Fight and Flight: Running for Dad

Running is, considered through the wide lens of human history, an almost ridiculously useful ability. 

As a crucial part of the fight-or-flight reflex (or at least the flight part), it kept our species from being eaten by, well, most anything.  Saber-toothed kangaroos, or some such.  From being eaten, regardless.  Or take for example the incredible Incan empire of South America.  The Incans never invented the wheel, but they built miles and miles and miles of roads that still survive to this day, to connect a massive, sprawling empire.  Why roads?  For running!  Incans used runners to carry messages between their far-flung cities.  Again, running became a crucial ingredient in human civilization, allowing communication across vast distances.

Today, however, I have a cell phone, and my only fight-or-flight-type reflex is curling up in a whimpering ball on the floor.

In other words, I’m not a runner.

Which is why I hesitated when my sister called me and said, “Would you want to do the Newport Bridge run with me as a fundraiser in support of Dad?”

My sister is no more of a runner than I am.

So, I said yes.

And then curled up into a whimpering ball on the floor.

It seems funny, perhaps, that in a blog devoted to fatherhood (and beer, and left-wing politics, and writing, and, well, you get the picture) I’ve devoted very little time to talking about my own dad.  But I know he’s always been a private man, and probably wouldn’t have wanted me throwing stories about him up all over the internet.  (Like I am now!)

Or post pictures of him...

But several years ago, we started noticing Dad acting a little different.  His walk was a little uneven, his hands shook, his speech sounded a little slower, even a little bit slurred.  He went to see some doctors, finally. They thought initially it could be Parkinson’s Disease, and I thought, Just like Michael J. Fox!  Then, they diagnosed him with Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, or PSP.

And I thought, What’s that?

Progressive Supranuclear Palsy is a progressive (duh!) neurodegenerative disease, in which brain communication to the body is interrupted.  It is considered a Parkinsonism, or a Parkinson’s Plus syndrome, which just means that it can easily be mistaken for Parkinson’s because the symptoms are so similar.  But while similar, and while both diseases seem to be connected to certain proteins in the brain that somehow damage nerve cells, they seem to be caused by different proteins.  And, most importantly, treatments for Parkinson’s don’t seem to work well, or at all, on PSP.  In fact, PSP has no widely effective treatment, and no cure.

A couple years after this diagnosis, as we watched the disease progress, I was talking to Dad and he mentioned that they thought maybe he didn’t have PSP after all.  From the way he was losing control of one side of his body faster than the other side, his doctor thought it could be Corticobasal Degeneration, or CBD.

“Oh,” I said.  “Is there a treatment for that?”

“Nope.”

“So, instead of one three-letter disease with no cure, you might have a different three-letter disease with no cure?”

“Or both.”

“How do they find out?”

“They won’t know until they look at my brain after I die.”  Then, my dad added, as only he could, “Someone finally wants me to give them a piece of my mind.”

So, PSP, or CBD, no treatment, no cure.  And very little research being done.  For example, a search of clinical studies through the National Institutes of Health website yielded 65 studies on PSP.  And 1883 studies on Parkinson's disease. 

Why?

Simple.  Over a million people, including Michael J. Fox, suffer from Parkinson’s Disease.  Estimates for PSP are around 20,000 people.  Where do you think most of the research money goes?  Not that I don’t understand; it makes completely logical sense.  If you only have a limited amount of money, you target that money to where it can do the most good.

That doesn’t stop me from wishing, hoping, that some breakthrough could happen, that the progress of the disease could be stopped.  That some of the symptoms could be eased.  That Dad could do something as simple as put his arms up and wrap them around his grandkids.

No, really, he's going to hate that I posted these...

But little research is still some research, and it may well fall to private fundraising, rather than reliance on government funding, to provide for further research.  Which brings me to why we’re running.  

We’re running (or at least shuffling in a very funny manner) across the Newport Bridge on October 22nd in order to raise awareness and money for an organization called CurePSP.  None of the money we raise will do anything directly, or probably even indirectly, to help Dad.  Instead, our hope is to help some future family, like our own, not have to experience this.  That some future dad might get more of a chance to enjoy a retirement doing what he loves, whether or not that involves antique firetrucks (though I kinda hope it does). We hope that through organizations like CurePSP, research will continue to at least increase the quality of care and quality of life for people with PSP, CBD, or similar diseases, or even find effective treatments and, someday, a cure.

Running over the Newport Bridge seems particularly fitting.  When he was working, keeping the lights on for the bridge was one of his jobs.  Dad was always being called out at night to fix those lights, which I think at least sometimes involved him climbing up the suspension cables.  I recall he was even featured in a local magazine article on the most dangerous jobs in Rhode Island.  The bridge seems like the perfect thing to feature in this run in his honor.  It’s also two freaking miles long, while I get winded chasing Leo down the aisle in Target.  And the whole course from start to finish is four miles, which makes me wonder just what I’ve gotten myself into.

But, I downloaded the Couch-to-5k app (finishing up Week 5!), set my alarm for 5:30am, and loaded some inspirational music to my ipod (you know, the usual stuff: Everclear, Better Than Ezra, the Muppets, Randy Newman…).

And so, I run.  Because running is part of our natural instinct, fight or flight.  But in Dad’s case, he doesn’t have a choice.  He can’t run.  So we will.

Visit our page on crowdrise to find out how you can help.  Thanks.

A monumental problem

As much as I've avoided this, it's time to say a few words on Confederate monuments.

