By Jim Parks
There goes a little old man walking and stopping, staring at old houses in a minority neighborhood in a shoreside New Jersey community during summer's dog days.
He is slight of stature, walks haltingly and with a painful looking limp.
He has been standing, staring at a house for a particularly long time when one of the residents on the block becomes nervous, calls 9-1-1 and asks for the assistance of the police. This man looks suspicious or quite possibly in distress. Can they come and help?
Two young officers approach him in their patrol cars, ask him for identification. The little old man says he hasn't carried an ID card or driver's license for many, many years. He rarely drives, has a business office to handle his affairs, and just doesn't see the need.
His name. Bob Dylan.
The officers, both of whom are in their twenties, have never heard the name before. It doesn't ring a bell.
Following the time-honored formula from the King's Bench, a three-pronged test of a man's own recognizance to a peace officer, they ask for his address and his date of birth. He gives them the information.
They ask the acid test question. What is his business in the neighborhood? He tells them he is on tour.
Just what does he mean by that? What does "on tour" mean, they ask.
He says he and some other men are doing a multi-city tour, a musical show playing stadiums throughout the U.S.
Who are these men? Why, Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp.
They immediately put him in the car and take him back to the hotel.
"He couldn't have been nicer," one of the officers told a local reporter.
I wonder how it must have felt, to be on your own, a complete unknown, like a rollin' stone.
I'll bet he felt free. I'll bet he felt fortunate and alert and alive and well.
At least, that is what I wish for him.
Walk on, Mr. Bob Dylan. You are welcome in my town any time, sir.
Rely upon it. We are here for you.
...You're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal...
Monday, August 17, 2009
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Norhern Command To Take Over In Flu Pandemic
In the fall, the war was always there, but we did not go to it any more. - Ernest Hemingway, "In Another Country"
U.S. Northern Command To Take Over In Predicted Flu Pandemic
By Jim Parks
The nation will come under martial when the predicted onslaught of the H1N1 Swine Flu pandemic hits the U.S. in the fall.
Military planners say swine flu could wipe out as many as two million American lives - in spite of a joint effort with FEMA to administer an estimated 160 million doses of vaccine.
Some naysayers predict an establishment of martial law; other emergency planners feel it is too much too soon.
Though the mainstream media has made little mention of the military effort to take control in all regions of the nation, nevertheless military planners are awaiting the final approval from Secretary of Defense Robert Gatesa of a plan first promulgated in 2006.
"I think the bureaucracy is using the pandemic to take too much authority," said Bosque County Emergency Operations Coordinator Dewey Ratliff.
Though the U.S. military would stand by to serve the state and local governments, providing virus testing services and air transport, there is still the matter of preparation and distribution of the 160 million doses of vaccine, he said.
When the Federal Emergency Management Administration plans for a major disaster such as a hurricane or an invasion, state governments must follow suit. But if the disaster does not occur, there is no means of reimbursement for state and local governments to pursue, and thus no recovery of the hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars spent in advance to curb the predicted onslaught.
It's a delicate balance. Too much too soon results in waste; not enough too late costs lives.
According to a Department of Defense plan promulgated in 2006, an onslaught of the disease would last 6 to 12 weeks "and multiple pandemic waves will follow." The prediction is that 20 to 35 percent of the population will become ill, three percent will be hospitalized and there will be a national fatality rate of one percent.
The government's mission statement in the plan is to maintain control of the national defense and the industrial capacity of the U.S.
No pandemic specific strain of vaccine will be available for a minimum of six to nine months after clinical confirmation of sustained human-to-human pandemic influenza transmission.
"State, tribal and local jurisdictions will be overwhelmed and unable to provide or ensure the provision of essential commodities and services," the plan says.
The Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security sound an even more ominous note in the briefing paper.
"If efforts to contain human-to-human transmission of a potential pandemic influenza outbreak at its source fail, the resources of the USG will not be sufficient to prevent the spread of a pandemic across the nation. Accordingly, the USG will use all instruments of national power to address the pandemic threat. Any effective response will require the full participation of all levels of government and the private sector."
Quarantine? It's a very limited strategy due to a very short incubation period of two days when an infected person has no idea he or she has been exposed to the virus, according to the plan.
"Quarantine and other movement restrictions, especially if the restrictions are involuntary, will have minimal effect on the spread of the disease due to a very short incubation period and the ability of asymptomatic individuals to shed the virus."
Though government reliance on "just-in-time procurement will compete adversely with U.S. and foreign civilian businesses for availability of critical supplies," the Department of Defense will "will provide distribution of medical supplies and medications in support of pandemic influenza preparedness and response efforts, when directed by the President or upon approval by the Secretary of Defense of a request from a Federal department or agency."
The government will maintain all stockpiles of medicine.
The best bet for individual survival and the well-being of the family is to stay to yourselves, have plenty of food and water on hand, don't go to work or school until the infection passes, and get vaccinated well in advance as the service becomes available. Diabetics, the elderly and kids need vaccination for the regular seasonal flu, the elderly for pneumonia and everyone needs to be inoculated for the H1N1 swine flu virus.
Here are the six stages of pandemic according to the United Nations's World Health Organization.
"In Phase 1 no viruses circulating among animals have been reported to cause infections in humans.
"In Phase 2 an animal influenza virus circulating among domesticated or wild animals is known to have caused infection in humans, and is therefore considered a potential pandemic threat.
"In Phase 3, an animal or human-animal influenza reassortant virus has caused sporadic cases or small clusters of disease in people, but has not resulted in human-to-human transmission sufficient to sustain community-level outbreaks.
"Phase 4 is characterized by verified human-to-human transmission of an animal or human-animal influenza reassortant virus able to cause "community-level outbreaks." The ability to cause sustained disease outbreaks in a community marks a significant upwards shift in the risk for a pandemic.
