The feist and I took a walk to scout out a local trout stream and hunt some shed antlers. The first hour or two was frustrating as we found nothing but shallow holes housing six inch Brookies. Thereafter we started to see that there actually were a few holes where a man might be able to catch some decent sized fish. An eighteen inch trout could be seen in one six foot deep hole. He was chilling there without a care in the world.
I did wander off a few times to check out the surrounding area. This part of spring, before the grass and brush really start to grow, is one of my favorite times of the years to tramp through creek bottoms and forest. Winter's work is laid bare with the melting snow and not yet covered over with the green that will feed itself off of the remains of things made dead.
Contrary to the message in Dreamworks' Rise of the Guardians, the "the center of Jack Frost is not playfulness or fun but rather the starvation and death which sustains life.
On October 12, 2012, public health officials at Nellis Air Force Base outside Las Vegas, got an unsettling call. Their medical center’s emergency department reported that in the last three days, three active-duty military had come in with vomiting and bloody diarrhea. All said they had recently fallen face-first in mud, during a Tough Mudder obstacle-course event on a nearby cattle ranch in the town of Beatty the week prior.
That's right folks wallowing in mud with hundreds of complete strangers might expose you to bacteria and if certain bacteria get into your digestive tract, you will experience digestive distress.
That so few people consider the possibility demonstrates the degree to which homo sapiens are not natural born scientists. We are tribal, however, and if there is enough tribal status to be gained but wallowing in the mud, we'll brave the explosive diarrhea to take hold of our reward.
Our ancestors who demonstrated their toughness through their work and not as a form of recreation, would have the good sense to walk around the mud hole.
When I was first introduced to the idea of elements, it seemed very straight-forward, I never thought to ask where they came from.
Then I learned about synthetic elements and my mind was officially blown. Previously my understanding was that elements were natural and all the things we had or made came from combining or recombining them through one process or another. That an element could be created was horizon expanding and left me a little in awe of my fellow homo sapiens who had accomplished such a feat.
Even later in my scientific education did I come to realize that all the elements that we have did not just appear with the Big Bang (which is more a commentary on the kind of student I was than anything about my instructors) but were themselves the products of various natural processes present in the universe that made new thing out of the old.
Researchers have recently announced that one process, one kind of event between stars, can account for all of the gold present in the universe as well as much of the other heavy elements like lead, platinum, and uranium. Neutron stars collide about once every 10,000 to 100,000 years in our galaxy and those collisions create that yellow metal we value so much. An info-graphic, created by those preeminent gold top dollar pawn brokers, breaks down the process.
If we start with the overused Carl Sagan line about each of us being
made of stardust we could say that marriage is symbolized by the
creative energy of the crashing together of two burned out stars. I can't help taking off the wedding ring, holding it, and leaning back with no small measure of awe at how it came to be.
In response to the firing of the CEO of Mozilla because he refused to repent of making a campaign contribution to California's "Proposition 8," which sought to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, fifty supporters of same-sex marriage have made an important stand against gay-rights puritanism.
Their common-sense proposal called on civil society to recognize the value in the freedom to dissent from popular opinion, in this case to oppose same-sex marriage. Freedom of speech, what a concept! Freedom to dissent on religious matters (and marriage is and always has been a religious matter, even if it is a secular religion) without fear. How novel!
I'm not too interested in having anyone's Pope tell me how to think about marriage, let alone fire me if my ideas do not conform to local orthodoxy.
Opponents of same-sex marriage have, with just a small bit of defensiveness, recognized the gesture. If we could get such attitudes into the mainstream culture we could have the makings of a revolution.
Why teach Plato to plumbers, construction workers, technicians, and nurses? The short answer is because each of us is more than our occupation, we are citizens.
If the citizen has any defense against the opinion makers who would herd us in this direction or that, it is the critical thinking skills and independence exhibited in Plato's Socrates. He teaches us to recognize that the confident speaker may not be worthy of our confidence. He teaches us the kinds of questions to ask. As witnesses to his dialogues we see that most people may be well-intended but that they do not know as much as they think they know.