In the terrible violence that has taken place in Charlottesville, and devastated our nation, there stands one figure behind everything that has happened, at the root yet also hiding in the shadows thrown by the violence.

Seen  here.  On a horse.  Tiki torches not included.

The white supremacists who chose to violently demonstrate in Virginia were there specifically to try and bully Charlottesville into keeping the statue of Robert E. Lee that the city had previously decided should be taken down.

It's part of a trend of cities realizing that their Confederate memorials are a really terrible idea, usually followed by a chorus of people shouting about how taking down the memorials is an attack on Southern history and pride.

I've mostly kept my opinions to myself.  Mostly because why should anyone give a hoot what yet another northern liberal has to say on the subject?  Obviously, I'm just going to accuse the Confederacy of being evil, the statue of supporting racism and hate, and demand they all be removed.  Because everyone in Virginia always listens to what people in Massachusetts say.

So why say something at all?  As a northerner, how could I possibly be able to understand the meaning of these statues for the descendants of the Confederate soldiers who fought and died for the rights they felt the North was taking away from them?

Here, maybe if I introduce some of my ancestors, it'll make things more clear:


One I'd like to introduce you to is my great-great-great grandfather Joseph Pavy.

I wish I could pull that outfit off.

Another is my great-great-great grandfather John Self III (no photo, sadly).  They both lived in Caroline County, Virginia, and both served in the Army of Northern Virginia under General Robert E. Lee.

Pavy was wounded at Gettysburg and captured by Union soldiers.  He was imprisoned and held until the end of the war, starved, tortured, and subjected to such deplorable living conditions that he died less than a year after being freed in 1865.  He was, in short, killed by the Yankees.  Self was with the army right up to the end, a loyal soldier who was part of the long shameful march home from Appomattox Courthouse following Lee's surrender.

And I was taught by my grandfather, a native Virginian, that Robert E. Lee himself was a proud American, who loved his country, who served it with distinction, and would have done anything for it, except take up arms against his home.  He loved the United States, but he loved Virginia more.  And that the statue of Lee represents a good man, a hero of Virginia, and not hatred and evil.

And as the great-great-great grandson of two men who fought for the Confederacy, and the grandson of a proud Virginian, I can with absolute clarity of conscious and with all the sense of history in my blood declare: that's bullshit.

First of all, Lee was a traitor, pure and simple.

Okay, yes, he was a war hero from the Mexican War, a brilliant general, and the best military leader our country had in 1860, and Lincoln wanted him to lead the Army.  But he said no.  Fine, that was his right.

But the second he took up arms against the United States of America, he became a traitor.  I don't care how much he loved Virginia, he could have said no then, too.  He could have refused to betray his country for the sake of his state, and he didn't.  And there was absolutely nothing noble in that. The same goes for my own ancestors: they may have been good and decent men, good fathers and good husbands, and upstanding members of their communities.  They may have done good things in their lives, things to be proud of.

But taking up arms against the United States isn't one of them.  There is no pride in that.  They lost, lost badly, and they deserved to lose.  There should be nothing to commemorate their actions.  Instead, they should serve as a warning, a cautionary tale, of those who would betray their nation on the whim of short-sighted, ignorant, arrogant, blow-hard politicians.

Furthermore, the Lee statue, as with most Confederate statues, has little or nothing to do with honoring the memory of the Confederacy, but rather was as erected part of a campaign in the late 19th century and early twentieth century to reframe the Civil War as something for Southerns to be proud of.  And by Southerns, I mean, of course, Southern whites.  The statues were also meant as an intimidation tactic to remind former slaves and the descendants of slaves that their freedom was tenuous, and could be revoked if they didn't stay in their place.  These Confederate memorials were built as part of a larger trend to find new, legal ways of disempowering minorities, to keep power in the hands of those who held it before the Civil War.  They are indivisible from Jim Crow laws and restrictive voter requirements.

Supposedly, the statues commemorated the "bravery" of those who fought for "Southern rights."  Yeah, the only right they fought for was the right to keep slaves.  And there's no bravery or pride in fighting for that.  Bravery, in the 1860s, would be standing up against slavery, not fighting to defend it.

But, the counter-argument runs, ultimately the Civil War is an important part of American history, so shouldn't its statues also be treated as part of that history?  Or should we seek to erase that horrible period from our history books; erase the painful reminder that once our country was torn apart by the desire for one group to deny human rights to another group?  My own town has a memorial to the War to Preserve the Union.  Should it, too, be taken down?

What we choose to honor represents the moral center of our country.  One kind of memorial reminds us that the Union was split, and brave men took up arms to defend the Union, the Constitution, and the ideas that the Union was founded on.  The other memorial tries to lionize those who would have destroyed all that.

You see, while one part of my ancestry is firmly planted in Virginia, another part of my heritage traces back to Maine, They've been there a long time.  I mean, back before Maine was Maine, and before this country was a country.  And my ancestors were there in the 1860s, and they joined the army to fight the Confederacy.  Maine was not a slave state, and was as far from the front-lines of the fighting as one could possibly get.  But the nation needed help, and my ancestors answered that call.  My great-great-great uncle, Sam Houston (no, not that one) was sent to New Orleans, where he died.  Probably from the heat.

And then there is my great-great-great grandfather, Lindley Whitaker.  (My Maine relatives had all the best names.)

And all the best beards!

