Malcolm R. Campbell's Blog, page 226

‘The Sailor,’ a new contemporary fantasy

Kindle Version

I’m happy to announce that Vanilla Heart Publishing has released The Sailor, the second book in my “Garden of Heaven Trilogy.” This Vietnam War-era novel set on an aircraft carrier is available in paperback, on Kindle, and other e-book formats.

The Sailor was inspired, in part, by my experiences on board the USS Ranger (CVA-61) in the Western Pacific in 1968 and 1969. (See Navy to Scrap Historic Aircraft Carrier Next Year.)

Publisher’s Description: When conscription and the Vietnam War pull pacifist David Ward away from Montana, mountain climbing and magic, he leaves for Navy boot camp with a suitcase of regrets. His fiancé ignores him, a close friend callously tells him to kill bad guys and have sex in every port, and an old flame sends devastating news that wrenches his life from its foundations.

Ranger in 1961 – Kemon01 photo on Flickr

Friends and family warned that if he dodged the draft, he would let down his church and country and become an embarrassment to everyone. Canada offered war resistors anonymous safety one hundred miles north of his ranch; a Swedish friend offered him the loving safety of her home and bed 4,500 miles away in Göteborg.

Rather than choosing a tempting offer for the wrong reasons, David serves onboard an aircraft carrier off the coast of Vietnam. Unlike his pilot friend Jack Rose, he’s more vulnerable to letters from home than from the war. His fiancé ignores him, a close friend callously tells him to kill bad guys and have sex in every port, and an old flame sends devastating news that wrenches his life from its foundations.

Steaming beneath the Golden Gate Bridge US Navy Photo

His spare-time work on a mountain climbing novel anchors him, a vision quest with a Hawai’ian sorceress in the warm waters off Oʻahu brings him hope, and an unexpected relationship with a Filipino bar girl saves his sanity.

His best friend will never return home from the war. When David returns, no family and friends meet the plane or help get David’s life back together. They enjoy hearing funny stories about the ship, teaching him to remain silent about everything that matters.

You can see a short excerpt from the book here.

For a sample of navy slang, see my post called Don’t let the old salts send you topside on mail buoy watch.

Book One – The Seeker

Kindle Version

The Seeker is currently on sale on Amazon for $2.99 on Kindle to tempt you into the first book in the trilogy. The books can, however, also be read as standalone novels.

I hope you enjoy The Sailor, and come away with a taste of the sea, of life on board an aircraft carrier, liberty in rough-and-tumble sailor towns, and what it was like for a young man who knows the mountains of the high country to suddenly be serving nine-month cruises aboard a ship.

–Malcolm

The Bare-Bones Structure of a Fairy Tale

Most authors who use mythic elements in their work are familiar with the hero’s journey structure introduced by Joseph Campbell in the 1940s. Campbell’s sequence of steps in a journey from beginning to end has been criticized by some for missing important aspects of themes, contexts and cultures, and over-used by others to explain the plots of all movies and plays. Nonetheless, it’s a handy structure.

Authors who want to write fairy tales have a similar sequence worthy of study in Vladimir Propp’s structuralist approach to fairy tales that suggests all tales follow a similar sequence even though each tale doesn’t use all of the thirty-one steps. In addition, Propp says the major characters in fairy tales usually include a hero, false hero, magical helper, dispatcher, villain and donor.

Like the hero in the hero’s journey schema, the hero in a fairy tale is sent out by a dispatcher (wise person, king, friend) who knows of the hero’s needs and sends him/her out to seek a prize, such as the princess/prince, and is assisted by a donor and magical helpers, then fights against by the villain and a false hero (who wants the prize).

Dmitry Olshansky, writing in the “Toronto Slavic Quarterly,” says that “in his research Propp separated variable and constant elements in different fairy-tales, seeking a wonderful uniformity in the labyrinth of multiplicity. (Propp, , Morphology of the Folktale). In other words, he was less interested in the matter than in the structure of the narrative, trying to establish a stable scenario in the relation between parts and whole in a totality of tales.”

