I've tried A, I've tried B. Tell me what else I can try! The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe (1979)
Trigger warning - if you are a white knuckle flier, this blog is not for you.
Not everyone has the temperament or training to respond correctly in an emergency situation. Certainly history books are full of hair-raising moments that ended with "Well, shit" followed by a very loud noise.
Two situations I learned of this week described the better of outcomes, the steely-eyed pilot seizing victory from the jaws of bent aluminum. The captains of the respective planes could not have been more different, or more alike.
Seventeen year-old Maggie Taraska departed the Beverly Regional Airport on a training flight. She was alone in the airplane, a student pilot. The airplane took off normally... Okay, it took off but left the right main landing gear behind. At the airport. On the runway. One can hear in her voice (video attached) that she is initially rattled. Well, who wouldn't be?
Aviate, navigate, communicate. Pilots are trained to fly the airplane, come what may. Sounds simple, until... Well, the landing gear falls off and you are alone at the controls of a sick plane. With a little help from her friends she gets the plane down, walks away and says later "You've got to have confidence in yourself to be a pilot."
On the other side of the world, in 2008, a Qantas A-330 airliner with 315 people aboard experiences an "uncommanded maneuver." In non-pilot English (being a non-pilot myself I usually need translation software) that means the airplane did something the pilots did not ask it to do. A nearly negative one G dive ensued, injuring 119 people, eleven of them seriously. The pilots regained control, only to have the airplane repeat the maneuver.
The captain later reported "There wasn't anything in our flight manuals that told us what to do." So, he and his crew improvised solutions, ignored the bleating and screaming of their fault detection software and flew the airplane. Unsure if the bizarre behavior of their aircraft would repeat itself too close to the ground to recover, the captain ordered an unusual maneuver he'd learned as a fighter pilot.
"Well," the Captain observed dryly to his cockpit crew mates as they wrestled with the beast. "I picked a bad day to stop sniffing glue."
Google the line if you don't recognize it.
Two cool customers. Two safe landings.
Sunday, September 23, 2018
Long, Painful Years Ago
Some old wounds never truly heal, and bleed again at the slightest word.
George R.R. Martin
Sitting at my desk in the early 2010s - unusual enough, I should have been out on the bike - the police officer assigned to our reception area called. He had a question.
"A woman just walked in to make a report of a sexual assault. It happened some time in the 1980s. What do you want me to do?"
It happens. Not often, and for a variety of reasons. At the point someone comes to the station to report that they have been the victim of a crime, our role is an easy one.
We take the report. We accept, in good faith, that the reporting person is giving us their truth. We take it down just the way he or she tells it. Judging their motives, their credibility - not our job...yet. They have a story to tell. We listen.
But, someone is saying as they read this, there is no chance this case will be prosecuted successfully. The statute of limitations. The... Everything!
We train our officers (who we call "agents") to be empathetic, but we are human beings. The reputation of law enforcement, that the first question we will ask is "What were you wearing," is not without some merit. But, that's not how our people are supposed to act.
At some point, though, there will be the gentle, almost apologetic discussion of reality with the person who has shown the bravery required to tell a stranger in uniform about the worst day in their lives. The case will be assigned to a detective. If the person he/she named as their assailant can be reached we will consider sitting down with them. If that person refuses to meet with us, or denies it happened...
Experts on human recollection, especially of traumatic events, teach that this is a tricky business. We are taught the limitations of perception and memory in the police academy. Experience also tells us that truth is elusive where facts are hard to come by.
At the end of the day the criminal justice system does not have many answers for someone who reports a crime thirty years after it happened. There are services we can provide - counseling, for example, from people trained in the trauma field. Sometimes, the mere fact of the report is enough for the victim.
Not all of these reports are genuine, or truthful. My first encounter with the arrest of an alleged sexual assault suspect turned out to be a "contract dispute." Some lonely businessman from Kansas (I think - this was 1980) encountered a young lady at a bar. They agreed on a price for her serves and repaired to his hotel room. At some point, there was a difference of recollection and he paid her what had been originally agreed to. She left, returning with a "friend" who also happened to be a cop.
But, at the beginning of the investigation, we began with the premise that she was telling us the truth. It's what everyone deserves.
The determination of credibility, of veracity, is left for later. Other facts are collected, other viewpoints considered. Sometimes, the truth is regrettably elusive to the unbiased mind. In the end, the best we can sometimes do is take their report, treat them with respect and wish them well.
Because they are human beings.
