Seafaring Moods

                                                 

                                       

                                                   

                                       

     "Queasy" is the best word to describe it - the emotion experienced when thinking about Ensign Kevin Burns, a grandson in a submarine underway and engaged in servicing a nuclear system. The Oklahoma City, SNN 723, has been in south Pacific seas training with ships of the Australian Navy - now as the predator, then the prey. Mentally, emotionally I am with that "boat" much of the time.
     Soothing the angst I remember a visit to another Los Angeles class submarine, the Newport News around 2000. Of the select spaces we were permitted to inspect was of course the galley. There four civilians chatted with four sailors amidst the aroma of  cookies fresh from an oven. These submarine sailors (and three others I met aboard) were articulate, smart and professional. They are the kind of people that Kevin is working with now. The memory of these conversations and the cookies reassure. Moods follow food.
     Hand shaking my shoulder - "Watch in 30 minutes! Go to the mess deck." A training cruise, I was 18. Dressing quickly - I passed through a dim, red lit passageway and dropped down a ladder into a dimly lit Destroyer Escort mess deck. There galley crew were passing out to those on midnight watch a sandwich - fresh, warm bread enclosing thick slices of Spam, slathered with yellow mustard and a cup of steaming, black coffee. That snack rushed me up to an edge - from midnight till 4:00 AM that DE had the most alert, far sighted, stern lookout in US naval history. Today, when thinking about that splendid sandwich and coffee I spring to a heightened vigilance and scan the Florida horizon for alien vessels.
     On the other hand - another cruise - another DE - having just completed a 4:00 to 8:00 AM  watch and exhausted, I dropped down the ladder into a noisy, crowded mess deck. On a steel tray I collected breakfast; beans, franks and two hard boiled eggs. In the ship's vernacular, "rat turds, dog turds and a pair of knockers". Finding a place to sit I glanced up just in time to watch a sailor with a tear in his jeans ascend the ladder - his ass crack flashed back and forth with every step up. My gaze returned to my tray and spoon. Words suddenly began pounding on the back of my head.
     "Get UP! Get your ass out of here! Now! Are you deaf?"
     I turned my head and considered an angry petty officer's face just inches away. He continued hollering as I was rising to address him. Then I was screaming at him - using "fuck" as noun, verb and direct object - threatening phrases, "your teeth in your hands" and "your nuts in a knot". He backed away to a bulkhead and slumped down into a semi-crouch. I paused, sensed a silence, then returned to my tray. The buzz on the mess deck revived back up. The sailor across from me looked sad, "you can't do that" and scooped up some beans.
     More screaming. "Stand up sailor!" I kind of jumped up and faced a Chief - almost - he was half my height. Again the mess deck was quiet.
    "You looking for a fight boy?"  -  "No Chief."
    "You pretty good with your hands?"  -  "No Chief."
    "You want to fight me?"  -  "No Chief."
    Disgusted he looked me over, up and down, turned and stormed out a hatch, almost without ducking, Again the mess chatter revived.
    As I sat down the sailor on the left, "Probably means a Captain's Mast." My sad eyed friend nodded in agreement and kept on eating. I skipped breakfast that morning. My flirtation with a mutiny did not result in a disciplinary hearing. Three decades would pass before my next meal of beans and franks. But now I have a deep affection for the sight, smell and taste of sugar cookies.
     US Navy photo: SNN 723 Breaching - by Fabio Pena.
     US Navy photo: SNN 723 - Chris Oxley.

