I’m well aware of where those words come from but, no, this is not about marriage, weddings, etc. That will wait for some other day. No, this is about my (admitted) limited experience with the surgical side of the medical profession. I will also admit to being extremely pain averse and phobic about hypodermic needles. Those of you who have endured major surgery of any kind have my undying admiration for a) having endured it and b) having endured it with grace. My own experience is limited and I have been ridiculously healthy all my life. So my “coping mechanisms” are not very good and I turn into a big baby over anything medico-surgical. But I do try to laugh about it AFTER it’s over.
My earliest introduction to surgery was at the age of three when my pediatrician determined that my tonsils needed to go. I didn’t necessarily understand what was about to happen although I knew it had something to do with my throat because sore throats had led to the surgery. I was admitted to Cross County Hospital in Yonkers, co-located with the Cross County Shopping Center. The hospital is gone but the shopping center still exists. I was too young to be scared, although old enough to be afraid of hypodermic needles. I recall getting one (in the butt, for some reason) after being admitted. It may have been to make me a bit groggy but I don’t know. I have a thin memory of being laid on the OR table. They were still using ether as an anesthetic and just before they put the mask over my nose, I said, “Be careful with me,” and then I was out. I woke up to a severely hurting throat and the blessed news that my parents could take me home that night. Any of you who have ever heard Bill Cosby talk about his tonsillectomy will know that the big promise was: ice cream! That’s right. So when we got home did I get ice cream? Uh, no. But I did get chocolate pudding. And I clearly remember sitting on the couch in the living room eating it, wearing blue pajamas and paging through the latest Lionel toy train catalog. And my reward for being such a good, big boy? A Matchbox (anyone remember Matchbox cars when they actually came in what looked like a matchbox) car transporter with detachable car trailer and folding ramp.
Flash forward eleven years to Mark on the cusp of puberty. At the time, I had a large, brown benign mole on almost the point of my chin. My parents decided that the mole should be removed because it would get in the way of shaving, something that was in the offing as my voice deepened and hair began sprouting in “other” places. By this time, I had a full-blown phobia of hypodermic needles so that was the major fear. To offset this, I was given a pre-op happy pill of some sort. I was major league dopey when they plopped me on the OR table and it seemed like I was unable to make my mouth move to talk. I wanted to verify, for the umpteenth time, that they were not going to put an IV in my arm. My mouth wouldn’t work, so I went to point to the inside of my elbow, but only succeeded in touching the surgeon’s glove. That resulted in being tied down. The operation itself was a total anti-climax and the surgeon actually walked me down to the doctor’s lounge where he changed into his Navy officer’s uniform for his reserve weekend. He says he knew I was fine when I tried to stand up and salute him.
When I had my USAF pre-commissioning physical, they determined that the three remaining wisdom teeth in my mouth had to go. I arranged for my dentist to do it. It was scheduled for a Friday afternoon and my parents were going away for the weekend. My dentist also was going to do it with laughing gas followed by Novocain. When I reported this state of affairs to my fiancée, she and her mother summarily ordered me to cancel the appointment and come to Connecticut where they arranged for their oral surgeon to do it and for my mom-in-law-to-be, who was an RN, to take me. This was my first experience with sodium pentothal and the count backwards from 100. Bill Cosby talks about being so pitiful that he couldn’t even get out the second 9 in 99. He had nothing on me. I was out like a light. The next thing I remember is waking up with a mouthful of cotton, sobbing uncontrollably. And I said something under the influence of the sodium pent that my wife’s mother, to this day, refuses to tell me. I have always wondered if it had anything to do with our sleeping arrangements at Syracuse University….
The first (and only) time I have ever voluntarily suggested submitting to a surgical procedure related directly to the last time I wanted to endure the worry of whether my daughter was going to cease being an only child. So, there we were at the urologist’s office for the pre-op consult. As we were finishing, I explained to him my phobic reaction to anything of a medical/surgical procedure nature. He told me not to worry, that he could give me a shot of valium before the surgery. I then had to explain the entire needle-phobia (which actually has a real name – Trypanophobia. Go ahead. Like Casey Stengel said, you could look it up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trypanophobia). That, then resulted in a prescription for two 10 mg Valium tablets. (Mmmmm. Valium good….) Surgery was scheduled for a Friday. (Some of you may recall this as being the first day of my Secured Transaction course in Law School which I was going to miss.) It was scheduled for 3:30 PM and I spent the day hanging out with my friends at our local hobby shop. An hour before surgery, I took 10 mg. A half hour before, I took 5 mg more and my wife picked me up to drive me. I have NO memory of the drive to the doctor’s office but she says I argued with her the whole way about taking the last 5 mg which she would not allow. I had borrowed my daughter’s Sony Walkman and I DO remember happily hopping up on the table and laying there while the surgeon was doing his thing, singing along with the radio. It was over very quickly (about 25 minutes) and when we got home, I picked up the phone and called my friend Rich (who was considering the same procedure) and said that the surgery was a piece of cake and that if I could tolerate it, anyone could tolerate it. I spent the rest of the evening sitting on a bag of ice. And, yes, unlike a certain episode of the TV sitcom Evening Shade, my daughter remained an only child.
Between 1985 and 2003, surgery and I remained strangers, other than as a bystander with other family members and friends. That all changed in 2003 when my doctor became alarmed at an extremely high level of calcium in my blood. This led to a diagnosis of hyperparathyroidism. The good news is that it is 100% curable. The bad news is that the only way to cure it is surgery. I went through three endocrinologists and way too many blood tests (plus a bone scan) before anyone could convince me that surgery was inevitable. So, I arranged for it in the period between the end of summer Irish dance classes and the beginning of fall classes. As usual, I received my dose of pre-op happy pills. I don’t actually recall the heparin lock being inserted but I would love to know the name of the nurse who did it. At my request, she put it inside my elbow rather than the back of my hand. If I knew her name she’d be on the Christmas list every year! I recall being wheeled into the OR and having them spread my arms straight out. There was a momentary thought about making a joke about the position but I figured even a non-believer like me was taking no chances at a time like that. The surgery was a complete success and the surgeon who did it had a very nice touch and you can barely see the scar on the front of my neck. (It was also great for about a month and a half that I could get away without wearing a tie at work.)
Although technically not surgery, I’ll conclude with my last procedure. Later that same year, the Monday before Thanksgiving, I got my gift for having made it into my second half century. Yes, that’s right, my first colonoscopy. Now I know all the stories about Katie Couric doing hers on TV and my wife telling me during hers that she was awake and watching it on the TV. NO FREAKIN’ THANK YOU! Again, it began with a happy pill and my last conscious memory was something cold hitting my vein through the IV. And then, I was being wheeled out to the car. I hadn’t eaten anything that morning, so my wife asked if I wanted to get lunch and I said, sure. (Understand, she has had several of these and every time, she’s so chipper afterwards that lunch was always a given. She also did not have to have any pre-op happy pills. Remember that point.) We arrived at the restaurant and she led me to the chair and made sure that I was able to successfully navigate the effort of sitting down. I believe I ordered a hamburger platter. The waitress brought our meals and I think I actually had a bite or two. As my wife describes what happened next, she was eating her own meal, looking at her plate and talking to me. She realized that I was not answering and she looked up. There I was, nose down in the hamburger, out cold. I have no idea what we did the rest of the day.
So here we sit on the edge of the New Year and this is, officially, my last blog of 2009. I have no plans to stop doing this as it is terribly therapeutic and a lot of fun for me to write I hope it is enjoyable for you to read, too. Coward that I am I am hoping this particular topic will not need to be revised as the future unfolds. But as that future unfolds, regardless of what awaits in 2010, let me extend my thanks and love to all of you. You have been a source of unending joy and warmth to me. Happy New Year everyone. I love you all more than I can say.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Babble-on
I’m going to guess that most of you are familiar with biblical story of the Tower of Babel (Migdal Bavel in transliterated Hebrew for those of you playing along at home). Just in case you’re not, according to the story, the angry deity, to punish the arrogant humans for attempting to build a stairway to heaven (which, by the way, is a great song by Led Zeppelin, too) caused a confusion of languages so that no one could talk to anyone and get anything accomplished. Now, those of you who know me are probably scratching their heads wondering, “Uh, Mark, what’s the deal with starting with a Bible story? You?” Well, read on. You’ll understand or comprend or verstehen.
My first contact with a language other than English (i.e. English as an American speaks it, not the Henry Higgins of My Fair Lady/Pygmalion fame) was Yiddish. Once I was old enough to be able to spell out words, my parents would speak in Yiddish to prevent me from understanding what they were talking about. They actually got away with this through the time I hit early double digits in age by which time I had heard it so many times that, while I could not understand the literal meaning, I got the sense of who and what was being discussed and would then ask why they were talking about that particular thing in front of me. Thus endeth the Yiddish. (It was only after his death that I learned that my father spoke English as a second language. Until he was about three, the only language spoken in his house was Yiddish.) (And if you are wondering, we did a similar thing with my daughter. My wife and I would spell things until she was old enough to spell, then we resorted to a pidgin French. When we found that was inadequate, we started spelling things in the Air Force phonetic alphabet. Thus Mark became Mike, Alpha, Romeo Kilo. My daughter never got that until we explained it to her years after it was necessary to use it.)
Anyway, one of the horrors of my youth was Hebrew School. It’s not that it was such a horrible thing, but it was five years of six hours of classes a week (two hours three days a week) plus homework ON TOP of what we were learning in grade school. Now, let me get this out right from the start. I am not good at learning foreign languages and have never stumbled on a good learning method for them. That will become readily obvious as you read on. So, there I am in Hebrew School struggling to learn an entirely new alphabet that reads right to left and has funny accent and diacritical marks, as well as the language associated with it. That was bad. Very bad. Then in the third year they whip a new wrinkle on us. Now, on top of what they want us to learn, we have to learn ancient Hebrew as written in the Torah, too. This is akin to an English speaker having to learn to read the original manuscript language of The Canterbury Tales. Some crossover to the modern language…but not so much. This led to some severe angst on my part as I was still struggling with the modern Hebrew. Then, in the fourth year they made my head explode. That was when they said now we’re going to read Rashi’s commentaries on the Torah. So far, so good. Wait for it. Stupid me naively thought, well, how bad could Rashi’s language be? It could be very bad because Rashi wrote in Aramaic. So now they want me to learn a third language???!!!! That is when my head exploded and my parents started to become very disappointed with my Hebrew School grades. Parenthetically, once that five year sentence ended, my mother decided I was going to Hebrew high school. I said no and in a first, to my memory, my father said no to my mother. I believe the shock of him gainsaying her was a sufficiently earth-shattering event that convinced her that this time it was not going to happen.
Through all this mess, starting in fifth grade in my hometown, some schools began introducing French and others Spanish. It all depended on which school you were in. I was in one that taught French. Let me just say this about French. At least they use the same freakin’ alphabet and read left to right. Okay, they do have a few accents but I could handle that much. I can’t say I remember much about the first four years of French with the exception of becoming familiar with the fact what we call the first floor was known as the Rez de Chausée and the Premier Etage was what we called the second floor. By the time we hit ninth grade, we were into the complexities of the language sufficient for me to be floundering. My solution? Make the teacher nuts. My seat was in the first row and she could easily see the look on my face, most of which showed blithering confusion. Periodically, she would say, “Monsieur Gutis, comprenenz-vous?” Whether I did or not, my standard answer was, “If you say so.” After several months of this, she flipped out and went into a rant about it not mattering if she said so, it only mattered if I was actually getting it. As the school year was rapidly drawing to a close, I figured that my work on her was done.
My senior year in high school, French class was French literature in French. This might not have been so bad for those who had actually done a reasonable job learning the language. Then there was me. I really loved this particular teacher. She was a tiny blonde woman who was a Polish Jew whose family fled the Nazis to France and then to the U.S. Her first name was Bella. (Remember that, it comes up later.) I loved her, but, again, that meant that it was my duty to make her crazy. When we would read plays, we would each take a part including her. She would really get into acting the part and one day, one of the girls in our class said, “Oh, Miss F., you should have been an actress!” Emoting as badly as any ham she answered, “Oh, yes. Someday my name will be up in lights!” And then I chimed in, “Yeah, flashing on and off saying Bella’s Bar and Grill.” Fortunately, I was saved by the bell, as class ended a moment later. She knew and I knew she knew that I was reading everything in English and faking my way through class and she kept saying, “Come the final, I’ll know who has been reading in French,” and she’d stare at my innocent expression. Here’s her big mistake. She gave us the subjective, essay part of the exam first. She took off every point she could on mine but then I knew exactly what grade I needed on the objective part to get a B. And I made it by one point because I knew the stories and could fill in the blank or answer the multiple choice questions easily. (And this is why I say that my wife and I used pidgin French. She had spent several summers living in France and could speak it well. The limitations were entirely mine.)
In university I had the option of taking a language or not. Three guesses? And the first two don’t count. My major was a dual concentration of International Relations and Soviet Studies. Because it was dual and not straight Soviet Studies, I was able to duck having to take Russian. Honestly? It’s my greatest regret about my university education. I did have enough exposure to Russian, though, that I learned to sound out the alphabet and can, more or less, read Cyrillic and sound out most words. (This came in very handy in the Air Force. One thing that all combat crew members had to do to be certified mission ready was to conduct a briefing of your war mission for a senior staff officer. As navigator, it was my responsibility to indicate how I would navigate the aircraft over the Soviet Union. It was a piece of cake because the Deputy Operations Commander who certified me said that he had never heard Russian names pronounced so well.)
The other thing I picked up in university was the Greek alphabet. No, didn’t take any courses in Greek but I did pledge a fraternity. Among the things we had to learn was the Greek alphabet. I can actually say it faster than the English alphabet, mostly because I never had anyone standing over me and yelling at me to go faster with the English. I can’t understand Greek but I can sound it out by the letters.
My next cold splash of foreign language came in law school. Why it is that people who deal in language made as complex as possible feel the need to make it worse by using Latin phrases is…oh wait. Never mind. Self-explanatory. Res judicata (the thing has been adjudicated), res ipsa loquitor (the thing speaks for itself), ab initio (from the beginning), pro hoc vice (for this occasion), well I could go on but you get the idea. The fortunate thing about this terminology is that I didn’t have to learn the actual translation. I just needed to know when and how to use it properly.
So now I come to my latest assault on a foreign tongue. My wife and I plan on going to Germany to visit friends in the not too distant future. Those of you who know me well know that I am as self-critical regarding my native land and fellow citizens as anyone. One of the things that distresses me is the tendency of American tourists to assume that no matter where they go, people will speak English. I decided that I’m going to be at least able to use some basic Deutsch when we are there. Yes, they will probably be horrified at my American accent and how I butcher the language trying to make myself understood. But at least they’ll know I’m trying. So, in conclusion, let me just say, “Mein freunden, ich liebe dich alle.”
My first contact with a language other than English (i.e. English as an American speaks it, not the Henry Higgins of My Fair Lady/Pygmalion fame) was Yiddish. Once I was old enough to be able to spell out words, my parents would speak in Yiddish to prevent me from understanding what they were talking about. They actually got away with this through the time I hit early double digits in age by which time I had heard it so many times that, while I could not understand the literal meaning, I got the sense of who and what was being discussed and would then ask why they were talking about that particular thing in front of me. Thus endeth the Yiddish. (It was only after his death that I learned that my father spoke English as a second language. Until he was about three, the only language spoken in his house was Yiddish.) (And if you are wondering, we did a similar thing with my daughter. My wife and I would spell things until she was old enough to spell, then we resorted to a pidgin French. When we found that was inadequate, we started spelling things in the Air Force phonetic alphabet. Thus Mark became Mike, Alpha, Romeo Kilo. My daughter never got that until we explained it to her years after it was necessary to use it.)
Anyway, one of the horrors of my youth was Hebrew School. It’s not that it was such a horrible thing, but it was five years of six hours of classes a week (two hours three days a week) plus homework ON TOP of what we were learning in grade school. Now, let me get this out right from the start. I am not good at learning foreign languages and have never stumbled on a good learning method for them. That will become readily obvious as you read on. So, there I am in Hebrew School struggling to learn an entirely new alphabet that reads right to left and has funny accent and diacritical marks, as well as the language associated with it. That was bad. Very bad. Then in the third year they whip a new wrinkle on us. Now, on top of what they want us to learn, we have to learn ancient Hebrew as written in the Torah, too. This is akin to an English speaker having to learn to read the original manuscript language of The Canterbury Tales. Some crossover to the modern language…but not so much. This led to some severe angst on my part as I was still struggling with the modern Hebrew. Then, in the fourth year they made my head explode. That was when they said now we’re going to read Rashi’s commentaries on the Torah. So far, so good. Wait for it. Stupid me naively thought, well, how bad could Rashi’s language be? It could be very bad because Rashi wrote in Aramaic. So now they want me to learn a third language???!!!! That is when my head exploded and my parents started to become very disappointed with my Hebrew School grades. Parenthetically, once that five year sentence ended, my mother decided I was going to Hebrew high school. I said no and in a first, to my memory, my father said no to my mother. I believe the shock of him gainsaying her was a sufficiently earth-shattering event that convinced her that this time it was not going to happen.
Through all this mess, starting in fifth grade in my hometown, some schools began introducing French and others Spanish. It all depended on which school you were in. I was in one that taught French. Let me just say this about French. At least they use the same freakin’ alphabet and read left to right. Okay, they do have a few accents but I could handle that much. I can’t say I remember much about the first four years of French with the exception of becoming familiar with the fact what we call the first floor was known as the Rez de Chausée and the Premier Etage was what we called the second floor. By the time we hit ninth grade, we were into the complexities of the language sufficient for me to be floundering. My solution? Make the teacher nuts. My seat was in the first row and she could easily see the look on my face, most of which showed blithering confusion. Periodically, she would say, “Monsieur Gutis, comprenenz-vous?” Whether I did or not, my standard answer was, “If you say so.” After several months of this, she flipped out and went into a rant about it not mattering if she said so, it only mattered if I was actually getting it. As the school year was rapidly drawing to a close, I figured that my work on her was done.
