Fractal Oak (Quercas fractalis)

a gully scoured in vain for color
a cut for a failed railroad
a structure for a horseless carriage
a silhouette of mathematical perfection
a bridge out of shadow and into the sunrise

Running Away

My friends and I emerge from the rec center all tired and flush from lifting and jog on down the hill, starting off slowly, talking about nothings but they are nothings that matter, bathroom remodels, barbecues past, old Fords, the weather. Perfect day for running, we say, if the wind isn’t up.

After awhile I’m winded enough to stop talking and my brain kicks in and I wonder if I will ever really get this gig. I want to be an elf gliding down the hill but in my head I sit in meetings, watching people discuss blocks of information that came from somewhere and will go somewhere else. I wonder how they knew where to find it and how they know where to send it. Strategic, multitasking, making decisions with insufficient information, deciding which manufacturers can be told everything and which can’t be told anything, knowing when to pipe up and knowing when to shut up. Thanks to last month I feel lucky to be here but mostly I feel lucky no one asks me anything. I sit, a benched rookie, watching, learning (I can hope).

We cross the boulevard and stream down a side street and someone talks about how his daughter used to clean house for a guy who owned a sports shoe distributorship, some ten thousand squares of suburban success, then the guy died and his son took over and went bankrupt and now he works for her in the meat department at Safeway. Funny how the world turns. But that’s life, people are always winning and losing. I can never decide if I am winning for not losing or losing for not winning. Mostly all I know is I am living for not dying.

The return trip is uphill and we run it faster. I don’t set the pace but I won’t fall behind. In between breaths my mind pares down to mathematical basics. Last weekend’s hike (puff) three thousand feet (puff) three miles (puff) three thousand over fifteen thousand change (puff) almost a twenty percent grade (puff) no wonder (puff) we were (puff) tired (puff).

Then I try to remember that thing Gauss made up when he was six years old, how to sum up a series of sequential numbers. It’s so simple, I never can remember it, I try to work it out while I pass landscaping shrubbery and cars pass me and the office building looms uphill. What is it, half of n times half of, what? Start over, one plus two plus three all the way to ten is (add add add) fifty five, okay, five times eleven? Is it n over two times n plus one? No, n over two times n plus one over two? Closer, yes, test it out on n equals five, on n equals eight, finally after two hundred seventeen puffs I’ve got it again for sure: the sum of all numbers from one to n is n squared plus n all over two. This keeps me alive while I run, while I puff puff puff in my personal prison, this Hanoi Hilton inside my head, inside my head.

Inside my head I wonder why after all these years meetings remain a mystery, conversations only half-decoded. Numbers work but numbers are boring, anyone can do numbers, it’s for judgment we get the big bucks, for judgment and experience and maturity and——

We speed up through the parking lot. No one wants to pretend he’s got something to prove but no one wants to come in last either so we finish fast and walk around in circles afterwards huffing and puffing and saying good run. Everyone has a meeting to run off to and all I want is a meeting with a good dog and a long hill but those are ungrateful thoughts, can’t have that, so inside we go, shower, dress, back to the hive. I’m happy enough because I feel tired, I feel healthy, and I figured out (yet again) an elegant way to add up a series of numbers. Another day in my unknown allotment is passing, but it isn’t being wasted, not entirely.

Hornet's Nest

More pitchers, no pertickler reason.

I'm very fond of the bridge that's missing. They tore it down last year after building the new suspension job. The old Carquinez Strait bridge was a) opened on the day my uncle was born and b) speechified at by my great-grandfather, who was mayor of Richmond at the time (May 1927).



NASA built a handful of trailers to quarantine the lunarnauts. The Hornet has one. A couple of the others are ... missing. I wonder ... maybe in a swamp in Florida, downwind of some old trailer park ...



This duck is all in a row. (Hey. Donald totally kicks butt over that glory-hounding Disney rat.)



How does a cool old airplane get into shape this bad in the first place? Hanging out with the NASA trailers?



A big ol' ship was getting moved around. Fun to watch. Sort of.



Toughest fireboat west of the Pecos.



Somehow this little lifeboat got away from mama and it was SO CUTE.



