Category Archives: Ramblings, ravings

Fruit

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I was buying fruit for my breakfast. I do it almost everyday. Same place, same basket size. It’s a quart of sliced fresh fruit. The type of fruit varies with the seasons. It’s a healthy way to start the day, and seems to keep me awake better than another coffee.

I had just handed my basket to the lady behind the counter, when I noticed an elderly gentleman walk up. He had gray hair, longish cut for most men his age, and was wearing gray slacks, and a red polo shirt. He paused in the narrow aisles near the man in a wheelchair. The man in the chair (Frank to his friends) asked if he was in the gentleman’s way.

“No”, he replied in a kind voice. And then, as an after thought, “not yet.” The last was delivered with a bit of a twinkle to show he wasn’t serious. Nice guy. Comfortable around others and funny.

The lady behind the counter asked how he was. Apparently he was another regular. Then she asked how his wife was doing. I could just picture him and his wife coming to the fruit stand every Thursday or something, and having a polite conversation while picking up some extra kumquats, or navel oranges, or the small red currants, bitter and still on the vine.

“Not too good, Elsie.” He even knew the name of the lady behind the counter. That was impressive.

Then, as if he didn’t realize what he was doing, he continued, “she fell down last week again. She wasn’t hurt much, but she suddenly stopped eating.”

These are not the words one expects in a friendly conversation. I saw Elsie’s lips compress just slightly, and her eyes seemed to fog slightly. Elsie is a busy lady, and she doesn’t always have the time to chat. We all know that. Apparently, the gentleman forgot that while friendly, she was also an employee. She was trapped by employee politeness, that somewhat difficult position in which showing polite interest while working is taken as showing personal interest.

The man was oblivious to all this. He continued, “she doesn’t want to see a doctor. I tried taking her to Dr. Kellar, but she wouldn’t get off the couch. She will let me get her things at the pharmacy, but nothing else.” He stopped for a second, as if to catch his breath, “I was hoping some fruit would bring back her appetite.”

I could just see him in a dusty brown living room, tan light coming in from the window, standing over the couch, and holding out a plate and saying, “but they’re your favorite plums dear. Elsie packed them special just for you.”

The man was still smiling, still polite. Too lost in the horror of watching a lifetime of shared courtesies, pinching pennies, buying a first car, and sharing late night TV next to each other on the sofa, to realize he had crossed that thin line from friendly to rude. After feet, yards, and even miles of things done together, his wife was dying by inches. And there was nothing he could do.

Elsie handed me my receipt. She had finished charging my card. I placed the slip in my wallet, and slipped the wallet into my backpack. Skateboard in hand, I quickly left the fruit stand, clutching my plastic bag with my quart of fruit, and my plastic fork. I passed the other fruit stands, and the leather repair guy, and was soon in the clear blue sunlight of the parking lot where no one was dying or talked casually about their life falling apart in a cheerful voice. I dropped my board, and made good time pushing my way to work. I was extra careful to watch for cars, especially at the crosswalk in the middle of the parking lot. The cars can’t see you coming, and they never expect someone to be moving as fast as I roll in a pedestrian space.

Finding work on my desk was a relief. Soon I was immersed; fruit container open, headphones thumping, and my mind not thinking. Not thinking at all.

She came from planet Claire

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I had the best on the bus again to day. I was going to work later than usual (which had something to do with working until 3:00 am the day before), when I poped out of the subway station at Hollywood and Highland. That area is packed with tourists, and today was no exception.

While waiting, I noticed a nice looking lady. She was looking at the bus sign, and checking her map. Back and forth, back and forth. After a while, I took pity on her and asked her where she was going. There are several buses that go through that area, and I often ride two of them. It turns out she and I needed to go on the same bus to get to her next stop. We started up a tentative conversation, and then the bus came, so we got on, and continued to talk.

I discovered she was a newly minted Major from the British Army, and helicopter pilot.  She had just finished up something like 9 months of school at Sandhurst, and had a bit of time on her hands. I failed to ask why she was in our neck of the words, LA not being noted for lying close to anything British, possibly because she was so fun to talk with. However, the best part was she was happily married.

