Thursday, March 07, 2024

Four Years Later

"Are you better off today than you were four years ago? The answer is a resounding no."

—Elise Stefanik (R-NY), March 6, 2024
***
I don't know about you...but my recollection of "four years ago" is pretty clear.

And as much as I'd like to forget that time—I really would—I'm stuck with memories I can't shake.

Four years ago I was busy moving our daughter home from San Diego State University—barely ahead of a pandemic rushing at us like a Cat. 6 hurricane.

Schools, businesses, and entire communities were hurriedly shutting down and going remote (as best they could)—the responsible thing to do in the face of a disease we knew little about and from which we had no defense.

Retired game show host Donald Trump, meanwhile, was telling people this new disease was no big deal, and it would be gone in a couple weeks—because it was "just like the flu."

Shortly thereafter, Trump would suggest people protect themselves by injecting bleach, or ingesting horse dewormer, or basking in ultraviolet light.

Advice like that—along with the Trump administration's intentional sabotage of the US response to COVID-19—led to the deaths of 400,000 Americans by January, 2021.

It's worth revisiting these little details when Elise Stefanik (R-NY) tries to tell us we were better off in March, 2020, than we are now.

Because she and a lot of other geniuses would very much like Donald Trump to be president again—since his last go-round was such a smashing success.*

(* If by "success" you mean the devastation and debauching of America.)

It's also worth noting that Elise Stefanik (R-NY) is out of her damn mind.

Friday, December 29, 2023

Browsing Through Time

Leila Lu Sorensen Miller
Oh, little darling of mine
I can't for the life of me
Remember a sadder day
I know they say let it be
But it just don't work out that way
And the course of a lifetime runs
Over and over again
No, I would not give you false hope
On this strange and mournful day
But the mother and child reunion
Is only a motion away
—Paul Simon
***
I was born in the 1960s, so my memories of that time are haphazard.

But if I close my eyes and let my mind drift...sometimes I still catch flashes of events from that era.

Like the day the a TV peacock unfolded its wings with a promise of "living color on NBC" (even though it was still black and white on our TV).

Or when a neighbor across the street warned us that something called the Beatles were "a threat to our way of life."

Or night after night of Chet Huntley and David Brinkley solemnly reading the toll of Americans killed and wounded in Viet Nam.

Or an AM radio voice announcing that Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated.
***
The girl up above, though? She was old enough to remember all of it.
***
She grew up on a farm in the middle of Nebraska, at a time when small family farms could still eke out a living. I remember visiting that farm, where her mom and brother lived with a little dog named Ralph.

I remember sitting high on her horse, Trixie, on a sunny day.

I remember sitting on her lap in a root cellar one night as a tornado roared past.

The thing that scared me the most, though, was the sound of a raccoon skittering across the roof of the old house...mostly because I didn't know what a raccoon was at the time.

Mom left the farm when she was 20, I think, and moved to Denver. She was 21 when she met my dad, 22 when they got married, and 23 when she had me. 

Along the way she worked a glamorous job with United Airlines, and left me with neighbors during the day. I didn't think anything of it, of course, because the neighbors' kids were great to play with, there was lots of Kraft macaroni and cheese, and mom was always there to pick me up in the afternoon.
***
Mom eventually left her job at United to stay home with me and my brother, who came along in 1968. A couple years later Dad got a job in Minneapolis, so off we went to a suburb called Apple Valley.

For some reason, Mom hated it. Even though she had friends there, women who took her on adventures she likely would never have gotten into on her own. 

Like the time they picketed the local grocery store for an entire week to protest high meat prices. Did it make a difference? That I don't remember. But one day the protest was over, and I don't recall hearing about it again.

Or the day we went to a Minnesota Vikings football game, then waited afterward by the players entrance to meet future hall of famer Mick Tinglehoff. Who, it turns out, went to the same little high school my Mom did.

Or the times she helped us dig tunnels and caves in the snow drifts that piled as high as the garage several times each winter.

Come to think of it, "Minnesota winters" may have been the reason Mom didn't care for the land of 10,000 lakes.
***
Browsing through photos of that era is a rabbit hole without end—and each one is its own little exercise in archeology. "Where was that taken? Who is that? Look how young they were..."

