A Rain Barrel. Life is Good!

I just completed a rain barrel installation on our Edisto Beach house. Woohoo! This is the type of thing retired engineer curmudgeons like to do and talk about. It solves two problems. It intercepts the rain that pours off the front of my house and washes out the driveways, and it collects water for the plants. Our town water comes from wells and is so salty it's bad for the plants. Fortunately the town lets you draw free reverse osmosis drinking water from spigots at the town hall.

The white pipe is the overflow system. I drilled a bunch of 3/16" holes in the part that goes around the corner of the house to distribute the overflow water. OK, I paid a guy to install a gutter on the front of the house to catch the water. Fiddling around on the top of a jouncy 24 foot extension ladder is a good way for an amateur to end up dead.

The Model Airplane Family

As a child in Columbia, SC in the mid-50's, Owens Field was but a short bike ride from my home. I loved to go there and study the airplanes up close. I marveled when they defeated gravity as they took off or gently floated in for landings. The big airplanes were fascinating, but so were the model airplanes that hobbyists came to fly on weekends near the old Curtis Wright Hanger. Eventually at age 12, I built my own model, which was frankly a rather disastrous performer.

On Sunday afternoons an African American family frequently appeared to fly their models. That seemed a bit unusual to me in those Jim Crow days where everything was segregated. What I remember most about the family was that the model airplanes they built and flew were superb. They looked as if they should be carefully displayed in a museum rather than flown about over the hard asphalt. They were excellent replicas of actual aircraft including even spectacular multi-engine bombers. The whole family worked together to fuel them, start their engines, and set them into flight. They performed as well as they looked.

The family was as memorable as the airplanes they flew. They arrived in a late model Dodge that always gleamed from a recent wash and wax job. The family was always dressed as if for church. Even the young boys wore suits and ties. At the time, I wondered why they arrived so spotless and formally attired for an afternoon of play. Did they feel they needed to go the extra mile in appearance and decorum to assure being accepted among all the white people? Did they take just pride the fact that they far exceeded their comparatively advantaged neighbors in their craft? Did the parents feel resentment that they had to go to such lengths to demonstrate their competence and respectability? Were they encouraged and heartened by the acceptance and admiration shown to them by onlookers like myself? I suppose I shall never know.

Ten years after my idyllic Sunday afternoons of aviation admiration, I was designing real airplanes for Boeing in Seattle. My skills had improved since my first crash and burn model. I received tremendous support in improving those skills. In South Carolina I was allowed to go to good public schools and encouraged through my university years in a tough engineering curriculum. Those advantages were not available back then to the family with those fine models.

Over 40 years since I left South Carolina to seek my fortune in the great northwest, I have maneuvered myself back home. The other day I walked by the old Curtis Wright hanger at Owens field. It still sits there, windows broken and vines crawling over it. A cyclone fence surrounds the hanger and grass grows high from all the cracks in the asphalt around it. The carcass of an old B-25 bomber or something of that ilk sits like a ghost inside it. Jim Hamilton Blvd. and a skateboard park occupy the space where people flew the model airplanes. As I looked over that memorable space I wondered what became of the nice family with the perfect model airplanes. Are the parents all wizened and gray somewhere enjoying their golden years? Have the children grown up and realized their dreams? I sure hope so. I wish I could thank them for entertaining and inspiring me with those cool model airplanes.

Savannah River Stemmed point

I found a splendid large projectile point (arrowhead in layman terms) on the beach at Edisto Island where I have a so-called tourist rental house. I just looked down and there it was right on the surface of the sand. It's really a good one as you can see from the photos. The photo on the sand is just as it lay, before I first touched it.

I didn't have any idea of it's origin but I had visions of it being real old, like made during cowboy times or maybe even pre-colonial times. My sister recently met an eminent archaeologist whose specialty is Native American archaeology. I sent him the two photos here and he identified it as a "Savanna River Stemmed point". He said it was chert, likely quarried near Allendale, SC and stained dark by a long rest in the marsh mud for about 4000 years. That puts it in the transition from the Middle Archaic to the Late Archaic cultural period of Native American prehistory. Dang! 4000 years! Here I sit holding this thing in my hand looking at all the little edges chipped away by some guy around the same time the biblical Abraham was about to cut his son's throat in a sacrifice commanded by God. (For those without a religious background, at the last minute God said, "Just kiddin'; I was just pullin' your chain to test your loyalty.")

