They Shoot Magpies, Don’t They?

This last week, I was surprised to see a letter to the local newspaper from Maggie Magpie, denouncing capitalism, the free enterprise system, private property, and the designated hitter rule.  The topics weren't surprising---that the old bat is still alive is shocking.  I thought that, by now, she would have screamed herself to death.

I should probably change the name of this blog to “Apropos of Nothing Whatsoever”, since every time I start typing, I think of three other things I want to write about.  I just realized that when I think about Maggie Magpie, I mentally picture Marjorie Main playing Ma Kettle.  Not only is there a certain resemblance, and not only did Maggie have about the same mental acuity as Ma Kettle, but Marjorie Main just seemed to have a career that started during the Civil War and never ended.  I can remember seeing her in countless movies, and every time I saw her I had the same thought—Is she still alive?  So it is with Maggie Magpie.

I think I first met Maggie when Fred Dabney, a friend, introduced us.   (One of these days, I’m going to get even with Fred for this.  It will, however,  be difficult, since as I write this, Fred’s ashes are in a cardboard box on a shelf in my office.  This is, perhaps, why I have yet to decide where to sprinkle his ashes—I have it narrowed down to the third floor of Enema U’s library or Chernobyl.)  Fred brought this elderly…lady...to my computer store because she was looking to buy a new computer.  And for several months, that is all she did—look at them.  I spent approximately the same amount of time with Maggie that it would take for someone to learn Chinese.  If I had known that she was looking for a computer to use to send exasperating letters to the local paper for the next three decades, this story would have reached exactly the same conclusion, but several months earlier.

And when she finally picked a computer, she did it exactly the annoying way Maggie does everything.

Among other computers, my store sold Kaypro Computers.  This was the age of Portable Computers.  This meant that for a fairly large sum of money, you could buy a computer with a tiny screen that folded up into a large metal suitcase--a more accurate term for these computers would have been "Luggable Computers".  Laptops were not yet available, but every company was working on them.  Kaypro, realizing that the market was rapidly changing, decided to eliminate its back stock of old obsolete parts by designing what must have been the worst computer ever made:  the Kaypro Robie.

Now, if you are designing a new electric motor, your design does not include a bathtub just because you happen to have one handy--unless, of course, you were Kaypro Computers back then.  They must have had warehouses of old, obsolete parts.  The Kaypro Robie was horrible—as the sum of its bad parts, it was colossally bad—and Kaypro knew it.  The price was low, but dealers were warned that ALL sales were final.  The manufacturer would not accept the return of a Robie for any reason.  They certainly did not want any of those old obsolete parts back.  I took one look at the Robie and refused to sell them.

Maggie had other ideas.  She saw one of these monsters advertised in a magazine—they were nicknamed “Darth Vader’s Lunchbox”—and demanded one.  (I had never advertised the Robie, since I had refused to sell it in my store.)  I tried, really tried, to not sell her one.  I explained over and over that the machine was junk, I offered her a great deal on a better computer, I begged her not to buy one….but she insisted.  I think she believed that I was trying to either cheat her or keep her from buying her dream computer.  Finally, forced by my dealership agreement with Kaypro, I had to sell her the computer.  I wrote Maggie a registered letter explaining my reservations and spelling out exactly the terms of the sale—that the computer was non-returnable and she would have to pay for it in advance.  Maggie promptly paid and I ordered the monstrosity. 

It took Maggie less than a week to discover the machine was junk.  Maggie is crazy, but she ain’t stupid.  And of course she wanted to return the machine!  While I was sympathetic, there was nothing I could do:  Kaypro wouldn’t take it back, and I couldn’t and I wouldn't sell it to someone else.  Maggie yelled, then cried, and then screamed threats as she left my store.  I have to admit that the thought of losing Maggie Magpie as a customer was the only bright part of the sale.  (Besides the small profit, that is.)

About two weeks later, I got an official letter from the State of New Mexico, informing me that Ms. Magpie had filed charges against me with the State Attorney General--specifically, Maggie thought I was guilty of fraudulent advertising.  The common term for this crime is “Bait and Switch.”  Even though I was obviously cheating an elderly woman out of her life savings, the complaint was dropped as soon as I produced a copy of the letter.

Two months later, Maggie came in the store looking for a printer.  I gently—but firmly—took her by the shoulder and escorted her to the door.  Maggie Magpie was the only customer I ever threw out of my store. 

Maintenance Wars

From my experience managing hotels, I can tell you that there is no such thing  as a decent maintenance man.  By that, I mean one worth a tinker's dam at fixing anything.  While I was running a hotel, I could have cared less if one was decent or not, as long as he could tell which end of a screwdriver to put in his hand.  Unfortunately, service guys with even that small level of competence were few and far between.

To be fair, I'm limiting the remarks above to the Continental United States only.  A friend of mine is a maintenance man at a nice hotel in Hawaii, so I will begrudgingly grant him the benefit of the doubt--at least if he doesn't take too long to invite me out for a visit.  (Albert?  Are you listening?)

A few of the maintenance men I have worked with have been spectacular trouble--real  "ruin your whole year" kind of trouble.  "Kevin" (I can no longer remember what the bastard's real name was) was a prime example.  Kevin wandered into the old Jack Tar Hotel one day and asked for a job in construction.  Looking back on it, I suspect that his car was out of gas and he couldn't figure out how to leave the island.  No matter--that hotel was always  in need of maintenance--that poor 'ol aging beachfront hotel had seen way too many years and hurricanes, and being located only about two hundred yards from salt water hadn't done her much good, either.  I could have hired Jesus Christ as a maintenance man and the place would have still needed more help.  One carpenter--even a miraculous one--couldn't have fixed all the troubles.

I hired Kevin on the spot, and gave him and his wife an aging room in the oldest section of the hotel to live in.  When suitably motivated, Kevin could work, but he turned out to be a much better magician than maintenance man.  Anytime there was a really nasty and dirty job Kevin could vanish for hours at a time. (For reference, the picture is me, after I finished cleaning the hotel's main boiler.)

As a matter of fact, Kevin was so good at vanishing that one day he did it completely.  I mean, he just flat disappeared.  The first I knew of it was when his wife came looking for him.  She had lunch waiting, and he hadn't shown up.  By that night, he still hadn't shown up.  We didn't think he had run off, since it was payday, and he hadn't collected his wages. 

After he was missing a whole day, I got the housecleaning staff together and we searched the whole hotel.  This was a long, two-story hotel, with multiple buildings, hundreds of rooms, two restaurants, three bars, basements, and tunnels connecting the buildings, so there were thousands of hiding places.  We looked all day long--I called in all the employees who had a day off.  No Kevin.  So we called the police and the next day, the police helped us search everywhere, again.  No Kevin.

