Commentary Humanity Religion

Do Short Shorts Matter?

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There are those who live their lives with no moral struggles. To them, nothing is right or wrong. Things are simply desirable, or they aren’t. Self interest makes the choices. The laws of man or God may get in the way, but only as barriers to get around. 

Most of us aren’t able to live that way. Most of us have a nagging conscience raising questions of right and wrong. This can be a burden or a blessing . . .  depending. Most of us struggle to develop our standards of right and wrong, and struggle even more to follow them.

I was reminded of this at a dairy farm in Pennsylvania. A wonderfully clean and healthy place. A great place to live if you’re a cow or calf or human child. A place where Amish buggies come driving in to buy milk and eggs, delivering children to enjoy ice cream and animals.

The folks who run this farm work hard, love one another, live modestly, help their neighbors, study their Bibles, and go to church on Sundays. And like most of us, they consider the rightness or wrongness of their words and deeds. So as I read the polite request bullet-pointed in a list on the wall, I smiled but did not scorn it. It said:

To many, such a sign will seem quaint and belonging to an earlier time. When I first read it, I had that reaction. But then, the very next day, I read about the funeral of Aretha Franklin in Detroit. There was much discussion of the mini-skirt worn by one of the singers, and whether it was appropriate for a funeral or not. Many considered it “immodest attire.” And former president Bill Clinton was accused of gazing at the singer in an inappropriate manner by a Fox News panel. They called it “leering.” So the sign I read in rural Pennsylvania is more current than it appeared. …

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Commentary Environment Guns Religion

Not Me? Reflections On the Day of Donald Trump’s Ban on Muslims

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WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 29: Demonstrators march down Pennsylvania Avenue during a protest on January 29, 2017 in Washington, DC. Protestors in Washington and around the country gathered to protest President Donald Trump’s executive order barring the citizens of Muslim-majority countries Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen from traveling to the United States.

He is banning members of the Muslim religion from our country, but I am not of that religion.

He is building a wall to keep out Mexicans, but I am not a Mexican.

He will not allow us to shelter the suffering, homeless, and dying refugees of war, but I am not a refugee.

He intends to torture prisoners, but I will not be one of those tortured.

He may cancel the health insurance of 20 million people, but I have other health insurance.

He will do away with protections for the environment, but I do not have so many years left to live, and future generations will pay for this, not me.

He is moving to further restrict the voting rights of minorities and others who oppose him, but I am a white man from Tennessee and I will still be able to vote.

He will degrade public education, on which most families depend, while funding private education for the well-off. But I already have my education.

He intends to deport some 12 million immigrants, including many who were born and grew up here. But I am not one of those to be deported.

He will reverse the civil rights gains made by lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, and transgendered persons, but I am not one of these persons.

He wants to make abortions illegal and even criminal, but I will not be needing an abortion. …

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Alcohol Places Stories

Breakfast in Payson

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I’m a big fan of Garrison Keillor. He once said that if you drive around the country, stop in small towns, and sit down with the locals in their breakfast cafe, you never know when you may hear something interesting, surprising, or even profound. John Steinbeck also believed that. He took his dog and drove across America, talking with ordinary people and collecting stories. They went into a thoughtful and entertaining book titled “Travels With Charley.”

payson azWell . . . I came to the desert town of Payson, Arizona. I ordered breakfast in a small diner there beside the road. The adjoining booth was occupied by a local man, sitting by himself, talking on his cellphone, his voice lowered. He had long, unkept hair and a long, unkept beard. His clothes looked as worn and tired as he did, and his speech had the lingering of alcohol about it. I heard him use the word “innebriated,” a term less confessional and more respectable than the word “drunk.” But meaning the same, of course.

The man was talking with a woman. You could tell she was someone he missed, someone he owed something to, someone he needed to have around and planned to see again.

The man was doing most of the talking, mostly about nothing, until the end of the conversation. The woman on the line had apparently said, “I love you.”

Now, a man in those circumstances must say something. As a man myself, I know about this moment, that pause that needs a response, as the woman awaits one. I didn’t expect a memorable response from this man, but I heard one.

