Something in the Air

A mere few weeks since the murder of Deputy Zackari Parrish another deputy is killed in the line of duty. Adams County Deputy Heath Gumm, shot while chasing a suspect. Another of our best taken in the cause of service above self.

Social media posts in the aftermath of an officer death sometimes begin, and end with a simple word... "Enough." I get it. I know the feeling.

I attended my first police funeral when Arvada Officer Walter "Mike" Northey was struck by a car and killed in August, 1979, while I was in the police academy. He was just twenty-five, a year older than I was. I will never forget the sound of his wife sobbing in the otherwise hushed church.

There have been so many since then. Good men and women who fell chasing a calling that does not easily translate into words. Rather, the deeds themselves speak the language of the love one has for their country, their community and the friends with whom they share the danger. It is a love that carries hardship, and sacrifice. And, it always will.

We live in an imperfect society, a paradox of the best, and the worst that people can show. Surrounded here in Colorado by several million good, honest, hard-working people, there are those few who prey on the weak, victimize the vulnerable and rob the innocent of the dignity they should enjoy of a life free from fear.

"Who will go?” And I said, “Lord, I'll go! Send me.” Isaiah 6:8.

And so, we go. To the disturbance in Douglas County. To the assault in Thornton. We go, knowing what might happen. Knowing what must happen. And men and women keep lining up to be chosen.

The writer in me would like to tell you a story, in its entirety. The police supervisor is ethically bound to keep confidences. So, here is what was open to public view.

As part of our agency's recruitment and selection process, we administer a physical agility test. It isn't easy - requiring the candidate to climb fences, run an obstacle course and drag a 150 pound dummy. It is run at a recreation center, in full public view. In fact, several individuals watched the proceeding and cheered on the huffing, puffing applicants. All had come from out of the state - where there is a great deal more air in the air. Most of the men and women completed the course within the allotted time. Three did not, and were allowed a re-test. In the years I've been doing this I've never seen anyone be successful the second time through.

One of the second-try candidates was failing. Her legs were giving out, her lungs screaming. Those of us with the stopwatches could only watch, and wait. The sad ending was inevitable. Then, it happened. My work partner, a big, imposing man of great personal character, bellowed - 

"Just how bad do you want this?"

I don't know from where the renewed speed, the strength and the never-give-up stamina were drawn. The applicant did not quit. She passed. And then, collapsed.

Who will go? Who will take the place of the fallen and carry on, have the watch? Protect our communities?

She will. The others cheering her on will. The next generation will. You are in good hands.

Positive Waves

"Why don't you knock it off with them negative waves? Why don't you dig how beautiful it is out here? Why don't you say something righteous and hopeful for a change?" Oddball (Donald Sutherland), Kelly's Heroes, (1970).

Other people's discomfort. Nothing sends me to the computer to blog like reports from someone of his or her misfortune. This time it was my brother and his flight to London on a "seasoned" United Airlines 767. His comments encouraged a general discussion among friends about the current state of disarray in commercial flying. I have to agree - not like it used to be.

My first flight was with my dad, from Philadelphia to Detroit to see his brother, my Uncle Jim. I was all of two, which made it (probably) some time in 1957. My dad remembered the aircraft as a DC-7, or an Electra. I thought it might have been the majestic Lockheed Constellation - it's the romantic in me. I remember dimly a flight attendant playing peak-a-boo with me. In reality, she was probably flirting with my 30 year-old barely out of the Marine Corps father.

My next flight was June, 1972. My Uncle Jim (funny how things have a way of working out), now living outside of Frankfurt, Germany, had invited me to spend the summer with my aunt and him. The flight to Frankfurt would become the standard against which I've compared all other flights. To wit:

My one-way ticket translates to about $3500 in today's dollars. I flew from Rochester to Syracuse (seventy miles) and then sat for several hours. The next flight was down to Philadelphia, where I sat for several more hours. Perhaps two hours late I boarded a creaky, cranky, aged TWA 707, a four-engine jet aircraft, bound for London. Only, the airplane couldn't make it that far on one tank of gas, so we stopped in Bangor, Maine to top off. Advertised as a forty-five minute delay, it was triple that.

I was wedged into the middle seat of a plane packed to the gills. On either side, two beefy (and surly) guys who had not gotten the message that the armrests belong to the dude in the middle. I had a book to read, and headphones were provided for the entertainment system.

Entertainment system...Ha! They plugged into the seat, but were acoustically operated (as opposed to electronically). The sound was literally piped to the ear pieces from some hidden, central location. The playlist - six or eight songs each on the six or eight channels - was bland. I still get a chill up my spine whenever I hear Argent's Hold Your Head Up, which came around every half hour from dusk on America's East Coast to dawn at Heathrow. There was a movie during the flight, which was so awesome I don't remember a thing about it. Dinner was served around midnight (nothing special). I was not even old enough to wash it down with a cocktail. I arrived in Frankfurt nearly 30 hours after I'd begun, a trip now made non-stop from Denver in a tad over eight hours, costing about a third as much, this for a round trip. Thus was international coach flying, circa 1972-style.