CV-12's record against the Empire.



Marines are the shipboard police, captain's escorts, jailers etc. "MAR DET" was tiled into the linoleum.





Semper Fi.



You want stories, find an old Marine. Note the Purple Heart amongst his ribbons. If I recall, the story involved a punji stick.

Old Castles and Stormy Skies

This would make a nice header for a web page, if I needed one. Our favorite city as viewed from Alameda. Specifically, from the aft edge of the flight deck of the U.S.S. Hornet CVS-12, last Sunday. Pier 3 at the Alameda Naval Shipyard is also where Doolittle's Mitchell bombers were loaded onto U.S.S. Hornet CV-8, whence they steamed across the Pacific to surprise Tokyo in April 1942. CV-8 was sunk the following October. CV-12 was commissioned in 1943, served with distinction, was later retrofit to become CVS-12, among her other duties picked up the Apollo 11 and 12 astronauts after splashdown, and was finally decommissioned in 1970.

Here's the Hornet as viewed by a crowd of awed teenagers about to spend the night.



Nearby is this weird-looking thing, the back end of a heavy lift ship.



Old relics of war can be the most peaceful places.



Even with a comically angry F-14 aboard.

Choice Day

I wasn't going to blog this week. Too many unbloggable thoughts in my head. But it was Blog For Choice Day, a subject hard to ignore. So I got two basic thoughts on it right now, being as I’m all in favor of life AND liberty and the pursuit of happiness ‘n shit. (And I wrote this knowing that most readers would disagree with me, but oh well. Oh, and the next paragraph was almost an attempt at dark humor I should delete but never mind, it's past my bedtime.)

Is it a Choice, or is it a Child?

In other words, does the kid being got rid of have any rights, or is it really just something the mother can get rid of if she chooses, like, I don’t know, a finger. Well, why not. You have the right to chop off your finger if you want. It won’t grow back but the beauty of a fetus is, even if you do kill it, you can always grow another. Of course, if someone else kills it, say while killing you, they will be prosecuted for two murders, not just one, even in California, and that confuses me.

Anyway, point is, being pregnant when you don’t want to be is very damn inconvenient. Many women have had to dredge up truly heroic proportions of courage to bear a child they have no means to care for. Others have made the enormously difficult decision to terminate (let us not understate that difficulty!). Choices all round. But we don’t make choices in a vacuum. If we are moral people, we must take into account the consequences our choices have for other people. So the question remains, is the fetus someone with rights, or is it not? If you cannot answer that question immediately with unequivocal proof that it is not, then there is doubt, and in every just society I have ever heard of, the benefit of the doubt goes to the living.

Besides, a choice was made when a potentially fertile couple chose to have sex. The risk of pregnancy was known. Kind of like the risk of killing someone is known when you start your car while blind drunk. If there’s a predictable consequence, I’m not sure what makes the choice to ignore that consequence so sacred.

You Can Take My Right To Privacy When You Pry It From My Cold Dead Fingers

Self-determination is one thing we all agree is sacred. Not everyone believes in natural rights, and I’m not eddicated enough to argue for or against the concept, but I’m sure everyone within reading range agrees that each individual at least has the right to express themselves, to say what they want, to have some control over their own privacy. Roe v Wade established a woman’s right to an abortion as an extension of her right to privacy. That pretty much ends the discussion as far as a lot of people are concerned. They aren’t going to let the gummint decide something so important – though how much they object to gummint having authority over public smoking or gun ownership or marijuana use or “hate” speech or control of rents or the sale of sexual services etc. etc. is always to be seen. It appears we all have opinions as to where our privacy really ends and our responsibility to others begins – opinions that differ, because we all differ, because we all come from different backgrounds and have slightly different perspectives on what privacy really means.