There was a moment of hesitation, and then: “I love you . . . no matter what I say or do.” …

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Open Water Swim Events

The Great Chesapeake Bay Swim 2016

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On June 12, 2016, I completed my 7th Great Chesapeake Bay Swim. My time was 2 hours and 36 minutes which is my best to date. I finished in 520th place among the 642 finishers. This does mean that a lot of swimmers finished ahead of me, but it also means I came in ahead of 122 others, all younger than myself. I finished first in my age group (75-79) although, full disclosure, there were only two of us in that age group. My Garmin Forerunner sport watch counted the 4,136 swimming strokes it took me to swim the 4.4 miles, and it estimated I burned 1,619 calories. My family made up this calorie deficit afterward with a barbecue dinner at the Red, Hot, & Blue place. The race was won by a 20-year-old man with a time of 1:24, which was a near record. The swimmers who swim across the bay that fast seem beyond mere mortals to me.

SON00608
Finisher medal for the 25th Anniversary

The weather was a good news/bad news affair. There were winds blowing 33 miles per hour, but the wind was blowing in the direction we were swimming. However, the wind was kicking up waves said officially to be 2-3 feet but felt to be more like 4-5 feet by those of us in the water. It was hard to get reliable breaths without taking in mouthfuls of water. I kept thinking of the expression “tossed around like a cork.” But the water was a pleasant temperature and the tidal currents were less than usual. Other than the terrific wind and waves, it was a great day for a swim.

I’m addressing 5 questions I’ve been asked about swimming out in open water.

Why do you do this?

Sometime around the year 2003, I was sitting at a company event next to a man named John Jellen. I’d recently given up running and taken up lap swimming. Jellen had recently completed the Great Chesapeake Bay Swim, I asked him many questions about the swim, and I began thinking I’d love to do this myself. Sometime after that, I was innocently driving across the Bay Bridge on a second Sunday in June, and had the astonishing view of all those swimmers far down below in the water. I wondered if I could ever do a thing like that. Then later I decided to try.  I began doing shorter open water swims, eventually qualified to enter the Bay Swim, and completed my first one in 2005. …

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Open Water Swim Events

Nanticoke River Swim 2016

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I have previously written about the annual open water swimming event in Maryland’s Nanticoke River. The 2012 swim is here and lthe 2013 swim is here. I won’t repeat descriptions of the area and the event, but simply report on my experience there just yesterday – May 1, 2016.

Nanticoke scenic river on Maryland's Eastern Shore
Nanticoke scenic river on Maryland’s Eastern Shore

To say that it was a cold and rainy day is putting it mildly. Rain was coming down almost constantly and alternating between light, medium, and heavy. The water temperature which is normally expected to be in the mid to upper 60’s was 55 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s 12.8 Celsius. Last summer I swam in my coldest water to date, which was 17 Celsius in an alpine river in Italy. I worried before the Nanticoke race that the water temperature would keep me from getting enough breath. It actually did not. The cold was painful at first, but as I got into the swim I was able to swim and breathe normally. 

I have dear swimming friends who literally love cold water and thrive on swimming in colder and colder environments. I will not be joining those ranks. This day after the swim, I am glad I was able to swim in such water, but I will not look forward to doing so again.

Also many of my cold water loving friends swim bare-skinned in bathing suits. I do not. At the Nanticoke I wore my Orca full length wetsuit, wetsuit insulated socks, and a Blue Seventy insulated cap under the race cap. If there was anything else I could have worn to help with the cold, I would have worn it.

Other than rain and cold water, conditions for the 2016 Nanticoke swim were quite favorable. The wind and waves were minimal, and the tidal currents were much less than in my previous swims there. The race was also less crowded, due perhaps to the expected cold temperatures. The 3-mile portion of the event, my group, had only 50 participants.

I swam well and felt I had done about as good as I am capable of. My time was an hour and forty three minutes, an average of 34 minutes per mile. I placed 37th out of the 50 finishers. …

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World War II

Soldier Letters from World War II

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Today’s soldiers communicate with families and friends in many ways. They can tweet and post on Facebook. They have email and voicemail, and they can send audio and video recordings. They can often make cellphone calls, use VoIP, and even videoconference using Facetime or other programs. There are, of course, restrictions on these activities in some locations and circumstances, but none of these modes existed in World War Two. Those soldiers had only letters and post cards. For them, the “mail call” was either a great reward, or a great disappointment.

