R Blog

Hear! Hear!

The ace is acting like a man.

Statement of Rep. Randy (Duke) Cunningham (R-CA) ...

    “I am resigning from the House of Representatives because I’ve compromised the trust of my constituents.

    When I announced several months ago that I would not seek re-election, I publicly declared my innocence because I was not strong enough to face the truth. So, I misled my family, staff, friends, colleagues, the public -- even myself. For all of this, I am deeply sorry.

    The truth is -- I broke the law, concealed my conduct, and disgraced my high office. I know that I will forfeit my freedom, my reputation, my worldly possessions, and most importantly, the trust of my friends and family.

    Some time ago, I asked my lawyers to inform the U.S. Attorney Carol Lam that I would like to plead guilty and begin serving a prison term. Today is the culmination of that process. I will continue to cooperate with the government’s ongoing investigation to the best of my ability.

    In my life, I have known great joy and great sorrow. And now I know great shame. I learned in Viet Nam that the true measure of a man is how he responds to adversity. I cannot undo what I have done. But I can atone. I am now almost 65 years old and, as I enter the twilight of my life, I intend to use the remaining time that God grants me to make amends.

    The first step in that journey is to admit fault and apologize. The next step is to face the consequences of my actions like a man. Today, I have taken the first step and, with God’s grace, I will soon take the second.

    Thank you.”

Former Ace Does Crash and Burn

From Salon. com: “Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham pleaded guilty today to a charge of conspiring to commit bribery, mail fraud and wire fraud. In the process, the California Republican admitted to taking at least $2.4 million in bribes from a defense contractor and other co-conspirators. "He did the worst thing an elected official can do — he enriched himself through his position and violated the trust of those who put him there," said U.S. Attorney Carol Lam. In a tearful appearance before the press a few minutes ago, Cunningham announced that he is resigning immediately from Congress. He said that he has forfeited the "trust of my friends and family" and vowed to cooperate with an ongoing investigation.” From my post of a few months ago: Duke Cunningham, Real Estate Ace As long as I’m on the subject of fighter pilots let me direct your attention to Republican Congressman Randy ‘Duke’ Cunningham, the first ace of the Vietnam War. He parlayed his acedom into a seat in Congress where lately he has been doing two things: pushing hard for a flag burning ammendment and defending himself against charges that he is a corrupt politico. Talking Points Memo http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/ is all over this story. Briefly, a defense contractor and contributor to the Duke’s campaign made it possible for 1) the Duke to sell (in round numbers) his $750,000 house for $1,500,000, 2) Buy a $5,000,000+ house for $2,500,000 (photos here. Would you think you could buy this in SoCal for $2.5 mil)  and 3) live on a yacht (owned by the defense contractor) in Washington for dock fees only. If the House still had an ethics committee he’d be gone already. Instead, citizens of his district will probably have to rely on the  drumbeat of the local press and a federal investigation. How far do the mighty fall? One day in 1972 he shot down 3 Migs to become and ace, then was shot down himself and rescued in the South China Sea. He got the Navy Cross and became a Top Gun instructor. Oh yeah, there were those rumors of his involvement in the Tailhook Scandal. But that blew over and he was elected as a conservative member of Congress dedicated to assisting the defense establishment move forward and protecting the flag against whatever. (His special contractor/helper has supposedly tripled his defense contracts with the Duke’s help). Human’s have an infinite capacity to rationalize their behavior (okay, I’m going to confess the pruning job I wrote about was pretty awful) and the Duke is busy explaining away his good fortune. Back in 1972 as his F 4C Phantom spun towards the ocean, as his chute deployed and as he dropped toward possible captivity I doubt that he was thinking, “I’m going to get some payback for this.” But as time passed perhaps his sacrifice began to create an itch. Perhaps he believed he was owed something. Or, perhaps having been treated as a hero since 1972 eroded the lines of concience that might have once existed. If one is special, shouldn’t one get special rewards? Now, as he sits in his palatial estate enjoying his view of his other rich neighbors, I’m pretty certain that he will not believe that he’s a crook. He’s still an ace in his own imagination, lighting up that afterburner and taking out those Commie bastards who want to tread on our flag, shooting down real estate deals right and left. But, as on May 10, 1972 he’s going to crash and burn. This time there may be no rescue.

