Yalta Schmalta.

Stalin can go pound snow.

It's one thing to read about the Yalta Conference of 1945 from FDR's point of view (No Ordinary Time), or Churchill's private opinion of Stalin (Closing the Ring); but it's quite another thing to read about it's effects on Poland just after the Red Army rolled across and claimed Poland for it's own.  Beyond The Call by Lee Trimble opens up a landscape not only decimated by war but gutted by distrust and cancerous from Russia's NKVD "security" network.  Allied POWs liberated by the angry Russian army weren't much better off outside the barbed-wire than in.  A bewildered bomber pilot, Robert Trimble, in an attempt to avoid being re-assigned to the Pacific theatre, volunteers for a covert post on the Eastern Front, officially to rescue downed aircraft but in reality to rescue the aircrews, both of which the Russians want to keep, in direct violation of the treaty signed at Yalta.  The job quickly blossoms into a full-on Hogan's Heroes episode and his story makes for a fantastic - if chilling - read.

In Kingsolver's Kitchen

Reading feels like eating, to me.  Devouring an author's wordcraft is analogous to tucking into a carefully prepared meal and while there are many fine chefs, no one cooks like Barbara Kingsolver.

Sticks to your ribs!

Just finished Pigs In Heaven and I feel satiated and content, like strolling home from a successful supper club, ruminating on the perfect blend of flavors and textures with a small smile.

  The side of mission work you don't read about in fundraising newsletters.

Kingsolver is most well-known for The Poisonwood Bible which is so good many people venerate it like the Holy Bible, wrapping it in a cloth under soft lighting or refusing to use it as a coaster.  It's Thankgiving and Christmas served in 543 pages of breathtaking richness, leaving you staggered and swooning with just a touch of peptic distress.  Kingsolver's kitchen, serving up delight after mouth-watering delight, deserves every Michelin star in the sky.

Haute cuisine for the soul.

The Best Money I Ever Spent.

I've been earning and wasting money on stuff since I was 14 and mostly it's all been long forgotten. For my money, here's some stellar standout stuff that's more than paid me back in services rendered:

Wolfgang Puck Coffeemaker: Best coffee maker ever - free gift

 Re-sale Brooks Brother's suit jacket: $9 

175-gram Frisbee: $12

Door-mounted pull-up bar: $30

Invicta Pro-Diver watch: $50

Resale P90X DVDs: $60

REI Mountain Dome tent: $100

Marmot Snow Goose sleeping bag: $120

Kindle Fire HD 8.9: $130

CPR Instructor course: $150

Henckels knives: $170

Train tickets to Seattle: $180

Exercise bike: $200

Used camper shell: $300

 Diamond Back Apex bike: $800

G.I. Bill: $1200

Sharp Aquos 60" TV: $1300

Yamaha Virago motorcycle: $1400

Colorado vacation: $2000

Used Honda Accord wagon: $11,000

New Toyota Tacoma truck: $18,000

College degree: Many, many thousands - worth every penny.

Memory Lane, Without The Potholes.

Last August we gathered near the old farmstead to celebrate my parent's 50th anniversary.  During a lull in the festivities some of us decided to work off some cheese cubes and meatballs by walking the 300 yards to the farmyard.  River and Denver hadn't seen it up close and despite strangers living on-site I felt no qualms walking straight up the drive and horsing around in the decrepit silo.  I realized I felt a sense of proprietorship of the place, as if the strangers were allowed to shelter there only by my benevolent absence.  The place - house, barn, trees, fields, silo - felt as much a part of me as my thoughts, and I was pleased at the chance to reveal my thoughts to the boys.

Bailey, River, Denver, soybeans & mosquitoes.

My childhood playground.

In the silo, watching clouds.

 Culture shock.

 40 feet of imagination.

Survivors of the Silo (Wool reference).

Nature or Nurture?

Warm, boiled, pastel poultry ovum!  Yeah!

Small incidents in the lives of children can be prescient personality indicators.  For instance, when River was 3 he attended an Easter Egg Hunt on the Coast Guard base along with maybe 30 other pre-schoolers.  The eggs were hidden in a great mound of shredded newspaper; the youngsters formed a circle around it, eyes bright with anticipation - except for River, who eyed the whole scene suspiciously and clutched Tammy's knee.  When the signal was given the entire pack launched into the pile with a keening roar - but not River.  He reeled back in horror and burst into tears.  If it had been 1889 Oklahoma, he would've been homeless and riding hell-bent for Texas, weeping all the way.

."I'm gittin' me some free tornados and drought!"