After about a week, Kevin's parents got into the act.  After being threatened with a lawsuit, we searched that hotel a third time.  By now, we had spent a hell of a lot of man-hours, at considerable payroll cost, searching for a guy who we suspected just wasn't there.  His paycheck, his wife, his car, and his clothing were still there, but...No  Kevin.

Eventually, we gave up.  Kevin's wife moved out, we rented his former room, and I mostly forgot about Kevin.  Then one day, I picked up the newspaper and read a story about the unidentified remains of a man being found in the swamp at the east end of the island.  If you drew a line on a map between the hotel and Tuffy's Bar--a place on the far eastern tip of the island frequented only by the locals--it would pass right through that swamp.  Could it be Kevin?

I called up the police, who connected me with the coroner, and I described my missing man.

"He was over six feet, thin, with sandy blond hair and a beard, and wearing shorts, a khaki shirt, and boon-docker laced boots," I said.  I had given that description so many times, I could do it in my sleep.

"Yeah," the coroner said.  "This could be your man.  You better come view him."

Most people who know me would probably say that I'm not exactly the squeamish kind.  Quite a few might even be emphatic making this point.  Still, I did not  want to do this.  Kevin--if that was him--had lain in that swamp during the summer for months.  I will spare you the grisly details, but there are....critters....that live in a coastal swamp.

So I went down to the coroner's office and viewed the body--what was left of it.  Years later, I got a degree in Anthropology.  I have taken a few classes where you have to identify bones and determine the sex of a skull, etc.  But even then--without any formal training--I could immediately tell that the body I was viewing belonged to a short, stocky, black man, who had been in that swamp for only a few days.  Not Kevin.

Later, of course, I found out that the coroner was a sadistic bastard who had everyone come view every body, identified or not.  Evidently, it's lonely, being the only person alive in a large walk-in refrigerator.  Twisted evil troll!  I hope he ended up in his own cooler.

Eventually, about a year later, we did find out what had happened to Kevin.  His body was found 50 miles away in Houston, inside a stolen van, which had been abandoned inside a storage locker.  According to the police, a motorcycle gang had stolen a van load of leather jackets, and decided to hide all the evidence in a locker which had been prepaid for a year.  Only Kevin knew their connection, and he wasn't talking.  This will never be on an episode of "Storage Wars!"

Kevin wasn't the only problematic maintenance man: there was also Hobo Joe.  Hobo Joe was--and here you may be way ahead of me--a hobo.  He drifted in and out of town, usually working just long enough to qualify for some form of benefit, then reentering premature retirement.  Unfortunately, during one of his brief forays into gainful employment, I discovered him face down in the back of one of the hotel bars.  Although he was supposedly cleaning a drain, he had elected to clean out a case of hotel beer instead.

When I fired Hobo Joe, he was angry enough to file charges against the hotel with the local Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) people.  According to him, the hotel's basement was a dangerous working environment.  Specifically, in one corner of the vast, labyrinthine cellar, there was a pit, eight feet square and about six feet deep.  At the bottom of the pit were powerful pumps that would switch on automatically in the event of flooding.

According to both Hobo Joe and the people from the office of OSHA, it was a potential hazard that needed both protective rails and a covering grate.  I was notified that an inspector was coming.

Two weeks later, when the inspector finally arrived, I led him down into the basement and to a corner where the inspector could see about 200 square feet of fresh new paint on the floor.

"What happened to the sump pump pit?" the inspector asked.

"When I realized that it was a working hazard, I had it filled in." I answered.

Satisfied with our compliance, the OSHA inspector wrote out a warning and left, happy and content at having demonstrated his bureaucratic power.

I suspect that he would have been a little less happy if I had led him to the correct corner.  Paint is cheaper than railings.  Any good maintenance man will tell you that.

The South Forty Inches

My garden is pretty much a disaster this year.  The tomato plants started producing late because of the heat and have started dying early just to be perverse.  While the cherry tomatoes were abundant, the large tomatoes--all five of them--probably cost me $25 each. 

The only thing the garden has really successfully produced--besides weeds--is parsley.  While useful, it is hard to build a meal around a plant that is sort of like pubic hair: it's attractive, but you have to push it out of the way before you start to eat.

Even that is now seriously in question.  My parsley is alive with caterpillars, yellow-and-black-striped, big, fat caterpillars.  If it were left to me, I would just spray the plants with Raid and call it good.  (No, I wouldn't worry about pesticides on my food--personally, I think pesticides and cholesterol are probably what give food flavor.)  The Doc, however is about as excited as a boy with a new puppy.  According to her, these ugly worms on steroids will eventually turn into butterflies.  Specifically, Black Swallowtail Butterflies. 

Somehow, The Doc is under the impression that it is okay to sacrifice the parsley crop (you wouldn't believe how much these suckers can eat) so that we can produce a flock of butterflies.  While I admit the butterflies do sort of look like an insect version of the P-38 night interceptors with racing stripes, I can't imagine that they will stay in the back yard long enough for me to even see them after they hatch out.  It is not exactly like a butterfly is useful for anything.

But it has given me an idea.  What would grilled caterpillars taste like?   Think about it--the only thing these bugs have eaten is nice, fresh--and regrettably pesticide-free--parsley.  If you pan-fried them in butter with a lot of garlic and a few chopped scallions....I bet they would taste a little like bacon.  Probably better than escargot.  Linguine a la Lepidoptera. (And it would be an eye-catching dish, too!  Or as the Chinese say: Ho Wok Mei!)

The idea is not as far-fetched as it sounds.  I've eaten fried worms in Mexico.  The Maguey plant--from which we get tequila and mescal--attracts the Tequila Giant Skipper butterfly.  The big red worms that hatch out are considered a delicacy.  While they are often fried and flavoried with lime juice, the best tasting ones can be found in the bottom of a bottle of mescal.

The Doc would never miss a few dozen culled from the herd.  (What is the correct collective noun for a stampede of caterpillars?  In the off chance that no one has yet come up with one--allow me the honor.  From now on, it is a squish of caterpillars.) 

Unfortunately, I would probably find out that pan-fried über worms just taste like chicken.  Lately, everything tastes like chicken--except for chicken and store-bought tomatoes (They both taste like cardboard).

But if the new menu works out as I hope, next year I may just forget all about planting tomatoes, lettuce, and chives, and just plant a few mini-pastures full of parsley for my livestock.  Just in case, I'm working with a pair of noodle-neese pliers and a paperclip to come up with an appropriate micro-branding iron.  Perhaps a flattened W--the Lazy Wiggle.