The "Town" of Oneonta

                                          Susquehanna Valley, Oneonta from Hartwick College
      Oneonta, New York, with 14,000 residents is much larger that Thornton Wilder's "Grover's Corners", Vermont. But it has a river coursing through reminiscent of Meredith Wilson's "River City", Iowa and William Inge's Kansas town, the setting for "Picnic". The "town" has two distinguished colleges;  Hartwick and SUNY Oneonta. It also has two descriptive appellations; "The City of the Hills" and a terminal sounding epithet, "Life Enjoyed". It remains a "town" because the resident population has not increased since 1950, and the fictions, myths needed to bind together vast populations in cities, nations are deluded in smaller population centers. Living in a "town" we see individuals more clearly, relate to them better (or perhaps worse) but with less distortion created by the patinas of myth. Clips of life in Oneonta over nearly four decades illustrates the point, perhaps.
      Raised 50 miles north of Oneonta I still had no idea of its location. For a job interview in 1966, I followed a map from Utica to Cooperstown and then into Oneonta. Soon on a hill in front of Hartwick's Bresee Hall I absorbed for the first time the wonderful view of the Susquehanna River Valley.
     My introduction to the people of Oneonta occurred on a crisp Halloween night that same year. My wife Annette, two daughters and I had been living in town for just two months. We went downtown where half the population was parading in the center of Main Street, the other half lining the sidewalks watching. Happy, noisy, costumed children everywhere. I had felt that I knew no one. But going home my face muscles ached, stressed from constant smiling, grinning and chatting.
     We bought our first home - a large 1912 house that bordered six other properties. The day after closing I walked up the shared driveway to greet one of my neighbors, an elderly woman. 
     "Hi, I'm John, the new owner". She looked at me, then at the house and back at me. "So the Bards were finally able to get rid of that place". She turned and walked away. 
     Our third daughter Jennifer, was born the following year.
     Ox Johnson was the proprietor of the neighborhood Deli. Ox was a business man first, politically conservative, a bespectacled, suspender wearing Elk member, with a sense of humor so dry that one could rationally challenge its very existence. He considered me a lefty college professor who might mature, maybe, someday. Once he asked me if I could help him move some produce. He had hurt his back. Sure, I said. Three days later we were in his truck driving to my surprise, to New Jersey, his source for fresh vegetables. Soon I was loading bushels of tomatoes, melons, cucumbers into the truck. Ox bought lunch. We would also serve together for several years, along with banker Henry Bunn, on the City of Oneonta Tax Assessment Review Board. Later I helped carry Ox to his grave. 
     The officer issued the ticket to me for violation of the leash law - in Wilber Park I had let Swede run loose. I appeared in City Court before Judge Walter Terry who happened to be a fellow poker player. Judge Terry seemed to be suppressing a smile as I stood before him. I was reprimanded, first offense, fine suspended, then admonished, "and let this be a lesson to you".
     I was on my way to Washington. The radio reported that Harry and Cathy's 23-year old son John, had been killed in a plane crash. I doubled over with anguish. Two days later I returned to Oneonta and now stood poised to knock on Harry's front door. It popped open, Harry pasted me, "Let's go!" We walked down Roosevelt Ave, crossed Main Street, then down Grande Ave to Neawha Park. Passing through the Park, we headed west on River Street, A couple of miles later we were on Oneida Street heading north to Chestnut, then east to Main and finally back to Roosevelt Ave. Neither of us had uttered a word - words had no meaning - Johnny was gone. Slowly I followed Harry through his front door.
     Steve, his wife and two daughters lived across the street. Bob, his wife and two sons lived next door. Both were police officers. Joe Pigeon, wife and four children lived on the next block up. Joe was the Oneonta Fire Chief and his son Patrick would join OFD and become a future Chief. Patrick's cousin Jeff also became a firefighter. Whenever sirens wailed in Oneonta it became a moment to pause and think about our neighbors.
     Real "towns" are like that.

My New York Times

                                                   