Compare that to a glorious flight in an exit row on a gorgeous US Airways A321 (Assholes and Elbows) in 2014. Flying home from seeing our oldest daughter sworn in as a Maryland attorney the day before the birth of our fourth grandchild - a little girl (On Track) seated in an exit row next to a Naval Academy cadet on Southwest. Flying down to see our eldest get married (Plane Talk) in Florida, watching the pelicans with Graham.

None of which beats a Thanksgiving flight we took to Liberia, Costa Rica to see some good friends marry each other (isn't that totally a fun sentence?). The FAs outnumbered us on the flight from Denver to Atlanta and the drinks were free. We had a ten hour layover, so we checked into the airport Hilton and headed for the bar. She had a deliciously light sun-dried tomato pizza, I a mound of crisp, tender cornmeal-encrusted calamari dipped in an elegant marinara sauce. After a great night's sleep we boarded a Delta 757 in mint condition and settled in for what we thought would be a normal flight.

It wasn't.

Pilots call the weather that day "Severe Clear." As we flew down the Gulf Coast of Florida we could see the Keys from thirty-something thousand over Tampa. Straight over the forbidden Island of Cuba, and out into the middle of the Caribbean. From our perch in coach, a cup of excellent coffee in one hand, a very good book in the other and the love of my own life at my side...we could see the Cayman Islands, little emerald jewels on a turquoise sea.

My friends are right. Flying just ain't what it used to be.

Orphans

At the White House...
President Matt Douglas (James Garner): Come on (moving a large desk in front of a doorway)!
President Russell Kramer (Jack Lemmon): That desk belonged to Jefferson! The Declaration of Independence could have been written on it!
Douglas: Tom isn't here to help me pick it up...
My Fellow Americans, (1996).

Day One of the Shitshow Shutdown. On Facebook, I wrote the following:

 And now, we wait. For cooler heads to prevail, for the persuasive influence of higher minds? No. We await the overnights... How is it polling? Is this the Schumer Shutdown or the result of a petulant president? On Facebook, we will all argue authoritatively, favorably quoting our hero and sharing disdainful memes about our villain. None of that matters. What matters, in the end, are the polls, the numbers - some of which are cooked more thoroughly than cheap meat. (Sigh). Buy a book, immerse yourself.

A friend, a good man in a storm who served this country with distinction, invited me to consider the situation from the Founders' perspective. Accepted.

Thomas Jefferson, writing to James Madison in September, 1789, suggested:  I set out on this ground which I suppose to be self evident, "that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living;" that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it. The portion occupied by an individual ceases to be his when himself ceases to be, and reverts to the society.

We made this mess, you and I. Tom, Jim and George aren't here to help us sort it out. Missing, also, are the individuals charged with our safety and security. So, maybe it's time to amend the Constitution. You get two terms, ladies and gents. After that, you have to go back home and try to make an honest living again.

It has been pointed out in the past that the institutional understanding of how to make government work is lost when the seats turn over due to term limitations.

Oh?  

No Shit

"Any man who judges by the race is a pea-wit. You take men one at a time."   Sergeant Buster Kilrain (Kevin Conway), Gettysburg (1993).

National Western Stock Show, Jumping competition

I sympathize with President Trump. I really do. I, myself, visited a shithole tonight.

There was a lot of bull shit. I was able to sidestep some pig shit, but I got a mess of horse shit on my cowboy boots. There was even a bit of sheep shit, which was not easy to avoid because of all the damn sheep. Much as the muck rakers, goat-ropers and cow punchers tried, there was shit everywhere.

There were also a lot of hard-working, hard-playing, hard loving folk drinkin' beer, eating barbeque, talking loud and wearing their big ole belt buckles under their big ole bellies. Big hat, lotta cattle. And, when you go to their place in Montana, or Nebraska or Kansas or the Great State of Colorado and you stand on their porch you are looking at where God Almighty feeds and clothes the world.

Yup. It was a total shithole, full of a lot of good people doing the best they can.

Just like every other shithole.

When the Music Plays

"Breathe deep the gathering gloom, watch lights fade in every room." Nights in White Satin, The Moody Blues, (1967).

Noting the passing of Moody Blues founding member and flautist Ray Thomas.

September, 1972. Boston.

The day comes, too soon but then not soon enough. My parents dropped me off at White Hall, a dormitory on the campus of Northeastern University. A small town boy in several senses, I was in a totally alien environment...a big city.