15 years later implicit distrust of mob-mentality and herd behaviour is a prominent feature of River's introverted social makeup.  Was he born that way or did the squealing horde establish an early loathing for group activities?  Which came first, the chicken or the egg? (See what I did there?)  I don't know, but even today if his peers are playing, he's the one not enjoying it. 

    Then Timmy slept a long, long time.

I was very young, but I remember brushing my teeth in the small farmhouse bathroom, getting ready for bed.  I had just about finished when my sister came in to do the same.  Crowded together, I finished my ablutions and stood there, watching her flog her teeth for what seemed like hours.  I remained transfixed, breathing shallowly, careful not to disturb her efforts at hygiene.

Some tasks are better handled alone.

 Finally, after about 3 minutes, I asked if she was almost done. "Why?" she burbled through dentifrice foam - "Go to bed already!"  "I can't", I said calmly. "WHY NOT?" she exclaimed, mystified. "Because you're standing on my foot." I replied.

One foot from freedom.

Was it tolerance or conflict-avoidance that kept me pinned to the bathroom floor instead of wobbling away and donning my flannel jammies with minty-fresh breath?  Whatever it was, it remains through adulthood, and it still freezes me in place just as nicely.  

Survival Of The Fittest.

This week's writing assignment: synopsis of a 10-minute stage play featuring less than four characters.

Brace yerselves fer heavy weather, me hearties!

Able-Bodied Seamen.

A ten-minute stage presentation synopsis.

            The scene opens on three sodden and bedraggled seamen cast ashore on a swampy, tropical island.  They are worming their way through fetid, tannic water, spongy, rotten detritus, and dense green foliage, crawling for fear of swamp creatures.  We see a large native structure just visible through the undergrowth in the distance.  Trailing them are the remaining survivors who are struggling to keep up but falling away one by one, succumbing to exhaustion. The weather is tumultuous; rain and wind lash the fraying palm fronds overhead, waves thunder against the shore behind.

Seaman 1: grunting - “Oy, it’s a bad ‘un!  Glory likes we swallowed the anchor this time, mates!”

Seaman 2: panting - “Can’t say as I’ve suffered worse, tho’ last week was a near corker!”

Seaman 1: tossing a rat carcass off to the side - “Aye, that it was, sure, but then balls-to-four found us snug in our hammocks, what, whereas now I’d say we’ve been swoggled with a right bag o’ dicks!”

Seaman 3: pulling aside some leaves - “Stopper yer gob-holes gents, I’m glassin’ as pretty a sight as you ever laid peepers on!”

Seaman 2: craning over Seaman 3’s shoulder - “I don’t see nothin’, ya daft blivit!”

Seaman 3: pointing toward the native structure, a large, rounded longhouse, just visible through the deluge – “There! Fifty yards ‘n ten points off starboard!   Wobblers-to-weevils we’ll find some’at in there!” 

Seaman 3 begins enthusiastically crawling forward and is immediately devoured by quicksand.

Seaman 2: recoiling and scuttling around the quicksand closer to Seaman 1, who has been making methodical, steady progress toward the longhouse. “Blimey!” He pants – “Did you ever see an albatross like? Poor sod, never had no chance, just slipped off the deck like a squid down a scupper! If I’d been on ‘is ruddy stumps my black soul’d be eight bells on the dog watch, smoking the Devil’s raking shot abaft me poopdeck!”

Seaman 1: grinding inexorably onward – “It’s foggin’ my noodle why the Cap’n set his compass rose to findin’ The Cave O’ Wonders – I ain’t never seen a Shellback so obsessed with Neptune’s gold!  Why, he tore us through spindrift like to split the mizzen, ‘n when I told that red nose barnacle we was sougeed to slivers and barrin’ a prompt haul-to we’d be crab dash for the Locker, he hit me broadside with that icy, heart-chillin’ stare o’ his and roared he’d be a shite-kneed swabbie if some pollywog bagger fresh from the sea-chest would hole his prize at the waterline!”

Seaman 2: struggling to keep up – “Blow me!  What’d you say to that?”

Seaman 1: nearing the longhouse – “Bollocks to pipin' at that sparkin' keg o' black!  I ain’t no bell-tapper:  I turned-to right smart, got a fid in my teeth and double-timed for'ard to splice a pelican bight 'ow the triple-strand over t' the maidenhead bitts.  I’d just wankled a keeper hard to the standing part when a whiff o’ the break thundered over the wind.  I couldn’t see past the bowsprit and it weren’t squared monkeyin’ up the maiden with the foam what it was, but I ain’t no greenhorn – I knows a reef when it whispers in me ear .  I sung out to the bosun, up in the sheets, but the damned williwaw luffed me like a pair of silken underdrawers;  I jobbered fast to the gunwhale and blow me down if  we didn’t bend on that reef like a stuck cachalot holing a Nantucket canoe!  Looks over his shoulder at pounding surf and the distant few remaining seaman floundering in the muck. “That growling she-bitch flung us on this bit o’ scratch and now I wouldn’t give a rancy bit if those sorry milt yonder ain’t deep-sixed: rum-to-raisins they ain’t like to see another beautiful bleedin' egg laid in Neptune’s lap.”

