Joe Haldeman's Blog, page 31

A day not like all days

Started cooking yesterday a little before eight, with family and friends due at nine.  Made a big platter of bacon and two mounds of sausage, regular and high-test.  Lots of coffee and tea.  Lore's Tim, the engineer chef,  baked a large pan of coffee cake, exquisite.

We noshed and opened gifts till one.  Gay took pictures of the tree before and after, which I'll post after she gets up.

I made a respectable haul.  Two fountain pens, a workhorse Lamy Safari, nicely garish lime green, with a 1.5 mm. italic nib -- and a verrry nice Pelikan 200 Italic.  Both of them wrote fine right out of the box, the Safari with a Lamy cartridge and the Pelikan with slippery Levenger Amethyst ink.

I think my first Pelikan Italic was also my first expensive pen, back in the sixties, about $25 then.  Just under a hundred now in the no-frills version with the "I" gold-plated steel nib.

Interesting teas.  Two of them are from (I think) the only active tea plantation in the United States, the Charleston Tea Plantation.  Governor Gray and Plantation Peach.  Also an intriguing box with Teavana's "Balance and Harmony" collection of four oddities.  "Body + Mind TM" is typical – Monkey Picked Oolong with Mao Feng white tea and Jasmine Dragon Phoenix Pearl.  I hope the monkeys were paid a union wage.

Lore made us a lovely ceramic berry dish, an aerated  box that keeps strawberries cool and fresh in the fridge.  Gay and I have berries with yogurt every morning, so that will see a lot of use.

Of the making of books there is, of course, no end.  Elmore Leonard's short story collection FIRE IN THE HOLE, Terry Bisson's autobiographical novel ANY DAY NOW, the cookbooks CULINARY TEA, THE SCIENCE OF GOOD COOKING and A FEAST OF ICE AND FIRE (recipes from A GAME OF THRONES).  The Hadley Richardson bio (Hemingway's first wife) PARIS WITHOUT END.  The optimistic BRAIN POWER, subtitled "Improve Your Mind as You Age") to which Hemingway might add "Isn't it pretty to think so?"  P.D. Smith's massive CITY ("A Guidebook to the Modern Age"), which I asked for, thinking it would help my futuristic imaginings.

Sister-in-law Barbara gave us her hand-bound annual collection of "The Straight Dope," the ultimate bathroom book! 

For the kitchen I got a potato ricer and an improbable spatula shaped like R2D2.

DVD's of the complete series THE WIRE.  CD's of both seasons' soundtracks of TREME, Guy Clark's DUBLIN BLUES, Ry Cooder's PULL UP SOME DUST AND SIT DOWN, and from Capitol Steps, TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN (FOR PRESIDENT).

And instead of a partridge, a miniature remote-control helicopter from ThinkGeek.

Good Christmas.  I prepared a 16-pound turkey and put it in the oven, and then relaxed in the tub for awhile, reading.  Then sort of cooked until dinner.  Served nine, ending rationally with low-carbohydrate ice cream.  Who says we're not health-conscious?

Long day but fun.  Now to deal with left-overs.

Joe

Aspects of the problem

There were armed guards on duty at Columbine, Fort Hood, and Virginia Tech.   Once a loonie is inside the school with an automatic weapon, being able to eventually kill him (or her, must be politically correct) just reduces the eventual body count.  Most of them kill themselves, anyhow, when they're about to run out of ammo.

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Newspapers don't give a lot of space to the copycat aspect of these tragedies.  What kind of a person would read about a school massacre and say, "God, wouldn't that be cool?"

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A question that answers itself.

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Schools actually are pretty safe, statistically.  Only two percent of homicides of school-age children occur in school.  Dear old Dad is more likely to kill you than some wacko off the street.

Which is no answer.

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If I were a parent, I'm not sure what I would do.  The argument that school shootings are really very rare might not convince me – a lot of our fears are irrational, but nevertheless real.  (Real as pi, you might say.)  A private school is about six grand a year.  Home schooling is even more dear, in a different currency.  But those venues do buy your children security.

A lot of magical thinking, or lazy thinking, obscures the problem.   "If all teachers were armed, the problem would go away" . . . but aren't there one or two teachers in your memory who were scary enough armed with just a ruler?  And don't you remember a couple of hard guys who had to rebel against the teacher no matter what?   Their testosterone is not going away just because the State has raised the ante.  ("Dr. Haldeman talks big but he's just a pussy . . . he'd never use that gun . . . watch this . . . . ")

Of course enveloping the whole problem is the genie that will never go back into the bottle:  America is saturated with guns and ammunition, and no politician who tries to take them away stays employed.

It's the snake eating its own tail, but growing so fast it will never be consumed.

