Blog Archives

THE SECOND AFRICAN AMERICAN PRESIDENT

1/31/2013

     The Second African American President
   I’ll not likely be around to vote for the second African American President, or the first Hispanic American president, or Asian American president, but when elected, he or she will owe a lot to Barack Obama.
   Obama was expected to make regressives gnash their teeth. They are. He was expected to become a target for all closet racists. He is.
   But he was not expected to frustrate blacks because he didn’t have a specifically black agenda, or liberals because he didn’t make enough noises about their pet projects.
   Instead he’s been a stalwart steady captain, brilliant at international affairs, a leader with a clear sense of direction instead of a weather vane pointing wherever vox populi winds blow. He sets a high bar for all future presidents, and banishes fears that a future African American, or Hispanic American, or Asian American, or Jewish American, or Muslin American, or Martian American would ipso facto not be up to the job.
   Besides all that, he’s given us Michele, and Malia, and Sasha, and Bo. How lucky can we get?

CLICK AND CLACK, THE TAPPET BROTHERS

1/28/2013

Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers
   “Don’t you just love Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers? Those jolly elves from Boston who know more about your car than MacDonald’s does about hamburgers?
   “Um, no.”
   “What? You don’t cherish those lovable buffoons, not a mean bone in their body, as ready to spring to your aid as a St, Bernard to a skier in distress?”
   “Include me out.”
   “What can you possibly not love about them?
   “They laugh too much. (Mutters) Pair of laughing hyenas.”
   “My friend, you have a character defect.”
   (Looks down.)
   “Not liking Click and Clack is... un-American!”
   (Sighs.)
   “Say something!
   “How about laughing jackasses?”
   “I see, a hard case. You think the world has too much happiness in it?”
   “Oh, no! There isn’t nearly enough happiness in this sad world of ours.”
   “You just hate laughing. You and the grinch!”
   (Hangs head.)
   “Cat got your tongue?”
   “I never liked that turn of phrase.”
   “What do you like, my friend?”
   “I like my friends. Am I your friend?
   “I doubt it.”
   “But twice, you said, ‘my friend.’”
   “Just an expression.”
   “Oh.”
   “You have to admit that they know a lot about cars.”
   “That, I do. They’re living breathing automobile repair manuals.”
   “If you lived in Boston you’d like ‘em. You’d need ‘em to fix your car.”
   (Wrinkles brow.)
   “Well, wouldn’t you?”
   (Shakes head, ‘no.’)
   “Why not?”
   “I don’t trust either of them.”
   “How can you not trust such teddy bears? Didn’t you ever have a teddy bear?”
   “Sure did. Loved him, too. But he never laughed.”
   “Is that why you’re anti-laugh?”
   “Oh, no. I’m pro-laugh. Just need a joke, or something funny.”
   “That’s where you’re wrong. Have you ever heard of laughter therapy?”
   “Vaguely, I think.”
   “‘Course you have. You feel low, start laughing. No jokes. Just laugh. Pretty soon you feel great.
   “Wouldn’t work for me.”
   “Have you tried it?
   “No.”
   “Then how do you know?”
   “I never tried to eat raw monkey brains, but know I wouldn’t like it.”
   “Not the same. We’re talking Click and Clack here, the Tappet Brothers.”
   “They laugh too much.”
                                                                        *

WHY NOT YOUR OWN PERSONAL PASTRY CHEF?

1/25/2013

DOG ONE GETTING OFF MARINE ONE

      Why Not Your Own Personal Pastry Chef?
   A recent National Rifle Association ad asks: “Are the president’s kids more important than yours? Then why is he skeptical about putting armed security in our schools when his kids are protected by armed guards at their school? Yeah! And while we’re at it, the President’s family:
   * is guarded by the Secret Service.
   * gets 1,000 security experts sent ahead when they go abroad.
   * gets to travel on Air Force One.
   * gets to travel on Marine One.
   * gets to travel in Cadillac One with 5-inch armor plate doors.
   * can take the family dog.
   * gets free medical care.
   * gets to live in the White House, rent free.
   * can have their family quarters re-decorated, tax-payer expense..
   * has their own movie screening room.
   * has their own basketball court.
   * has their own bowling alley.
   * gets fresh flowers every day.
`   * has a White House beehive with a beekeeper and honey just for their table.
   * has a chef, a pastry chef, waiters, and people to vacuum and make beds.
   * never needs to shop at supermarkets.
   * gets their laundry done.
   * doesn’t pay telephone, electricity, gas, or wi-fi bills.
   * has a Camp David getaway with a swimming pool.
   * will get a 6-figure retirement income, plus a staff , for life!
   * can count on daddy getting a fancy State funeral.
   Is the President’s family more important than yours? Then why are they getting all that stuff? Grrrr!

WAR ON WOMEN, INDIA AND THE U.S.A.