I do like to talk to attractive women, a failing I suppose I’ll happily take to the grave, but I do not like to play the field, having found long ago I have no skill for it. Luckily, Claire was married herself, so there was none of that awkwardness. Somewhere in Britain there is a very happy doctor and heli pilot (her husband) as I found Claire to be smart, attractive, interesting, polite, and very well mannered. We talked about flying, having kids, life in the military, and all kinds of things. Really the ride was much too short.

When I got to the office where I was working, I was trying to tell the guys there about my experience. All I could come up with was that I met someone who was  knowledgeable about a topic of study I would gladly pay money to hear. That I got this this same lecture for free, and from a pretty woman, made it all that much the better.

Well met while on the bus

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I’ve been so busy with work I have had time to post, but I keep meeting rather interesting people on the bus. Tonight it was a younger man (probably in his early 30s) helping out a much older couple. You could tell from the casual way they were around each other that they were either good friends or family. I liked the way the older couple seemed to fix on the younger man, as if he was the center of their own little world. In return he was protective and thoughtful with them. Always careful to include them in his thoughts (they were traveling a new route), and comforting in the way he led.

It reminded me of on old book called “A Fire In The Belly” about masculinity and manhood. What I got from the book, besides a vague sense that it is okay to be masculine, is that women nuture, but men husband. Husbanding being the male version of nurturing.

It’s always nice to see men husband in public, either with children or the elderly.  It always gives me a sense that things are pretty decent in America if men can still behave well.

Home Invasion; a true story

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Last night, someone tried to break into our house.

Really.

It was scary at the time, but now it makes me chuckle.

Really.

It goes like this.

We were in bed and asleep, at around 1:10 am at night. It was in the early hours of March 18th, which means revelers from St. Patrick’s day were just straggling in. A fact unknown to us, as we’re pretty serious home-bodies, but still important to our story.

My wife heard a strange sound coming from the living room, and got up to investigate. I woke up from her leaving the bed, but I was just barely awake. Suddenly she exclaimed, “Oh my god, Eric! Someone is trying to break into our house!”

That got me up in a hurry. I put on my glasses, and made my way quickly to the front door. Sure enough, someone was trying to use a key to open the door.  I could hear the sound from the bedroom, but thought it was the cat playing with a toy or something (remember, I was sound asleep). Since I had launched the cat getting out of bed, it was obviously not her.

I slapped my flat palm into the door with a huge boom. (try it. Its quite loud, especially on the other side if it’s unexpected) Then I yelled, “What the fuck are doing?”

“Trying to get in,” came the matter of fact voice from the other side.

“Get the fuck out of here. This is not your house,” I yelled back.

“I just wanna get in,” said the voice.

“I’m calling the cops!” I yelled.

At this point I turned to Teri and told her to call the police.

“Should I dial 9-1-1?” she asked.

“Yes! Call 9-1-1. Hurry!”

I went back to our bedroom, put on socks and shoes, and grabbed a short baseball bat we keep handy for such occasions. It was then that I noticed our son was still asleep. Huh?

By this time my heart was pounding from the adrenalin, and I head Teri say that her legs were shaking.

When I got the bat, Teri said, “He’s moved to the back. Oh my God, he’s at the back door.” She was totally shocked. She had turned on the back porch light, and was still talking to the 9-1-1 operator, when the stranger started trying his key on the back door.

Now the back door has a large window on the upper half (four big panes) which was covered by a pull down shade. The doorway opens into a small utility room where we keep our washer and dryer. The entrance is so small that there is only about a 4″ gap between the opening door, and the washer. Clearly not enough room to swing a bat with any force, and the windows on the door mean  any one who seriously wants to get it, can simply break the glass, reach through, and unlock the door from the inside.

Knowing I didn’t have much time, I decided to pull back the shade slightly, and see who it was.

There on the other side of my back door was my neighbor Greg. He was hunched over, trying to work the lock (a futile effort, as the door lock is damaged, and will not open even with the proper key), but the light was on, and I know him well. The first thing I noticed was that he had blood on his face from a cut over one eye, and his lip on that same side was swollen. There were two wide rivulets of partially dried blood down the right side of his face. One on the nose, and the other passing just under the eye. Probably he had taken a couple of left jabs to the face. He didn’t slur his words, and he did not weave when he walked, but he must have been blind drunk. Hell, our front door is nothing like his (it even faces a different direction), and the path to the back door is also VERY different. I don’t know how he could have mistaken the two. Somehow, he did.

