A Man Like Few Others

"Whenever you're faced with an explanation of what's going on in Washington, the choice between incompetence and conspiracy, always choose incompetence." 

"Better to be paralyzed from the neck down than the neck up."


"Some will protest that in a world with so much human suffering, it is something between eccentric and obscene to mourn a dog. I think not. After all, it is perfectly normal—indeed, deeply human—to be moved when nature presents us with a vision of great beauty. Should we not be moved when it produces a vision—a creature—of the purest sweetness?"
Charles Krauthammer, MD.

Mourning the passing of the iconic Charles Krauthammer.

A few bland lines - born in Manhattan to a Belgian mother and Ukrainian father, Harvard educated psychiatrist, speechwriter for Carter VP Walter Mondale. A diving accident in his first year at Harvard left him paralyzed from basically the neck down (he still graduated). Author, speaker, Fox News commentator. Blah blah blah.

In the arena of ideas, he was a titan, a man whose wit and wisdom, his grasp of concepts and vocabulary, often required a rereading to completely digest. His coworkers and contemporaries spoke of his kindness, humility and good humor. I'm sure the recipients of scalpel-like verbal excisions could easily have done without. He was an intellectual, and an unapologetic conservative. If that formulation makes you queasy:


"[They are] no longer trying to win the debate but stopping debate altogether, banishing from public discourse any and all opposition. The proper word for that attitude is totalitarian. It declares certain controversies over and visits serious consequences from social ostracism to vocational defenestration upon those who refuse to be silenced."

He had good things to say, as well as harsh, about nearly everyone involved in public life. He labeled President Obama as a first-rate intellect, while marveling at how a young man with no paper trail, no history would become president. This truly difiant conservative took time out during the 2016 campaign to brand then-candidate Donald Trump an infant ("I thought he was an eleven year old, but I find I'm off by a decade"), that the man was prone to the occasional gaffe of telling a revealing truth.

One could easily write a worthy blog about Dr. K that merely listed a dozen or so of the more pithy comments advanced over his amazing life. Like this one, written about him by his friend George Will:

"Some people are such a large presence while living that they still occupy space even when they are gone."

They Wrote What?!

“Yes, I felt very small. The typewriter seemed larger than a piano, I was less than a molecule. What could I do? I drank more.
-pg 237”
― Albert Sánchez Piñol, Pandora in the Congo

Almost a month. That is beyond unusual. But, as William Forrester said, the first key to writing is to write.

My absence hasn't been spurred by a dearth of topics. Perhaps it was paralysis of the kind writers sometimes encounter. Where. To. Start.

The 2017 term for Johnny Roberts and the Supremes is winding to a close with more of a whimper than a roar. This group is developing - very nicely - a habit of sidestepping big changes with deftly-worded, narrowly reasoned masterpieces of nuance. The "travel ban" case is yet to be published (it's already been decided, technically) but there was the cake case and the data search case.

The cake case. Has more mischief been made recently through a vicarious mis-reading of what is fairly straightforward? One need not agree with the outcome, or even the reasoning. Caveat - the editorial staff here at Bikecopblog (me, and Jed) are strongly in favor of marriage being open to all. So, when Jed turns 10 we won't be shopping at Masterpiece for birthday cupcakes, which is coincidentally right here in beautiful Lakewood.

That said, the case does not stand for "You don't have to serve anyone you don't want to serve." Individuals on several sides of the political spectrum (typically people hanging way out in the breeze) have justified all kinds of mischief by reading this case... Okay, by reading other people's opinions of this case, and then setting their feet firmly in the quicksand of ignorance. Masterpiece is a great read, if for no other reason than all of the judges who wrote opinions - Kennedy for the majority, Kagan, Gorsuch, and Thomas  concurring and Ginsburg in dissent - wrote beautifully crafted opinions that clearly reflect their method of interpretation. Maybe you agree with the majority. Maybe Ginsburg's dissent is more your cup of tea. It's well worth the read.

The cell phone case - Carpenter v. US. "Oh, the humanity..."

You know what this opinion says, in essence? Instead of issuing subpoenas to get cell phone records from the provider (which is what happened in this case), law enforcement will have to get warrants. According to the nitwit Fox legal "expert," it struck a blow for privacy.

Okay, big guy. Whatever.

There are dissenting opinions, but they are of the kind where reasonable people have disagreed and are being respectful as such. Don't read the breathless, not especially well-thought-out Wiki entry. At once it calls the decision "landmark" and "very narrow" in that it didn't overturn anything, really. Chief Justice Roberts' interesting opinion for the majority walks a fine line that technology has paved. It is also worth the read. Oh...emergencies? Guess what. All the time-honored exceptions exist. Take a breath. We're fine.

Finally.