Sunday, August 26, 2018
Let All The Children Boogie
There's a starman waiting in the sky
He'd like to come and meet us
But he thinks he'd blow our minds
There's a starman waiting in the sky
He's told us not to blow it
Cause he knows it's all worthwhile
Starman, David Bowie ("The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust"), 1972.
Ah, Facebook...
"Earthrise" is a photograph taken by Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders on December 24, 1968. It depicts our planet coming into view as the spacecraft's orbit takes it from the far side of the Moon.
Beautiful blue and elegant, it was called "The most influential environmental photograph ever taken" by adventurer Galen Rowell. One can easily conclude that, despite petty bickering, we share an elegant and unique place in the universe. Preserving what we have, finite and delicate as it is, should be a priority over destruction and disaster.
It was also thought to put at least one thing - that the Earth is flat - to bed. That notion, of course, is cute.
Someone posted Earthrise on FB. The reason they did so is lost in what happened next. The thread was taken over by individuals, many especially exorcised and impassioned, alleging that the Moon landings of Apollo 11 and 12 were faked. Also 14-17. No human being has ever landed on the Moon, they screeched. One poor soul, obviously demented, wrote his opinion in all caps and included in his statement approximately twenty exclamation marks.
Ben Franklin once remarked that "Three people can keep a secret if two are dead." Tom Clancy wrote in The Hunt for Red October that the ability to keep a conspiracy secret is inversely proportionate to the square of the number of people involved. The possibility that NASA faked the Moon landings and has successfully kept it quiet is about as likely as President Trump's minions keeping the Stormy Daniels story among themselves.
But, that is not what is fascinating. Conspiracy theories abound, especially on the internet. Some of them are preposterous. Others... Insane. One need ask not whether they are true, but what it is about human nature that causes people to want to believe.
Dr. Jonathan Haidt, in his book The Righteous Mind, suggested that people follow intuition first, and then look for evidence later. In the absence of evidence, economist Dr. Thomas Sowell suggests, human beings concoct rational-sounding arguments based on "common sense" but little else. Those people, Dr. Sowell observes, do not look for facts to support their theories.
One need ask - why would someone want to believe that the Moon landings were faked? What interest, what emotion, what personal need would that conclusion serve? What would compel someone to be so sure, in the absence of evidence, that they would troll FB and foist their improbable conclusion on total strangers? Why am I wasting valuable minutes of my own life writing this?
That's what writers do.
One question for the conspiracy theorists. Telemetered data was broadcast from the spacecraft every second of each mission, which was readily collected by anyone with the proper equipment. Any idea why the Soviets didn't call bullshit on the whole thing?
Oh, right. They were in on it, too.
He'd like to come and meet us
But he thinks he'd blow our minds
There's a starman waiting in the sky
He's told us not to blow it
Cause he knows it's all worthwhile
Starman, David Bowie ("The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust"), 1972.
Ah, Facebook...
"Earthrise" is a photograph taken by Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders on December 24, 1968. It depicts our planet coming into view as the spacecraft's orbit takes it from the far side of the Moon.
It was also thought to put at least one thing - that the Earth is flat - to bed. That notion, of course, is cute.
Someone posted Earthrise on FB. The reason they did so is lost in what happened next. The thread was taken over by individuals, many especially exorcised and impassioned, alleging that the Moon landings of Apollo 11 and 12 were faked. Also 14-17. No human being has ever landed on the Moon, they screeched. One poor soul, obviously demented, wrote his opinion in all caps and included in his statement approximately twenty exclamation marks.
Ben Franklin once remarked that "Three people can keep a secret if two are dead." Tom Clancy wrote in The Hunt for Red October that the ability to keep a conspiracy secret is inversely proportionate to the square of the number of people involved. The possibility that NASA faked the Moon landings and has successfully kept it quiet is about as likely as President Trump's minions keeping the Stormy Daniels story among themselves.
But, that is not what is fascinating. Conspiracy theories abound, especially on the internet. Some of them are preposterous. Others... Insane. One need ask not whether they are true, but what it is about human nature that causes people to want to believe.
Dr. Jonathan Haidt, in his book The Righteous Mind, suggested that people follow intuition first, and then look for evidence later. In the absence of evidence, economist Dr. Thomas Sowell suggests, human beings concoct rational-sounding arguments based on "common sense" but little else. Those people, Dr. Sowell observes, do not look for facts to support their theories.
One need ask - why would someone want to believe that the Moon landings were faked? What interest, what emotion, what personal need would that conclusion serve? What would compel someone to be so sure, in the absence of evidence, that they would troll FB and foist their improbable conclusion on total strangers? Why am I wasting valuable minutes of my own life writing this?