Catherine Orenstein, in Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked, calls these elements structural building blocks. These elements are looked at by Propp in chronological order rather than studying the patterns underlying the tale. Propp looks at tales outside the context of culture and time period, a problem that also confronts those who use the hero’s journey sequence too much like a formula.

Sequence

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Arthur Rackham’s 1909 illustration for “The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm”

You can find Propp’s sequence of steps in multiple places online including Wikipedia and in a nice post by Jerry Everard. However, here is the basic sequence. It’s worth a look, I think, if you’re studying fairy tales with a thought of using the genre yourself:

Hero leaves home. (e.g., Little Red Riding Hood heads for Grandmas’ house.*)
Hero told NOT to do something or go to a certain place. (e.g., LRRH warned about talking to strangers or getting off the path.*)
Hero goes there anyway and meets the villain. (e.g., LRRH picks flowers.*)
Villain tries to find out “treasure/prize.”
Villain extracts information from victim.
Villain deceives victim.
Victim unwittingly taken in by villain begins helping the villain in some way.
Villain harms or injures somebody and/or their property.
Hero discovers misfortune and goes to help.
Counteraction decided upon.
Hero leaves home.
Hero is tested, helped or attacked.
Hero reacts to donor by passing tests, solving problem, performing a service.
Hero obtains magic.
Hero reaches prize/treasure s/he is seeking.
Combat between hero and villain.
Hero “branded” via injury, mark, object (ring, cloak, scarf)
Villain defeated.
Problem/misfortune resolved.
Hero heads for home.

Prince wakes Snow White – Wikipedia photo

Hero pursued. (e.g., Snow White rescued by prince)
Hero rescued from or hides from pursuer.
Hero arrives home, though friends/family usually don’t recognize him/her.
False hero claims s/he did what the hero actually did.
Hero faced with difficult task or ordeal.
Hero successfully does task or faces ordeal.
Mark on hero brings others to recognize him/her
False hero exposed.
Hero is made whole (looks, clothing).
Villain punished.
Hero marries prince/princess, ascends throne, or rewarded in other way.

It’s fun comparing the steps in this sequence with popular fairy tales. This is easy on the SurLaLune site which has annotated versions of many old favorites.

If you’ve read a lot of fairy tales, you’ve probably already internalized the structure. If not, Propp will prop you up.

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* See Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked (Kindle link) for an analysis of the fairy tale using Propp’s sequence.

Now on iTunes and Audible/Amazon

–Malcolm

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Don’t let the old salts send you topside on mail buoy watch

The carrier’s island – goodhugh photo on flickr

As I work through the final edits for my upcoming novel The Sailor, I find myself smiling at all the weird, strange, and often crude navy slang and acronyms that were a part of daily life when I served aboard the four acres of sovereign soil better known as an aircraft carrier or a bird farm.

Since this is a family blog (don’t ya think?), I won’t mention the profane slang other than to say you can find it quickly enough in a Google search.

One of the first things you learn on an aircraft carrier is that the navy does not fly choppers. If you call a helicopter a chopper, you’ll probably be placed on mail buoy watch (more on that later) or sent off in search of various kinds of equipment and supplies that don’t exist. The helicopter is a Helo (hee-low).

A liberty port

Going ashore is going on the beach whether it’s a beach, a pier, or liberty (free time) in a foreign port where you might get screwed, blued, and tattooed. (Oops, I forgot this is a family blog.)  Now hear this, if you get back late from liberty you are not AWOL, you are UA. UA = authorized absence, as in, “I was UA” or “Mr. A.J. Squared Away (a sailor with a perfect shave, perfect uniform, etc.) went UA.”

Once you become a member of Uncle Sam’s Canoe Club, called the Gulf of Tonkin Yacht Club during the WESTPAC (western Pacific) Vietnam War days, your first duties involve listening up, taking a good set of notes, and otherwise learning the rocks and shoals (regulations).  If the chief (chief petty officer) thinks you’re slacking off, otherwise known as skating, and aren’t learning, he’ll either write you up (put you on report) or send you off to the galley to wash the flavor extractors.

If you get written up, you’ll end up shooting pool with the captain, that is, brought before a captain’s mast hearing after which you might variously be sent to the brig, demoted, or served a big chicken dinner (bad conduct discharge).