"Phase 5 is characterized by human-to-human spread of the virus into at least two countries in one WHO region. While most countries will not be affected at this stage, the declaration of Phase 5 is a strong signal that a pandemic is imminent and that the time to finalize the organization, communication, and implementation of the planned mitigation measures is short.
"Phase 6, the pandemic phase, is characterized by community level outbreaks in at least one other country in a different WHO region in addition to the criteria defined in Phase 5. Designation of this phase will indicate that a global pandemic is under way."
- 30 -
Here are links to the information used in this report:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14580
http://fhp.osd.mil/aiWatchboard/pdf/DoD_PI_Implementation_Plan_August_2006_Public_Release.pdf
http://www.prisonplanet.com/h1n1-pandemic-pentagon-planning-deployment-of-troops-in-support-of-nationwide-vaccination.html
http://www.creative-i.info/?p=9290
http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2007/02/TNSbirdflu070206/
http://groups.google.com/group/bc.politics/browse_thread/thread/f006a68a8f1d93af/90ea801c58ffd019?lnk=raot
U.S. Northern Command To Take Over In Predicted Flu Pandemic
By Jim Parks
The nation will come under martial when the predicted onslaught of the H1N1 Swine Flu pandemic hits the U.S. in the fall.
Military planners say swine flu could wipe out as many as two million American lives - in spite of a joint effort with FEMA to administer an estimated 160 million doses of vaccine.
Some naysayers predict an establishment of martial law; other emergency planners feel it is too much too soon.
Though the mainstream media has made little mention of the military effort to take control in all regions of the nation, nevertheless military planners are awaiting the final approval from Secretary of Defense Robert Gatesa of a plan first promulgated in 2006.
"I think the bureaucracy is using the pandemic to take too much authority," said Bosque County Emergency Operations Coordinator Dewey Ratliff.
Though the U.S. military would stand by to serve the state and local governments, providing virus testing services and air transport, there is still the matter of preparation and distribution of the 160 million doses of vaccine, he said.
When the Federal Emergency Management Administration plans for a major disaster such as a hurricane or an invasion, state governments must follow suit. But if the disaster does not occur, there is no means of reimbursement for state and local governments to pursue, and thus no recovery of the hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars spent in advance to curb the predicted onslaught.
It's a delicate balance. Too much too soon results in waste; not enough too late costs lives.
According to a Department of Defense plan promulgated in 2006, an onslaught of the disease would last 6 to 12 weeks "and multiple pandemic waves will follow." The prediction is that 20 to 35 percent of the population will become ill, three percent will be hospitalized and there will be a national fatality rate of one percent.
The government's mission statement in the plan is to maintain control of the national defense and the industrial capacity of the U.S.
No pandemic specific strain of vaccine will be available for a minimum of six to nine months after clinical confirmation of sustained human-to-human pandemic influenza transmission.
"State, tribal and local jurisdictions will be overwhelmed and unable to provide or ensure the provision of essential commodities and services," the plan says.
The Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security sound an even more ominous note in the briefing paper.
"If efforts to contain human-to-human transmission of a potential pandemic influenza outbreak at its source fail, the resources of the USG will not be sufficient to prevent the spread of a pandemic across the nation. Accordingly, the USG will use all instruments of national power to address the pandemic threat. Any effective response will require the full participation of all levels of government and the private sector."
Quarantine? It's a very limited strategy due to a very short incubation period of two days when an infected person has no idea he or she has been exposed to the virus, according to the plan.
"Quarantine and other movement restrictions, especially if the restrictions are involuntary, will have minimal effect on the spread of the disease due to a very short incubation period and the ability of asymptomatic individuals to shed the virus."
Though government reliance on "just-in-time procurement will compete adversely with U.S. and foreign civilian businesses for availability of critical supplies," the Department of Defense will "will provide distribution of medical supplies and medications in support of pandemic influenza preparedness and response efforts, when directed by the President or upon approval by the Secretary of Defense of a request from a Federal department or agency."
The government will maintain all stockpiles of medicine.
The best bet for individual survival and the well-being of the family is to stay to yourselves, have plenty of food and water on hand, don't go to work or school until the infection passes, and get vaccinated well in advance as the service becomes available. Diabetics, the elderly and kids need vaccination for the regular seasonal flu, the elderly for pneumonia and everyone needs to be inoculated for the H1N1 swine flu virus.
Here are the six stages of pandemic according to the United Nations's World Health Organization.
"In Phase 1 no viruses circulating among animals have been reported to cause infections in humans.
"In Phase 2 an animal influenza virus circulating among domesticated or wild animals is known to have caused infection in humans, and is therefore considered a potential pandemic threat.
"In Phase 3, an animal or human-animal influenza reassortant virus has caused sporadic cases or small clusters of disease in people, but has not resulted in human-to-human transmission sufficient to sustain community-level outbreaks.
"Phase 4 is characterized by verified human-to-human transmission of an animal or human-animal influenza reassortant virus able to cause "community-level outbreaks." The ability to cause sustained disease outbreaks in a community marks a significant upwards shift in the risk for a pandemic.
"Phase 5 is characterized by human-to-human spread of the virus into at least two countries in one WHO region. While most countries will not be affected at this stage, the declaration of Phase 5 is a strong signal that a pandemic is imminent and that the time to finalize the organization, communication, and implementation of the planned mitigation measures is short.
"Phase 6, the pandemic phase, is characterized by community level outbreaks in at least one other country in a different WHO region in addition to the criteria defined in Phase 5. Designation of this phase will indicate that a global pandemic is under way."