That's what writers do.
One question for the conspiracy theorists. Telemetered data was broadcast from the spacecraft every second of each mission, which was readily collected by anyone with the proper equipment. Any idea why the Soviets didn't call bullshit on the whole thing?
Oh, right. They were in on it, too.
Saturday, August 25, 2018
A Life Serving Others
"In prison, I fell in love with my country..." John McCain.
Mourning the passing of John McCain, senator, naval aviator, patriot.
Required viewing in my "knife and fork class" as a new direct commission ensign in the Naval Reserve was a series of videos shot aboard the carrier USS Forrestal on 29July 1967. Multiple aircraft sat running, fully fueled and armed, awaiting launch for an attack against North Vietnamese forces.
A flash... An errant missile from an F-4 Phantom. One explosion after another. A dozen pilots trapped in their cockpits as flames threaten to cook off their ordinance. A chief, wearing shipboard khakis and carrying a hand-held fire extinguisher, runs toward the planes as canopies come slowly open. Another explosion and the chief is gone.
Lieutenant Commander John McCain's A-4 Skyhawk is right in the middle of the holocaust. The cameras record him jumping from his cockpit onto a wing, then tumbling off down to the deck awash with spilled jet fuel.
He escaped the disaster that killed 134 sailors and pilots, only to be shot down and captured in October of the same year. He spent the next six years in a North Vietnamese prison camp. He was tortured, his injuries ignored. Yet, he demonstrated courage, leadership and an iron will. He would suffer the after effects of his injuries for the rest of his life.
His political career took him first to the House of Representatives, and later to the Senate. He developed a reputation as a maverick, with the unique ability to anger and frustrate both sides of the aisle. A bill meant to curtail lavish political contributions designed to influence politicians (some would say purchase their services) was co-sponsored with Russ Feingold, left wing Democrat senator from Wisconsin.
His run for president in 2008 was pure McCain. He chose as his running mate a little known woman governor from Alaska with a reputation for bucking well-connected political machines. She initially appeared to be a fresh, plain-spoken breath of fresh air. That she turned out to be a lessor figure on the national stage, probably responsible for voters souring on their ticket, did not cause McCain to toss her to the wolves.
On election night, the presidency lost, he took to the stage and... Marveled, celebrated, that he had lived to see the day the United States of America had chosen an African-American as her president. He was proud to be an American, he said.
As one might imagine, he was opposed to the unconventional interrogation methods used in the aftermath of 9/11. Reasonable people disagree on this subject, but Senator McCain never waivered. Agree or disagree, it is always the right of a man who endured torture to hold his country to higher standards than the ones he had been shown.
He was not perfect. He could be difficult, petulant, petty. But, on the short list of great Americans he finds a comfortable place among our most distinguished servants, and warriors.
Fair winds and following seas, sir. The battles you fought on our behalf were worthy of you.
Mourning the passing of John McCain, senator, naval aviator, patriot.
 |
| John McCain (right) |
A flash... An errant missile from an F-4 Phantom. One explosion after another. A dozen pilots trapped in their cockpits as flames threaten to cook off their ordinance. A chief, wearing shipboard khakis and carrying a hand-held fire extinguisher, runs toward the planes as canopies come slowly open. Another explosion and the chief is gone.
Lieutenant Commander John McCain's A-4 Skyhawk is right in the middle of the holocaust. The cameras record him jumping from his cockpit onto a wing, then tumbling off down to the deck awash with spilled jet fuel.
He escaped the disaster that killed 134 sailors and pilots, only to be shot down and captured in October of the same year. He spent the next six years in a North Vietnamese prison camp. He was tortured, his injuries ignored. Yet, he demonstrated courage, leadership and an iron will. He would suffer the after effects of his injuries for the rest of his life.
His political career took him first to the House of Representatives, and later to the Senate. He developed a reputation as a maverick, with the unique ability to anger and frustrate both sides of the aisle. A bill meant to curtail lavish political contributions designed to influence politicians (some would say purchase their services) was co-sponsored with Russ Feingold, left wing Democrat senator from Wisconsin.
His run for president in 2008 was pure McCain. He chose as his running mate a little known woman governor from Alaska with a reputation for bucking well-connected political machines. She initially appeared to be a fresh, plain-spoken breath of fresh air. That she turned out to be a lessor figure on the national stage, probably responsible for voters souring on their ticket, did not cause McCain to toss her to the wolves.