As a good ol' Texas boy, it is more in my nature to be a rancher than a farmer anyway.

Congress Is Not in Session

Last Saturday, President Obama surprised the world when he announced that he would "allow" Congress to debate and vote concerning military action against Syria.  As luck would have it, Congress is not currently in session and the only person who can call it back into session is the President.  And the President absolutely does not want to do that.  Why not?

In 1807, President Jefferson had a somewhat similar problem.  The British had long been at war with the French, and in an effort to keep their navy preeminent, had been violating American neutrality by stopping our ships on the high seas and forcibly removing sailors they claimed were "British deserters."  Actually, depending on their manpower shortages, they occasionally just seized Americans and "pressed" them into British service.

The combination of using force to stop American ships and the impressment of our sailors infuriated our infant country, but the fury turned to rage after the British ship, HMS Leopard, attacked the USS Chesapeake just off the coast of Virginia.   The British ship pursued the Chesapeake and fired broadsides into her, forcing the American vessel to lower its colors and allow the British to board her.  The British removed four sailors, one of whom was subsequently hanged.  

The country demanded war--literally screamed for war--and President Jefferson wanted to punish the British.  He didn't like England in the best of times, and this was clearly an act of war just off the American coast, but as president, Jefferson knew that this country was no match for the British.  During his administration, the readiness of the American navy and army had suffered:  put simply, our military was not capable of taking on the British.

Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution gives Congress the right to declare war, and Congress was eager to do just that--but Congress was not in session.  Congressional leaders insisted that Jefferson call a special session, and when Jefferson refused, one newspaper called Jefferson a "dish of skim milk curdling at the head of our nation." 

Jefferson knew that by the time that Congress came back into session, the fury would have abated and the eagerness for war would have  passed---and he was right.   Congress eventually passed a few idiotic trade sanctions that had the net result of impoverishing America and doing almost nothing to the British.  All the economic progress since the revolution was wiped out by the misguided trade sanctions.  Unfortunately, five years later--under a different president--America did declare war on England and the fledgling country just barely survived.

If swift action were what President Obama really wanted, I think he would have called a special session of Congress for the first time in over sixty years.  But on September 9th, when Congress is already scheduled to reconvene, the heat of the moment will have cooled, and a vote for a military strike will be less likely.  What is also clear is that--no matter what happens--the fault will then be on Congress.  

Syria Does Not Exist

It seems the "President" of Syria has jumped the shark and started to use poison gas on his own people.  The Assad family first seized control of Syria more than 40 years ago and has no intention of relinquishing power as long as it has one citizen left it can murder in the name of stability. 

Using chemical weapons on your own people is an offense that must be punished.  The only problem is that the only real opposition in Syria to the murderous bastard president is the Muslim Brotherhood--an entire bucketload of murderous bastards who hate the United States.   While personally, I would advocate that America enjoy a cold one and do nothing but watch the carnage until there was no one left, evidently, our government feels the need to deliver a message to Syria.

I like the US military, but I think it does a poor job as a postal service.  In my opinion, trying to communicate with crazy people by bombing them will work about as well as baptizing a cat.

About a century and a half ago, Queen Victoria had a similar problem with the looney leader of Bolivia, General Mariano Melgarejo.  General Melgarejo had seized power just a few years  before.  While a crowd was gathered in the square in front of the Palace of Government to chant "vivas" to the former leader, Melgarejo came out onto the balcony, dragging the freshly murdered

corpse of the president, while proclaiming, "The president is dead!  Who Lives Now?" 

The assembled crowd promptly--and wisely--began chanting, "Viva Melgarejo!"

As dictator, Melgarejo was ignorant, brutal, and crazy--the hat trick of bad leadership.  When Brazil sent a peace offering of a beautiful horse, he had the animal stand on a large map of Bolivia while he traced a line around the horse's hoof.  All the land enclosed within the circle was given to Brazil as a reciprocal gift.  When told about the story about Caligula's making his horse a general, Melgarejo promptly made his horse a general in the Bolivian army.

General Melgarejo admired the French--mostly because he didn't know any.  When he heard that the Prussians were attacking France, the dictator ordered the entire Bolivian army to be sent to defend Paris.  When one of the dictator's two-legged generals tried to explain the problem of crossing the Atlantic Ocean, Melgarejo exclaimed, "Don't be stupid!  We will take a short cut through the brush!"

In 1870, General Melgarejo held a banquet to honor his new mistress.  When a British diplomat was offered a glass of chicha, he politely refused and said he preferred chocolate.  Obviously, the diplomat knew that chicha is made by partially chewing corn kernels, then spitting them into a jug to allow the fermentation process to start.  (The saliva helps break down the starch.)

Infuriated by the snub, the dictator forced the diplomat to drink an enormous amount of chocolate, then tied the poor man to a donkey and paraded him through the streets of La Paz.  When the embarrassed diplomat returned to England, he promptly complained to Queen Victoria.  The queen, showing only a little more understanding of geography than the dictator, promptly demanded that warships be sent to Bolivia--only to learn from the Prime Minister that Bolivia was landlocked and had no coast.

This may be a good point in the story to admit that much of this story--like a lot of Latin American history--has a fairly high concentration of bullshit.  Who knows how much of this is really true?  I can tell you, however, that Bolivia is one of the few countries on the planet that Great Britain has not invaded.  On the map above, the countries in white are those that have not (yet) been invaded by Great Britain.

Furious, Queen Victoria ordered a map to be brought to her.  Studying the map, she quickly located Bolivia and drew a large inky 'X' across the country with her pen.

"Bolivia," the queen announced imperiously, "does not exist."

As far as I am concerned, this is as good a message to President Assad as bombing a few civilians who already hate us.

Pope Marcus the Second

This has been a solemn week at Enema U.  We have had a long series of orientations and convocations, I have heard the school fight song played reverently in lofty chambers.... and somewhere it suddenly dawned on me:  I work in organized religion.  Actually, to be specific, being a professor is a lot like being the pope.  Please consider the following evidence:

Professors are infallible.  At least as far as my students think--I can burp in class and three students will write it down in fear that it will be on next week's test.  Students today never challenge authority.  Not only will they believe everything on the internet, but after fifteen minutes of blurry PowerPoint slides, a couple of maps and a few B&W photos of famous dead white men, I can get a class to believe that George Washington bombed Hiroshima.  That is speaking ex cathedra! 

