Michael C. Goodwin's Blog, page 10

The Cuban Missile Crisis

60 Years ago, (this coming October), there was a very serious nuclear confrontation with the then USSR (now Russia) and the United States. I was 11 years old at the time, old enough to know that there was a great deal of tension, concern and outright fear in the adults around me. At the elementary school where I was a student, the teachers talked about emergency procedures for us to follow in case of an attack, and that was not exactly a calming thing for us young people. It all added up to something serious and very scary.

The United States had just placed a number of Jupiter, medium-range nuclear ballistic missiles in Italy and also in Turkey, which borders the Soviet Union. With nuclear missiles that close to Moscow, there was a great deal of concern in the mind of the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev. In July, 1962, he met with Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who was looking for something that would deter the U.S. from invading. The year before, there had been a failed attempt with a CIA backed invasion of the island by 1,400 Cuban exiles opposed to Castro regime. Khrushchev and Castro decided to place a number of nuclear missiles there and construction was started on launch facilities. With a presidential election coming in November, President John F. Kennedy tried to keep speculations of what was happening in Cuba, (only 90 miles from Florida), under wraps. However, U-2 spy planes had confirmed, with photographic evidence, that missile sites were being constructed. And with Soviet nuclear missiles that close to mainland U.S.A., the president was forced to act.

After initially considering bombing the missile sites and following up with an invasion of the Cuban mainland, Kennedy chose the less aggressive course of a naval ‘quarantine’ on October 22, to prevent any more missiles being delivered. (A quarantine being less then a blockade, which was an act of war by definition). U.S. naval ships, submarines and planes intercepted Soviet cargo ships delivering missiles and the soviets responded with naval ships and subs of their own. After several very tense days of negotiations, with each side’s fingers on the nuclear trigger, Kennedy and Khrushchev reached an agreement. The USSR would remove their offensive weapons from Cuba in exchange for a U.S. pledge not to invade Cuba without provocation. In secret, the U.S. also agreed to remove the Jupiter nuclear missiles from Turkey. It was also decided to create a ‘hotline’ for direct communications between the nuclear powers and a lowering of tensions between the two. But, after a couple of years, both sides resumed the expansion of their nuclear arsenals and found other ways to confront each other.

I am, of course, reminded of this event in my youth, by current events in Ukraine and threats by the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, to escalate his invasion there by using nuclear weapons to achieve his goals. I am feeling the tension once again, and it is not a pleasant thing. We can only hope that we keep our heads and work out the issues involved. Nuclear war is still very possible in this day and age, and would be exceptionally destructive to our civilization. But we must help Ukraine in any way we can, and if it risks nuclear confrontation with Russia, we must take the chance.

(Below, a U.S. Navy ship intercepts a Soviet cargo vessel during the Cuban Missile Crisis).

Twenty-First Century Birthday

It was September 11, 2001, and I was very much looking forward to my fiftieth birthday. It was a bright and sunny, late summer morning as I drove my son to high school, listening to the radio for the news of the day. I was a graphic artist employed at the local newspaper so I liked to get a hint of the news to prepare for the days work. Suddenly, it was no longer a good day, two jet planes had crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. I dropped off my son and headed to work with all possible speed. Things were already chaotic with everyone trying to make sense of what was actually going on, what was true and factual. After a quick editorial meeting we decided to publish an unprecedented early morning special edition with all the news we could get on the terrorist attack. By noon, the six-page newspaper was on the presses and being distributed. Like everyone else in the country, we were all in shock. My wife called to remind me that there was a birthday luncheon for me at the children’s museum where she was the director. I asked if I could invite some of the newspeople along and she said that was fine. It was a very good thing to get out of the newsroom and into a happier place to eat a little food and birthday cake, I honestly think it pretty much saved us all from complete depression and despair that day

I had it in my mind, before my birthday, that the world in the new twenty-first century looked pretty darned good. That was the very last time I ever thought that. Other problems began to pile up, The war on terror with the invasion of Iraq, and the never ending fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan. The militarization of our own police for our protection, the bruising financial crash that caused widespread problems here across the entire world, and the rise of right-wing populism encouraged by a corrupt president determined to undermine our democracy. Before the turn of the century I had hardly ever heard of global warming and climate change. But now, they are among the top problems facing our country and world. With the increasing pace of technological change and the rise of the internet in this new century, I found myself unemployed at a much earlier age then I expected and things have only gotten further out of hand recently with no sign of slowing down or getting better.