Whitaker joined the 19th Maine Infantry.  He fought at Fredericksburg, at Chancellorsville, and at Gettysburg.  He was wounded in the Battle of the Wilderness.  These two men answered the call of their country and sacrificed themselves for a fight that ultimately didn't directly affect them.  Why?  Because their nation needed them.

We preserve these memorials to the Union cause to remind us that our nation NEEDED to be preserved, against those who would tear it asunder to keep other human being stripped of their freedoms.

Make no mistake: tearing down the statues will not fix everything.  There will always be Confederate flags.  There will always be white supremacists.  And, unfortunately, there will always be short-sighted, ignorant politicians who try to pass laws dictating what bathroom you can use.  Bigotry and hate were here in this country before the Civil War, and stuck around after the war.  But thankfully, the history of this country, while very far from perfect, is full of lessons on how to effectively deal with that hate.  If the history of our country tells us anything, it's that Confederate statues stand for treason, for racism, for depriving other human beings of basic human rights.  Our country does not, will not, can not stand for that.  And ignoring it is not enough; we must always actively fight against it.

We are, almost uniquely in this world, a nation founded exclusively on ideas.  And even if slavery was woven into the fabric of this nation at its inception, is was never part of the ideas that form its foundation. Instead, we are a people and a nation "conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."  And in such a country, a statue to Robert E. Lee, or Stonewall Jackson, or P.T. Beauregard, has no place.

Finally, my argument against Confederate statues, against the lionizing of the Confederacy and the romanticizing of the pre-Reconstruction South, has one final advocate, and you might be surprised by who it is:

General Robert E. Lee, who wrote in 1869, "I think it wiser, moreover, not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the example of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, commit to oblivion the feelings engendered."

Okay, maybe my grandfather was sort of right about him after all.

Which is why I say:

Take down the damned statues!

Pieces of Eight: Chapter 2

Half a year ago I shared the first chapter of the novel I'm kinda sorta working on, inspired by my cousin, by his death, and by the stories we used to tell each other.  It's kind of interesting to write what now seems like it has to count as a period piece, being set in October of 2004.  Am I really that old? And then, last month, I shared the prologue, because, you know, pirates.

Different pirates.

Well, if you're interested, here's the second chapter.  No pirates this time,  But it's got a surprise at the end.  If I can keep up the current pace, you'll be able to read the next chapter some time next month.  

Chapter 2

October 12, 2004

Jim Kelley pulled his eyes off the dusty, cobweb-filled ceiling beams of the old carriage house and turned his attention back to the young man listlessly stirring the mortar beside him.

It was early, and the chill in the air was a constant reminder that summer was gone.  Even the summer season was officially over, as of yesterday, Columbus Day.  Once, Jim recalled, the summer tourist season ended with Labor Day in September. But at some point, some genius had decided that the tourist season should go until Columbus Day.

Whatever keeps the tourists coming in, thought Jim.

They should have finished this job almost a week ago, but a lot of the outside work had been delayed by a series of thunder storms, just bad luck, and this new kid hadn’t shown Kelley much in the way of promise.

“C’mon, kid,” he shouted.  “We gotta get this done.”

The kid didn’t look up.  “What's the hurry?"

"What's the hurry?" Jim shot back.  "The hurry is we got to get this job done by the weekend.  This ain't some guy's man-cave, this is Astors freaking Beechwood.  And they got a big thing happening this Saturday. And they're not paying us to take our sweet time.  Now get moving!"

Jim walked out of the carriage house and stood in the driveway beside his pickup truck.  He hated yelling at the kid, but Jim needed to get him motivated somehow.

He didn't usually do historical renovation jobs, not like this, where the emphasis was on keeping as much of the original materials as possible, but he'd done a few, and the money on this one was something he couldn't say no to.  And hell, you couldn't do a half dozen jobs in a place like Newport without running into something that was built two hundred years ago.  Historical preservation was one of those annoying things that went with the territory

Still, this job was different for him.  Astors Beechwood was a big league tourist attraction, one of the named Newport Mansions that lined famous Bellevue Avenue.  It was unique, in that is was one of the few mansions open to the public that wasn't owned by the Newport Preservation Society, which owned properties like the Breakers, Marble House, the Elms.  No, Beechwood was privately owned, and it showed.

Rather than a boring tour guide, visitors to Beechwood were shown around by people who acted like it was still 1900.  They dressed, talked, totally acted like they were living more than a century in the past.  God help you if you pulled out a cell phone, they'd probably burn you as a witch.  It was what they called "living history," and Jim had seen it before.  He'd taken the family up to Plimouth Plantation and Old Sturbridge Village.  Stupid, if you asked him.   Hokey.  Just talk normal.  It's the twenty-first century!

This job had been presented as something that needed doing in a hurry.  Someone had come across a story about a party that had been held here by John Jacob Astor IV exactly one hundred years ago, in 1904, and had decided that recreating that party would be the perfect end to the summer season.  Even though they were holding the party in the middle of October.  They'd decided that they would need the carriage house renovated for the party, which was a bit of a problem, since the carriage house wasn't a normal part of the tour, was mostly storage these days, and had been renovated so many times over the past century that it was totally out of character from the rest of the mansion.

Which was how Jim had gotten the job.  He'd needed to peel back all the layer of renovation and bring the carriage house back to the kind of look it might have had back in 1904.  They'd already peeled back decades of shoddy workmanship: rotted wood, veneer, faux marble, back to the original bricks, which were threatening to come apart as the mortar disintegrated with the slightest touch. 

