as expensive as it was.

Anyhow, once down on the surface, they were told to get some sleep. Who can make a perilous journey to land on the friggin’ Moon and then want to take a nap? They refused their orders and got dressed for a little jaunt. Of course, they had to take along that danged American flag to plant and their first problem was getting the thing stuck into the hard lunar soil so goddamn President Nixon could interrupt their work on a useless task for the TV camera for a useless interview with the “boys” to be telecast and recorded on a tape that would be lost in an obscure closet somewhere yet to be discovered in Texas… or maybe California… or maybe Florida. These guys just risked their necks to get to the Moon and they had to stop what they were doing to pose for a dumb ass TV commercial for a crooked politician.

Whatever. The fellahs did get back to work. Buzz spent a good deal of time doing what seemed to be the Bunny Hop as he figured out how to move around in those ridiculous suits that were like balloons you wore. Neil got most of the chores with the digging and laying out experiments as his pilot looked like he was high on nitrous oxide at a Grateful Dead show before that camera. Then they had to go back into their rickety little Moon Ship for that snooze before going back up to the orbiting command capsule… if the rocket in their own ship would light as promised.

That proved to be a problem. The rocket was actually in fine shape, but Buzz bumped into the switch that turned it on when he was getting back into the Lunar Module. It broke off. Fortunately, he had a Bic pen. He took off the cap and jammed it into the switch. They were on their way back home. Buzz is still both proud and abashed by this episode, forty-three years later.

So, the guys, Armstrong and Aldrin and the command module pilot, Mike Collins, head back home in what had become at this point, well, essentially a flying outhouse. After six days with about as much personal space as a phone booth provides… things were getting a little stinky. When the recovery crew opened the hatch to the Apollo 11 capsule, they almost lost their lunch. No portion of a trip to the Moon and back, including prying three adventurers out of their tiny space craft is for sissies.

Next came the quarantine in a little trailer home. The astronauts needed to be isolated to protect the crew of the aircraft carrier that had picked them up from imaginary space bugs. The thing was hermetically sealed but fitted with a large picture window so Nixon, yes him again, could drop on by to have the plucky boys make another TV ad for him. He took a short break from compiling lists of Jews and other enemies, plotting burglaries and assassinations to say how proud he was of the brave Americans confined to a silver tube on wheels after spending seven days at the edge of Death at every moment, with each flip of a switch, with every move in a terribly confined space with no escape. Now, they were trapped yet again having to put up with Nixon.

Of course, Nixon had almost nothing to do with the guys triumphant and daring trip to the surface of the Moon and back. The men who actually engineered the politics and economics required to perform such a feat, JFK and LBJ, were either murdered or banished in disgrace. Nixon’s joy at this reality was barely concealed behind his smug and clueless pronouncement of the achievement that he shared with the brave explorers. They put up with his nonsense and went back to their jobs, now essentially working as lab rats being examined to see if they would die some hideous death from an alien microbial beasty.  The boys were good natured about living in their terrarium like some exhibit at a zoo. They played a lot of cards and gave interviews over the phone and did their best to explain what they had done and experienced to the folks back at NASA and JPL, and to the world.

After being let out of the big test tube, the guys were sent to perform in parades and publicity functions. They pretty much hated that. When the hoopla was done, they each went their own ways. Buzz had a hard time for a while: depression and much booze. He eventually rebounded to become the preeminent Celestial Mechanic of our age. His ideas might finally get us to Mars. Collins went on to a life of public service and as a business leader in the private sector. Armstrong took a path rather different than his two colleagues who sailed with him to the Moon and back.

He moved back to his home in Ohio and became an engineering professor at a little state college. He seldom made public appearances but for showing up in class on time. He taught young people about the practical matters of solving little problems or hard problems for folks; making devices that might just become pieces of the next great space ship or a washing machine.

Armstrong could have cashed in his golden ticket of fame. He did not. He chose to make a modest living as a teacher and tend to his family and community. He touched the face of the Moon, but he chose to be firmly planted and steady to his principles right here on Earth. He humbly demonstrated to us all how to be Human when an entire planet assumes that you are more than Human. A little light went out of the world with the departure of a modest, brave and hard working man. Tonight or any night, if it is clear and the Moon is high, give that piece of rock and dust a wink and nod. One of our kind dared go there first and stomp gentle on its rough hide.

Hic Finis Est

SCS