And there are *so many* of them. Giving each the attention they deserve could become somebody's life's work.

[sighs wistfully]

Mom peacefully passed away in her sleep sometime Christmas night. 

And while dementia had stolen many of her memories, just a few days ago she could still happily recount her childhood on the Nebraska farm where she grew up.

She loved to repeat the tales of her pet lambs and piglets—and she'd still get mad recalling the hens that would peck her and the roosters that would chase her around the barnyard.

Every time we talked she would ask about our current adventures in farming—and tried her best to convince us we should add pigs to our growing menagerie.

Her: "Piglets make wonderful pets!"
Me: "Yes, but they don't *stay* piglets, Mom."

And she would laugh.
***
I haven't thought about most of these things in a long time. It was a pleasant surprise to find them laying around my brain, waiting to be dusted off and held up to the light.

It occurs to me that memories are like the oldest Christmas ornaments in the box—precious and beautiful, but also frighteningly fragile. We can never be sure when—or if—we'll ever stumble across them again.

Or if we'll recognize them when we do.
***
I can't see the future but I know it's coming fastIt's not that hard to wind up knee deep in the past
It's come a lot of MondaysSince the phone booth that first night
Through years and miles and tears and smilesI want to get it right

—Jimmy Buffett, Coast of Carolina

Tuesday, November 21, 2023

The Opposite Of "Cowboy Up"

I have been felled by cowboy apparel.

This after 11 months of training, 28.5 miles of a trail race, and two weeks of post-race recovery—all without pain, let alone injury.

"Cowboy down"
Four weeks of occasionally wearing cowboy boots, though, and suddenly I have a knee injury? I mean, come on. How does that work?

I have a theory.

In running shoes (almost all I ever wear), I am a mid-to-forefoot striker (and have been for years).

In cowboy boots (which I rarely wear), I'm a chunky-1.5-inch-heel striker. The biomechanics (and stability) are hilariously (ominously?) different. 

So why am I even a little surprised?

Perhaps because I'm 14 years removed from my last knee injury—a torn ACL that required surgery and a year of rehab—so I *may* have assumed I was now immune to such things.

Anyhoo, that's my guess as to the cause-of-injury, symptoms of which include "Hey, that fcking hurts" whenever I use my left leg for something other than visual symmetry.

Quintas, in the wild
The diagnosis? I have an orthopod appointment in a couple weeks to determine that. With luck, it'll be something silly, like the phase of the moon combined with tropical variability in barometric pressure—all of which we'll laugh about later.

In the meantime, though, I'll be over here not-running, losing all my fitness, and occasionally wearing cowboy boots—because horses.

For the record, yes, he's worth it.

They all are.

Thursday, October 19, 2023

Always Worth It

Bubbles up
Never more grateful for
the existence of trekking poles
nor happier to be welcomed back home.

They will point us toward home
No matter how deep or how far we roam

They will show you the surface
The plot and the purpose

So when the journey gets long

Just know that you are loved
There is light up above
And the joy is always enough

Bubbles up
Bubbles up


—Jimmy Buffett

***
I had almost forgotten how many ways a long race can go wrong...and right.

This sunrise, which actually got
better the more we climbed.
Like, how I can sign up for a 55-mile event, finish just half of it...and still feel like it was an amazingly great day.

The H.U.R.T. Peacock Challenge 55 started in the dark, immediately climbing a couple thousand feet to look out over a gorgeous Hawaiian sunrise. 

That view alone made the hours that followed worthwhile—a mindset I rediscovered despite not running an ultra for more than four years.
***
Our farm sits on the lower NE side of Mauna Kea. The country roads on these slopes are almost entirely up or down—not a lot of flat to be found anywhere. 

Which makes it an excellent place to train for climbing.

This is fortunate since one loop of the PC course includes more than 6,200 feet of elevation. 

What our hills didn't prepare me for was 90-degree temperatures on "the Long Road"—an exposed, seven-mile out-and-back on baking asphalt. We get some warm, tropical conditions over here on our side of the Big Island, but nothing like that.

Woof, it was rough, and it left me wrung out and hung out to dry.