The job is for life.  As soon as the Council of Cardinals (more commonly known as the Committee for Promotion and Tenure) votes in approval and tenure is granted, there is very little chance of removal from office.  Some departments on campus have less turnover than the House of Lords or Congress--with pretty much the same result.  After a few decades of stagnation, quite a few professors become about as spontaneous as stalactites.

We all drive the Popemobile.  Well, most of them are actually Toyota Priuses.  Prii? Prions?  As far as I am concerned, it takes religious fervor to believe that an electric golf cart with weird windows is really a car.  And the Prius is worse.  Actually, this is a very common religious tenet among faculty.  After careful study of the sacred text (The Gospel According to Rachel Carson) you will learn that living the perfect life (No Nukes!  No Fracking! No Exxon!) will return us all to a sustainable Garden of Eden.  (No Fracking Way!)

We spend our days in contemplation and reading.  Ah, the pursuits of the mind.  We slowly walk in unison through the cloisters to the library.  If you listen carefully, you can hear our chant:  Deus bonus est, Deus bonus est, Domino finem fecerit pizza.

Now that you mention it, we speak Latin.  Go to any graduation and look for the faculty--we're easy to spot.  "We be wearin' satin and speakin' Latin".  The school motto, Veni, Vidi, Velcro (I came, I saw, I stuck around) is prominently displayed.  The campus is lousy with Latin inscriptions.  A few of us even know what they mean.

We dress alike.  Papal robes.  Caps and gowns.  We all look like we are wearing some old woman's ugly dress.  The Pope has a better hat, but the faculty don't have to wear ruby slippers from the Wizard of Oz.

During our sermons, people try unsuccessfully to stay awake.  Now this is a problem that I personally do not have in my classes, but I hear that some of my associates have had a few students drift off during their scintillating lectures.  While history is never boring, evidently quite a few historians are. 

A few...um....decades ago I took a required class in Medieval European Architecture.  Meeting in the afternoon for two and a half hours, the class sat in the dark, looking at endless slides while the professor monotonously droned, "And here we see another fucking old Carolingian church..."

Or at least, that is what I remember before I fell asleep.  The only other place I can remember being this bored was church. 

Neither the pope nor faculty are likely to get laid.  Not only is this officially frowned upon, but as a group, we professors just aren't very cool.  (There evidently haven't been any really cool, sexy university professors since the 1960's!).  For the faculty, sex on campus is unlikely (except for those who teach Animal Husbandry).

And, last but not least, just like any other organized religion, we take people in when they have nothing but beliefs, and force them out when they begin to know something.

Damn! The Summer is Over!

Classes start up again this week.  Don't get me wrong--I love teaching and I love being in  the classroom and I am very fond of my students (Most of them.)---But the end of summer does bring a few changes, not all of which are welcome.

Other than the calendar, the first sure sign of the start of a new school year is the traffic in town.  About 10% more cars double the noise---and damn near triple the number of accidents in town as a lot of teenage drivers---suffering under a massive overdose of testosterwrong---suddenly return to the town's streets.  The noisy combination of large engines with small mufflers is evidently  the basis of the mating cry for the flowers of American youth:  Blooming Idiots.

Enema U is buzzing with the usual "new" news: 

We have a new coach, Kareem de Blé, who has promised that all of the university's problems will disappear as soon as we win a few games---and this can be easily achieved with just a little more funding.  It is the same old story---the team needs more funding if it loses and deserves more funding if it wins.  (Not that we know much about the latter).

Fresh from the unqualified---or at least unmeasured---success of online education, Enema U has a new program that we are eager to implement ASAP:  Speed Teaching!  Students will spend five minutes per classroom---more than enough time for the professor to hand out printed copies of the PowerPoint presentation and a list of readings that the students couldn't care less about.  When the bell rings, the students have ten minutes to either make it to the next class or simply skip the class as usual and get another cup of overpriced coffee from the increasingly misnamed bookstore.

And we have New Regents!  Nothing improves a university more than fresh political appointees from the governor.  Experience has certainly taught us that political appointees are at least as competent at leadership as lapdogs are suited for hunting.

There has been a flurry of self-important email pronouncements from on high, or as the university quaintly calls them, the Lukewarnings.  Most of the Lukewarnings are short announcements concerning important campus activities such as yet another parking lot closure, the library holding a book burning to raise funds, a progress report on the Biology Department's ongoing quest to breed fat-sucking mosquitoes, and the Department of Internet Control Kabal (ICK) holding yet another class on Effective Teaching Online.  That course, of course, is only taught in a "bricks and mortar" classroom .  Mainly, the Lukewarnings reveal the recent appointments of several new executive vice-presidents

You would think, in an institution where hundreds of faculty members are desperate to publish one more article dealing with such weighty topics as "The Social Mores of Post-Industrial Female Irish Bartenders", lest they, too, should perish, that we could could change the rules just once and grant tenure to the first faculty member who succeeds in writing a program identifying the name and job function of all of the university's currently existing vice-presidents.  Or at least complete the first volume.

Most exciting of all, this time of year, the calendar begins filling up with Committee Meetings.  I can never sit through the beginning of a committee meeting without remembering the old story about one of President Eisenhower's Cabinet meetings.  After the meeting had been underway for a few minutes, Eisenhower suddenly slammed his fist down on the tabletop and exclaimed, "Goddammit!  We forgot the silent prayer!"

University committee meetings are usually the reverse of this---there is a lot of silent praying going on---usually for an early adjournment.  Unfortunately, there is not much chance of any committee's either coming up with any new ideas or even reaching a decision.  Committee meetings never actually achieve consensus---the talk just slowly dwindles after everyone becomes engrossed with playing the mental game of "Whom Shall I Strangle First" and stops talking over one another.  This is the universal signal for adjournment.

And, of course, after a summer where we were constantly a few flying monkeys short for a faculty meeting, we suddenly have a quorum.   There are many, many, great faculty members at Enema U---but there are only two types:   Those whom you would like to have a drink with, and those who make you want to drink---a lot!

I have never really understood the need for faculty meetings, so I only show up because of an undying hope that we will "vote someone off the island".  One candidate I definitely  would vote off would require a rather large barge, but in the meantime, with 7 billion people on this planet, I simply refuse to let one jackass screw up my day as often as he does the faculty meetings.

But even surly-undertoned faculty meetings, where overly-polite professors are too tolerant to stifle perennial rudeness, have given me a valuable insight that I should share: 

No matter how bitter I sound right now, I'll get over it all as soon as I get back into the classroom.