- 30 -
Here are links to the information used in this report:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14580
http://fhp.osd.mil/aiWatchboard/pdf/DoD_PI_Implementation_Plan_August_2006_Public_Release.pdf
http://www.prisonplanet.com/h1n1-pandemic-pentagon-planning-deployment-of-troops-in-support-of-nationwide-vaccination.html
http://www.creative-i.info/?p=9290
http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2007/02/TNSbirdflu070206/
http://groups.google.com/group/bc.politics/browse_thread/thread/f006a68a8f1d93af/90ea801c58ffd019?lnk=raot
Friday, August 7, 2009
Trying to think how to describe Jake flinging the cast net
By Jim Parks
A few years after I left the 'Glades, I was at the jazz festival in Atlanta one hot summer Sunday afternoon wearing khakis and a Yankees cap when the Deputy Mayor turned to someone and said, "He stands in the Earth."
He was talking about me. Someone had just introduced us and a cat was blowing one of those high, reedy series of arpeggios that introduce a fusion piece over bass and percussion wild and free and splitting the muggy atmosphere amongst the ellums and oaks out there where the cicadas chatter the evenings away.
Yes. I do. I do declare, I do.
Anyway, when I saw the snapshot of Jake flinging that cast net in black and white against the evening summer sun out on the dock at his place at Doctor's Pass on the Cocohatchee, I said that was what I was looking to say about all that down south hocus pocus and hush puppie shut yo' mouth ways of getting along with folks.
Yes.
If I was Solomon, I would write Selah! at the end of each verse, but I'm just a dude who lived on smoked mullet and grapefruit stolen off the trees and trucks, a little garlic and a lot of red wine in those days of the afternoon haze, the morning mist and wild hogs running through the palmetto and circling around the banyans and Spanish palms.
Yes.
We did some business and Jake showed me how to take ready made mesh and cut it on the bias, then sew it together in a big circle and put a pursing rope on the lead line and sew the narrow ends to a brass ring and hold the narrow end in my mouth and gather the leads in one hand and hold the pursing rope in the other and fling it in a perfect circle out over the water and drag in a mess of mullet where you see them jumping.
Yes.
He showed me how you have to let the bib of your overalls down after you unhook the galluses so the mesh don't catch on the the big old brass buttons and all. Yes. And all. Folks say that down in there. Me too. I still say "And all," though I'm back safe and sound up in here in the mountains.
Yes.
I look over at the old rolling block black muzzleloader I scored down in there. It's leaning up in the corner behind the door. Shoots a .45 soft lead hollow point through a .50 cal. sabot, fires smoke and flames four foot out the muzzle, kicks like a mule and drops a two-hundred pound wild hog dead in his tracks.
Oh, yeah.
Some say they won't eat that. Others say they won't eat that mullet. But, then, some folks ain't never been all that hungry.
Anyway, I didn't sign up for those folks. Every year that goes by shows me how time works against a man. Every time I ram a bullet down that muzzle with the old bullet starter and then fight that ramrod down those lands and grooves, then clean it with two passes of a patch and load it again with some black powder - every time - I know how time works against a man.
That's when you're getting to know something, you know. You get to where you're knowing that, you're getting to where you know some things that are worth knowing. That's right.
Anyway, back to the muzzleloader and the cast net. We were out in the 'Glades the other side of Immokalee - bunch of us - on the owl hoot and running drunk. We got into a nest of eastern diamond back rattlers. Durndest thing you ever saw, all balled up together and mad as hell that some fool woke them up during their winter nap. One-eyed Bobby, old half breed Indian boy, showed us what to do about all that. He cut a switch and whipped them across the back right behind the head. Paralyzes them. They can't coil and they can't strike. Then he got himself a tow sack out of the pickup he stole from Jodie, his second to last old lady, a wild little Yankee chick who always went barefoot and kept her haircut like a man's, ran around in cutoffs all the time. He just reached down and picked them rattlers up and throwed them in the tow sack.
Yes.
He said we ought to drive to Bonita and sell them to the old man who owned the Wonder Gardens. It's a private zoo with big old 'gators and vultures and swamp panthers and a little cafe and all such as that. Ain't ever been in there. Costs too much, I guess.
Anyway, when we got down there the old man was sitting out front in his overalls and long-sleeved plaid work shirt, wearing his slouch hat and had his feet stuffed in rubber boots - smoking his pipe through that dirty gray brush pile of a beard. One-eyed Bobby jumped out of the pickup with the tow sack full of snakes and hollered that he had more than a dozen rattlers in the bag. Would he like to buy them? Old man said, "Hell, yeah." Then he looked in the top of the sack and named a price. We all agreed. Then he did the damnedest thing I think I ever saw. He just reached in and grabbed one of them behind the head and held him up, his mouth open, spittin' mad and rattlers going like crazy. The rest of them in the bag got going on it, too. I said, "Man, you ought not just reach in there like that."
It scared me. It surely did. He said, "Can't coil to strike if'n they're in the bag, now, can they? Ain't never been bit like that. Been bit a many a time, but not like that." Then he handed the bag of snakes to one of his young'uns and peeled some twenties off a roll he had in the bib of those overalls and snorted. "Anything else I can help y'all with?" Everybody thanked him and they took out for the liquor store across the street.
I stayed behind because I owed the old boy money over there and I didn't want to show myself. I asked the old man what it was like before there was a road from Fort Myers to Bonita and a road to Miami across the 'Glades.
"T'was just like this but no cars. Mules and wagons. Horses and buggies. You ought to know. You ain't that goofy. Everybody taken the mailboat to get somewhere." I said I heard he was a professional 'gator hunter back in those days. "Yeah."
I said I didn't reckon they had much fish and game regulation or anything like that back then.