Miles 23 to 28.5 were an exercise in patience, as I was moving slowly through some acute physical lows. In years gone by I would have been deep into a pity party that invariably would go something like...

"What's wrong with you? You should be running this."
"I don't know what's wrong with me, but I know I don't want to be out here any more."
"Well, that's stupid, there's only a few miles left."
"You're stupid."
"No, you are."

...and so on.

None of that negativity happened on this day, because I knew what was wrong with me (electrolyte imbalance and dehydration), and I knew I was going to have to just settle in and hike the rest of the way.

And I was okay with that. Because it was something I knew I could do, even if it took a good long while, no matter how lousy I was feeling.

Also, recognizing I wasn't going to make the first loop cutoff (7.5 hours), it felt like there was still some honor to be had in getting back to the starting line under my own power.

So, that's what I did.
***
In these few days post-Peacock, I've felt a lot better than I was expecting to. My legs feel sound, with no pain at all. Which tells me the many months of hill training were on point.

As with a couple of previous DNFs of 50 miles or longer, I'm left to wonder what I could have done differently about my hydrating and electrolytes. The challenge is that none of my experiences at those distances have been similar, and no regimen has worked the same way twice.

Just when I think I have something figured out that I think I can count on, the ground-rules shift beneath me.

As it goes in an ultra, so it is in life.

Point me toward home, somebody.

Bubbles up. 
***
Toe the line.
Take the chance.
Blow up.
Struggle.
Fall apart.
Try again.
Worth it.

Always worth it.


—Sally McRae
***
Peacock Challenge 55

DNF

Shoes:
Topo Mountain Racer 2

Song stuck in my head for way too many miles:
"Surfing In A Hurricane" —Jimmy Buffett

Friday, October 06, 2023

Comparative Adventuring

"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing."

—Helen Keller
***
"forgot coffee at home. acquired some of the swill we serve here. set it on my desk, knocked it off with my elbow. all over floor and clothes. swore. opened cabinet to grab paper towels, cabinet door came off the hinge. hunkered over to sop up coffee, came up and hit my head on underside of desk."

—Me, on a work day, October 2011
***
It's become obvious that we have a problem with one of our neighbors.

In the past few weeks he's broken through one of our perimeter gates multiple times, and subsequently broken into our chicken yard an equal number of times.

At first we asked him, in a neighborly way, not to do these things, by quietly reinforcing the gate. In response, the breaking and entering escalated to a daily occurrence—at which time we decided to stop putting up with his bullshit, and called his owner.

Yeah, the bad neighbor is a bull—his name is Bambi, and he's a big jerk. He repeatedly 
put our chickens in danger of being crushed, and us in danger of being disfigured herding him out of the chicken yard and through the irrelevant outer gate.

In addition, we figure he owes us a new 6-foot gate and a new 30-foot section of chicken-yard fencing.

Fortunately his owner is *not* a jerk—he's been apologetic about Bambi's anti-social antics, and has offered to pay for repairs.
***
In this very same timeframe it became obvious that we had a parallel problem with a different neighbor.

This one decided it would be great fun to harass our sheep.

It started with frantic yelling at them, then quickly escalated to crawling under our fence and chasing them from one end of their paddock to the other.

Tired of our sheep being terrorized and traumatized, we once again took matters into our own hands. The neighbor in question is now tied to a post on our front deck.

Yeah, he's a Border Collie named Patchi, staying with us while his owner is on a photo assignment in Tahiti.

We *hate* restraining Patchi like this, but his herding instinct overwhelms his good manners. He literally can't be trusted off the leash for ten seconds. 

So, he'll be herding chew toys on the deck for another 48 hours.
***
Our work days have changed significantly since that October day in 2011. Our office is now a small farm, and the coffee is always good.

Sure, sometimes the work environment is physically hostile—but now we can actually take immediate and definitive steps to remedy the problem. It's quite liberating.

I'll take that seven days a week, 10/10, no notes.