My senior year in high school, French class was French literature in French. This might not have been so bad for those who had actually done a reasonable job learning the language. Then there was me. I really loved this particular teacher. She was a tiny blonde woman who was a Polish Jew whose family fled the Nazis to France and then to the U.S. Her first name was Bella. (Remember that, it comes up later.) I loved her, but, again, that meant that it was my duty to make her crazy. When we would read plays, we would each take a part including her. She would really get into acting the part and one day, one of the girls in our class said, “Oh, Miss F., you should have been an actress!” Emoting as badly as any ham she answered, “Oh, yes. Someday my name will be up in lights!” And then I chimed in, “Yeah, flashing on and off saying Bella’s Bar and Grill.” Fortunately, I was saved by the bell, as class ended a moment later. She knew and I knew she knew that I was reading everything in English and faking my way through class and she kept saying, “Come the final, I’ll know who has been reading in French,” and she’d stare at my innocent expression. Here’s her big mistake. She gave us the subjective, essay part of the exam first. She took off every point she could on mine but then I knew exactly what grade I needed on the objective part to get a B. And I made it by one point because I knew the stories and could fill in the blank or answer the multiple choice questions easily. (And this is why I say that my wife and I used pidgin French. She had spent several summers living in France and could speak it well. The limitations were entirely mine.)
In university I had the option of taking a language or not. Three guesses? And the first two don’t count. My major was a dual concentration of International Relations and Soviet Studies. Because it was dual and not straight Soviet Studies, I was able to duck having to take Russian. Honestly? It’s my greatest regret about my university education. I did have enough exposure to Russian, though, that I learned to sound out the alphabet and can, more or less, read Cyrillic and sound out most words. (This came in very handy in the Air Force. One thing that all combat crew members had to do to be certified mission ready was to conduct a briefing of your war mission for a senior staff officer. As navigator, it was my responsibility to indicate how I would navigate the aircraft over the Soviet Union. It was a piece of cake because the Deputy Operations Commander who certified me said that he had never heard Russian names pronounced so well.)
The other thing I picked up in university was the Greek alphabet. No, didn’t take any courses in Greek but I did pledge a fraternity. Among the things we had to learn was the Greek alphabet. I can actually say it faster than the English alphabet, mostly because I never had anyone standing over me and yelling at me to go faster with the English. I can’t understand Greek but I can sound it out by the letters.
My next cold splash of foreign language came in law school. Why it is that people who deal in language made as complex as possible feel the need to make it worse by using Latin phrases is…oh wait. Never mind. Self-explanatory. Res judicata (the thing has been adjudicated), res ipsa loquitor (the thing speaks for itself), ab initio (from the beginning), pro hoc vice (for this occasion), well I could go on but you get the idea. The fortunate thing about this terminology is that I didn’t have to learn the actual translation. I just needed to know when and how to use it properly.
So now I come to my latest assault on a foreign tongue. My wife and I plan on going to Germany to visit friends in the not too distant future. Those of you who know me well know that I am as self-critical regarding my native land and fellow citizens as anyone. One of the things that distresses me is the tendency of American tourists to assume that no matter where they go, people will speak English. I decided that I’m going to be at least able to use some basic Deutsch when we are there. Yes, they will probably be horrified at my American accent and how I butcher the language trying to make myself understood. But at least they’ll know I’m trying. So, in conclusion, let me just say, “Mein freunden, ich liebe dich alle.”
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Law of the Jungle, Part 2
So, there I was, wondering what was the reason for what seemed to be purposeful roadblocks from my editor. Without admitting anything, she promised that she would take another, more careful look at her notes and get back to me. When she did, she conceded that with a bit more polishing, it would be ready for publication.
Before she did that, the elections for the editorial positions were being held. Well now. Wasn’t that just an entrancing evening to sit through? I mean, it was complete with campaign speeches including one from a Hasidic student whose main argument was that because he had dealt with Mosaic law from childhood, he was most qualified to be editor-in-chief. Yeah, okay, dude, whatever. I’ve dealt with Mosaic law since my childhood, too. As one of the (I’ll be kind and say) more mature students (in fact, I think I was the oldest person on Law Review at the time), my support was solicited. My support was not forthcoming for anyone because, quite frankly, it meant nothing to me and besides I hate politics at any level. They were all day students who were engaging in yet one more Darwinian exercise of who can come out on top. I neither remember nor care who was elected. What did matter was what came next.
My editor and I finished up the work on my case note and it was ready for submission. She was very pleased because it was the fastest an evening division student’s case note had ever been finished. It was so fast, in fact, that it was done before the notes from several of the new editors were ready. So guess what. Mine got shelved. Why? Here’s what I was told. “How would it look if an evening student’s case note was published before the case notes being written by some of the new editorial board were published?” My response was that I couldn’t care less (I believe there was actually some obscene language in my response but I may be mistaken). Mine was ready and this was supposed to be a meritocracy. I believe it was George Orwell in 1984 who said, “All the pigs are equal but some are more equal than others.” So I got elbowed aside from the Fall issue and not published until the Winter issue. For those of you who care, here’s the official citation: Expanding Third Party Liability for Failure to Control the Intoxicated Employee Who Drives: Otis Engineering Corp. v. Clark, 668 S.W.2d 307 (Tex.1983), 18 Connecticut Law Review 155 (1985). Yes. Quite the little mouthful, and that was the title after my editor and I shortened it. (There was also quite a bit of irony they day she walked into a DMV hearing representing the alleged drunk driver and I was the hearing officer. I recognized her but she did not recognize me until after we were done and I introduced myself.)
So there I was, finishing up second year with just the summer session course to take. It was a course in Secured Transaction and taught by the one professor all the day students tried to avoid. He was an old school grader. He did not give you a grade, you earned it. There was too much of a chance for something like a B or, heaven forefend, C+ which would just kill a Grade Point Average that was aimed at Wall Street. I realized that the first night of that class was the same Friday night of the day that I had scheduled a wee bit of surgery on my nether regions which would guarantee that my daughter remained an only child. The teacher’s reaction was that it would be serious for me to miss even one night of class but if I thought the surgery was more important….I did miss the class. And I did earn an A, the grade of which I was proudest in Law School. Parenthetically, the class was made up solely of evening division students and several exchange students from a Canadian law school.
So, having completed my case note, I just sat back and watched Darwin at work on Law Review. My few fellow evening division cohorts on the review and I got a kick out of watching them constantly at each other in a struggle of survival of the fittest (or maybe the least unfit). Better entertainment than any reality show. In FACT, what an idea! Law Review: The Reality Show. You heard it here, first.
Third year was boring, enlivened mainly by Criminal Procedure. The professor threw out a couple ideas for projects which would be done in lieu of the exam. I am always for that sort of thing, so my best friend and I volunteered to do an in-depth examination of how the criminal justice system is portrayed on American TV. Watch TV for a grade? Sign me up! We spent a few weeks taping police, lawyer and detective shows and watching them. We each made notes of particular bits and then arranged them to start with the arrest and carry it right through the court process. We edited it together, wrote a script and presented it one night in class. It was eerie how well it went. Our professor was almost struck speechless. Apparently we had gone above and beyond. That earned us both an A+ without having to worry about the exam, plus that year’s award for excellence in Criminal Procedure. That was fine. The important thing was we had fun and avoided an exam.
As we got into fourth year (ugh!) we were now in that sweet spot for interviewing with prospective employers. I had been working with a friend who was in private practice and I intended to go in with him once I was done so interviewing was a waste of my time. Here’s a piece of advice: Don’t believe everything a lawyer tells you. This guy was going on about what great ideas he had and how we were going to be pioneering new areas. As they were areas that interested me, I was excited. Then, one day, his secretary, who really liked me, literally took me by the arm and dragged me into the ladies room. She told me to get the hell out as this guy was into some bad financial and legal problems and that I did not want any part of them. I left, completely mystified. I took a day off from work and went skiing by myself. Somewhere in that day I realized I had to go in a different direction. Unfortunately, the “recruitment season” was long over.
So fourth year drifted on. It was not just boring it was the death of a thousand cuts made worse by the knowledge that those day students you had started with were now actually practicing law (well, a few were studying to take the bar exam again, nyuk, nyuk). Through a friend, I was able to get a new position as a Law Clerk with a small firm that would take me on as an associate after I was admitted to the bar. (That’s yet another sad tale of broken and false promises but not really pertinent here.) And then, one day, we were sitting under a tent, caps and gowns adorning us. I, as a fair number of my fellow evening students, had fancier robes, as a bunch of us already had several degrees, including one guy who was an MD. Each division had elected a graduation speaker. Their topics all put it in perspective. The day student’s speech began with high-sounding ambitions and goals but ultimately boiled down to this: If you want us to be able to do noble and pro-bono work, you need to make law school cheaper. We have these huge student loan debts so we have to work for big salaries and can’t afford to be noble. And thank you for playing along! Next contestant! Our evening division speaker was married and the mother of several small children. What she talked about was how nice it was going to be to finally, after four years, be able to sit down to dinner with her husband and children and not have to be constantly on the treadmill of classes and work that meant that they hardly saw her. (In August, after the bar exam was over, we were walking in a store and jokingly I asked my daughter why she didn’t hate me anymore. As serious as can be she looked at me and said, “Because you’re home now.”) After the graduation ceremony, one of my friends said to my wife, “What’s next for him, medical school?” Serious as a crutch my wife said, “Over my dead body.” All righty-then!
So next came the bar exam. I am convinced that law school prepares you, not to practice law, but to have the necessary background to study for the bar exam. The bar exam prep course teaches you how to take the exam. Assuming you pass, you then go to work for someone who, hopefully, teaches you how to practice law. Suffice it to say, I passed. Good thing, too. That was an experience I never want to go through again. I thought that Air Force survival training, learning what it was like to be a prisoner of war would be the most stressful experience I’d ever have. It was nothing compared to the bar exam.
My career as a lawyer was not typical and is fraught with missteps and blind alleys but at the moment I’m in a fulfilling position doing something I believe in. But at a particularly dark moment in my past when I was struggling to find a new law position (which never really materialized) and I needed a paycheck, I went to work for a retail store for the Christmas season. I recall it very clearly. One day I was working in the Men’s Department in the island where ties and accessories were arrayed. A very attractive young woman was paying by check and I asked her for a photo ID. She showed me her UConn Law School student card. I politely asked if she was a student. In fact she was. As I completed her transaction and handed her the bag, thanking her by name, of course, I told her that she should consider getting into something else. She asked why she would ever want to do that and I gently explained, “So you’re not selling ties at Christmas to earn a paycheck. Happy Holidays.” And off I went to the next customer.
Before she did that, the elections for the editorial positions were being held. Well now. Wasn’t that just an entrancing evening to sit through? I mean, it was complete with campaign speeches including one from a Hasidic student whose main argument was that because he had dealt with Mosaic law from childhood, he was most qualified to be editor-in-chief. Yeah, okay, dude, whatever. I’ve dealt with Mosaic law since my childhood, too. As one of the (I’ll be kind and say) more mature students (in fact, I think I was the oldest person on Law Review at the time), my support was solicited. My support was not forthcoming for anyone because, quite frankly, it meant nothing to me and besides I hate politics at any level. They were all day students who were engaging in yet one more Darwinian exercise of who can come out on top. I neither remember nor care who was elected. What did matter was what came next.
My editor and I finished up the work on my case note and it was ready for submission. She was very pleased because it was the fastest an evening division student’s case note had ever been finished. It was so fast, in fact, that it was done before the notes from several of the new editors were ready. So guess what. Mine got shelved. Why? Here’s what I was told. “How would it look if an evening student’s case note was published before the case notes being written by some of the new editorial board were published?” My response was that I couldn’t care less (I believe there was actually some obscene language in my response but I may be mistaken). Mine was ready and this was supposed to be a meritocracy. I believe it was George Orwell in 1984 who said, “All the pigs are equal but some are more equal than others.” So I got elbowed aside from the Fall issue and not published until the Winter issue. For those of you who care, here’s the official citation: Expanding Third Party Liability for Failure to Control the Intoxicated Employee Who Drives: Otis Engineering Corp. v. Clark, 668 S.W.2d 307 (Tex.1983), 18 Connecticut Law Review 155 (1985). Yes. Quite the little mouthful, and that was the title after my editor and I shortened it. (There was also quite a bit of irony they day she walked into a DMV hearing representing the alleged drunk driver and I was the hearing officer. I recognized her but she did not recognize me until after we were done and I introduced myself.)
So there I was, finishing up second year with just the summer session course to take. It was a course in Secured Transaction and taught by the one professor all the day students tried to avoid. He was an old school grader. He did not give you a grade, you earned it. There was too much of a chance for something like a B or, heaven forefend, C+ which would just kill a Grade Point Average that was aimed at Wall Street. I realized that the first night of that class was the same Friday night of the day that I had scheduled a wee bit of surgery on my nether regions which would guarantee that my daughter remained an only child. The teacher’s reaction was that it would be serious for me to miss even one night of class but if I thought the surgery was more important….I did miss the class. And I did earn an A, the grade of which I was proudest in Law School. Parenthetically, the class was made up solely of evening division students and several exchange students from a Canadian law school.
So, having completed my case note, I just sat back and watched Darwin at work on Law Review. My few fellow evening division cohorts on the review and I got a kick out of watching them constantly at each other in a struggle of survival of the fittest (or maybe the least unfit). Better entertainment than any reality show. In FACT, what an idea! Law Review: The Reality Show. You heard it here, first.
Third year was boring, enlivened mainly by Criminal Procedure. The professor threw out a couple ideas for projects which would be done in lieu of the exam. I am always for that sort of thing, so my best friend and I volunteered to do an in-depth examination of how the criminal justice system is portrayed on American TV. Watch TV for a grade? Sign me up! We spent a few weeks taping police, lawyer and detective shows and watching them. We each made notes of particular bits and then arranged them to start with the arrest and carry it right through the court process. We edited it together, wrote a script and presented it one night in class. It was eerie how well it went. Our professor was almost struck speechless. Apparently we had gone above and beyond. That earned us both an A+ without having to worry about the exam, plus that year’s award for excellence in Criminal Procedure. That was fine. The important thing was we had fun and avoided an exam.
As we got into fourth year (ugh!) we were now in that sweet spot for interviewing with prospective employers. I had been working with a friend who was in private practice and I intended to go in with him once I was done so interviewing was a waste of my time. Here’s a piece of advice: Don’t believe everything a lawyer tells you. This guy was going on about what great ideas he had and how we were going to be pioneering new areas. As they were areas that interested me, I was excited. Then, one day, his secretary, who really liked me, literally took me by the arm and dragged me into the ladies room. She told me to get the hell out as this guy was into some bad financial and legal problems and that I did not want any part of them. I left, completely mystified. I took a day off from work and went skiing by myself. Somewhere in that day I realized I had to go in a different direction. Unfortunately, the “recruitment season” was long over.
So fourth year drifted on. It was not just boring it was the death of a thousand cuts made worse by the knowledge that those day students you had started with were now actually practicing law (well, a few were studying to take the bar exam again, nyuk, nyuk). Through a friend, I was able to get a new position as a Law Clerk with a small firm that would take me on as an associate after I was admitted to the bar. (That’s yet another sad tale of broken and false promises but not really pertinent here.) And then, one day, we were sitting under a tent, caps and gowns adorning us. I, as a fair number of my fellow evening students, had fancier robes, as a bunch of us already had several degrees, including one guy who was an MD. Each division had elected a graduation speaker. Their topics all put it in perspective. The day student’s speech began with high-sounding ambitions and goals but ultimately boiled down to this: If you want us to be able to do noble and pro-bono work, you need to make law school cheaper. We have these huge student loan debts so we have to work for big salaries and can’t afford to be noble. And thank you for playing along! Next contestant! Our evening division speaker was married and the mother of several small children. What she talked about was how nice it was going to be to finally, after four years, be able to sit down to dinner with her husband and children and not have to be constantly on the treadmill of classes and work that meant that they hardly saw her. (In August, after the bar exam was over, we were walking in a store and jokingly I asked my daughter why she didn’t hate me anymore. As serious as can be she looked at me and said, “Because you’re home now.”) After the graduation ceremony, one of my friends said to my wife, “What’s next for him, medical school?” Serious as a crutch my wife said, “Over my dead body.” All righty-then!
So next came the bar exam. I am convinced that law school prepares you, not to practice law, but to have the necessary background to study for the bar exam. The bar exam prep course teaches you how to take the exam. Assuming you pass, you then go to work for someone who, hopefully, teaches you how to practice law. Suffice it to say, I passed. Good thing, too. That was an experience I never want to go through again. I thought that Air Force survival training, learning what it was like to be a prisoner of war would be the most stressful experience I’d ever have. It was nothing compared to the bar exam.
My career as a lawyer was not typical and is fraught with missteps and blind alleys but at the moment I’m in a fulfilling position doing something I believe in. But at a particularly dark moment in my past when I was struggling to find a new law position (which never really materialized) and I needed a paycheck, I went to work for a retail store for the Christmas season. I recall it very clearly. One day I was working in the Men’s Department in the island where ties and accessories were arrayed. A very attractive young woman was paying by check and I asked her for a photo ID. She showed me her UConn Law School student card. I politely asked if she was a student. In fact she was. As I completed her transaction and handed her the bag, thanking her by name, of course, I told her that she should consider getting into something else. She asked why she would ever want to do that and I gently explained, “So you’re not selling ties at Christmas to earn a paycheck. Happy Holidays.” And off I went to the next customer.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Law of the Jungle
I was inspired to write on this topic by a charming young woman whose grades have virtually guaranteed that she is a lock for law school next year. In all the excitement of congratulating her, I thought back on my own experiences in law school. And SHAZAM! Today’s topic.
