Air traffic

Last year I reported on the vicissitudes of national military budgets, which resulted in several first-world nations claiming they were unable to find the money to maintain 24x7 readiness for dealing with violations of their air space.

I suggested that Baltic countries in particular might want to rethink that situation, because living next door to Vladimir Putin, and being former entities of both the Russian and Soviet empires, would sure as hell make me uneasy.

Since then, it’s come to my attention that there have been incidents involving Russian aircraft flying into Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, near-Canada (yeah, not in their air space, but pretending to launch Cruise missiles on the US), the Netherlands, Alaska (yeah, I know: you can see Russia from there; I understand how those pilots might have got confused), and near-UK.

When I say “near-“ I mean “close enough for the countries involved to actually launch fighter intercepts. This includes the one earlier this month off of the coast of Cornwall.

There have also been other incidents where Russian aircraft buzzed US and Canadian naval vessels in the Black Sea. Although I can understand the attraction—I mean, if the Ruskies were engaging in naval exercises off the Gulf Coast, wouldn’t the Top Guns from Pensacola be itching to play some chicken?

Shoot—every redneck on the coast from Corpus Christi to Cape Coral with a huntin’ rifle, a six-pack and a bass boat would be powering up for a swipe at them. So, yeah.

At any rate, earlier this week Lithuania announced that it is reintroducing a limited form of military conscription; for years they’ve had a volunteer, professional army. So far neither Estonia nor Latvia appears to be following suit. I hope they’re not counting on the Litvaks to provide full protection.

And I hope they’re all gassing up their fighter jets and staffing their radar stations, 24x7.

C'est un peu compliqué

Well, this is really interesting--at least it is to a software product manager interested in the user experience. A friend of a friend posted this graphic on Facebook:

The initial word in the top five lines is pronounced “say”. They all sound exactly the same. The sixth sounds like “saw”. Pretty close.

The first three words in the last line translate to “its [sic] not complicated”, which I’m taking as a deliberate joke, using the possessive in French to achieve the incorrect possessive in English, on account of the number of people who swap “it’s” and “its” as though they mean the same thing and the apostrophe is optional.

However, the part that interested me is the final three-word expletive. I typed them into Google Translate, because while I knew the words independently, I wanted to check what they constitute in the collective. Unaccountably, this expression (and others like it) is never taught in college French classes, and (perhaps more unaccountably) I've not encountered it in my travels or work experiences.

Anyway, I typed "putain", and got "whore", so fine. 

As soon as the "d" of "de" went in, "whore" changed to "fucking". (I can say that, can't I? I mean, Google did...)

Google Translate uses predictive text; it recalibrates its response with each letter you enter, which I find most entertaining. 

The progression of "Putain de mer" got me "sea fucking". 

And then "putain de merde" first time round gave me "fucking shit", because I typed in an extra "r".

 And, as I corrected my input, it became "fuck off".

They give you a little icon to correct their translation, but frankly, I was laughing way too much to be able to operate dangerous equipment like a keyboard and mouse.

Il n'y a de rien.

Capturing the moment

Monday was the anniversary of the raising of the US flag atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima in 1945. Planting the flag there signaled attacking Marines that a key goal had been achieved in a battle that eventually resulted in the deaths of 20,000 Japanese and nearly 7,000 Americans.

If you have never seen the photograph taken by AP photographer Joe Rosenthal, well, I totally do not understand that. It is one of the most iconic pictures ever taken, and it formed the basis for the Marine Corp Memorial statue at Arlington National Cemetery.

I can think of only two photos taken in the 70-plus years since, which even touch on the power of the flag-raising. Both of those are from Vietnam: Vietnamese police chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan shooting a Viet Cong prisoner in the head on a Saigon street in 1968 (AP’s Eddie Adams), and nine-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc running naked after being burned by napalm (AP’s Nick Ut).

But what I’m really here to talk about today is the power of the still photograph. We forget about that because we’re so wrapped up in videos—images flashing by so we never have to dwell on something visually, much less really think about it. Like sharks, our eyes are always in motion. And we’ve been led to believe that video is somehow truer than the single image. More lifelike. Or deathlike, in the case of ISIS footage.

Well, I dunno about that. And the flag over Suribachi is a case in point.