Jim checked his watch.  The kid moved slow, but he guessed they'd still finish on time, which was good.  He didn't want any unexpected late nights this week.  He wanted to get home in time to watch the Sox game.  Playoffs.  Against the Yankees, even.  Can't beat that.

At least, he reflected, traffic wouldn't be bad.  Like many Newporters, Jim had a complicated love-hate relationship with the tourist industry that doubled the city’s population every summer.  Newport’s economy had become more and more dependent on tourist dollars, especially as the Navy’s presence had decreased.  Now, the sailors wandering the stores by the waterfront owned their own yachts and the stores had gone from bars and tattoo parlors to nightclubs and upscale designer clothing boutique.  But on the other hand, traffic turned into gridlock for five months out of the year, prices went up, and the bars would suddenly charge you twenty bucks just to get in the door.  Still, without the money the tourists brought in, Kelley wouldn’t have a job, let alone his own business.

It all came back to these mansion, Jim reflected, turning his attention from the small carriage house, nearly hidden behind a stand of trees, to the main Beechwood mansion.  Compared to some of the other Bellevue Mansions, Beechwood was nearly reserved.  It fairly gleamed in October sunshine, but had none of the over-the-top architectural touches of mansions that were built later, with the touches of French or Italian elegance. It looked a little like a modest house that had been added to over and over again over the years to turn it into a mansion, which was pretty close to Beechwood's actual history.  Beechwood was built in 1851, but massively renovated for by the Astors after they bought it in 1881, one of the first mansions of what they would call the Gilded Era.  "They," in this case, being Mark Twain, who coined the phrase to refer to how the newly rich tycoons of the late 1800s seemed to cover everything in gold, only to hide the rot and corruption underneath.  And as the rich realized they had more money than they knew what to do with, they came to Newport, and started building their modest "summer cottages," sprawling mansions that other, less rich people would come from miles around just to get a look at.  It was the beginning of a kind of golden age for Newport, when the city let the super-rich do whatever they wanted.

So different from now, Jim thought sardonically.

Suddenly, from behind him, he heard the kid let out a shout of surprise.  He spun around just in time to see his employee running out of the carriage house and out across the estate lawn.  Jim shouted after him, “Get back here, or you’re fired!”  The kid didn’t even look back, just kept running.

Cursing, Jim turned his attention back to the carriage house, walking slowly back inside.  Now empty, the large, open space of the carriage house had a solemn, eerie quality he hadn’t noticed earlier.  The sun did not reach far enough in to banish all the shadows, and a gloom hung in the corners.  Jim thought for a moment he could feel a palpable heaviness, some hard-to-describe pressure in his gut, the kind of twisting stomach people might associate with seeing some gruesome image, but here, it just floated on the air.

He shook his head, told himself that his mind was just playing games, and walked to the wall where the kid had been working.

Probably some raccoon, he thought.  It wasn’t uncommon for some animal to dig its way into decaying walls and to build a nice nest for itself in that in-between space.  Probably scared the raccoon as much as the kid.  He looked at the black hole in the wall where a dozen bricks had been pulled away and stacked neatly on the floor.  It was too dark to see inside.  He pulled a flashlight from his belt and shone it into the empty space.

The light illuminated the dull yellowish white of a human skull, bits of skin and hair still clinging to its rounded dome, and the glint of metal from a knife blade protruding from the vertebrae of its neck.

Jim jumped backwards, dropped the flashlight, and ran out of the carriage house.  Once out in the sunshine, he pulled his cell phone from his pocket, flipped it open, and breathlessly called 911.

Pieces of Eight (and a Brief Meditation on Writing)

So, around 6 months ago, I threw something up on this blog.  It was the first chapter of a novel I've been trying to write.  At the heart of it is my cousin, Mike McCarthy, whose death I'm still trying to figure out and deal with a dozen years afterwards.  I call the story (now) Pieces of Eight, because it sounds pretty cool.  And it never really had a title before, so it's definitely better than no title.

A couple of you said nice things about it.  Thanks, guys.  You're sweet.

That was gonna be it.  Just something about Mike, and move on. I'm writing a couple stories featuring my kids, now.  I'm even thinking about getting a self-published, professionally printed copy to give them for Christmas this year.  Pretty cool, right?

But then...

But then my mom read what I wrote.  And she told Mike's mom about it.  And she read it.  And soon after, I got a letter in the mail.

Yeah, that's right.  A letter.  What's a letter?  Think of it like this: if you wrote an email, printed it out, and paid someone to deliver it.  I know, pretty weird.  Needless to say, I don't get a lot of letters, so this was special.  I won't share all it, entire internet, just say the letter got me thinking.

What should I do with the story, now?

I'm still not sure.  Perhaps I could throw the whole thing that I've written so far up for people to read.  (It wouldn't take much.  I'm not more than a few dozen pages in at this point.)  Maybe people will like it, maybe not.

And maybe this could kind of jump start me into working more on the story.  Maybe this will become the reason (self-imposed deadlines work a lot better than my current strategy of "I don't know, whenever I feel like it"), or maybe this blog serves as a chronicle of a very rough first draft, a kind of behind-the-scenes of a writer's process, or at least this writer's process.  That could be interesting.  At least for me.

Anyway, while I try to figure out what to do next, you should at least have a chance to start at the beginning, so here's the prologue.  It's short and has pirates.  Enjoy.