Joe

(Who, forgive me for repeating this, does have the victim's right to an opinion, having been shot both in combat and as a civilian.)

burning bright

Back home in Gainesville, sunny Florida.  It would all be very nice except that it's colder than Boston.  The smoke alarm went off before five, perhaps triggered by the arctic cold.  It only took an hour or so to reset it.  Talking on the phone with someone enjoying the weather in Bangladesh.

Saw Life of Pi last night and enjoyed it.  I don't know how obvious a metaphor can be before it becomes a simple statement, like "we're all in the same boat (like this boy and the tiger)."

The story has an interesting structure, a young man recounting to another young man the overpoweringly large incident that shattered his youth, and as the tale unfolds, the cinematographer takes us back, and back, and inside, until the whole thing is a stack of Russian dolls – and when the final doll is revealed, the whole story inverts in a clever and moving way.

The tiger business and the lost-at-sea peril . . . well, you might want to check the battery in your pacemaker.  This is some truly fucking scary stuff.  Startle scary but also existential scary.

Or maybe I'm tiger-phobic.  I get scared walking down the cereal aisle.

Joe

School shootings

Since Gay and I don't have any children, I was not aware that schools nowadays have "lockdown" drills, the way we had "duck and cover" drills against atomic attack.  Here's a thing from the education blog Care2:“This is a lockdown,” our principal’s voice comes over the PA system. “Everyone get out of the halls and into a safe space immediately.”My first few years of teaching, this message scared me no matter if I knew it was a drill or not. Now, seven years in, I don’t even think twice. I just lock the doors, turn off the lights, close the blinds, and make sure the students are sitting out of sight and below desk level. The whole process takes less than a minute, and we practice it so often that my nerves don’t even kick in anymore; I just respond quickly to secure my room.With several lockdown drills required by law each year, it’s no surprise that the process has become routine. It’s a good thing, too, because if and when a real crisis were to take place, I want to be ready.It may sound pessimistic to assume that a crisis might happen in school, but the fact of the matter is that we live in a post-Columbine world. I remember the Columbine High School shooting like it was yesterday; I was a freshman in high school, and I watched the whole event unfold on my television once I got home from school. Before that, no one had ever thought to run lockdown drills or have an emergency management plan in place for a school shooter. Tornado and fire drills, yes, but not a malicious intruder. Columbine changed all of that. Now we run lockdown drills several times a year and during different situations; some are during class, others during lunch, and still others during passing periods.Are things like that all over the country?  I guess they will be now.Joe

schools and guns

Hardened schools, Ron.  Full of hardened children?

I wonder whether, instead of being all hand-wringing about the NRA, we ought to wring our hands about how easily legislation can be bought.  Any special-interest group with a treasury the size of the NRA's can out-vote tens of millions of citizens.  (Though I personally am not convinced that legislation makes that much difference, given the ubiquity of gun ownership.  Strong laws about carrying and concealing weapons have no effect on, for instance, a crazy guy who fills his car with guns and ammo and drives down to the schoolyard.)

Well, hell.  Guns don't kill people.  Bullets kill people.

Joe

What to say?

Here we go again.  Another nut case spreading death and destruction in celebration of his right to keep and bear arms.

So the pundits will haul out their old arguments and buff them up with the current front-page news.  The lad who did all the murder and suicide was evidently using perfectly legal weapons.  It wouldn't be especially relevant if he weren't.  There are more legal firearms than citizens in America.

Seventeen thousand murders last year -- 11,000 by guns.  Those other 6000 are worrisome, too. 

Is there anything new to be said here?  People like me, who have been shot by fellow citizens, might think it's obvious that ownership of guns – and ammunition! – ought to be regulated by the state, and people who are conspicuously mentally ill should be denied access to instruments of destruction.

But look at the individual words there.  Are we going to register butcher knives?  Deny gun ownership to anyone who's been to a psychiatrist?  Outlaw target practice except at government-controlled ranges?  Go out and register the 200-400 million guns already owned?

None of the above, of course.

The subhead story under the fold was "Mass killing one of worst ever in US."  The individual words there tell a story, too.  Only one of the worst, thank God, not the worst.

Something that's more in my territory, and only a little bit sad, was an interview with Eugene Cernan, who forty years ago yesterday walked up the ladder to zip up the Lunar Module and leave the lunar surface, the last man ever to do so.  Here's what he said to interviewer James M. Clash: 

“I honestly believed it wasn’t the end but the beginning,” said Cernan, now 78. He thought at the time: “We’re not only going back but, by the end of the century, humans will be well on their way to Mars.”

Funding for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as a percentage of the national budget has declined. The U.S. is relying on Russia to fly to the International Space Station.

“We cracked open the door and threw out a plum to young men and women who followed us -- many far more capable -- and they reeled in a lemon,” Cernan said.

At least that door is not really closed, not forever.  Where there's life there's hope.