***A small note.  Recently a kind and wise president of a state university passed away.  This man, who had given the better part of his life for the betterment of the university, rode the elevator up to heaven with a recently deceased pope.  When the elevator got to heaven, a host of angels singing hosannahs picked up the scholar and carried him through the golden streets of heaven, which were lined with former students, each cheering the man's entry into his just reward.

The pope, feeling a little neglected, asked God what all the fuss was about.

"Well," God said.  "We get popes up here all the time, but we rarely see a teacher like that man."

He is missed.

The Legend Creates Reality

Television shows are usually a very poor depiction of reality, especially shows that are supposed to be based on actual events.  You could run a divining rod over most of these shows and it would never find a fact to twitch over.  This is strange, since history is fascinating.  Every war, every scandal, every love affair that has ever occurred is history.  This probably flies in the face of your memories of history class, but trust me--history isn't boring.  Historians are boring.

One method of enlivening history is simply to lie and when it comes to depicting the Wild West, having a good imagination is a lot easier than research.  For a few writers, the truth is pretty much an unwelcome stranger.

Ned Buntline was one such writer.  Ned wrote the dime novels that distorted the West, making up wild tales with only the briefest accidental brush with reality.  His books include The Black Avenger of the Spanish Main and Buffalo Bill and His Adventures In the West.  While both are great reads--neither is even remotely true. 

Interestingly, the story of Ned Buntline is about as fascinating as his yarns.  Buntline was one of several pen names used by Edward Zane Judson, whose real life was far more colorful than most of his novels.  Buntline/Judson went to sea as a midshipman in the age of sail, served in two wars, and fought a duel for which he was tried for murder.  His acquittal angered a local mob, who lynched him--but his friends managed to cut him down and save his life.  Curiously, today he is probably best remembered for supposedly inventing the Colt Buntline--a gun the author neither saw nor even heard of during  his lifetime.

Stuart N. Lake was another writer who never let the truth get in the way of a good story.  Lake wrote the scripts for John Ford's My Darling Clementine and Winchester '73, but it was his 1931 biography of Wyatt Earp that made him, and the relatively obscure lawman famous.  In Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshall, Lake created the prototype of the heroic western lawman.

While the book is a wild exaggeration of the true life of Earp, one clever invention in it was to  take on a life of its own.  In the book, Lake wrote that Ned Buntline placed an order with Colt Firearms for five custom Peacemaker revolvers, each with a 12-inch barrel and a detachable shoulder stock.  Buntline then supposedly gave the revolvers to the five most colorful lawmen of the time: Wyatt Earp, Charlie Bassett, Bat Masterson, Bill Tilghman, and Neal Brown.  Lake asks us to believe that Buntline's gifts are in gratitude because these  Dodge City peace officers had made the west "colorful" enough to give him a living as a writer.

According to Lake, most of the men cut the barrel extensions off their revolvers to make them easier to carry, but Wyatt Earp kept his a foot long.  Then, when he wasn't shooting bad guys with the gun, he was knocking them senseless--using the pistol as a club.  Lake also tells us that Earp could draw his revolver--with a barrel that went down to his knee--still faster than any desperado could slap leather with a normal-sized gun.

Unfortunately, the story is simply not true.  Buntline never ordered any such gun, and while Colt advertised that it would make a barrel at any length--at a dollar an inch surcharge--it made no pistols in the 19th century with 12-inch barrels.  Nor were those five lawmen all in Dodge at the same time, and Buntline was back east at the time, and,... well, you get the idea.   While it is a great story, and many people have tried to prove it true, there is no proof that Earp ever owned such a gun. 

Through the efforts of such men as Buntline, Lake, and Zane Grey, the Western took off as a standard in the movies, and eventually, on television.  From 1955-1961, Hugh O'Brian played Wyatt Earp weekly in The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp.  The popular television show hired none other than Stuart Lake as the technical advisor.  Naturally, shortly into the first season (in a script written by Lake) Ned Buntline presented Wyatt Earp with a Buntline Special.  O'Brian/Earp carried the long clumsy revolver for the next six years.

And suddenly, the gun really did exist!  Demand for the gun convinced Colt Firearms to begin production of a .45 caliber Peacemaker with a 12-inch barrel engraved with the legend: Buntline Special.  They have been periodically manufactured ever since.  Not to be outdone, there was even a toy version made for children.  Today, no fewer than four firearms companies make working "reproductions."

At the end of one of one of my favorite movies, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, a beloved, aging politician, played by Jimmy Stewart, has just confessed that the true hero of a famous gunfight was actually the character played by John Wayne.  This confession would  completely change the popular history of the event.  The newspaper editor takes the notes from the confession and destroys them.

"This is the West, Sir," he says.  "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

And sometimes, after a century and a half, the legends actually become reality.

Something, Somewhere, Needs Shooting

More than forty years ago, I had a cramped, overpriced, and ugly apartment on the Gulf Freeway in Houston.  That apartment had almost exactly the same layout as a motel room, and being located on the freeway, it was about as noisy—well, out the front door anyway.  The back side was much quieter—my balcony overlooked the largest cemetery in Houston.

To be fair, there were certain advantages to living next to a cemetery.  It was always quiet—very few loud parties were held there---and I always had fresh flowers for my dates.  At the start of every semester, after paying tuition and buying required textbooks, I was so broke that food became a luxury item.  I eventually shot—and ate—every duck from the cemetery pond.  Ornamental ducks do not taste very good, but hunger is the best sauce.

When I moved into those apartments, the chief attractions for me had been the location and the pool.  I had never lived anywhere with a pool, and could easily imagine myself studying next to the pool, swimming my way through freshman calculus.  I think I may have swum in that pool twice.  The only people who regularly enjoyed that pool were the Houston Police Department.  For traffic control purposes, the city had put a large CCTV camera on a pole next to the freeway.  Remotely operated, the camera could swivel and turn up and down the freeway looking for accidents and traffic jams.

Watching a freeway on a television monitor is probably pretty boring, so it probably isn’t all that surprising that the camera spent most of the time aimed at the pool, instead.  I didn’t mind—my desk was situated so that I could look out the window at that pool, myself.  What I did mind, however, was the number of times I watched the camera slowly panning back and forth, focusing on the apartment windows.  Watching the girls in a public pool was fair game, but playing Peeping Tom with bedroom windows was not!  One night during a noisy thunderstorm, the camera was destroyed when someone shot it with a load of duck shot.

That was forty years ago, when it was much easier to stop unwarranted government spying.  Today, I’m not certain exactly what—or who—needs shooting.

I don’t care how many supposed terrorist attacks have been subverted, my government does not have the right—morally or legally—to monitor what I do on my cell phone or on the internet.   Prove to me that monitoring my cell phone, specifically MY CELL PHONE, has stopped a single terrorist attack ….or stop violating my rights!