"They didn't have nothin' and didn't even know it," he said. He spit tobacco. Said, "Folks just didn't know no better and liked it fine."
I said, "You come in here from somewhere else. What year was that?"
"1920."
"Come from somewhere else. Where?"
"I don't reckon that's none of yo' bidness."
"Thank you, sir. I'm mighty sorry I asked you."
"Ain't nothin. Just none of yo' bidness, that's all."
He got up and went inside the little store they had at the zoo. A month later I said something to one of the girls who worked in the cafe next door - that I would like to get me a rifle and start to shooting wild hogs. I had learned all about where they are and how to ambush them. We had spent some quality time together at her trailer.
I got drunker than a waltzing pissant that night and when I woke up in the bed of that old Chevy pickup I was driving back then, there was that muzzle loader laying next to me.
I deduced it was time to leave her trailer. Just take the muzzleloader and go. I don't know where the hell it came from. Never asked. I just got to asking where to get bullets, powder, primers, how to shoot it. All that.
Where did it come from? I don't reckon that's none of yo' bidness, is it? I did buy the Colt .45 six shooter at the pawn shop. It just ain't safe trying to hunt hogs with a muzzleloader. Nothing meaner than a wounded hog and no hog dogs to help out. Nice to have a friend along.
Yes.
No hogs up here in these mountains. Plenty of deer, though. They say they are going to come for the rifles and pistols.
I'm gonna tell them what they told the Mexicans in Texas when they came to take their arms and the cannon they had at Gonzales.
Come and take it. I'll be right here waiting on you if you want it that bad.
Yes, sir.
A few years after I left the 'Glades, I was at the jazz festival in Atlanta one hot summer Sunday afternoon wearing khakis and a Yankees cap when the Deputy Mayor turned to someone and said, "He stands in the Earth."
He was talking about me. Someone had just introduced us and a cat was blowing one of those high, reedy series of arpeggios that introduce a fusion piece over bass and percussion wild and free and splitting the muggy atmosphere amongst the ellums and oaks out there where the cicadas chatter the evenings away.
Yes. I do. I do declare, I do.
Anyway, when I saw the snapshot of Jake flinging that cast net in black and white against the evening summer sun out on the dock at his place at Doctor's Pass on the Cocohatchee, I said that was what I was looking to say about all that down south hocus pocus and hush puppie shut yo' mouth ways of getting along with folks.
Yes.
If I was Solomon, I would write Selah! at the end of each verse, but I'm just a dude who lived on smoked mullet and grapefruit stolen off the trees and trucks, a little garlic and a lot of red wine in those days of the afternoon haze, the morning mist and wild hogs running through the palmetto and circling around the banyans and Spanish palms.
Yes.
We did some business and Jake showed me how to take ready made mesh and cut it on the bias, then sew it together in a big circle and put a pursing rope on the lead line and sew the narrow ends to a brass ring and hold the narrow end in my mouth and gather the leads in one hand and hold the pursing rope in the other and fling it in a perfect circle out over the water and drag in a mess of mullet where you see them jumping.
Yes.
He showed me how you have to let the bib of your overalls down after you unhook the galluses so the mesh don't catch on the the big old brass buttons and all. Yes. And all. Folks say that down in there. Me too. I still say "And all," though I'm back safe and sound up in here in the mountains.
Yes.
I look over at the old rolling block black muzzleloader I scored down in there. It's leaning up in the corner behind the door. Shoots a .45 soft lead hollow point through a .50 cal. sabot, fires smoke and flames four foot out the muzzle, kicks like a mule and drops a two-hundred pound wild hog dead in his tracks.
Oh, yeah.
Some say they won't eat that. Others say they won't eat that mullet. But, then, some folks ain't never been all that hungry.
Anyway, I didn't sign up for those folks. Every year that goes by shows me how time works against a man. Every time I ram a bullet down that muzzle with the old bullet starter and then fight that ramrod down those lands and grooves, then clean it with two passes of a patch and load it again with some black powder - every time - I know how time works against a man.
That's when you're getting to know something, you know. You get to where you're knowing that, you're getting to where you know some things that are worth knowing. That's right.
Anyway, back to the muzzleloader and the cast net. We were out in the 'Glades the other side of Immokalee - bunch of us - on the owl hoot and running drunk. We got into a nest of eastern diamond back rattlers. Durndest thing you ever saw, all balled up together and mad as hell that some fool woke them up during their winter nap. One-eyed Bobby, old half breed Indian boy, showed us what to do about all that. He cut a switch and whipped them across the back right behind the head. Paralyzes them. They can't coil and they can't strike. Then he got himself a tow sack out of the pickup he stole from Jodie, his second to last old lady, a wild little Yankee chick who always went barefoot and kept her haircut like a man's, ran around in cutoffs all the time. He just reached down and picked them rattlers up and throwed them in the tow sack.
Yes.
He said we ought to drive to Bonita and sell them to the old man who owned the Wonder Gardens. It's a private zoo with big old 'gators and vultures and swamp panthers and a little cafe and all such as that. Ain't ever been in there. Costs too much, I guess.
Anyway, when we got down there the old man was sitting out front in his overalls and long-sleeved plaid work shirt, wearing his slouch hat and had his feet stuffed in rubber boots - smoking his pipe through that dirty gray brush pile of a beard. One-eyed Bobby jumped out of the pickup with the tow sack full of snakes and hollered that he had more than a dozen rattlers in the bag. Would he like to buy them? Old man said, "Hell, yeah." Then he looked in the top of the sack and named a price. We all agreed. Then he did the damnedest thing I think I ever saw. He just reached in and grabbed one of them behind the head and held him up, his mouth open, spittin' mad and rattlers going like crazy. The rest of them in the bag got going on it, too. I said, "Man, you ought not just reach in there like that."
