McGee Fest 09

“The actual tragedies of life bear no relation to one’s preconceived ideas. In the event, one is always bewildered by their simplicity, their grandeur of design, and by that element of the bizarre which seems inherent in them.”
-- Jean Cocteau “Les Enfants Terribles” (1929)

Dear Friends:

“Randy, call Jack at LBJ about McGee Fest 09, he is also will to kick in some $$$$$$$$$$$. Skip”

Skip, I spoke with Beamer the day after your comment, and sure enough, he’s geeked about the benefit and, more importantly, willing to pitch in financially.

Here’s an excerpt from an e-mail I received from Mike Stadler:

“What's the deal with Tim McGee? What's getting him and how's he doing?….This summer, I'm not teaching at the California Coast Music Camp, so I hope to make it back at the end of July to catch Hiawatha and maybe the reunion, if I think I can stomach it. If I'm there, I'd be pleased to chip in on the McGeeFest. I can do solo stuff, or back people on guitars (electric or acoustic) or mandolin or fiddle or vocals. I play other things, but mando and fiddle are about all our TSA folks seem to let through without destroying it. I could even throw in a transvestite cowboy song, if you think it'll fit.”

It's good of you to make this effort, especially from a distance. Too often people
restrain themselves when action is what's needed. Not your forte, I know, but still ...

As ol' Anatole France said, "I prefer the errors of enthusiasm to the indifference of
wisdom." Enthusiasm. Is that what Meg Ryan had in "When Harry Met Sally?" No, wait! That was a sargasm, wasn't it?

I'm procrastinating. I don't feel like hitting heavy SF area traffic in the heavy rain,
so I'm catching up on old emails, etc. But my dawg has grown too old to wait a lot
longer, so I'll sign off.

-- Mike Stadler

Dear Mike:

We would LOVE to have you at the benefit, either or both nights, and in any capacity you so choose: solo, back-up musician, or fronting the band. There won't be any sort of
Walrus reunion (that baby seal has been clubbed to death enough). Me (some other Ann
Arbor cats), French, and Kuhli (maybe McKelvy) will be lurking around, but I'm hoping
Tret, Syria, Fast Eddie, Bobby and Laurie Hayes, Kippola, and the like will join in.
Having you there would be great. I have your CD and love it.

Action has never been my problem. It's the thoughtful consideration that precedes it
that's always given me trouble. Seriously, I think this could be way cool fun. How about
Sudsy as M.C, and a Ski-doo cameo? Motor City King, here we come.

Peace - Randy

Zanzibar lives! Mike Stadler is going to represent for the west coast, and we might even convince Sudsy AKA Robert Glantz (he’s the tall blond guy in the crazy youtube Indian short, and true son of Marquette) and Mako AKA Mike Maki to do a Ski-doos cameo.

The one-and-only Mr. Billy DeBroux also left a post that, like the Barackster, was full of moral uplift and hopes for the future:

“Dear friends(sounds like Firesign Theater), I researched the idea of creating a charitable organization [501(c)3] for McGee Fest 09,using two sources; my CPA and a friend who has a 501(c)3. We can do it but not this year because the application process takes two to three YEARS. Our only option is to locate someone who has a charitable (my friends' is not setup to do it) that will sponsor the event, then we donate to the sponsor(our donations would then be tax deductible) and then the sponsor turns around and gives the donations to Tim. Or we can just gather at the Bay, have ourselves a grand old time, and leave Uncle Sam off the guest list. P.S. Thanks for the kudoos on the birth of my Granddaughter Madeline. Late,Bill.”

We are going to need an emcee or two, what say you, Billy? We’ve got a venue, now we have to get people to descend on it like Woodstock, starting with the performers.

A thought I had was to have the more acoustic oriented music in the bar, and rockers in the backyard. This would also allow groups that like to do both electric and acoustic the chance to switch locales, this is where having the event happen over two days is a huge benefit. I’m thinking of looking for some sponsors who might compensate musician/musical expenses, perhaps some Viagra, Depends, or Lamasil banners, you know, a product placement deal.

In all seriousness, I suspect that many musicians will jump at the opportunity to appear in a hip show for a worthy cause.

I don’t know how many of you read the comments at the end of each post, but one gentleman from Wyoming (there’s a picture of him with a Trout) left a classic conspiracy rant in response to the Gary Condit reference:

“personally witnessed the Condit's "Disposal for Hire" service in 1977 while in enlisted US Army MI and was sworn to secrecy about it, since the CIA figured he'd try to infiltrate Congress with it's subsequent blackmailing abilities (Tell you something?) They sometime operate independently & I have the feeling that's what's behind Gary's current "Not a suspect," but AN arrest is "Imminent." I really hope for a subpoena soon. Or, if they frame the Salvadorian (His specialty-in-advance ability to research government data bases, as he plans his hit, etc.) then it's going to be a "Tidy-up" like the Anthrax thing. Is the new evidence the new DNA with Jonbenet? http://www.rickhyatt.freeservers.com”

I visited his web-site…(and you thought I was a wacko)…some interesting…er…photos…and domestic…er…stuff….(Skip, I think you might get a kick out of this)



R. J., an excellent artist in all mediums (there’s a link to him on this blog) left a comment about Cthulu (that’s the H.P. Lovecraft inspired image in the last blog, the weird thingee with tentacles for a head):

“That is not dead which can eternal lie.
And with strange aeons even death may die.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh C'thulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!!!”

Given that R. J. is an old friend of Tim, and an unbelievable guitar player (and I don’t use that term lightly), perhaps we’ll see him in Big Bay.