                                                        September 12, 2001
     There are great print-news sources in the United States: the Washington Post, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald, Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal (minus its occasionally obnoxious editorial page) and several others. The Sarasota Herald Tribune is a very good paper. But all things considered the New York Times is the finest source of print-news and analysis on the planet. I like my "news" straight - a professionally written who, what, where, when and why. For analysis I seek columnists and  op-ed writers from across the intellectual spectrum. In the Times, Brooks, Douthat, Dowd, Cohen, Collins, Krugman and Blow satisfy my requirements. Thus, at a celebratory family dinner I grimaced when a perfect grandson referred to the Times as a "left wing media outlet". This idea had never occurred to me.
     The Times is not just a life-long, major source of my information but also a means to satisfy righteous outrage. Over the years I have dashed off numerous letters to the Times editors, several were published - one resulting in retaliatory efforts to have my employment at Hartwick College terminated. The Times also published a travel piece I authored identifying great Atlantic coast campsites.*
     A poor educator I would have been had I not tried to use the Times as an educational tool. The objective was to get the undergraduate student to touch, glance at, or read anything from the Times and then show up in class better informed. My efforts frequently bordered on the desperate. I would advise students to always carry a copy of the Times under their arm. Then when relaxing in the library, dining hall, wherever, conspicuously display the newspaper while doing something else. The bait set I promised that an exceptionally attractive member of the opposite sex would "bite", using the Times as an excuse to strike up a conversation. This could most certainly result in a relationship with an extraordinary individual (in a Darwinian sense) - a good provider, then much successful breeding. Should the student wish to "dial up", then instead of the Times, s/he could substitute anything by Einstein, Gibbons or Thucydides. Seek to dial down? Comic books or a novel with a "bodice busting" cover would work nicely. Unhappily the digital era, cell phones and tablets have rendered this excellent strategy moot.
     I have used the Times in Russia as a cudgel.  Traveling in the old USSR accompanied by undergraduates gave rise to the occasional issue. One blustery night my group of 25 arrived in a vast hotel lobby in Yalta. We were joined by a large group from Argentina and were informed by a surly Administrator that our luggage - not more than 90 pieces - was unfortunately missing. The Argentine tour guide went ballistic protesting incompetence and threatening to call their ambassador in Moscow. The Administrator was unflappable, armored - the threat bounced off. I was irritated. But one missing bag is theft, 90 missing is a "muck up". I had to register my displeasure.
     "I have a friend at the "New York Times" and smiled.
     Behind his eyeballs there was a flash of panic. But before my bluff could be exposed an Aeroflot truck with 90 pieces of luggage and a besotted driver was discovered parked off a nearby road. But I would use that line with excellent effect again - twice. Now I do have a friend at the Times, Michael McIntire, a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter and Hartwick graduate.
     The Times also publishes on occasion something that becomes an instant "classic". In October, 2016, a Trump lawyer demanded that the Times retract and apologize for a libelous article featuring two women who accused Mr. Trump of inappropriate touching. Part of the reply (paragraph 2) by Times lawyer David E. McCraw;
     "The essence of a libel claim of course is the protection of one's reputation. Mr. Trump has bragged about his non-consensual sexual touching of women. He has bragged about intruding on beauty pageant contestants in their dressing rooms. He acquiesced to a radio host's request to discuss Mr. Trump's own daughter as a 'piece of ass'. Multiple women not mentioned in our article have publicly come forward to report on Mr. Trump's unwanted advances. Nothing in our article has had the slightest effect on the reputation that Mr. Trump, through his own words and actions, has already created for himself." **
     Mark Twain, H.L. Menken and Oscar Wilde are still smiling.

*John O. Lindell "In Search of the Perfect Beach Campsite" NYT Travel Section; June 26, 1977.
**New York Times October 13, 2016

DNA Travels

                 
                                               
                                                                    Neanderthal                Homo sapiens                 

     