It scared me. It surely did. He said, "Can't coil to strike if'n they're in the bag, now, can they? Ain't never been bit like that. Been bit a many a time, but not like that." Then he handed the bag of snakes to one of his young'uns and peeled some twenties off a roll he had in the bib of those overalls and snorted. "Anything else I can help y'all with?" Everybody thanked him and they took out for the liquor store across the street.
I stayed behind because I owed the old boy money over there and I didn't want to show myself. I asked the old man what it was like before there was a road from Fort Myers to Bonita and a road to Miami across the 'Glades.
"T'was just like this but no cars. Mules and wagons. Horses and buggies. You ought to know. You ain't that goofy. Everybody taken the mailboat to get somewhere." I said I heard he was a professional 'gator hunter back in those days. "Yeah."
I said I didn't reckon they had much fish and game regulation or anything like that back then.
"They didn't have nothin' and didn't even know it," he said. He spit tobacco. Said, "Folks just didn't know no better and liked it fine."
I said, "You come in here from somewhere else. What year was that?"
"1920."
"Come from somewhere else. Where?"
"I don't reckon that's none of yo' bidness."
"Thank you, sir. I'm mighty sorry I asked you."
"Ain't nothin. Just none of yo' bidness, that's all."
He got up and went inside the little store they had at the zoo. A month later I said something to one of the girls who worked in the cafe next door - that I would like to get me a rifle and start to shooting wild hogs. I had learned all about where they are and how to ambush them. We had spent some quality time together at her trailer.
I got drunker than a waltzing pissant that night and when I woke up in the bed of that old Chevy pickup I was driving back then, there was that muzzle loader laying next to me.
I deduced it was time to leave her trailer. Just take the muzzleloader and go. I don't know where the hell it came from. Never asked. I just got to asking where to get bullets, powder, primers, how to shoot it. All that.
Where did it come from? I don't reckon that's none of yo' bidness, is it? I did buy the Colt .45 six shooter at the pawn shop. It just ain't safe trying to hunt hogs with a muzzleloader. Nothing meaner than a wounded hog and no hog dogs to help out. Nice to have a friend along.
Yes.
No hogs up here in these mountains. Plenty of deer, though. They say they are going to come for the rifles and pistols.
I'm gonna tell them what they told the Mexicans in Texas when they came to take their arms and the cannon they had at Gonzales.
Come and take it. I'll be right here waiting on you if you want it that bad.
Yes, sir.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
East of the Light
By Jim Parks
Rudy saluted Bubba when he came out of the water after he had lashed the ends of the purse seine back together in a circle and we waited for the fish to gill off in it, to become packed in the mesh in their panic..
He stripped and stood in a jock, staring into the sun overhead, balanced on the rail outside the pilot house. His hair looked blue, so black and glossy in the sun, his brown Caribe skin sweating. He fought the grin that kept threatening to capture his face, make him burst into a long series of giggles.
With a flash of white teeth, he shouted "Chingada!" and dove into the ultramarine blue water beside the net where the bull sharks had been eating in a frenzy, chopping up the fish who were caught, tearing holes in the mesh, making the water foam with a froth of reddish blood soon fading to brown and dissipating to a green tinge in the warmth of the sun.
The stream comes closer to the mainland U.S. there than anywhere else - less than a mile.
It's not like in the Keys where there are chains of coral reefs and islands. This is a huge limestone peninsula washed by the warm water out of Africa and the Caribbean, bound for the British Isles and the European continent, thence back to the tropics.
In the stream, there are game fish and schools of mackerel, tuna, jack, all competing for the needle fish, anchovy, squid. You can see them from above - a thousand feet - a shadowy gray stream within the deep blue stream, moving along in a frenzy of feeding.
The boats work with airplane pilots who radio to let them know where they are jumping at baits shoved to the surface and sometimes out into the air. Everything moves briskly in the stream, at about six knots, to the northeast.
As Rudy jumped, Hector shouted "Ai! Cojones!"
Bubba stood transfixed, watching as Rudy splashed back to the side of the boat and climbed the rope ladder dangling over the side.
He pulled Rudy's arm, boosting him back over the gunwale in the crisp December air. They stood beaming at each other for a moment, then they embraced, laughing.
"It is necessary, no, cabron? It is necessary," Rudy said.
Bubba grabbed him again and they hugged, taking each others' crucifixes between thumb and forefingers and kissing them, slapping each other on the back repeatedly.
Simultaneously, almost whimsically, they spit into the ocean where the bull sharks still chewed at the net, the fish blood foaming, the dorsal fins working it all into a froth.
Then they both put their clothes back on while the rest of the crew slammed batten boards on the deck to panic the fish in the water beneath her keel, to make them try to swim out of the encircling pursed seine.
We drifted along to the northeast until the pilot in the little 150 buzzed us and we started to feed the foot ropes over the dishpan winches overhead, faking the loaded seine down on deck, shoveling ice over the fish in layers, faking another layer, then more ice, finally tarping the whole load and heading for the inlet and the fish house, the twin V-8 turbo Detroit diesels singing in the engine compartment under the fiberglass deck, the hull struggling to plane in front of the propulsion nozzles proven in the shallow waters of Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Brazil.
We headed back through the inlet, ignoring the other boats stopped by Customs and the Marine Patrol, Coast Guard. It was not our fate today.
Only we knew what lay beneath the stinking mass of fish and netting.
It would be a long night and a longer day after.
We were heading home. We were East of the light. That meant sewing up huge holes in the mesh, holes chewed by bull sharks in a frenzy of feeding upon helpless Spanish mackerel in the deep blue waters over the marl where tons and tons of gold and silver and cannon and bronze hails lay at rest after endless northeasters that blew it all to smithereens long, long ago.