Best - Randy

In Praise of Ignorance!...and, Sudsy's Big Adventure

“I have never regarded politics as the arena of morals. It is the arena of interests.”
-- Aneurin Bevan

“The most successful politician is he who says what everybody is thinking most often and in the loudest voice.”
-- Theodore Roosevelt (for Barack Obama)

“Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even when there’s no river.”
-- Nikita Khrushchev (for Sarah Palin)

If you haven’t watched “Sudzdog Gazillionaire” AKA “Zinda Dil,” (it is of course on Youtube) you ain’t lived.



Let’s send a big shout out to Grandpa Billy De Broux.

Remember how happy Gary Condit was when 9/11 made Chandra Levy’s name disappear from the electronic reality trough? And we thought he was guilty. Imagine that, a politician actually not being guilty of what he was accused of. Well he has to be even happier now that they’ve found the actual killer. Perhaps Gary should phone O. J., maybe he could cheer him up about them catching the real murderer.

What I’m doing here is free- associating.

How about Obama’s speech last night? Pretty rousing, wasn’t it. One thing that never changes in contemporary American political regime change: the gullibility of a culturally ignorant, and morally clueless, American public. The way Obama was bad mouthing video games and too-much-TV (see Berenstain Bears text), I thought I was listening to An American Family Values spokesman, rather than an agent of change. My heart fluttered when he said, “we are not quitters.” You know, because winners never quit, and quitters never win. I mean that’s the American way. Militarily, we simply hit the objective with a bigger hammer and we can’t lose. Economically, all it takes is some hard work and a good pull on the bootstraps. Jolly good, I say. Yes, if there’s one thing we can count on, it’s this: America loves a winner. As much as some of you might disagree, if we’re talking about an early speech in the infancy of a presidency, it doesn’t matter who’s standing up there, it could be Bush or Obama, Nixon or Kennedy, the public will love them. And so they do. All across America the masses have embraced Obama. But this doesn’t change the fact that this American electorate is the same one that kept Bush in office for eight years. Based on that track record, we should be very skeptical about putting any special value on the public’s embrace of Obama. The element missing from our long antiquated two party system is informed DISSENT. The reason the French, and their western European ilk, take to the streets and actively protest at a local level is exactly about the multi-party system, and its insurance that the idea of thinking globally BUT acting locally, is more than a bumper sticker. What I guess I’m saying here is that the majority of American’s are PROUD OF THEIR IGNORANCE!

Here’s an excerpt from Mark Slouka’s Notebook piece, “A Quibble” (Harpers 3/09).

“What we need to talk about, what someone needs to talk about, is our ever-deepening ignorance (of politics, of foreign languages, of history, of science, of current affairs, of pretty much everything) and not just our ignorance but our complacency in the face of it, our growing fondness for it….Today, across swaths of the republic, it amuses and comforts us. We’re deeply loyal to it. Ignorance gives us a sense of community; it confers citizenship; our representatives either share it or bow down to it or risk our wrath….It can appear quaint, part of our foolish-but-authentic, naïve-yet-sincere, rough-hewn spirit. Up close and personal, unromanticized and unfiltered, it’s another thing entirely. In the flesh, barking from the electronic pulpit or braying back from the audience, our ignorance can be sobering. We don’t know. Or much care. Or care to know.”

Best – Randy Tessier

QUAGMIRE!: The Perils of Valedictocracy

“The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.”
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

Below I’ve included some recent news articles indicating why I think Obama’s ideas about change are an example of realpolitik sloganeering rather than moral or ideological considerations. If my skepticism of the new status quo comes as any surprise, recall my disagreement with our new president’s stance on same-sex marriage, the death penalty, and universal health care. My strong support of Obama during the election run had more to do with the necessity of unseating a criminal regime and the frightening possibility of a McCain succession, then the kind of unswerving support many of my liberal friends showered on him.

Just as I feared, rather than a closet radical patiently awaiting the chance to affect some real change, we’ve got (I’ll skip the highly charged racial epithet I’m sorely tempted to use here) a house, rather than field, colored person in the oval office. Here’s one of the kinder descriptions of what I’m talking about: “It [the house/field distinction] refers originally to slavery times, when black women used to be raped by the white slave owners to produce mixed children. They would usually grow up working in the plantation house and sometimes would receive a formal education, unlike the black slaves who worked outside in the fields. The mixed children would associate with whites and have privileges the slaves did not. Now the term refers in a derogatory manner to lighter-skinned people of color, who are sometimes perceived as acting superior to darker-skinned people, and who because of their color, are in association with whites in what is viewed as a fawning manner, and therefore enjoy greater success in life.” (Taken from Urban Dictionary.com)

The epigraph in Lewis Lapham’s Notebook Essay, “Achievetrons,” in the Harpers Magazine March, 2009 issue is this: “Few men are so disinterested as to prefer to live in discomfort under a government which they hold to be right, rather than in comfort under one which they hold to be wrong” (C.V. Wedgewood). Lapham’s point is that, like Clinton, Bush, Reagan, and Kennedy before him, Obama has cast his lot with the same Ivy League wunderkinds who led us into the Vietnam War (Kennedy); inaugurated the ascendancy of privatization, trickle-down theory, and unregulated-laissez-faire economics (Reagan); instituted a neo-con political philosophy based on eliminating the system of checks and balances between the judicial, executive, and legislative branches of government, stripped citizens of their civil liberties, sought to do away with habeas corpus, and legalized torture (G.W. Bush); advocated abstention from signing a global land mine ban, and approved the destruction of a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum by a Cruise missile air strike that ultimately caused the deaths of tens of thousands of African (Clinton). These “achievetrons,” a term Lapham takes from David Brooks, the cohort of rich plutocrats that have historically benefited from the long running canard that America is not a socially stratified society, are not likely to implement the redistribution of wealth Obama has promised. And why should they, given that this would run counter to the “discomfort” they themselves would surely experience should any such painful redistribution actually be undertaken.

