A Bookish Boy

Although I've spent so much of my life dragging tons -- literally -- of books around behind me, I sometimes forget the powerful influence a select few have had on me. When I moved in with Ms. X earlier this year I promised her I would winnow down what we both thought was probably between 6,000 and 8,000 books to less than 1,000. We immediately started building bookcases at her house. We later determined that I had somewhere between 12,000 and 15,000 books. We gave them away to libraries, colleges and puzzled passersby as quickly as we could, but I still didn't hit my target of 1,000. She's been very patient!

It was very, very difficult to part with them. I've had visitors ask me "How many of these books have you read?" Duh. ALL of them. It's a terrible vice. Try to keep your children illiterate. One of my few innate abilities is speed reading and I used to read one book a night.

Only a handful of them have truly changed my life. The first ones included the scifi adventures that whetted my appetite for a lifelong interest in science. The first ones weren't something literary like Ray Bradbury, they were pure pulp like Tom Swift.

Later came books that had more substance, but were often pretty much ignored. Perhaps the biggest was "The True Believer" by Eric Hoffer. Hoffer had very little education -- he was often called "The Longshoreman Philosopher," but he had a first rate mind and had been deeply influenced by the horrors of the two biggest ideologies of the twentieth century -- fascism and communism. He eventually concluded that the followers of both were essentially the same people. At an age where I was trying to find my ethical footing, the lightbulb that went on in my head as I read has remained as a beacon of common sense for 40 years.

When I look at my shelves, I think I spot the "big influences" pretty easily. But tonight I realized that's not always the case.

It's Halloween. I set up a chair inside the door and scanned the shelves for some "light" reading to sustain me as the ghouls and Princess Leias marched up the walk.

I spotted an old favorite, but one I haven't read in 15 years: "Principles of Performance Driving" by Jackie Stewart (winner of 27 Formula One races. Still a record). I clearly remembered that I learned more about driving from this book than from any other source. I bought it after I was privileged to take a few laps at speed with Jackie back when he was flacking for Ford Motor Company. These were pretty amazing, glassy smooth hot laps on a banked track in a Ford TAURUS! Maybe more on that some other time.

I had been racing myself during two periods in my life. Early '70s and mid '80s. I'm a pretty good pilot, but was middle of the pack as a race driver (that's me in the photo circa 1985). Truth be told ... I could turn pretty hot laps, but was never going to be a winner.

Jackie's book had a big influence on me. As the years went by, that influence seemed to me to be primarily on my (street) driving, my flying and maybe my fairly recent motorcycling. Well and good. Those are pursuits where good advice can keep you healthy. As I reread the beginning of his book, I recognized a number of principles that I use on the road every day. Good stuff.

But as I continued to read the first chapter, I began to see something else. Something much more. I began to realize that this book was one of those that changed my life. A book about driving? Oh yeah.

I was about 33 when I bought the book. And I was trying very hard to grow up. Some of the growing up that people do as they walk across the stage with their high school diplomas still hadn't happened to me (Despite a high grade point average, I didn't bother to attend my graduation. I was in Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco trying to be cool).

But back to Mr. Stewart's "instructional" book. I had a real problem at the time with understanding the risk taking part vs. rational part of my personality. As the people who have REALLY known me will tell you, both traits are deeply ingrained. The fact that they are sometimes directly contradictory ... well, that was a real problem for me.

But Jackie layed it all out. There it was. A life that had no trouble reconciling these two fire and ice characteristics.

Jackie is dyslexic. He can barely read and in his foreword talks about what torture writing his first book "Faster" was. All I can say is, he may have to use a tape recorder to write, but he is truly a brilliant guy. Step by step, he walked me through how to make it work. If you have a personality conflict like mine, just read Chapter One. You'll be all better. I can't drive like he can, but I can approach some puzzles like he does.

I still have a dozen or so books that changed my life, but that's the only one written by a race driver.

Special, huh?

I want to take a Louisville Slugger and pound somebody with it.

This week the veneration and worship of Yankee Stadium is reaching its feverish peak. They need to hurry up and get this over with so they can TEAR IT DOWN!

What is it about we Americans that makes us so quick to discard the important things that make us American. Whether it's our neglect of jazz and blues when the artists are huge stars elsewhere or our headlong rush to destroy the origins of our greatest homegrown sport, we sure love to leave smoking craters where cultural icons used to stand.