Saturday, September 02, 2023

Precious Days

It's time for a change
I'm tired of that same old same
The same old words, the same old lines
The same old tricks and the same old rhymes

Days precious days
Roll in and out like waves
I got boards to bend, I got planks to nail
I got charts to make, I got seas to sail

I'm gonna build me a boat with these two hands
She'll be a fair curve from a noble plan
Let the chips fall where they will
'Cause I got boats to build

Guy Clark and Verlon Thompson, "Boats To Build"
***
I guess I just thought Jimmy Buffet would go on forever.

That no matter how many years had gone by since that 1980 Red Rocks concert, there'd always be another chance to catch him and the Coral Reefer Band somewhere, some day.

Waking up to the news that "some day" is now "never again" is hitting unexpectedly hard.

Sitting here this morning, it's funny to me that one of "his" songs that stuck with me through the years is one Buffett didn't even write. On its surface, "Boats to Build" isn't a departure from his vast catalogue of music. 

But the more I listened to it over time, the more I appreciated it as an allegory for "this one wild and precious life" we've been given.

Sails are just like wings
The wind can make 'em sing
Songs of life, songs of hope
Songs to keep your dreams afloat

Shores distant shores
There's where I'm headed for
I got the stars to guide my way
Sail into the light of day
***
Time to go build a thing today...



Thursday, August 17, 2023

Emergency Unpreparedness

On May 4, 2023, a wildfire ignited near our farm.

Despite the fact that our community was directly in the path of wind-driven flames, the local Hawai'i County emergency management sirens never sounded.
***
I wrote about it here...
 
It was one-thirty p.m. or so that we first smelled the smoke. It took all of thirty seconds to identify the source—a widening plume downslope from our farm, carried directly toward us by the trade winds.

It was, what, maybe half an hour later that the power went down.

By three p.m. the smoke plume had grown by orders of magnitude, and ash was falling like black snow. One of our neighbors, a retired firefighter, hosed down the long, dry grass on the north side of his house, obviously worried about embers floating in on the trades.

Meanwhile, we went through our afternoon routine, making sure chickens, geese, and sheep had extra food and water. Later we noticed our clothes smelled like smoke, which was less surprising than it was jarring.

Dusk came early as smoke swept over and around us. We brought out an array of battery powered lights and joked about turning on the ceiling fans hanging inert above our heads...
***
At the July meeting of our community association, we were informed by our County Council representative that the reason local sirens weren't used was that "...in the view of emergency management, there wasn't sufficient cause to alert the public."

Here's the thing, though—many people who live in this area could see smoke and ash and approaching flames. And since the power was down, people who were homebound for medical reasons were at risk. 

Despite that, someone at Hawai'i County emergency management decided no communication was necessary—not even a quick cell phone alert to let people know what was going on.
***
Between August 8 and August 9, 2023, a wildfire on Maui raced through historic Lahaina town.

The local emergency management sirens never sounded.

According to the head of the Maui County Emergency Management Agency, "...the sirens are used primarily for tsunamis, and that's the reason why almost all of them are found on the coastline. The public is trained to seek higher ground in the event that the sirens sounded. If that was the case, then they would've gone into the fire."

I suppose there's no way to know if people hearing an emergency siren would blindly rush out the door and toward an oncoming firestorm. Or if they'd figure out, somehow, that the alert was actually about the fire that was closing in on them at a reported mile per minute.

It's possible, one supposes, that rather than jump into their cars and try to escape on impassable roads, more people might have jumped into the water as the flames consumed the town. Humans are adaptable that way, sometimes.

But there were no sirens—because somebody in charge of local emergency management decided "the largest single integrated public safety outdoor siren warning system in the world" would do more harm than good.
***
Post Script

According to the "Siren quick facts" at the County of Maui web site:

  • The all-hazard siren system can be used for a variety of both natural and human-caused events; including tsunamis, hurricanes, dam breaches, flooding, wildfires, volcanic eruptions, terrorist threats, hazardous material incidents, and more.
A week and a half ago, more than 13,000 people called Lahaina home. Countless more worked and played there, against a backdrop of timeless tropical beauty. 

Today, more than 110 people are confirmed dead and a thousand are still unaccounted for.
***
Update:

"Maui Emergency Management Agency Administrator Herman Andaya has resigned effective immediately, Mayor Richard Bissen’s office announced.

"Andaya cited health reasons, the announcement said."