Cojones. Yes, cojones.
###
Rudy saluted Bubba when he came out of the water after he had lashed the ends of the purse seine back together in a circle and we waited for the fish to gill off in it, to become packed in the mesh in their panic..
He stripped and stood in a jock, staring into the sun overhead, balanced on the rail outside the pilot house. His hair looked blue, so black and glossy in the sun, his brown Caribe skin sweating. He fought the grin that kept threatening to capture his face, make him burst into a long series of giggles.
With a flash of white teeth, he shouted "Chingada!" and dove into the ultramarine blue water beside the net where the bull sharks had been eating in a frenzy, chopping up the fish who were caught, tearing holes in the mesh, making the water foam with a froth of reddish blood soon fading to brown and dissipating to a green tinge in the warmth of the sun.
The stream comes closer to the mainland U.S. there than anywhere else - less than a mile.
It's not like in the Keys where there are chains of coral reefs and islands. This is a huge limestone peninsula washed by the warm water out of Africa and the Caribbean, bound for the British Isles and the European continent, thence back to the tropics.
In the stream, there are game fish and schools of mackerel, tuna, jack, all competing for the needle fish, anchovy, squid. You can see them from above - a thousand feet - a shadowy gray stream within the deep blue stream, moving along in a frenzy of feeding.
The boats work with airplane pilots who radio to let them know where they are jumping at baits shoved to the surface and sometimes out into the air. Everything moves briskly in the stream, at about six knots, to the northeast.
As Rudy jumped, Hector shouted "Ai! Cojones!"
Bubba stood transfixed, watching as Rudy splashed back to the side of the boat and climbed the rope ladder dangling over the side.
He pulled Rudy's arm, boosting him back over the gunwale in the crisp December air. They stood beaming at each other for a moment, then they embraced, laughing.
"It is necessary, no, cabron? It is necessary," Rudy said.
Bubba grabbed him again and they hugged, taking each others' crucifixes between thumb and forefingers and kissing them, slapping each other on the back repeatedly.
Simultaneously, almost whimsically, they spit into the ocean where the bull sharks still chewed at the net, the fish blood foaming, the dorsal fins working it all into a froth.
Then they both put their clothes back on while the rest of the crew slammed batten boards on the deck to panic the fish in the water beneath her keel, to make them try to swim out of the encircling pursed seine.
We drifted along to the northeast until the pilot in the little 150 buzzed us and we started to feed the foot ropes over the dishpan winches overhead, faking the loaded seine down on deck, shoveling ice over the fish in layers, faking another layer, then more ice, finally tarping the whole load and heading for the inlet and the fish house, the twin V-8 turbo Detroit diesels singing in the engine compartment under the fiberglass deck, the hull struggling to plane in front of the propulsion nozzles proven in the shallow waters of Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Brazil.
We headed back through the inlet, ignoring the other boats stopped by Customs and the Marine Patrol, Coast Guard. It was not our fate today.
Only we knew what lay beneath the stinking mass of fish and netting.
It would be a long night and a longer day after.
We were heading home. We were East of the light. That meant sewing up huge holes in the mesh, holes chewed by bull sharks in a frenzy of feeding upon helpless Spanish mackerel in the deep blue waters over the marl where tons and tons of gold and silver and cannon and bronze hails lay at rest after endless northeasters that blew it all to smithereens long, long ago.
Cojones. Yes, cojones.
###
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Exorcism
By Jim Parks
Sister did it for the attention, according to certain of the brothers and their wives who were strict adherents in the beliefs and practices of The Church.
They said she had never been stable and would never be, that she was touched by evil, that the Lord could not walk with her on any continual basis. They made excuses for her. They looked away embarrassed when she would show up barefoot on Sunday mornings with her purse in one hand and her heels in another, having stripped her voluptuous bare legs of her stockings, her hair askew and her dress wrinkled and dirty.
She wiped her eyes with cocktail napkins she had stuffed away in her purse, gaudy things printed with logos that said "Kit Kat Klub" or "Primrose Room." She would stroll into the churchyard with her head down, casting glances at the faces of the disapproving matrons and the knowing gazes of the old boys.
She was just that kind of girl - a woman full blown and mature at an impossibly young age only too willing to play with men full grown and just passing through. They would drop her off and cruise away in their old cars and pickups and she would walk down the old cut bank dirt road and up the holler, her finely arched, fabulously sculpted woman's feet carrying her to the door of the little whitewashed chapel through the collection of aging cars and the gaggle of gawking worshippers.
On a Wednesday night it happened in the middle of Prayer Meeting. The terrifying spectacle held the congregation spellbound. The door burst open and Sister fought a half dozen of the men of the Church as they forced her down the aisle. Two of the brethren brought her struggling and cursing to the altar. A half-dozen people held her down and laid on hands while the preacher spoke in tongues and beseeched the unclean spirits to "come out of this woman."
He shouted and railed at them, crying out in a rich baritone, "Let this sister be. Let her alone, I say."
Sister struggled and fought. The muscles in her neck and her torso sprang into full relief, her abdomen writhing and her legs thrashing out as she caught them off guard with kicks of her heels and the slashing attacks of her pretty blood red lacquered nails.
Her face, twisted and hateful, looked as evil as they said she was under its layer of makeup and lipstick. She was a female human being under the most extreme of circumstances. When it was over and she had succumbed, she cried and cried and cursed them at the top of her lungs.
A trip to the mental health center and thirty days observation on a locked ward didn't really change her behavior.
She still loved men, couldn't keep her hands off them, preened, undulated, warbled and flirted with them any time she got the chance.