There is an old joke about lawyers coming out of Jewish families. A lawyer is a Jewish mother’s son who can’t stand the sight of blood. (In my case, very descriptive.) The truth is there was never a chance of my becoming a doctor. I really can’t stand the sight of blood, mine or anyone else’s. Couple that with the sciences, especially chemistry, not being strong subjects and you have the makings of someone who has no chance of seeing the inside of a medical school other than as a patient, experimental subject or cadaver.
I remember as a kid loving the courtroom scenes in the old Perry Mason show starring Raymond Burr. I’m not that big of fan of mystery stories so I’d say to me parents to call me when the courtroom scenes came on. (And, by the way. If you murder someone and Perry Mason is the lawyer for the innocent person who is accused, DO NOT GO TO THE TRIAL. Guaranteed, you will feel compelled to confess, thereby ruining your whole nefarious plan.) Anyway I liked the court scenes and always had it in my mind to go to law school. This desire was overridden by the compulsion to become an aviator. Because the Air Force was paying for my education with my promise of becoming a navigator, the idea of delaying commissioning for another three years was a non-starter.
After I got out of the Air Force, I really didn’t know what I wanted to do. I settled on getting my master’s degree in library science (MLS). There was a joint program where you would wind up with both an MLS and a Juris Doctor but I passed on that. So I became a librarian. Periodically, I would mutter something about going to law school and someone would say, “Well why don’t you apply?” I always had a ready excuse until one day when I muttered it and got the question, I had no excuse.
The first step towards law school is the Law School Admission Test. I don’t know how it is now, but when I took it, it was basically a test of logic and logical thinking. (Yes, I know what you are thinking. How does doing well with logic contribute to the practice of law? Short answer. It don’t.) Thanks to a friend who is a mathematical genius who taught me the process of logical thinking, I did well enough to be admitted to the University of Connecticut Law School in September 1983.
UConn is one of the law schools that has a day division and an evening division. Because I was a grown-up with a family and a real job who needed the paycheck, I opted for evening division. Day students finish in three years and have the entire summer off. Evening students take four years and have a summer session course. The biggest difference, however, is the kind of students that the respective divisions attract. Day, the fast track to private practice, attracts the best and the brightest college grads. Many of them have no idea what to do with their lives, so law school is a good place to go to defer dealing with real life. (Gosh, Mark, can you be a LITTLE more judgmental? Why, yes, I can.) The title of this piece, the Law of the Jungle, refers to the cut-throat nature of the way those students carry on. You’ve heard all the stories about hiding books or cutting pages out just to sabotage other students. Well, evening division, for the most part, attracts people like me. We were a little older, we knew what working for a living was like and what having spouses and children were all about. More important, we had learned that much of life requires cooperation. I liked to use a phrase I learned in Air Force training: cooperate and graduate. The Law of the Jungle prevailed in day division.
Law school’s three years, generically go like this: First Year they scare you to death, Second Year they work you to death, Third Year they bore you to death. Let me tell you, Fourth Year you just want to shoot yourself. All the people you started with have graduated and you’re there for ONE MORE YEAR. One more year. By this time your family has almost forgotten what you look like, you barely know what supper not purchased from the lunch truck tastes like and all you know is you JUST WANT IT OVER.
Back to Year One. This is where you start learning to think like a lawyer. If you’ve ever seen the beginning of the TV show The Paper Chase, you’ve heard Prof. Kingsfield, the Harvard professor portrayed by John Houseman (Harvard, by the way, is one of those too snooty for an evening division law schools, so is Yale), “You come in hear with heads full of mush and when you leave, you leave thinking like lawyers.” There is every bit as much thinking indoctrination as there is in military basic training where you need to forget everything you knew and begin thinking the “right” way. (To this day, I lament the fact that I can’t NOT process things through that legal filter.) One of the highlights of that first year is when you get to do a Moot Court appellate argument before your teacher and two of the teaching assistants acting as the judges. Here’s a hint. If you are in the last group of the day, abandon hope when ye enter those portals. One of the TAs admitted to me after the fact that they were bored after hearing the same argument over and over so they gave us a really hard time for sh*ts and giggles.
At the end of that first semester, a group of us got together to study. One of them was the HR manager of a local business and we met in their conference room. He kept making pots of coffee and I kept drinking it. We finished up near midnight and I went home and went to bed…to bed, not to sleep. About 2:30, I was lying there wide awake with my heart racing and wondering if you can have a heart attack without it hurting. Then it occurred to me that about two pots of coffee had induced a caffeine rush that would not quit. Lesson learned about coffee late in the day.
After grades were published after first year, I was shocked to get a phone call from the editor of the Law Review. It seems that my grades were high enough to qualify and would I want to join? I said I would get back to him. Law Review, for those of you who don’t know, is the prestigious student-published journal. (Recall what was made of President Obama being the editor-in-chief of the Harvard Law Review.) My initial reaction was, “Oh great, just what I need: a ton of more work and daily interaction with the young ‘uns in day division. But then my wife and I talked and I decided that if I didn’t take it, I would regret it later. So, there I was, joining Law Review. (Funny story about how I got the call. The top three evening division students were offered it. My best friend, the person with whom I took almost every course and who I studied with and talked with and laughed and cried with throughout the four years, had been number three and she turned it down. I was number four. I asked her, years later, if she regretted passing it up and she said not one bit.)
Second year began as first year had ended. It almost was a seamless process. The biggest difference was that now I was on Law Review! (Yes, that and 75 cents, at the time, would get you a ride on the New York Subways.) The upside was that the Law Review offices had lots of good nooks and crannies with couches and comfy chairs where I could hide for an hour before class and catch a few winks or read. The editor to whom I was assigned, was a charming young woman, ten years my junior in age and life experience but one year ahead of me in law school. We chatted for a while on topics for my case note (which would be my contribution to be published). When I decided on the case, much to her credit, she told me that she recognized that as mature thirtysomething (not exactly how she put it but it was what she meant) she realized that I did not need to be put through the pain of submitting an outline for approval and that I could start writing whenever I was ready.
Classes, meanwhile, seemed almost an anticlimax. I’m not sure if it was the familiarity with the milieu and the process, but I don’t recall any angst, aggravation or worry from classes. Oh, there was one bit of annoyance I recall. Excuse a mini-rant for a moment. Professors who write their own textbooks and make you buy theirs when there are better texts on the subject annoy the hell…no, they PISS ME OFF. The professor we had for Trusts and Estates was even worse. He was unable to get his textbook published, so he had the Law School duplicate copies of his cut and pasted manuscript and we had to buy this “textbook” for this course.
When you are one of the second year Law Review students (translation: drudge) you had the opportunity to do the most mind-numbingly boring task ever concocted by guilty man: cite-checking. A moment for explanation. If you have ever seen any legal writing, you will note that the footnotes, in smaller type, often take up more of the page than the text. Footnotes seem to be the sine qua non of Law Review writing and everything you mention had better be cited to something in some way. So, there you are, crawling around the dusty shelves of the library, checking every single footnoted source from some third-year law student’s case note to make sure that what he or she has cited actually says what they claim. That was a charming weekend.
Meanwhile, there I am working on my own case note (on and Apple II+ computer with a special internal connection that allowed me to use the Apple II word processing program). I’ll be the first to admit that the first couple of drafts were not good and needed a good bit of re-writing. Somewhere around the fifth re-write, when I realized that my charming young editor was reversing certain sections every time I submitted the draft, she and I had a discussion. It turned into a rather heated discussion until I proved my point with copies of all five drafts. She finally admitted that she was trying to get me to slow down. I really could not understand why. Then I found out.
To be continued….
There is an old joke about lawyers coming out of Jewish families. A lawyer is a Jewish mother’s son who can’t stand the sight of blood. (In my case, very descriptive.) The truth is there was never a chance of my becoming a doctor. I really can’t stand the sight of blood, mine or anyone else’s. Couple that with the sciences, especially chemistry, not being strong subjects and you have the makings of someone who has no chance of seeing the inside of a medical school other than as a patient, experimental subject or cadaver.
I remember as a kid loving the courtroom scenes in the old Perry Mason show starring Raymond Burr. I’m not that big of fan of mystery stories so I’d say to me parents to call me when the courtroom scenes came on. (And, by the way. If you murder someone and Perry Mason is the lawyer for the innocent person who is accused, DO NOT GO TO THE TRIAL. Guaranteed, you will feel compelled to confess, thereby ruining your whole nefarious plan.) Anyway I liked the court scenes and always had it in my mind to go to law school. This desire was overridden by the compulsion to become an aviator. Because the Air Force was paying for my education with my promise of becoming a navigator, the idea of delaying commissioning for another three years was a non-starter.
After I got out of the Air Force, I really didn’t know what I wanted to do. I settled on getting my master’s degree in library science (MLS). There was a joint program where you would wind up with both an MLS and a Juris Doctor but I passed on that. So I became a librarian. Periodically, I would mutter something about going to law school and someone would say, “Well why don’t you apply?” I always had a ready excuse until one day when I muttered it and got the question, I had no excuse.
The first step towards law school is the Law School Admission Test. I don’t know how it is now, but when I took it, it was basically a test of logic and logical thinking. (Yes, I know what you are thinking. How does doing well with logic contribute to the practice of law? Short answer. It don’t.) Thanks to a friend who is a mathematical genius who taught me the process of logical thinking, I did well enough to be admitted to the University of Connecticut Law School in September 1983.
UConn is one of the law schools that has a day division and an evening division. Because I was a grown-up with a family and a real job who needed the paycheck, I opted for evening division. Day students finish in three years and have the entire summer off. Evening students take four years and have a summer session course. The biggest difference, however, is the kind of students that the respective divisions attract. Day, the fast track to private practice, attracts the best and the brightest college grads. Many of them have no idea what to do with their lives, so law school is a good place to go to defer dealing with real life. (Gosh, Mark, can you be a LITTLE more judgmental? Why, yes, I can.) The title of this piece, the Law of the Jungle, refers to the cut-throat nature of the way those students carry on. You’ve heard all the stories about hiding books or cutting pages out just to sabotage other students. Well, evening division, for the most part, attracts people like me. We were a little older, we knew what working for a living was like and what having spouses and children were all about. More important, we had learned that much of life requires cooperation. I liked to use a phrase I learned in Air Force training: cooperate and graduate. The Law of the Jungle prevailed in day division.
Law school’s three years, generically go like this: First Year they scare you to death, Second Year they work you to death, Third Year they bore you to death. Let me tell you, Fourth Year you just want to shoot yourself. All the people you started with have graduated and you’re there for ONE MORE YEAR. One more year. By this time your family has almost forgotten what you look like, you barely know what supper not purchased from the lunch truck tastes like and all you know is you JUST WANT IT OVER.
Back to Year One. This is where you start learning to think like a lawyer. If you’ve ever seen the beginning of the TV show The Paper Chase, you’ve heard Prof. Kingsfield, the Harvard professor portrayed by John Houseman (Harvard, by the way, is one of those too snooty for an evening division law schools, so is Yale), “You come in hear with heads full of mush and when you leave, you leave thinking like lawyers.” There is every bit as much thinking indoctrination as there is in military basic training where you need to forget everything you knew and begin thinking the “right” way. (To this day, I lament the fact that I can’t NOT process things through that legal filter.) One of the highlights of that first year is when you get to do a Moot Court appellate argument before your teacher and two of the teaching assistants acting as the judges. Here’s a hint. If you are in the last group of the day, abandon hope when ye enter those portals. One of the TAs admitted to me after the fact that they were bored after hearing the same argument over and over so they gave us a really hard time for sh*ts and giggles.
At the end of that first semester, a group of us got together to study. One of them was the HR manager of a local business and we met in their conference room. He kept making pots of coffee and I kept drinking it. We finished up near midnight and I went home and went to bed…to bed, not to sleep. About 2:30, I was lying there wide awake with my heart racing and wondering if you can have a heart attack without it hurting. Then it occurred to me that about two pots of coffee had induced a caffeine rush that would not quit. Lesson learned about coffee late in the day.
After grades were published after first year, I was shocked to get a phone call from the editor of the Law Review. It seems that my grades were high enough to qualify and would I want to join? I said I would get back to him. Law Review, for those of you who don’t know, is the prestigious student-published journal. (Recall what was made of President Obama being the editor-in-chief of the Harvard Law Review.) My initial reaction was, “Oh great, just what I need: a ton of more work and daily interaction with the young ‘uns in day division. But then my wife and I talked and I decided that if I didn’t take it, I would regret it later. So, there I was, joining Law Review. (Funny story about how I got the call. The top three evening division students were offered it. My best friend, the person with whom I took almost every course and who I studied with and talked with and laughed and cried with throughout the four years, had been number three and she turned it down. I was number four. I asked her, years later, if she regretted passing it up and she said not one bit.)
Second year began as first year had ended. It almost was a seamless process. The biggest difference was that now I was on Law Review! (Yes, that and 75 cents, at the time, would get you a ride on the New York Subways.) The upside was that the Law Review offices had lots of good nooks and crannies with couches and comfy chairs where I could hide for an hour before class and catch a few winks or read. The editor to whom I was assigned, was a charming young woman, ten years my junior in age and life experience but one year ahead of me in law school. We chatted for a while on topics for my case note (which would be my contribution to be published). When I decided on the case, much to her credit, she told me that she recognized that as mature thirtysomething (not exactly how she put it but it was what she meant) she realized that I did not need to be put through the pain of submitting an outline for approval and that I could start writing whenever I was ready.
Classes, meanwhile, seemed almost an anticlimax. I’m not sure if it was the familiarity with the milieu and the process, but I don’t recall any angst, aggravation or worry from classes. Oh, there was one bit of annoyance I recall. Excuse a mini-rant for a moment. Professors who write their own textbooks and make you buy theirs when there are better texts on the subject annoy the hell…no, they PISS ME OFF. The professor we had for Trusts and Estates was even worse. He was unable to get his textbook published, so he had the Law School duplicate copies of his cut and pasted manuscript and we had to buy this “textbook” for this course.
When you are one of the second year Law Review students (translation: drudge) you had the opportunity to do the most mind-numbingly boring task ever concocted by guilty man: cite-checking. A moment for explanation. If you have ever seen any legal writing, you will note that the footnotes, in smaller type, often take up more of the page than the text. Footnotes seem to be the sine qua non of Law Review writing and everything you mention had better be cited to something in some way. So, there you are, crawling around the dusty shelves of the library, checking every single footnoted source from some third-year law student’s case note to make sure that what he or she has cited actually says what they claim. That was a charming weekend.
Meanwhile, there I am working on my own case note (on and Apple II+ computer with a special internal connection that allowed me to use the Apple II word processing program). I’ll be the first to admit that the first couple of drafts were not good and needed a good bit of re-writing. Somewhere around the fifth re-write, when I realized that my charming young editor was reversing certain sections every time I submitted the draft, she and I had a discussion. It turned into a rather heated discussion until I proved my point with copies of all five drafts. She finally admitted that she was trying to get me to slow down. I really could not understand why. Then I found out.
To be continued….
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Flights of Fancy, Part Deux
(OK, apologies to Hot Shots and Hot Shots, Part Deux...which by the way is one of the few sequels funnier than the original movie.)
I made it through the rest of B-52 training without incident although the crew, as a group, had a sporty moment. By late in our training, our instructor navigator pretty much trusted us not to screw up and would relax upstairs until shortly before the bomb run when he would come and stand between us. One of the qualifications the pilots had to check off was to fly a visual route low-level leg. That meant flying about 200 feet off the ground in non-cloudy conditions. On the particular day we were supposed to do this, the terrain avoidance radar was broken on our aircraft. The pilots, therefore, were flying using nothing but the Mark 1 eyeballs built into their heads. We had a readout that functioned only at 500 feet above the ground or less telling us how much clearance we had from the terrain (called a radar altimeter). At one point during this low-level flight route, I hear our instructor say over the intercom, “Don’t put the landing gear down, pilots.” At that moment my eye caught the radar altimeter readout and it was at 50 feet. We’re blasting along at about 350 knots at 50 feet above the terrain. Oooo, yay. We later learned from the pilots that at that point we crossed a road where a semi was parked. The driver was outside the truck and when he saw us dived under it.
That 200 foot clearance was important and very near and dear to the navigators. On a B-52, the pilots and defensive team sit on the upper deck. To safely eject, they just need 120 knots of indicated air speed and can safely eject on the ground. The navigators, on the other hand, eject downward. Yes, I said downward…as in straight at terra firma. We needed 200 feet of clearance at a minimum for our parachutes to function. In fact, when I was in training, they modified the seat from needing 300 feet to 200 and I could never get a clear answer as to whether they did anything more than changing the manual and the decal on the seat.
That downward ejection system has another function that caused me a problem back at my squadron. The table that the navigators use has an actuator that pulls it in during ejection so you don’t crack your chin hitting it on the way down. When you preflight your ejection system, you have to crawl under the table and check the actuator. My training crew radar navigator and I had an understanding that we would keep the table PUSHED IN until both of us checked under it. The first time I flew with a different radar navigator, I was expecting the same thing. So when I backed up what I thought was far enough, I stood up…and promptly slammed the back of my head on the table that he had pulled out. One trip to the hospital and one concussion later, I made the SAC Weekly Safety Briefing. I was so proud….
I had one other minor incident in training. The B-52 is boarded through a hatch on the bottom side of the airplane that opens down. Early in training, during our preflight, I thought my instructor had shut the hatch. I stepped back and guess what I discovered? That’s right. He hadn’t but fortunately the drop to the tarmac was accomplished without injury. Yes. I fell out of a B-52 without a parachute and lived to tell about it.
