Byron Edgington's Blog, page 9

Kings, Queens & In Betweens.

Please consider supporting this Columbus documentary from Five Sisters Productions which touches on marriage equality & parental rights in one of the stories in this film. Heading into the halfway point, they've hit 15% of the kickstarter goal to finish this important film on drag, gender expression and identity, and LGBTQIA rights. You can help get the word out -- post it, tweet it, email it, blog it. The filmmakers are donating their time and plan a national social action & community outreach campaign next year, which will not only create positive momentum for progress, but also highlight Columbus as a creative, open-minded city!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/981223409/kings-queens-and-in-betweens-a-documentary-on-drag

Helicopters: A Primer

Taken from The Sky Behind Me, a Memoir of Flying and Life , Chapter 6: First Takeoff: The Mattel Messerschmitt
“This is as good a time as any for a short primer on how helicopters fly, the aerodynamics of rotary-wing flight. The main blades provide the lift, of course. But they also provide the steering mechanism for all intended directions. In the cockpit, the main stick the pilot holds in his or her right hand is called the cyclic. The cyclic is for horizontal flight. Ease the cyclic to the right, the aircraft goes right. Ease it left, and left you go. Forward, backward, sideways, all maneuvers in the horizontal plane come from moving the cyclic.
To the pilot’s left, on the floor of the aircraft, is another stick called the collective pitch, or collective for short. It’s for vertical flight. Pull the collective up, you go up. Push it down, down you go. The important thing about the collective is that, as it changes, the pitch in all main blades changes ‘collectively’ and equally. Moving the collective up and down also changes the amount of torque produced by the blades spinning around upstairs.
This is where the two pedals on the floor come in. Those two controls put pitch in and out of the tail rotor, which acts against all the torque mentioned above. The technical name for the tail rotor is the anti-torque rotor. The easiest way to explain what it does is to remove it from the aircraft, and show what would happen. Without the tail rotor, when we pull the collective up, the aircraft would come up, as it’s supposed to. But the entire airframe would also spin around in the opposite direction of the main rotor. The upshot of this is, that when changing collective settings, up or down, the correct amount of pedal must be used to add or remove pitch in the tail rotor as well. It’s simple; it’s complicated.” People asked me often through the years to explain what makes a helicopter fly, what keeps it aloft, the basics of so called rotary-wing aviation. I decided to blog about it in case some of those folks, or you perhaps, still wonder. The above description is, of course, simplistic; there are many factors involved in taking a helicopter into the air and safely landing one again. These are the basics, and, I hope, reasonably easy to imagine. What I allude to in the book, over and over, is that which may be the primary consideration in flying a helicopter, and that is balance. It’s simple physics, really. If something is out of balance it must be corrected, or the aircraft won’t continue flying. Lift must balance with drag; yaw must balance with trim; fuel must balance with time; speed must balance with power etc. etc. What a veteran pilot knows, and what’s so hard to convey to non-flyers is that it really is a metaphor for a life well lived. And, as in life, when everything is in balance, the sense of contentment is sublime. Tune in tomorrow for a description of what is perhaps a helicopter’s most exotic, and yet most useful feature, its ability to land with no power at all–at all! Talk about sublime!

Justitia

This post is a response to a thoughtful commentary by a friend who happens to be a lawyer. His comments concern Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg‘s own comments on marriage equality and how they were cited in the press.
My response etc.: There have always been, and always will be the cries of ‘activist judges,’ and ‘unelected arbitrators’ yadda, yadda, yadda. This is why we have judges. This is why they are not subject to electoral pressure. Judges are not supposed to be either ‘out in front of’ or ‘lagging behind’ public opinion. They’re supposed to rule in an objective fashion about the cases in front of them, and in the DOMA case specifically it’s impossible to justify its existence in a society that by charter demands equality. ‘The Public’ in this case is comprised of people who, by and large, don’t even understand the implications of DOMA, much less have authority to enforce it on others. The lady with the blindfold is named Justitia. Let judges be judges.