Plato has long been taught in the nation's universities and community colleges and many translations are available in bookstores and libraries, but instruction is not always made relevant and some translations can be intimidating. If you have an internet connection the engaging instruction from around the world is as close as your personal computer or smartphone.
I am just finishing John Holbo's Reason and Persuasion: Thinking Through Three Dialogues by Plato and have found myself engaged at a whole new level. When I first read Plato twenty years ago, the novelty was enough to hold my attention despite uninspired classroom instruction. John Holbo's presentation is first rate, relevant to how we live in the present and, importantly, totally free.
Why read Plato? It is a good way to be less of a chump and live a more reflective life. That is one of the places that patriotism and self-fulfillment overlap.
Critical thinking provides benefits in all areas of life: work and business as well interacting with government from the level of your average traffic stop to national elections. Yes, you can live a reflective without reading Plato but it is no exaggeration to say you are reinventing the wheel. Hell, some optimists believe Plato might even be able to expand the minds of MBA students.
I almost forgot, there is one cost to reading Plato and meeting Socrates through a couple of his dialogues. Not only do many people "out there" not know as much as they think they know, there is a good chance you will be forced at address that possibility that neither do you.
As the snow has given way over the last few weeks we have started our first garden work of the spring. The sheep barn was mucked out with all that excremental goodness spread on the garden. Peas and the first radishes have been planted. A collection of lettuce seeds spread into a bed. Trays housing seeds that will grow into hot peppers, squash, and tomatoes have been placed in the cold frame. Our top setting onions have emerged from their winter slumber and the apple trees will soon be setting out their blossoms.
On my next weekend off I will be cleaning out the chicken house, that manure cannot be directly added to the garden but must be composted, and putting up wood for the next winter. Neither is a bother, as long as I am outside.
On the whole it was the kind of day when one is thankful that there is no one along with except for the dog.
The dog is contractually obligated to think highly of you. As far as he was concerned, the day went exactly as planned and could not have gone better.
Secondly, he can't bring up the aspects of the story that I will leave out.
As background, I don't go fishing on opening morning, there are too many people. The benefit of my work schedule is I have the choice to go out when other people are at work. If I am with another human being it is because I know and like that human being.
Once I decided to head out I chose a section of river that I was fairly confident I would be alone. It requires a hike to get there from the closest public access and with the river fairly high, the area can be difficult to navigate. The place I had in mind, however, also has two broad deep backwaters that I had hoped would surrender some walleye.
After working Friday night, we headed out Saturday morning. I am old enough to know better than to do this kind of thing when sleep deprived but it turns out I am still too young to care.
In the first twenty minutes or so of hiking it became obvious that I would not be able to get to my first choice of backwaters without trespassing. The hike to the second, I knew, would be a lot more work. We'd come this far and I wasn't about to turn back.
While the river was not as high as my last scouting trip, I had not tried to get to that second back water on the last scouting trip. I had expected that the river level would be back on its way down but it was rising. To my credit, I only fell in twice and the second one didn't really count since I feel in as deep as my knee but was already wet up to my waist.
Still we picked a path and even cast a few times into the flooded oak savannah. The channels were four feet deep and running as quickly as most local creeks. The views were wonderful and the sound relaxing, but I still had to get to the fish.
To make a long story short, we arrived. I did throw out a few casts with a variety of lures. They were sinking lures. By some absence of logic, I had left the floaters at home. Going through my bag I did find some dehydrated liver we use for dog treats. Reconstituting them with some river water and I had a passable bait. Well, it would have been passable if I would have caught anything.
There ought to be fish in there.
The time passed and life was good. I saw geese, wood ducks, blue-winged teal, and ring-necked ducks. Musket and I watched deer pick their way through the watery goodness. The first turkey buzzard of the spring soared above looking for a meal. The first frogs of the spring could be heard. Too soon it was time to head back.