I can’t leave the subject of Air Force flying without mentioning something that I learned only years after the fact. We were watching the Craig T. Nelson show Call to Glory where he played an Air Force colonel and pilot. At one point his wife tells him that she lives in fear whenever he flies. I looked at my wife and asked if she felt anything like that. To my utter shock she told me that she said goodbye to me for the last time every time I walked out of the house in my flight suit. That was quite a sobering moment for me.
Since the Air Force, all my flying has been virtual or as a passenger. Despite that, I find that on any flight where the pilot patches their communication into the passenger audio system, I feel compelled to listen in. Oh. And of course I have to sit next to the window. After all, I am a trained navigator and if the navigation systems on the aircraft were to malfunction, well I could just get a chart and visually navigate for the pilots. At least that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it. On trans-Atlantic trips, my daughter wants to know why it’s necessary. I tell her it’s a little known fact that a trained navigator can map-read the white-caps and waves. That is met with a skeptical, “Yeah? How you gonna see them at night?” I simply explain that I’m a really, really skilled navigator. Somehow, I’m never quite sure she buys any of it. But I DO get the window seat.
On the subject of my daughter and flight, she has a history of being Little Miss Jet Set when the spirit moves her. Ireland (6 or 7 times), England (6 or 7 times), Las Vegas, California. Her passport has more stamps than her parents’ passports combined. But for some reason, she is a white knuckle flyer. How my daughter, exposed to me and flying from birth became fearful of flying I will never understand. She says it’s worse when she’s flying somewhere WITH us. Then, all the parent-child dynamics hit and she’s a little girl again. I make sure to keep up a running commentary on what the noises she is hearing are or why the airplane is bucking like a rodeo bronco and why it’s actually fun. Again, I’m selling, she ain’t buying.
And by the way, the worst turbulence I have ever encountered was not on an Air Force airplane flying low-level. When we had to go to survival school at Fairchild AFB in Spokane, Washington, about twenty of us were flying in uniform. The aircraft encountered severe turbulence near Mount Shasta. We were laughing about it and having a high old time. Finally the little old lady in the seat between two of us screams, “This is all your fault! You got them to do this on purpose!” The smartass in me wanted to tell her that she was right but I decided that might not be the best thing I could do. Fortunately the pilot got clearance to climb out of the turbulence and things settled down.
Anyway, back to my daughter. One year she came to Florida with us but had to fly back a few days ahead of us. In order to get her on the airplane, she had a prescription for Ativan. (If you’ve never had the pleasure, it will knock you happily on your butt.) Nevertheless, she wanted one of us to go onto the airplane and get her settled. We were asking the gate people if we might do that when the pilot comes up and says, “How about if I get her settled?” She looks at him, looks at us and says, “Okay. But only if you promise to stay aboard and fly it.” Having given her his word, she happily stumbled her way down the jetway to the waiting airliner.
One of the family flying jokes has always been from a George Carlin line. “When they say it’s time to get on the airplane, I say f**k you, I’m getting IN the airplane.” Inevitably, one of us will say this in the departure gate area. Something else we do is rate the landings. One bump, the pilot landed the airplane. Two or more, it was the co-pilot. (In the B-52 there was a well-worn strap above the navigators. I asked my radar navigator before our first flight what it was for and he said it was for co-pilot landings. I thought he was joking…until our first landing. Typical navigator pose for landing is hands over head holding that strap in a death grip just in case the co-pilot has the landing.)
So these days, I keep my hand in the flying game with Microsoft Flight Simulator. I belong to an on-line group called Virtual Continental Airlines (vcair.com) and we do our flights on the Virtual Air Traffic Simulation (VATSIM) network. In many cases, we have flying enthusiasts who function as air traffic controllers at various levels. It’s a fun way to fly an airliner without the expense of owning one, fueling it, maintaining it, etc. I’ve also flown probably more than forty different air combat simulators. (And yes, there was actually one a number of years ago based on the B-52. At least the B-52 “Megafortress” as created by Dale Brown in his novels.)
One last actual flight story. In AFROTC, pilot candidates could earn their private pilot’s license and be able to skip the initial phase of pilot training. My fraternity big brother, as a senior earned his. The day after his license arrives in the mail, he and I go out to Syracuse/Hancock Airport and rent a Piper Cherokee. We take off in bright sunshine, a perfect flying day. Now, let me digress a moment. Hancock, in the winter, at times could only guarantee a terminal weather forecast plus or minus fifteen minutes when the standard is plus or minus one hour. Also, when making a visual approach to the main runway, there is a small island in Lake Oneida that is used as a turn-in fix. Remember these two points. So, there we are, enjoying ourselves…and the clouds move in…along with snow. We decide that maybe it’s time to get out of Dodge and to put this little sucker and our skinny butts back on the ground. He says to me, “Look down and tell me when we’re over the island.” I look down and say that I can’t see anything. He says, “How the hell are you going to be a navigator when you can’t even see an island in a lake.” After telling him what part my under regions he can kiss I suggest that great white pilot find the island himself. He gives me the yoke and tells me to try not crashing and looks down…and realizes that I had stated a factual point. It is white out under us. He mutters something to himself, takes the control and contacts the tower. They have to give us a special VFR (that’s visual flight regulations) clearance for us to land, mainly because there was nowhere else to send us. Needless to say we survived but it was a sporty landing.
And one thing that every pilot should remember: Take-off is always optional. Landing is mandatory. Happy (con)trails to you, until we meet again!
I made it through the rest of B-52 training without incident although the crew, as a group, had a sporty moment. By late in our training, our instructor navigator pretty much trusted us not to screw up and would relax upstairs until shortly before the bomb run when he would come and stand between us. One of the qualifications the pilots had to check off was to fly a visual route low-level leg. That meant flying about 200 feet off the ground in non-cloudy conditions. On the particular day we were supposed to do this, the terrain avoidance radar was broken on our aircraft. The pilots, therefore, were flying using nothing but the Mark 1 eyeballs built into their heads. We had a readout that functioned only at 500 feet above the ground or less telling us how much clearance we had from the terrain (called a radar altimeter). At one point during this low-level flight route, I hear our instructor say over the intercom, “Don’t put the landing gear down, pilots.” At that moment my eye caught the radar altimeter readout and it was at 50 feet. We’re blasting along at about 350 knots at 50 feet above the terrain. Oooo, yay. We later learned from the pilots that at that point we crossed a road where a semi was parked. The driver was outside the truck and when he saw us dived under it.
That 200 foot clearance was important and very near and dear to the navigators. On a B-52, the pilots and defensive team sit on the upper deck. To safely eject, they just need 120 knots of indicated air speed and can safely eject on the ground. The navigators, on the other hand, eject downward. Yes, I said downward…as in straight at terra firma. We needed 200 feet of clearance at a minimum for our parachutes to function. In fact, when I was in training, they modified the seat from needing 300 feet to 200 and I could never get a clear answer as to whether they did anything more than changing the manual and the decal on the seat.
That downward ejection system has another function that caused me a problem back at my squadron. The table that the navigators use has an actuator that pulls it in during ejection so you don’t crack your chin hitting it on the way down. When you preflight your ejection system, you have to crawl under the table and check the actuator. My training crew radar navigator and I had an understanding that we would keep the table PUSHED IN until both of us checked under it. The first time I flew with a different radar navigator, I was expecting the same thing. So when I backed up what I thought was far enough, I stood up…and promptly slammed the back of my head on the table that he had pulled out. One trip to the hospital and one concussion later, I made the SAC Weekly Safety Briefing. I was so proud….
I had one other minor incident in training. The B-52 is boarded through a hatch on the bottom side of the airplane that opens down. Early in training, during our preflight, I thought my instructor had shut the hatch. I stepped back and guess what I discovered? That’s right. He hadn’t but fortunately the drop to the tarmac was accomplished without injury. Yes. I fell out of a B-52 without a parachute and lived to tell about it.
I can’t leave the subject of Air Force flying without mentioning something that I learned only years after the fact. We were watching the Craig T. Nelson show Call to Glory where he played an Air Force colonel and pilot. At one point his wife tells him that she lives in fear whenever he flies. I looked at my wife and asked if she felt anything like that. To my utter shock she told me that she said goodbye to me for the last time every time I walked out of the house in my flight suit. That was quite a sobering moment for me.
Since the Air Force, all my flying has been virtual or as a passenger. Despite that, I find that on any flight where the pilot patches their communication into the passenger audio system, I feel compelled to listen in. Oh. And of course I have to sit next to the window. After all, I am a trained navigator and if the navigation systems on the aircraft were to malfunction, well I could just get a chart and visually navigate for the pilots. At least that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it. On trans-Atlantic trips, my daughter wants to know why it’s necessary. I tell her it’s a little known fact that a trained navigator can map-read the white-caps and waves. That is met with a skeptical, “Yeah? How you gonna see them at night?” I simply explain that I’m a really, really skilled navigator. Somehow, I’m never quite sure she buys any of it. But I DO get the window seat.
On the subject of my daughter and flight, she has a history of being Little Miss Jet Set when the spirit moves her. Ireland (6 or 7 times), England (6 or 7 times), Las Vegas, California. Her passport has more stamps than her parents’ passports combined. But for some reason, she is a white knuckle flyer. How my daughter, exposed to me and flying from birth became fearful of flying I will never understand. She says it’s worse when she’s flying somewhere WITH us. Then, all the parent-child dynamics hit and she’s a little girl again. I make sure to keep up a running commentary on what the noises she is hearing are or why the airplane is bucking like a rodeo bronco and why it’s actually fun. Again, I’m selling, she ain’t buying.
And by the way, the worst turbulence I have ever encountered was not on an Air Force airplane flying low-level. When we had to go to survival school at Fairchild AFB in Spokane, Washington, about twenty of us were flying in uniform. The aircraft encountered severe turbulence near Mount Shasta. We were laughing about it and having a high old time. Finally the little old lady in the seat between two of us screams, “This is all your fault! You got them to do this on purpose!” The smartass in me wanted to tell her that she was right but I decided that might not be the best thing I could do. Fortunately the pilot got clearance to climb out of the turbulence and things settled down.
Anyway, back to my daughter. One year she came to Florida with us but had to fly back a few days ahead of us. In order to get her on the airplane, she had a prescription for Ativan. (If you’ve never had the pleasure, it will knock you happily on your butt.) Nevertheless, she wanted one of us to go onto the airplane and get her settled. We were asking the gate people if we might do that when the pilot comes up and says, “How about if I get her settled?” She looks at him, looks at us and says, “Okay. But only if you promise to stay aboard and fly it.” Having given her his word, she happily stumbled her way down the jetway to the waiting airliner.
One of the family flying jokes has always been from a George Carlin line. “When they say it’s time to get on the airplane, I say f**k you, I’m getting IN the airplane.” Inevitably, one of us will say this in the departure gate area. Something else we do is rate the landings. One bump, the pilot landed the airplane. Two or more, it was the co-pilot. (In the B-52 there was a well-worn strap above the navigators. I asked my radar navigator before our first flight what it was for and he said it was for co-pilot landings. I thought he was joking…until our first landing. Typical navigator pose for landing is hands over head holding that strap in a death grip just in case the co-pilot has the landing.)
So these days, I keep my hand in the flying game with Microsoft Flight Simulator. I belong to an on-line group called Virtual Continental Airlines (vcair.com) and we do our flights on the Virtual Air Traffic Simulation (VATSIM) network. In many cases, we have flying enthusiasts who function as air traffic controllers at various levels. It’s a fun way to fly an airliner without the expense of owning one, fueling it, maintaining it, etc. I’ve also flown probably more than forty different air combat simulators. (And yes, there was actually one a number of years ago based on the B-52. At least the B-52 “Megafortress” as created by Dale Brown in his novels.)
One last actual flight story. In AFROTC, pilot candidates could earn their private pilot’s license and be able to skip the initial phase of pilot training. My fraternity big brother, as a senior earned his. The day after his license arrives in the mail, he and I go out to Syracuse/Hancock Airport and rent a Piper Cherokee. We take off in bright sunshine, a perfect flying day. Now, let me digress a moment. Hancock, in the winter, at times could only guarantee a terminal weather forecast plus or minus fifteen minutes when the standard is plus or minus one hour. Also, when making a visual approach to the main runway, there is a small island in Lake Oneida that is used as a turn-in fix. Remember these two points. So, there we are, enjoying ourselves…and the clouds move in…along with snow. We decide that maybe it’s time to get out of Dodge and to put this little sucker and our skinny butts back on the ground. He says to me, “Look down and tell me when we’re over the island.” I look down and say that I can’t see anything. He says, “How the hell are you going to be a navigator when you can’t even see an island in a lake.” After telling him what part my under regions he can kiss I suggest that great white pilot find the island himself. He gives me the yoke and tells me to try not crashing and looks down…and realizes that I had stated a factual point. It is white out under us. He mutters something to himself, takes the control and contacts the tower. They have to give us a special VFR (that’s visual flight regulations) clearance for us to land, mainly because there was nowhere else to send us. Needless to say we survived but it was a sporty landing.
And one thing that every pilot should remember: Take-off is always optional. Landing is mandatory. Happy (con)trails to you, until we meet again!
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Flights of Fancy
“I’m leaving on a jet plane.
Don’t know when I’ll be back again.”
--John Denver (1943-1997)
Note: This is dedicated to my dad who never had a chance to slip the surly bonds of earth.
Airplanes and aviation have been part of my life almost as long as I can remember. My father built wooden model airplanes in his youth. During World War II, he was 4-F (that’s how bad his vision was) but he worked building aircraft at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. His middle brother was in the Air Corps…until he was transferred to an infantry unit just in time to be killed at the Battle of the Bulge. The first plastic model I ever built with my father (I think I was 5) was an Aurora kit of a North American F-86D Sabre Jet. In 1968, my parents and friends were going on a vacation overseas in May. Unfortunately my father died in April, never having had the chance to fly.
The first time I ever had the chance to fly in an airplane was in July 1969 when my mother and I went on a trip to Israel, Rome, Zurich and London. At the time, El Al was flying Boeing 707s on its intercontinental routes. In case you’re not familiar with the layout of the 707 (and it’s an important thing here) check this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_707. Anyway, we were sitting just ahead of the wing which means that we were abreast the inboard engine. We were at cruise altitude, about an hour and half out of New York when my mother nudges me and says, “What’s that thing out there?” Expecting to see a UFO or something of the like, all I see is the inboard engine. I ask what thing she’s talking about. She points and says, “That thing. That thing that’s following us!” I look again and then it hits me. I ask if she means the thing that says El Al on it. “Yes! Why is it following us?” Now understand, I’m a 17 year old smartass who has read about and dreamed about airplanes for years, my mother is someone who learned to drive in her late thirties and has never been on an airplane before. So I had to go through the cost-benefit analysis of how smart-mouth an answer I want to give. Finally, I simply explained that if that thing stops following us it is likely that the airplane will crash into the sea below and we will all die. That provoked an alarmed, “Well what is it then?!” Sighing I had to explain that it was called an engine. Parents. Honestly.
Later on during that trip (by which time I had become the darling of all the ladies on the tour and sad to say they were all the spinsterish type, not a cougar among them), I felt very comfortable being the tres charmant smartass. At the time, El Al would occasionally rent an aircraft if they needed one for a particular flight. As it happened, the airplane that was supposed to fly us to Rome was about three hours late arriving. The flight crew was in the departure lounge along with us. Finally, I walk over to the pilots and ask if the problem is that they’re waiting for the glue on the wings to dry. Fortunately for me, this was before security at Israeli airports became really grim. They gave me one of those smiles that say, “Yeah, cute kid. And if we thought we could get away with it, we’d kick your smart-ass.”
As a kid, I had gotten myself into an OC thing about becoming an officer in the U.S. Navy. As I got older, that obsession morphed into wanting to fly in airplanes. (Okay, confession time, here. Actually, I wanted to become an astronaut. Only two obstacles to that goal. First, my vision is not 20/20 rendering me unfit for pilot training, Air Force or Navy. Second, my intentions of majoring in aerospace engineering lasted until Thanksgiving of my freshman year. That was when I figured out what college level math was all about. I’m a smart enough guy but if I had banged my head against that wall, I would have flunked out.) My best bet to fly in airplanes, especially when I wasn’t going to be the one driving them, was the Air Force. Hence, Air Force ROTC was a no-brainer, especially because that whole math and engineering thing rendered me a poor fit for the Air Force Academy.
My first experience with a whoopee bag came on an AFROTC sponsored trip to the AF Museum in Dayton, Ohio. We had the wonderful opportunity to be flown in a Massachusetts ANG C-54. If you’re unfamiliar with the C-54 check this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-54. This was the airplane that was the primary US airlifter during the 1948 Berlin Airlift and I think this particular airframe was about that old. We were descending into Syracuse/Hancock Airport through a snowstorm with rather rough turbulence. The real problem was the heat was cranked to “sixth ring of hell” setting and the combination was too much for my poor tummy. At least I felt better when the Colonel said, “There are two kinds of people in the world: those who have gotten airsick and those who will.” (That was the only incident of that type in my flying time but, gotta be honest bout it.)
Through navigator training, nothing much funny happened and I earned my wings in May 1975 (Coincidentally about fifteen minutes before the ceremony, my wife informed me that she had confirmation of being pregnant. Earned my wings and my spurs all in one day.) No the goofy Air Force stuff came when I was in B-52 training. Of course, I would get an instructor navigator (IN) who introduced himself as a screamer and wanted to go back to Loring AFB (Presque Isle, Maine) because he liked hunting bear. So of course, I buckled down and played it straight…not.
The normal navigator radar display presents a plan view of the ground out to x number of miles. Of course, the closer to the center, the closer to the airplane. Got that picture now? It’s important. The first time my IN said to me, “Navigator, show me on the radar where we are,” (translation: “Give me a fix using range and bearing to known target to conform that we are on center-line”) the smartass second lieutenant (moi) points at the center of the screen. The next flight, same thing. The flight after that, same thing, except this last time, I feel fingers preying the side of my helmet away from my head and I hear a loud growl, “Navigator if you ever give me that answer again, I will kill you.” I was pretty sure that the Air Force would frown on murder but this guy was a bear hunter.