A Tin Can is a destroyer, like the one escorting your carrier, not a metal outhouse.

If you’re serving on an aircraft carrier, you’ll soon learn to stay off the flight deck during flight ops unless you are authorized to be there. If you work on the flight deck, the color of your shirt (yellow, green, white, red, blue, purple, brown or black) identifies the job you’re supposed to be doing. Red is, of course, for crash and smash (firefighters). If you want to watch launch and recovery operations, head up to the windows called vulture’s row in the island (AKA superstructure) where the view is perfect.

Old salts will try to fill your head (brain, not the rest room) full of crap (lies, yarns, and obviously erroneous scuttlebutt) that will only result in your being considered as gear adrift or a good candidate for mail buoy watch. “Mail buoy watch” is mandated by lifers (old salts) when the weather is poor.

During bad weather, somebody (you) is dressed up in foul weather gear and sent topside (AKA, a weather deck) with a hook. Your job will be to watch for the mail buoy, that is to say, the place where the ship’s mail will be waiting because either the COD (the mail plane) or some mythical mail ship can’t deliver the mail in a storm.

Before you head out to snag the mail, your uniform of the day (helmet, life jacket, etc.) will be critiqued by those in the know. Pictures will be taken and then you’ll be on your own in the rain until you realize you’re a victim of the kind of good-natured hazing that will give a guy a lot of grief, a bad cold, and a trip to sickbay for some Corpsman Candy (an ineffective cough drop).

It’s always best to at least look like you know what you’re doing, that is to say staying 4.0 (pronounced four-oh) and squared away during your tour of duty on the big gray ship (BGS). Who knows you might stop saying FTN (you can figure out what that means) and ship over (reenlist).

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Coming Soon

You May Also Like: Heave Out and Trice Up

–Malcolm

Writers, what brings you feelings of awe?

“The heart of it all is mystery, and science is at best only the peripheral trappings to that mystery–a ragged barbed-wire fence through which mystery travels, back and forth, unencumbered by anything so frail as man’s knowledge.” – ― Rick Bass, The Sky, the Stars, the Wilderness

Montana thunderstorm – photo by chrisdat on Flickr

We often use the phrase awe-inspiring to describe sunsets, powerful storms, scenic mountain vistas, our favorite music, heroes and heroines and all manner of other things that are larger and more wondrous and more powerful than ourselves.

Before we can tell memorable stories, we need to discover what in our lives is awe-inspiring and then hold that close in our hearts and celebrate it and allow it to flavor our writing. When we do this, we link up to the readers’ on-going search for the kinds of plots and themes and characters that add magic and wonder to their lives.

Larger than life characters are part of the mix. So, too, exotic locations, the dangers of wind and sea and storms, tranquility and peace so dear one can almost touch their source, memorable choices that place characters at risk, and love in many forms.

If you, as a writer, feel awe as you think about the subject matter, location, plots, themes and characters of a prospective story, you have a better chance of connecting with readers than you would if everything about the project seemed rather flat and monotonal.

Your story need not be something over the top like Lord of the Rings, The Da Vinci Code, Raiders of the Lost Ark or Game of Thrones to inspire awe as you write it and as readers discover it. Quiet moments can also inspire awe; so can low-key plots. The awe comes from you and on how you react to the world.

If mountains inspire you, then you will write of mountains. If children inspire you, they will find their way into your stories. If something attracts and holds your attention and “asks you” to contemplate its beauty, mystery and power, then you will end up the best kind of nourishment for writers.

–Malcolm

I find awe and wonder in mountains. I cannot help but write about them. You will find mountains in The Sun Singer, Sarabande and The Seeker and, I hope, a dash of awe. They also contain magic, but you expect that because they are contemporary fantasies!

A Glacier Park Novel

Review: ‘Glacier Park Lodge: Celebrating 100 Years’ by Christine Barnes

Glacier Park Lodge: Celebrating 100 Years, by Christine Barnes, photography by Fred Pflughoft, David Morris, and Douglass Dye, Farcountry Press (May 2013), 64 pages.