Seaman 2: trailing by several yards – “Wait up a bit, won’t you shipmate?  I’m full-fagged, n’ your clothes is shredded down to what God gave ya.  T’ain’t fittin ta meet the natives with no more decency than a newborn babe – ‘low me rest my bones a bit and I’ll give ya my oilskins – they’re makin’ me a sea-anchor, anyhow!”

Seaman 1: pounding on the longhouse door – “Oy, belay that, mate: natives ain’t used to oilskins and there ain’t no call for ‘em off the heavy weather watch!  If their sainted eyes can’t rest on a poor, knackered sailor slicked in his birthday suit, that’s just poor kip: they can bugger off an’ be damned!”  Resumes pounding weakly. 

Seaman 2: straining to drag himself closer – “Damn YOUR eyes for a black-hearted bastard!  I swear on my dear mum's holy bones I’ll fillet you for a bilge-bagger if you don’t wait one bleedin’ minute, ya poncy git!

Just then the longhouse door opens and strong, brown feminine hands reach out to gently pull Seaman 1 inside.  The door closes behind him just as Seaman 2, with his last remaining strength, drags himself to the threshold.  He pounds and shouts until his hands are bloody and his voice hoarse, to no avail.  His head falls slowly into the mud and he breathes his last.

End.

Mona Lisa Smile.

L'Inconnue de la Seine.

I've been using Resusci Anne mannequins in my CPR classes for nearly 20 years and just last year discovered the source of her enigmatic visage: the death mask of a 16 year-old suicide victim from 19th-century Paris! Resusci Anne isn't really a looker. She is - and I'm being generous - creepy.  But man is she good at what she does!  

She's a little cold, but still a good kisser.

Here's the story, from the manufacturer's website: http://www.laerdal.com/us/docid/1117082/The-Girl-from-the-River-Seine

The Girl from the River Seine

At the turn of this century, the body of a young girl was pulled from the River Seine in Paris. There was no evidence of violence and it was assumed she had taken her own life.
Because her identity could not be established, a death mask was made, as was customary in such cases. The young girl’s delicate beauty and ethereal smile added to the enigma of her death. Romantic stories that speculated on this mystery were published. According to one, her death was the result of an unrequited romance. This story became popular throughout Europe, as did reproductions of her death mask.
Generations later, the Girl from the River Seine would be rediscovered when Asmund S. Laerdal began the development of a realistic and effective training aid to teach mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. He believed that if such a manikin was life-sized and extremely realistic in appearance, students would be better motivated to learn this lifesaving procedure. Moved by the story of the girl so tragically taken by early death, he fashioned her mask for the face of his new resuscitation training manikin, Resusci Anne.
Resusci Anne celebrated her thirty-fifth birthday in 1995. Inspired by The Girl from the River Seine, Resusci Anne has become a symbol of life to the millions of people throughout the world who have learned the lifegiving technique of modern resuscitation, and to those whose lives she has helped save from unnecessary death.

Go take a CPR class with Resusci Anne and give meaning to the short, unhappy life of L'Inconnue de la Seine.

New World Orter.

What's not to Like?

Ort: a scrap or remainder of food from a meal.

Seven years ago I predicted that in five years we would all look back on our Facebook days and ruefully shake our heads in disbelief that we so naively opened our private lives to billions of strangers.  I was dead wrong. It appears I fell into the trap of underestimating the stupidity of people in large groups. Like the classic rat tests at the University of Chicago in the early 1900's, Facebook doles out just enough random pleasure nuggets to keep us madly scrolling, our jaws slack, until dinner burns and our bosses hire someone else (who they found on LinkedIn).  My wife defended Facebook using the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge example (but admitted that The Dress was a low point).  I have yet to see good things come from flaunting our mindless access to water and ice (NPR reported that the beleaguered Syrian people were aghast at the waste, while they were straining rubble from their urine to make soup) by gleefully dumping tubs on the heads of pious do-gooders.  "No, No!" you cry - "It raised millions and increased awareness for Lou Gehrig's disease!" I can't argue with the millions, although it does make jerks like me want to hold off donating to the ALS Foundation until I see what they do with the treasure trove they're sitting on.  I would pause at the awareness, though; did Ice Bucket mania really furrow the brows of the tweeners gasping under the deluge, or was it simple mob-mentality; an infantile grasp at recognition - "It went VIRAL, dude!" - cloaked under a righteous cause?  Confronted with 1.4 billion Facebook competitors, sheeple will do anything to get noticed, and some of them even do - for about 2 seconds, until we scroll them up and away.  Facebook and its suckling advertisers are the real lottery winners here.  They loll at the table, gobbling up our offerings then belching, picking their teeth, and spitting us out like the orts we've become.  