Both the pilot and co-pilot on our training crew were new to B-52s, one having been a pilot instructor the other being a brand new pilot. Consequently, they had never worked with a navigator telling them where to go (which is what navigators do…tell pilots where to go). The first two times I said to come left and the aircraft starting turning to the right, I merely corrected them. The third time I suggested on intercom that I meant the OTHER left. The last time it happened I suggested on intercom that the pilot look at the co-pilot and to then turn the aircraft in the other direction. Misdirection issues ceased after that.
In a typical B-52 mission, from the time the aircraft comes off the ground until it returns to the pattern, the navigator is basically busy 100% of the time. The worst time, for me, came on the celestial navigation legs. All you have is a periscopic sextant, a blank, white chart with nothing but latitude and longitude lines and your pre-computations to maintain proper navigation. I’d be working my butt off and I would hear our aircraft commander, with sandwich in hand, say, “Why work when you can fly.” I finally brought that to an end during a subsequent flight planning session. I concluded the navigator’s briefing by noting that the next time the navigator heard said phrase on intercom he was coming upstairs and stabbing with his dividers the person who said it.
Another bit of fun and game as part of that training crew came on our third flight. We had returned to the pattern at Castle AFB (near Merced, California). The tower had given us an extended downwind pattern which put us over Yosemite Park. For the first time in our flights, the instructor pilot (IP) trusted the newbie pilots sufficiently to unstrap from his seat, come downstairs and use the relief tube which is located aft of the navigators. (No, folks, the B-52 does not have a flush potty. The relief tube vents to the great out of doors and the actual potty is accessed by lifting the defensive instructor’s seat. That latter bit has always been something that the navigator a/k/a offensive team always made a point of reminding the electronic warfare officer and gunner a/k/a defensive team.) Anyway, he’s standing there and suddenly we feel the airplane shudder with some thumps. Anyway, the IP says to us, “What was that?” Navs have no windows in a B-52 and we shrug. Just then the pilot says, “We took a bird strike.” IP says, “I can’t trust them with anything,” zips up (actually down if you understand the zippers on a flight suit) and goes back upstairs. A few minutes later, I ask the radar navigator if he smells something funny. He says no then about a minute later he asks me if I meant something that smelled like roast chicken. I nod and just then the electronic warfare officer says, “I’m smelling something odd, recommend going to 100% oxygen.” We all put on our masks and go to 100% and the pilot contacts the command post. They recommend that we do a full-stop rather than staying in the pattern and shooting approaches. We land and taxi in and the entire crew compartment smells like a Kenny Rogers Restaurant by the time we exit the aircraft. We had flown through a flock of ducks and there were about twenty assorted blood streaks on the forward part of the airplane. One had cracked the radome and what we were smelling was one that had been sucked into the air conditioning system and cooked. $20,000 worth of damage and we made the SAC weekly incident report. DAMN, we were proud!
(to be continued)
Don’t know when I’ll be back again.”
--John Denver (1943-1997)
Note: This is dedicated to my dad who never had a chance to slip the surly bonds of earth.
Airplanes and aviation have been part of my life almost as long as I can remember. My father built wooden model airplanes in his youth. During World War II, he was 4-F (that’s how bad his vision was) but he worked building aircraft at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. His middle brother was in the Air Corps…until he was transferred to an infantry unit just in time to be killed at the Battle of the Bulge. The first plastic model I ever built with my father (I think I was 5) was an Aurora kit of a North American F-86D Sabre Jet. In 1968, my parents and friends were going on a vacation overseas in May. Unfortunately my father died in April, never having had the chance to fly.
The first time I ever had the chance to fly in an airplane was in July 1969 when my mother and I went on a trip to Israel, Rome, Zurich and London. At the time, El Al was flying Boeing 707s on its intercontinental routes. In case you’re not familiar with the layout of the 707 (and it’s an important thing here) check this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_707. Anyway, we were sitting just ahead of the wing which means that we were abreast the inboard engine. We were at cruise altitude, about an hour and half out of New York when my mother nudges me and says, “What’s that thing out there?” Expecting to see a UFO or something of the like, all I see is the inboard engine. I ask what thing she’s talking about. She points and says, “That thing. That thing that’s following us!” I look again and then it hits me. I ask if she means the thing that says El Al on it. “Yes! Why is it following us?” Now understand, I’m a 17 year old smartass who has read about and dreamed about airplanes for years, my mother is someone who learned to drive in her late thirties and has never been on an airplane before. So I had to go through the cost-benefit analysis of how smart-mouth an answer I want to give. Finally, I simply explained that if that thing stops following us it is likely that the airplane will crash into the sea below and we will all die. That provoked an alarmed, “Well what is it then?!” Sighing I had to explain that it was called an engine. Parents. Honestly.
Later on during that trip (by which time I had become the darling of all the ladies on the tour and sad to say they were all the spinsterish type, not a cougar among them), I felt very comfortable being the tres charmant smartass. At the time, El Al would occasionally rent an aircraft if they needed one for a particular flight. As it happened, the airplane that was supposed to fly us to Rome was about three hours late arriving. The flight crew was in the departure lounge along with us. Finally, I walk over to the pilots and ask if the problem is that they’re waiting for the glue on the wings to dry. Fortunately for me, this was before security at Israeli airports became really grim. They gave me one of those smiles that say, “Yeah, cute kid. And if we thought we could get away with it, we’d kick your smart-ass.”
As a kid, I had gotten myself into an OC thing about becoming an officer in the U.S. Navy. As I got older, that obsession morphed into wanting to fly in airplanes. (Okay, confession time, here. Actually, I wanted to become an astronaut. Only two obstacles to that goal. First, my vision is not 20/20 rendering me unfit for pilot training, Air Force or Navy. Second, my intentions of majoring in aerospace engineering lasted until Thanksgiving of my freshman year. That was when I figured out what college level math was all about. I’m a smart enough guy but if I had banged my head against that wall, I would have flunked out.) My best bet to fly in airplanes, especially when I wasn’t going to be the one driving them, was the Air Force. Hence, Air Force ROTC was a no-brainer, especially because that whole math and engineering thing rendered me a poor fit for the Air Force Academy.
My first experience with a whoopee bag came on an AFROTC sponsored trip to the AF Museum in Dayton, Ohio. We had the wonderful opportunity to be flown in a Massachusetts ANG C-54. If you’re unfamiliar with the C-54 check this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-54. This was the airplane that was the primary US airlifter during the 1948 Berlin Airlift and I think this particular airframe was about that old. We were descending into Syracuse/Hancock Airport through a snowstorm with rather rough turbulence. The real problem was the heat was cranked to “sixth ring of hell” setting and the combination was too much for my poor tummy. At least I felt better when the Colonel said, “There are two kinds of people in the world: those who have gotten airsick and those who will.” (That was the only incident of that type in my flying time but, gotta be honest bout it.)
Through navigator training, nothing much funny happened and I earned my wings in May 1975 (Coincidentally about fifteen minutes before the ceremony, my wife informed me that she had confirmation of being pregnant. Earned my wings and my spurs all in one day.) No the goofy Air Force stuff came when I was in B-52 training. Of course, I would get an instructor navigator (IN) who introduced himself as a screamer and wanted to go back to Loring AFB (Presque Isle, Maine) because he liked hunting bear. So of course, I buckled down and played it straight…not.
The normal navigator radar display presents a plan view of the ground out to x number of miles. Of course, the closer to the center, the closer to the airplane. Got that picture now? It’s important. The first time my IN said to me, “Navigator, show me on the radar where we are,” (translation: “Give me a fix using range and bearing to known target to conform that we are on center-line”) the smartass second lieutenant (moi) points at the center of the screen. The next flight, same thing. The flight after that, same thing, except this last time, I feel fingers preying the side of my helmet away from my head and I hear a loud growl, “Navigator if you ever give me that answer again, I will kill you.” I was pretty sure that the Air Force would frown on murder but this guy was a bear hunter.
Both the pilot and co-pilot on our training crew were new to B-52s, one having been a pilot instructor the other being a brand new pilot. Consequently, they had never worked with a navigator telling them where to go (which is what navigators do…tell pilots where to go). The first two times I said to come left and the aircraft starting turning to the right, I merely corrected them. The third time I suggested on intercom that I meant the OTHER left. The last time it happened I suggested on intercom that the pilot look at the co-pilot and to then turn the aircraft in the other direction. Misdirection issues ceased after that.
In a typical B-52 mission, from the time the aircraft comes off the ground until it returns to the pattern, the navigator is basically busy 100% of the time. The worst time, for me, came on the celestial navigation legs. All you have is a periscopic sextant, a blank, white chart with nothing but latitude and longitude lines and your pre-computations to maintain proper navigation. I’d be working my butt off and I would hear our aircraft commander, with sandwich in hand, say, “Why work when you can fly.” I finally brought that to an end during a subsequent flight planning session. I concluded the navigator’s briefing by noting that the next time the navigator heard said phrase on intercom he was coming upstairs and stabbing with his dividers the person who said it.
Another bit of fun and game as part of that training crew came on our third flight. We had returned to the pattern at Castle AFB (near Merced, California). The tower had given us an extended downwind pattern which put us over Yosemite Park. For the first time in our flights, the instructor pilot (IP) trusted the newbie pilots sufficiently to unstrap from his seat, come downstairs and use the relief tube which is located aft of the navigators. (No, folks, the B-52 does not have a flush potty. The relief tube vents to the great out of doors and the actual potty is accessed by lifting the defensive instructor’s seat. That latter bit has always been something that the navigator a/k/a offensive team always made a point of reminding the electronic warfare officer and gunner a/k/a defensive team.) Anyway, he’s standing there and suddenly we feel the airplane shudder with some thumps. Anyway, the IP says to us, “What was that?” Navs have no windows in a B-52 and we shrug. Just then the pilot says, “We took a bird strike.” IP says, “I can’t trust them with anything,” zips up (actually down if you understand the zippers on a flight suit) and goes back upstairs. A few minutes later, I ask the radar navigator if he smells something funny. He says no then about a minute later he asks me if I meant something that smelled like roast chicken. I nod and just then the electronic warfare officer says, “I’m smelling something odd, recommend going to 100% oxygen.” We all put on our masks and go to 100% and the pilot contacts the command post. They recommend that we do a full-stop rather than staying in the pattern and shooting approaches. We land and taxi in and the entire crew compartment smells like a Kenny Rogers Restaurant by the time we exit the aircraft. We had flown through a flock of ducks and there were about twenty assorted blood streaks on the forward part of the airplane. One had cracked the radome and what we were smelling was one that had been sucked into the air conditioning system and cooked. $20,000 worth of damage and we made the SAC weekly incident report. DAMN, we were proud!
(to be continued)
Monday, December 21, 2009
Snow Job
I have always taken great pride in having been born and raised a New York boy. From my earliest memory, my family lived in an apartment. I can even remember, clearly, very clearly, the address: 300 Gramatan Avenue in Mount Vernon, NY. (And by the way, if you’re really interested, there is a Facebook page on that particular address. Honest. As Casey Stengel said, “You could look it up.”) Until I moved into my fraternity my sophomore year at Syracuse University (more about that city, later), I had always lived in apartments. Anyway, I’m telling you this to explain something of my love-hate relationship with dealing with snow and snow removal.
Aside from the fact that heavy snow would sometimes mean NO SCHOOL (capital letters, fanfares, fireworks shooting off to celebrate), there was always the child’s joy of playing in it, throwing it at each other or city buses as they passed by then coming inside to hot chocolate and warm, dry clothes. What it did not mean to the apartment dweller was dealing with the after-effects. There were other people (namely the building superintendent) to deal with the snow around the building property and the almost magical appearance of city snow plows and city employees with shovels to create streets and sidewalks out of what had been an impenetrable mass of white stuff. Having never had to deal with the concept of “shoveling” (other than the occasional whopper I’d try to slip past my parents), it was one of the many things for which I was unprepared as a home-owner.
Syracuse University was my first choice for college and, for the life of me, I can’t recall exactly why. Don’t get me wrong, four years there was just great and that was where I met she to whom I have been married for over 35 years. But I was somewhat unprepared for winter in central New York. I remember a little pamphlet they gave freshmen that had a semi-humorous section called “Syracuse is…”. What I recall from that is “Syracuse is the same pair of sandals for four years because you’re never going to get much of a chance to wear them,” “Syracuse is six months of great skiing and six months of fair skiing,” and, my favorite, “Syracuse is fourteen inches of ‘partly cloudy.’” This last point is so true you could puke. There are two winter weather terms you learn REAL FAST in Syracuse, radiational cooling (when the absence of cloud cover in the winter causes the temperature to resemble temperatures seen somewhere north of the Arctic Circle) and lake effect snow. Lake effect snow. Yeah! When you sit on the lee of a large land-locked lake (Ontario in the case of Syracuse), all you need is a wind sweeping across the lake and picking up moisture. It then dumps said moisture in the form of snow flakes on the area to the lee of said lake. And they used to say that it was worse in the “snow belt” area to the west of the city. Worse? Give me a freakin’ break!
My freshman year (1970) we experienced a snowfall that signaled a first in the storied history of Syracuse University. It was the first time in its history that a snowfall caused the university to close. I think it was something on the order of a 24 inch blizzard. And of course, I had airline tickets to fly home that weekend. (I actually made it but getting to the airport was tons of fun.) My introduction to snow shoveling was at my fraternity. (Usually by the time the snow hit, the pledges had already been initiated so we had lost our slave labor and had to do stuff for ourselves.) It seemed like fun. Usually it was so cold that the snow was powdery and light. And of course, we were aided and abetted by copious amounts of liquid sunshine a/k/a alcohol.
I had been curious about skiing and when I started dating the woman who I married, she was a skier. She told me that she’d introduce me to the sport and I was all set to try it along with my very own snow bunny. That idea lasted until the first weekend of the semester when we started dating. She went on a university ski-club trip…and came home with her left leg in a cast with ruptured ligaments in her ankle from a wee mishap. That was pretty much the end of the idea of skiing for either of us. (Odd, how things work. For some reason that whole weekend I was sure that she would come home injured. Don’t know why I knew this but I did. And I could get graphic about how we overcame this obstacle during “inside” activities but I’ll spare the TMI.)
Air Force navigator candidates, at the time, were all trained at Mather AFB in Sacramento, California. So after a year and a half of sun and warm weather in Sacramento, where was my first choice for assignment? Griffiss AFB, Rome, NY. For those of you who don’t know, Rome is about 35 miles east of Syracuse. (And for those of you who do know, it’s still about 35 miles east of Syracuse.) It is even snowier in Rome. Our first winter there, we had something on the order of forty-two straight days with at least three inches of snow. The guy who plowed our driveway finally said not to call him again because he had nowhere to push the snow. Fortunately the winter broke the next week and Mother Nature graced us with warmer weather. We pretty much gave up the concept of shoveling the front walk and would go in and out through the garage. We owned a cocker spaniel at the time and we’d let her out and she would run around her little “trail” along the base of the house where the wind sculpted the snow away. Once her necessaries were completed, she would run into the snow, creating tunnels. Periodically, she would leap out, catch a breath, then go back to burrowing through the snow. When she had had enough, she’d come in, covered with snow and shivering and, of course, wanting to be hugged and warmed. (Yeah, puppy, fat chance there.) That was the only time I have ever needed chains on my tires. And cold? Cold enough to blow apart the turbines on several B-52 engines that were sitting on alert when the engines were started quickly. (Didn’t that make us aircrew members feel secure….)
For the Great Northeast Blizzard of February 1978 we were living with my in-laws in Connecticut. The governor of Connecticut had the good sense to order the state closed for three days just to get the roads cleared. Unfortunately, she didn’t so anything about our driveway, which was fairly wide and fairly steep. But, being in my twenties and in the flush of good health and youthful zeal, I helped get it shoveled out and actually thought it was kind of fun. (Looking back I question my sanity and/or contact with reality but, hey, I was young.) The next year we spent in Charleston, West Virginia. As the New Yorker/New Englander in our small apartment complex, I would laugh at the paralyzing effects of two inches of snow and actually go out and single-handedly shovel the parking lot and driveways. Hey! It was fun showing off my northeastern hardiness. (And if I didn’t do it, it was never getting done.)
A few years later when I got into skiing, I recognized the fact that in order to ski, you need snow. My growing hostility to the white menace abated somewhat. I was beginning, however, to wonder why it was that we couldn’t get snow on just the mountains. After all, skiers need to drive to the ski areas. But then I went through some serious employment issues and spending money on skiing was out of the question. That was probably the death knell of my tolerance for snow. Besides, I was now into my thirties and every shovel-full seemed to be heavier than they were just a few years before. And we were living in a house with a two-car garage and a driveway every bit as wide. Those of you who have ever had the experience of getting your driveway shoveled and then having the town snow plow come around and dump five feet of dirty, heavy packed snow back in the driveway will know how disheartening that is. Hey! I’m done! Sh*t! No I’m not!
Which brings us to our current home. It has a one car garage (that I’m not sure a car has ever actually been in, it being yet another storage area for “stuff”) but a driveway wide enough to park cars side by side. For several years we would go through the yearly hassle of trying to find someone who was reliable and would plow the driveway whenever it snowed. That was an iffy proposition, at best. Even when we had someone who was reliable enough, we were often on the backside of his stops. If we needed to get somewhere, guess who was out there with the freakin’ shovel. And then our snow plow guy would show up, see it was done and assume we didn’t need him anymore. So the next time, we’d have to call him and ask why he hadn’t done our driveway…it’s kind of like an endless loop. And having hit the half-century mark in 2002, I had become intensely hostile to flakes…human and water crystal-types.