In 1973 when Roe v Wade was established, this was in many ways a different country. Rights to privacy and free speech that we take for granted today were not yet established. But they were on the march. Recent years had seen massive movements in defense of free speech, of political opposition, etc. Meanwhile, there were still laws against many consensual sexual acts, against many types of speech we today consider protected, and the last laws against mixed-race marriages were only recently overturned. A momentum had built to relegate all those antiquated laws to history's dustbin. At the same time, the unsafe conditions created by the deadly combination of prejudice against unwed mothers and inadequate abortion facilities had enabled a horrible kind of back-alley slaughter. Scared young women who had exercised their natural rights to sexual activity and wound up pregnant were at risk of being killed by unprofessional abortionists taking advantage of their fear and desperation. Roe v Wade was a natural response to these converging trends. In one stroke, a major blow was made in defense of privacy, of sexual freedom, and of feminine emancipation. What of the child? Well, it was unfortunate, and not everyone agreed that the life was really a life, and in the end privacy concerns trumped the question. I wondered how that was possible, how privacy could be found more important than the question of life, until I remembered more about the early 1970s.

At that time, there was a thing called the Marital Rape Exemption. It was recognized as valid in every state. A man could not be prosecuted for forcing sex on his wife. A woman who was raped had no recourse if the rapist was also her husband. I remember when a wife-rape conviction made the news simply for being a conviction. I believe it was in the late 1970s. Prior to that, this brutal crime and its perpetrator were covered by the right to privacy.

Child abuse was also far more common than it is today. I have no data – just ask enough of your friends who were children then. Look at the wealth of resources available to both prevent and recover from child abuse that didn’t exist just ten or twenty years ago. This is a little more anecdotal, but I’m sure most people would agree that as we go back in time, the prevalence of child abuse is likely to increase. It did not appear as a result of 1960s permissiveness or some such nonsense. Child abuse is a generational issue that goes back and back and back. The past two or three decades have been the first time in human history that there have been effective trends to prevent it. But in 1973 if you saw a bruised face or a burned arm on a child or for that matter a mother slapping her child silly in the grocery store parking lot, chances are you shook your head and regretfully acknowledged a family’s right to privacy. And forget sexual abuse. You know it happened, a lot. You also know it was rarely reported, and reports rarely taken seriously.

Roe v Wade was passed in this atmosphere of respecting privacy. Society has evolved since then, but we still accept Roe v Wade. It’s a complex political issue and as such it is much more difficult to change our attitude towards it than to, say, pass a law requiring teachers to report evidence of abuse. But an entire generation has passed, and in my opinion it may be time, with rationality and compassion, to take another look. Not necessarily to write more restrictive laws, but certainly to reconsider, as we must always do periodically, our underlying assumptions.

UPDATE 1/23: More from a nice Catholic lesbian libertarian down in AZ.

Morning Thought (facsimile thereof)

This is a year of change (hence the little man up there hauling shit out of the dark). A year to fret less and do more. Also to do better at my job, being as I'm freaking grateful just to have one. But that doesn't mean becoming even more enmeshed within the gray fabric cells and venetian blind slats of New Folsom Prison. It just means pushing myself to live out near my edges rather than so deep within my brain as I am wont. Maybe I'm just reminding myself to live like Roosevelt's dog and

Shit on the White House Lawn,
and Lick your balls while you still can
- Father Luke

I Took a Walk Today

I took a walk today.

I got up from my chair and walked down the hall between cubicles. People were in some of them. They were reading their monitors or typing something or staring with consternation at a piece of equipment shoved in amongst their books and papers and parts and things.

I turned left at the wider hallway. It ran between larger fields of cubicles, each with narrower corridors that angled past in my peripheral vision like the rows in a tomato field alongside the freeway. Only a lot more slowly.

I turned right at the windows and walked between them and the cube farm. Someone I’ve never seen before smiled and said, Hello. I smiled back and kept walking. I stopped in the corner of the building where the windows converge. I stood in the corner and looked down at the parking lot.

It was in a bath of cold winter sunshine. Cars and trucks gleamed, but not so much, because they all needed washing. By something more effective than rain or shine.

Off in the distance the land north of the river formed a silhouette of trees and houses. To the right snowy mountains peaked above the foothills. To the left the coast range was a distant shade of blue. Between me and all these places there were trees and buildings and streetlights and cars that needed washing.

I turned right and walked along the windows. In the cubicles to my right, people were talking, sometimes to each other, sometimes on the phone. They sounded like they knew what they were talking about. I had no idea.