Besides being co-opted by the wealth, privilege, and power that inevitably intoxicates even the most incorruptible, I fear Obama’s biggest mistake will follow Kennedy’s: his commitment to escalating an un-winnable and morally and economically, unsustainable war in Afghanistan, no doubt stems from following the self-same advice of a cadre of elites whose delusory and romantic notions about the nature of war and its outcomes got us into the tragedy of Vietnam.

Associated Press Writers Nedra Pickler And Matt Apuzzo, Associated Press Writers Fri Feb 20, 7:48 pm ET

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration, siding with the Bush White House, contended Friday that detainees in Afghanistan have no constitutional rights. In a two-sentence court filing, the Justice Department said it agreed that detainees at Bagram Airfield cannot use U.S. courts to challenge their detention. The filing shocked human rights attorneys. "The hope we all had in President Obama to lead us on a different path has not turned out as we'd hoped," said Tina Monshipour Foster, a human rights attorney representing a detainee at the Bagram Airfield. "We all expected better." The military has determined that all the detainees at Bagram are "enemy combatants." The Bush administration said in a response to the petition last year that the enemy combatant status of the Bagram detainees is reviewed every six months, taking into consideration classified intelligence and testimony from those involved in their capture and interrogation. After Barack Obama took office, a federal judge in Washington gave the new administration a month to decide whether it wanted to stand by Bush's legal argument. Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd says the filing speaks for itself. "They've now embraced the Bush policy that you can create prisons outside the law," said Jonathan Hafetz, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who has represented several detainees.

By MARK MAZZETTI and DAVID E. SANGER
Published: February 20, 2009

WASHINGTON — With two missile strikes over the past week, the Obama administration has expanded the covert war run by the Central Intelligence Agency inside Pakistan, attacking a militant network seeking to topple the Pakistani government.

ReutersMembers of Pakistani tribes offered funeral prayers on Feb. 15 for victims of an American missile attack in the North Waziristan region, near the Afghan border.
The missile strikes on training camps run by Baitullah Mehsud represent a broadening of the American campaign inside Pakistan, which has been largely carried out by drone aircraft. Under President Bush, the United States frequently attacked militants from Al Qaeda and the Taliban involved in cross-border attacks into Afghanistan, but had stopped short of raids aimed at Mr. Mehsud and his followers, who have played less of a direct role in attacks on American troops. The strikes are another sign that President Obama is continuing, and in some cases extending, Bush administration policy.

Here’s an excerpt from an article in the UKGuardian:

Another myth is that the west "walked away" after the Russians left. If only it had. Instead Washington and Pakistan broke the Geneva agreement by maintaining arms supplies to the mujahideen. They encouraged them to reject Najibullah's repeated efforts at national reconciliation. The mujahideen wanted all-out victory, which they eventually got, only to squander it in an orgy of artillery shelling that left Kabul in ruins and produced the anger that paved the way for the Taliban. If western governments are now paying a high price in Afghanistan, they have brought the disaster on themselves.
The Taliban will not drive Nato out militarily. The notion that Afghans always defeat foreigners is wrong. The real lesson of the Soviet war is that in Afghanistan political and cultural disunity can slide into massive and prolonged violence. Foreigners intervene at their peril.
Nato is in a cleft stick and the idea that, unlike Iraq, Afghanistan is the "right war" is a self-deluding trap. A military "surge", the favoured Obama policy, may produce short-term local advances but no sustainable improvement, and as yesterday's Guardian reported, it will cost the US and Britain enormous sums. Pouring in aid will take too long to win hearts and minds, and if normal practice is followed, the money will mainly go to foreign consultants and corrupt officials. Talking to the Taliban makes sense under Najibullah-style national reconciliation. But the Taliban themselves are disunited, with a host of local leaders and generational divisions between "new" and "old" Taliban. Worse still, since the war spilt into Pakistan's frontier regions, there are now Pakistani Taliban.
What of the better option, a phased Nato withdrawal? It will not produce benefits as clear or immediate as the US pull-out from Iraq. Most Iraqis never wanted the US in the first place. They know the destruction the invasion brought, have stepped back from sectarian war, and now have a government which has pressed Washington to set a timetable to leave. In Afghanistan the risks of a collapse of central rule and a long civil war are far greater.

j.steele@guardian.co.uk

Religion, Local Matters and other Weirdness!

“Every man contains within himself a ghost continent—a place circled as warily as Antarctica was circled two hundred years ago by Captain James Cook.”
-- Loren Eiseley 1907-77: “The Unexpected Universe” (1969)