Anyhow, holding this thing sends chills up my spine. It's like a voice from the past. I wish it could really tell me its whole story. Did it have a short useful life before it was lost? Or maybe it was lost and found for several cycles of life. Did it ever stick in a deer, a bison, a man? Wow!

Explanation of the Economy

Many people are disturbed by something called "the economy", which is always misunderstood but clearly accepted as being caput at the moment. I shall explain how it works. In a nutshell the economy is an abstraction. It is neither a particle nor a wave. It is the other thing, a system. Right now it is a flawed system.

There are two kinds of economic systems. One is called microeconomics and the other is called macroeconomics. Microeconomics is where you have a maximum of two islands and two products, usually coconuts that grow best on one and clams that grow best on the other. There is a strong and logic-based science that guides the people on these islands toward certain mutually beneficial agreements that make all the islanders better off. These agreements involve the clever practice of trading some of what one island has for some of what the other island has.

The science of microeconomics breaks down when the two products are not both food, but something else such as guns and butter. It also breaks down when a bully owns all the canoes, or when somebody eats the cow that makes the butter. Then it is no longer microeconomics but macroeconomics, sometimes called politics. These aberrations that degrade microeconomics into macroeconomics are accelerated by a special invention, the IOU (pronounced "I owe you") also known as money. Money pretty much drives the nail into the coffin for microeconomics.

Since we are stuck with macroeconomics, here's how it works. It works on greed. Do not be intimidated by the negative connotation this word has in normal parlance; it is a good thing in macroeconomics. If it were not for greed, we would all have starved to death when we finished eating all the clams and coconuts. The greed is that everyone wants the money and performs conniving manipulations to get it, sometimes even resorting to work.

The macroeconomic engine runs on hot air exchanged between two opposing greed driven groups. The first group (called the Haves) worships the earth's first man, Adam Smith, and his only begotten son, Will Rogers, who described the trickle down theory. The second group worships Adam's wife, Eve, who was thrown off the coconut island for eating a coconut from a tree designated by God as his own tree. Eve scraped by on a sandbar with nothing but sand and seaweed to eat. The followers of Eve are called Have-nots and they espouse a theory called the soak-up theory.

The hot air happens when the preaching starts. The Haves start preaching the trickle down theory which reckons that if you designate some money (like in a stimulus package) and give it to them it will trickle down to the Have-nots, creating jobs and income on the way. The Have-nots preach the soak-up theory which reckons if you give all the money to them it will soak up to the Haves, again creating jobs and income on the way. As long as one side has hotter air than the other, the engine will be driven by a law of physics called the Carnot cycle. (Named for Eve's son Sadi Carnot who was half brother to Will.) There is a physical limit to the Carnot cycle's efficiency. Not all of the flowing hot air can create jobs and income. A certain percentage of it turns into entropy which is a lot of hot air floating away in all different directions.

So why has the economy gone caput? Simple! The Haves' aggregate greed slowly caught up to the have-not's aggregate greed even though the Haves were greatly outnumbered by the Have-nots. This destroyed the temperature gradient and the macroeconomic engine ground to a halt. What can you and I do about it? Our best bet is to go back to an island and eat coconuts and clams while something called the market sorts itself out.

My conversation with a Nazi prisoner of war

Who let Dr. Strangelove back onto the set? I'm speaking of Dick Cheney of course. (Yes I know. I promised a Nazi and I'm talking about a different brutish thug. I'll get to the actual Nazi a little further down.) So anyway I was watching TV the other night and up rolls Dick in front of the cameras, raving on about how much danger we're in. This supposed danger is because we might move Guantanamo detainees onto the US mainland, release some for repatriation, and stop torturing the others. Gad! We voted this guy's party and their failed policies out of office. Why doesn't he just shut up, get with his cronies and play golf or, better yet, go on a hunting trip.