At the wall where the conference rooms and the stairs and the elevators and the bathrooms form the building’s core, I turned right again. It was darker here, between walls and cabinets. At the end I turned right one last time, back into the light. I passed people going either to or going fro, ‘twas hard to tell, and turned left back into my little hallway, and went between people having a conversation and sat down again in my chair.

It was a nice walk.

How to Fence the Wind

You can't.


So now our dog runs are shared. No problem, this time of year the chickens aren't out anyway. And the neighbor is keeping his dogs cooped up on the other side. They sit straight and attentive when you draw near, and watch every little movement of your face. Spooky-smart bastards, always getting out and whipping those tiny tails around. They so love living.

Wooden fences are cheap and last ten years or so, good for new houses but the neighbor's house isn't that new, and I don't think the fence posts were mounted properly anyway, so they rotted away and when the big storm hit, thar she blows. We will get wrought iron put in, with vertical members that dogs can't climb, and it'll open up the yard too and things'll be nice. Yay for insurance.

(Addendum: It is of no significance that this post is of no significance. I wrote it so I could go to bed and get some sleep. You understand.)

Angles

I woke up and stared upwards and tried to work them.


The house is full of angles. Can't always figure them out. As with the house, so with life.

Protecting Democracy

Asha warns us about paperless voting. My head's usual place in the sand often prevents me knowing what is going on, so I was shocked. I thoroughly oppose the idea of electronic voting and always have. I am concerned almost to the point of panic that there are apparently moves afoot to establish electronic voting as the norm. Follow the link from her posting to send the word to our so-called representatives and support an emergency bill that will save the paper ballot.

Ironic that we use electronic communication to deter electronic voting? Maybe. But these electronic systems are wonderful for communication. They are horrible for doing anything that requires real accountability. Money transfers, purchases, troop movements, fine. But as we learned in FL in 2000, a strict paper trail is a cornerstone of a democratic society. Without it, we're screwed. And take it from me, a high-tech so-called professional of some twenty five years' experience, anything they tell you about backup systems and new nonvolatile technologies and redundant records and on and on, it's just marketing speech either from people who a) want to be remembered for doing something "progressive" or b) want to sell a lot of shit to people who want to be remembered for something. Do not trust technology. Got that?

Here's the letter I wrote at the site Asha points to:

I am shocked to discover paperless voting is under consideration. I will never cast a vote that lacks a physical paper trail. I want you to recognize electronic voting as a scam pulled by narrow technological interests, to acknowledge the physical polling place as a fundamental gathering point for democracy, and to abandon these paperless efforts before they cause irreparable harm to our country. Thank you.

I don't know yet if that made any sense, but too late anyway, it's sent.

I recall from my genealogical research that I had an ancestor who was very proud to have walked a few miles to vote after celebrating his 100th birthday. He voted for W. H. Harrison which gives you an idea of when he was born (1740). My dutiful trek down to the polling place gives me a connection to old Sam Leonard, a connection I never want to break by sitting my lazy fat ass at home to vote over the internet, the only likely exercise to follow that being the impotent rage that will result from my vote and every other being lost or miscounted due to a programming "error". And you must understand that in such a case, "error" absolutely belongs in quotes.

Workspace Haiku Rev Zero Dot Two

A cube of my own
Just what I've always wanted
A dream come true - NOT!

I touch walls of gray
They surround me so closely
Boy do they ever

A nice color, gray
Soothes the savage beast within
Lobotomy Gray

I touch my nice walls
Stare at them and stare and stare
Have I mentioned gray?

This is where I work
This is also where I "work"
"Work" "work" work "work" work

A creative space
A wondrous colorful space
So actionable

Actualize it
These issues are concerning
Let's try a new shade

Exercise

Over the months (like tonight) I've been trying to write up part of one of my Asia travels. Sort of like the trip, it keeps going nowhere. The problem is I want it to be interesting. It really wasn't very.

Well, it's exercise.