RELIGION

Old Ratzo Ratzinger’s at it again. Strong on the heels of the Papal Panzer’s terrestrial guarantee of a purgatorial reprieve, he told Nancy “the chameleon” Pelosi that her pro-choice stance is out of line with the Catholic church’s position on abortion. Of course, cognitive dissonance is nothing new to Nan – being pro-abortion and a devout Catholic. Prior to assuming the mantle of Speaker of the House, when asked if she had any past regrets, she righteously replied, none! I guess her voting in favor of the war in Iraq doesn’t count as a past regret. Anyway, given that God’s rottweiler is an ex Hitler Youth, in terms of respecting the sanctity of life, I guess he’s come a long way from shooting down Ally planes. Never one to forget old friends, Popsy recently revoked the excommunication of Bishop Richard Williamson. The same guy who scoffed at the existence of the Nazi death camps (those were pazcki ovens!) and the preposterous idea of a genocidal component to the Holocaust. Then there was the Papist enforcer’s appointment of Gerhard Maria Wagner as the auxiliary bishop of Linz, the guy who said “the death and destruction caused by Katrina that year was ‘divine retribution’ for New Orleans' permissive sexual attitudes and tolerance of homosexuality”(The Guardian 2/1/09). Der commissar’s in town, oh-oh-oh! Here’s another doctrinal chestnut for all you mackerel snappers looking to decrease your punishment in the afterlife: “’It’s no coincidence that in New Orleans all five abortion clinics as well as night clubs were destroyed.’ And he asked: ‘Is the noticeable rise in natural disasters a consequence of environmental pollution or rather of spiritual pollution?’ Wagner had also characterized Harry Potter novels as “Satanism, said homosexuality was curable and ruled out lay participation in church affairs”(Commonweal 2/16/09). No, it’s not a vaccine, it’s, it’s…Gerhard’s Special Homotherapy! Herr Wagner has repented! He’s on a mission (excuse the pun) to restore clerical credibility. He’s had his Prince Albert removed, and vowed on the Blessed Mother’s virginity there will be no more abusive priests. Praise God!

LOCAL MATTERS

“Freegans” is a term given to master dumpster divers. Here’s The Michigan Daily’s definition from, “The Statement” (Kara Morris 2/11/09): “Freeganism, a play off of veganism, is an anti-consumerist philosophy where practitioners seek to minimize the use of resources by limiting their reliance on commercial markets. When it comes to food, this means a diet based largely on homegrown produce and dumpster loot. Freegans are committed to reducing their consumption in a way that benefits themselves and the surrounding community.”
A spokesperson, Cat, had this to say about dumpster diving in Ann Arbor: “Look into a supermarket’s delivery cycles. One supermarket might get new shipments of flowers on Fridays and produce on Mondays — meaning that they’ll likely be clearing their shelves in preparation. This varies across supermarkets, so you’ll have to familiarize yourself with your local grocer’s habits. “Whole Foods sucks,” Cat declared, "because they compact and lock their dumpsters. So, of all places, don’t start there.” Whole Foods does suck, and that’s all I’ve got to say about that!

OTHER WEIRDNESS

Now I’ve only seen this malady manifest itself in student writing, but there is a condition called FAS (Foreign Accent Syndrome) in which sufferers spontaneously bust out with a sometimes unintelligible foreign accent. In one well noted case, an Upper Peninsula man began speaking with an Afghani accent after falling off of an Ore Boat in Lake Superior late last year. After washing up on in the Copper Country, the Baragans thought he was a terrorist spy and pelted him with rotten pasties. While FAS victims usually suffer the accusation of faking their newly acquired dialect, the cause is generally related to damage to speech centers in the brain.

Upon close questioning it was revealed that Hamid (formerly Toivo) also suffered from IED (Intermittent Explosive Disorder), a condition whereby victims (mostly men) are prone to angry outbursts, wildly disproportionate to the situation, often giving way to road rage and domestic abuse. After rigorous testing, it was found that Hamid…er…Toivo suffered from a radical imbalance of serotonin and testosterone.

While undergoing treatment, however, the now restored Toivo began to use his left hand to uncontrollably grab his right hand whenever he went to wipe himself after using the commode. The poor man was soon diagnosed as suffering from multiple conditions. In addition to FAS and IED, Toivo also had AHS (Alien Hand Syndrome), a syndrome whereby the afflicted lose conscious control of a limb due to a bad interface between brain hemispheres. The puzzled doctors, however, thought that a possible benefit of this condition might be derived from having the rogue hand extinguish the chain smoking Toivo’s cigarettes, and thus thwart his every attempt to light up. Toivo soon overcame this by simply using the derelict hand to masturbate, and, in effect, keeping it occupied in a way other than duct taping it in an oven mitt attached to his belt buckle.

Alas, if this wasn’t enough to torment this poor soul it was soon learned he had “Capgras Delusion,” the belief that close friends and family members are imposters, which served to explain why Toivo vehemently denied any relation to Hilda Ruhomaki, his once beloved identical twin who worked at the Mohawk bakery. Named after the French psychiatrist who first described this condition in 1923, CD should not be confused with “Cotard’s Delusion,” which causes an overwhelming feeling that one is dead, decaying, or never existed at all. Oh woe was Toivio, lo and behold he had this too, and had to be heavily sedated lest he continue his repeated attempts to dig shallow graves in his back yard and cover himself with a thin layer of leaves and dirt.

When the questioning by the frustrated psychologists, doctors, and therapists became too much for Toivo, he was overcome by a bout of “Spasmodic Dysphonia,” a condition whereby one is overcome by an inability to speak in anything other than rhymes, whispers or a falsetto voice. SD involves a condition in which spasms prevent the vocal cords from vibrating normally. Much to the horror of those around him, Toivo couldn’t stop singing the Starland Vocal Band’s “Afternoon Delight” and Bob Seger’s “We’ve Got Tonight.” Ouch! Fortunately the doctors had an edition of Emily Dickinson poetry handy, since this freakish affliction seems to dissipate when the sufferer is forced to recite poetry, thus changing the tenor of their voice.

Had enough? No? Okay, then how about this, poor Toivo also had something called “Alice in Wonderland Syndrome,” a neurological condition that makes objects (including one’s own body parts) seem dinkier, bigger, and closer or farther away than they actually are. This condition is commonly associated with childhood and usually disappears with the onset of adulthood. While its origin is unknown, it can be related to migraine headaches, epilepsy, brain tumors or the use of psychotropic drugs. It was probably before this condition made it into the current DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) that the old saw about one’s penis looking smaller than it really is when gazed down on from above was in vogue.

And that’s all I have to say about that!