So now what? It is September 11 again and twenty years further into the 21st century and I am that much older as well. This century shows no signs of ever getting easier on us and with the event of Covid 19 stalking the world, things will most likely never slow down. Now, it is either get moving to solve some of these problems, or Mother Nature will start really bashing us around. She has sent us plenty of warning signs, but knowing humans, we won’t worry about things until they get really serious. We need to get our own house in order politically to organize a united defense against the problems that will continue to multiply. But that is going to be a very difficult fight to begin with. There are powerful forces at work to prevent us from getting things under control, so maybe the fight is already fixed against achieving any success. But we must try, sitting on our hind ends will only achieve nothing, and doing nothing will surly bring us more disasters on a scale unimaginable.

(Happy Birthday to me, September 11, 1955. My sister Linda, was born a year after me so we had to share birthdays, and cake. Notice three candles on my side and two on her side.)

Star Treking

It was with some surprise that I saw an ad for a 55th anniversary celebration of Star Trek the other day. Surprise because I had lost track of years since its first appearance on Television. The famous TV series premiered on September 8, 1966, I remember it very well because I tuned into that inaugural show and sat with rapt attention for an hour, I was hopelessly hooked. I was a few days short of my 15th birthday and I was interested in all things space and in the then current U.S. space program to the moon. But here was the future, and we had made it into deep space with alien planets and species, space ships with warp drive and phasers, what glorious stuff! Little did I know then that it would have a profound effect on the course of my life and work

I graduated from high school about the same time the television series ended in June, 1969. So I figured that it was the end of it. Four years in college and away from TV and all other distractions, I mostly forgot about Star Trek. Though Trek itself went into syndicated reruns and science fiction conventions devoted to the series began growing the fandom around the world. When I graduated from college in 1973, and landed my first job at a planetarium in Salt Lake City, I ran into a staff full of science fiction and Star Trek followers. And much to my delight, I discovered that there was a huge fandom that I had never heard of, and dove right in. I got involved in fanzines, cartooning, illustration, and working with conventions. Through these things I got to meet many other fans, organizers, publishers, writers, artists and many of the actors in the series.

Through my illustrations and book work I traveled the U.S. with my wife who became a fairly well known fantasy artist. We attended 3 to 4 conventions a year exhibiting our art and meeting many other fans. We toured museums and art galleries where ever we went and saw many sights that we would have never seen if we had stayed home. After our son was born we continued to travel and instilled in him a life-long love of travel, food, art and science. Aside from paying the travel bills, my art took on a deeper meaning for me as a way of examining our world and our place in the universe, which is why I write strongly about the growing dangers to it. I certainly don’t paint as much as I did when we were traveling but I still like to get on that starship occasionally and explore strange new worlds through my art. I hope I can continue to do that for a long time into the future.

(My painting of the the early versions of the Enterprise. It has helped me get off the planet and give me a different perspective of things.)

The Limit

Last Friday, here at my house in Northern Utah, I could not see the mountain. The mountain I refer to is a beautiful 9,700 foot peak called called Ben Lomond, part of the Wasatch Mountain Range just beginning behind our house a few miles away. The smoke, (from the numerous west coast forest fires), had blanketed our state with a thick fog of impenetrable haze and I could not see Ben Lomond. We live up here against the mountain on what we locally call a bench. The bench is actually part of a 12,000-year-old shoreline of a recent large glacial body of water called Lake Bonneville. This lake once covered 20,000 square miles of Utah and Nevada and was over 900 feet deep. Over the years since, this large body of fresh water has shrunk to the very salty 1,700 square mile puddle with an average depth of 16 feet called the Great Salt Lake.

So you might say we already live in an area that has seen massive adjustments due to climate change. A dozen thousand years ago it was very much cooler with those glacial lakes and large numbers of ice age megafauna such as woolly mammoths, whose bones have been found all over the state. Over the last two months the temperatures here have hovered in the upper nineties with regular weekly forays into the hundreds, and the only animals around have been a small flock of quail and one hot, tired ground squirrel, hardly in the same league as a mammoth.