A woman in her group therapy class got her in touch with a lawyer from the city. He came up from the mill town and had her sign papers that got her a settlement of several hundred thousand dollars against the church and the insurance policies of those who had abducted her at her home and brought her to the church to be exorcised of the demons they were so sure they could expel from her finely proportioned, well-muscled and symmetrical being.
On appeal, the state supreme court ruled against the judgment. The justices said it was the religious right of those people to worship as they might see fit. They called it a landmark case in the newspapers nationwide.
Sister moved away.
She sent one old boy a postcard from a beach town in California.
It said, "I'm sure enough glad you ain't here. And I damn sure am glad you don't even hardly know how to get here, fool."
Sister did it for the attention, according to certain of the brothers and their wives who were strict adherents in the beliefs and practices of The Church.
They said she had never been stable and would never be, that she was touched by evil, that the Lord could not walk with her on any continual basis. They made excuses for her. They looked away embarrassed when she would show up barefoot on Sunday mornings with her purse in one hand and her heels in another, having stripped her voluptuous bare legs of her stockings, her hair askew and her dress wrinkled and dirty.
She wiped her eyes with cocktail napkins she had stuffed away in her purse, gaudy things printed with logos that said "Kit Kat Klub" or "Primrose Room." She would stroll into the churchyard with her head down, casting glances at the faces of the disapproving matrons and the knowing gazes of the old boys.
She was just that kind of girl - a woman full blown and mature at an impossibly young age only too willing to play with men full grown and just passing through. They would drop her off and cruise away in their old cars and pickups and she would walk down the old cut bank dirt road and up the holler, her finely arched, fabulously sculpted woman's feet carrying her to the door of the little whitewashed chapel through the collection of aging cars and the gaggle of gawking worshippers.
On a Wednesday night it happened in the middle of Prayer Meeting. The terrifying spectacle held the congregation spellbound. The door burst open and Sister fought a half dozen of the men of the Church as they forced her down the aisle. Two of the brethren brought her struggling and cursing to the altar. A half-dozen people held her down and laid on hands while the preacher spoke in tongues and beseeched the unclean spirits to "come out of this woman."
He shouted and railed at them, crying out in a rich baritone, "Let this sister be. Let her alone, I say."
Sister struggled and fought. The muscles in her neck and her torso sprang into full relief, her abdomen writhing and her legs thrashing out as she caught them off guard with kicks of her heels and the slashing attacks of her pretty blood red lacquered nails.
Her face, twisted and hateful, looked as evil as they said she was under its layer of makeup and lipstick. She was a female human being under the most extreme of circumstances. When it was over and she had succumbed, she cried and cried and cursed them at the top of her lungs.
A trip to the mental health center and thirty days observation on a locked ward didn't really change her behavior.
She still loved men, couldn't keep her hands off them, preened, undulated, warbled and flirted with them any time she got the chance.
A woman in her group therapy class got her in touch with a lawyer from the city. He came up from the mill town and had her sign papers that got her a settlement of several hundred thousand dollars against the church and the insurance policies of those who had abducted her at her home and brought her to the church to be exorcised of the demons they were so sure they could expel from her finely proportioned, well-muscled and symmetrical being.
On appeal, the state supreme court ruled against the judgment. The justices said it was the religious right of those people to worship as they might see fit. They called it a landmark case in the newspapers nationwide.
Sister moved away.
She sent one old boy a postcard from a beach town in California.
It said, "I'm sure enough glad you ain't here. And I damn sure am glad you don't even hardly know how to get here, fool."
Friday, July 24, 2009
Army Revokes Major's Orders To Deploy To Afghanistan
By Jim Parks
The Army spared an officer the duty of serving in Afghanistan after he filed a lawsuit claiming he doesn't believe that President Obama is the legitimate President of the United States of America.
Major Stefan Cook filed a Federal lawsuit against the government.
Within a short time, the Army revoked his orders to deploy to Afghanistan..
His attorney, Ms. Orly Taitz, has demanded strict proof of the President's nativity. She requested a "vault copy" of the President's birth certificate.
Officials in Texas and Hawaii, when contacted for comment, said they had never heard of a "vault copy" of a birth certificate.
The event of President Barack Obama's live birth in a hospital at Honolulu, Hawaii, was recorded under a procedure that requires doctors and clerks to send a certificate to the State Registrar of Vital Statistics. In Texas, this document is kept in a vault equipped with a halon fire extinguishing system and subsequently recorded electronically.
Certified copies printed on security paper may be purchased under the strictures of certain rules and regulations, according to Geraldine Harris, Texas State Registrar of Vital Statistics at the State Health Services Commission.
It's a very big deal for many reasons. In the case of President Obama's nativity, it is extremely pertinent because the Constitution requires that a President be a native born American. Hawaii State Registrar of Vital Statistics Alvin Onaka was unavailable for comment. An assistant in his office said she, like Ms. Harris, has never heard of any certificate of a birth event being referred to as a "vault copy."
"Do you know what this means?" asked Ms. Taitz, the attorney who claims she is representing 170 soldiers who have questioned the legitimacy of the President's authority as Commander in Chief. "It means the Obama administration has blinked. They have no cards to play with. The moment I filed a lawsuit, they didn't even fight.
"Can you imagine what are the consequences? This is disastrous...We'll have no military because any time a soldier, any sailor, any airman does not want to follow any orders, all he has to do is call an attorney and say 'I don't want to follow this order because I question the legitimacy of the commander in chief.'"