I thought I was over the pain of the abandonment of great Tiger Stadium (every inch the equal or superior of Yankee Stadium) for the abomination of The Bank That Left Michigan Field, but this sad turn of events has ripped open the scab.

The Curse of the Bambino on all their heads! Especially the two chief idiots: George Steinbrenner and Michael Bloomberg.

And a baseball novena for the vigilant fans who keep Wrigley Field and Fenway Park so vibrantly alive.

The miracle of wings

The generous and thoughtful Ms. X just presented me with an early Christmas gift. We were in the mood to watch a movie, so she unveiled "One Six Right: The Romance of Flying."

It's a documentary look at a single airport and what it has meant to the pilots who fly out of it. I highly recommend it.

The film started me thinking about my many experiences around just such airports over 30 years as a pilot and the wonderful experiences I've had in the air. It also made me explore some of my deeper feelings about flight and what it's meant to my life.

It always brings me back to earth when I try to philosophise about flying. And I'm not alone. One of the old coots interviewed in the film says it's virtually impossible to describe piloting to someone who hasn't done it and I reluctantly agree. We've had very few "pilot philosophers" or "pilot poets" and they unfortunately tended to die young (think Antoine St. Exupery or John Magee).

Of the many, many feelings flying has produced in me, I'll offer a puzzling contrast for your consideration:

Often when flying a single seater, especially a high performance sailplane, you're faced with a sweet and sour or yin and yang sensation. As you listen to your slow breathing in the oxygen mask. As you scrape a light frost off the inside of the canopy for a better view of the earth far below. As you raise your hand to shield your eyes from the sun that seems so much brighter, more piercing than down below, you feel a terrible loneliness and unbridgeable separation from your fellow humans. And you also feel like a god.

I'll leave you with the most famous work of the aforementioned John Magee, an American who died flying for the RAF in World War II. He was nineteen when he died.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air. . . .

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

An old problem

I just want to put everyone on notice.

After a weekend of grunting and straining up at the cottage and enduring the aches and pains that come afterward for a man in his 50s, I was reminded that I've been meaning to say this.

I'm planning on being old. If I'm lucky.

Not a "senior citizen." Not a "golden ager." One editor of a magazine for the elderly even suggested "polygenerarians." I hope he was joking.

Oh. And one more thing. I won't "pass on." I plan on dying. Lord knows I've tried enough times already, usually by interesting and dramatic methods, but no luck so far. But I will succeed eventually!

So, all you young whippersnappers take note of the new instructions.

Mission improbable

I was scouting possibilities for the fall turkey hunting season. For reasons known only to the Department of Natural Resources, the northern Michigan county that our cottage is in will not have a turkey season this fall. This will force me to move one county west, which is no great hardship because the Pigeon River area is very beautiful. Beautiful, but somewhat unfamiliar to me.

So I made my way over to Otsego County to sniff around for good turkey habitat. I took a number of obscure roads to get to the general area that looked promising on a topo map. The roads kept getting less and less civilized as I moved farther away from the "real" roads. Soon I turned north on the quaintly named "Tin Shanty Bridge Road." Either the Tin Shanty Bridge is long gone or it's too obscure to notice, but I never saw it. What I did see was a road that kept diminishing until it was little more than a sandy two-track. I could feel my little two-wheel-drive Pontiac Vibe getting nervous.

The road twisted and turned through some beautiful country, with higher glacial moraine hills to the east filled with mature hardwoods (Acorns! Mmmm turkey food!) and cedar swamp and pine marsh to the west. If I was a chubby tom turkey I'd hang around here, I thought.

I occasionally had to decide whether to take a left fork or an equally unpromising right fork. I apparently kept guessing correctly because I didn't come to a dead end. No road signs, of course.

I realized at some point that I better stop and take some notes, or I would never remember any of this in November. I pulled over, as much as I could, off the road and stopped. I felt a little foolish pulling over, because not only had I not seen another vehicle the whole time, I hadn't even seen the TRACK of another vehicle (we'd just had a couple days of rain and the sand was a blank canvas at this point).

I had been scribbling for a minute or two when I became aware of a vehicle approaching. Hmmm, I guess there IS somebody else in these deep woods, I thought.