I thought we would be able to follow the backwater back far enough so that we could get around it and back to the car and maybe we could have. The presence of a bridge was a tempting enticement. The bridge was not made for when the water was so high, however, so again we got fairly soaked. My brave and loyal canine companion had to be dragged through the water.
Goodbye stink
At this point I was on the boundary between public and private land. The public consisting of a 60 degree incline with the backwater at the bottom and the private being the flat on top of the hill. Picking our way through the terrain, gun shots rang out from the private land. Turkey hunting was my first thought until the rapid fire made it evident they were target shooting. Either way I was glad to be below the sheltered by a few feet of earth above us. Keep your head down Musket. They're *probably* shooting in another direction.
A good time was had but no fish and everybody needed a good bath to wash off ticks and the stink. I think I'll stay home on Sunday or maybe even go to church and save the next excursion for Monday or Tuesday. There are some great trout streams nearby that the DNR maintains easements for easy access. I think our chances of catching more fish and fewer ticks, while still avoiding too many homo sapiens are good.
Wife: I'm not comfortable driving my van any more than I need to until it is in the shop. May I take your car to town?
Me: Well, I don't really...
W: Really? Are you really going to say you do not want me to drive your car the ten mile round trip to town and back? Is that what you are going to say?
Me: You are right and have a right to be offended. I am sorry. Take my car. I will see you when you get home.
(thirty minutes later the phone rings)
W: So I am at the auto body shop.
Me: You're where?
W: They say it will only cost $500 to fix. I hit a turkey. I am so sorry.
(silence)
W: I am alright though. (Sob) Hello?
Me: Do you have any idea how hard it is to hit a turkey?
Actually, I might have dropped the f-bomb in that last sentence. "Do you have any idea how hard it is to hit an f--king turkey?"
The fourteen pound suicidal hen met her little poultry god on Friday morning; before noon she was chilling in the freezer. To my bride's credit, she did all the butchering herself. When it is all said and this hen will contribute to four or five meals for our family of five. Expensive meat when you have to repair the vehicle. The meat is free, however, if another person's car serves as the agent of destruction.
Not the cheapest meat we've ever served at the table.
There is a taboo to eating roadkill that comes down to nothing more than posturing for status. Mention roadkill to your average hunter who knows how to field dress and prepare wild game and he will often stick up his nose talking about how the meat flavor would change in the couple of hours the carcass laid on the road. That same hunter, however, will serve with pride steaks cut from the big buck he killed at dusk last year and had to track the next morning.
I'd bet five bucks the same hunter could not tell the difference between summer sausage made from deer as the beef sausage that can be bought on sale at the local grocery, but that won't stop him from spending two to three times as much to have his deer ground and mixed. I'd even give even odds he wouldn't be able to tell good quality grass fed ground chuck from his ground venison. To the extent the taste of wild food is superior to what we bring home from the super store speaks to the quality of cut-rate meat and not some mystical superiority of wild game.
Field rules for proper food safety still apply but the issue of scavenging versus hunting is a matter of status and pride, two things to which the philosophical mind learns to be indifferent. Moreover it is a simple way for industrious but cash strapped families to eat far above their pay grade. If you are living paycheck to paycheck, you can pick up high quality meat off the side of the road or pay for the privilege of consuming pink slime. Eighty pounds of deer burger or seven pounds of turkey eats just the same whether or not there is a picture of camouflaged hunters to put on Facebook or not.
Some people make an ideology out of eating road kill as a form of waste not want not sustainability, or as a escape vegan-ism, good for them. Some people make it their source of protein for years or decades, I admire their dedication. In the seventies I think a lot of us did, to help make ends meet. I just know that it is free and if something is free it means I can use my dollars on something else.
Nom, nom, nom
way to
I'm a hunter. I like those photos. I look forward to taking those photos of my children as they learn to hunt but hunting is a matter of connection to my inner predator. It is part of humanity's nature. So is scavenging. Scavenging, may not be a year-long season (I'd have to witness an accident and be close to home to pick up a deer in July or August) but it is a much longer than the either the deer gun season and the bow season combined. It is also much more flexible for the individual who may not be able to get off work for the gun season or put in the time to harvest deer with a bow.