Peace - Randy

A True Hero and Son of the Upper Peninsula

“The ordinary man is involved in action, the hero acts. An immense difference.”
-- Henry Miller, “The Books in My Life” (1952)

After the near tragedy on the Hudson River last month, we (my Argumentative Writing class) had a discussion concerning the definition of heroism. The hoopla in the news about the pilot’s veteran ability to ditch the plane on the icy waters was certainly an admirable accomplishment, but does this qualify him as a hero? The Latin terms for two essential heroic qualities are sapienta (wisdom) and fortitudo (strength), and Chesley Sullenberger certainly possessed these character traits; but do these attributes in themselves constitute heroism? I mean, had the pilot been borderline illiterate and wheelchair bound, he still might have landed the plane.

My contention is that Sullenberger’s actions were amazing considering what might have been, but not necessarily heroic. Why, because heroism implies a choice. Yes, Sullenberger saved himself, the crew, and the passengers, but what choice did he have. Put yourself in his position. Would you do anything different? No. You would do everything in your power to save yourself, and any residual benefits would be all the better. Having done that, would you call yourself a hero? I brought this up with a colleague at work this morning, and he agreed that the element of choice is a key aspect of being heroic. He then offered an example of someone he considers a hero. His answer, a vague reference to the guy that saved the woman in the 1980’s crash of an Air Florida plane on the Potomac River in Washington D. C., inspired this blog. I decided to make a call.

When my family first moved from French Morocco (Africa) to Marquette in the late 1950s our closest family friends were the Skutniks. My dad, Air Force MSGT Oliver Tessier, was the best friend of First Sargeant Martin L. Skutnik. Since the housing area of K. I. Sawyer Air Force Base was not yet built, we lived next door to each other on Ridge Street in Marquette. Later on, after we moved into base housing in the mid-sixties, my brothers and I stayed close to the Skutnik kids. My girlfriend was Nadine Skutnik, while my brother, Paul, was Lenny’s best friend. In about 1969, both of our families moved away from the U.P. We slowly drifted apart and lost contact, which is how it is with many military brats. There are many close buds I had from that time that I still can’t locate.

Now fast forward to 1980. Jimmy Carter had just lost his second run for office to Ronald Regan after having bungled the Iran hostage crisis in 1979, and Nightline, with Ted Koppel, became a fixture of the late night news. It became a way of keeping the public abreast of the events of the day once the Iranian debacle had passed. The show stayed on the air and survives to this day. After arriving home on a late January evening in 1982, I turned on the telly, grabbed a beer, and heard Koppel mention the name, Lenny Skutnik. Knowing the chances were slim that this might be some other Lenny Skutnik, I turned up the TV and sat there riveted to the unbelievable images before me. Back to the call I had to make.

Yesterday, I spoke with Lenny on the phone. He told me those years when he went from being a little boy to a teenager in the Upper Peninsula were some of the best times of his life. In fact, he called me about three years ago to inquire about what the Sawyer area is like now, and where he might go and stay if he revisited his early years. I asked him about that call.
He told me that once he found out Sawyer’s housing area was now a low-income-housing-project, he had no interest in making that trip. I then asked him how the near impossible story of the Hudson miracle landing impacted his life. He said that, yes, he had gotten a call from a D. C. news station, and that he had declined to be interviewed due to the politicization of his actions shortly after that cold January night in 1982.

In a tragic coincidence, I write this following a horrible plane crash last night in which a Continental Airlines commuter jet carrying 49 passengers and crew crashed outside of Buffalo, New York, killing everyone aboard. So why am I talking about Lenny Skutnik, and what does this have to do with the meaning of heroism? Here’s why.

There was another hero in all this. The man who kept passing the rope to his fellow passengers. Being aboard the plane makes his story slightly different than Lenny's, but again, his actions involved a choice. When he, Arland D. Williams Jr., decided to help others by ultimately sacrificing his own life, he transcended the attitude of self-interest (survival) hard-wired in all of us, thus achieving the status of the heroic.

Here's some information from a Web-site encyclopedia source:

 

"The helicopter crew lowered a line to survivors to tow them to shore. First to receive the line, Bert Hamilton, who was treading water about ten feet from the floating tail, took the single lifeline dangling beneath the chopper and passed it under his arms. The others watched while the helicopter carried him a hundred yards to the Virginia shore and returned. The helicopter pilot had to gently move the survivor across the ice, while avoiding the sides of the bridge and keeping an eye on the crowd. By now, some fire rescue had arrived but military personnel and civilians were the key in pulling the survivors from the shore up to the waiting ambulances. The survivors were nearly frozen with ice on their clothes, making them feel like they were 3 times their body weight. It would take 6 people to get each survivor from the shore up to the waiting ambulances. The helicopter returned to the location of the aircraft's tail, and this time a survivor sometimes referred to as "the sixth passenger" (later identified as Arland D. Williams Jr.) caught the line. Instead of wrapping it around himself, however, he passed it to flight attendant Kelly Duncan. On its third trip back to the wreckage, the helicopter trailed two lifelines, for its crew knew that survival in the river was now only a matter of minutes. One of the lines was aimed at "the sixth passenger." He caught it again, and again passed it on, this time to Joe Stiley, the most severely injured survivor. Stiley slipped the line around his waist and grabbed Priscilla Tirado who, having lost her husband and baby, was in complete hysteria. Patricia Felch took the second line, and the helicopter pulled away. Before it reached the shore, however, both Priscilla Tirado and Patricia Felch lost their grip and fell back into the water.

United States Coast Guard Capstan was too far away on another search and rescue mission downriver to assist the 6 initial survivors of Air Florida Flight 90 which crashed into the 14th Street Bridge and then the ice-choked Potomac River on January 13, 1982. Capstan is seen here with another smaller Coast Guard boat helping with recovery of bodies and salvage operations.