OK, now for the Nazi story. I'll get back to Dr. Strangelove's ideas again later. Long ago, 23 years after WW II to be precise, I was hitching from Newcastle, England to London. I was picked up by a lorry (British English for a big truck). The driver right away heard my southern accent and asked if I was from the United States, Australia, or some other English speaking country. I told him the United States and he said, "Oh, I've only been to the United States once and that was only to Columbia, South Carolina." I said, "You're kidding; that's my home town. How did you end up there and only there?" He told me he was a German soldier in WW II. He was captured and ended up being held at Fort Jackson.

This led me to a thousand questions for Heinz (not his real name, which I long ago forgot) about his capture and detention at Fort Jackson. He said one of the first things that happened after his capture by the US military was that a kind American soldier came along giving each detainee an apple for a snack. As he relaxed and started relating his experiences it sounded more like a comedy romp than anything else. It reminded me of the TV series "Hogan's Heros" except with the roles reversed.

I asked him if he ever tried to escape. He said, "Yes, I escaped twice." I asked him how far he got. He said he only went as far as Columbia for a night on the town then sneaked back into the fort. Once he even asked a Columbia policeman for directions. The policeman inquired about his accent and he told him he was a Polish refugee. The policeman wished him well and sent him on his way with directions.

After the war he was released. By then he thought America was great and he didn't want to go back to Germany. He wasn't allowed to remain in America, but he managed to settle in England and build his life there.

I have since learned that German prisoners of war were also sent out to assist my wife's relatives on farms in Wisconsin and probably elsewhere too.

My purpose in relating this story is that sooner or later we have to release prisoners of war. Oh yes, I know that some Americans would like to just shoot them all. It ain't gonna happen, thankfully. There are many Americans who would like to at least keep them in high security incarceration forever in Guantanamo (No wait; we're closing that) or in Charleston's Navy brig (What? The locals are afraid to house them there?) Well, maybe in the federal penitentiary in Kansas (Oh? The locals don't want them there either?) Golly, where? Wherever we stash them it will cost a lot of money every year they are held but American taxpayers just love to pay taxes for the government to do stuff, don't they? Of course they don't!

My point is this. It seems like we always end up having to release prisoners of war sooner or later. When we release them we would like them to be sufficiently mollified that they don't resume or begin a life committed by rage to killing us. For an inside look at how we're actually doing it, read Chaplain James Yee's book For God and Country. I didn't find reference to waterboarding and dogs as we heard of in Abu Ghraib but the relentless sensory deprivation, humiliating harassment, and endless insults to their religion and values seem unlikely to change their hearts toward loving the USA. Would you feel safe releasing prisoners who had been abused repeatedly, had their sacred religious text mocked and vandalized, been shackled and taunted for hours (sometimes daily for extended periods) in interrogations seemingly aimed more at revenge than information recovery. Or, would your rather be releasing people whom our military had treated humanely like Heinz, provided with facilities for worshiping according to their faith, and even shown random acts of kindness.

Now I know what my conservative Republican friends are thinking. (Yes I do have some; I live in South Carolina after all.) They're thinking, "That naïve lilly-livered liberal has really lost it now. Sure, just give them some fresh cut flowers in a vase with orange juice and toast and hummus at breakfast and they'll be singing the Star Spangled Banner. Yeah, right…NOT!" No, I realize that we have already done irreparable damage with abuse of many existing detainees. Moreover not all the new ones we capture will completely forget their raging determination to do us ill, even with the most humane treatment. Anyone released must be evaluated by an intelligent process and cleared of criminal charges of war crimes by an open system of justice consistent with our own laws and the agreements that we have within the international community. I simply believe we will end up with a heck of a lot more detainees that we can eventually safely release and repatriate if we incarcerate them legally and humanely rather than listening to Dr. Strangelove who (incredibly) is still telling us to torture them.

Postscript on safety: Why are we so terrified of transferring the Guantanamo detainees to the mainland? We already intentionally release into this country unrepentant murderers and rapists every day when their sentences are up. Most of us even have lovable friends who (whether we know it or not) have DUI convictions. These drunk friends and fellow Americans slaughter 17,000 Americans per year, far more than the sum of American deaths in the twin towers destruction and the entire Iraq war.