Before you do anything, however, you are going to have to figure out your local rules and regulations. If you home process your meat, most states still required you to get a
tag in order to take procession of roadkill, and that process can be either more or less user friendly. If you are going to take
the meat to a processor, you will need to show them the tag before they
will cut the meat for you.
Wisconsin requires a tag for possession not
only for deer but for most road kill and when we tried to obtain one for the turkey Friday morning it
became abundantly clear after four or five phone calls that if anyone did know the process, they had
the day off (Saturday morning is the fishing opener after all) and would get back to us on Monday. The plain fact is that
it depends in large part upon your local warden. If you are going to collect roadkill, get to know them. Ask them how they
understand the law and would advise you to proceed.
Secondly you need to find roadkill and get to it before other scavengers find it or the meat has an opportunity to spoil. In Western Wisconsin we can have weeks where the temperature does not get above zero and spoilage is less of an issue. At that temperature a deer carcass is as safe from bacteria as is in your freezer.
If you drive the same route to and from work, it takes only a little practice to notice whether or not a deer was in the road eight hours earlier. Taking into account personal safety and obeying all traffic laws (I'd be hard pressed to stop along our busy interstate to pick up roadkill that I had not personally hit). After finding your roadkill, obeyed your local laws and loaded it, the next step is to get the carcass field dressed and either put it up yourself or to a processor who can get the meat ready for your plate.
If you are scavenging in winter one hassle is you may find yourself attempting to field dress a brick of ice. If a local locker is going to cut the meat for you, you can check with them beforehand to see if they will do this for you. If you are doing it yourself, you might have to hang it in the garage and let it thaw slightly before prepare it for processing, but no longer than is absolutely necessary. Personally, I'd just keep a tub of warm water to warm my hands up in and proceed right away. If you need to be taught the details, it is easiest to have someone teach you but if that is not an option, there is always the internet.
A "Can-Do" Wisconsin attitude
After I field dress a deer, sheep, or any other large mammal, I will cut young animals into rough roasts, wrap them and put them in the freezer for later use. If it is an older animal I will cut the animal into quarters and place them in the freezer. When convenient we use a grinder to make our own ground meat and use the bones to make soup stock.
Can you come up with an excuse to not make use of roadkill while still complaining about how hard it is to get by? Of course you can. Do I want to hear about it? Only if you think this lady would find your story compelling.
With apologies to the Bob Dylan classic and a certain 2008 campaign theme , the times they are a changin' but not necessarily in the manner we hoped. Change is, of course, unavoidable but it does not always unfold as the optimists promise, pessimists fear, or self-certified experts imagine. Those of us in the trenches should recognize their words as statements of intention or estimation. We get the same from car salesmen.
Today two Ukrainian helicopters were shot down. Grassroots protesters with shoulder fired anti-aircraft weapons? Ri-ght. No one doubts that Russia is taking advantage of the mis-steps of a demographically ignorant EU and American alliance. Western mistakes of the past two decades do not excuse Russia's contributions to the destabilization of Ukraine, but context is important.
However we got here, a fight is brewing. The French contributions to the rise of German fascism did not negate the need to respond to the destructive military force it unleashed on Europe. The failures of Czarist Russia does not make right the Stalinist gulags or the Ukrainian Famine. We live in the present and at the present troops are moving. A later generation will have the luxury to apply the lessons of recent history's mistakes.
If willing to suffer the cost, Russia can dismember Ukraine. I doubt they'd swallow the whole thing history has seen those boundaries change many times before. The biggest cost would be to the nation's standing as a member in the world community. The expense of this cost is uncertain. As China seeks to remake Asia, and Iran and Sunni Islamists each seek to alter the status quo of the Middle East to their own design, the world community could look a lot differently in the decade to come.
The past is outside of our control. The future is yet to be made. Today troops are moving and this Washington Post graphic illustrates.
Nature is change. It is natural that we should change with it and today that requires accepting the possibility that Europe, like much the rest of the globe, is becoming a dangerous place that we must meet with wisdom, resolution, and courage.
