Tough time on the Freeway this morning….thanks to NPR!

Tough time on the Freeway this morning….thanks to NPR!  I drove Jinny downtown this morning and on my way back home, I encountered one of those traffic jams that Atlanta seems to have mastered and turned from a mild irritation to an excruciating pain.  In brief in was stuck on the freeway, surrendered by a bunch of not very happy folks.  I was nursing my patience, listening to NPR when a very serious gentleman came through the airwaves and started a very serious discussion on the issue of Iran Uranium Enrichment.  A sobering subject if there was ever one.  The problem was that this gentleman had one of those voices where at time the beginning or end of a word comes with a slight whistle sound.  Combining by a slight radio distortion and my less than perfect hearing the two words “Uranium Enrichment” became “Geranium Enrichment.”  At first, it was OK but as the expose was becoming more sinister in the explanation of the possible consequence of said Geranium Enrichment and that the gentleman was repeating the expression more often, it became very funny.  Soon I started giggling and very quickly find myself in total hilarity right smack in the middle of a freeway turned into a parking lot, surrendered by increasingly angry motorist.  If look could kill I would have been terminated with extreme prejudice right there on the spot by the murdering stare of two Ladies in the car on each side of me.  The result of those reactions succeeded only to drive my hilarity to a higher level and I owe my survival only to the dissipation of the traffic jam allowing all to go on their ways!  Geranium Enrichment did in fact put my life in grave danger!

Right? Wrong?

I was watching a TV show about Lincoln the other night.  They were discussing some of the speeches of his early involvement with the brand new Republican Party and his equally early debates with Douglass.  It was late and I had taken some pills to help me go to sleep. They started acting and had me in a relaxed and finally sleepy mood.  

 Suddenly (although recited without heavy voice) a quote from Lincoln shook me wide-awake.  The phrase went something like “In a true and just Democracy the wishes of the majority are always subservient to the principle of right and wrong"

I really did not sleep much that night thinking of my past and of all the occasions when in the Present I sat in the majority and thought myself to be on the right side of the Right/Wrong equation only to discover in the Future that I had been on the wrong side!  Is our conscience that much affected by the direction of the wind of the Present?

Family sailing and gale force wind!

In the 1970s, while living in Sioux Falls, SD I had acquired interest in two boats. One was an Aluminum a 19 inboard/outboard runabout that I owned outright and that we baptized “Brown Bear” . The other one was a 26’ sloop that I owned in partnership with a friend. We never bothered to baptize the Sloop and only referred to it as the Chrysler 26. They were both trailerable and we used to take them from lake to lake pulled behind the family van.

In that particular Summer we had decided to go and explore Bayfield, WI at the suggestion of our  friend Martha whose family owned a vacation house there. She had described the wonders of the Wisconsin Upper Peninsula and of the Apostle Islands of Lake Superior.

So on this glorious we piled the necessary (and a few superfluous as was customary) equipment in the Van. Next  the Sloop went on its trailer and the pair was hitched to the Van. Then our son Denis, his sisters (regularly referred to as “The Twins”) Sara and Debi, my gentle and very patient (wink wink nudge nudge) spouse Jinny and good old me headed Eastward in direction of the Shores of Gitchigumi.

It was one of those magical trips of discovery of a beautiful part of this country, Neither the Upper Peninsula, nor Bayfield nor Lake Superior not the Apostle Island deceived us and they all met and surpassed our expectations.

After having copiously explored the land we finally placed the Sloop in its element and on a glorious sunny morning emerged under sail from the marina in direction first of Madeline Island and then a few of its twenty-one sisters.

Under full sails the little sloop was flying with just enough pitch and roll to cause some discomfort to the Twins who very quickly turned a light pale of green and violently surrendered  the breakfast of pancake they had devoured that morning. By the Grace of God they managed the action downwind avoiding thereby the wrath of mean old sailor Dad! Then the proper motion sickness medication applied they settled down, but in no way enthused by the process of maritime exploration.