White Hall was an older building, begging for renovation. It was not air conditioned, so we kept the windows open. It was not uncommon to have someone hoist microwave-sized speakers onto window sills and blast music into the courtyard. It always seemed to be The Moody Blues' Nights in White Satin.

The song, written by band member Jason Hayward, is a love song, of sorts. Love from afar, yearning love that is not returned. Perfect, cloying, to a seventeen year old on his own for the very first time.

Many people remember this song by the "Late Lament," spoken by band member Mike Pinder. "Cold-hearted orb that rules the night, removes the colors from our sight. Red is gray, yellow white. But, we decide which is right, and which is an illusion."

I always remembered Ray Thomas's haunting flute solo. For some reason, it seemed to capture perfectly the mixture of self-doubt, of naïve optimism, of an adolescent's fireproof belief in the hopeful possibilities of tomorrow. Whenever I hear that song, and that flute, I remember Boston in the fall of 1972.

I had no idea that, nearly thirty years later, daughter Katy's flute playing would have a similar effect - memories of days and nights at band competitions, at concerts and a university dormitory where she bid good bye to one life and embraced another.

Thank you, Mr. Thomas, for a gift of music.

Just Plain Folk

"Everyone else gets in an airplane. [John Young] wears his airplane." Astronaut Charles Bolden.

Mourning the passing of Astronaut John Young.

The Space Transportation System, known as Space Shuttle, was to be the delivery truck America needed as the third phase of exploration began. Big as an airliner, designed to (eventually) hold seven astronauts, it was unproven technology. All other space fliers, from both the Soviet Union and the US, reentered Earth's atmosphere as ballistic vessels, arresting their breakneck descent through a series of parachutes.

The Shuttle would be different. She would have wings, and glide - after a fashion - to a controlled landing on a runway. Glide being the operative word, as the descent would be unpowered, giving the crew one shot at a controlled landing. And, a whole lot of shots at piling their billion dollar machine into a heap somewhere. The commander of the first orbital Shuttle? John Young.

John Young was born in California, and joined the Navy in the early Fifties. He learned to fly helicopters and fighter planes. He became a test pilot, then one of a group of NASA astronauts  - "Group Two" - that contained luminaries such as Neil Armstrong, Pete Conrad and Jim Lovell. 

His first space flight was beside Original Seven member Virgil "Gus" Grissom, who had irreverently (and defiantly) dubbed the craft Unsinkable Molly Brown, the initial flight of the Gemini portion of the early space program. Grissom's wasn't the only departure from staid NASA protocol to take place  on the flight - Original Seven member Wally Schirra "caused" a corned beef sandwich to be placed in Young's suit pocket.

Of course he ate it in orbit. NASA officials went nuts.

All was eventually forgiven. He commanded Gemini 10, with Mike Collins (who described Young's "awe shucks" manner as enigmatic, masking a keen engineer's mind). In April 1972 he became the ninth person to walk on the Moon as commander of Apollo 16. Later, he was Chief of the Astronaut Office.

The initial flight of the Shuttle in 1981 landed at Edwards Air Force Base. Once the craft was rendered safe (which took longer than he hoped, causing him to complain on an open radio frequency) he descended the air stairs and, in the words of a book written on the subject - "gesticulated" - as he inspected Columbia. That, of course, is a gross understatement. Young prowled, he gestured, he clapped his hands in sheer joy. He was always known as a reserved flier, a laconic and awe-shucks kind of guy. Clearly, he was overcome with the utter improbability of flying - not plopping down in the ocean - but really flying a spacecraft to a controlled landing on a runway.

No one who has watched the video of that shuttle landing, and that pilot circling the bird in awe and wonder, will ever forget that in the early days of space flight America looked to brave men, and later brave women, to carry the torch of exploration into an unpredictable future. John Young accepted the challenge, and flew the world's most complex craft toward uncharted horizons, and lived to tell about it.

Fair winds and following seas, sir. There sure weren't many like you.

Yeah, You Blend

Geek

1. A socially inept or uncomfortable person.

2. A carnival performer who performs wild or disgusting acts.

Well, okay. Embrace it.

I'm a geek. No, not the second one. The first one, sort of. Specifically, I'm an "avgeek," which I understand is a known and collected sub-species. The reference is clear - "There are two kinds of people. Those who look up when an aircraft flies overhead, and those who do not." I'm one of the former.

We lived for a while in Commerce City, CO. Before you locals go "Eeeewww, Commerce City," two things. First, that odor near the refineries? That's what a money printing press smells like. Second, it was Reunion. It's more like Southern Brighton.

Anyway, we were directly in the flight paths of DIA. Sometimes departures, sometimes arrivals, depending on the wind. Frontier A-319s make a sound like a roller coaster going downhill (but, no screaming...that we could hear) when the engines throttled back. The Lufthansa 747s (headed either to Munich or Frankfurt) made a deep whooshing sound as they climbed, weighing nearly a million pounds.