Marcus Aurelius wrote, "the universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make of it."This was first illustrated to me in a children's book that I first read, as you might expect, as a child: Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel.
The story in brief begins with Mike and his steam shovel, Mary Ann, proudly building America during the first industrial revolution only to find themselves replaced by new diesel powered machinery. Steam shovels are thrown aside and our builders find themselves cast off and without a place in the world they had known. Mary Ann is confronted with an existential threat. Mike finds his loyalty tested.
The ending is a happy one. It is a story of adapting to change and I am not going to spoil it for you. I'd bet your local library has a well worn copy.
I smile as all these Boomers looking to escape their lives and embrace a third or fourth act. That is a lie. I find myself wanting to throat-punch them, but I ought to be a detached enough observer to meet them with a smile so I try to "fake it until I make it."
Their first act was the hippy phase. They spawned Gen X during this time. Now we all question our sanity regarding the decision to have children from time to time but most of us go out of our way to 1) hide this fact from our children and 2) blame ourselves and our own character for failing to rise to the task.
Boomers emotions about parenthood came out sideways
This was probably the experience of most Boomers as they raised Gen X and their own internal venting at parenthood and the demands of children can be seen in the movies which they wrote, produced, and paid good money to see. The problem arose from their ideology of child rearing, which was notable in believing children did not need to be protected from their own venting. So many of us watched Rosemary's Baby, Firestarter, Poltergeist, Children of the Corn and a plethora of lesser movies featuring demonic children when we ourselves were children.
Exhibit A) Our parents our very busy living their own lives and leave us as the latchkey kids. Exhibit B) Children are portrayed as demons in movies. Exhibit C) They seem very anxious to see me find my own games to play and things to do so long as it away from them. The lesson we learned, this is what adults see when they look at us. The truth was more complicated, they were young and often in difficult financial straits as they and the nation recovered from the inflation of the seventies and early eighties.
The hippie ideology was discarded as Boomers got richer and older and the opportunities of money and maturity become available to them. They became "yuppies," gave birth to Gen Y, and changed their parenting practice. Tipper Gore led the public charge for protecting children from adult music lyrics. No doubt the campaign that followed only slowed the cultural trend but it did reflect the attitude change among parents, an attitude that may have only impacted media on the margins but denoted a change in how parents thought about and, as a result, treated their children.
More movies were increasingly made specifically for children so the change in theme was marked. There began talk of cleaning up prime time television. Supervised after school activities were organized and paid for. Being a generation Y kid had its own dangers however. In the seventies and early eighties a child who was just a little too feral would just blame himself for his father's drinking and go explore the Playboy collection the farmer next door kept hidden in the barn. Millennials, if they persisted in being too feral, too non-compliant, would find themselves medicated for their disorder.
Child impeding your freedom? There is a pill for that.
From one extreme to another, first children were treated as threat to freedom, later children were made the center of the universe with the impact that adolescence was extended into a person's twenties. God forbid they have to buy their own health insurance until age 26! Now some Boomers are asking themselves how to get their kids to stop asking them for money. Well, when you tell someone they are the center of the universe and deserving of the best from early childhood, they tend to believe you.
Must Miss TV
The irony should not be lost, however, to hear how the most self-absorbed generation is complaining about how self-absorbed their children are. Really? I remember what the Boomers were like in midlife. If it were possible to set up a scale of generational self-absorption, could anything top "thirtysomething"?
Kidding aside, there is a subtle difference that should be emphasized. The Boomers were self-absorbed with themselves as a cohort, in part because so few of them as individuals actually took part in the great accomplishments attributed to the generation. Only so many were at Woodstock, or actually marched with Martin Luther King Jr. There sense of greatness is a kind of Boomer Exceptionalism that, like American Exceptionalism, credits the individual with a portion of the accomplishments of a few.