As an Individual Mobilization Augmentee, Major Cook had volunteered for a year's deployment of Afghanistan on May 8. His orders were issued on June 9, according to Lt. Col. Maria Quon, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Army Human Resources Command at St. Louis. As an augmentee, his status allowed him to ask for revocation up to the time of his reporting date. Cook had not asked for this. Col. Quon said she could not say why the Army had revoked his orders. She cited the Privacy Act.
In the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia on July 8, Ms. Taitz told the court that Major Cook does not believe Obama is a natural-born U.S. citizen, and so cannot serve as president and commander-in-chief.
The Army spared an officer the duty of serving in Afghanistan after he filed a lawsuit claiming he doesn't believe that President Obama is the legitimate President of the United States of America.
Major Stefan Cook filed a Federal lawsuit against the government.
Within a short time, the Army revoked his orders to deploy to Afghanistan..
His attorney, Ms. Orly Taitz, has demanded strict proof of the President's nativity. She requested a "vault copy" of the President's birth certificate.
Officials in Texas and Hawaii, when contacted for comment, said they had never heard of a "vault copy" of a birth certificate.
The event of President Barack Obama's live birth in a hospital at Honolulu, Hawaii, was recorded under a procedure that requires doctors and clerks to send a certificate to the State Registrar of Vital Statistics. In Texas, this document is kept in a vault equipped with a halon fire extinguishing system and subsequently recorded electronically.
Certified copies printed on security paper may be purchased under the strictures of certain rules and regulations, according to Geraldine Harris, Texas State Registrar of Vital Statistics at the State Health Services Commission.
It's a very big deal for many reasons. In the case of President Obama's nativity, it is extremely pertinent because the Constitution requires that a President be a native born American. Hawaii State Registrar of Vital Statistics Alvin Onaka was unavailable for comment. An assistant in his office said she, like Ms. Harris, has never heard of any certificate of a birth event being referred to as a "vault copy."
"Do you know what this means?" asked Ms. Taitz, the attorney who claims she is representing 170 soldiers who have questioned the legitimacy of the President's authority as Commander in Chief. "It means the Obama administration has blinked. They have no cards to play with. The moment I filed a lawsuit, they didn't even fight.
"Can you imagine what are the consequences? This is disastrous...We'll have no military because any time a soldier, any sailor, any airman does not want to follow any orders, all he has to do is call an attorney and say 'I don't want to follow this order because I question the legitimacy of the commander in chief.'"
As an Individual Mobilization Augmentee, Major Cook had volunteered for a year's deployment of Afghanistan on May 8. His orders were issued on June 9, according to Lt. Col. Maria Quon, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Army Human Resources Command at St. Louis. As an augmentee, his status allowed him to ask for revocation up to the time of his reporting date. Cook had not asked for this. Col. Quon said she could not say why the Army had revoked his orders. She cited the Privacy Act.
In the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia on July 8, Ms. Taitz told the court that Major Cook does not believe Obama is a natural-born U.S. citizen, and so cannot serve as president and commander-in-chief.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
He chose to be glued back together
By Jim Parks
When the emergency surgeon offered him a choice between sutures and a new method of closing knife wounds, he chose to have the doctor super glue his flesh back together.
He was slashed twice, once across the chest over the pectoral muscle group, and once across the abdomen over the rib cage, just over the traversing colon and spleen. A day later, he was up and working again.
From behind a thousand-yard stare, as he talked, he gazed through the plate glass window of the Firestone Store, a middle-aged counter clerk more used to taking credit applications and processing orders for tires, batteries, wheel alignments and tune-ups than fending off deadly attacks by edged weapons.
"They were grown men," he said of the two blacks who attacked him because "They said they wanted all the money."
There was only a little bit of cash to be had. Most people pay with credit cards or have their purchases billed on their Firestone national account.
"I think it was drugs that affected their judgement," he concluded, looking back at the computer screen, ready to dismiss the moments of terror when the pair walked into the store, which is located just across the street from the Santa Fe division yards in the old railroad town of Temple, Texas.
In broad daylight, just a stone's throw from City Hall and the police station, the pair had walked in and demanded the cash.
"One of them struggled with me. We kind of wrestled back and forth; then he hit me with his fist and he cut me then. I didn't see the knife until I saw the blood and saw I was cut."
A day later, when the battery on my pickup failed and I wheeled in to have it replaced, he and other clerks were still cleaning up blood smears and the residue of black fingerprint powder left behind by detectives who had investigated the robbery the day before.
When the emergency surgeon offered him a choice between sutures and a new method of closing knife wounds, he chose to have the doctor super glue his flesh back together.
He was slashed twice, once across the chest over the pectoral muscle group, and once across the abdomen over the rib cage, just over the traversing colon and spleen. A day later, he was up and working again.
From behind a thousand-yard stare, as he talked, he gazed through the plate glass window of the Firestone Store, a middle-aged counter clerk more used to taking credit applications and processing orders for tires, batteries, wheel alignments and tune-ups than fending off deadly attacks by edged weapons.
"They were grown men," he said of the two blacks who attacked him because "They said they wanted all the money."
There was only a little bit of cash to be had. Most people pay with credit cards or have their purchases billed on their Firestone national account.
"I think it was drugs that affected their judgement," he concluded, looking back at the computer screen, ready to dismiss the moments of terror when the pair walked into the store, which is located just across the street from the Santa Fe division yards in the old railroad town of Temple, Texas.
In broad daylight, just a stone's throw from City Hall and the police station, the pair had walked in and demanded the cash.
"One of them struggled with me. We kind of wrestled back and forth; then he hit me with his fist and he cut me then. I didn't see the knife until I saw the blood and saw I was cut."
A day later, when the battery on my pickup failed and I wheeled in to have it replaced, he and other clerks were still cleaning up blood smears and the residue of black fingerprint powder left behind by detectives who had investigated the robbery the day before.
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