It is inherited, and manifested itself into middle age when my good friend John and I drove to Oshkosh, WI for the annual fly-in there. He is a pilot - a damn good one - and we spent the better part of a week poking around the grounds, watching airshows and soaking it all in. My first novel - Out of Ideas - began there. It was a bucket list trip, one of the best.

So, WTF?

I pay a fraction over a soy latte at Starbucks every month to be a member of Big Jet TV. It is a streaming service based in London. Two guys - two wonderful, goofy, loveable guys - go to airports in England (and Germany and...sometime in 2018, San Francisco) and do 90-120 minute sessions watching planes take off and land. No...stop, really there is a point to this. They stand on the roof of a compact SUV with a fairly expensive set-up, do video and provide running commentary. They really are geeks, unabashedly and unapologetically so, about commercial aviation. I totally love it.

Today, they got...nicked? Yes, that's it. They were contacted by the local police and told to pack up their shit. It began innocently enough - sirens and a report by Jonny that there was some police activity in the area. It turned out they were the police activity. Apparently someone, possibly a pilot or three, had called them in as suspicious and even a hazard to aviation. Bloody hell!

The initial responding officers accepted their explanation, their credentials and a laminated letter from the property owner that they were allowed to be where they were set up. Of course, that didn't last long and the broadcast ended rather abrupt, like. Brilliant.

Aviation fans of Jonny and Jerry weighed in from all over the world (seriously, the whole world) with the usual "Don't them coppers have anything better to do?" I, myself, a fan of Jonny and Jerry (especially since they gave me a shout out last week...oh, you didn't hear it? A pity) weighed in and blamed it on command staff. But, my plane spotting unsated, I nipped about the morsels still available and happened upon a photo.

Jonny and Jerry are standing on the roof of their SUV, directly adjacent to final approach. They are wearing bright yellow jackets. Their vehicle is in the middle of a field, acres of barren ground surrounding them. Whenever a plane flies (a few hundred feet) overhead Jerry waves madly at the crew.

Okay. Maybe... 

"Knew We Were Coming"

"I am not the thinker Kicking Bird is. I always feel anger first. There are no answers to my questions." Wind in His Hair (Rodney Grant), Dances With Wolves, (1990).

Bullets fly, and according to initial reports five Douglas County officers are hit. Early information suggests that there is at least one fatality (A source tells press representatives "It doesn't look good for us"). Two citizens are also wounded. Again, no definitive word. I check in with a buddy, a deputy for DCSO. He's fine, on his way in. Everyone there is on their way in.

I don't feel sad, or somber. I'm angry. Whatever this asshole's malfunction, shooting five cops is no solution. It's never going to be a solution. A disturbance? Offer your explanation, take your ticket, fight it out (or plead it out) in court. Yeah, but not this guy. Five cops and two citizens hit. 

I could sit down and write, but they will be angry words, undisciplined, unfocused, a string of variations on a theme...fuck you, strong memo to follow. None of the news channels have additional information - why would they. Douglas County is still trying to get control, account for their people, reach the loved ones of those who were hit. Then, confirmation that one of the officers didn't make it. I head for the gym.

At W. 1st Ave, I pass a fire station. Two firefighters are making haste toward the flag pole in front of their building. Both are wearing shorts (in fifteen degree weather). They have been informed by their command to put the flag at half mast, and they were not wasting time doing it. Out of the mutual respect firefighters and cops share, it's going to get done...now.

Further along toward the gym, a marked Lakewood PD Tahoe pulls up beside me at a light. I'm sure I know the officer, but the angle is wrong. All I see is a grimness of purpose, that unamused look we all get on the way to a meaningful call. Maybe, he's on the way to a disturbance...

Because, it never stops. The phones rarely stop ringing. Hell, nowadays they barely slow down. There is always another call, always another crisis. The reason my friend came in to work, that the surrounding PDs took some of Douglas County's "routine" load, is because the pace is unrelenting.

Some years ago, two of our officers were shot by a sniper. He knew they were coming and laid in wait. I went in to work, having been woken by a phone call from a friend. "Do you know what happened?" she asked. My job when I arrived? Put together shift schedules for the next day. Because, it never stops.

Additional information is now available, in the calm that overtakes the investigation of a major incident. The officer - Zack Parrish - was a stand-up dude, a dad and husband. The others who were shot - all good people. One, a Castle Rock PD SWAT officer. Dispatch traffic was released. "Be sure you're kitted up," someone says. That means helmets, rifle plates. One of the officers is down inside the apartment. One hundred rounds. An ambush. The Sheriff says "He knew we were coming." 

Of course he did. And, I'm angry all over again.