The day went by oh so quickly and soon we were on our way back when all in the sudden, without any warning things started turning ugly and we were in the middle of a respectable gale. Quickly the children were place to the relative security of the cabin and had been wearing life jacket since we left the marina. The sloop was a drop keel, tiller steered boat and this particular one was notorious for dropping its keel on a very capricious way and in a hard weather the tiller was a handful. Never the less the only option was to ask Jinny to handle the tiller and keep us pointed to sanity while I had to go forward to the bow to secure the foresail then standing on the top of the cabin furl as much of the main sail that I could.

Then for some crazy reason the song of Gordon Lightfoot refused to get out of my head the Saga of the Edmund Fitzgerald as the sloop rolled and pitched crazily and water washed over the deck in sizable amount.

I had secured the hatch of the cabin to try to keep it as dry as possible and I became seriously concerned by the fate of my kids stuck inside a violently rolling and pitching cabin. Having brought the sails under control and still able to maintain headway I was able to replace Jinny at the tiller. Good Mother Hen that she is she decided to look inside to check on the fate of the brood. She emerged laughing hysterically and took a few minutes to come down enough to tell me that Denis was doing fine and that the two not seaworthy young ladies of this morning were inside laughing their head off and truly enjoying the best roller coaster ride of their lifetime!

Go figure!

More news less rumor!

The news industry's performance during the last tragedy has been at least disturbing if not disgusting at time. At least one person honesty and innocence was trashed without any foundation whatsoever (The brother of the shooter) and no apology was made whatsoever.There is a huge difference between news reporting and rumor mongering. The hunt for the ratings has corrupted the entire industry. I do believe that it is time we return to the practices of Walter Cronkite and Edward Morrow. There is a French Proverb that advise to twirl one's tongue in one's mouth seven times before talking, that sounds like a pretty good advice right now!

The rearview mirror of Life

On January 1960, in Hourtin in the Southwestern Department of la Gironde, France, the weather was down right cold, the waters of the Hourtin et Carcans Lake, the larger fresh water lake of France, looked dark and inhospitable. A squad of ten freshly inducted seventeen years old Sailor Apprentices were boarding a regulation French Navy Chaloupe for an instruction class on handling a Lateen sail rigged service wooden boat. I was among those "lucky dogs". None of us had acquired sea legs yet and the exercise was dismally lacking any kind of grace. I turned to the Second Maitre in charge of our group and (very) politely asked him how long it takes to learn to handle a sailboat. He smiled and after a chuckle gave me the universal answer of: "Five minutes and a Lifetime". We survived this afternoon of amazing mayhem without throwing any body overboard and luckily nobody was stupid enough to try to share the Lake with us. I had my five minutes and went on to larger and more elegant sailing vessels and became a decent sailing sailor.
Now I am an old man stuck inland and looking back at my life I wish that I could relive those two freezing panic stricken hours on Lac Hourtin et Carcans.

Stop the madness!!I

I flatter myself of the fact that I have friends all over the wide political spectrum of the American landscape. I have Republicans, Democrats, Liberals, Conservative, Centrist, Liberals, and Libertarians friends. I enjoy their friendship, argue with some, but respect them for their caring and intelligence. Therefore, it pains me, during this campaign period, to witness that thanks to the virulence of the political and personal attack on the persons, family, character, and integrity of the candidates and the total disregard for the truth, highly intelligent and capable potential candidates are refraining of participation. The unbelievable willingness of some people to accept (and propagate) any kind of trash is lowering the standing of our nation and open the gates of power to the scum of the political world. Reading the international press and commentaries of private citizens of the globe brings the tremendous pain of witnessing the downfall of the perception of our national integrity and standing. Partisanship has bred a horrible willingness to accept lies and propaganda repeated often enough by many accomplices and has resulted in horrible attack on the integrity and valor of true heroic American Heroes, and trusted this nation on unnecessary war with the loss of life, limbs, and minds tens of thousands of our best children. We even have witnessed the willingness of exposing our undercover Intelligence agents during a conflict. We have witnessed an eagerness to use any effort to politically embarrass a President while our country was already under attack. Isn’t time to stop the madness?

The Party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan deserves much better than the field of duds’ polluting the airwaves presently or a part Congress bound and determine to force a failure until Election time for propaganda sake!