I really am fed up and have reached my limit, when you can smell and taste the air and not even see the beautiful things around you, it has gone too far. Last summer was pretty much the same with foul air from wildfires all over the west and winter was worse with smog and pollutants trapped by temperature inversions in our lovely valleys. Next summer will be the same with a very good chance of continued extreme drought, and probably every year after until there are no more trees left to burn. Why did we let it get this way, and why do we continue to let it go on? How much worse must it get before we understand what is happening and try to stop it. Humans are great at waiting until the last minute to do things, but what if there isn’t a last minute? It took 12,000 years to go from freezing cold to broiling hot around here. It will only take less then a hundred more years to get to uninhabitable.

(As least you can see the mountain today. Actually the trees are starting to block the view now, so it guess it will not matter much if the smoke returns.)

The Dinosaur Under my Desk

Several months ago we embarked on a carpeting and flooring redo of our house. The only room we didn’t do was the upstairs art studio, mostly my domain. However it was soon clear that this was a mistake and any future resale of our house would be hampered by the one room with the nearly 30-year-old leftover carpeting. The reason I didn’t want carpet it in the first place was that my studio was stuffed with art materials, books, memorabilia and just plain junk from over 45 years of drawing, painting and Science Fiction convention art shows all over the United States. There was so much stuff I didn’t want to move it, sort it out and rid myself of it. However, my wife convinced me that it was a worthwhile project and would help us transition into our retirement years and into any future art projects.

It is amazing what humans collect and keep. I had stuff from my college years to the last convention that I worked on just before the pandemic. We got rid of the five different types of desks, bookcases, taboret and support tables and purchased new and matching furniture, and it did make a difference. Many of the old books were saved and resorted into actual matching subjects and a lot of old paperwork and just plain unnecessary materials were tossed. I have probably attended nearly 50 SF conventions over the long years and had something or other from most of them, which also had to be sorted, saved or tossed. Since Lynne, (my loving and patient wife of 45 years), is also a very talented artist we integrated her art supplies, reference books and other materials into the studio. No more man cave nonsense, we will work together in our retirement.

Since I have collected rocks and fossils from when I was young, several boxes of old material also had to go. One box of the best specimens was kept, including a fair sized chunk of dinosaur bone, which is one of my favorite pieces. Somehow I feel kinship with that ancient beast, he (or she) and I have survived a whole life of ups and downs and it has certainly lasted a lot longer then I have, (100 million years or so). I found a place for it far under my desk where I can see its reassuring bulk from time to time, or tap it with my foot, a sort of pet rock. Okay, so a lot of artists are a bit eccentric, but we are quite happy in our new studio. Whatever happens to us in the near future, me and my Dino friend will see it through together.

(The old and new studio layouts compared, the Dino bone is on the table for the photo. There is still some more adjusting and perhaps a few more paintings to hang up.)

Teaching the Horse to Sing

An ancient Greek writer and historian, Herodotus, told a story about a thief that was brought before the king to be sentenced and then executed. As he was being taken away, the thief pleaded that in one year he could teach the king’s favorite horse to sing. Day after day the other prisoners watched the thief singing to the horse, telling him that it was impossible and laughing at his folly. The thief replied that he had an extra year to live and who knew what would possibly happen in that time. He could die, the horse could die or even the king could die in that time. And who knew, maybe the horse would learn to sing.

If convincing people that climate change is happening now seems a little like trying to teach a horse to sing, then you would be right. But there are those who persist in trying, despite the sheer futility of it. With the summer only half over and with a stunning amount of unnatural heat, fires and drought conditions here, perhaps more people will be convinced that something terrible is really happening. For me anyway, I need no prodding, the pleasantly warm and gentle summers of my youth have forever vanished. I can remember snow lingering on our tall mountains here until July. Now, if there is any snow on them by the end of May, it is unusual. Spring conditions begin a full month earlier and Fall lasts a month longer as well. I will predict that in less then ten years our green, water-greedy lawns will be frowned upon and may well be legislated into something more equitable for the dryer climate of our desert state.