A silver late model minivan slowly passed me and then stopped slightly past my vehicle. A well-dressed woman in a skirt, blouse and nice shoes (!!!) approached my window. As I rolled it down, I was struck by how much she looked like the fresh-faced, wholesome movie star of the 1950s, June Allyson.

JA: Are you lost?
Me: No, are you?
JA: We just thought you might need some help.
Me: Nope, but thank you for stopping.
JA: Would you like to know how to have a happier marriage?
Me: Huh?
JA: A happier marriage. This brochure (whipped out from her secret brochure holster) will help you and your wife live the way the Lord intended. By following these simple biblical principles the two of you can get more out of life and be assured of a happy hereafter, too.
Me: I ain't married.
JA: Oh ... oh ... well.
Long pause.
JA: (Again dipping into the brochure holster) Here's something about how to deal with loss of a loved one. In a biblical way.
Me: Thanks.
Long pause.
Me: Say, have you seen any turkeys around here?

Man, those Jehovah's Witnesses really get around.

The conversation kind of fizzled out at that point and she wished me well and got back in her vehicle to continue searching the woods for converts. She apparently hasn't seen the movie "Deliverance."

I must say, though, that the chat ended more quickly and on a more friendly note than most I've had with religious proselytizers. Another life lesson learned. When feeling cornered, inquire about turkeys.

Bird Brains Part 2

As if Godzilla wasn't bad enough, they now have bird problems in Tokyo. According to a story in The New York Times, the Japanese are beside themselves as they battle an invasion of crows. The birds are spreading garbage, cutting fiber optic cable to use in their nests and causing major power outages by committing seppuku on high-tension power lines.


The Japanese have declared war on the birds, but so far are losing that war. From the Times piece:

"Some steps taken to reduce crows include putting garbage into yellow plastic bags, a color the birds supposedly cannot see through, and covering trash with fine-mesh netting, to prevent large beaks from reaching the goodies within.

Still, the crows have proven clever at foiling human efforts to control them. In Kagoshima, they are even trying to outsmart the Crow Patrol. The birds have begun building dummy nests as decoys to draw patrol members away from their real nests.

'They are trying to outfox us,' said Kazuhide Kyutoku, deputy chief of Kyushu Electric’s facilities safety group, which conducts the patrols. 'They aren’t willing to give up territory to humans.'

The birds seem to be winning. Mr. Kyutoku said despite the twice-weekly patrols, which have removed 600 nests since they began three years ago, the number of nests keeps increasing, as have blackouts."

While I sympathize with our Far Eastern brethren, I've been busy with my own "bird problem" for the past three weeks. Yes, folks, it's spring turkey hunting season in Michigan.

After weeks of scouting near our cottage in northern Michigan, I returned two weeks ago to actually hunt the wily gobblers. Because it's not uncommon to see a turkey walking along the road in this state, many of my non-hunting acquaintances ridicule this pursuit. "I saw 10 turkeys in a mall parking lot yesterday!" they mock. Yes, I answer patiently, but local law enforcement and the DNR frown on me hunting in mall parking lots.

And don't think the birds don't know it.

Two hunter friends joined me for the expedition and each morning we slouched out to the woods to watch the sun come up from our separate spots in the Mackinaw State Forest. We made funny noises for a couple hours while we stared at maddeningly empty clearings. In the evenings, some serious beer drinking and card playing was accomplished, but no birds were harmed in the making of the production.

It's a humbling experience to be outsmarted by a bird, but I think it's good for the human psyche. And one reason, I've found, why most hunters have a better understanding of nature than their non-hunting brethren

The Japanese are now wrestling with whether to employ "lethal means" to reduce the crow population. All I can tell them is that a loaded 12-gauge is no guarantee of sending a bird to meet his ancestors.

For another take on crows from a respected news source, click here.

Don't die before you pass the cash register

Is anyone out there in my vast listening audience becoming a bit uncomfortable with the increasingly cozy relationship between physicians and the pharmaceutical companies?

We trust these doctors -- literally -- with our lives and we'd like to think that the treatment decisions they make are based on our best interests.

But there's increasing evidence that those decisions are shaded, or worse, by financial considerations that have little to do with the quality or the outcome of the treatment.