The Swiss-style Glacier Park Lodge on the eastern side of Montana’s Glacier National Park was built by the Great Northern Railway (now BNSF) one hundred years ago as a tourist destination for railroad passengers. While the railroad sold its lodging facilities in 1957 and ended its passenger service in 1971, the rustic hotel with its central roof supported by massive Douglas firs has endured through the years as the “Gateway to Glacier.”

Christine Barnes has captured the spirit of the historic hotel with an accurate overview of “Big Tree Lodge” accompanied by an extravagant collection of archival and color photographs in Glacier Park Lodge: Celebrating 100 Years.

If the Great Northern Railway’s transcontinental route from Minnesota to Washington was the grand dream of tycoon James J. Hill in the late 1800s, the hotels and chalets built by the railroad at the dawn of the new century were the great vision and legacy of Hill’s son Louis W. Hill.

“Louis had taken over from his father, James J. Hill, in 1907, but temporarily stepped down in December 1911 to devote his time to railway-financed projects in and around Glacier National Park,” writes Barnes. “‘The work is so important I am loath to [entrust] the development to anybody but myself,’ he explained to the press.”

As a book of memories, Glacier Park Lodge: Celebrating 100 Years describes the establishment of the park in 1910, the building of the hotel in 1912 and 1913, the railroad’s back-country chalets, and the area’s mountains and wildlife. The book includes a bibliography of standard Glacier references, recipes from the hotel dining room and travel information.

With the help of three talented photographers, Barnes’ experience as a veteran chronicler of old hotels allows her to distil salient facts and images into this small-format book in an accessible style. Her other books include Great Lodges of the West, Old Faithful Inn at Yellowstone National Park and Great Lodges of the Canadian Rockies. She was the senior consultant and historian on the PBS series Great Lodges in the National Parks which included two companion books.

Glacier Park Lodge: Celebrating 100 Years is a perfect introduction to the hotel for first time visitors and a keepsake for long-time hikers, climbers and other enthusiasts of the Crown of the Continent.

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In addition to three novels partially set in the park, Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of Bears; Where they fought: Life in Glacier Park’s Swiftcurrent Valley and “High Water in 1964″ in the National Park Service’s Glacier centennial volume A View inside Glacier National Park: 100 years, 100 Stories.

Contest Winners, Saturday’s Writing Prompt, etc etc etc

Today’s Writing Prompt: “Bubba, if I catch you eatin’ plastic one more time, I’m gonna tan your hide.”
The Real McCoys (lost episode): Luke (Richard Crenna) tells Grandpa Amos (Walter Brennan) that he dreamt of going where no man has gone before. Kate (Kathleen Nolan) overhears the conversation and accuses Luke of fantasizing about Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis). Grandpa tells Luke to get the stars out of his eyes before the police show up.
Inspiration: Bones, by Smoky Zeidel, “Last month, as we walked along Pebble Beach in Big Sur, enjoying the roar of waves crashing on shore and marveling at the abundance of wildlife on the beach, Scott made the most intriguing find in what I refer to as a bale of kelp hay (who knows what marine biologists call it; bale seems fitting, though). He found a single vertebral bone, tangled in the detritus.”

Only $4.99 on Kindle (I know you can afford it!)

Springtime Giveaway for The Seeker: Congratulations to the winners of the giveaway contest for my new contemporary fantasy novel. The winners are Cynthia, Kathy, Charmaine and Terry. Thanks for entering the giveawat!
Quotation: “If ever there is tomorrow when we’re not together… there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we’re apart… I’ll always be with you.” ― A.A. Milne
Lists: 11 Neil Gaiman Quotes on Writing, by Chris Higgins – “Neil Gaiman is a prolific author spanning genres — he has hits in the worlds of comics, young adult fiction, grownup fiction, television, film, and even nonfiction (I particularly enjoyed Don’t Panic, his Douglas Adams/HHGTTG companion). Here, eleven quotes from Gaiman on writing.” Mental Floss
From the Oh, Well Department: Since previous posts about the USS Ranger here on Malcolm’s Round Table have gotten a lot of hits, I had high hopes for Navy to Scrap Historic Aircraft Carrier Next Year. I thought the USS Ranger Foundation, a group trying to turn the decommissioned aircraft carrier into a museum in Oregon, would see the post and explain why they appear to have given up on the project. This is one post that didn’t get any traction. To bad.
Words to the Wise: “A good storyteller is a person with a good memory and hopes other people haven’t.” – Irvin S. Cobb

–Malcolm

Spring Fantasy Novel Giveaway for ‘The Seeker’ – Fifth Excerpt

The Novel

Adventure, love, loss, war, and betrayal in this gritty contemporary fantasy release in April by Vanilla Heart Publishing.

