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Ramblings From the Ragged Crumbling Edge Of The Reality-Based Community

Thursday, April 21, 2005

A REQUIEM FOR UNHERALDED HEROES

...last May, the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, the primary federal wildland firefighting agencies, abruptly cancelled the contracts for 33 retardant aircraft to great consternation and controversy, citing concerns over the safety and airworthiness of these generally old multi-engined propeller-driven aircraft driven by the mid-air structural failures of two planes in 2002 that resulted in five deaths. After a great deal of negotiations and to-ing and fro-ing, a protocol was developed that would allow the aviation companies that own these aircraft and have provided the backbone of aerial retardant delivery for years to be able to certify airworthiness for this fire season and be eligible for contracts to work for the Federal Government. Last week it was announced that 10 aircraft had been certified for contract firefighting services for this year, seven of them being converted P-3 Orions of submarine- and hurricane-chasing fame owned by Aero Union Aviation of Chico, CA. Wednesday afternoon, during a check-ride/training flight over the Lassen National Forest in Northern California, one of those seven P-3's crashed, killing all three pilots on board, including the company's chief pilot...


http://www.air-and-space.com
An Aero Union Aviation P-3 Orion, in the Company's distinctive paintjob

...in my younger, thinner, healthier days, I occasionally found myself out in the middle of a burning forest on a fire crew attempting to do my/our part in putting out a wildland (forest) fire. To us nameless dirty grunts grubbing around in the dirt on some mountainside, the men who flew the retardant planes delivering that deep royal crimson fire-retarding slurry were sometimes the next best thing to God. They would fly - and still do, when allowed - these enormous multi-engined planes into places and under circumstances of turbulence and visibility that the designers of those aircraft would have thrown down their slide rules and stalked out of the office - never to be seen again - if you had seriously proposed that they design these old birds to handle these circumstances. They were our heroes. They saved work, saved time, once in a while may have actually saved lives, flinging these massive metal beasts off into the sorts of wild rides that any amusement park lawyer with half a brain would immediately quash in the design phase if the park owners suggested making people pay for that kind of experience. We never knew their names, just like they never knew ours; we were all just components of a large human/mechanical machine trying to stop a fire from consuming any more land than necessary. We only knew and know them by the numbers on their planes (such as Tanker Two Zero above). And now three more of our unknown heroes are dead. Even though we probably never knew them, we are diminished by their loss and we grieve with their families. They didn't die "on the line", but they passed on in the preparation for getting there, and in the end it's all really the same thing. There will no doubt be administrative consternation and hand-wringing over the large tanker program with the loss of a relatively young aircraft out of an already suspect fleet (the aircraft that crashed yesterday was built in 1966; many of the planes used up until last year were built in the late 1940's to mid-1950's). That, however, is for the suits to deal with; those of us who have spent some time out at the pointy end of this particular arrow are simply going to mourn our collective loss while trying to honor and celebrate the lives of three men who were willing to walk all the way out to that scary unknown edge at a moment's notice, always knowing that the chance of slipping off that edge was at least acknowledgable every time the wheels came off the ground. There will never be ribbons or medals or statues honoring the things people do in this line of work, but there are those of us who will always remember...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:10 PM 0 comments
THE GREENSPAN CONUNDRUM

...Alan Greenspan is at it again. Today he is obsessing with increasing stridency in front of the Senate Budget Committee over the national deficit. Now, I don't pretent to understand economics beyond some basic "Econ for Dummies" level. In fact, I rather dislike economics. Absolutely hated it in college, everything about it: the textbooks, the instructors, the classroom, everything. I suspected that seemingly rational people who enjoyed economics, even wanted to major in that field, actually had a hunger to be self-flagellating masochists but couldn't stand the sight of their own blood, so...hey...economics! As a result, I don't pretend to understand the deeper "inside baseball" discussions that fire up when Greenspan passes through the crimson curtains to stand on his balcony and deliver his ex cathedra economic pronouncements. I do recognize, however that this current deficit obsession of Greenspan's hasn't always, even recently, been his primary concern...

...the good news is that other, more knowledgable people pick up on the same thing. Ronald Brownstein is one of those sorts, and points out Greenspan's inconsistency far more eloquently than I could ever hope to (which is why he's a rich and famous journalist and I do this for free). And of course, there is always Paul Krugman, one of the best at making economics accessable us little people, suggesting the potentially dire consequences of Greenspan's complicity in this whole budget surplus/tax cut scam. I'll let them do the talking...
Posted by: Jack K. / 11:45 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

DID HE HEAR THIS ON "CAR TALK"?

...after he had put five rounds into the hood of his LeBaron, and after he had been released from jail for his troubles, Floridian John McGivney said:

“I think every guy in the universe has wanted to do it...It was worth every damn minute in that jail.”