Inspired by filmmaker Frank Capra, whose films, he said, "embodied the rebellious cry of the individual against being trampled into an ort by massiveness - mass production, mass thought, mass education, mass politics, mass wealth, mass conformity."

Confound Their Politics, Frustrate Their Knavish Tricks....

"God Save the Queen", second verse:

O Lord our God, arise,

Scatter her enemies,

And make them fall,

Confound their politics,

Frustrate their knavish tricks,

On Thee our hopes we fix,

God save us all.

Zombie-infested medieval England: A bad time to lose your sword.

I usually have several reading projects going at once; occasionally they complement each other. The Scourge by Roberto Calas is a darkly comic serial placed in the England I'm reading about in The History of England, Volume I by David Hume.  Calas tries hard for accuracy in his settings and it's fun to transpose his grim zombie fantasy onto Hume's grim reality. 

No zombies, but plenty of miserable deaths.

20th century England  provides the backdrop for Winston Churchill's Closing the Ring, the 5th book in his six-volume memoir.  I couldn't imagine when he found time to write until I learned he had some free days after Clement Atlee's Labour Party removed him from the Prime Minister spot just 10 weeks post-VE day.  "Oh, you saved us from slavery and doom?  That's great, now bugger off!" 

 "Yes, but I'll be sober in the morning!"

It's fascinating to read Churchill's version of events juxtaposed against Franklin Roosevelt's machinations revealed in the Pulitzer Prize-winning No Ordinary Time, by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

Don't judge - boring cover, extraordinary contents.

A large portion of the last 70 years of American existence have been influenced by the changes wrought in the tumultuous 4 years of WWII.  Goodwin unpacks what was truly an extraordinary time - led by a truly remarkable team - in a deeply researched, tightly written, ultimately readable narrative.

I have a much deeper appreciation for my own history as a European descendant and a greater sense of the Sisyphean (and usually fatal) task of leading large numbers of recalcitrant followers after reading these books.  Well, except the zombie novel - that was just mindless, British fun.  God save us all!

A Gross Appreciation of Goats.

I'm here for whaaaaaat?

I was working with a nurse in the lab the other day and we were discussing her prior medical experience when she casually mentioned she'd been through the Army's "Goat Lab".  "The Army what?",  I asked.  "You know, at Ft. Bragg, where they shoot and blow up goats for medics to train on", she replied distractedly, fiddling with the dials on the Coughalator.  "They shoot 'em through the gut then send you in to stabilize them - it's really great training."  I hadn't heard of it and had to admit it did sound like great training, if you weren't a goat.  I have a great appreciation for goats; that program sounded grossly like goat hell.  Then I guiltily remembered my own goat training, and it brought to mind the first time I heard the word "gross".

Growing up, on the farm, we butchered our own meat. The unused parts would be left in the barnyard for the dogs to gnaw and I spent untold hours dissecting the heads - eyes, in particular, fascinated me. After whittling on a head with a dull knife for the better part of an afternoon I would walk away, my curiosity satisfied, leaving the shredded mess where it lay.  One day my sophisticated cousins from the grand metropolis of Green Bay came for a visit. They rolled to a stop next to a desiccated pile of goat scraps and my youngest cousin excitedly piled out, planting her foot directly onto an eyeball with a dull 'pop'.  "OH, GROSS!!", she screamed, flailing her arms and leaping back into the car. I asked my mother what "gross" meant - she said it was a bad word and I was never to say it. I was confused by the wickedness of city people.

I guess we were running a "goat lab" of sorts - they were used for the advancement of knowledge, among other things.  I'm certainly not squeamish at the idea of the Army using animals to simulate human injuries if it makes for better medics, and their lives are given more meaning than the billion or so animals found in the frozen food section. PETA disagrees with me though - after 60 years of exploding goats the Army caved to public opinion and shut down the Goat Lab two years ago. As a humble recipient of the knowledge passed on from goats, I'm grossly disappointed.

http://sofrep.com/3252/goat-lab-18d-training/ 

Life-Cake.

This week's writing assignment: "Going Without".