 "The earth of a hundred millennia ago was walked by at least six different species of man . . . Homo erectus, 'Upright Man' who survived . . . for close to 2 million years (was) the most durable human species ever. It is doubtful whether Homo sapiens will still be around a thousand years from now, so 2 million years is really out of our league." [Anatomically correct Homo sapiens, "Thinking Man" has been around 2 hundred thousand years.]*
                                                                                                           Homo erectus     At my local 7/11 I picked up a Sunday newspaper and handed it to the associate for checkout and payment. She was a tall, black woman with long eyelashes. We had occasionally chatted over the past couple of months. "May I ask you a question?"
   "Sure" I mumbled.
   "Are you part African-American?"                                                                
   Totally alert - "Why do you ask?"                                                                                          
   "Well - you have kind of an African nose."
   "We are all out of Africa."                                                                                
   "Some people don't like that idea."
   "Oh well" I relaxed, shrugged. "But I do wish you had thought my shoulders were off LeBron James or my physique, wit Muhammad Ali."
   "No" she smiled, lashes dipped.
   Fortuitously Dr. Erik Lindell, my brother has done some investigation of this matter. He swabbed his mouth and rushed the cotton ball with spittle attached off to the National Geographic Genographic project. The NGG than analyzed the DNA markers to determine the source of his ancestry (and much of mine though there still can be considerable differences) and the migratory route traveled by the paternal DNA.
    But first a "shout out" for a man who lived 30 to 70,000 years past in East Africa known to scientists as M168. Mr. M168 is the common ancestor of every non-African alive today. 
    Dr. Lindell reports that his Y chromosome identifies our family as members of the Haplogroup N that migrated out of East Africa 50-60 thousand years ago. The group crossed Arabia, Central Asia, arriving in Siberia and halting for many millennia south of the Altai Mountains. DNA markers indicate that we are descendants of a man who lived in Siberia 10,000 years ago.
Scientists suggest that Haplogroup N was "stuck" in Siberia for 20 to 30,000 years unable to figure out (perhaps incompetent, dull witted, lost) a route over the formidable Altai's. Eventually they moved north and then west skirting the mountains, moving across Russia and into northern Finland. N's provide the demographic base for the reindeer-herding Saami people and most Scandinavians. Dr. Lindell robustly rejects the pessimistic possibilities that Ns were "stuck". He argues that they probably enjoyed life in Siberia confronting the towering snowy mountains, lush valleys and were "simply taking their time". But we digress.
   Elements of the N group then proceeded south through Scandinavia and crossed the Doggerbank - a geographic feature now submerged beneath the North Sea - to arrive in the British Isles.  Lindell reports that our family is a more complex cocktail than originally thought. The American wing of the Lindell family had adjusted to the idea of being 50% Swedish and 50% Irish. DNA stats indicate that we are: 42% Irish/British; 20% Scandinavian; 3% Finnish; 35% Broadly European; 2.9% Neanderthal.
    The Irish/British 42% is something of a surprise while the "Broadly European 35%" is disappointing - a category that defies more specificity. We are also closer to residents of Siberia than to those of Sweden. But the presence in our genes of remnants of another Homo species "Neanderthals" leads me to intense speculation. There are hundreds of variants Neanderthals have contributed to Sapiens. Most Lindells enjoy tenting with nights illuminated by stars and bright hot campfires. Perhaps this is an echo of that other distant, extinct species.

*Yuval Noah Harari Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind 2015.  Dr. Erik Lindell writes frequently on international trade issues for online publications. See also Arizona State University Institute of Human Origins. Online. Photos Wikimedia.
 

An Errant Connoisseur

                                               