On Mondays we do chest, on Tuesdays shoulders, on Wednesdays biceps. Somehow I slacked off today (back and legs), probably because I forgot that tomorrow (triceps) I have a doctor's appointment. I know I can't expect myself to do much more than push-ups over the weekend.

Well, it's exercise.

Sometimes my lips pucker up and just need to play a trumpet. Especially when my kid is practicing. I'll grab my old horn and tootle a little bit, do some scales and some song I heard once, until the sticky second valve pisses me off and I quit. I don't play often enough to get any better.

Well, it's exercise.

At night we have the stupidest arguments. Matters so technical our sons roll their eyes that anyone would care. But we have different instincts in how we approach factual matters, and neither of us is the passive sort, and we have energy built up over countless minuscule issues that like individual raindrops fill a raging sea, and besides we're too tired to know better. And then, a deep breath later, or a night's sleep, or something in-between, and we're back to loving normality.

Well, it's exercise.

Morning Train

Big News

Pine tree Christmas smell is delightful. Even in January. Even when the trees were left behind over the weekend and I have to go collect them all by myself in the dark after work without even one Boy Scout to help me. They were left behind for various reasons. Mostly customers not filling out the form right so we couldn’t get it, and then calling to complain. Sometimes the tree wasn’t got even though the Scouts marked it as got. Mysteries. Couldn’t solve ‘em. Just got the trees.

One was fifteen feet long, and heavy. I managed. Dropped ‘em all at the vacant lot we used this year – next year that lot’ll be a library, will think of something else. A chipper will grind ‘em up later this week. That’ll smell good too, but with any luck I won’t be there.

Lots of trees down round here. Friday’s storm made national news, which is funny. When most places’ storms make the news, it’s pretty bad. Ice shuts down a city, towns are flooded out, etc. But this is Northern California. Life is relatively easy. We had wind. Lots of wind and our fence went down, and a neighbor’s boat has a tree on it, and somewhere I saw a tin garden shed all crumpled up like sixth grade homework, and some people had their power out, but that was about it. Wind. Big news.

Wan o' the immortals, but he's deid noo

Flashman was a delightful bastard, and Private MacAuslan and his mates mostly beyond words. I love Fraser's very-un-p.c. depictions of antebellum America and I can only hope, beyond hope, that somehow Flashy's memoirs of his service on both sides of the Civil War will somehow come to light. In any case, one of my literary heroes has gone on.
George MacDonald Fraser -- 1925-2008

Lab Safety Rule

For lab access I need to take a couple pointless classes as well as understand the safety rules.

For your safety, there is a strict No Food & Drink Policy enforced in the lab

The only reason I can think that would be for my safety is that if I violate it the lab manager will throw something heavy at my head.

Nappy You Hear

Folks are blogging resolutions. Okay, here's the only one of mine worth blogging: I should not and therefore will not do blog stuff from work anymore. 'Specially with a new job, a new group, a new boss and all. Kind of unpro. (Starts tomorrow.)

With the other things I want to ramp up on, that will also mean not doing any more blog stuff from home than already, maybe less. Or, it could just mean not thinking about it and just getting my fix by writing whatever. Oh, okay, I can do that. Prolly that will help with the other things anyway.

So the nappies we heard were on the bottoms of young children at the NYE party down the street. Younger families. They understood when I said how weird it was for both my kids to be off somewhere else, each with a car. They understood, while managing their young children's immediate needs. I think we shared some mutual envy. Lots of food, beer, champagne, karaoke, fireworks left over from July, etc.

I found out I'm two degrees from John Steinbeck. He used to come over to Berkeley and crash Grandma's brothers' parties. Don't know if he hit on her or not. He was a Stanford man and a drunk so there's quite a bit yet to learn about why they let him in. But, there he was. Timeframe: Early 20s. Grandma was at Cal during the fire.

I'm three degrees from Barney Oldfield, while on the subject. Mom's dad's dad was a mechanic and served as such one day while the famous race car driver was making a racing tour of the West Coast.

Six degrees from Abe Lincoln -- explained that in my other blog, the one I foolishly terminated and let become a diggscript zombie. Should I bother with a recap? Nah.

'Kay, I feel better now. Back ... to life! L'chaim!