On election night, the presidency lost, he took to the stage and... Marveled, celebrated, that he had lived to see the day the United States of America had chosen an African-American as her president. He was proud to be an American, he said.
As one might imagine, he was opposed to the unconventional interrogation methods used in the aftermath of 9/11. Reasonable people disagree on this subject, but Senator McCain never waivered. Agree or disagree, it is always the right of a man who endured torture to hold his country to higher standards than the ones he had been shown.
He was not perfect. He could be difficult, petulant, petty. But, on the short list of great Americans he finds a comfortable place among our most distinguished servants, and warriors.
Fair winds and following seas, sir. The battles you fought on our behalf were worthy of you.
Friday, August 17, 2018
Inside Scoop
"I'm a cop at heart. It's in my blood." David A. Clarke, Jr.
It was an impromptu moment, one I miss most of all. Running errands - that is, picking up BDU pants to wear test - I stopped at a nationally-recognized coffee shop for a salad. It wasn't hard to pick out the unmarked supervisor's cars in the lot.
My friends sat at an outdoor table, relaxed. I went over, intent on saying hi and moving on. I had things to do.
"Sit down," one of them said. "Let me buy you a cup."
We have been work friends for years, he and I. Once, thirty or more years ago, he and I disarmed a man with a gun who had forced his way into an apartment and was beating a woman with a telephone. We still chuckle about that, how the guy had planned to be gone when the police showed up. Big mistake.
The three of us, sergeants all, talked about the things police supervisors discuss. Rumors, gossip... Families and friends. The good times. One excused himself for a meeting.
"I'll get the shield back to the station," he said as he left.
"We just came from talking a suicidal guy with a gun out of a hotel room," my friend said. "I wonder how many of these people know what we really do."
Not many, we decided. By design.
America - big cities and small towns, industrial states or ranches and farms. It works because there are men and women willing to do things in the service of their communities. Firefighters, nurses, dispatchers. City workers, transportation departments. People who answer calls for services large and small. Many citizens, perhaps most, don't know what the average officer does. And, that's good.
I stood talking yesterday to a former co-worker who took a job with a local fire department. Her last duty day they'd made almost twenty runs. She'd gotten four hours of sleep over her twenty-four hour shift. She wasn't complaining. She and her wife have a kiddo. The schedule works for them
Who really knows what first responders do?
Those three guys in uniform sitting at a table, drinking coffee...two of them fresh from convincing a guy that his life was still worth living. The one guy in the soft uniform thirty-nine years removed from his first day "on the job" who trains the next generation, the ones who will pick up the shield when we have had enough.
All day long.
The picture? That's New York police officer Jesse Ferriera Cavallo. All she did was leap thirty feet from an overpass to save a young boy...while off duty. That's all.
It was an impromptu moment, one I miss most of all. Running errands - that is, picking up BDU pants to wear test - I stopped at a nationally-recognized coffee shop for a salad. It wasn't hard to pick out the unmarked supervisor's cars in the lot.
My friends sat at an outdoor table, relaxed. I went over, intent on saying hi and moving on. I had things to do.
"Sit down," one of them said. "Let me buy you a cup."
We have been work friends for years, he and I. Once, thirty or more years ago, he and I disarmed a man with a gun who had forced his way into an apartment and was beating a woman with a telephone. We still chuckle about that, how the guy had planned to be gone when the police showed up. Big mistake.
The three of us, sergeants all, talked about the things police supervisors discuss. Rumors, gossip... Families and friends. The good times. One excused himself for a meeting.
"I'll get the shield back to the station," he said as he left.
"We just came from talking a suicidal guy with a gun out of a hotel room," my friend said. "I wonder how many of these people know what we really do."
Not many, we decided. By design.
America - big cities and small towns, industrial states or ranches and farms. It works because there are men and women willing to do things in the service of their communities. Firefighters, nurses, dispatchers. City workers, transportation departments. People who answer calls for services large and small. Many citizens, perhaps most, don't know what the average officer does. And, that's good.
I stood talking yesterday to a former co-worker who took a job with a local fire department. Her last duty day they'd made almost twenty runs. She'd gotten four hours of sleep over her twenty-four hour shift. She wasn't complaining. She and her wife have a kiddo. The schedule works for them
Who really knows what first responders do?
Those three guys in uniform sitting at a table, drinking coffee...two of them fresh from convincing a guy that his life was still worth living. The one guy in the soft uniform thirty-nine years removed from his first day "on the job" who trains the next generation, the ones who will pick up the shield when we have had enough.
All day long.