Feeling relieved, I told him to go around to the front, then I turned around, went out the front door, and walked the side of the house to meet him. There I met up with Greg roommate, Jade, who had been awakened by the slapping of the door, and came out to investigate. By this time a police helicopter had arrived, and was circling the house with its spotlight on. Jade and I got Greg into his house, and then we waived at the police helicopter to let them know we were okay. Teri came out, and I told her to call the cops and let them know we were okay. She called 9-1-1 and told them the scoop (they actually thanked her). The helicopter flew off almost as soon as she hung up.

Altogether it was only about 5-6 minutes from the time she heard the noise, until the police helicopter flew away. It took us an hour to go back to sleep after all that fear and adrenalin. Fortunately, no one was hurt.

The next day (this morning) Greg came over to apologize.  Actually, Jade had to tell him to, as he didn’t remember a thing.

Meeting people on the Metro

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To get to work, I usually ride the subway, and bus lines. In LA these are collectively run by the Metro. It’s an interesting way to travel, offers less stress, and a decent amount of reading time, is skateboard friendly, and allows one, on the odd occasion, a chance to meet interesting people.

Tonight, riding how late, I met a gentlemen from Japan named Ken. Ken is a videographer working around town, and happened to be on his way to the bus station in downtown LA to take the bus to Mexico for a vacation. We had a laugh waiting for the subway talking about our careers and our education. He has a university degree in zen, yet works in video. I have a degree in history, but work in photoshop.

It was one of those fun little international moments one tumbles upon when you find a kindred spirit who happens to hail from another side of the planet. Ken had a pretty good grasp of English, but there was still some pretty clear language barriers.

Which was funny, because while Ken and I were talking, a gentlemen named Mike came up, and started talking to Ken in Japanese. Mike had purchased Rosetta Stone, and really loved it. Judging by his success, it apparently served him well.

Mike and I took the train in the valley, and had a fun conversation ourselves. Mike did some time in the Navy (as a diver, which is a type of special forces), but was now back in school studying genetics. He claimed that the U.S. is really behind Japan, and Germany, when it comes to genetics, so the only way to get a serious education was to go abroad. Hence the purchase of Rosetta Stone. I guess he’ll be in Japan next year going to University. I wish him luck.

Boycotting the Olympics

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The other day I was on the phone with a buddy of mine, so I asked him if he was watching the Olympics. It was a natural enough question; he’s laid up in the hospital which means he’s got plenty of “nothing to do”. His answer surprised me, he was boycotting the Olympic coverage.

So the next day I was on the phone with another friend, this time taking a break from working on the house, when I mentioned our mutial friend’s stance on the Olympic coverage. He replied that his girlfriend was doing the same thing. She wasn’t happy with what China was doing to Tibet, and this was one of her responses.

Call me sheltered, but this was the first time I had heard of boycotting the Olympic coverage, and so I was in a bit of a shock. Even the online community in which I am active had not really talked much about it, which is a surprise because those guys there (myself included) will chew the fat about anything and everything, often to the point of the latin phrase “ad infinitum, ad nauseam”.

As it always seems to do, shock eventually gave way to thinking, and even a bit of anger. Not at my friends, or the girlfriend’s of my friends (I like them all very much, thank you), but at the idea of boycotting the Olympic coverage on television.

Here’s why.

Most of you know that the Olympics started amongst the Greek Polis (city-states) about 2700 years ago. This makes it exactly as old as democracy, as this was the birthplace of both institutions. What most people do not know is that the Polis then were constantly at war with each other. Every year, after the crops were in the fields, but before the harvest (war season) these little city-states would take up their grudges with their neighbors, usually at the point of armed conflict. Not all of the Polis were democracies (Sparta being the most notable exception, was an oligarchy), but ALL of them, including these fledgling democracies, fought each other. They even developed a wonderful type of fighting in order to accomplish this with minimal loss.