 Cakes, not pyramids, were more Maslow's thing.

             Lacking the basics – air, water, food, shelter, clothing, – is alarmingly dangerous and will permanently change you.  Maslow puts our physiological needs at the base of his hierarchical five-layer life-cake for good reason: you won’t go without them  for long, that’s for damn sure – either you’ll die or you’ll kill, but one way or another you’ll find relief.   

            The second-tier of Maslow’s cake is safety.   Once the things that can snuff you are handled, those medium-range threats come into focus. A good government can hold off an angry uprising by addressing just these two levels of need for its populace; conversely – as Nicholas II and Chiang Kai-shek found out the hard way - allowing 30 million people to be starved or butchered by roving gangs will cause a major shift in political favor.  Levels 1 and 2 are where we’ll sink if the Zombie Apocalypse arrives or a particularly energetic sun-produced EMP shuts down the global grid.  “These things,” we muse - as we use a sharpened lawn-mower blade to carve a steak from our dead neighbor’s haunch – “we simply won’t tolerate going without.”

            Tier three, though… - the need for love and acceptance – that can feel like a disposable luxury.  We can skulk around the edges of life without that.  To open ourselves to love and acceptance feels like taking a sledgehammer to the safety of tier two, which we’ve already established we can’t do without;  better to just settle for a Little Debbie than a wedding cake, am I right?

            Esteem, the fourth tier theorized by Maslow, is obviously frivolous, I mean, the shoppers at Wal-Mart alone prove that!  Interestingly, those of us without esteem for ourselves seem to have an abundance to spray all over those we admire, those preening go-getters who strut and crow and drive glossy German cars.  How I hate them - and want to be them!  I imagine sometimes what it must be like to have healthy self-esteem, to place the fourth frosted layer on my Maslow cake – it’s exciting to pretend!   In the end, it’s too much of a stretch; I can never quite get there. 

            If you’re one of the lucky few who’ve managed to carefully craft your life-cake like a boss, your final, crowning layer is self-actualization (snooty, smiling, pretentious, self-absorbed bastards – what does that even mean!!!! ).   I’m fairly certain most of humanity is going without this, and the ones who say they’ve achieved it are just desperately trying to bake tier three.

            Marie Antoinette wasn’t popular with her proletariat because she, wrapped in the gauzy fog of an imagined five full layers, projected her towering fantasy cake onto them, and gaily told them to eat it.  They, tired of living on mud-pies and smoke, turned their baleful glares toward her plump, rosy neck.  It’s alarmingly dangerous, you see, to go without.  

Making Mischief.

Alexander the Great should have dried his tears and created more worlds to conquer!

Mischief Reef: it conjures turquoise lagoons, pounding surf and hidden pirate coves where devious men do dirty deeds. As things stand, it's aptly named.  What used to be just a small reef in the Spratly Islands (recognized by international law as belonging to the Philippines) has been fashioned into a semi-habitable atoll of dredged sand complete with a fully habitable fort that - if China has their way (and no one seems prepared to stop them) - will be one more defensible position in their creeping domination of the South China Sea.  It's subtly similar to Hitler sneaking his troops into the Rhineland in clear violation of the Treaty of Versailles, pausing for a bit to gauge the reaction of France and Britain and, finding them distracted by the Abyssinian crisis, commencing to unleash hell. Keep an eye on China - in fact, now might be a good time to brush up on your Mandarin. They say they only want what's theirs but their actions say they want what's yours, too. Their numbers say they just might get it.

Broken, And Glory Bound.

This week's writing assignment: Restorative Measures.

 Psalm 34:18

                Is it possible to fix what’s shattered?   True, the shards can be gathered into a resemblance of their former shape, but the black cracks are forever a silent testament to immutable laws that - given ripe opportunity - cause violent destruction.  What restorative measure is there that will fill what’s defiled, smooth what’s jagged, soften what’s sharp?  These puzzle pieces require more than glue and patience; they cannot regain their former glory without once again surrendering to destruction, returning to their basic elements in a crucible.  Soft, careful forces can then shape them once more into a whole; a usable vessel unblemished by its past.  It is the only way.

                It goes against all instinct, all nature, to hail the molten crucible as a restorative; surely destruction heaped upon destruction cannot be a good plan, cannot be for the best!  Yet it must be so, for all nature must pass through such fire to find refinement, and refinement is to be wished by our nature, longed for, in fact.

                Thus is the dissonance found in our core: to long desperately for the glimmering only attainable through the inferno we long desperately to avoid.  We hang back like shy children before this hard truth: only by plunging into terrifying oblivion can we discover the balm of wholeness.