The Giveway

Leave a comment for a chance to win an autographed trade paperback copy or one of three Smashwords coupons for an e-book copy.

How to Enter: All you have to do is leave a comment, hopefully friendly, on any of my  Spring Fantasy Novel Giveaway for ‘The Seeker,” posts by midnight (U.S. eastern daylight time) on May 31, 2013.

Good luck!

Excerpt Number Five: The Beach

Wilson’s Beach Cottages on the Florida Gulf Coast

Now—as that blind poet once said—“when the child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared,” they went into the sea and he heard women’s voices singing a far-off hymn while Anne walked close through the incoming tide. They walked in the company of gulls and sandpipers, and a playful cocker spaniel puppy that stayed with them until they reached the end of Wilson’s long pier. Anne was saying, as the wind blew her hair toward the high water outside the confines of the sheltering bay, “We were good last night.” David kissed her and said “yes.” Last night in this place she had worn a sheer cloak of starlight in the diamond spray, her face no longer in shadow, and they had seen fire howling between their legs until the waves drove them down with murder in their eyes and all was claws and blood.

–Malcolm

Wilson’s Beach Cottages have been closed for years. You can see the book’s Amazon listing here and its Barnes & Noble listing here. Excerpt number one is posted here. Excerpt number two is posted here.

Review: ‘Inferno’ by Dan Brown

Three things are clear about Dan Brown’s novels: The reviews don’t matter because fans are more addicted to them than drugs. Years from now, his fiction will comprise the body of work most-often associated with the spate of globe-spanning puzzle novels linking historic events to  modern day criminal plots, even though the form was pioneered by Katherine Neville in The Eight. And, while his style continues to evolve, every book he writes will forever be chasing the sensation of The Da Vinci Code.

Inferno is another Robert Langdon thriller that mixes exotic locations (Florence and Venice) and ancient symbols and texts (Dante and The Divine Comedy) with a world shaking danger (the threat of a plague). Brown uses an interesting plot device here: Landgon wakes up in a Florence hospital with a head wound and retrograde amnesia. He has no idea why he’s in Florence and who may or may not be trying to kill him. (It becomes clear before he leaves the hospital room that somebody is.)

He must simultaneously solve the puzzle of symbols linking a prospective plague threat from a genetic engineer concerned about reducing the world’s population and the personal puzzle about his nightmarish dreams and how they’re connected to the story’s prospective heroes and villains. While solving the puzzle, Langdon and Dr. Sienna Brooks find numerous secret doorways and panels, life threatening moments and people who are determined to stop them for reasons as yet unknown.

In the past, Brown has been criticized by using endless historical and cultural monologues from Langdon and others to fill secondary characters in on the importance of historical events and their related symbolism. Obviously, this device was used as a way of telling the readers how centuries old stories and symbols played into the solution of an urgent problem of the present day.

Brown has toned down those monologues a great deal in Inferno and provided dialogue that more naturally fits into a story with one chase scene after another. You will no longer find five-hundred-word Langdon lectures being delivered while the bad guys are only seconds away. You will find a lot of Florence and Venice travelogue.

Brown describes the streets, museums, and ancient buildings in exhaustive detail. Imagine being chased across a town by the bad guys while having the luxury to notice every building, monument and street corner along the way, including those that don’t pertain to the story. The descriptions slow down the action but are easy to skip.

The descriptions also serve the plot because they tie into Dante and to the mad scientist who’s a Dante aficionado. The travelogues allow physical time to pass in the novel so that Langdon will have an opportunity to process the symbolism as well as the returning snippets of his fragmented memory.