To the extent Millennials are self-absorbed, they are absorbed in their own existential experience of the present and I find they are largely aware of the fact and even seek to push back against that impulse. Only time will tell but it strikes me as entirely possible that millennials could "flip" and become quite the cohesive cohort. If I would voice any concern it would be how quickly they feel stuck in the limited options presented before them. They are too easily made "helpless" and believe the choices offered to them are the only options available. They've rarely had to make their own games, organize their own teams, pick, let alone win their own fights. Like the Greatest Generation, I expect once adequately inspired, they will be great at following orders and working as a team. Resistance to their hegemony will not be futile but it may feel like it for a time.
How Boomers viewed the GI generation when they were "in the way"
and after they were safely marginalized.
Before the Boomers lauded their parents as the "Greatest Generation"
they were attacking them as the source of oppression and colonialism,
both at home and abroad. Some of that criticism was warranted, it is
the change of attitude that I find interesting. In the years of attack,
the generation that won the Second World War was portrayed as Archie
Bunker. Once cultural and political power was assumed, Boomers than
swapped that image for one closer to Captain John Miller's in Saving
Private Ryan.
There is no secret Boomer conspiracy. None of these
developments were preplanned. It all happened at the level of emergent
order as people of a similar age and life experience react,
uncritically, to the world around them. In the real world, however, the WW2 hero and 1964's old white man reactionary were the same person.
The source of my surprise is how I can still hear Boomers complaining about and discounting either their parents' experiences, (and that refrain was getting old in the seventies), or those who have followed them. Just this month I heard a Boomer talking about how great the "Greatest Generation" had it. Really? Last time I checked a good percentage of them grew up hungry and had to work to support their families. Even those that were well fed, knew deprivation of various sorts unknown to any generation since. Vietnam was a tragedy but the casualties were 20% of that of World War II. Yes, it sucks not winning and all, go tell how bad it was to the veterans of the Korean War. Even the few cultural reflections of the Korean War that took place were used as a sideways way to talk about Vietnam.
Every time a Boomer complains about generations X or Y, however, I just remind them that we are largely the children of Boomers and ask, "Was it nature or nurture that made the problem you deride?
Boomer's Don Henley and Glenn Frey seemed to have a succinct description of the Boomer mindset as early as 1973,
Now it seems to me, some fine things
have been laid upon your table
But you only want the ones that you can't get
It is a treadmill, and to their credit many a Boomer has stepped off of it at one stage of their journey or another. Good for them. Hopefully we will all mature as much as we age. Many Boomers, however, are still the knee-jerk pontificators of their own myths that they were in adolescence. Generational exceptionalism is cute when you are twenty but at sixty or seventy in makes you a reactionary boor. Those are the Boomers looking for a third or fourth act and getting their boob jobs, leaving their third wives because they feel unfulfilled, chasing another adventure while lamenting feeling estranged from their childhood home, grandchildren or the absence of settled roots. Still chasing a new trinket to satisfy a hunger based in a promise which is a phantasm: that freedom is found in freedom from constraints.
That poet of the silent generation was closer to the mark,
"Freedom's just another word
for 'nothing left to lose.'
Freedom ain't worth nothin'
but its free."
Freedom is not found in freedom from constraints but rather through self-discipline. The disciplined individual can disagree vehemently with another on a policy issue and not hate them as an individual. That too is a consequence of a discipline that recognizes the question is almost never an issue of pure good versus evil. Staying committed to a community and a home, scrimping dollars and living on less, that will allow us, fate willing, to have our home paid off in less than twenty years from the date we purchased it and before the oldest goes to college. During the majority of the time this will be accomplished with one spouse working while the other homeschools three children. That is parental freedom and will be financial freedom, both born through discipline. My family is not alone in this respect and it is not because we are not facing challenges.We are, however, willing to pay a cost for the freedom we desire.
Gen X learned of natural consequences the fun way.
As a member of generation X, I am fortunate. There were few expectations from either Boomer or Millennial. We were not taught to expect a utopian future, but a nuclear cloud, so every day appears as a gift. from the crib we've been told by the actuaries that the social safety net will be unable to provide for us. We met this information with the knowledge that no one was going to take care of us, so we had better do it ourselves. Our parents let us play in the street way back when we were cute. No one is going to bail us out as our skin sags and our ideas, such as they are, are eclipsed by the larger, hipper, and better organized Generation Y.