Pfc. David Briggs, Jr.
Pfc. David Briggs, Jr.

I was the youngest of three brothers, and now the only one still living. My oldest brother, David Jr., volunteered for the army at age seventeen, over the objection of our father. He trained at various bases, then shipped to England, then fought in the Normandy Invasion. He was killed in action on August 15th, 1944 at the age of nineteen, five days before his twentieth birthday.

His death was a great loss to our family and I still think of him often. Just hearing the music from “Band of Brothers” or “Saving Private Ryan” brings it back. By all accounts, my brother was bright and personable and had a fine life ahead of him. That his life ended at nineteen years of age and mine has been long and mostly happy seems unfair. That he was among nearly 300,000 other killed-in-action soldiers from the United States alone, all mostly his age, is a haunting memory.

I look at nineteen-year-olds today and they seem so young. It is hard to believe this was the age of my elder brother as a soldier. It is also hard to fathom the use of German boys aged twelve through sixteen which occurred toward the end of the war. There was actually an Allied camp for captured German boy soldiers that once housed 10,000 of them. 

David Briggs grave in Normandy
David Briggs grave in Normandy

Before he died, David Jr. wrote letters to me and to my older brother, John. The letters are cheerful, caring, and given to some wisdom and good advice. …

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History Places

Unexpectedly, A Confederate Flag

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Being somewhat of a nature and wildlife photographer and in the general area, I decided to visit the Point Lookout State Park in Southern Maryland. For those not acquainted, this is a remote location where the Potomac River joins the Chesapeake Bay. It was a clear and windy day, and very peaceful. A very few sightseers were around, but mostly I had the place to myself. I did see a variety of wildlife: bald eagles, brown pelicans, ospreys, great blue herons, swans, and assorted ducks and seagulls. I had come to Point Lookout innocently, unaware of the dark history of the area. But history overtook me.

Point Lookout Marker
Point Lookout Marker

Almost immediately I noticed markers telling that a Civil War prison had been located here. The Union had established it after the Battle of Gettysburg, and it had housed more than 50,000 Confederate soldiers and Confederate-leaning citizens of Maryland. Some 4,000 had died and were buried here (the number is approximate because no accurate records were kept). There are no individually marked graves of these dead; all are buried in a common mass grave. 

No prisoner of war camp has ever been a happy place. The prison at Point Lookout had no buildings for the prisoners, only military tents. Summers were hot and winters were cold. Water was contaminated and diseases were frequent. Food was scarce and poor in quality. It should be understood that neither the Union or the Confederacy was adequately prepared to handle prisoners of war, and that conditions on both sides were disgraceful. It is believed that 26,000 Confederates died in Union prisons, representing 12% of all captured. And some 15% of Union soldiers died in Confederate prisons. Clearly neither side has anything to be proud of. More information can be found here. …

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Health People Stories Swimming

Surprised By Gratitude

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Each weekday morning I go to the swimming pool to, well, swim.  I usually swim three miles, which takes me about an hour and a half. The lanes at my pool are 25 yards long. It takes 5,250 of these yards to make a three mile swim. That’s 105 laps, a lap being down to the end and back. Often I get in the water and swim non-stop. Now many of my fellow swimmers swim faster than me, but not many swim longer or farther. I catch views of others as I swim. Many do a few laps and then hang on the sides of the pool talking. Many of them spend more time talking in the water than swimming in it. When I observe this, I feel proud to be such a dedicated swimmer.