Brown has done a good job stirring the characters into an ever-changing  mix of people who–at any given moment–might be trustworthy or untrustworthy. The characters’ motivations and allegiances aren’t engraved in stone. The novel’s over-arching themes are the dangers of overpopulation to humankind’s survival and whether or not one should use cutting-edge advances in genetic engineering to “fix” the problem before Mother Nature solves it by purging the planet of a lot of people.

Since the themes are real, they add a compelling dose of prospective reality to a story filled with symbols, iconography, Italian art and architecture, and the multiple meanings of Dante’s levels of hell. For Langdon and the other characters, a real or figurative hell may well be the story’s destination. Brown, I suspect, hopes readers will ponder whether hell is also Earth’s destiny.

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of contemporary fantasy novels, including the recently release story of love and destiny, “The Seeker.”

Spring Fantasy Novel Giveaway for ‘The Seeker’ – Fourth Excerpt

“The Seeker,” by Malcolm R. Campbell, Vanilla Heart Publishing (April 14, 2013), contemporary fantasy, 224 pages, trade paperback, Kindle, Nook, PDF

The Novel

Adventure, love, loss, war, and betrayal in this Book 1 of the Garden of Heaven Trilogy, The Seeker.

The Giveway

Leave a comment for a chance to win an autographed trade paperback copy or one of three Smashwords coupons for an e-book copy.

How to Enter: All you have to do is leave a comment, hopefully friendly, on any of my  Spring Fantasy Novel Giveaway for ‘The Seeker,” posts by midnight (U.S. eastern daylight time) on May 31, 2013.

Good luck!

Excerpt Number Four: Anne

After they finished the dinner they prepared together, after the meadowlarks’ piccolo-sharp whistles enfolded into the raspy songs of wind and creek, after darkness flowed up out of the cottonwoods, after they watched the stars materialize in the sky above the circle of box elders, after Anne’s Christian Brothers Napa Rose wine connected them to the light of the waxing crescent moon, they fetched an old horse blanket and a kerosene lantern and walked arm in arm up the bright path to the chokecherry tree.

David hung the lantern on a limb below the ripe fruit while Anne flung out the blanket. The pale yellow light spun a cocoon within the night, extending outward just shy of the altar upon which the sweet lamb was slaughtered in the eagle’s dawn raid eleven years ago.

Anne stepped into the center of the blanket and lifted her arms above her head in a long,

slow, cat-like stretch. Her figure was fine and young, and when her hair caught the light, the world stopped, cloaking the rising whispers of his blood within an immense silence, suspended and potent. She looked at him over her shoulder, eyes sweeping his body.

Then they looked past each other and waited for signs.

Coo-hoooooooooo. The call startled them both. Coo-hoooooooooo. High-pitched and cold, the song carried from east to west as the bird flew overhead. Coo-hoooooooooo.

“Oh, wonderful,” said Anne. “Is it a dove?”

“A burrowing owl,” he said.

“No kidding. Where does it burrow?”

“In the logs stacked up near the fence.”

“I saw its silhouette soar across the Milky Way, but I couldn’t make it out.”

“Wolf trail,” he said. “Look, it’s smoldering in the fire of the northern lights.”

She fell back into his arms and watched the sky. Beneath the fire, her hair was smoke in his mouth.

“Hold me good or the night will carry me off,” she said.

–Malcolm

You can see the book’s Amazon listing here and its Barnes & Noble listing here. Excerpt number one is posted here. Excerpt number two is posted here.

Navy to Scrap Historic Aircraft Carrier Next Year

Ranger – Wikipedia Photo

“The seventh USS Ranger (CV/CVA-61) is one of four Forrestal-class supercarriers built for the US Navy in the 1950s. Although all four ships of the class were completed with angled decks,Ranger had the distinction of being the first US carrier built from the very beginning as an angled deck ship.” – Wikipedia

In matters of war, I am a pacifist.

That said, I believe our troops merit our support whether or not the war they’re fighting in is popular or not.

I also think history and historical artifacts, objects and memorabilia are important, for they help communicate the stories of other eras. It’s been a pleasure working with museums as a grant writer and as a collections manager and seeing first hand how excited people can get when shown historic equipment, documents and photographs.