                                                Kagoshima, Japan, 2015  Wikimedia
    My best lobster so far was consumed at the original Palm Restaurant on 2nd Ave in New York City - the late 1960s. I was dining with Ray Schillmoeller, a hotshot, national sales rep for TRW. I was a poor pedagogue - he picked up the tap. Our waiter was surly, the table covered with newspaper and the lobster so large it should have been returned to the sea to breed. But it was delicious, ingested with copious amounts of butter and draft beer. The worst lobster was a slightly smaller crustacean served up at a restaurant on Cayo Largo, Cuba in 2006. What it lacked in flavor it made up for in tensile strength - try chewing on Teflon body armor.
    The finest pasta dinner ever occurred in the late 1950s, on a sunny Sunday afternoon at the Nicotera family camp near Hinckley Lake, N.Y. I had been courting Annette, my future wife. As was then the tradition all the men - uncles, cousins, Annette's father Louie and guests were seated on two benches on each side of a twelve foot table. The table, benches and extra chairs filled the spacious screened-in porch. The women - aunts, cousins, Annette, sister Madeline, their mother Josephine, began serving the meal - rigatoni with a perfect marinara sauce, spicy sausage, plump garlic meatballs slightly crisp in one spot, beef marinated in sauce, herbs and rolled up and crusty Nicotera Italian bread. To drink a satisfying red wine and Genesee Cream Ale. The pasta course was followed by a magnificent anti-pasta. Finally, coffee and Nicotera Bakery cookies - almond nut were my favorite. Sexist as it may sound now I remember thinking, "Boy! This is great!" In addition to wonderful food what made this dinner for me exquisite - three aunts, Agnes, Petrina and Tina and two uncles, Frankie and Arthur - each went out of their way to call me "John" for the very first time. I then understood that I was under serious scrutiny as a possible match for their beautiful niece. 
    Best fish dinner - a Chinese restaurant on Massachusetts Ave in Cambridge - a short walking distance from the Harvard campus - late 1970s. Accompanied by daughter Cathy, I ordered a Hunan Crispy fish. What arrived was a whole carp. I know the joke, "Bake carp on an oak board for 8 hours at 500 degrees. Remove from oven, throw away the carp, eat the board." But this carp as prepared was beyond delicious. To this day I scan every menu looking for a comparable dish - which leads naturally to a recollection of a fish dinner nightmare.
    On Longboat Key, Florida there is a respected restaurant the (something) House. In 2013, Carol Hanlon and I were dining there for the first time. The menu offered "a whole fish" prepared with a sales pitch of ingredients. My memory flashed with that crispy fish of long ago - I bit. The fish that arrived was indeed lips to tail but had been deep fried so long that the fish was literally gone - what remained was brownish skin stretched over bones. Respectfully I pointed out to the waitperson that I could indeed tell the difference between a fine dinner and garbage, strongly suggesting I was in the presence of the latter.. The trash was removed, the financial charge quashed, apologizes received and I skipped the main course. But my quest continues for that now mythical carp dinner of yore.
    Kagoshima, Japan 1970, dinner with eight Japanese businessmen and one American, David Mosher. We sat on tatami mats in a "L" formation. A geisha clad waitress (five in total) sat directly in front of two men and was charged with keeping our Saki cups full. There was much laughing, toasting while exotic dishes kept appearing before us. I was drinking and eating everything in reach. I gingerly picked up a hot ceramic bowl and with my sticks pulled the contents up and partially into my mouth. I tried to bite through the contents but failed. And the portion between my teeth was connected ropey-like to everything below in the bowl. So moving my lower jaw back and forth I tried sawing through - unsuccessfully - then my first wave of panic. The contents were slippery, greenish and sinewy as hell. I thought of kelp rotting on a Maine beach. Sawing! Tiny beads of sweat popped out on my forehead. Dave was watching my anguish with a perfectly straight face. "Well I think I am going to pass on that dish" and then he smiled and reached for his Saki cup.
 

Memorials - Volgograd

                                                       

                                            Mamayev Mount - "Rodina" - Volgograd
                                       

                                                  August 23, 1942
      Methodically I stepped along the water line trying to keep my boots dry, while stooped over looking for something, anything, that might be metallic and "connect" me with this place and history. Connections must be found - they cannot be purchased in a gift shop. The Volga was calm, dappled by sunlight and flowing with power south. A hundred yards off shore a reddish hydrofoil
sliced a course north.
     Ahead was a quarter mile of uninterrupted shoreline. To the right the river stretched away a mile or so to the eastern shore. On my left the bank rose up and away over two hundred feet. On top was a squat, granite platform supporting the turret of a Russian T-34 tank. A four inch hole in the turret created by an armor piercing projectile killed the crew. The tank's 76.2 mm gun slightly elevated, was pointed west and even in death seemed to be acquiring targets. A series of similar tank memorials are spaced along the west shore of the Volga and indicate the "high water mark" of the German assault on Stalingrad. For five months, one week and three days - August 1942 to February 1943 - the battle raged. The city was reduced to gutted structures and rubble. Amid winter temperatures of -20 to -30 degrees (F) surviving inhabitants had neither heat nor light. One million were killed and another million were wounded or captured in the most horrific combat since Verdun - 1916. The German 6th Army - 350,000 men - was encircled and destroyed. The Wehrmacht would never recover from the losses incurred at Stalingrad and thereafter would be fighting a "defensive" war. In the 1960's, surviving German POWs - a total of 10,000 men - were repatriated to Germany from the Soviet Gulag. In the post Stalin USSR the city's name reverted back to Volgograd. *
     I continued my walk seeking a connection to this history. Once as a callow faced lad, I was stumbling along near a rampart at Fort William Henry in Lake George, NY. One of my large shoes kicked up what first appeared to be a stone but upon examination was a 50 caliber "mini ball". I was now "connected" with life two hundred years earlier, with men and women who used muzzle loading weapons, lived, loved and died around the fort. The mini ball remains a prized possession.
     Now along the shore of the Volga I reached down and picked up a metal fragment, two inches long and a half inch wide. One side was encrusted with tiny stones and sediment. The other smooth and slightly rounded like a piece of a small barrel or shell casing. In the 1980's it was still possible to walk the streets of Volgograd and see the facade of an occasional building pockmarked by small arms fire and shrapnel. But maybe this fragment had absolutely nothing to do with the battle on the Volga.
     The sun was dipping and the T-34 relic above was beginning to cast a shadow down towards the river. I put the fragment in my pocket and began the walk back to city center. On the way I passed a department store with a bronze plaque affixed to the wall next to a bright window display. It stated that Field Marshall Friedrich Paulus had used this building as the Headquarters of the 6th Army - from here its surrender order had been issued.
     *See - Lt. Gen. Vasili Chuikov The Battle for Stalingrad NY: Holt Rinehart and Winston; 1964.
       Also - Wikipedia; Wikimedia for photos and Robswebster.com.