So last year, we made a deal with our next-door neighbor who is everything I am not when it comes to caring for a house. He’s a plumber by profession but he knows how to repair stuff with pretty much any tool. (I, on the other hand, grew up in an apartment with a father who was convinced that if I touched a tool I would hurt myself. Hence, I am less than competent…okay, incompetent, when it comes to tool usage. I have never met a nail that I couldn’t bend. I have never found a stud in a wall…they move. I’ve seen it happen. I put a nail in and it goes right through plaster. Someone who knows what they’re doing raps on the wall and finds a stud RIGHT WHERE MY NAIL HOLE IS! Little known fact: Studs move when you’re incompetent.) Anyway, he’s good with small gas-powered engines, too. (I once had a Sears riding lawn-mower. Despite following maintenance directions it threw a rod after less than a year. Just call me death to small engines.) So we made a deal with him. We bought a snow-blower and he does our driveway after he does his. Talk about the best investment in winter maintenance we ever made. Here’s to you, Joe, my winter wonderland hero!
Aside from the fact that heavy snow would sometimes mean NO SCHOOL (capital letters, fanfares, fireworks shooting off to celebrate), there was always the child’s joy of playing in it, throwing it at each other or city buses as they passed by then coming inside to hot chocolate and warm, dry clothes. What it did not mean to the apartment dweller was dealing with the after-effects. There were other people (namely the building superintendent) to deal with the snow around the building property and the almost magical appearance of city snow plows and city employees with shovels to create streets and sidewalks out of what had been an impenetrable mass of white stuff. Having never had to deal with the concept of “shoveling” (other than the occasional whopper I’d try to slip past my parents), it was one of the many things for which I was unprepared as a home-owner.
Syracuse University was my first choice for college and, for the life of me, I can’t recall exactly why. Don’t get me wrong, four years there was just great and that was where I met she to whom I have been married for over 35 years. But I was somewhat unprepared for winter in central New York. I remember a little pamphlet they gave freshmen that had a semi-humorous section called “Syracuse is…”. What I recall from that is “Syracuse is the same pair of sandals for four years because you’re never going to get much of a chance to wear them,” “Syracuse is six months of great skiing and six months of fair skiing,” and, my favorite, “Syracuse is fourteen inches of ‘partly cloudy.’” This last point is so true you could puke. There are two winter weather terms you learn REAL FAST in Syracuse, radiational cooling (when the absence of cloud cover in the winter causes the temperature to resemble temperatures seen somewhere north of the Arctic Circle) and lake effect snow. Lake effect snow. Yeah! When you sit on the lee of a large land-locked lake (Ontario in the case of Syracuse), all you need is a wind sweeping across the lake and picking up moisture. It then dumps said moisture in the form of snow flakes on the area to the lee of said lake. And they used to say that it was worse in the “snow belt” area to the west of the city. Worse? Give me a freakin’ break!
My freshman year (1970) we experienced a snowfall that signaled a first in the storied history of Syracuse University. It was the first time in its history that a snowfall caused the university to close. I think it was something on the order of a 24 inch blizzard. And of course, I had airline tickets to fly home that weekend. (I actually made it but getting to the airport was tons of fun.) My introduction to snow shoveling was at my fraternity. (Usually by the time the snow hit, the pledges had already been initiated so we had lost our slave labor and had to do stuff for ourselves.) It seemed like fun. Usually it was so cold that the snow was powdery and light. And of course, we were aided and abetted by copious amounts of liquid sunshine a/k/a alcohol.
I had been curious about skiing and when I started dating the woman who I married, she was a skier. She told me that she’d introduce me to the sport and I was all set to try it along with my very own snow bunny. That idea lasted until the first weekend of the semester when we started dating. She went on a university ski-club trip…and came home with her left leg in a cast with ruptured ligaments in her ankle from a wee mishap. That was pretty much the end of the idea of skiing for either of us. (Odd, how things work. For some reason that whole weekend I was sure that she would come home injured. Don’t know why I knew this but I did. And I could get graphic about how we overcame this obstacle during “inside” activities but I’ll spare the TMI.)
Air Force navigator candidates, at the time, were all trained at Mather AFB in Sacramento, California. So after a year and a half of sun and warm weather in Sacramento, where was my first choice for assignment? Griffiss AFB, Rome, NY. For those of you who don’t know, Rome is about 35 miles east of Syracuse. (And for those of you who do know, it’s still about 35 miles east of Syracuse.) It is even snowier in Rome. Our first winter there, we had something on the order of forty-two straight days with at least three inches of snow. The guy who plowed our driveway finally said not to call him again because he had nowhere to push the snow. Fortunately the winter broke the next week and Mother Nature graced us with warmer weather. We pretty much gave up the concept of shoveling the front walk and would go in and out through the garage. We owned a cocker spaniel at the time and we’d let her out and she would run around her little “trail” along the base of the house where the wind sculpted the snow away. Once her necessaries were completed, she would run into the snow, creating tunnels. Periodically, she would leap out, catch a breath, then go back to burrowing through the snow. When she had had enough, she’d come in, covered with snow and shivering and, of course, wanting to be hugged and warmed. (Yeah, puppy, fat chance there.) That was the only time I have ever needed chains on my tires. And cold? Cold enough to blow apart the turbines on several B-52 engines that were sitting on alert when the engines were started quickly. (Didn’t that make us aircrew members feel secure….)
For the Great Northeast Blizzard of February 1978 we were living with my in-laws in Connecticut. The governor of Connecticut had the good sense to order the state closed for three days just to get the roads cleared. Unfortunately, she didn’t so anything about our driveway, which was fairly wide and fairly steep. But, being in my twenties and in the flush of good health and youthful zeal, I helped get it shoveled out and actually thought it was kind of fun. (Looking back I question my sanity and/or contact with reality but, hey, I was young.) The next year we spent in Charleston, West Virginia. As the New Yorker/New Englander in our small apartment complex, I would laugh at the paralyzing effects of two inches of snow and actually go out and single-handedly shovel the parking lot and driveways. Hey! It was fun showing off my northeastern hardiness. (And if I didn’t do it, it was never getting done.)
A few years later when I got into skiing, I recognized the fact that in order to ski, you need snow. My growing hostility to the white menace abated somewhat. I was beginning, however, to wonder why it was that we couldn’t get snow on just the mountains. After all, skiers need to drive to the ski areas. But then I went through some serious employment issues and spending money on skiing was out of the question. That was probably the death knell of my tolerance for snow. Besides, I was now into my thirties and every shovel-full seemed to be heavier than they were just a few years before. And we were living in a house with a two-car garage and a driveway every bit as wide. Those of you who have ever had the experience of getting your driveway shoveled and then having the town snow plow come around and dump five feet of dirty, heavy packed snow back in the driveway will know how disheartening that is. Hey! I’m done! Sh*t! No I’m not!
Which brings us to our current home. It has a one car garage (that I’m not sure a car has ever actually been in, it being yet another storage area for “stuff”) but a driveway wide enough to park cars side by side. For several years we would go through the yearly hassle of trying to find someone who was reliable and would plow the driveway whenever it snowed. That was an iffy proposition, at best. Even when we had someone who was reliable enough, we were often on the backside of his stops. If we needed to get somewhere, guess who was out there with the freakin’ shovel. And then our snow plow guy would show up, see it was done and assume we didn’t need him anymore. So the next time, we’d have to call him and ask why he hadn’t done our driveway…it’s kind of like an endless loop. And having hit the half-century mark in 2002, I had become intensely hostile to flakes…human and water crystal-types.
So last year, we made a deal with our next-door neighbor who is everything I am not when it comes to caring for a house. He’s a plumber by profession but he knows how to repair stuff with pretty much any tool. (I, on the other hand, grew up in an apartment with a father who was convinced that if I touched a tool I would hurt myself. Hence, I am less than competent…okay, incompetent, when it comes to tool usage. I have never met a nail that I couldn’t bend. I have never found a stud in a wall…they move. I’ve seen it happen. I put a nail in and it goes right through plaster. Someone who knows what they’re doing raps on the wall and finds a stud RIGHT WHERE MY NAIL HOLE IS! Little known fact: Studs move when you’re incompetent.) Anyway, he’s good with small gas-powered engines, too. (I once had a Sears riding lawn-mower. Despite following maintenance directions it threw a rod after less than a year. Just call me death to small engines.) So we made a deal with him. We bought a snow-blower and he does our driveway after he does his. Talk about the best investment in winter maintenance we ever made. Here’s to you, Joe, my winter wonderland hero!
Friday, December 18, 2009
Liquor is Quicker
"Candy is Dandy but liquor is quicker."
Ogden Nash (1902-1971)
"But sex don't rot your teeth."
Anon.
Before launching into this one, in case you didn't read yesterday's Whining About Wine, the same PSA applies herein. Okay? Okay.
After thinking about my experience with wines, it occurred to me that I might as well continue and talk about my experience with distilled beverages. (In case you are unsure of the distinction, all liquors start with a fermentation process. A further process then distills the fermented liquid into a more concentrated - read HIGHER alcohol content - liquor. Science lesson over.) By definition, this also excludes beers and ales. But come on, that can be another day's discussion. (Say! What a splendid idea.) And lest you be concerned that what follows will be a recounting of various drunk, stupid behaviors, that's not the aim. Drunk, stupid behaviors will be in context, much like blood in a Quentin Tarantino movie. There's a lot of it but it's there to make a point. Honest. Oh, and after doing DUI hearings for 20 years and looking back at my own experiences, I have often stated that alcohol really makes you stupid. That's not a value judgment but an empirical observation.
Sad to say that my first real experience with hard liquor occurred at a (Wait for it!) Bat Mitzvah party. (I never really considered that Bat Mitzvah parties contributed to my delinquency but it appears that they have There is a cautionary tale here but for the life of me, I cannot begin to say what the moral is.) How it was that the waiter with the liquor cart was serving the teenagers' table is beyond me but we did live in a more innocent time back in the 60s. Anyway, at the tender age of 15, I ordered a rye and ginger. A cousin of the Bat Mitzvah girl sitting across from me who was at least a couple of years older than me said, "You should try bourbon. It's much better than rye." Now, having already become an aficionado of James Bond novels, I knew that Bond, in the early books, often drank bourbon. So after finishing my R and G my next order was bourbon and soda, just like 007. This individual whose name has been lost to me, if I ever knew it, had just set the pattern for my whiskey consumption for the next 41 years.
My senior year in high school, a group of us decided that we needed to have a drinking party. Why we decided this is also lost to the dim past. Of course, we had the obligatory 18 year old who could buy for us. I even remember where the store was. It was a small liquor store under the 241st Street terminal of the number 2 subway in the Bronx. Anyway, my two or three dollars bought a pint of something called Heaven Hill bourbon. Yeah. Probably named after where they bury you after drinking too much of it. I don't remember much of that night other than deep in the throes of drunken stupidity I called a girl with whom I had recently broken up. I have NO idea what I said to her but I remember making the call, aided and abetted by my equally drunk and stupid pals.
For whatever reason, my freshman year at Syracuse University was mostly wine and beer. I do remember a brief flirtation with Courvoisier VSOP and Napoleon brandy because I was deep in an OC/PR thing about the Napoleonic wars and, besides, it was sooooo sophisticated. It wasn't until I moved into my fraternity my sophomore year that the real college drinking began. In many ways, the memories are kind of like a patchwork quilt: small pieces of stuff, incomplete in many cases, sewn together into one grand tapestry. (Can you mix any MORE metaphors, Mark?) There were the Brandy Alexanders while playing bridge that resulted in some awesomely stupid bids, card play and arguments with my partner. There were more bottles of Jim Beam, Jack Daniels and assorted cheap bourbons (Chester Graves and Liquor Square brand to name two. And I suspect that Chester Graves are found on Heaven Hill) than I care to or can remember. There were bottles of pure grain alcohol (198 proof) brought from Atlanta by one of my frat brothers with which we made punch and played the Pass Out board game. There was the night we couldn't get our parking lot plowed so I thought it was a good idea to get plowed. That was a night of Courvoisier followed by shots of Peppermint Schnapps. You know you are toast when you stop tasting the alcohol in the schnapps and just taste the peppermint. (The next morning I woke up in my bed fully clothed, shoes included. Seems that my roommate found me passed out on the floor. He picked me up and his date held up the covers and he slid me under them.) There was the night of way too much bourbon when I was supposedly studying for an Economics 205 exam. I have a faint memory of sitting on the couch between two of my fraternity's Little Sisters, one of whom was in my economics class. The one in my class kept saying that I was going to flunk the exam because I was too drunk but the other said I would be fine because, drunk as I was, I was making sense about the textbook. (I got an A on the exam.) There was a brief flirtation with gin my last semester until she who I loved and ultimately married told me that she could not stand the smell of gin on my breath. Yes, I quickly understood the implications of her not wanting to be near me.
There was the semester where my roommate got screwed over by the girl he was dating and started drinking. Believing that no one should drink alone, I drank along with him. About the time he was pulling out of his nosedive, the same thing happened to me. He believed that no one should drink alone so he drank with me. That entire semester came back to us over a period of years in small bits and pieces, literally. One thin memory I do have is of the night we ran out of everything else to drink except for his bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label. Now, I loathe blended scotch. But I was sufficiently drunk to just not care about the taste and we polished off that bottle, too. (Gradewise, that semester was bad for him. He was taking Organic Chemistry and some other hard courses. I, on the other hand, was taking two Public Affairs, two Religion courses and Air Force ROTC. I think he wound up with a 1.6. I wound up with a 3.5.)
Much of the drinking behavior abated after I began steadily dating the woman who is now my wife. There were, however, several significant oopsies along the way. The Little Sisters of my fraternity (of whom she was one) would throw a 5 AM TGIF party once a semester. Because it would have been difficult for her to get out of bed at 5 AM without my knowing it, I was the frat brother in on the secret planning. At the one I most clearly remember (remember being a relative term) they made punch bowls full of Bloody Marys, Mai-Tais and Whiskey Sours. My frat big brother never made it to a class that day thanks to alcohol poisoning. I went to my AFROTC class (Friday being uniform day) and got into trouble with my teacher the major. When he asked if i was drunk at that hour (that hour being 10 AM) I told him that I was drunk by 7 AM. He then reported me to the colonel, a good ol' boy from North Carolina with thousands of flying hours in bombers. He really liked me because he knew I wanted to fly bombers, too. He asked me about what had happened so I told him the truth. He looked at me, winked and said, "Real fine. Keep up the good work."
An interesting thing occurred when I became a commissioned officer in the Air Force. I have often commented that I learned to drink in university and learned how to not drink in the Air Force. I looked around and saw the amount of alcohol consumption and the number of alcoholics and made a pledge to myself and my wife that I would not be one of them.
In the early 80s, thanks to the influence of some friends, I got into skiing and Mexican food. Where the two of them intersect is right inside a Margarita. (I am also a huge fan of Jimmy Buffett and if you can't figure that one out, email me and I'll explain the relationship.) The night I finished the bar exam, my friend John picked me up and he and my friend Rich took me to dinner at a Mexican restaurant with specific instructions to be sure I got drunk. Four or five large Margaritas later, my blood alcohol probably said DRUNK but I was so wired from taking the exam that I barely felt the effects. How sad is that? (No, I didn't drive, John drove me home. And I did pass the bar exam.)
The intervening years were mainly Jack Daniels whenever I felt the need to drink. On the rocks, by the way, no mixers. A couple of years ago, my friend Steve offered me some really expensive single-malt scotch. I demurred because I never liked scotch. He pushed me to try it anyway. Surprisingly, I found it to be pretty good. Two years ago, a bunch of the guys associated with our dance school went up to New Hampshire to play cards, smoke cigars, drink heavily and generally behave badly. Of course we stopped at the state liquor store just across the NH border to stock up. As was my habit, I bought Jack Daniels (Green label, too!!). While we were playing cards, Steve offered me some of the Irish whiskey he had bought. By that time I was half in the bag anyway, so I figured, why not. When it vaporized in my mouth and slid down my gullet with the gentlest of after-burn and kick, I knew this was a relationship that I had to pursue. A few weeks later, my wife went to Florida to be with her mother who was having surgery. She was there a few weeks and on one Saturday night, bored and lonely (always a good combination for alcohol consumption), I went to a liquor store and bought a pint of Jameson to take for a test drive (not literally, gang). Suffice it to say, I have abandoned the corn mashes and bourbons. Aside from my love for all things Irish (okay, almost everything, and if you are wondering about the not so much part, email me), Irish whiskey is wonderful. One of the things I like best besides the taste is the fact that it gets me buzzed long before it causes me to fall asleep (due to interaction with a medication I take). Irish whiskey. German wine. A combination with which I can live happily ever after.
Ogden Nash (1902-1971)
"But sex don't rot your teeth."
Anon.
Before launching into this one, in case you didn't read yesterday's Whining About Wine, the same PSA applies herein. Okay? Okay.
After thinking about my experience with wines, it occurred to me that I might as well continue and talk about my experience with distilled beverages. (In case you are unsure of the distinction, all liquors start with a fermentation process. A further process then distills the fermented liquid into a more concentrated - read HIGHER alcohol content - liquor. Science lesson over.) By definition, this also excludes beers and ales. But come on, that can be another day's discussion. (Say! What a splendid idea.) And lest you be concerned that what follows will be a recounting of various drunk, stupid behaviors, that's not the aim. Drunk, stupid behaviors will be in context, much like blood in a Quentin Tarantino movie. There's a lot of it but it's there to make a point. Honest. Oh, and after doing DUI hearings for 20 years and looking back at my own experiences, I have often stated that alcohol really makes you stupid. That's not a value judgment but an empirical observation.