Image of Virgin Mary Has Appeared in My Underpants

The Virgin Mary has appeared in my underpants! When I cast them upon the floor before my shower this morning I saw the amazing likeness. This is not faked! If I lie, I pray Satan will turn me into a pillar of salt or, worse yet, a Republican. At first I thought it was Mother Teresa but then I realized it was actually the Virgin Mary. Not the romanticized child face from Michelangelo's imagination in his Pieta, but the real Virgin Mary at a later age. Look at this image. Is this not the worried face of a woman whose eldest son at age, say, 33 is still unmarried, neglecting his day job, growing his hair a foot long, and running around claiming it's all fine because he's on some kind of self-devised spiritual quest?

I do not know why the Virgin Mary has appeared to me. I think it may be to reassure me that my house will sell. My cousin told me that if I buried a statue of St. Joseph in my yard upside down it would make the house sell. I could not find such a statue. In good faith, I went to garden shops but they only had statues of St. Francis and various naked cherubs frolicking in bird baths. Now I am thinking that if Saint Joseph is good, his wife would be ten times better. I think I shall bury my underpants in the yard upside down... unless someone out there wants to purchase this priceless religious relic for $400. Oh, the image is no longer visible because I am currently wearing the relic. You can even purchase the underpants along with the house in which this miracle occurred for $420,000. May God bless you!

Charles Krauthammer you've got your head up - uhh- in the sand!

An opinion piece by Washington Post columnist Dr. Charles Krauthammer appeared in The (Charleston, SC) Post and Courier titled "We owe Muslims no apology". That is quite an incendiary title. I infer that "we" means all Americans. The title and article offend me for several reasons.

According to the US State department, two to three million of "we" Americans are Muslims, making it the third largest religious affiliation in America after Christianity and Judaism. I have worked with Muslims. My best friend when I was a young man was an Egyptian Muslim. He saw me through a lengthy slump when I was unemployed and dumped by my girlfriend. He and his wife eventually introduced me to the fabulous woman to whom I have been married for thirty two years. I attended his funeral and burial in a large Islamic section of an old Seattle cemetery. We non-Muslims were welcomed there with kindness and appreciation by the Muslim community. All my direct experiences with Muslims strongly support former President Bush's often repeated assertion that "Islam is a Peaceful Religion."

So what about Dr. Krauthammer's claim that we don't owe Muslims an apology? We have been sticking our American nose into Middle Eastern countries and insinuating ourselves into their political conflicts and civil wars for a long time. Our noble humanitarian mission usually synchronizes better with American economic interests and majority religious beliefs than with neutral peacekeeping. Many Muslim civilians have been killed by Americans and other Middle Eastern groups armed and funded by Americans.

I know first hand of one Muslim who deserves a gigantic apology. I had the privilege of meeting Chaplain James Yee's Palestinian wife when Chaplain Yee was a prisoner in the Charleston Navy Brig. He was there on trumped up charges stemming from his kindness to Guantanamo detainees to whom he ministered as a US Army Islamic Chaplain. I learned first hand of the FBI's terrifying intrusion into Mrs. Yee's home and their refusal to tell her where he was or of what he was accused. Chaplain Yee was cleared of all charges.

Dr. Krauthammer argues that we not only have not harmed Muslims, we have done them a long list of big favors. One example he cites was the military campaign for the liberation of Iraq. Give me a break! This liberation began with a vicious shock and awe bombing assault, precipitated a civil war, destroyed priceless antiquities, and has taken the lives of well over a hundred thousand Iraqi civilians. Surveys of Iraqi citizens reveal that virtually all of them feel less secure now than before we liberated them.

The audacity that Dr. Krauthammer shows in his commentary is beyond belief. How would we respond to a title claiming "we" owe Jews or Christians no apology? All of the big three religions have at various times and places defamed the others, spilled innocent blood, violated their rights, or seized their land. The sooner we all quit keeping score and start apologizing the better off we will be.

Here is an afterword for those readers who can't see past the fact that Osama Bin Laden is a Muslim. Yes of course he is and he is arguably the most evil man of the twenty first century. Several Popes of the fifteenth and sixteenth century were notorious war-mongering fornicating torturers. They were Christians. You shouldn't tarnish a whole religion by the excesses of their most notorious intolerant leaders.