I'm over Justice Sotomayor. Trevino v. Davis. The Supreme Court denied cert in a death case, and she wrote a dissent to the denial. Soto thought they should have heard it (and basically wrote that the sentence should be overturned) because Trevino's lawyer didn't make enough of a thing that his mom drank a lot of beer when he was in the womb. So, according to her, Trevino's life should be spared (and before you say "life without possibility--" New York just sprung some asshole who literally executed two NYPD cops) because his mom drank.

Linda Salinas was fifteen when she happened upon street gang thugs in San Antonio, Texas. They offered her a ride, then took her to a park. She was raped, and stabbed to death. Trevino's comment to his friends? "I learned to kill in prison."

No one disputes - Trevino included - that he raped and murdered a fifteen year old girl. But, he alleges, his legal responsibility is limited because his mom drank and his trial attorney didn't make enough of a point of it.

Sotomayor can write whatever she wants. I'm not a fan of the death penalty (either is Jed), but... Linda Salinas's life is worth less because her murderer's mom drank?

I need a drink.

In the Shadows of the Fallen

"The real men, the real heroes, are the fellas that are still buried over there and those that come home to be buried." Edward James "Babe" Heffron, 506th PIR, 101st Airborne Div., "Points," Band of Brothers, 2001.

Memorial Day, 2018. Remember the men and women of the United States military who gave their "last full measure of devotion" in defense of our country. Divided as we are, uncertain of our future as always, regardless of party or outward appearance they offered America The Blank Check. May they rest in peace, knowing that the freedoms they fought for grow stronger every day.

An Artist For the Heavens

"The star pilot in the class behind Pete’s, a young man who was the main rival of their good friend Al Bean, went up in a fighter to do some power-dive tests. One of the most demanding disciplines in flight test was to accustom yourself to making precise readings from the control panel in the same moment that you were pushing the outside of the envelope. This young man put his ship into the test dive and was still reading out the figures, with diligence and precision and great discipline, when he augered straight into the oyster flats and was burned beyond recognition. And the bridge coats came out and they sang about those in peril in the air and the bridge coats were put away, and the little Indians remarked that the departed was a swell guy and a brilliant student of flying; a little too much of a student, in fact; he hadn’t bothered to look out the window at the real world soon enough. Beano—Al Bean—wasn’t quite so brilliant; on the other hand, he was still here." The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe (1979).

Al Bean:  Pleasant, persistent, relentless pursuit of required information - give him an office boy's desk and within a week he will know what the president of the company does. Very pleasant fellow to be around, especially if you like spaghetti, which is all he eats on a trip. Carrying the Fire, Michael Collins (1974).

Noting the passing of Alan LaVern (Al) Bean, test pilot, astronaut, painter.

Extraordinary times, extraordinary people. Al Bean was born in Texas, attended the University of Texas and took his commission as an ensign in the United States Navy. He flew fighters during the early jet age, at a time when aircraft teething problems made Naval Aviation a dicey proposition. He became a test pilot, trained by one Charles (Pete) Conrad, Jr. In the early 1960s he applied to become, and was accepted as, a NASA astronaut.

Isn't life strange, sometimes? Bean's former flight test instructor, astronaut Pete Conrad, specifically requested Bean for Apollo 12 after Conrad's original crewmate Clifton (CC) Williams was killed in a T-38 jet trainer crash. Together, Bean and Conrad landed the Lunar Module Intrepid within sight of the Surveyor 3, an unmanned probe that had landed on the Moon two years before. Bean was the fourth human being to set foot on another planet. Unbeknownst to NASA, Bean had smuggled aboard a self-timer for his Hasselblad camera - intent on taking the first Moon Selfie at the Surveyor site. Alas, he could not find it in the gear bag before he and Conrad departed to return to their LM.

Captain Bean went on to command the second mission to the Skylab, a rudimentary precursor to the International Space Station. Of course, Conrad commanded the first.

Once retired, Captain Bean took up painting. He saw things as only a man could - who had seen the Moon not through a telescope, but through a thin layer of gold-impressed glass, his feet planted on the gray, powdery, desolate surface. Some canvases are detailed and formal representations. Others, displaying a bit of humor. All of them painted by a man who was there. He was there.

Al Bean passed away after a short illness. Another space age hero, gone.

I wonder, sometimes, how it is for other generations of Americans to watch as their childhood heroes fade away as octogenarians. Glenn, Armstrong... And Al Bean. There was a day, it seems not so long ago, when they danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings.


 

All About Amy

I don't usually do this.

Read this article. Then, make your donation. Remember the man who will have to go on without the love of his life. And say a prayer for the thousands of men and women like Amy Caprio who put on a police uniform every day.

Pray for the souls of the other four officers killed in the line of duty the day she died.

She was a warrior. We will never forget.