By then one of these passengers, Priscilla Tirado, was too weak to grab the line. A watching bystander, Congressional Budget Office assistant Lenny Skutnik, stripped off his coat and boots, and in short sleeves, dove into the icy water, and swam out to assist her. The helicopter then proceeded to where Patricia Felch had fallen and paramedic Gene Windsor dropped from the safety of the helicopter into the water to attach a line to her. By the time the helicopter crew could return for the sixth passenger, the last survivor, both he and the plane's tail section had disappeared beneath the icy surface. He had been in the paralyzing cold for twenty-nine minutes. His body and those of the other occupants were later recovered. According to the coroner, this man, who had passed the lifeline to others, was the only plane passenger to die by drowning."

Here's more on Lenny from Wikipedia.

“Martin Leonard Skutnik III (born 1953, Mississippi) is an American employee of the Federal government of the United States. He goes generally by "Lenny" as his first name. Skutnik has held various jobs as a painter, supermarket porter, and cook for the Burger Chef restaurant chain. He has also worked in a meat packing plant and in a furniture factory.

Lenny Skutnik is most celebrated for an act of heroism following the crash of Air Florida Flight 90 on January 13, 1982 in the Potomac River, Washington, DC. At the time, Skutnik was a US government office assistant. During the rescue operation of passengers from the crashed plane, one passenger, Priscilla Tirado, was too weak to grab the line dropped from a helicopter. Hundreds of people were watching, including emergency services personnel, but only Mr. Skutnik was willing to risk his life. Skutnik saw the situation, and stripped off his coat and boots and, in short sleeves, dove into the icy water and swam out to assist her. He succeeded in getting Tirado to the river shore, from where Tirado was subsequently taken to hospital, saving her life.
For this act, Skutnik was invited to attend the 1982 State of the Union address by US President Ronald Reagan on 26 January 1982. He was the first in what has become an annual tradition of notable people being invited to sit in the President's box at the State of the Union address. Skutnik sat next to First Lady Nancy Reagan. Reagan praised Skutnik as follows:

Just two weeks ago, in the midst of a terrible tragedy on the Potomac, we saw again the spirit of American heroism at its finest the heroism of dedicated rescue workers saving crash victims from icy waters.

And we saw the heroism of one of our young Government employees, Lenny Skutnik, who, when he saw a woman lose her grip on the helicopter line, dived into the water and dragged her to safety.

Skutnik received a standing ovation from the entire assembled audience. Since then, others who are invited into the Presidential gallery and honored in the speech have been known among the Washington press corps as "Lenny Skutniks". The Presidential gallery is sometimes referred to as "The Heroes' Gallery".

Among the honours that Skutnik received for his act of heroism are the United States Coast Guard's Gold Lifesaving Medal and the Carnegie Hero Fund Medal. He received 1600 pieces of mail over several weeks after the incident, where a number of them had the address as "Lenny Skutnik, Hero of the Potomac". He also received various public tributes, including two "Lenny Skutnik Days" in Mississippi on 9 February and 10 February 1982. On 3 February 1982, the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia unanimously passed a resolution in praise of Skutnik's "unselfish act of bravery", with a standing ovation.

As of 2009, Skutnik continues to work for the US government”

This blog concerns the issue of heroism and what makes a hero.

Please leave your comments.

Best - Randy Tessier

Plenary Indulgences, Multiple Embryos, and Shadow's Lament: DARWIN, TWAIN, and the POPE

“Here’s the mirror—look and wince. One out of every four of us think we’ve been reincarnated; 44 percent of us believe in ghosts; 77 percent, in angels. Forty percent of us believe God created all things in their present form sometime during the last 10,000 years. Nearly the same number—not coincidentally, perhaps—are functionally illiterate. Twenty percent think the sun might revolve around the earth.”
-- Harpers Magazine, 2/09

Being baptized a Catholic, it’s no wonder then I was so relieved to hear my church bulletin’s news: “Bishop announces Plenary Indulgences.” You knew they had to do it. With all the debauchery, decadence, and downright shameful behavior pervadin’ the planet, something had to be done. Prior to the Bishops’ decree,I was worried as hell about goin to Hell! Now I can escape Lucifer’s BQ by doin’what those murderin’ Medieval perverts did, buy my way out. Well, maybe not exactly. I mean, the new edict didn’t say they were for sale. But I’m assumin’ they are. I even asked that guy, Blagoyawhateverhisnameis, and he said they’re sellin’ em’. Saw the Times today and just about fell outta my chair: “In recent months, dioceses around the world have been offering Catholics a spiritual benefit that fell out of favor decades ago – the indulgence, a sort of amnesty from punishment in the afterlife – and reminding them of the church’s clout in mitigating the wages of sin.”

Now that’s what I want, amnesty from punishment in the afterlife. I mean, I saw “Little Nicky,” and that ain’t where I wanna end up. I guess the Pope figured Martin Luther’s party poopin’ expose of the Papists’ redemption peddling scheme died down enough since 1517 to open shop again. That damn Protestant Reformation is still a sore spot with old Ratzo Rattzinger, and ya’ can’t blame him. I’m in agreement with that dude from Brooklyn: “’Why are we bringing it back?’ asked Bishop Nicholas A. DiMarzio, who has embraced the move. ‘Because there is sin in the world.”