Not So Tuffy

The Tuffy scouring pad is not what it used to be. Everyone has their own personal technique for washing dishes. Some people like a wash rag, others a brush (with or without a handle). Still others like steel wool or copper pads. Me, I have to have a Tuffy. Technically a Tuffy is an SOS® Tuffy Nylon Scouring Pad made by Clorox. Clorox Company, you should be ashamed. I’m gonna guess that Tuffys are being out sourced to some third world country where the quality control has gone to hell. Why do I think so, you will ask. Because, my last two Tuffys actually unraveled after a couple of dish and pot washings. They sort of turned inside out. There was no integrity to the construction. Instead of a tough nylon weave, instead of palming a hand grenade-sized scrubbing demon, I am now holding something that looks like an old, unraveled sock or a piece of fishnet that washed up on the beach. In all my years as a Tuffy user I have never had a defective Tuffy. Tuffys would last for months at a time. And, now, two in a row. The first one I was willing to write off as a bad experience. An anomaly. A quirky deviation from the norm. However, when my replacement Tuffy went all limpy and wimpy I felt a kind of despair. Two in a row is a more than a trend. It is not a mere tendency. Two in a row proves that Tuffys are no longer any good. We humans don’t enjoy changing our habits. And when one is emotionally invested in something as important as a Tuffy, a critical implement required to maintain a tidy home and sanitary household conditions, and the Tuffy fails, heartbreak may ensue. I should write to Clorox and report. Ask for my money back even. But I’m too distraught to care.

Reporting from Lummi

"Bucolic" (of or relating to the pleasant aspects of the countryside and country life) might be a good word to start with. There’s not much going on. Start a fire in the morning. Drink a cup of tea. Do some news and read some blogs on a dial-up connection. The island pace is as slow as the dial-up. In the afternoon our grandson might come. He’s pretty much an outdoor unit and wants to move pebbles from one location to another or put wood chips in the wood cart or, most important, spit apple skins. The apples are long gone so we hide one in a tree like an Easter egg and pretend to pick it, then sit on a bench near the bank and watch Mt. Baker come and go while we spit. If we are in front of the house some neighbor might stop to talk. That is, they stop their car in the middle of the road and let the occasional car drive around. No one gets exercised over this. Road rage is unknown. The ferry goes back and forth. The cars queue up. Once a week we run errands. Groceries mostly, but try to schedule a stop at The Old Town Cafe for biscuits and tahini gravy. On the reservation across the way the Tribal Police chased a young man into the Nisqually River and he drowned. A sad event but one has to be glad it was the Tribal cops and not the Whatcom County Sheriff doing the chasing. Back in the ferry line, a Lummi man will try to sell fish, another art, another carvings. Business is slow. No tourists in the line up. Bucolic again, we do some pruning, some weeding and some carving. I bought some curved carving blades from a forge on Waldron Island. Waldron, if you don’t know, doesn’t encourage visitors but you can visit the North Bay Forge via the internet. The tools are great and I have learned how not to cut myself. Carving is an interesting meditation. One disappears into the wood. A neighbor invited me to his carving studio to see what he was doing. He gave me half a round of green alder to use to make a mask. I don’t have an adze yet (a good carver’s adze costs about $190) so will work it down with a chain saw so I can start. There’s a face of some kind living in the wood and I intend to find it, one chip of wood at a time. The eagles are back from the mountain tops cruising the beach for snacks. The kingfishers and blue herons stay year around. After dark the owls are hooting. It’s been raining but on a sunny day we rode our bikes around the north end of Lummi. The reef net boats are put away for the season and Legoe Bay appears deserted. The local public TV station will be broadcasting a documentary someone made on this ancient fishing method. We don’t get the local PBS station and won’t get to see it. We get three Canadian stations via antenna and watch Canadian news. One can start to feel Canadian up here near the border. I’m reading O Canada an obscure book of literary criticism by the great Edmund Wilson. He is explaining Canada to me. I need to understand. I can see Canada from where I sit. On clear nights we see the lighted ski slopes above Vancouver. Tonight we’ll have dinner with friends at the island’s Beach Cafe. It’s a gathering of neighbors. If someone brings a baby in, he or she gets passed around. Most nights we have been watching Firefly, a very entertaining sci-fi series which appeared on Fox in 2002 and was canceled before the season ended. Having some idea of how difficult it is to get a show into production on onto network television it must have been very distressing for the creators and actors to do something of this quality and have it fail. But, it really hasn’t failed. It’s a huge DVD success. So much so that it spawned as film this year called Serenity which may give birth to a sequel. Highly recommended to jazz up a bucolic life. The big leaf maple has shed its leaves and most of its trillion seeds. I have scooped them by the bucket full out of the gutters. The grass has mostly stopped growing. The fog is lifting and I need to go out and hide an apple in a tree.