Libraries With Posthumous Voices

                                         

                                             Harvard - Widener Library
                                       

                                             Utica N.Y. Public Library
     The Argentine, Canadian scholar Alberto Manguel has a personal library of 30,000 volumes. Manguel ". . . conveys a sense that posthumous voices and literary characters converse among themselves under his roof." He is also the author of Library at Night. *
     From a sitting position on the floor I reached up, seized and pulled a book toward me - half a dozen others fell with it. A memory from the Dunham Public Library in Whitesboro, N.Y. Regularly my parents took my brother and I there on Saturdays to refresh our reading supply. "Remember" my mother would harp, "never go any where without a book."
     My grammar school had no library and the high school had a large room with a few books - The Lives of the Saints - many trophies and two office desks. I was not a quality or even an adequate student. In the third year of high school my mother contemplated sending me off to barber school. Toward the end of my sophomore year in college I found myself in the Utica Public Library, a neo Greco-Roman construct from 1903. My reason for being there is lost but on the second floor rear were stacks. There I happened upon Samuel Eliot Morison's History of US Naval Operations World War II, or at least 12 of the 15 volumes. I read them all with pleasure sitting in those stacks over the next few months. Then following a surprising surge in study habits I received a BA from Utica College of Syracuse University.
     1959 - I arrived at New York University. The NYU library was quite user friendly for graduate students. But the New York City Public Library was overwhelming - its immense card catalog required concentration and saintly patience - on every subject there was always more ! Home eventually became the sub-basement of the NYU Law School Library. There below the street, in a silent, sealed, artificial environment I reviewed the transcripts of the World War II war crimes Tribunals, IMT Far East and Nuremberg. My happy view of the value of the species homo sapien was scorched and human activities since then have reinforced the pessimism.
     I would utilize the Hartwick College Library for 34 years. Because of earlier efforts by Professors Boris Schzockov and Dan Allen, Hartwick had a fine, modest, yet intense Russian/Slavic collection. (It had much Russian Orthodox material but then the splendid RO Holy Trinity Monastery was just 25 miles north in Jordanville, N.Y.) I tried to enhance the collection and remember being quite pleased in the early 1990s, that as the USSR imploded Russian students were already studying at Hartwick. I could also go into the Library and right next to the New York Times and Times of London, peruse the latest copy of Izvestia. This was a time of hope.
     During this period I spent a summer at Harvard researching Soviet nationalities. My first visit to Widener Library - I followed a bright line on the floor through different rooms, floors until I arrived at the "Slavic Section". It was quiet, cool, with the aroma of leather and musty paper. I wandered among the stacks - every volume touched required reading. Few things in life satisfy anticipation. Widener Library exceeded mine - and I had yet to visit the Russian Research Center.
      2016 - It is the future - now and then I visit the Fruitville Branch of the Sarasota Public Library. It is a bright, spacious, multi-purpose place (meetings, lectures, books for sale) with much technology as well as stacks with CDs and books. It has a children's section where youngsters can sit on the floor and pull down books.
     *See Robert Harrison, NYRB  October 22, 2015.