There actually is motion picture footage of that flag raising, which, as it happens, was the second flag raised that day. (But it wasn’t staged for the camera, as some have claimed. The first flag wasn’t very big, and so wasn’t visible to Marines who still had a hard fight to go before the island was secured. So it was taken down and replaced with a larger one.)

And that film has nothing like the power of Rosenthal’s perfect frozen moment, capturing the Marines (and one Navy corpsman) as the flag was only just beginning to flow in the wind.

Yes, there are times when having both film and sound is the best way to tell a story. But if you’re a true photographer, and you have your share of lucky moments of being in exactly the right place in the Big Moment, a single shot is worth more than a thousand words, and more than a lot of videos that get spread around the Internet.

Gratitude Monday: Practice, practice

In addition to my posts here for Gratitude Monday, I’ve taken up the practice of calling out three things each day for which I’m grateful. I could do it privately, but I just started slapping up posts on Facebook, in this format: “May I spill over with gratitude for the blessings bestowed upon me, of which there are many. Today I am grateful for:” and then I slap up three things.

There are days (the ones when it totally sucks to be me) when I really have to reach for something, much less three of them.

(And because it totally messes with the karma to use a negative, I have to refrain from such things as “Not having an allergy to shellfish” or “At least Anthem is no longer my healthcare insurance”.)

The other day I was talking with a friend who’s also job hunting. She practices conscious gratitude as well—last thing before going to sleep she names ten things she’s grateful for, “Even if it’s just my favorite jam on my breakfast toast.” And she told me she really loves my little triad of thanks.

So today I am grateful for the practice of gratitude. I know it makes me a better person, and it certainly improves my attitude about pretty much everything.

Except Anthem, of course. They totally suck.

The week in weird

We are surrounded by news of the weird, and I’m not exactly sure from which direction the weird winds blow wildest.

First off, on Wednesday, the day the UK’s defence [sic] secretary harrumphed that the Baltic nations should be on the lookout for Russian incursions, given the undeclared war going on in Ukraine, the RAF scrambled Typhoon fighters to warn off two Russian Bear bombers that were skirting the coast of Cornwall.

Cornwall is in the south of England; it’s the little part that juts out to the left on this map:

And you’ll notice that it is a goodly distance from any territory that belongs to Russia. So it’s not like those two Bears took a wrong turn on their way from Smolensk to Nizhny Novgorod and the next thing they know they were skimming past Newquay trying to find the best place for winkles and chips.

There have been other incidents, both in the air and undersea, where Russian units have pushed the envelope in various parts of Western Europe. Testing the boundaries, as it were, kind of like teenagers trying to get their curfew extended. Only with Putin, it’s more like recovering either the old Soviet Union or possibly the pre-1917 Russian Empire. Hard to know with that guy.

But, as Sancho Panza used to say, whether the rock hits the pitcher or the pitcher hits the rock, it’s going to be bad for the pitcher.

However, there’s good weird to balance the bad.

Well, I suppose the modifier “good” all depends on whether you’re one of the protagonists involved in these two stories.

First, from Orlando, a woman believed to be under the influence of some “heavy unknown substance” was arrested last Sunday after peeling off her clothes, walking naked into traffic, grabbing herself in a place where Minnie Mouse doesn’t even have a place and then climbing onto a car and stomping on it.

The report I read makes a point of identifying the car in question as a Lexus, as though that’s somehow more of an affront than a Chevy or a Volvo. And one of the passengers in said Lexus reported that the miscreant (one Amie Carter, 31, if you care) also threw a mobile phone at the car behind the one she was mounting. (Well, that’s the verb the news story uses.)

Sadly (and I do find this difficult to believe) there appears to be no video footage of this incident. Go figure.

Well, naturally I thought this all very interesting, but my big question is this: where did Carter get the mobile phone to throw if she was naked? And my answer to myself is: no place I want to know about.

But from sunny Florida, let’s move up to Michigan where last month Christina Bond fatally shot herself through the eye while adjusting the handgun she was carrying in her bra holster. Bond, an evangelical Christian, biker and Republican, was 55. She was also obviously a gun nut.

Now, as with the case of Carter (and, what the hell, Putin, too), my mind just started filling with pictures. Like—did the folks at the Road to Life church edge away from her when she was taken by the spirit and began speaking in tongues and clutching her chest? What about the Friday night fish fry fundraiser for the Republicans—did they try to keep her away from the deep-fry baskets? Did anyone ask her to dance?