The picture? That's New York police officer Jesse Ferriera Cavallo. All she did was leap thirty feet from an overpass to save a young boy...while off duty. That's all.
Sunday, August 12, 2018
A Sticky Wicket
"Football is a game of mistakes. Whoever makes the fewest mistakes wins."
The kneeling, the charges and counter-charges... It must be football season again.
Lest we forget, the National Football League has attempted to curb the practice of players kneeling during the national anthem, or not appearing at all. Much silliness is made of First Amendment protections, workplace rules and the apparent ungrateful nature of a field full of millionaires refusing to show the most common respect for our country. Let's be fair...
It's about us...cops. According to these men we are racists. Hell, a US senator with aspirations to the White House said something similar just recently. The whole system is racist, and must be protested every Sunday on fields purchased primarily by taxpayers and protected by men and women in blue. In some of these cities officers have - very recently - given their lives in the service of the communities cheering these...gentlemen.
Her: "The Broncos are on."
Me: "I'm watching St. Kitts versus Guyana."
In a nutshell, I'd rather watch cricket than the National Football League. That's what I think of them and their opinions.
The kneeling, the charges and counter-charges... It must be football season again.
It's about us...cops. According to these men we are racists. Hell, a US senator with aspirations to the White House said something similar just recently. The whole system is racist, and must be protested every Sunday on fields purchased primarily by taxpayers and protected by men and women in blue. In some of these cities officers have - very recently - given their lives in the service of the communities cheering these...gentlemen.
Her: "The Broncos are on."
Me: "I'm watching St. Kitts versus Guyana."
In a nutshell, I'd rather watch cricket than the National Football League. That's what I think of them and their opinions.
Saturday, July 28, 2018
Toward the Sky
A B-25 Mitchell flew over, gear and flaps down. The radial engines sputtered and grumbled, throttles back as it approached the runway. It was our first glimpse of an aircraft at AirVenture 2005. John and I had driven the eleven hundred miles to witness the airshow of a lifetime.
Our second glimpse was of an ultralight aircraft in a ditch, surrounded by traffic cones. We found out later that the engine had quit, the glorified umbrella descending with all of the grace of a coal shovel. The pilot wasn't seriously injured.
Over the course of the next week a thousand airplanes came and went. So did a monster rainstorm. Therein lies a life-changing tale.
I had already written my first novel...er, manuscript. That's how the power of presumption seems to work, for me at least. I've written several million words of fiction - none of it in police reports, smart ass - but never considered anything a novel unless it was published somewhere.
A Miracle of Zeros and Ones was written, and had been read by several friends. It wasn't very good, was grossly overweight... Most commercial novels are less than a hundred thousand words. Miracle was almost 200K. Oops. I guess I got a little carried away.
I got a lot of rejections from publishers. What did I expect? Although several returned nice comments there didn't seem to be much interest in a policewoman being stalked through the mobile data terminal in her car. I had guessed wrong, sort of.
Any number of the books I'd read for writing classes I'd taken (among them how to write romance...really) talked about providing variety as a means of getting published. I'd tried what I knew best - law enforcement from the grunt level. I felt like Sundance.
"We've gone straight," Sundance says, the effort having resulted in death and disaster. "What do we try now?"
Tuesday, I think it was, in soggy Oshkosh. Damp and overcast from the previous evening's downpour. The afternoon airshow went on as advertised, with some modifications to account for the lower cloud deck - the ceiling. Overhead were Mustangs, Spitfires, AT-6s... Lots of them. Formations, single aircraft passes. John had a receiver (he's a pilot). We listened as the airplane drivers talked to each other, coordinating a 200 mile per hour, 3D ballet.
We learned later that evening a Mustang had crashed off airport grounds. Sadly, the pilot rode it in and was killed. And, the words just started spilling forth.
What if?
Years later, I would have jumped onto my travel laptop and started typing. Heck, my daypack has several notebooks that would have come in spectacularly handy. But, this was 2005. I was a rookie. John had a pad of sticky notes. It would have to do.Over the course of the drive back to Denver I invented Deputy Karen. Her marriage over, her life a shambles. Dispatched to an airplane crash, meets a guy...
Out of Ideas was published by a small California imprint, and then reissued through Amazon. The day it went live - I became a freelance writer. A novelist.
Every July I think about the extraordinary trip to Oshkosh with a fabulous friend. I came home with a ton of memories, and an aviation story to tell. Now I have a web site (Jamesgreer.online), many more books to sell and a dream. All from looking toward the sky one gray day in Wisconsin.
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