1/23/2013

War On Women: India and America
   In 1955-56, I visited Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Agra, and New Delhi as a member of a dance troupe. Wherever we danced, Indian dancers danced for us and I was swept away by the most advanced dance art on earth. it was Indian Independence Day when we arrived in New Delhi, and we saw a great parade that included dances by more than 30 cultures. In the Adjanta Caves, we saw the treasured carvings of an ancient civilization, in Agra, stood in awe before the Taj Mahal, were aware that this was the venerable civilization that had produced Mahatma Ghandi.
   But today India, now a great power, has seen its epic history muddied by an unspeakably vicious rape/murder, followed by the revelation that Delhi is one of the most virulently anti-woman cities of India. The crime exposed a deep hatred and fear of women, expressed by a young man who complained that educated women are taking men’s jobs. It echoes what I heard here in the aftermath of WW-II, when women were expected to relinquish their war-time management and factory jobs to return to kitchens and nurseries.
   No American can be self-righteous vis-a-vis India. Our recent presidential campaign exposed our own women-hating men, men who cannot accept women out from behind male shadows. The jejune delusions of ex-politicians, Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock, and Joe Walsh, cannot be laughed off, because thousands of similarly benighted voters put them in office and have not suddenly lost their fear and hatred of women. Those beating the drum for American exceptionalism, close eyes and minds to our own poisoned well of backwardness.
   India, with four times our population, must start to deal with its savage backward males. Swift and severe punishment of the perpetrators is the merest first step.

ROOTING FOR BOEING

1/20/2013

COCKPIT OF A BOEING B-17 FLYING FORTRESS

Rooting for Boeing
   The new Boeing 787 Dreamliner is having teething troubles: overheating batteries, leaking oil, cracked window, grounded by all the airlines. Boeing says all new planes have them, which is true. When I learned to fly Boeing’s great B-17 Flying Fortress in 1944, it was the latest G model, teething troubles over. And yet, the one I flew across the Atlantic, had a new “formation stick,” kind of like hopped-up power steering. The first and only time I switched it on, it flipped the plane on its side. I switched it off.
`   “Don’t touch the damn thing!” said an instructor—after I already had. Nobody used it, and anyway, B-17s, sensitive and responsive, flew formation beautifully without it. I learned to love every inch, from the bucket seat, comfortable for 10-hour missions, to the thunder when I advanced the throttles on takeoff using the middle grips that controlled all four engines at once, to the contented purr of its engines when perfectly synchronized.
   After Victory in Europe Day, I was assigned to the “White Project,” flying troops from Italy to Morocco, first stage of their eventual redeployment to the Pacific. B-17s are inefficient troop transports, but with the Pacific war still on and thousands sitting around, slews of idle pilots, and millions of gallons of 100-octane gasolIne, it made perfect sense. We took off from an airstrip at Pomigliano near Naples, passed by Mt. Vesuvius, over the sparkling Bay of Naples, caught sight of the southern tip of Sardinia, angled southwest, crossed the Mediterranean, kept the coast of Africa in view until Gibraltar, hung a left, landed in Rabat, debarked the troops, flew back the next day. Two or three trips a week until one day, I picked up a mid-flight radio message that Japan had surrendered. I immediately told the troops sprawled out in the waist, and they broke out bottles. When we landed, they had to be shoveled out of the plane.
   After that, nothing for obsolete bomber pilots to do except fly a minimum four hours a month to maintain flying status. We'd sign out a B-17 like you sign out a basketball in high school, fly to Rome, Pisa. Cairo, Marseille.
   Twenty years later, when my photog brother, Alfred, had an advertising job shooting a Boeing 707, he asked me to model the pilot. “Thought you’d like to sit in a Boeing cockpit again.”
   Amazingly, it had much the same look and feel of my old war bird! And why not? If it ain’t broke...
   Today, more than sixty-five years later, I feel Boeing’s pain. But the folks who made the B17 Flying Fortress, with a great tradition behind them, will soon have the 787 Dreamliner purring. Book me a flight!

HAS THE UNCIVIL WAR STARTED?

1/13/2013

Was It the Opening Shot of UnCivil War?
     "Gun Enthusiast With Popular Online Videos Is Shot to Death in Georgia." It was in the New York Times, Friday, Jan 11, 2013, page A17, Keith Ratliff, 32 years old, from Carnesville. He posted videos to the web which usually ended with something blowing up. An expert gunsmith, he had three and a half million subscribers, 500 million views. Police found him dead in his office on January 3, shot once in the head, execution style.
   But not by one of his own guns. Someone with a gun had come in from outside and put a bullet in his head. (The 800-pound gorilla is getting harder and harder to ignore.)
   Was it someone maddened by personal loss, enraged by the NRA’s heartless refusal to acknowledge reality, driven by grief, rage, and obsession with revenge? You want 2nd Amendment rights? I’ll give you 2nd Amendment rights. A bullet in the brain.
    No one with a grain of sanity would actually do it. God forbid! But violence breeds violence, madness, madness. Tiny bodies in child-sized coffins, pictures of mass innocents slain, videos of funerals, loved ones in despair over lives blasted away, society wounded, savagery spreading from medulla oblongata—the primitive lizard brain—into hearts, arms, trigger fingers.
    Good Guy Keith Ratliff, surrounded by guns until a baddie came in and knocked him off. Are copycats checking over their Glocks and Bushmasters? Is the NRA stepping up security in its glistening glass NRA headquarters? Has it installed metal detectors, opened a “Check Your Guns Here” counter in the lobby? Or is Wayne LaPierre daring to follow his advice to the nation by adding armed guards, giving guns to secretaries, computer operators, maintenance crews, advertising for retired cops and military, offering sign-up bonuses to ex-Army Rangers and Navy Seals? Has the opening shot of the UnCivil War been fired?