This got me to thinking about just how sinful a world we’re in. I mean, think of the all the baby killers out there. Why just today I got an e-mail made me mad enough to bust up a condom shop:

"Dear Friend,What happened in Florida is a tragedy. A little girl, gasping for air, born and then left to die in a trash bag before being hauled out.Yet the eyes of the world are focused on one little girl's death in that Florida abortion mill. But Shanice at least has a name. And she'll be remembered, and her death will be mourned.But what about the lives of the other 3,500 babies? Who mourns their deaths or fight for their personhood -- and their very lives?American Life League is fighting this -- right now -- in our neighborhoods and communities, and we need YOUR help to continue.Need proof? In 1997, as many as 19 Planned Parenthood abortion mills were operating in the Diocese of Amarillo. After executing our plan to get rid of Planned Parenthood, by 2008 there were ZERO clinics in operation.You read this right -- American Life League, through your prayers and donations, drove Planned Parenthood out of the Texas Panhandle.Your quick donation right away helps us take out these abortion mills, shutting them down for good! At a time when the abortion lobby is demanding billions in handouts from Washington, every dime we get goes to put tragedies such as what happened to Baby Shanice to an end.Impact matters in the fight to end abortion -- your donation of $250, $100, $50, or even just $25 right away will make an impact!Abortionist hire attorneys that cost a fortune defending their heinous acts. Every dollar we use to shine a light on their terrible profession, they spend five dollars or more fighting us back. Now that's an impact that will put the abortionists out of business!Your prayers and your support matters. And if you can't make a quick donation online, just print out this e-mail and send it back to us!

Yours in the Lord who IS Life,

Judie Brown

PresidentAmerican Life League"

That’s right Judie, we need to save every cottin pickin baby we can. In fact we should encourage every prospective mother to consult a brave doctor like the one that implanted SIX embryos in that Suleman lady in sunny Californiay.

This from Yahoo! The News!:

"Suleman, 33, of Whittier, already had six children when she gave birth Jan. 26 to octuplets. The births to an unemployed, divorced single mother prompted angry questions about how she plans to provide for her children.
But the backlash seems to have extended as well to Suleman's doctor.
In a portion of an NBC interview, broadcast Friday, Suleman said she had six embryos implanted for each of her in vitro pregnancies, using the same sperm donor and fertility specialist.
In the case of the octuplets, the procedure resulted in six boys and two girls, including two sets of twins.
"The revelation about one center treating her makes the treatment even harder to understand," said Arthur Caplan, bioethics chairman at the University of Pennsylvania. "They went ahead when she had six kids, knowing that she was a single mom ... and put embryos into her anyway."
In the United States, there is no law dictating the number of embryos that can be placed in a mother's womb. Multiple embroys can be implanted to improve the odds that one will take.
However, there are national guidelines which put the norm at two to three embryos for a woman of Suleman's age, in order to lessen the health risks to the mother and the chances of multiple births.
When asked why so many embryos were implanted, Suleman told NBC: "Those are my children, and that's what was available and I used them. So, I took a risk. It's a gamble. It always is."
She said her life's goal was to be a mother and she had struggled for seven years before finally giving birth to her first child in 2001.
"All I wanted was children. I wanted to be a mom. That's all I ever wanted in my life," Suleman said in the portion of the interview that aired Friday. "I love my children."
According to state documents, Suleman told a doctor she had three miscarriages. Another doctor disputed that number, saying she had two ectopic pregnancies, a dangerous condition in which a fertilized egg implants somewhere other than in the uterus."

This women’s got one hell of a litter, and I know both Judie, God, and the Pope are mighty proud. Praise God! If this ain’t a good reason to outlaw abortion, I don’t know what is! Easy with those exclamation points, big fella!

Well, you guessed it, ‘Shadows been lookin’ over my shoulder, and she is pissed!. Seems she remembers my mention of Mark Twain’s essay, “The Lowest Animal.” The one where he says every other animal species is higher than man, and that man is plagued by a curse no other animal suffers: the moral sense, the capacity to know right from wrong and then choose to do wrong. She was so proud thinkin’ she was top dog. She was as dead serious as Twain in thinkin’ the Mississippi side-paddler had it right. Wrong, Fido!!

Mr. Smarty pants, Samuel Clemmons, thought he was being funny when he mocked Mr. Darwin and his Beagle boys, but he had it wrong. According to Carl Zimmer’s article in today’s Science Times (02/10/09) in the NYT, Darwin’s ideas twernt’ no different than Twain’s:
“Darwin believed there was a continuity between humans and other species, which led him to think of human morality as related to the sympathy seen among social animals. This long-disdained idea was resurrected only recently by researchers like the primatologist Frans de Waal. Darwin ‘never felt that morality was our own invention, but was a product of evolution, a position we are now seeing grow in popularity under the influence of what we know about animal behavior,” Dr. de Waal says. “In fact, we’ve now returned to the original Darwinian position.’”

Until Next Time – Randy Tessier

The Iceman Cometh? The fIcTiOn of Security!

“Faith is much better than belief. Belief is when someone else does the thinking.”
-- R. Buckminster Fuller, 1972

People are out of work, like that fella on the right. I guess the dignity of death is not having your shoes stolen when you been dead for a month. No narcotics for a year. It’s my anniversary. I found religion, I came back to booze and boo! Praise God. We’ve always known alcohol is a healing agent, now we’re about to bestow that exalted status on pot.

Friends, we live in a time of profound decadence, a time when humans are exhibiting hedonistic practices beyond the pale. Tea-bagging, blokens, and other depravities are all the rage. You must choose, brothers and sisters, whether you’re gonna be a part of the problem, or a part of the solution.