...well, actually, no I haven't. I've had relationships with a number of cars, some of which probably deserved a mob-style hit. And I have hammered my share of offending broken auto parts into unrecognizable metal lumps in fits of frustration. And I know that the gunplay desire must be powerful for some, given the number of abandoned cars I've encountered in the woods that looked as though somebody tried unsuccessfully to drive them across Omaha Beach with the first wave on D-Day. Truth be told, however, I've never had that particular urge. I'm more into long drops off of high cliffs myself...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:20 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

ODDS AND ENDS

...over the past many months that I have been nurturing this personal ego-trip while at the same time trying to do justice to Ruminate This, I have built a list of blogs down the right side of the page that I read on a regular basis. It is neither as extensive or as inclusive as some of the blog rolls that can be found on some of the larger sites, and it may well not even include those sites who have been so kind to blogroll me (I have only the most vague idea about who may actually include me on a blogroll; the ones I know of I have included; those I don't know about...well, I apologize). I've added two more tonight; Suburban Guerrilla and The Mahablog. Both of them will no doubt not notice this "honor", given that they are far larger fish in this blogging pond than I am, but they are blogs that I want to get to easily every day. Suburban Guerrilla offers some intriguing insights and observations that are always capable of stimulating thought, and Maha at Mahablog quite simply has a captivating writing style that I have every intention of shamelessly copying at every available opportunity...

...I have no idea who actually comes to visit this site (except for the folks who occasionally provide tremendously appreciated comments) but my counter says you do. I heartily encourage you to visit all of the sites, especially those that aren't Atrios or Kos. There's some good stuff out there....
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:42 PM 0 comments

Monday, April 18, 2005

THE INJUSTICE OF JUSTICE SUNDAY

..."But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, amlice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old slef with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator." Colossians 3:8-10 (NIV)...

...Sunday, April 24, will be heralded as 'Justice Sunday' by a coalition of conservative religious groups and will feature Senate Majority Bill Frist in a program that will feature the theme that Democrats and other liberal fellow-travelers are robbing "people of faith" of their Christian heritage and religious freedom through the auspices of a liberal activist court. In those spaces where this is not malice and slander, it is simply a lie, one for which all the creative interpretation in the world cannot create cover. At the very least, absent any other charge, it slanders God-loving people of faith who simply do not agree with these religious conservatives that their particulary set of moral imperatives needs to be codified in law in order to force all Americans to live in accordance with their particular set of beliefs...

...amongst the laundry list of things that make me somewhat unlikely to ever be considered a poster child for "the true progressive" is my Christian faith. I freely admit to struggling to live the life that a 'good' Christian is supposed to live; as an imperfect human, I regularly violate any number of the prohibitions listed above along with a few others that we don't need to discuss here, but - like any other Christian - I believe that I have been saved by Grace and can with a truly repentent heart approach God and receive forgiveness for those lapses (including those I may well commit before I'm done with this). The thing is, these folks wrapped up in this "Justice Sunday" thing don't seem to even understand that there is a whole body of Christian believers that generally don't agree with their worldview and are slandered by their characterizations whom they slander with the characterizations of this press release. Then there are what appear to be the lies. Three big issues dominate the radar screen of the religious right: abortion, school prayer, and same-sex 'marriage'. The presence or absence of any of these big three in our society provide a challenge to neither religious freedom or Christian heritage, although they raise defensive hackles in certain quarters. All Christians are free to live a life unencumbered from any of these items; they are not forced to have abortions, they can still encourage their children to pray in school, and none of them would be forced to enter into a homosexual union. None of these are even difficult issues except for same sex 'marriage', and that only is because of the confusion created by the array of meanings of the word itself, which is freighted down with a heavy burden of religious as well as secular civic symbolism. The organizers of the "Justice Sunday" event, were they to be honestly queried, would - I suspect - be hard pressed to cite a situation where, in the context of a multicultural, multireligious society, they have suffered a loss of religious freedom or Christian heritage. School prayer? Nope; I'd go after 'em myself on that one. I don't need my children being forced to listen to some sanitized meaning-free mumblings that may not even honor the Christian values that I am trying to instill in my children (I say this, by the way, as a person who as an early elementary schoold student was subject to the daily bible reading and prayer). Abortion? Wrong again. Nobody is forcing any member of the religious right to have one and, at the same time, they are not granted the right by God as Christians to force their views on the subject on other people...

...Christianity is all about having a personal relationship with God. Insofar as the New Testament talks about relationships with other people and trying to exert some control over them, it deals with congretational members and the buttressing of their faith...or perhaps their defenestration if they just can't get it. All the talk about government being ordained by God is true as far as it goes, but there is no instruction on how to subvert or control government to create an inclusive Christian society. That can't happen anyway; there are far too many groups with their own religious systems who wouldn't - and shouldn't be expected to - tolerate some sort of forced conversion at the lifestyle level to the particular beliefs of the religious right, as there are plenty of Christians who would similarly reject such an effort. John Kerry said that, while he was personally opposed to abortion, he didn't see it as government's role to dictate the legality of abortion to other people. I've got no problem with that and I don't see it as any sort of wishy-washy kowtowing to the pro-abortion movement (it also doesn't strike me as particulary nuanced, unlike all the chatter from all the talking heads during the last election). As frequently is the case, there's a bottom line here: millions of American Christians don't buy what the conservative right is selling; they are slandered against and lied about in all of these protesting efforts, such as Justice Sunday, that are attempting to force a particular view of Christian beliefs on the society as a whole; and there is no support in Scripture for the outcome that these folks are trying to achieve. It would be nice to think that we could all get along as believers in Christ, but that doesn't look likely; it's more likely time to stand up and take a stand against the manifestations of a belief structure with which we don't agree and which some other agent is trying to force on us as the only acceptable "Christian" viewpoint...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:24 PM 0 comments

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