Sad to say that my first real experience with hard liquor occurred at a (Wait for it!) Bat Mitzvah party. (I never really considered that Bat Mitzvah parties contributed to my delinquency but it appears that they have There is a cautionary tale here but for the life of me, I cannot begin to say what the moral is.) How it was that the waiter with the liquor cart was serving the teenagers' table is beyond me but we did live in a more innocent time back in the 60s. Anyway, at the tender age of 15, I ordered a rye and ginger. A cousin of the Bat Mitzvah girl sitting across from me who was at least a couple of years older than me said, "You should try bourbon. It's much better than rye." Now, having already become an aficionado of James Bond novels, I knew that Bond, in the early books, often drank bourbon. So after finishing my R and G my next order was bourbon and soda, just like 007. This individual whose name has been lost to me, if I ever knew it, had just set the pattern for my whiskey consumption for the next 41 years.
My senior year in high school, a group of us decided that we needed to have a drinking party. Why we decided this is also lost to the dim past. Of course, we had the obligatory 18 year old who could buy for us. I even remember where the store was. It was a small liquor store under the 241st Street terminal of the number 2 subway in the Bronx. Anyway, my two or three dollars bought a pint of something called Heaven Hill bourbon. Yeah. Probably named after where they bury you after drinking too much of it. I don't remember much of that night other than deep in the throes of drunken stupidity I called a girl with whom I had recently broken up. I have NO idea what I said to her but I remember making the call, aided and abetted by my equally drunk and stupid pals.
For whatever reason, my freshman year at Syracuse University was mostly wine and beer. I do remember a brief flirtation with Courvoisier VSOP and Napoleon brandy because I was deep in an OC/PR thing about the Napoleonic wars and, besides, it was sooooo sophisticated. It wasn't until I moved into my fraternity my sophomore year that the real college drinking began. In many ways, the memories are kind of like a patchwork quilt: small pieces of stuff, incomplete in many cases, sewn together into one grand tapestry. (Can you mix any MORE metaphors, Mark?) There were the Brandy Alexanders while playing bridge that resulted in some awesomely stupid bids, card play and arguments with my partner. There were more bottles of Jim Beam, Jack Daniels and assorted cheap bourbons (Chester Graves and Liquor Square brand to name two. And I suspect that Chester Graves are found on Heaven Hill) than I care to or can remember. There were bottles of pure grain alcohol (198 proof) brought from Atlanta by one of my frat brothers with which we made punch and played the Pass Out board game. There was the night we couldn't get our parking lot plowed so I thought it was a good idea to get plowed. That was a night of Courvoisier followed by shots of Peppermint Schnapps. You know you are toast when you stop tasting the alcohol in the schnapps and just taste the peppermint. (The next morning I woke up in my bed fully clothed, shoes included. Seems that my roommate found me passed out on the floor. He picked me up and his date held up the covers and he slid me under them.) There was the night of way too much bourbon when I was supposedly studying for an Economics 205 exam. I have a faint memory of sitting on the couch between two of my fraternity's Little Sisters, one of whom was in my economics class. The one in my class kept saying that I was going to flunk the exam because I was too drunk but the other said I would be fine because, drunk as I was, I was making sense about the textbook. (I got an A on the exam.) There was a brief flirtation with gin my last semester until she who I loved and ultimately married told me that she could not stand the smell of gin on my breath. Yes, I quickly understood the implications of her not wanting to be near me.
There was the semester where my roommate got screwed over by the girl he was dating and started drinking. Believing that no one should drink alone, I drank along with him. About the time he was pulling out of his nosedive, the same thing happened to me. He believed that no one should drink alone so he drank with me. That entire semester came back to us over a period of years in small bits and pieces, literally. One thin memory I do have is of the night we ran out of everything else to drink except for his bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label. Now, I loathe blended scotch. But I was sufficiently drunk to just not care about the taste and we polished off that bottle, too. (Gradewise, that semester was bad for him. He was taking Organic Chemistry and some other hard courses. I, on the other hand, was taking two Public Affairs, two Religion courses and Air Force ROTC. I think he wound up with a 1.6. I wound up with a 3.5.)
Much of the drinking behavior abated after I began steadily dating the woman who is now my wife. There were, however, several significant oopsies along the way. The Little Sisters of my fraternity (of whom she was one) would throw a 5 AM TGIF party once a semester. Because it would have been difficult for her to get out of bed at 5 AM without my knowing it, I was the frat brother in on the secret planning. At the one I most clearly remember (remember being a relative term) they made punch bowls full of Bloody Marys, Mai-Tais and Whiskey Sours. My frat big brother never made it to a class that day thanks to alcohol poisoning. I went to my AFROTC class (Friday being uniform day) and got into trouble with my teacher the major. When he asked if i was drunk at that hour (that hour being 10 AM) I told him that I was drunk by 7 AM. He then reported me to the colonel, a good ol' boy from North Carolina with thousands of flying hours in bombers. He really liked me because he knew I wanted to fly bombers, too. He asked me about what had happened so I told him the truth. He looked at me, winked and said, "Real fine. Keep up the good work."
An interesting thing occurred when I became a commissioned officer in the Air Force. I have often commented that I learned to drink in university and learned how to not drink in the Air Force. I looked around and saw the amount of alcohol consumption and the number of alcoholics and made a pledge to myself and my wife that I would not be one of them.
In the early 80s, thanks to the influence of some friends, I got into skiing and Mexican food. Where the two of them intersect is right inside a Margarita. (I am also a huge fan of Jimmy Buffett and if you can't figure that one out, email me and I'll explain the relationship.) The night I finished the bar exam, my friend John picked me up and he and my friend Rich took me to dinner at a Mexican restaurant with specific instructions to be sure I got drunk. Four or five large Margaritas later, my blood alcohol probably said DRUNK but I was so wired from taking the exam that I barely felt the effects. How sad is that? (No, I didn't drive, John drove me home. And I did pass the bar exam.)
The intervening years were mainly Jack Daniels whenever I felt the need to drink. On the rocks, by the way, no mixers. A couple of years ago, my friend Steve offered me some really expensive single-malt scotch. I demurred because I never liked scotch. He pushed me to try it anyway. Surprisingly, I found it to be pretty good. Two years ago, a bunch of the guys associated with our dance school went up to New Hampshire to play cards, smoke cigars, drink heavily and generally behave badly. Of course we stopped at the state liquor store just across the NH border to stock up. As was my habit, I bought Jack Daniels (Green label, too!!). While we were playing cards, Steve offered me some of the Irish whiskey he had bought. By that time I was half in the bag anyway, so I figured, why not. When it vaporized in my mouth and slid down my gullet with the gentlest of after-burn and kick, I knew this was a relationship that I had to pursue. A few weeks later, my wife went to Florida to be with her mother who was having surgery. She was there a few weeks and on one Saturday night, bored and lonely (always a good combination for alcohol consumption), I went to a liquor store and bought a pint of Jameson to take for a test drive (not literally, gang). Suffice it to say, I have abandoned the corn mashes and bourbons. Aside from my love for all things Irish (okay, almost everything, and if you are wondering about the not so much part, email me), Irish whiskey is wonderful. One of the things I like best besides the taste is the fact that it gets me buzzed long before it causes me to fall asleep (due to interaction with a medication I take). Irish whiskey. German wine. A combination with which I can live happily ever after.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
December 17, 2009 - Whining About Wine
First off, let me get the public service announcement out of the way. From December 1989 until April 2008, I was a hearing officer with the Connecticut Department of Motor Vehicles. Most of the cases I heard were DUI license suspension hearings. Since April 2008 I have been the Department’s case presenter for DUI cases (kind of like a prosecutor but not quite). As a result, I take a rather dim view of drinking and driving and some of my perceptions of drinking have been shaped by the past twenty years. So don’t drink and drive. Seriously. Don’t do it. Okay. The PSA is over.
Thanks to my initial contact with wine, my relationship with it has been fraught with false starts and blind alleys. My initial contact with wine originates with Friday night meals with my mother’s parents and the Passover seders with them. Some of you may know exactly where this is headed and it is right to Manischewitz. If you have ever been subjected to the heavy, dark, almost sickly sweet Manischewitz wines from the 50s and 60s, you will wince along with me. Bad as it was, it was made worse at the Passover seders where four glasses of wine are downed throughout the ritual meal. Can’t have little Markie or his cousins getting cocked on wine can we? Answer? Wine spritzers. Yes, Manischewitz wine diluted with seltzer. Yum! As a result of this childhood trauma, wine, to me, was something to be avoided like the plague. (Of which, by the way, the Passover seder commemorates ten of them inflicted on Pharaoh and the Egyptians, which also sounds like a great name for a band although Sam the Sham might have something to say about that.)
Fast forward to high school age. My mother has dear friends who are married. He was born in Germany and she was born in Austria. After my father died, they went out of their way to include us whenever they could. They introduced me to Rhine wines. I had never heard the names Zellerschwarzekatz or Liebfraumilch before nor had I ever tasted anything like them. My ignorant palette liked the taste of the dry white and for a while, they were what I would want, partly because the names just sounded cool.
My first drunk was induced by champagne. The morning in question, I had a track meet, and as was my habit, I didn’t eat before I ran. I then had to leave the meet and go directly to a Bat Mitzvah party where I proceeded to consume more champagne than was prudent. And as I recall it was kosher champagne and was…well, kosher champagne. But I don’t remember much of that morning.
By the time I reached university (at the time 18 was the legal drinking age so I could buy my own), I was influenced by the commercials for Mateus rosé, a semi-sweet Portuguese wine. And, besides, the bottle was really, really cool looking and made a very cool candle holder when the wine was gone. Mateus was my freshman year wine of choice. But it could not hold a candle to Boone’s Farm Apple Wine and Strawberry Hill. We used to buy that stuff by the case. Talk about a sweet, cheap (and really bad) drunk. And that’s to say nothing about the André champagne and cold duck we would buy every year for Homecoming Weekend. There’s a quality beverage. On the other hand for the sophisticated palettes possessed by my fraternity brothers and me, this was quality stuff. (You don’t even want to know some of the stuff we drank nor the quantities. Honestly, I don’t have much memory of some of those days/nights. What I do remember isn’t pretty.)
As I moved through my post-college days, wine tended to recede into the background. I mean, in the Air Force who needed wine when you had five cent Blood Marys every Saturday from 7 AM to 1 PM at the Officer’s Club Stag Bar? And if I really wanted to drink there was bourbon. (That’s a whole other track of my drinking life.) I recall at some point thinking that drinking sherry from a goblet in the evening was very sophisticated. That lasted a couple months. My wife, who is less of a drinker than I am and I am only an occasional social drinker (unless I’m driving when I’m then known as the designated driver), likes White Zinfandel. My Irish step dance partner had a long, happy relationship with Pinot Grigio although she has switched to Chardonnay. Many of the other ladies in our Irish dance school/family like various whites. I tended to stick with whiskey (bourbon then Irish) as it takes less to generate that pleasant buzz. So I never paid much attention to wine. And besides, wine was for effete intellectuals who…oh, wait, I’ve been characterized as an effete intellectual, too, so strike that.
And then we went to San Francisco a few weeks ago for a week-long holiday. Among the many things we did was a tour of California wine country with tastings. Now, if you have seen the movie “Sideways” you will be familiar with California wine country. Even in chilly December, it is beautiful and chock full of wineries. I had little expectation other than it sounding like a fun experience. That all changed at Madonna Estates, the first winery we visited. The last two wines they offered for tasting were a Riseling and a Gewürtztraminer. I was psyched about trying the latter because Spenser (the detective created by Robert B. Parker, not the poet) likes it. The Riesling hit my mouth and to my surprise…I was in love. This was reinforced by our next stop at Sutter Home Winery. I found their Riesling to be a bit too sweet and full-flavored. Yes. I actually tasted the difference! But I was still in love.
Well, we flew home on a Saturday, landing in the snow on Saturday night which means that the next day was Sunday. (See, if you were following along yesterday about calendars you’d understand how I came up with that.) That means the liquor stores in Connecticut are closed. And we had no Rieslings among our meager wine collection. Fortunately, my daughter asked us to bring over some Christmas decorations for her tree. While there I looked through her wine rack and (ring the bells, blow the trumpets) she had a Columbia Valley Riesling. I summarily informed her that I was taking the bottle home with me. And I did. And through the day I sampled glass after glass until, alas, the bottle was empty and I was gently buzzed but still firmly in love with MY wine. It’s a relationship to be pursued…in moderation. So much wine, so little time. After all I am OC/PR.
Thanks to my initial contact with wine, my relationship with it has been fraught with false starts and blind alleys. My initial contact with wine originates with Friday night meals with my mother’s parents and the Passover seders with them. Some of you may know exactly where this is headed and it is right to Manischewitz. If you have ever been subjected to the heavy, dark, almost sickly sweet Manischewitz wines from the 50s and 60s, you will wince along with me. Bad as it was, it was made worse at the Passover seders where four glasses of wine are downed throughout the ritual meal. Can’t have little Markie or his cousins getting cocked on wine can we? Answer? Wine spritzers. Yes, Manischewitz wine diluted with seltzer. Yum! As a result of this childhood trauma, wine, to me, was something to be avoided like the plague. (Of which, by the way, the Passover seder commemorates ten of them inflicted on Pharaoh and the Egyptians, which also sounds like a great name for a band although Sam the Sham might have something to say about that.)
Fast forward to high school age. My mother has dear friends who are married. He was born in Germany and she was born in Austria. After my father died, they went out of their way to include us whenever they could. They introduced me to Rhine wines. I had never heard the names Zellerschwarzekatz or Liebfraumilch before nor had I ever tasted anything like them. My ignorant palette liked the taste of the dry white and for a while, they were what I would want, partly because the names just sounded cool.
My first drunk was induced by champagne. The morning in question, I had a track meet, and as was my habit, I didn’t eat before I ran. I then had to leave the meet and go directly to a Bat Mitzvah party where I proceeded to consume more champagne than was prudent. And as I recall it was kosher champagne and was…well, kosher champagne. But I don’t remember much of that morning.
By the time I reached university (at the time 18 was the legal drinking age so I could buy my own), I was influenced by the commercials for Mateus rosé, a semi-sweet Portuguese wine. And, besides, the bottle was really, really cool looking and made a very cool candle holder when the wine was gone. Mateus was my freshman year wine of choice. But it could not hold a candle to Boone’s Farm Apple Wine and Strawberry Hill. We used to buy that stuff by the case. Talk about a sweet, cheap (and really bad) drunk. And that’s to say nothing about the André champagne and cold duck we would buy every year for Homecoming Weekend. There’s a quality beverage. On the other hand for the sophisticated palettes possessed by my fraternity brothers and me, this was quality stuff. (You don’t even want to know some of the stuff we drank nor the quantities. Honestly, I don’t have much memory of some of those days/nights. What I do remember isn’t pretty.)
As I moved through my post-college days, wine tended to recede into the background. I mean, in the Air Force who needed wine when you had five cent Blood Marys every Saturday from 7 AM to 1 PM at the Officer’s Club Stag Bar? And if I really wanted to drink there was bourbon. (That’s a whole other track of my drinking life.) I recall at some point thinking that drinking sherry from a goblet in the evening was very sophisticated. That lasted a couple months. My wife, who is less of a drinker than I am and I am only an occasional social drinker (unless I’m driving when I’m then known as the designated driver), likes White Zinfandel. My Irish step dance partner had a long, happy relationship with Pinot Grigio although she has switched to Chardonnay. Many of the other ladies in our Irish dance school/family like various whites. I tended to stick with whiskey (bourbon then Irish) as it takes less to generate that pleasant buzz. So I never paid much attention to wine. And besides, wine was for effete intellectuals who…oh, wait, I’ve been characterized as an effete intellectual, too, so strike that.
And then we went to San Francisco a few weeks ago for a week-long holiday. Among the many things we did was a tour of California wine country with tastings. Now, if you have seen the movie “Sideways” you will be familiar with California wine country. Even in chilly December, it is beautiful and chock full of wineries. I had little expectation other than it sounding like a fun experience. That all changed at Madonna Estates, the first winery we visited. The last two wines they offered for tasting were a Riseling and a Gewürtztraminer. I was psyched about trying the latter because Spenser (the detective created by Robert B. Parker, not the poet) likes it. The Riesling hit my mouth and to my surprise…I was in love. This was reinforced by our next stop at Sutter Home Winery. I found their Riesling to be a bit too sweet and full-flavored. Yes. I actually tasted the difference! But I was still in love.
Well, we flew home on a Saturday, landing in the snow on Saturday night which means that the next day was Sunday. (See, if you were following along yesterday about calendars you’d understand how I came up with that.) That means the liquor stores in Connecticut are closed. And we had no Rieslings among our meager wine collection. Fortunately, my daughter asked us to bring over some Christmas decorations for her tree. While there I looked through her wine rack and (ring the bells, blow the trumpets) she had a Columbia Valley Riesling. I summarily informed her that I was taking the bottle home with me. And I did. And through the day I sampled glass after glass until, alas, the bottle was empty and I was gently buzzed but still firmly in love with MY wine. It’s a relationship to be pursued…in moderation. So much wine, so little time. After all I am OC/PR.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
December 16, 2009 - Calendars
I sometimes wonder if the Mayans didn’t predict that the world would end in 2012 because they knew what the invention of calendars would mean. Now, do I actually think the world will end on December 21, 2012? (or is it December 23, 2012 and does that mean if the 21st comes and goes we still have to be worried all over again?) Short answer: no. Not on the 21st, the 23rd or even (odd?) the 25th. (And, parenthetically, wouldn’t that just suck. Merry Christmas! Oops Doomsday!) (Oh, and if the rapture comes on Christmas, will it be singing the Hallelujah Chorus, Silent Night or Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer?) Anyway, the Mayans. The 2012 date derives, I am told by that immaculate source of information Wikipedia, from the end of the 5,125 year Long Count Calendar. What? Did they give up counting after 5,125? Was the concept 5,126 too big a leap to take? Or did they just get bored of counting? Or did they just ingest one too many South American “substances” and one calendar guy looked at the other and said, “Duuuude! What number were we up to?” and none of them could remember. No. I suspect none of the above is the case. I suspect that some Mayan Einstein intuited that one day calendars would be paper and cardboard things adorned with all sorts of pictures, poems and assorted words of wisdom.