Opening Day 2013

This opening day is sweeter somehow than a lot of them preceding it. Winter doesn't care to let go this year for some reason. Maybe it's my age? Maybe the old Island Fever I heard about living in Hawaii has returned? Maybe we're all just bone-weary of this long, plodding slog the country seems to be stuck in since 'W' finally went to the showers.
But baseball is back. It's what we need. I'm sure it is. To hear the crack of ash against horsehide again, the slap of ball against leather, the chorus of rousing fans wishing a hit gone, gone, farther than ever a hit has gone before. I think it's the comforting randomness of baseball that enthralls us. In a world of stunning, depressing predictability baseball soothes us with suspense. As Crash Davis said in Bull Durham, "I believe in the hanging curve." Baseball begins each year around the time of the vernal equinox, a time of 'equal night.' So we begin all tied up. That seems about right.
It's a certain metric of the true baseball fan that, deep down, even in a tie game in the late innings, especially then, we worshipers in the cathedral of baseball truly don't care who wins. We pray to the god of running bases that the game is fair, and good, and enduring as the last out of the last game of the last season. Baseball is the only game where scoring is referred to as safe at home.
Too early to matter, and ain't that another beautiful thing?, here's my prediction. Tigers/Yankees, Reds/Giants in the playoffs. Yanks/Giants in the fall. And the Giants take it all. Play ball!

Fearless

I never claimed to be fearless. If you read The Sky Behind Me , what you may come away with is a story of a man who knew his limits, and didn’t push the river as some say. I don’t feel particularly brave or courageous. But I do know this. Fear is truly the great limiter of human endeavor. The worn out cliche’ is that boats weren’t designed and built to stay in the harbor, and neither were we. It’s one of the reasons I’ve taken a stand for equal rights for everyone in this country. As a nation, we were crafted as a response to fear: fear of attempting to move past old, mythic sensibilities; fear to oppose ancient institutions; fear to confront longstanding superstitions and myths from our recent European ancestry.
The new American narrative we created put fear aside, replacing that most ancient of emotions with something brand new in man’s history, the radical concept that we’re in command of our own destiny, and that each person is free to make of that destiny what they will. No more royal prerogatives. No more familial or nepotistic claims to success and elevation. No more paternalistic supervision of men’s lives.
Watching the crowd in front of the Supreme Court of the United States Tuesday morning I was struck by two things: the civility of the opposing participants in the marriage equality confrontation; and the shared passion that their argument would win the day. But something else stood out that brisk, early spring morning as I watched people milling around in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol dome. The day before, in Paris, even larger crowds had gathered for the same purpose, in a clash over equal marriage rights. It was history happening in the present, and history transported more than two hundred years. Our revolution was not without bloodshed, far from it. But its resolution has been marked for the most part by peaceful if passionate social conflict. The French revolution on the other hand was declaimed as a bloody, drawn out affair, with repercussions lasting almost to the present, exemplified by the scene in Paris last week. The difference is fear. Fear that any resolution is of necessity a zero sum event, that compromise is never to be had. Fear that our gain must mean the others’ utter defeat. Fear that we Americans have somehow managed to put aside.
Watching my fellow citizens in Washington I saw something else Tuesday morning. I saw hope, not fear.

Fellow Warriors

Here I am with at Reagan National A/P yesterday, March 26th. Craig and I are fellow warriors. I spent almost thirty years in uniform defending the idea of an America where we’re all free & equal. Craig served in the Marine Corps and was deployed to Iraq in 2004. But the real battle for him began when he returned home to New Hampshire. Craig’s brother Calvin is a gay man. When Craig married his spouse Berta few years ago he realized that his brother and best friend couldn’t enjoy the same benefits and protections that he defended as a Marine. So Craig got involved to make marriage equality a reality for Calvin, including a truly heartfelt speech at the HRC national dinner in 2012. Recently a number of legislators, including many conservative Republicans like Rob Portman of Ohio and Larry Pressler of South Dakota have seen marriage equality for what it is, an issue of basic rights, freedom from burdensome government dictating who may or may not marry and of fairness, including economic and social. Let’s hope Craig Stowell, former Marine and New Hampshire conservative Republican wins this battle.