My rights under the Fourth Amendment guarantee “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures…”  What can be more unreasonable than the government seizing the data and searching databases on every single person in the country?

Nor am I very happy about my medical records.  The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) guarantees that my medical records are safe.  Giving those records to the Internal Revenue Service insures that they are not.  Why does the government have a right to seize and maintain my medical records?  Why do they want to turn over all of our records to an agency that has proven it can’t be trusted with a potato gun?

Starting in the fifteenth century, there was an English court of law known as the Star Chamber.  Meeting in secret, and often without the knowledge of the accused, this court exercised enormous power, eventually becoming a political weapon against the enemies of the crown.  Among the abuses was the ability of the prosecutors to present secret written evidence.  This is a fairly apt description of today's Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court that oversees the actions of the National Security Administration.

This is the court that has authorized the continual collection of all cell phone data, domestic and foreign.   To be sure, a warrant allowed this—not surprising when you learn that since 1979 the government has requested 33,949 such warrants.   To date, all but 11 were granted, and 4 of those were still partially granted.  (What in hell were the other 7?  Requests to strip-search dead nuns?)

The FISA court is usually a single judge, appointed by the government, to perform oversight on the government, for the government.  The court operates in secrecy, with no possible civilian scrutiny.  Each judge is appointed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and the appointment requires no confirmation or oversight by the Congress.  After the terrorist attacks on 9/11, the Patriot Act extended the powers of this court to allow domestic espionage on U.S. citizens. 

The abuses of the Star Chamber strongly influenced the writing of the 5th amendment.   I guess if we can trash the 4th amendment, it’s not much of a stretch to ignore the 5th.

A last note:  No matter what I write about, I get hate mail—that's fine since I usually correct the grammar and spelling and return the missive with a grade.  I can already predict the content of much of this week's mail: "If you have nothing to hide, why object to the search?"  Ignoring the fact that none of this charade is keeping me safe—or that I have no desire to trade freedom for safety—I know the correct response:

“If I have nothing to hide, why do you need to search me?”

Vice Tubes

After The Doc graduated from four years of medical school, we moved to Galveston Island for seven years while she did her surgery residency.  Little did she realize that the fastest way for a really impressive career in medicine is to do three years of law school and get elected to Congress.

Why Galveston?  I could say that it was because Galveston had the only state hospital in Texas and was home to a premier medical school.  While true, these weren't the primary reasons.  The Doc and I had gone to the University of Houston and on several memorable weekends we had driven my Barracuda the 50 miles down to the beach in order to watch the submarine races.  We thought we "knew" Galveston.  We didn't---we only knew where to find a fairly deserted beach.

Moving to Galveston was fairly easy because we owned several thousand books and very little furniture.  We loaded a U-Haul truck and had it tow our "classic" Ford pickup to Galveston.  By the time we finally reached the island we were almost exhausted.  We had rented an antique house close to the medical school.  The neighborhood was ancient and full of homes built in the nineteenth century.  At the time, we naively believed that these old homes were still standing because they had been built so well they could withstand the hurricanes.  Later, we learned--the hard way--that any house still standing just hadn't been hit.  Yet.

It was June, hot as Hell, and as humid as only an island can be.  And it was hard work unloading that truck.  There have been a few times when I think we own entirely too many books.  By the time we got that truck unloaded, The Doc and I were definitely exhausted.  That old house was a hothouse, clogged with boxes and the electricity wasn't going to be connected until the next day.  We decided to ignore the condition of our house and go for a walk.  We were tired, dirty, and sweaty, but more than anything else, we needed a break.

The neighborhood was wonderful.  It rains every damn day on that island, so the lawns and the gardens are the greenest you will find in Texas.  The magnificent old antebellum houses, the wrought iron fences, and palm trees along the sidewalks give parts of the town a beautiful, perfectly landscaped appearance. 

Just a few doors down from our house was a huge house with a large extended porch.  We were to later learn that the house dated from before the Civil War and that the porch had been used for illegal slave auctions.  While Congress had decreed that no more slaves were supposed to be brought to America after 1808, evidently a few slaves had been smuggled into the country illegally from the ships at the dockyards a half-mile away.  There was a great debate going on in the town when we first got there--the city fathers wanted to restore the home as a museum while the majority of the town's African-American residents thought this last vestige of slavery should be destroyed.  The debate, which at times grew quite heated, was interrupted by the sudden total destruction of the house by arson.  As a debating tactic, this was pretty much the last word.

As we walked down the street, we came across a magnificent mansion.  There is simply no way to describe it accurately, but I'll try.  Behind a tall wrought iron fence and a beautifully manicured garden was one of the largest homes on the island.  By comparison, Tara of Gone With the Wind fame was miserable FEMA housing.  As The Doc and I stood there admiring it, a smiling old man with white hair stepped out of the bushes and approached the fence.

"Would you like to see inside?"  he asked as he unhooked the gate and motioned for us to come in.

After he led us through several grand rooms, he took us to his study and served us lemonade.  This was Captain Julius Jockusch, and the home had been in his family's possession for decades.  Every room was right out of a PBS drama from the Edwardian era--each room had a fireplace made out of a different exotic stone and the walls were of hardwoods from around the world.  And every room had one of those old voice tubes with a funnel on the end.  To communicate with the kitchen, you picked the tube up, blew a whistle to attract the attention of the kitchen help, and then spoke into the funnel to order your mint julep.

"A reporter once wrote about the house," Captain Jockusch explained.  "But the article called them vice tubes."

Captain Jockusch's study was exactly what you would expect in this kind of home---very large, wood paneled and with a large wooden desk.  I still envy the glass-fronted bookcases.  Scattered around the room were several easels holding oil paintings on display.  As I examined one, I suddenly noticed the legible signature in the corner:  Chester W. Nimitz.  All of them were signed that way.

"You knew Admiral Nimitz?  I asked.  I was shocked---Nimitz had been born in Fredericksburg, Texas, and is a legend familiar to every Texas schoolboy.

"Oh, yes." Captain Jockusch said.  He pointed at a framed photo on the wall---the famous picture of Nimitz, on the deck of the U.S.S. Missouri, signing the Japanese surrender documents that ended World War II.

Captain Jockusch pointed to a uniformed young man in the front rank.  "That's me." he said.  "I was one of Admiral Nimitz' aides."