(Fun fact:  April 26, 1717, New England really was hit by a pretty big storm.  Yeah, that's right, historically accurate weather!)


Pieces of Eight

Prologue

April 26, 1717

The waves crashing onto the shore all but drowned the sound of thunder that rumbled across the black landscape of the stony beach.  Lightning briefly illuminated the four men as they heaved another box from the longboat.  The rain and salty spray of the breakers drenched them more with every step, their skin numb with cold as the water soaked through their clothes, their oilskins doing nothing to keep the wetness at bay.  But these men were sailors, and sailors ignored the damp cold like the Devil ignores cries for mercy.

Once out of the surf, three of the men carried the box, straining against the weight of its contents, toward an outcrop of rock, while the fourth man retrieved a lantern from the boat and followed them.  The outcrop sheltered them from the rain, if not the wind and constant din of the surf and thunder, and the three men set the box down, breathing heavily.  Beside it sat five other boxes of similar size.

“It’s the Devil’s own night,” one of the men said as lightning illuminated the driving rain just beyond the outcropping.

“Shut your trap,” spat the fourth man, “or I’ll let you walk back to the ship!”

“Pardon me, Captain Williams,” said another man, “but how do you know these will be safe here?”

The man holding the lantern, Paulsgrave Williams, smiled at the question.  “I grew up in this place.  I climbed these rocks as a boy.  I know them as good or better than any man alive.  Look there!”  He pointed into the darkness with the lantern.  By its light, the deep shadows  began to resolve into massive stones, with a narrow, triangular space between them, perhaps five feet in height.  “This very cave I discovered as a boy.  It will be big enough to hold our loot 'til we meet up with Black Sam and can come by it again.”

He thrust the lantern into the hands of the man who had asked the question, then barked, “Now, start lifting!  God's wounds, get those chests into that cave, fast as you can.”

As the men moved to obey, Williams stood back at the edge of the outcropping, staring back at the thundering surf.  He couldn’t see the Marianne, anchored off the shore, but he longed to be back aboard her.  But her hulls had been full, her treasure load of Spanish silver heavy, and he needed to lighten her load, if they should encounter a British patrol.  The waters of Newport were generally safe for privateers, the enterprising sailors that harassed the Spanish fleets with the tacit approval of the British crown.  But for pirates, like himself, who attacked any ship, regardless of its flag, few waters outside of Nassau would be safe.  And while Marianne was a fast ship, and had performed well under Captain Black Sam Bellamy, she was now his ship, as Bellamy had adopted the stolen slaver Whydah as his new flag ship.  Just days ago, Bellamy had told Williams of his intention to visit his scorned lover in Wellfleet.  Williams had tried to talk Bellamy out of it, but Bellamy had insisted.  Williams had said he’d stay in Rhode Island waters, for he had family on Block Island and in Newport that he wished to visit, but that he would meet Bellamy further north in a week’s time.

Williams had always had a bad feeling about Maria Hallett, Sam’s old lover.  He’d heard stories of her being a witch, and as the rain slashed the air all around him, he wondered if that witch had conjured the storm, knowing the scoundrel who’d broken her heart was coming back to hurt her again.  But he knew Bellamy was genuine in his wish to see Hallett, though Williams thought their reunion doomed, and he prayed that the Whydah would weather this storm.

Waves crashed on the beach and the salt spray struck his face like a cold palm slapping him back to his senses.

If she sent this storm after you, Sam, he thought, you’re good as dead already.

Suddenly, there was a shout and a crash from behind him.  Williams turned to see one chest lying broken on the rocky ground, silvery metal glinting in the lantern light.  The men were backing away from the chest, and Williams was about to shout to them, when he saw a tall figure emerge from the shadows.  It seemed to walk out from the cave, its head and arms covered in a heavy cloak, its movements strange, measured, like a horse over untrustworthy ground.

“Who are you?” shouted Williams.

Instead of answering, the figure raised its arms.  The cloak revealed no hands, but instead, flashes of fire exploded from each arm, thunderous crashes of sound echoed over the rocks, and the smell of gun powder filled the air.  Two of his men fell to the ground, their faces and skulls torn to shreds by the musket balls.

The figure dropped its arms, two pistols falling to the ground, smoke curling from their barrels.  Williams was reacting now, pulling his own pistol from his sash.  But before he could raise it and fire, the figure jerked its head back, the cloak falling away to reveal its face.  Williams hand went limp in shock, the pistol clattering to the rocky ground.

“ 'Tis The Devil!” shouted the third man, the one who still held the lantern.  The figure sprung, now, racing at his target, its right arm moving quickly, jabbing the man in the neck.  Williams thought he glimpsed metal, obscured by the cloak, then the man dropped the lantern and Williams saw only the blood frothing from his neck as he screamed his last wet, desperate breath.  The lantern went out as it struck the ground, the man falling to the ground beside it with a wet thump.

Williams found himself running, the rain pelleting his face, rushing through the black night until his found the long boat.  He shoved at the beached craft, afraid every moment that the demon would be at his back, cutting off his head and holding it high as his final trophy.  He shoved one last time and the boat was free, bobbing in the rough surf.  With a strength of will he’d barely known he possessed, Williams heaved himself into the boat, grabbed at the oars, and managed to turn himself away from shore.