About to find out who we are

Tomorrow–March 26–at this time I’ll be attending a rally at the Supreme Court. The event is intended to demonstrate support for equal marriage rights in this country. At least that’s the outward intention. The hidden one is a bit different. It’s a subtle display of who we are as Americans. The so called gay marriage issue has been percolating for years, but it’s about to come to a full boil in this country, and it is time. In the next several weeks we’ll discover something critically important about ourselves. Depending on which way the SCOTUS rules, for or against Prop 8, for or against DOMA, will tell us quite a lot about whether we truly believe that all American citizens are equal under the law–or not. I happen to believe we are equal regardless of personal distinctions, skin color, gender, religious persuasion or sexual orientation. To me it’s like being a little bit pregnant, or being randomly consistent. We’re either equal or we’re not. Simplistic, yes, but fundamental distinctions tend to be very simple. By the end of the term, the Supreme Court of the United States will make one of the most fundamental rulings in this court’s history. I predict that ruling will affirm that we are indeed equal, that civil marriage equality applies to everyone.

Once a missionary...

This may seem a bit of a stretch, but if life has taught me anything it is this: we focus on what our passion is, regardless of what that may be–money, power, fame, sex, family, career or angry birds. Gaining wisdom seems to have some connection to understanding what it is that drives us, and how it does that. In my case, as indicated in my book, I started out driven to become a missionary priest. Anyone who knows me now may be mystified by that. But all I’ve done since leaving the seminary as a teenager, way back in the twentieth century is drop the ‘priest’ part. I’ll always be a missionary of sorts. Only the focus has changed, the particular issue that sparks my passion and gives me my big why, as in, why I get out of bed every day.

Which brings me to my current drive, the acquisition of equal marriage rights (and rites) for my LGBT friends. I’ve been questioned numerous times on why I’m so invested in this, and it’s really quite simple. Call me a blockhead, but when I heard those words in third or fourth grade, I forget just when it was, “…with liberty and justice for all,” I believed them. That pledge didn’t say “…with liberty and justice for all white, middle class, male heterosexuals who own a boat and have an offshore account.” It said for ALL. And, silly me, I believed it.

The wisdom to see the simplicity and beauty of that statement keeps me at the latest of my missionary endeavors. It’s why I created the website for straight people to use to affirm equal marriage rights this coming May 9th. There’s a FaceBook page for it as well. I long ago realized this missionary thing ain’t going away. Sometimes it’s a burden, and I fear it has driven some people away, not wishing to be drawn in to the political aspect of my efforts. It’s who I am. The wisdom of a teenager might be enough. I believe it is.

10 Years ago today

A very short post–in remembrance of those lost in Iraq starting ten years ago today. Americans and Iraqis, gone. And for what? The picture says it all: an unseen enemy, confusion and chaos in the fog of war. If the first casualty of war is truth, the second must surely be clarity, moral and otherwise.

A tale of two green lands ravaged by war

A St. Patties Day post a day late, and thoughts on life as an Irish/English mongrel brat. Two items greeted me this morning: a torrent of rain rumbling on my roof; and an Irish lilt titled Come to the Hills , sung by a young lad named Damian McGinty of Celtic Thunder fame. Days like this drive my thoughts inward, and I find myself more in touch with me Irish side, more melancholy than merry, brooding and bleak to match the blustery weather. I’m reminded of me old Irish mum, the saddest happy woman I ever knew. Me old uncle Mike who once was asked when he had his last drink, and responded, in fine Irish form, “Haven’t yet.” And listening to the tune I return to that land of my ancestry where “…the trees sway in time, and even the wind sings in tune.” Repeat that poetic phrase and you’ll hear the spoken music of Ireland, the reason Irish writers have been lavished with literary accolades from time out of mind.
We Irish have another reputation. This post is a day late, and that fits nicely with the practiced indolence we seem to have perfected. Again, watch the video, listen to the lilt, and witness the lush, easy atmosphere that is Ireland. In my book I hope I’ve captured a bit of this feeling, and have contrasted it with the realities I witnessed in another green, faraway land riven by conflict. I’ve traveled to Vietnam twice, once in war, once in peacetime. I’ve traveled to Ireland twice, once as a young restless fellow seeking my place in the world, once again having found it. Both places have seen the ravages of war. Both have emerged as a kind of touchstone for me, lands where I likely discovered more than I left behind.