Apparently this bra holster is a whole thing, which I did not know about. I wonder if you have to get a conceal-carry permit for these things, or is the gun not really concealed?

I’m also betting it’s a lot harder to get a guy to look at your face when you’re wearing one of those things. Kind of a double attraction for him. Triple, maybe.

Well, I also wonder what happens when you’re out at the tavern, and you’re three or eight Black Jacks into the evening, and you get a little confused about which cup has your cash and which your carry? Makes me also wonder why we haven't heard of more incidents along these lines. But perhaps we will.

But that’s all the weird I can handle for now. What would be really weird would be if Putin started packing a piece in a bra and then… Oh, never mind.

The minstrel of the dawn

It was quite the blast from the past on Saturday when NPR’s Scott Simon interviewed Gordon Lightfoot. The Canadian singer-songwriter, 76, is embarking on a tour and has embarked on a 26-city tour.

I didn’t recognize Lightfoot’s voice, but then I don’t think I’ve ever heard him speaking much; just the singing. I don’t recall now how I came to love his stuff, but I first went to see him at a tiny club in Huntington Beach, where I probably shouldn’t have been allowed in because I was underage. But I’d persuaded my BFF to go with me, and then somehow had the chutzpah to go backstage—or maybe it was beside-stage; the club really was small—to take his picture:

A lot of years later, I went with another friend to the Universal Amphitheatre to hear him again. This time he was backed up by a band, singers and the whole megillah, and he had a bit of the air of someone who'd already been rode pretty hard and put away wet.

Even if you’ve never heard Lightfoot, you’ve heard his songs. Seriously—if you don’t know “Early Morning Rain”, you haven’t been alive at any time in the past 40 years.

(I know this will sound antediluvian to Millennials, but when I rode my bicycle from Paris to Santiago de Compostela, I had no iPod, no smartphone, not even a Walkman. I sang to myself, and I well recall blaring out “Now the liquor tasted gooood and the women all were faaaast” as I pedaled through a Spanish village, much to the visible surprise of the residents.)

Lightfoot actually wrote a range of songs, including some truly forgettable fluff. “Go-Go Round” comes to mind, with its refrain “Only a go-go girl in love with someone who didn’t care.” Well, yes—haven’t we all been that go-go girl?

But, as Simon brings up in the interview, there are many (including myself) who only know about the Edmund Fitzgerald tragedy of 1975 because of Lightfoot’s “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”.

My favorite Lightfoot song, however, is the one Simon refers to as the “unofficial Canadian national anthem”, “Canadian Railroad Trilogy”. Actually—I think much of my understanding of Canadian history comes from that one song. Um. But I always loved the three distinct parts, wrapped in the underlying “green dark forest…too silent to be real.”

So I’m glad to hear Lightfoot is still out there playing the halls. And the clubs.

Three Danes

I really don’t know what to say about the vicious attacks last weekend in Copenhagen. I’ve been hearing some talk about the possibility that they weren’t acts of terrorism, but random violence by a young man with gangs in his background.

Well, let me just point out that shooting up a café where Swedish political cartoonist Lars Vilks (who travels with bodyguards because of death threats from Islamists) was participating in a discussion on free speech, followed by firing on a synagogue, does not seem all that random to me. Especially only a month after the Charlie Hebdo/kosher supermarket murders.

So let me just leave you with three names:

Dan Uzan, 37, shot while on security duty outside the Great Synagogue early Sunday morning.

Documentarian Finn Noergaard, 55, murdered at the café on Saturday.

Alleged shooter Omar el-Hussein, 22, only recently released from prison; killed on Sunday by Danish police after he fired on them.

A [Jewish] community volunteer, a film maker and a thug. Make of that what you will.

Not just one of your little toys

What sad news—Lesley Gore has died, aged 68, of cancer. Way, way too young.

Her career in pop started more than 50 years ago, when under that demur little flip ‘do, she showed she had a set of pipes. Well—she was from New Jersey, so…

The reports all describe her as “Lesley Gore, Singer of ‘It’s My Party’”, so maybe that was her biggest hit, although she had more than just a couple.