The return to the Marianne was a nightmare of cold, of rain, of crashing waves threatening to capsize him, but yet was nothing to the nightmare he’d left behind, the nightmare he’d visit again and again in his sleep from years to come, of the night when, during the witch’s storm, he’d come face to face with the Devil himself.

It’s the Devil’s treasure, now, he thought, and swore to never return for it for as long as he might live.

Make Great Beer Again

Ah, St. Patrick’s Day.  Or, as I like to call, "Oh Sure, NOW You Like Immigrants" Day.

Time for everyone to take a break from talking about penniless moochers, dangerous religious fanatics, deportations, travel bans and border walls so they can instead reflect on the Irish, who came to this country as penniless moochers, were beaten and shunned as religious fanatics, and regularly threatened with deportations.  But they fought hard to be accepted, to assimilate, and now they can keep homosexuals from marching in their parades.  Because nothing says America like turning the hate that was focused at you onto some other group!

As for me, I'm gonna have some corned beef and cabbage (yes, yes, I know, but I LIKE corned beef and cabbage, in spite of myself), drink a nice, dark ale, and think about the immigrant experience of my Irish ancestors.

Because, of course, I'm part Irish.  The great-grandson of immigrants.  Not much surprise there.  This country is a nation of immigrants.  In school, I was taught that America was the great Melting Pot of cultures from around the world. 

Turns out, this is total bullshit.  Our nation HATES immigrants.  Always has, always will.  Hell, our main symbol of welcoming immigrants into this country, Ellis Island, was built on an island because that made it easier to turn potential immigrants away.  From our very beginning, we hated any immigrant group that was in any way different from us.  And as those immigrants came to be accepted as American, both conforming to American culture and conversely forcing American culture to conform to their traditions, they became the new face of America, by totally HATING the next wave of immigrants.  German, French, Irish, Hungarian, Italian, Asian, Hispanic, we’ve always HATED immigrants.  We always seek to keep anything that we perceive as foreign out of our country.

So thinking, and still in the spirit of St. Patrick’s Day, I stepped into a local bar.  It wasn't a bad bar; seemed alright.  The paint was peeling in places, but the giant screen TV was clearly very expensive and very new.  I wasn't sure it would live up to the banner above the bar, calling it, "The Best Bar Ever.  I Mean, Ever.  Seriously, Just the Best."

I sat down and asked the bartender for a stout.  The bartender, a large, somewhat overweight fellow in ill-fitting clothes with an vaguely jaundiced complexion and pale blond hair that looked like it might jump off his head at any moment, shook his head and said, “Sorry, but we only serve American beers here.”

"Excuse me?"

I did a quick double-take.  “Don’t you have any American stouts?”

“No, I mean real American beers, not American versions of immigrant beers.  Stout’s an English style of dark ale.  We fought the Revolution to be rid of stuff like that!”  He picked up a glass and began to clean it with a rag.  As he did, I noticed the slogan embossed on the glass: “Make Beer Great Again.”

Now, the guy had a point.  Of course I knew stout was an English style originally.  I just never thought of it as an immigrant beer before.  Plenty of high-quality stouts, or any other ales, we made right here in the United States.  Surely, one must count as “American.”  I decided to press my case.

“So, do you have any ales at all?”

The bartender shook his head again.  “Ales, by which you mean beer made with the classic top fermenting ale yeast Saccharomyces Cerevisiae, are all foreign-born immigrant brews.  Not welcome here.”

It was becoming clear that this bartender was a) incredibly well-informed on the nature of beer-making, and b) serious about this whole “American beer” thing.

“Okay,” I replied.  “I’ll take a Bud.”  Nothing un-American about that!  Why, nothing said “America!” like a cold bottle of Bud.  Well, maybe Bud Light, but my hypocrisy only goes so far.

“ ‘Fraid not,” the bartender replied, now seeming a little sad at my total inability to listen to what he was saying.

“Oh, c’mon!  Bud is totally an American creation.”

“Your Budweiser is the major commercial example of what is known in the beer world as Premium American-style Lager.”

“Exactly,” I shouted.  “American-style!  Can’t get more American than that!”

“It’s a German immigrant beer,” my new-found beer guru explained.  “You see, that pale, light version of lager centers, as a style, around the city of Pils in what is now the Czech Republic, but was at one point Bohemia.  German immigrants to America brought the style with them and started brewing it here.  Budweiser itself, as a specific beer, was based on a beer found in the city of Budvar in the Czech Republic, known in German as Budweis.”

I’d heard this story before, and wouldn’t let a distortion of the facts pass unassailed.  “But Budweiser, while based in part of the Budweis beer, was created independent of that beer by Carl Conrad, who worked with Adolphus Busch to make a lighter, paler version of pilsner, using rice in place of some of the malt.  That’s a strictly American variation.”

“A variation of a foreign beer is still a foreign beer.  We have to have standards.  Just because it was first made here, if it was spawned by a foreign beer, it’s still an immigrant.”

“Well, you could put green food coloring into it.  That’s a pretty American thing to do.”

But seriously, don't ever do this.

He didn’t respond, which was fair enough.

I was clearly getting nowhere with this guy.  “What about California Common beer?” I asked.  “That was first brewed in San Francisco!”