New Yorker swimming pool coverThese are my fellow swimmers. But there are a lot of others taking up water space in the pool who are not swimmers. I call them the splashers. They get in the water to wade, chat, clap, bounce, float, splash, act silly, and dance around. Often they do these things in groups and with an overweight leader, and to loud and lively music. I think they pay money to join these groups, and they probably imagine they’re getting in shape by doing this. From the looks of most of them, they have a long way to go. The New Yorker captured this phenomenon in a recent cover illustration. Count the number of individuals who are actually swimming, despite the inspirational image on the front wall. (click to enlarge the picture and better appreciate)

The men’s locker room at our pool is a communal place. There are no privacy curtains or individual shower stalls. We dress and undress and shower together; we hear and overhear conversations; we may not speak with others, but we do hear and observe things.

On morning I was there getting dressed and I heard loud panting and wheezing. I looked around the corner and there was a large, overweight, out-of-shape man trying to put on his clothes. Even putting on socks was a great effort for him. His breathing was so labored that I wondered how he could swim at all. Lazy bastard! I imagined him lounging on the sofa, watching TV, and eating potato chips and ice cream and drinking beer. I assumed he was one of the splashers. Why did he even bother coming here? …

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Nature Photography

Eagles

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e-scout-medalMy interest in the American Bald Eagle began early. When I joined boy scout Troop 88 in Maryville, Tennessee with the rank of Tenderfoot, I knew that the ultimate was to become an Eagle Scout. This goal was held out before us over the years of advancing to higher ranks of scouting. I was not especially fond of studying and working on all those merit badges, but I did it because of the goal. Whenever I met an Eagle Scout in uniform I would glance at the imposing badge with the red, white, and blue ribbon and the silver eagle hanging below it. I wanted one of those and eventually did get one.

Select DSCN0223The Bald Eagle is, of course, our national bird and a symbol for others besides boy scouts. I am happy that Benjamin Franklin did not have his way about selecting the turkey as our national bird, even though I do like turkeys also. The Bald Eagle is just an amazing, strong, soaring, intelligent, skilled, majestic bird. I never tire of watching them, and when I can I enjoy trying to photograph them.

E7K_3493 selectMost of my photographs have been from a considerable distance. I do have telephoto lenses, but those get you only so close. I am amused when people observe my long lenses and think that they can magically bring any distant object "up close." They can't. You still have to work hard, be patient, and be lucky to get close shots. I keep trying.

I was lucky the other day in the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge near Cambridge, Maryland. From a distant road I saw two eagles apparently having a fight over something. It turns out there was food on the ground and they were fighting over it. By the time I got there one eagle had chased the other on off and was eating. There were already three photographer cars there I joined them. The eagle was intent on its meal and did not fly away. I shot from the roof of my car, first stills and then video. I got four short videos, each about a minute in length. The following is unedited and the sounds you hear in the background are camera shutters clicking as fast as they could. Enlarge to full screen for the best view . . ..

[youtube]https://youtu.be/dBn5_BjS17Y[/youtube]

Commentary Guns

Evolved Thinking

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On Tuesday, November 8th, 1960 I cast my first vote in a U.S. presidential election, at the age of 23.  I voted for Richard Nixon against John F. Kennedy. I was a Southern Baptist ministerial student at the time, and although I did not openly admit it, I was influenced by the fervent anti-Catholic sentiments I heard around me in Tennessee. Preachers said that a vote for Kennedy was a vote to have the Pope running things in America. My voiced rationale for the Nixon vote was that he was “more experienced.” 

kennedy nixonI did learn better. In the 1964 election I voted for Lyndon Johnson against Barry Goldwater, then for Hubert Humphrey against Nixon in 1968, then for George McGovern against Nixon (who seemed never to go away) in 1972. My thinking on Nixon and what he represented had clearly “evolved.” 

I grew up in rural Tennessee, and although he had a Ph.D, my father was still a mountain man from North Carolina. He gave me a rifle at an early age and taught me to shoot and hunt. I developed a love for guns and hunting and marksmanship.

I joined the National Rifle Association and benefitted from its connection with the U.S. military that allowed NRA members to purchase surplus weapons for almost nothing. I obtained and refinished guns such as the classic M1903 Springfield .30-06, the army M1 .30 Carbine, and the .45 caliber pistol. I learned to re-finish and re-blue weapons, and to fit and furnish them with new and beautiful wooden stocks. In those days you might have called me a “gun nut” and been pretty accurate. …

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