It is already much too late to turn the clock back to an earlier, better time. Unless we bring our carbon spewing civilization under complete control by 2050, then we are pretty much screwed. Many parts of our hot, storm-wracked planet will have already become uninhabitable, ecosystems will collapse, parts of our oceans will become dead zones and the air we rely on will become too hot and foul for proper breathing. With the unreliable seasonal rains and droughts our crops will be more prone to failure, creating world-wide shortages and continent-sized famines. Massive climate caused human migrations, resource shortages and wars will become endemic in the scramble for what is left. All we have to do is convince people to give up burning vast amounts of gas, oil and coal and use alternative sources of energy. Surely that horse can sing before our time is up. Let’s just say that the horse must learn to sing for all of us.

(As beautiful as this photo is of Bryce Canyon in Southern Utah, I would not like these very hot, dry desert conditions in the Northern part of the state where I live.)

The End of the Green Lawn

Earlier this spring, my next door neighbors finally gave up on trying to maintain their lawn on the side of their house. They had the ground covered with a plastic weed barrier and then dumped a ton or so of gravel and rocks on it. It looks awful. But now they don’t have to do anything to maintain it, but that is what they are and I can’t do anything about it.

The official start of summer is a few days away and we have been enduring a nasty heat spell with record breaking temperatures already. It also looks to last a long time, say until next fall. There is also a full-on drought happening this year as well with already low reservoirs and limited recreational opportunities therein. We have to cut back on watering our lawns now to twice a week, and there is a state snitch website that you can turn in your neighbors for overwatering or wasteful watering. In southern Utah they are starting to offer people money to dig up their water wasteful lawns and newly built housing is not required to have anything resembling a lawn now.

I live in an area with a Home Owners Association, (HOA), and my neighbor doesn’t. So I have to maintain the required green lawn and they do not. If higher temperatures, less rain and lower snowfall continue, then the HOA may have to change the requirements for us. It now occurs to me that my lazy neighbors have inadvertently tied into the next trend in our climate stressed world, the elimination of the water-hungry green suburban lawn. The signs were there for all to see, it just took a long-term drought here in the West to smack us in the head with the reality of it. We have lived on luck and just enough water in the past to ignore the problems lurking in the future. But, surprise! The future eventually gets here and if you’re not ready for it, things can get a little painful. And unfortunately, the pain looks like it’s just getting started.

(I have labored long and hard on growing my verdant lawn and landscaping as you can see in this photo that I took this morning. I would be unhappy to have to give it all up and plant cactus and scraggly drought tolerant shrubs. But I may not have much choice in our hotter and dryer future.)

Water in the Desert

Drought has become the latest media frenzy here in the west and it’s not hard to see why. The U.S. Drought Monitor shows that nearly all of the Southwest is in a severe to extreme drought. And half of that is in the highest rating of an exceptional drought. This also extends into western Colorado which is the source for much of the Colorado River. This river provides water for over 40 million people in seven states including the mostly very dry states of Nevada, Arizona and southern California, not to mention irrigation for large amounts of crop land. So when the Colorado river starts drying up, people take notice.

The Colorado River is 1,450 miles long and is one of the most developed river systems in the world with 15 major dams and hundreds more on small tributaries. The dams can hold four to five times the river’s annual flow and generates hydroelectricity as well as irrigation and municipal water for cities. The two major dams on the Colorado are the Glen Canyon and Hoover dams. Glen Canyon Dam is the second highest concrete-arch dam in the U.S (710 feet tall), second only to the Hoover Dam at 726 feet tall. Glen Canyon holds 26.2 million acre-feet of water storage and Hoover holds 28.9 million acre-feet of water. But that is, of course, when they are full.

Right now, Glen Canyon Dam is at 34.7 percent capacity and 138.5 feet below full level. Hoover Dam is at 37 percent capacity and 140 feet below full level. If the water continues to fall, hydroelectric production will be limited and water resources will be cut back to the states around the river. Climate change has brought higher spring and summer temperatures and less rain and snowfall. The southwest has been in drought conditions since 2000 even with a few good years of rainfall. Still that period of time rivals any drought in the last 1,200 years. River flows are predicted to decrease by 6 to 20 percent in the next 50 years and temperatures will increase. Population is also expected to increase in the Southwest with its warm climate and will need even more water in the future. However, it appears that there will be an eventual end to continued growth and expansion in this region, and that is something people are not at all prepared for.

(Photos courtesy U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Hoover Dam water intake towers and lower levels. Glen Canyon Dam exposed shoreline and shrinking water around a marina.)