Is my generation without its vices? Of course not, but believing our own press releases about ourselves is not one of them. Like the Silent Generation support for the Boomers, the best we can hope to do is influence the cultural program of the rising Millennials. Frequently omitted from public consciousness and cultural power, our vices, along with our virtues, are more private.
As of today, I resolve to drop generational generalization, at least so far as it applies to my gripes with Baby Boomers. Where individuals, organizations or movements need to be critiqued or resisted, of course I will still act unto my best understanding of virtue, but let me bury the Baby Boom complaint right here. Acceptance of the present is as much discipline as it is interior state of mind. Hopefully the latter can follow from the former.
I feel the music video missed an opportunity to be great by indulging in completely predictable imaging. It would have been ground-breaking and marvelous in 1978, too bad it was filmed in 2004. It undermines the message to "walk tall" when the examples are banal. There is no courage in preaching to the choir.
Still, I enjoy the song and it requires very little imagination to give it a stoic reading; there is no good but virtue and no evil but vice, therefore "walk tall" or in a previous century's jargon, "be virtuous."
Finally a theory that actually fits the facts and requires neither mental gymnastics nor radical imputation of wrong doing: a fire in the cockpit.
At the first indication of any smoke or fire, the crew should have immediately donned their oxygen masks. If they didn’t, the smoke from any cockpit fire would have quickly overcome them. Seeing smoke, the cabin crew would have attempted to contact the captain. Failing this, they would have donned their smoke hoods and entered the flight deck with fire extinguishers.
However, if the entire flight crew was incapacitated, the airplane would simply have flown on autopilot until it ran out of fuel. And that is what appears to have happened.
What may have caused the fire in the first place? It could be something as simple as undetected damage to the center pedestal wire bundles, caused by rough handling during maintenance or a mouse chewing through the insulation. Once again, we will not know until the aircraft is recovered.
However, it is my professional opinion that, when we finally do unravel this mystery, the pilots and flight attendants of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 will be lauded as heroes.
I instantly thought of the 1999 Learjet that crashed in South Dakota.
Our brains are wired to make connections, even where they are none. We have an innate desire to create a narrative to explain the universe. Never account to chance what can be blamed on God's vengeance for our sin, witches in our midst, UFO's, or a government conspiracy. We want a emotionally satisfying "why" when the most we can hope for is a technically descriptive "how."
Maybe the disaster which befell the airliner is something completely different, yet still, I anticipate the final answer will be mundane and leave many unsatisfied looking for a more complex explanation.
On Saturday night, the day before Easter, I brought my wingman Musket to
the Twin Cities. On Sunday morning we went for an eight-mile walk
through downtown Minneapolis and later down the Mississippi River
waterfront. In the hour before we started I found a set of rabbit ears
and I thought it would be cute to have him wear them as we made our way
through town. What surprised me was the response.
My first hint
at the public response was a gentleman who stopped on a busy roadway
(Washington Ave), rolled down his window and shouted, "You and your dog
are f--king awesome man!" Children laughed, people waved, and numerous
car horns were honked. A tourist took our picture. An old woman came
up to me and said, "God bless you for doing this."
Really? I
dressed my dog up goofy and walked him through town so I could see some
sculpture? I'm not one to look a blessing in the mouth regardless of
whose god is sending it but I am sure there are plenty of people within a
mile of this spot doing more important work than clowning around town.
It
was rewarding to see how much joy our unexpected presence brought to
people, but I am surprised by it. Young and old, Muslim and Christian,
straight and gay, black, white, latino, and multi-racial, the homeless
mentally ill as well as men in thousand-dollar suits escorting women
wearing Valentino shoes cracked smiles, asked the dog's name,
said, "thank you" and laughed out loud. If I could bring that much joy
on a regular basis, that would be a life well-lived, even if I never
understood the process at play.