Ph’deed

This spring I asked my friend Elif Armbruster if I could read her Ph’d thesis. Why would anyone ask to read a Ph’d thesis you ask? Because it sounded interesting. And it was. Plus, it was very readable. I think I finished it in a couple days much to her surprise. Elif had taken four American writers, William Dean Howells, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry James and Edith Wharton and analyzed how architecture, particularly their own homes, had affected their writing. Except for Uncle Tom’s Cabin I had pretty much skipped (since college) these important American authors. But Elif piqued my interest. She made them sound interesting. Actually, when I read Uncle Tom’s Cabin a few years ago I was shocked at how good it was so didn’t think I was taking much of a risk to dive into the others. First stop—The Rise of Silas Lapham by William Dean Howells.  (More here).

Revisiting the Kinsey Report

In the late 1950’s I didn’t want to baby-sit for the two unruly neighbor boys. That is until I discovered their parents owned copies of both Kinsey Reports (male and female). In the fifties Dr. Kinsey and his reports were a phenomenon. Over the course of several evenings I managed to read most of the pertinent data in each volume. My conclusion was that just about everyone was getting it except me. In Kinsean terms I was no doubt “sex shy.” In adult years I never returned to the Kinsey Report. But a couple of years ago I did read an excellent and fascinating biography of Alfred Kinsey, expert on the wasp gall and pioneer sex researcher. Kinsey was one of those charismatic, persuasive characters who have a knack for selecting followers he could dominate and control. Mr. Kinsey’s personal sexual habits are detailed in Alfred Kinsey, A Life by James Jones and included such varied behaviors as inserting a toothbrush in his penis and furnishing his wife as a sexual partner for his employee-colleagues. Kinsey’s research was based on detailed interviews with thousands and thousands of subjects. Recent information indicates that the data in the male volume might be skewed because of the high percentage of homosexuals interviewed by the team. Kinsey boiled everything down to statistics, charted and graphed. He believed the human was an animal like any other.
Kinsey believed that man was a pansexual creature and should express himself with any partner who might come along, male or female. He was insistent that his staff project an image of conventionality to the public and community while, at the same time, encouraging them, often insisting, that they engage each other in sexual activity. Author James Jones details the fact that there was a lot of “sharing” back and forth among the small staff that served Kinsey—his inner circle, both hetro and homosexual. But this raises some important questions about the impact of emotion in the sexual equation or the more complicated geometry of the inner circle’s interactions. Very obviously an interesting subject for a film or a novel. And, not surprisingly, T.C. Boyle, author of The Road to Wellville, Drop City and The Tortilla Curtain, has explored this subject in a recent novel titled The Inner Circle.  Read the review here.

Revenge of the Gnomes

Trolls, ogres, goblins and snotgurgles (according to experts there are only two or three snotgurgles in the world) are in charge, though their poll numbers (troll numbers?) are rocketing down. Gnomes, on the other hand, naturally wary of trolls and such, have remained underground in their secret homes, fearing that trolls will catch them and hold them against grindstones or set their feet on fire. But it seems possible that the gentle  gnomes will emerge and possibly regain control, wily creatures that they are. Few have seen the gnomes recently but one can be assured that they are around, raising their crops, helping the rabbits, offering medical aid to the other creatures. They live a natural life off the grid. They live for a very long time; hundreds of years. Europeans seems to know more about the gnomes than we do. Wikipedia describes the gnome as a mythical creature. But philosophers and thinkers as diverse as Paracelas and Rudolf Steiner have spoken and written on the importance of gnomes.In 1976 a Dutchman named Wil Huygen, after twenty years of study and with the authorization of a council of gnomes, compiled a book illustrated by Rien Poortvliet that distilled his carefully researched  knowledge of gnomes. The writing is objective but accessible. The illustrations are worth the price of the book. All should tune up their knowledge and prepare for the revenge of the gnomes by reading Wil Huygen’s book.   (A review of which to be found here.)