(as an aside, Victor Davis Hanson has a wonderful book about this subject, and it’s importance to Western Culture, called “The Western Way of War“. It’s a great read.)

So when the Olympics were first conceived, they did so with the full knowledge that warfare was common amongst the participants, and largely came about because warfare was so common. Today, we think of the Olympic ideal was to have something higher than warfare to celebrate. In greek culture this meant the human body, specifically the male body (the super-models in those day were always male) and what it alone could accomplish. But to get to this higher goal, they needed to stop fighting each other. To accomplish this, runners would be sent for each carrying an olive branch (symboling peace), and at the sight of these runners, the Polis would stop their wars, select their best athletes, and send them off to the games.

But here’s the thing. Even then the Greeks knew that the Olmypic games were themselves a type of battle, albeit a peaceful one. Call it war-light, or war without blood. With rare exception, the events of the early Olympics all stemmed from martial themes, and celebrated martial prowess. Success in the games was equated with success in the battlefield, and vice-versa. Guys who were charging each other, spears held high, just a few weeks before, would now face each other in the Stadium, and go to battle, albeit in a slightly different way. Each Polis would send a delegation of it’s VIPs and they would cheer and support their champions as best they could. Winning an event was often as important as winning an actual battle, and more than one war was settled based on the performance of their champions alone.

But make no mistake, to the ancient Greeks, the Olympic ideal was a martial one, and was conceived as one. To them, the Olympics was not sports rising above warfare, but battle without the blood.

Keeping this in mind, the question becomes, should we boycott the Olympics? Should we send a message to China, about their human-right behavior, by not engaging them? Ignoring for the moment the futility of boycotting something already bought and paid for, the barrenness of the concept that separating one’s self from a higher ideal is beneficial to anyone, and the fact that America’s human-rights record is, right now, no better, I say no. We have some actual conflicts with China, and will continue to do so for some time to come. This is the nature of global politics, especially amongst larger nations. Like the ancient Polis, we will always have some kind of conflict with China, and need to resolve these conflicts in some way.

The Olympics Games is one way to resolve some conflict, and it works as well today as it did some 2700 years ago. Don’t believe me? Look at how hard China is working to put on a good face. Those guys know their country is getting a lot screen time in the rest of the world, and they mean business. Add to that the fact that athletic performance in China is much more important than anywhere else. In other words, defeating the Chinese in the 100 meter dash is just as effective as defeating them in the field of battle, only in the Olympics, as the ancient Greeks discovered, no one dies, and no one looses face.

We have at our disposal a wonderful tool for resolving some conflict with a potential adversary. I say we grab our flags, cheer for our teams, and do our very best to defeat the Chinese without bloodshed, and which allows them to save face.

What have we got to loose?

The Right Thing To Do

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Originally written sometime in early May

We stayed up and watched the first of a new miniseries on PBS called Carrier. Like most stuff on that network, the show was excellent. At one point, in what I believe to be an effort to show the scope of drama in the lives of the 5000 people living on a floating city, they showed a fresh-faced young man recounting the story of how he told his girlfriend’s father that his daughter was pregnant.

Now what struck me about this is not the fact that the girl was pregnant; that stuff happens all the time. What bothered me was that the lad mentioned that he and the girlfriend both wanted to “do the responsible thing” or “the right thing”. Not to single this couple out, as this is a common refrain in our country, but I have to call bullshit on this one. The “right thing to do”, the “responsible thing to do”, would be to not have unprotected, or partially protected sex. Period. Having a child with someone who failed to be responsible in the first place, is hardly responsible. At best is shows the hope of responsibility, but not the fact of responsibility. In fact, it’s probably more appropriate to say it shows the faith of responsibility, as little or no responsibility has been actually demostraited.

Once pregnant, having the child is nothing more than making the best of a bad situation; one caused by one’s own irresponsibility. Nothing more, and nothing less.

Now I don’t wish any ill on this couple, or any other in this situation. Quite the contrary; I hope for them the best. Nor do I think they should have gotten an abortion. My point, my only point here, is that dressing up a pig, doesn’t make it any less a pig. If you want to be responsible, and do the right thing, and if you do not believe in the personal use of abortion (like myself), then the responsible thing to do, the right thing to do, is to not get anyone (our yourself) pregnant. Period.