Secondary Water

My yearly struggle to maintain a green lawn has begun a month earlier then normal. Actually all of the seasons here in Utah, (second lowest state in terms of annual rainfall), are a month early. I have observed this for many years, the temperature variance from when I was much younger is startlingly noticeable. Yesterday, Thursday, June 10, 2021, the high was a refreshingly cool 63 degrees, not entirely unusual for the beginning of June. In four days on Monday it will be 100 degrees, and the rest of the week will be 100 or in the upper nineties, (July temperatures). So much for the verdant lawn much required by my Home Owners Association. We do have what is called secondary water for use on lawns and farming. Almost all of it is from reservoirs in the nearby mountains, though this year things are a little different than past seasons.

Secondary water, (untreated and not for drinking), is generally used for crop irrigation and watering lawns. All of the water we use here is from Pineview Reservoir on the other side of the first line of the Wasatch Mountain range. This time of year the reservoir is generally at its highest point, full of winter melt-water for recreation, fishing and irrigation. It has been a drier winter then usual and so the dam is only at 55% of normal capacity and 20 feet lower. The number of boats allowed on the waterway is going to be restricted this summer, though the area of exposed beach has increased. Of the 112,000 acre-feet capacity there is only 60,000 acre-feet of water remaining, and a normal years usage is 50,000 acre-feet, so the math is sadly lacking in any positives. Restrictions will have to be put in place. There will be less water for lawns and some farmers are already planning on lower crop yields. This fall, the secondary water will be turned off about three weeks earlier, though I expect that it might be even sooner. My lawn, and everyone else’s will dry out a month earlier and slip into its fall and winter dormancy, at least that is what we hope.

Opposite the mountains is the Great Salt Lake, which has no outlet and is therefore called a terminal lake. Its level rises and falls according to river inflow and rainfall in Northern Utah. Since that has been scarce the last couple of years, the level of the lake is reaching historic lows, not seen for 167 years. Nothing much lives in it’s very salty waters and lower levels help contribute to successful evaporation mineral extraction, so there are not too many complaints there. But there is a number of freshwater marshes around the lake with are vital to large numbers of waterfowl. It will be interesting to see how lakes and reservoirs fare if we get another dryer then normal winter, we are into our reserves of water this year, so there will be none for next year. Goodby to green lawns?

(The ‘D’ word has been bandied about lately, (D for drought). In a place that depends on what little rain and snowfall it normally gets, things can get a little scary. Image courtesy utah.com. The lower reservoir levels this spring can be clearly seen.)

Customer Service Horror

There is nothing on this planet this is more completely aggravating then trying to get help on a customer-service phone line. And there is nothing else in the entire universe that can turn me, who is actually a fairly pleasant and patient person, (but don’t ask my wife her opinion on that), into a raving, murderous, angry, screaming Hulk-like person. Like billions of other humans, I have always wondered if it is something that all of these companies do on purpose. And the answer is yes, they do try to be annoying.

In my limited research, I have found that a normal person spends an average of 13 hours a year trying to resolve problems and complaints with services, (and this estimate is from 2013, it is probably much worse now). By limiting the number of customers who can successfully resolve their complaints or get refunds, companies actually improve their profits. They direct the calls to call center operators, who, more often then not, cannot speak decent English and have absolutely no authority to actually offer refunds or other resolutions for the problem. And trying to change, adjust or drop certain services only gets you an extended explanation of what other things that you can or should get, and an incredibly complicated and fantastically convoluted process to sort out what you will actually be getting.

I recently tried to resolve a small problem by using a company online resolution center. After nearly 10 minutes of going around in a complete circle and typing in the same question three times, I finally gave up and called the customer service line, which of course tells you that it will be much quicker to go online to resolve your issues. And this always opens up an whole new can of fresh horrors. Increasingly, companies are using AI to determine whether or not a customer is sufficiently unhappy with their services. I don’t know about you, but as soon as I start talking to an automated system, I turn into that Hulk-like creature and want to smash things. Especially that company I am trying to talk to. But hey, they make plenty of money without me, so why should they care.

(I have finally canceled my phone land-line, which in recent years, has only provided me with an increasing number of automated marketing calls. But now, my cell phone is picking up the slack. Technology continues to progress, making it easier to annoy us even more.)