NATURAL LIVES IN A GALAXY FAR FAR AWAY

1/10/2013

Natural Lives in a Galaxy Far Far Away
   Cat lovers are irrational, and so is love. Not centered in that cool core of reason, the over-developed prefrontal cortex; love is far more than sex or romance, and includes love of God, ideas, art, humankind, family, friends, nature. Some call love a Darwinian survival mechanism, the workings of a “selfish gene.” I call it love.
   My family was katzenaren, which means cat fools in German. We always had cats. Elizabeth and I now have Little Girl (photo above left) and Nero (sidebar, below right) who every day after breakfast, curl up on our bed for half an hour of washing and grooming before settling down to serious sleeping.
   Nero is usually on my side, Little Girl on Elizabeth’s, or, for mysterious cat reasons, reversed. Sometimes they’re both together, always a picture of glowing contentment. Little Girl, smallish at 9 pounds, is a one-person cat, Elizabeth’s, and regards me askance, except once in a while when for no reason I can fathom,, she’ll approach and allow me to stroke her soft head and back. But Nero is mine, a fine, sleek, 14-pound “Tuxedo,” white chest and paws, shining black body. When I see him sleeping, I can never resist a pet or a nuzzle knowing he won’t mind, and watch to see his paws clench, that tell-tale move kittens make when nursing, maybe to stimulate milk flow. But adult cats do it their whole lives to show pleasure. Nero never disappoints and I’m always flattered.
   Some keep cats as a practical matter, like my local locksmith, whose tabby guards against mice in his basement place of business, alone on weekends, yet round and glossy, seemingly no worse off for lacking companionship two days a week. Some people are wary of cats, some cultures fear them, and ancient Egyptians captured their compelling beauty in art. When I visited Thailand in 1955, I was amazed to see valuable Siamese cats everywhere, until I realized that they are the common everyday cats of the country once called Siam. Sir Isaac Newton, the scientist, invented the swinging cat door. After Charles Dickens’ cat, Bob, died, he had one of his paws stuffed and labeled, “In memory of Bob, 1862.” Edward Lear, who wrote The Owl and the Pussycat, had a cat named Foss. The Broadway musical, Cats, was based on poems by T.S. Eliot. Abraham Lincoln had the first White House cat.
   Nero and Little Girl have one job, to be loved and admired, and do it well, a whiff of the natural world in our technologically besotted lives. It strikes me as wondrous that these creatures, born for forests and jungles, adapt so well to life with humano sapiens. We steal their birthright as hunters, and imprison them in idle comfort to help us cope.
   Despite daily dispatches of human savagery, mendacity, and corruption, animals live natural lives in a galaxy far far away. They remind us that we are but a tiny bit of wondrous creation. Some we keep close by for their mystery and beauty, but we desperately need them all.

A NEW PARADIGM

1/7/2013

A New Paradigm
   A reader, doubtful about my suggestion that a new pro-gun organization is needed, pointed out that:
   * The loonies that kill babies are on the rise.
   * We have lost control of a once moral society.
   * The gun problem needs a paradigm shift.
   He made other powerful points, but there was one he didn’t make; the erosion of our tradition of a “loyal opposition,” in which opposing sides speak to and respect each other. The extremist National Rifle Association, considers all gun regulation to be a violation of the U.S. Constitution, and deems those who advocate regulation disloyal. Like other extremists, some of whom sit in Congress, they denigrate compromise. Traditionally the essence of the democratic process, extremists now consider compromise a shameful retreat. This is a blow against democracy itself.
   The formation of an alternative gun-owners group (one reader suggested, Traditional American Gun Owners - TAGO) would appeal to gun-owners dismayed by gun violence, and who support reasonable gun controls. It will also attract non-gun owners who respect of the right of fellow Americans to own a gun. Both sides would meet on the common ground of abhorrence to criminal gun violence, seeking real solutions while avoiding an extremist fight in which all, and the country, would lose.
   A new pro-gun organization would challenge the NRA to find leadership to represent its members, not gun manufacturers, offer an alternative for those who support laws against the madness that turns public places into killing grounds, and respect the traditional gun-bearer as a lover of independence and the land with a passion to preserve its wildlife habitats. This is the paradigm shift that our country desperately needs.

Author (Yuma, AZ, 1944)

Being 90 years in this world, with great kids, great grandkids, great wives (two, one at a time) and great memories, I wonder why some people seem to have stopped loving the U.S.A.? I will wonder in print right here. If you wonder too, or can provide some answers, please comment.
Stuart Hodes

       With my friend, Nero.
             April, 2012.
    Photo by Ray Madrigal