See how simple that is?

We’ve Got The Spirit, Yes We Do…

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About 230 years, and untold hundreds of billions of dollars, ago this country was founded under some pretty cool ideas. By accident of geography, a healthy dash of luck, and a huge amount of sweat, we’ve grown into a wonderfully large and diverse country that makes a HUGE impact on the world, and the world’s culture. We were small, now were large. Can you dig it?

But here’s the thing. In all that growth, in all that advancement of ideas and ideals, in all those billions of dollars made and earned, we still practice politics with slogans that are reduced down to nothing more complicated than can be expressed by a hundred cheering fans at a football game.

Since Barack Obama captured the Democratic nomination, slaying (at least for four more years) the hideous Hilldibeast, and the start of the real election campaigning began (real as in Dems vs. Repubs), the only things that have made the blogosphere are such terribly silly stuff as whether or not McCain is a U.S. citizen, or why Obama will not release his birth certificate.

This is an interesting time in America politics, with a couple of interesting guys running for the big office. They are both pretty sharp, eloquent, camera savvy, and able to work without a teleprompter. These are the kind of guys who can really debate; really get into the meat of an argument, and chew it down to the bone. Yet, the election so far looks to me more like they are campaigning for Prom King, rather than the Most Powerful Man In The World.

The sad part is, this is our own fault. If we only respond to the silly and sensational, then that is what is going to be “in play”, and right now, that is all we’ve got.

We are a country of bigger ideas than “We’ve got the spirit…” (hell, we are a country founded on bigger ideas than that), and right now we have a couple of candidates who are capable of articulating these more complex ideas, and doing it with élan. As citizens would should expect, nay demand, that they raise the bar of electoral communication, and we should do this every time they, the candidates, or any blog or new organization, talks politics.

Do not let anyone else tell you their pet molehill is a mountain. Do not let anyone else lower the bar of political discussion to such crap. We’ve been given such a steady diet of political junk food, for so long, that most of us accept it as a real meal. It’s not, and we shouldn’t.

We finally got some real political chefs in the kitchen. It time to demand something more than hamburgers and hotdogs.

Pretty Good Day Today

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Around noon I went to the store to pick up a few items for diner. On the way in I noticed a plane that looked a bit like a B-24 flying in the distance. I lost it after just a second, while trying to deal with the traffic around the store. After I parked the car I heard the distinctive sound of loud engines in the air. I looked up in time to see a B-17 flying by. Man those things are beautiful about 1000 feet up. I’ll bet there are still some people who think differently. They were an awfully deadly bomber.

When I walked out of the store, I again heard the sound of “round engines” as my father-in-law calls them. Sure enough, it was a B-25. At 1000 feet up, there’s no mistaking the lines of that plane, and it was traveling quite a bit faster than the stately pace of the B-17. As it passed, the full noise from the engines was evident, and it gave me a thrill. There’s nothing like that sound.

All in all, it was a pretty good day.

Why I Love My Son

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There’s a dead bird on the mantle tonight, and tomorrow morning we’ll be burying it in the back garden. How it got there, goes like this.

Trevor was out playing in the front when he noticed a small house finch that wasn’t flying off like the others. He called to Teri, and she went out and looked. The bird was a bit small, and was not able to fully fly. It could flap it’s wings, and if put up someplace high, like on the bird feeder, it could fly/crash gently down, but that was about it. We put it in our butterfly cage, and brought it inside. It was getting late, and we have several feral cats around, so leaving it out was a clear death-sentence.

We tried to give it something warm to lay on (an old towel), and feed it some crushed up bird seed, but nothing seemed to help. About a hour later I found it dead.

When Trevor found out, he was very sad. I asked if he want to help me bury it tomorrow morning (something we’ve done before), and said yes. It was then that he suggested the back garden as the burial place, a touching idea as this is a nice place for birds to come to. By then he had tears in his eyes, and even though he was crying, he still was brave enough to make this suggestion.

I love that my son can care for a finch, to the point of tears, even though he’d never seen this particular one until late this afternoon.