My significant other, Madame X, and I were visiting her mother recently when mom whipped out a home blood pressure measurement cuff. Being a pilot, my blood pressure is checked obsessively by Father Fed. I've always been very proud of my blood pressure, the positive result of which tends to drive my flight surgeon batty. He and I are both stocky, to use a polite, if not very pilot-ese, expression. My blood pressure was always great and his sucked. After his nurse would measure mine, I would tell him that he wasn't drinking enough beer, laying around enough, etc. This would always send him off grumbling under his breath.

Mom's blood pressure cuff spit out a result I was not happy with. What? What's that number again?

This set me off on a research jag to determine what the right number should be for a fossilized specimen like myself and that led to ...

... a dandy piece of journalism by Seattle Times reporter Duff Wilson.

As part of a series by his paper, Wilson explores the sometimes questionable, perhaps a bit shady, relationship between the medical profession and big, BIG drug companies. How ironic it is that, in year 35 of our ridiculously expensive war on drugs, the biggest pushers of drugs of all are supported by the government. And that means us.

At a time when there is an increasing sentiment for letting government manage our health care system, it's wise to remember that quasi-public, or even governmental agencies are not immune to being manipulated by big money.

But, back to my blood pressure.

I knew that the "standards" for such things had changed in recent years. At one time, older folks like myself could have higher numbers and it was considered to be OK. At some point, we were all expected to log 120/80 or else. For many years, I not only hit that number, I beat it.

So I was all in a panic when the number was higher. I'm still concerned because the number has risen, but after reading Duff's piece, I now realize I'm being "played" as the youngsters say.

To read Mr. Wilson's excellent article, click here.

Michigan, My Michigan

If you ever casually insult Texas in front of a Texan, be prepared to put up your dukes. Most Texans have a passionate pride in their state that makes them react strongly – even violently – to a perceived slight. Though portions of their state are dusty eyesores filled with semi-literate yahoos, Texans puff their chests out at the sight of the Texas flag or the lilting strains of the “Yellow Rose of Texas.”

Michigan, on the other hand, is timidly supported by even her strongest adherents. For reasons I don’t understand, the fair peninsulas seem to stir only tepid emotions, at least publicly.

I’m guilty as the rest and have less excuse because I know better. With one brief exception I’ve lived here all my life and have seen just about every nook and cranny of the state. With all due respect to our Texan cousins, the Lone Star state doesn’t hold a candle to Michigan.

Ms. X has been a big, big influence in reawakening my long buried feelings about Michigan, especially the north country. She loves the state dearly and is not shy about it. We now spend a lot of vacation time (and dollars) right here and enjoy it immensely. The (now) resort home and, hopefully, some day retirement home we’re sharing on every spare weekend and vacation day was her idea. And a great idea it was.

Jeff Daniels of Hollywood fame has also influenced me to wear my Michigan love more on my sleeve. His unabashed and open love for his state should be an example for us all. If you ARE a closet Michigan lover, just listen to his beautiful rendition of the Civil War-era song “Michigan, My Michigan” for proof of his devotion. Makes me cry every time I hear it. Click here to listen.

But back to that resort home. Right now I’m looking out the window at a beautiful scene of brilliant white snow and the muted browns and greens of pines and cedars. The lake we enjoy so much during the warmer months is in its long frozen slumber. As the seasons change, and even day to day, the view offers a constantly changing kaleidoscope of beauty.

And water is, to a great extent, the secret of Michigan’s beauty. A sizeable chunk of all the fresh water on Earth surrounds the state and is sprinkled across it like jewels in the form of countless small lakes like the one I’m gazing at. If you like water, you’ll love Michigan.

But it’s not just the water. Ms. X and I enjoy the rolling terrain and gentle vistas as we make the trek up M-33 toward the cottage. The American Midwest may not have some of the drama of the west and east, but its serene beauty is a wonderful antidote to the pressures of the week.

And, lastly, the people are special, too. Maybe one of the reasons that Michiganders don’t spend more time bragging about their state is that, by nature, they tend to be quiet compared to a Texan, a New Yorker or a Californian. And more genuine to my eyes, too. No empty L.A. air kisses behind the ears or Bronx Cheers or cowboy hats with no cattle.

Maybe I should be glad that Michigan doesn’t get more attention. Places like southern California, Florida and Texas have arguably been spoiled by their own success. Anyone who has spent a few hours on a California freeway or in a crowded Florida park knows what I mean.

Those of us in the know will keep Michigan our little secret for a while longer.