I served aboard the USS Ranger (CVA-61) during the Vietnam War. The war was probably the country’s most unpopular war. When I appeared in public wearing my uniform, I was intentionally bumped into on the street, spat on, and called a baby killer. Yet our history and memories of that time must be preserved.

So, in matters of history, especially those that focus on museums and other educational experiences, I am an activist. In Charleston, I have seen the displays on the USS Yorktown and I have seen the reactions of tourists and school groups as they toured the flight deck, the hangar deck, the mess decks, bridge and ready rooms of the old ship.

When the USS Ranger Foundation was formed in Oregon with the hope of following the examples of those who saved the USS Yorktown in Charleston and the USS Midway in San Diego as museums, I was happy to join up even though I don’t have the financial means to donate money nor the proximity to the ship and selected museum site to volunteer.

Ranger in 1961 – Kemon01 photo on Flickr

First, the educational opportunities here are immense. It’s one thing to read about military history. It’s quite another to walk through a fort, battlefield or restored ship. Aircraft carriers have evolved since the Vietnam War—I can hardly even recognize the modern navy uniform. As I write this, there have been tests of flying drones off of carriers rather than expensive manned aircraft. As a museum, Ranger could have been a piece of history on the Columbia River at the donated site in Fairview for many years to come.

Second, museums and other cultural tourism sites bring dollars and jobs into communities. Many studies have been done showing that a tourist destination such as the USS Ranger can bring in a higher percentage of every tourist dollar than other attractions.

Apparently this is not to be

USS Ranger Public Affairs Office on the 03 level. I am second from the right here in 1968.

I salute the long hours and dedicated efforts of the volunteers and directors of the USS Ranger Foundation. But I think I missed a memo.

The application process for the acquisition of a decommissioned navy ship is difficult, expensive and lengthy. Unfortunately, the Foundation’s application was rejected by the Navy last October. (See Foundation to Fight NAVSEA Decision to Scrap Ranger) At that time, the Foundation was looking for ways to have that decision reversed.

Over the Christmas holidays, the Foundation said that constraints were keeping them from having more time to develop their application. Here’s where I missed the memo, I think.

I never heard what those constraints were, what (if anything) was missing or incomplete in the Foundation’s original application, or whether or not the support of influential people in and out of government could influence the Navy to provide more time, reconsider, or otherwise work with the Foundation to save the ship rather than scrapping the ship.

Now, the Foundation is looking for another ship. That’s probably a reasonable backup approach. Nonetheless, I think we need to know:

Why the application was rejected.
What, if anything, could be done to make the application acceptable.
Who, if anyone, could be enlisted to garner political and public attention to urge the Navy to delay the scrapping schedule and,
Who, if anyone, could raise additional funds and increased public support within the State of Oregon to save the ship and bring it to the Portland area.

We don’t know any of these things. Perhaps, in knowing them, we would see that placing a historic aircraft carrier in a Columbia River museum site had too many insurmountable obstacles in it to ever succeed even if the navy waited five more years or ten more years.

A-4 Skyhawk landing in 1980 – Kookaburra2011 photo on flickr

I have worked with museums and I have seen the impossible done before. Those in the know said “It will never happen.” But it did happen, with money left over and with the partnering help of those who had been thought, by those afraid to ask, to be the least likely to assist a museum.

So it is, that I do not like seeing this project fade away without a ramped up, viral PR campaign and without the help of high-level thought leaders and influencers who might be able to make a USS Ranger museum a reality. A successful aircraft carrier museum helps everyone, including the Navy. A scrapped ship frees up space at a pier and brings in a few dollars, but otherwise helps no one.

Worse yet, our history is lost in the bureaucratic shuffle. Rather than fading away, I would have preferred seeing this project end, if it had to end, with nothing less than a noisy, failure-is-not-an-option, Hail Mary, damn-the-torpedoes effort.

As always, I wish the Foundation fair winds and following seas.

Malcolm R. Campbell, Journalist

USS Ranger Public Affairs Office and Naval Station Great Lakes  1968 – 1970