For me, though, she drew a line in the sand that went way beyond crying at a party. “You Don’t Own Me” should have been the anthem of the women’s movement. If it hasn’t been, there’s still time.

It was used to good effect in The First Wives Club, and I think it’s due for a resurgence.

Whaddaya think?

Gratitude Monday: Health and safety

A couple of years ago I posted about being grateful for the fact that, in the United States, it’s considered a basic duty of the government (usually at the local level, but it goes up the line all the way to the EPA) to provide the citizenry with safe water, and that you mostly get it delivered to your kitchen and bathroom via pipes. You don’t have to go down to the creek with your buckets and schlep it back to your home; you turn the tap and there it is.

Well, yesterday I was talking with a friend of mine who runs an electrical business in England, and was reminded that there’s something else for which I’m grateful: at least in the six states where I’ve lived (even those south of the Mason-Dixon Line), building codes have meant that I’ve had relatively modern plumbing and wiring in my residences.

We were talking about his range of services—new construction as well as repairs and renovations, and I flashed onto my flat in Maidenhead, where there was mildew in the cupboards (closets to Americans), and they ran wires alongside pipes, along the floorboards, outside the walls.

(And, so you know, this was the least appalling place I looked at. Some of them were so stultifyingly awful, I actually gasped. And I've lived in a place where cockroaches were a daily occurrence, although I'm grateful that I only saw rats at a distance in the complex.)

But the worst, for me, was that when an electrician came in to do something about the ridiculous under-counter fridge (it was a plug-in, but stuck into a space with no room for the plug; I’m not making that up, he had to remove the plug and wire it into the wall to make it fit), he showed me the fuse box for the place.

As in—“here are some fuses, and here’s how you take this this wire to replace any fuse here that blows”. Not a circuit breaker, a fuse box. With wires.

Also—when I asked him if running wiring alongside pipes was allowed by building codes, he just laughed. It seems that in the UK, they don’t need no stinkin’ building codes. Or they didn’t up until the 21^st Century.

At which point, my friend tells me, they’re still not huge on enforcing them.

I’ve lived in some dodgy places over the years in the US, but never in a place that I thought might kill me. Or where I was expected to have electrician skills in addition to paying obscene amounts of rent. So I am really grateful that the swell county of Santa Clara has building codes, and enforces them.

And I know where the circuit breaker box is.

Matters of the heart

Today being Valentine’s Day, I know you’re awash with pressure to produce demonstrations of undying passion for your significant (or even your somewhat-interesting) other. Flowers (better have a damned good explanation for that bouquet not being a fistful of red roses, at five times the going rate for other times of the year), chocolates (possibly more leeway there) and/or jewelry.

You do know that every kiss begins with Kay, right?

Well, forget about all that. Because I have something so much better than industrially-extruded conspicuous consumption that has the same ephemeral effect on the economy that it does on your social life.

It’s a great story in the New York Times, about photographer Lauren Fleishman, who was inspired by love letters between her maternal grandparents to embark on a project to photograph couples who’ve been together for at least 50 years.

Her grandparents married in 1944, and were together for 59 years.

Fleishman spent six years discovering and photographing the couples; her resulting book The Lovers was published last month.

The Lovers presents the intimate ties, of course. But the couples talk also about the much more problematic issues of long relationships—getting through rough patches, and overcoming those times when s/he just pisses you off beyond belief, without storming out for good.

That’s one of the characteristics of love that lasts beyond passion. Anyone can be in love, especially when you’re in your 20s or 30s (ish). It’s like one extended adrenaline rush, so you just power through the little hitches because you’ve got the incentive of the next romp to entice you. Fleishman focuses her lens and her interviews on how these couples managed to transcend the rush and turn it into a bond that has lasted for decades.

 Eric Marcoux and Eugene Woodworth. Portland, Ore. 

Fred and Fran Futterman, Brooklyn

 Yevgeniy and Lyubov Kissin , Brooklyn

I love the comment by Karam Chand, married since 11 December 1925 to Kartari in an arranged marriage. “My trick is to make. Kartari laugh... Being funny is my way of being romantic. I have been told laughing makes you live longer—my wife is still alive, so it must have worked. I love her, and I want to spend another 80 years by her side.”

Well—if that ain’t romance then I’m Maria of Romania.