Joe

neuresthenia?

(from a conversation in sff.net)
 
I think you're right, bob, though it wouldn't be a bell curve.  A significant fraction of soldiers are really addicted to violence and/or danger, some to the extent that they never fit in, "back in the world."  My experience was not unusual.  For several months after I got back, I was living in a kind of hybrid reality -- my reflexes were definitely still attuned to combat, and there was always a silent scream going through my head -- Watch out!  Watch out!  About a month after I got back, I was shopping in a PX grocery store in West Point, and some worker dropped a beer keg, with a huge bang.  I was suddenly on the floor, surrounded by people looking worried.  A bird colonel helped me back up on my feet and asked if I was all right.I'll be fine, sir.  In another twenty or thirty years.Joe

be Sirius, please

A respondent in sff.net quoted a local newspaper as giving this weather report for the day Phobos was discovered:  "For this city and vicinity, generally fair 
weather may be expected for two days, with gradually increasing warmth and 
occasional cloudiness, possibly threatening a shower tomorrow. " Of course 
we do know that the air was very clear and steady over Washington at four in 
the morning, for Hall to spot the tiny spark of Phobos, thitherto unseen. 
  
I've never seen Phobos, unsurprisingly, but I had a low-octane similar experience, 
the first morning I used my [then] new 9.25" scope, down in the steady clear 
air in the Florida Keys. I looked at Sirius, I think with 444X, and saw its 
faint dwarf companion clearly, in the deep blue predawn sky. It took my breath 
away. 

Joe 

(Googling, I find that it's best to look for it when the sky isn't totally dark; otherwise the brilliance of Sirius can dazzle it into invisibility.)

holiday whirl

We spent a lot of time on transportation yesterday, going into town twice.  First we went to a Vietnamese restaurant for lunch with C. David Thomas, a meeting arranged by Michelle Oshima (of the MIT Arts Council).  David is a good artist who's about my age, Vietnam veteran, who's in close contact with his Vietnamese counterparts.

http://www.wellesleywestonmagazine.com/spring10/dept_artist.htm

He's a political activist, but in a quiet way.  I want to stay in contact with him – I do want to return to Vietnam some day, and he might be a conduit to that.  Interesting guy . . . we were both working out of Pleiku; he arrived just a month or so after I left.  So a lot of our memories are congruent.

He gave us three books he's designed:  Ho Chi Minh:  A Portrait, As Seen by Both Sides, and Visions of War and Peace – which carried a shock of recognition; I checked it out of the Gainesville library last year.

Came home to rest for an hour or two and then off again, also way out on the Green Line, to dinner with Tom Levenson and Katha.  Tom's a writer who did his time as head of the Writing Department a few years ago.  Katha's an artist and academic.  We were joined by TaNehisi Coates, senior editor at the Atlantic – almost coincidentally, TaNehisi is the guy who wrote the marvelous endorsement of The Forever War I quoted last week.  He came into town  months ago on a visiting-professor gig at MIT, and happened to pick up The Forever War at the Harvard Book Store.

So it was a really fine evening, full of constantly shifting conversation fueled by good food and wine.

People sometimes wonder why we put up with the hassle of moving twice a year so I can put on my professor costume for a few months.  Meetings like these two are a large part of it.

And so now I go off to root around in the basement of the MIT Science and Humanities Library, collecting 19th century astronomy stuff for the new novel.  Another nice thing about being here. 

Also on my way to two Christmas parties, the Writing Department and the Humanities School.  Tough job, but somebody has to do it.

Joe

illegible note

Actually, what it says is "Aug. so hot in Wash. D.C."   My novel opens with Asaph Hall's discovery of the martian moon Phobos, around 4 in the morning on August 18, 1877.  So I unleashed Google, but alas.  Here's what my own diary says:

I spent a couple of hours this morning, 4:40 to 6:30, working on background stuff for the novel.  It turns out that finding out the temperature in Washington at four in the morning, 18 August 1877, is not a simple Google . . . the free information only goes back to 1900.  (There's a form to fill out to get a copy of the Washington newspaper that day.)  I'll have to go down to the library and look it up on microform records.  Or pay someone to do it, which I resist.

In 1909, the low on that morning was about 50; in 1902, it was 60.  It makes a difference in what Asaph is wearing when he makes the observation in the drafty observatory dome.
 
Posed pictures of astronomers "working" at that time always have them in coat and tie, but I suspect they didn't dress up in the absence of photographers.  And the weather was changing fast along the East Coast in that time, with growing industrialization based on coal.
 
I did come up with a composite of what the novel's main character, Asafa ("Asa"), will look like.  I went through hundreds of actors' casting-call photos for female mixed-race faces around thirty years old.  Now I'll take pencil in hand and draw her.  Be living with her for a year.

Joe