Far from retired, the captain was, I was to learn over the coming years, a perfect gentleman.   He worked with every charity in town, was a director for the ship channel pilot's association, and was famous for his volunteer work on various veterans' commissions all over the country.  Once, over a martini at the Flagship Hotel, he told me he had grown up in the Steves House in San Antonio--another great old mansion in Texas History.

But what I remember most is not the house, or the paintings by Admiral Nimitz.  I remember the kindness, generosity, and hospitality of this man.  He took two strangers off the street and brought them into his home when they were tired and dirty.  A gentleman is someone who goes out of his way to put others at ease.  I have only met a few of those, and Captain Julius Jockusch was definitely one of them.

Ships of the Desert

Years ago, Vernon and I were flying a small Cessna across Southeastern New Mexico.  I'm not even sure why we were there, but anytime you find yourself in a small Cessna, it is mostly for pleasure.  Small 4-seater single-engine planes are slow, impractical, crowded, and fantastic fun.  If you are already a pilot, you know what I am talking about.  If you aren't, don't find out!  Flying is as addictive as heroin--but it costs more.

Somewhere around Roswell, Vernon said, "Hey, you want to see something interesting?"

Of course I did.  Vernon has been flying in New Mexico for much longer that I--he has probably forgotten to log more hours of flight time than I have in total.  So Vernon took the yoke, made a small turn and after a few minutes put the Cessna into a steep banking turn.  The ground, a few thousand feet below, filled my side window as we slowly circled a Nazi battleship.

Actually, there was a fleet of them in the desert, where they had been quietly resting since the end of World War II.  During the war, they had suffered, showing considerable evidence of having been bombed repeatedly from the air. 

The desert southwest is a wonderful place to fly.  We have well over 350 flying days a year.  This is why the military built bomber training bases all over New Mexico.  The flood of student pilots had to have something to practice its bombing on, so the military plowed targets into the ground, or created large berms of sand.  Either way, the lines were then whitewashed.  The most common target was a giant bullseye with a swastika in the middle, while others were ships, docks, and the outlines of cities.  Some of the swastikas were done backwards (but not all).

These kinds of manmade formations are called geoglyphs, and they are not that much different from the famous Nasca Lines of Peru.  While the Peruvian lines are up to slightly over a mile in length, the  largest New Mexico geoglyphs--a bullseye--is 1800 feet wide.  Some of the ships are 800 feet long and 200 feet wide.  In total, there are dozens of them outside of Roswell, Albuquerque, Clovis, and Deming.

If you fly low enough, you can still see the bomb damage around the targets.  While real bombs were rarely dropped, even the 100 pound sand bags, with small marker charges, left a visible crater.  The student pilots bombed the targets from 1942 until 1945.  When the war was over, the targets were allowed to simply weather and slowly start to disappear back into the desert.

Every year, the blowing sand, the rains, and the winter frost slowly work at removing evidence of the targets.  The whitewash and paint are long gone and from the air, it is almost impossible to notice the targets unless you happen to be in a low-flying small Cessna.  The locations were picked for their isolation, so the only visitors on the ground are probably coyotes and prairie dogs.

When archaeologists rediscover the geoglyphs ten thousand years from now, they will be as mysterious as the Nasca Lines.  Undoubtedly, they will say they had some religious purposes--maybe thinking that we worshipped ships by shooting at them.

The Future Was Yesterday

Paul Haney was a customer before he became my friend.  I sold him several computers, and somewhere during the business we did together, Paul and his wife, Jan, became important to The Doc and me.  So he was a little disappointed when I sadly announced that I had sold the company and we were leaving Galveston for the mountains and high desert of Southern New Mexico.

"What's so good about a desert?" he asked.

"Well," I answered.  "You would just have to go see for yourself."

So Paul and Jan did.  They went on vacation to New Mexico the very next week.  And when he returned two weeks later, he announced that I had been right.  He and Jan had bought a cherry orchard in High Rolls, New Mexico.  They actually moved to New Mexico months before The Doc and I managed to make the move.

You may know Paul, too.  If you, like I, lived vicariously through the astronauts of the Sixties, then you have certainly heard Paul--he was the "Voice of Mission Control" through the Gemini and Apollo programs. 

Long before I had a blog, I used to write a lot of letters.  I recently found one I wrote to  Paul almost fourteen years ago.  At the time, the whole nation was obsessed with Y2K and the coming new millennium.

Sunday, December 19, 1999

Dear Paul,

I'm supposed to be grading papers.  I keep sneaking away to do something else.

We bought a cheap breadmaker the other day.  Dillard's had a $30 model.  Karen and Sonja, a neighbor, looked at it and Sonja bought it.  It worked pretty good, but only made a one pound loaf of bread.  Karen thought the bread was good, so she bought a slightly bigger version that makes a 2 pound loaf for $80.  Somehow, it has become my breadmaker.  So, I loaded it up late last night and set the delay to come on this morning early enough that I could eat fresh bread while watching Meet the Press.

After I had the breadmaker ready, I ground some coffee beans, loaded the coffee pot and set it to go off just as the breadmaker was finishing baking the fresh bread.  All the while, I'm watching a news program out of Seattle on the satellite TV system.  There was a loud party down the street, so I put all the outdoor lights on the motion sensor mode.  I finished cleaning up the kitchen, loaded the dishwasher and put it on a 2-hour delay so it wouldn't come on until everyone was asleep.

Before I went to bed, I turned off the lawn sprinkler system, since the temperature was supposed to drop to freezing during the night.  The grass is still green (Isn't southern New Mexico great!) and will water it once a week until it turns brown.

Just before going to bed, I turned off the TV in my office and shut down the computer that has been downloading a new version of Internet Explorer for the last two hours.  The only email I had received that evening was the new Dave Barry editorial in the Miami newspaper.

(Okay, I admit it, I stole the cartoon from his column.)  By now, I am sure you have gotten the point of all of the above.  Maybe the 21st century came a while back and we didn't notice.

I may have more toys than most people, maybe I like little techno gadgets more than most, but there is something unreal about the last 10 years or so.  I exchange messages fairly routinely with people who live so scattered around the world that not even Phileas Fogg could visit them all in three months.  My children do their homework from databases around the globe.  I did most of my Xmas shopping from stores that are so distantly remote that I have no idea what state they are located in.

Almost everyone I know has an email address.  The only exceptions are children and the elderly.  And not all of either of those categories.  As much as we have talked about a computer revolution or an internet revolution, we are barely halfway through the changes.  The internet is almost 50 years old, at least the concept is.  In 1953, Robert Heinlein wrote a story called Methuselah's Children, where the hero shopped for new clothing over a computer terminal, examining clothing styles and colors until he was satisfied.  He pressed a credit slip to the screen and placed his order.  The functional difference between that and how I order books from Amazon is too minuscule to notice.