Buck Twenty

We learned about gratitude and humility - that so many people had a hand in our success, from the teachers who inspired us to the janitors who kept our school clean... and we were taught to value everyone's contribution and treat everyone with respect. Michelle Obama.

One hundred twenty thousand views, six hundred posts.

Someone out there is doing the math. The confluence of those numbers must mean something, somehow. But, I know what it means to me.

Thank you.

I know that not every reader found what they were looking for. Many of you have struggle through...or quickly abandoned...some of the posts that promised one thing and delivered something else. Or, nothing. There have been at least a few that provoked some discord and dissention. Along the way I've been blessed with fantastic guest writers, men and women whose gifts with words are breathtaking. I've had some fun, and thankfully sold a few books.

You've seen me through hard times, personal and professional loss. We've celebrated great achievements, laughed off stumbles and bumbles. I've told a few stories, taken you a few places and - I hope - given you some insight into law enforcement as practiced on the ground, by street cops, and the price paid by everyone involved.

If I've made you laugh, or cry, or felt the joys and struggles we've shared... I've done my job. That each of you has chosen, at some point over the last nine years, to open one of my posts, just to visit. that makes me very happy.

Thank you for bringing Bikecopblog onto your screen. I hope that at least one of the six hundred made it into your heart.

From Farrar-Straus to My House

"The right stuff is the uncritical willingness to face danger."  The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe (1979).

Noting the passing of Tom Wolfe - author, journalist...story teller.

Book buying was different in the latter stages of the Twentieth Century. Book stores abounded, small and large. Browsing was in and of itself an adventure, part of the charm. To run one's hand over a cover, read a few introductory pages, maybe look at pictures. Then, there was the Book-Of-The-Month Club.

It involved a sort of bait and switch, if that can be seen as a fair label for an accepted procedure. A card would arrive. If one did not want the monthly selection, just mail back the card. Well, I forgot to do that once. The featured selection arrived while I was at work.

The Right Stuff. It was a book about airplanes, and the early years of America's space program. Well... In the privacy of my low-rent apartment I poured a beer, cracked open the book (you do remember the sound, and the fragrance...right?) and started reading.

Wolfe starts with an airplane accident, but from the point of view of Jane Conrad, whose husband Pete was a Navy pilot. Wolfe describes the phone tree of chance, the exchanges of informational snippets among Navy base wives when "something" had happened to someone. We see inside of the anxiety, the horrible uncertainty, and the gnawing fear service wives (this was the 1950s, after all) endured even in peacetime. Mrs. Conrad knows the drill, and when military personnel approach her door she just knows that "something" has happened to Pete.

In fact, Lieutenant Conrad is slogging through the muck of a primordial bog, looking for the airplane that has crashed. It is his job to conduct an on-scene investigation. He finds the aircraft - and the pilot, who is a friend. But, the friend has been decapitated. Wolfe's description of the moment Pete discovers how is pure storytelling gold.

The more I read the book, the more I felt a certain, if humble, connection to these men. I had begun my career as a police officer during a time when more than two hundred men and women were killed while on duty each year. I shared in the pilot's sense of humor (Wolfe's retelling of the pilots' stories about "Accident-prone Mitch Johnson" and his scrapes with certain death are worth the price of the book) and the way they accepted the dangers they faced. And I found, in his words, the way to remind myself that I was willing to face danger, as were my friends. It gave me peace during a time of great personal uncertainty.

Wolfe's other books were quirky, counter-culture. The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby? I enjoyed From Bauhaus to Our House, improbably about architecture. I soldiered through Bonfire of the Vanities not because the subject appealed, but because Wolfe can tell a compelling story.

Wolfe was not without his critics. Neil Armstrong was a fan of the story Wolfe wrote about the astronauts, he said. But, the author had played loose and fast with the facts. It must be said that Wolfe had labeled Armstrong as something of an automaton. Who knows, maybe they were both right.

But it was Wolfe's treatment of Chuck Yeager, the first man to officially exceed the sound barrier, that made the book - and Yeager - famous to those of us for whom the pilot had been a distant historical figure. It seems that Yeager and his friends were known to "knock back a few" at the slightest provocation. The sun setting, for example. Yeager, after a few drinks, decided to go horseback riding just hours before his flight. It didn't end well.

The day of his attempt to break the sound barrier in October 1947, he climbed into his plane - Glamorous Glennis - and discovered that, because of the ribs he had broken after falling off of his horse, he could not close the hatch on his aircraft.

The solution, provided by his friend and fellow pilot Jack Ridley, involved...

But, that would deprive you of the great gift Wolfe possessed. He tells this, and other incredible stories, so well that it is impossible not to be drawn into the book.

Mr. Wolfe, you had an incredible gift. Thank you for sharing it.