The bartender nodded.  “Yes, steam beer, as it’s also called, was first brewed in San Francisco, and it is a unique product of opportunity and environment.  But it’s made from the same bottom-fermenting lager yeast known as Saccharomyces Pastorianus, traditionally brewed in colder temperatures than the top-fermenting ale yeast.  Brewers trying to make German-style lager in the 19^th century ran into trouble from the California heat, resulting in a totally different flavor in their beer.  But, despite the higher brewing temperature, California steam beer, like Budweiser, is a derivative of German-style lager.  Immigrant brew.”

I threw up my hands at this.  “You’ve banned every beer that isn’t native to America?  That makes no sense!  Beer has been coming to this continent since the first English settlements here!  It’s part of this country’s backbone.  You can’t ban any beer because it’s too foreign for you.  What would you have left?”

Without answering, the bartender turned to his beer tap, poured some yellow, murky liquid into a pint glass, and placed it front of me.  “Try this.”

I did.  It tasted cloying sweet, and slightly sour, like cornbread topped with something that had been sitting in the hot sun for too long.  Not terrible, but hardly what I’d call refreshing.

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’s called Chica.  Originally made in South America.”  I raised an eyebrow.  “Hey, at least it’s AN America.  Anyway, it’s fermented from corn.”

Corn.  Maize.  American enough, I guess.  I took another sip.

“They make it by chewing the corn, spitting it back out and letting it ferment.”

I put the chica down.

Having had quite enough of this malarkey, I got up to leave.  But before I did, I turned to the bartender and said, “You know, St. Patrick was pro-immigration.  He was an immigrant himself, and according to legend he played a big role in snake immigration patterns.

“If we keep everything foreign out of this country, we’ll only harm ourselves.  If nothing else, our beers will suck.”

And I left.  And this descendant of immigrants went home to make (and enjoy) a batch of homebrewed immigrant beer.

Make Great Beer Again.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Saving the World (with Science-Fiction!)

Look, I know, you're busy.  So am I.  I won't take up too much of your time.  But we need to talk seriously about saving the world.

Saving the world isn’t easy.  I know.  I’ve tried.

My first plan (to locate radioactive waste and become a mutant superhero) didn’t work out.  My fallback plan is to raise my kids to save the world for me.  But that takes time, and these days, it’s hard to tell if we have enough time. 

I was feeling pretty good at this time last year (for the first time in a long time, actually) with the passing of the Paris Accord to finally address climate change and keep global temperature rise to below 2 degrees Celsius.  The idea of being carbon neutral by 2050 was downright exciting!

After all, climate change is a global existential threat to all humans and our ways of life.  Naturally, our government should join with other governments in the interest of mutual security!

But then a year of harsh reality came crashing down and it’s abundantly clear that no one in the government gives a duck’s butt about the Paris Accord, climate change, or guaranteeing a future for our children and grandchildren.

And now our current Commander-in-Cheeto (and no, I will never NOT call him that) is demanding that scientists shut up about climate change, run new research by him first, and freely offers “alternative facts” when regular actual facts aren’t convenient enough.

Well.  Shit.

Okay, no need to panic.  After all, government is inefficient at best, and it would have taken them forever to actually do anything.  No, this whole climate change thing should be left to the free market.  After all, given the right incentives, the free market always makes the right decisions.  And thanks to the simple carbon tax that Congress passed, the free market has all the incentive it needs to innovate ourselves to a rosy, totally non-disastrous future!

What?  Congress didn’t pass a carbon tax?  But why not?  It’s simple, effective, focuses the energies of corporations on making simple changes to reduce carbon emissions, and provides a system by which corporations that invest in carbon-capture technology can make a ton of money!  And most of all, it's a free-market capitalism-based idea.  These guys are supposed to LOVE market-based solutions!  It’s a no-brainer!  And without some incentive, no private company will bother investing in clean technology (except a tiny bit, just to pull in easily-suckered environmentally-conscious customers).

Really?  Not at all?  Not even a cap-and-trade system?

Well.  Shit.

Ok, guys.  Looks like we’re gonna have to do this our damn selves.  As usual.

Now, look, I know you’re doing all you can.  You’re recycling, composting, driving fuel-efficient cars, maybe you have solar panels on your house, or maybe you’re still looking into that.  You’ve reduced your carbon footprint as much as possible.  You’re not part of the problem, you’re part of the solution!

Sorry to say this, but it’s not enough.

We can’t nickel and dime our way to climate sustainability.  At the Paris climate summit, the world’s top climate scientists agreed that to mitigate the worst-case scenario of climate change we needed to find a way to become carbon neutral.  Neutral.  Meaning no carbon emissions added to atmospheric levels.  Seven billion human beings contributing no more carbon to the atmosphere than the planet is able to deal with.  It’s impossible.

The very notion is like something out of a science-fiction novel.

Which gives me an idea.

Now, I don’t read a ton of science-fiction, partially because a big chunk of it is absolute rubbish.  But I’ve found a handful of authors who are well-worth the time and effort to make it through their books.  Authors like Neal Stephenson, Phillip K. Dick, and (most relevant to this conversation) Kim Stanley Robinson.

Robinson wrote, in addition to a series of books looking at catastrophic climate change and surreal but wonderful book about a time-traveling Galileo, a series of books on colonizing Mars, taking a hard look at what would be involved at terraforming the Red Planet to make it habitable to Earthlings, and whether or not such a thing should even be attempted.  Really great stuff.

Either Mars...or the Earth four years from now.  Hard to tell.