The new, technological revolution -- ain’t it grand! The new, cool job status is “outta work.” Rosie the riveter gave way to Kent the data entry dork. War requires goods and services. People with skills? Titan, CACI, Halliburton, and KBR, (google ‘em). Got enough typewriters, then let me apply these electrodes to your tits. CACI started out as a clerical service and ended up as a surrogate torture training camp for the American government (google ‘em). Need your clothes washed soldier? Only $99 a load? Pat Tillman must be rolling in his grave. Such a sanitized send-up in the NYT article the Saturday before the “big game.” Never a mention of how the Bush administration posthumously prostituted him on the altar of Western righteousness. And how about brave, General Petraeus’ appearance, and the two, I think, patriotic anthems, and big Super Bowl flyover by the jets? My heart was aflutter. Why? Because I knew those birds were hybrids! But more than that, I knew they represented my freedom. Just knowing they’ve got my back gives hope to me and Shadow (or is that, Shadow and I?). Praise God!

Speaking of the big game, did you know that steel dick ring that’s irritating the hell out of me right now is called a Prince Albert. It’s been so cold down here, and there, I’ve had to wear a catheter to warm it up. Errrr…maybe that was Herb Alpert, you know, and all that gism…I mean jazz…whipped cream and other delights…a taste of honey. What the fuck does that have to do with the “big game,” Me? Wait a minute, I’m Me again! ‘Obamas in charge now, it’s official. I went on his facebook and he said, “it’s complicated.” Did you know the Michigan budget allots more to our prison system than it does to education?

Furthermore…

Since he had never considered it before, bleeding to death seemed absurd. Pluto was frozen in the present, disconnected from the past by the thought of his mortality, or, if you prefer, deprived of the future by a severed artery. He could only damn nature's complicity in his fate.

The sheer sandstone face loomed before him, an inscrutable, alien thing, representing his every uncertainty. Amidst the icy spray of the waves he suddenly realized the gravity of his predicament. The dizzying rock precipice before him confirmed his utter desolation.

By one of those tricks of the eye wherein nature taunts the mind, Pluto's eyes beheld an overhanging scrub. Prostrating itself to the impending gale, its piney hands beckoned him. The signs were clear; this was his place of death. He gestured toward the tree while crawling up the steep rock face. His legs betrayed him.

Tranquilized, eyes plastered shut, and hooded in black, Zeke Pluto was taken to the public square in Belmopan, Belize, on July 4, 2010. The police carefully unfolded a thick blue plastic sheet about 16 feet by 16 feet on the blistering asphalt. Pluto, delirious, barefoot, feet shackled and hands cuffed behind his back, knelt quietly as the Procurator read his crimes to an angry crowd.

The executioner beckoned the soldier to hand him the long, curved sword. Approaching the condemned from behind he lightly placed the tip of the sword on Pluto's neck, causing him to instinctively raise his head.

In spite of the blazing sun and buzz of the picnickers, he became vaguely aware of a slow, swooshing sound. This otherworldly whine was a sound he could neither ignore nor understand. Like the release of an arrow from a powerful compound bow.

He paused, quizzically, was it near or far away--he couldn't tell. He perceived the soft whistle as having always been there. But now its pitch was, almost imperceptibly, rising. He feared this new ability to perceive the ancient hiss. He began to scream at the shriek.

As the awful sound subsided, Pluto lost consciousness and seemed suspended by the light, as one who is already dead. He was resurrected years later -- or so it seemed to him -- by an unbearable lightness of mind, followed quickly by an overwhelming sense of suffocation.

Galvanic sorrows tormented his limbs; throbbing with a heart-squeezing intensity. Slices of thin pain pressured his hands and feet. As to his head, he could feel a growing pressure, a drowning congestion.

These reactions were purely limbic, reptilian responses to that grossest of stimuli. All possibility of thought removed from the moment was negated; biological dynamics governed his behaviors, and these were agonizing. He was in a world unmoored, in motion, topsy-turvy. Down that tunnel, of which he was the sole occupant, without embodiment, the world swung in camera spin.

Suddenly, the culvert-like opening widened, and he could see shadowy figures beckoning him towards a door. He rejoiced, as if rescued by divine guerillas. Hallelujah. He ran toward their welcoming arms. Free. He followed the widening gyre.

At nightfall he paused, empty, unhappy, and alone. Sheer will drove him on. Finally he found a road he knew he had traveled before. It seemed familiar, the right direction; a twilight zone where being revealed itself as the illusion he himself had once prophesied. It offered comfort, yet appeared uninhabited. No dogs barked, no birds sang. No sign of animal presence. The angular, crepuscular sky shaded the dusk in mood indigo, like a Turner landscape engulfed in thick coal smoke. Above him the stars offered a measure of inevitability. Their configuration providing a cryptic significance: offering the possibility of new lands. The space of this strange place was defined by alien whispers that dissolved the distinction between sound and image.

Gingerly touching his neck, his hands felt the cold wet slash of ragged flesh he new to be the work of the executioner. His eyes bulged grotesquely from the sad, excruciating pressure. His tongue, black and swollen in its supplicant protrusion, made his baleful moan unintelligible.

Blessed relief came in a vision, a scene from his sad past, a brief reverie on his short happy time with Zelda at Dandelion Cottage. All that he ever loved was crystallized in the image before him. The darkness before the dawn passed. Pail and shovel in hand they met in slow motion, a memory portrait of a fleeting happiness; light, lovely, and kind in the morning sunshine. At last, Zeke found the comfort of sheltering arms, the cool, sweet solace, and the joy of her touch. He loves her so much, too much, pathetically. Her caress, the end of the shrieking, that lifelong icy sound, brings a draining of all energy, of his self; all is light, all is darkness and quiet nothingness.

The violent swing of the saber sent the severed head flying about 4 feet from the prostate trunk. The paramedics then presented the head to the doctor who staunched the geyser of blood spurting from the gaping maw.

At sunset the doctor sewed Pluto's head onto his trunk. The body was wrapped in the blue plastic sheet and taken away in a private ambulance.