In much the same way that the Christmas “buying season” seems to begin about the same time that stores have out the Halloween candy and costumes (in other words right after the kiddies head back to school), calendars for the following year begin to appear in July. Isn’t everyone thinking about what calendar they want for the year beginning five months hence around the same time they’re worrying whether the National League will beat the American League in the All-Star Game? Talk about Anticipation (which, by the way, was a great song by Carly Simon that got turned into a catsup commercial)! So by High Summer, the stores (bookstores in particular) have rearranged their displays to give room to the thousands of calendars that everyone seems to be publishing now.
In my youth (not nearly as misspent as I could have hoped), picture calendars were not nearly as common. There were the bank or insurance calendars with Currier & Ives prints, the ones from the Chinese restaurants with a tasteful picture of either Chinese food or an attractive Asian woman and, best of all for a pre-pubescent male, the ones with the babes that could occasionally be glanced in service station (those are now called gas stations and they offer no services other than taking your money and selling coffee and junk food) offices where, if you were really lucky, a nipple might even be observed.
Back in college days there were the obligatory Playboy and Penthouse calendars for my room in my fraternity. Later on I developed a rather more sophisticated taste in babe calendars: Sports Illustrated Swimsuit. Yep. That’s right from “bare it all to just how skimpy can we make a bikini and get away with it.” Now that’s what I call developing a sophisticated taste. And I will admit to having over my desk for 2009 a Danica Patrick calendar but almost all the pictures are in her driving suit.
My adult experience with this devil’s brew of days adorned with pictures is, of course, colored by the OC/PR (that’s obsessive-compulsive/pack rat) mentality I have mentioned before. (Now, come on, folks. At some point I’m going to stop explaining OC/PR so pay attention. OK? OK.) The worst example of this insanity comes from the Star Trek obsession.* For a while, I was very involved with all things Star Trek but particularly the published book-type thingies. It was only a teensy-weensy baby-step from books and magazines to include (Wait for it!), yes…calendars. Simon and Schuster who publish the “official” Star Trek publications released something on the order of five ST (Star Trek, let’s keep up, here) calendars a year. There was ST, ST: The Next Generation, ST: Deep Space 9, ST: Voyager, ST: Enterprise, to say nothing of the movie calendars and the Ships of the Fleet calendar. And of course OC/PR little ol’ me just HAD to have each one. And throw them away when the year ended? Oh, perish the thought! These were ST collectibles now! I even kept the individual freakin’ pages of the page-a-day ST calendars. Hey! They were great pictures! (And then there were The X-Files calendars which were also collectible once the year ended. Somehow I managed to avoid Babylon 5 calendars. Not sure how, but wall space may have had something to do with it.)
But remember now, we’re dealing with an OC/PR here. Of course there were the sports calendars…The Yankees, the Raiders, the Rangers (New York (NHL), not Texas (MLB), perish that thought), Formula 1, IndyCar, NASCAR. And that was in addition to the ones the Yankees gave out on Calendar Day. And, of course, once the year ended? Right. Collectibles.
And then there are calendars as gifts. This seems to have become one of the gifts of last resort. Can’t think of something nice to get someone? Do they like puppies? Perfect. Kittens? Sensational. Sailing ships? Terrific. Lighthouses? Outstanding. Old movies? Great. Ireland/England/Scotland/Germany/Italy/Any where else in the world? Marvelous. Planets and galaxies? Groovy. Rock groups? Dude! And if you are a good shopper or simply go to places like Odd Lots or Ocean State Job Lot or Christmas Tree Shops (a fate I try to avoid, not always successfully), you can often find these things for a dollar or two. And this is to say nothing of waiting until January of the year when they start marking down the calendars to 75-90% off! Oh, baby! For a few bucks you can paper your walls!
But then, I stop and think about it. What is the calendar I most use? It’s the one on my computer at work that is part of Microsoft Outlook. The book of my life is told by the dates recorded in electrons and 0s and 1s. And no pictures, no cutesie sayings, no pithy words of advice; just a calendar in which to record stuff. So to return to the where I started, I believe that late in December 2012, if the Mayans are correct, there will come the great calendar disaster. Will it mean the end of the world? Probably not. But it may mean the end of the world as we know it.
*Before any of you make the mistake of calling me a Trekkie, let me say that I never lived in my mother’s basement and I have had carnal knowledge of women. I was a fan of Star Trek. Got that straight, now? OK
In much the same way that the Christmas “buying season” seems to begin about the same time that stores have out the Halloween candy and costumes (in other words right after the kiddies head back to school), calendars for the following year begin to appear in July. Isn’t everyone thinking about what calendar they want for the year beginning five months hence around the same time they’re worrying whether the National League will beat the American League in the All-Star Game? Talk about Anticipation (which, by the way, was a great song by Carly Simon that got turned into a catsup commercial)! So by High Summer, the stores (bookstores in particular) have rearranged their displays to give room to the thousands of calendars that everyone seems to be publishing now.
In my youth (not nearly as misspent as I could have hoped), picture calendars were not nearly as common. There were the bank or insurance calendars with Currier & Ives prints, the ones from the Chinese restaurants with a tasteful picture of either Chinese food or an attractive Asian woman and, best of all for a pre-pubescent male, the ones with the babes that could occasionally be glanced in service station (those are now called gas stations and they offer no services other than taking your money and selling coffee and junk food) offices where, if you were really lucky, a nipple might even be observed.
Back in college days there were the obligatory Playboy and Penthouse calendars for my room in my fraternity. Later on I developed a rather more sophisticated taste in babe calendars: Sports Illustrated Swimsuit. Yep. That’s right from “bare it all to just how skimpy can we make a bikini and get away with it.” Now that’s what I call developing a sophisticated taste. And I will admit to having over my desk for 2009 a Danica Patrick calendar but almost all the pictures are in her driving suit.
My adult experience with this devil’s brew of days adorned with pictures is, of course, colored by the OC/PR (that’s obsessive-compulsive/pack rat) mentality I have mentioned before. (Now, come on, folks. At some point I’m going to stop explaining OC/PR so pay attention. OK? OK.) The worst example of this insanity comes from the Star Trek obsession.* For a while, I was very involved with all things Star Trek but particularly the published book-type thingies. It was only a teensy-weensy baby-step from books and magazines to include (Wait for it!), yes…calendars. Simon and Schuster who publish the “official” Star Trek publications released something on the order of five ST (Star Trek, let’s keep up, here) calendars a year. There was ST, ST: The Next Generation, ST: Deep Space 9, ST: Voyager, ST: Enterprise, to say nothing of the movie calendars and the Ships of the Fleet calendar. And of course OC/PR little ol’ me just HAD to have each one. And throw them away when the year ended? Oh, perish the thought! These were ST collectibles now! I even kept the individual freakin’ pages of the page-a-day ST calendars. Hey! They were great pictures! (And then there were The X-Files calendars which were also collectible once the year ended. Somehow I managed to avoid Babylon 5 calendars. Not sure how, but wall space may have had something to do with it.)
But remember now, we’re dealing with an OC/PR here. Of course there were the sports calendars…The Yankees, the Raiders, the Rangers (New York (NHL), not Texas (MLB), perish that thought), Formula 1, IndyCar, NASCAR. And that was in addition to the ones the Yankees gave out on Calendar Day. And, of course, once the year ended? Right. Collectibles.
And then there are calendars as gifts. This seems to have become one of the gifts of last resort. Can’t think of something nice to get someone? Do they like puppies? Perfect. Kittens? Sensational. Sailing ships? Terrific. Lighthouses? Outstanding. Old movies? Great. Ireland/England/Scotland/Germany/Italy/Any where else in the world? Marvelous. Planets and galaxies? Groovy. Rock groups? Dude! And if you are a good shopper or simply go to places like Odd Lots or Ocean State Job Lot or Christmas Tree Shops (a fate I try to avoid, not always successfully), you can often find these things for a dollar or two. And this is to say nothing of waiting until January of the year when they start marking down the calendars to 75-90% off! Oh, baby! For a few bucks you can paper your walls!
But then, I stop and think about it. What is the calendar I most use? It’s the one on my computer at work that is part of Microsoft Outlook. The book of my life is told by the dates recorded in electrons and 0s and 1s. And no pictures, no cutesie sayings, no pithy words of advice; just a calendar in which to record stuff. So to return to the where I started, I believe that late in December 2012, if the Mayans are correct, there will come the great calendar disaster. Will it mean the end of the world? Probably not. But it may mean the end of the world as we know it.
*Before any of you make the mistake of calling me a Trekkie, let me say that I never lived in my mother’s basement and I have had carnal knowledge of women. I was a fan of Star Trek. Got that straight, now? OK
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
December 15, 2009
December 15, 2009
I briefly considered doing today’s entry about how when you commit to writing a blog, you need to come up with something to say and how there are days when you just don’t know what to say. But it’s way too soon to play that card. I mean, if I can’t even make to the second day of writing this thing…well you get where that is headed. I thought I’d follow on to the theme of what I talked about yesterday and the experience of going through “stuff” and eliminating it.
Some people say that the best way to learn about a person is to look through their medicine cabinet. Now, aside from the invasion of privacy aspect, to say nothing of the HEPA laws (and who knows how strict they have become), I concluded that a more benign way of telling something about someone is to look through their coffee mugs.
Now think about it. Unless you live the Martha Stewart lifestyle (and chills run up my spine as I type THOSE words) where everything in the cabinet matches or works organically with everything else or the Candace Olson HGTV lifestyle (further chills) where everything is “whimsy” (AAAAUUUUUGGGHHH! Sorry. Just had to do that.), you probably have a fairly eclectic collection of coffee mugs.
Let’s examine the phenomenon of coffee mugs. If you are an inveterate coffee drinker, those tres elegante little demitasse-looking cups that come with most dish sets are just, well to use a term loaded with all sorts of terrifying overtones to most males of the homo sap species, inadequate. (Yes, ladies, we all know size matters.) Anyway, back to coffee mugs. After being exposed to the Starbucks venti (Who the hell came up with that term?) or Dunkin Donuts extra large or even McDonalds’ Newman’s Own large coffees, we coffee drinkers need a mug big enough to at least get through the Sunday comics. So, having acknowledged the need for a “mug” as distinct from a “cup”, where do these things come from?
Where do they come from? Thinking of our own kitchen, some of them were purchased by my wife because she liked them. These generally come in groups of four or at least pairs. They often tend toward the COW (that’s Candace Olsen whimsy (AAAAAUUUUGGGGHHH! Sorry, just had to do that!)) and appeal to the feminine instinct of cuteness and charm. I tend to avoid those cups, not so much because I object cuteness and charm but...well, I have MY favorites (and Candace and Martha would probably stroke out looking at them).
If you recall my discussion about OC/PR (that’s obsessive-compulsive/pack rat) mentality, you can understand how I wound up buying a lot of them. There was Star Trek (5), Dale Jarrett (6), Al Unser, Jr. (3), New York Yankees (4), Oakland Raiders (2), New York Rangers (1), Bugs Bunny (4) and military themes (3). Like I was ever going to drink that much coffee. For a long time, the Dale Jarrett and Star Trek mugs hung on a cup-holder display thingie on the wall of my former home office. And the dust they collected was awesome! They have all gone under the axe and have been shipped elsewhere. (There is one more collectible mug I have but I’ll address that below.)
Another way of accumulating them is gifts. The travel mug that I used until it got so icky it had to be tossed was a Dale Jarrett mug that I received as a Christmas gift. There is still a white buffalo/Indian mug in the kitchen cabinet that was a gift. That one sat in its gift box for several years until I remembered it when cleaning out the home office.
Yet another way of accumulating these things is the “gee, I thought you’d like that” purchase. My wife is an inveterate and quite skilled Goodwill shopper. Some of her purchases are astounding. She saw a decent sized mug with an age of sail ship on it and “gee, I think he’d like that” and bought it. That’s actually my current home coffee mug of choice.
And then there are the “I just have to have that” mugs. The most recent in that category came home from our recent holiday in San Francisco. No, it does not have anything to do with San Fran.) We were on the trolley on Market Street when it stopped and I looked up and saw…(drum roll, please)…the Ferrari Store. (A word of explanation. In Formula 1 auto racing my favorite team, Team Lotus went out of existence and I switched my allegiance to Ferrari). We got off the trolley and walked up to the store…and I beheld an actual Ferrari Formula 1 race car. (Look at my pictures, you’ll see me posed in front of it.) The store sells only official Ferrari-authorized merchandise. If you think that MLB, NFL, NHL, NBA, NASCAR, etc. stuff is pricy, you ain’t seen nothin’. I wandered around attempting not to let the drool show as I looked at this and that. I had about decided that this was just too pricy and I REALLY didn’t need any of it. I was about to say, “Let’s go,” when that little devil on one shoulder smacked the crap out of the little angel on my other and I decided that I had to buy SOMETHING. So I settled on a coffee mug. After all how much could one coffee mug be? $28.00 plus SF sales tax, that’s how much. But that devil kept whispering in my ear, “But you really need it.”
So the Ferrari mug is now my official “at work” mug and I look at it with the reverence owed to a relic of great value. I even use the gift box it came in for my paper clips at work. There! That justifies the price. A coffee mug AND a paper clip holder. That’s it. Honest.
I briefly considered doing today’s entry about how when you commit to writing a blog, you need to come up with something to say and how there are days when you just don’t know what to say. But it’s way too soon to play that card. I mean, if I can’t even make to the second day of writing this thing…well you get where that is headed. I thought I’d follow on to the theme of what I talked about yesterday and the experience of going through “stuff” and eliminating it.
Some people say that the best way to learn about a person is to look through their medicine cabinet. Now, aside from the invasion of privacy aspect, to say nothing of the HEPA laws (and who knows how strict they have become), I concluded that a more benign way of telling something about someone is to look through their coffee mugs.
Now think about it. Unless you live the Martha Stewart lifestyle (and chills run up my spine as I type THOSE words) where everything in the cabinet matches or works organically with everything else or the Candace Olson HGTV lifestyle (further chills) where everything is “whimsy” (AAAAUUUUUGGGHHH! Sorry. Just had to do that.), you probably have a fairly eclectic collection of coffee mugs.
Let’s examine the phenomenon of coffee mugs. If you are an inveterate coffee drinker, those tres elegante little demitasse-looking cups that come with most dish sets are just, well to use a term loaded with all sorts of terrifying overtones to most males of the homo sap species, inadequate. (Yes, ladies, we all know size matters.) Anyway, back to coffee mugs. After being exposed to the Starbucks venti (Who the hell came up with that term?) or Dunkin Donuts extra large or even McDonalds’ Newman’s Own large coffees, we coffee drinkers need a mug big enough to at least get through the Sunday comics. So, having acknowledged the need for a “mug” as distinct from a “cup”, where do these things come from?
Where do they come from? Thinking of our own kitchen, some of them were purchased by my wife because she liked them. These generally come in groups of four or at least pairs. They often tend toward the COW (that’s Candace Olsen whimsy (AAAAAUUUUGGGGHHH! Sorry, just had to do that!)) and appeal to the feminine instinct of cuteness and charm. I tend to avoid those cups, not so much because I object cuteness and charm but...well, I have MY favorites (and Candace and Martha would probably stroke out looking at them).
If you recall my discussion about OC/PR (that’s obsessive-compulsive/pack rat) mentality, you can understand how I wound up buying a lot of them. There was Star Trek (5), Dale Jarrett (6), Al Unser, Jr. (3), New York Yankees (4), Oakland Raiders (2), New York Rangers (1), Bugs Bunny (4) and military themes (3). Like I was ever going to drink that much coffee. For a long time, the Dale Jarrett and Star Trek mugs hung on a cup-holder display thingie on the wall of my former home office. And the dust they collected was awesome! They have all gone under the axe and have been shipped elsewhere. (There is one more collectible mug I have but I’ll address that below.)
Another way of accumulating them is gifts. The travel mug that I used until it got so icky it had to be tossed was a Dale Jarrett mug that I received as a Christmas gift. There is still a white buffalo/Indian mug in the kitchen cabinet that was a gift. That one sat in its gift box for several years until I remembered it when cleaning out the home office.
Yet another way of accumulating these things is the “gee, I thought you’d like that” purchase. My wife is an inveterate and quite skilled Goodwill shopper. Some of her purchases are astounding. She saw a decent sized mug with an age of sail ship on it and “gee, I think he’d like that” and bought it. That’s actually my current home coffee mug of choice.
And then there are the “I just have to have that” mugs. The most recent in that category came home from our recent holiday in San Francisco. No, it does not have anything to do with San Fran.) We were on the trolley on Market Street when it stopped and I looked up and saw…(drum roll, please)…the Ferrari Store. (A word of explanation. In Formula 1 auto racing my favorite team, Team Lotus went out of existence and I switched my allegiance to Ferrari). We got off the trolley and walked up to the store…and I beheld an actual Ferrari Formula 1 race car. (Look at my pictures, you’ll see me posed in front of it.) The store sells only official Ferrari-authorized merchandise. If you think that MLB, NFL, NHL, NBA, NASCAR, etc. stuff is pricy, you ain’t seen nothin’. I wandered around attempting not to let the drool show as I looked at this and that. I had about decided that this was just too pricy and I REALLY didn’t need any of it. I was about to say, “Let’s go,” when that little devil on one shoulder smacked the crap out of the little angel on my other and I decided that I had to buy SOMETHING. So I settled on a coffee mug. After all how much could one coffee mug be? $28.00 plus SF sales tax, that’s how much. But that devil kept whispering in my ear, “But you really need it.”
So the Ferrari mug is now my official “at work” mug and I look at it with the reverence owed to a relic of great value. I even use the gift box it came in for my paper clips at work. There! That justifies the price. A coffee mug AND a paper clip holder. That’s it. Honest.
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