Terraforming has long been a common device in any science-fiction dealing with human traveling to other planets.  How do you make a planet totally unlike Earth into a new Earth?  If it’s cold, like Mars, you maybe could find ways to increase atmospheric concentrations of CO2, or if it’s hot, like Venus, find ways of scrubbing CO2 out of the atmosphere.  Typically, big machines are used to cover up the fact that its basically ecological magic, waving a wand and making a planet habitable.  Take a dead, unlivable planet, turn on the re-Earth-anator, and presto!

All of this is, of course, total fiction.  But I also thought 1984 was fiction, until Captain Tiny Hands got elected and we started having to actually hear the words “alternative facts” without any intended irony.

(Yes, I know, I’m supposed to lay off divisive rhetoric and infantile name-calling.  But screw it, I will when he does.  I’m not the one who’s supposed to be acting like the leader of the Free World.)

So, if Newspeak can exist now, so can terraforming, which means this whole climate change thing is about to get awesome!  We can terraform the Earth itself!

Because the reality is we can’t just rely on our own incremental reductions in our individual carbon footprints.  We need to actually terraform the Earth, to make it more habitable than it is or soon will be.  And here’s the craziest part: I firmly believe that we have all the technology we need to do this, and most of it is available to anyone.

We have the technology to capture carbon out of the atmosphere.  (Some of them are called trees.)  We have the technology to reflect more of the sun’s energy out into space, rather than letting it get absorbed and turned into heat.  (White paint.)

No, really.

Do you remember when Obama’s first Secretary of Energy suggested everyone paint their roofs white?  No?  I didn’t think so.  But he said it, and it’s actually a great idea.  Minimal cost, maximum reward.

How?  Because turning a black surface to white causes a huge increase in that surface's albedo, which is a measure of how much of the sun's energy to reflected back into space without causing warming that can be trapped by greenhouse gases.   Now, your roof might not be very big, but multiply that by all the homes in just the United States, and that’s a small thing that could make a big difference.

So, should the government demand that everyone paint their roofs white?  Why not?  This administration seems to love making this country more white.  (Too soon?)

But sadly, the only way you'll get this government to act on this simple, effective measure to deflect more sunlight away from the Earth is if you can convince them that the sunlight is immigrating from a Muslim country.  

So, how about a bunch of people just start going around and painting everyone’s roofs for them?  Why can't we just do it ourselves?

And it's more than just painting things white.  We also need more carbon sinks, places where carbon is transformed into a solid form that can be stored for long periods.  Like forests.  Peat bogs.  Algae.  Let’s all start planting random forests.  How does one start a peat bog?  I have no idea, but someone out there does!  We can do this!

Now, reflective space mirrors might be a little outside the realm of the manageable, unless Elon Musk reads this blog (in which case, Hey, how’s it goin’?), but seeding the upper atmosphere with intentional pollution could have the exact same effect: that of reflecting more sunlight before it even reaches the surface. 

Sure, pollution sounds terrible, but if pollution in the upper atmosphere can create a kind of global dimming it might buy us enough time to pull more carbon out of the air.  It’s an extreme idea, I admit, but it’s one that has to be seriously considered.  Is it beyond the capability of a small but dedicated group of ragtag rebels to pollute the upper atmosphere using…I don’t really know.  Balloons?  Really tall mountains?  A very, very long hose?

Or maybe grass can be genetically altered to be a much lighter color, thus increasing the albedo of our lawns.  I know from homebrewing that brewer’s yeast consume sugar and turns it into alcohol and carbon dioxide.  Could yeast be engineered that did the same thing in reverse?  Get the yeast drunk on alcohol so it consumes CO2?

Maybe alcohol really is the solution to all of our problems.

These are just small ideas.  I’m not certain any of them would work.  But they’re only the beginning.  Yes, they cost money, but not so much as to be prohibitive.  Even without a government or a corporation behind us, we could begin, step-by-step, to terraform our own planet.  That was the major insight of Robinson’s Mars books: small innovations, like tiny wind-powered heaters or genetically engineered lichen, or holes dug deep enough to harness geothermal heat.  We could do something similar here, only in reverse.  Nothing would change our climate overnight, but little by little, our efforts could counteract our own carbon emissions and start to reverse some of the damage our species has done.

Okay, I know what you’re thinking.  I’m talking about a handful of people choosing to deliberately change our climate in ways that can’t be totally and accurately predicted.  What right do these individuals have to change a climate that will affect billions of people?

It’s a fair question, and totally meaningless since that is the status quo we’re all living with and seem to be implicitly endorsing in our everyday lives.  We drive cars, we use electricity from coal and natural gas fired power plants, we use gas to heat our homes.  Yes, when the industrial revolution started and created our current way of life, we didn’t know about climate change.  But that excuse went out the window decades ago.  We now know that we are changing our planet; we’re doing it willingly and deliberately.

All I suggest is that some people should do the same thing, just in the opposite direction.

I guess what I’m suggesting is that we need some non-governmental organization, some charity, some foundation, willing to look at new and potentially controversial ways of changing our environment.  

Maybe we need the polar opposite of a Greenpeace; an organization militantly dedicated to actively changing our planet’s climate, reducing carbon emissions through any means necessary, and finding ways to mitigate the greenhouse effect using technology as a front-line effort, not an after-market solution like more LED lightbulbs.

And I’m convinced that a bunch of smart people, in a room, with no agenda other than stopping climate change, and given an adequate amount of pizza and beer, can do this!

Ah!  Solutions!

So, what do you say?  I’ll bring the beer.