Even five years ago, while shopping this way might have been possible, it would have been very strange.  This Christmas, no one knows how much E-Commerce (how old is that word?) is going on, but it may be as much as 15% of all gift shopping.  How much more is coming?  Will ATM machines turn into internet kiosks?  They better, because the need for cash is all but over.  I access my bank online nearly every day.  Will malls vanish?  How much computing power will my car have?  Will notebook computers become more common than briefcases and backpacks?  Will my next cell phone have a GPS?  A camera?  A screen?  Will the word 'film' become as obsolete as 'phonograph?'

Between Karen's office and our home, we own a fax machine, two copiers, two scanners, two cell phones, a satellite dish, three stereo systems, a DVD player, 3 VCR machines, 6 computers, 3 laser printers, and two color inkjet printers.  We own twice as many computers as television sets.  Ten years from now, what will an updated list reveal?  How many of those systems will have merged?  How many will have disappeared?  Will we wonder how we ever got along without polymorphs?   Or whatever the next new gizmo is.

Sorry, I didn't mean for this to turn into a rant.  Write soon and tell me how the cherry trees are faring.

Well, it's been almost 14 years, and I guess the "polymorph" turned out to be the iPad I wrote all of this on. 

Wouldn't a Bonfire Be Easier?

The black dragon lobbed over an egg-shaped thing fully the size of a peck measure it was.  And it burst, and a dragon flew out with peals of thunder rolling.  In the air it was like a blazing and flashing fire.  The first bang was like the dividing of chaos in two, as it mountains and rivers were all turned upside down...
Chiang Hsien, 1431.  The Jade Box Collection.

It is the day after Independence Day.  The barbecue grill is cold, the beer is gone, and spent fireworks litter the yard.  While we still struggle to digest the massive amount of undercooked beef we consumed, it is time for a little introspection.

Assuming that you still have both eyes to read this, you are probably not one of the 6300 Americans who went to an emergency room yesterday with a fireworks related injury.  A large portion of those fireworks injuries were probably due to the beer.  The more beer you drink, the more skilled you believe you are with fireworks.  When it comes to sex, karaoke, and fireworks--beer lies.

Somehow, the birth of our nation has always been tied to fireworks.  Consider what John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail about celebrating the birth of our nation:

[The day] "will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. . . . It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires, and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”

Adams got a lot of that correct--the parades, the guns, the illuminations, etc.  All he forgot to mention was barbecue, beer, and the picky little detail of the date.  Adams wrote the above about July 2--the date the Continental Congress voted to approve the resolution for independence.  July 4 was the date the congress accepted the declaration written by Thomas Jefferson.

Americans may be celebrating the wrong date, but we are certainly doing it in style.  Last year, Americans used over two HUNDRED MILLION pounds of gunpowder, just for fireworks--that's not even counting the gunpowder we used to shoot each other.  And a hell of a lot of it was purchased from...China.  That's right, we celebrate the most American of holidays with Chinese fireworks.  If we are going to use all this gunpowder, maybe we should learn something about it.

Gunpowder, of course, was invented in China.  It was an accidental invasion--the Chinese doctor was experimenting with medicine when he stumbled upon the formula.  History does not record his name, but it does mention that his house burned down.  Rapidly. 

Gunpowder is a mixture of charcoal, sulfur, and saltpeter.  The crucial ingredient is the saltpeter.  If the mixture contains a fair amount of saltpeter it will burn.  If the concentration is 75%, when it burns it will produce 3000 times its volume in gas.  That much gas in a closed container is called an explosion.  That much gas in a large room is called Congress.

(Please don't take this as an encouragement to start playing at medieval alchemy in your basement.  There are only two kinds of people who play with gunpowder.  The moron who has already hurt himself and others or the moron who is about to.  It's no joke.)

Sulfur has been known since biblical times, it is not that difficult to identify, nor is it hard to collect and purify.  It can easily be ground into a fine powder.  Nor is charcoal exactly hard to find.  It turns out that several kinds of wood work well:  willow, alder, and grape vines were widely used.  In China, adding charred grasshoppers was believed to give the powder "liveliness."

Now we need saltpeter.  The best natural place was a hot climate that encouraged natural decomposition and a long dry period that allowed nitrates to leach to the surface.  In China, it wasn't hard to find places like that, but in Europe, you had to find a different source.

It was the 1300's when the knowledge of gunpowder reached Europe.  Saltpeter forms naturally in smelly, rank, damp, and decomposing areas.  This describes all of Europe in 1300 and many public places in France today.  Saltpeter formed naturally in privies, stables, and tombs.  It was common in cesspools, old manure piles, and outhouses. 

In a cave near Moscow, where large numbers of soldiers had been dumped in piles, a rather macabre form of recycling was practiced.  The decomposition produced saltpeter, which was turned into gunpowder, which was then used to kill more soldiers, who presumably could be dumped in the cave.  Any day now, Putin will claim that Russia invented sustainability.

If none of these olfactory delights produced enough saltpeter, you could just cook it.  The recipe calls for human feces, urine from people who drank wine or beer (it was widely believed the best urine came from priests), horse shit, and a lot of lime.  This witches brew had to stored indoors out of the rain for about a year and the concoction had to be stirred once a week.  For every hundred pounds of this delightful sludge, you would eventually harvest half a pound of good saltpeter.  (For a Bomb, James Bomb, it is shaken not stirred.)

After the discovery of gunpowder, it took less than a single century for the Chinese to begin making fireworks.  Firecrackers and small bombs were made first, then small propellant charges were added to arrows.  Before long, stronger charges were self-propelled, the arrow was unnecessary.  After that, it was just a steady growth in size, range, and destructive power. 

As difficult as all of this is, it was remarkable that the use of gunpowder didn't die out.  Seems like peace would have been a lot less trouble and it had to smell better.  I understand the impulse--I like fireworks.  Humans glory in destruction.  We instinctively love fire, thunderstorms, loud noises and a good all-around mess.  Gunpowder gives us all of this at the same time.  But, maybe, it is past time to move beyond all this.

Let's just blame it all on the Chinese.  Or maybe bamboo.  It turns out that if you put a single segment of green bamboo in a hot fire, when the air enclosed suddenly escapes, it will produce a loud bang.   (The first firecracker was probably gunpowder stuffed into bamboo.)  By the thirteenth century, even before gunpowder, Chinese New Year was about as noisy as it is today.

Last year, we celebrated an American holiday with $227 million in Chinese fireworks.  Next year, why don't we just buy bamboo?