Category Archives: Random Access

Random Access, the op-ed.

Undercooked Pizza

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I hadn’t talked with Missy and Biff Loomis for a while so it was nice to hear from them this morning. Missy wears bling which dangles and jangles when she dips her minnows out of the bait tank. She usually prefers to talk about fishing and motorcycles and her job on the state so I put down my newspaper and paid attention. Today, she had pizza on her mind.

Undercooked pizza.

They had gotten tied up with customers down on the dock yesterday and didn’t get to eat breakfast until nearly noon. She decided to call in an order for her favorite pizza to The Doughbie Brothers, a friendly neighborhood pizzeria that has combinations you’ve never heard of.

Undercooked Pizza Slice from a Yelp ReviewShe drove to the restaurant to find the pie was still in the oven. The Doughbie Brothers guarantee the pick up time; worse, this is the second time they’ve been late. She grumbled a bit and a few minutes later, her order arrived all boxed up and ready to go.

Or not.

When she got it home, it was missing several toppings and the crust hadn’t been stretched out so it was all bunched up on one side of the pie. And it wasn’t fully baked.

“That reminds me of the time …” he says as he launches into a story.

We all know someone who does that.

I’m that guy.

SWMBO and I went to First Night Burlington with friends a couple of decades ago. The annual citywide, substance-free party has nearly 100 stage shows, musical acts, and arts activities in 18 or 20 venues to kick off the new year. New Year’s Eve this year will be its 35th anniversary.

A huge number of performers are either from Puffin County or are local favorites so it’s a great show for us. Some events are free and buttons for the rest are available at 65 button outlets around us.

The crowds are large and the lines for food and the church and other venues are often ridiculously long so we opted to drive down to South Burlington to grab a pie at the national chain pizzeria down there.

That chain doesn’t guarantee how long it will take but we didn’t care. We were inside and warm and enjoying ourselves instead of standing in line in the winter deep freeze. Our crust had been stretched out but it wasn’t fully baked.

With a mushy, stretchy, doughy mouthful, I called the waiter over.

“The pizza isn’t done,” I mumbled.

She offered to put it back in the oven.

Everyone at the table knew that wouldn’t work. We’d get back a mushy, stretchy, doughy pie that was really, really hot. And we did.

Anyway, retelling that story is somewhat annoying, particularly to my friend Missy. She’s heard many if not most of my stories but worse, since they’re my stories it means, suddenly, we’re talking about me.

Oops.

Paul Newman, Mary Harper, Dick Harper (back to camera)That’s a difficult hurdle for our memories because so many of them are about our own experiences. I do (sometimes) tell stories about what happened to my friend Rufus or to my friend Liz Arden or even to that actor fellow I used to race with, but I don’t know their stories as well as I know my own.

Making connections has always been my creative strong suit (see, It’s still All About Me).

If I needed a particular kind of hydraulic hose for that pilemaker I wrote about last month, I found it by remembering that I had used one on the race car, a hose that I first found in the aircraft industry. I’ve done that all my life. Likewise, if you tell me an undercooked pizza story, I will instantly make the connection to that long ago New Year’s Eve in Burlington. Likewise, if you ask me about living in the Keys, I’ll think of my grandfather who, at 92 years of age, decided to close up shop and move there from our ancestral part of Pennsylvania.

Sadly, we humans have more trouble getting to those memories as we age. I don’t think we forget the stories. We just forget the ways to find them without a little conversational help from our friends.

I certainly needed those triggers to access the stories I’ve related here today. I also certainly hope those triggers keep working so I propose a little thought experiment of those of us of a certain age or older:

When you tell a story, write down the trigger that reminded you of the story
Collect those triggers.
Read the triggers in a couple of years.
Tell the stories again.

Let’s all try to remember to do that. When you send me the results, please list this column in the subject line so I can try to remember why I wanted them.

Meanwhile, I’m having a meatloaf sandwich for lunch!

 

Thank You, John McCain

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“Let’s return to regular order,” Mr. McCain said on the floor of the Senate.

Diana Bauer and I mused about accomplishments this morning. “Everybody is yapping,” she said, “but we aren’t accomplishing much.”

“Our deliberations can still be important and useful, but I think we’d all agree they haven’t been overburdened by greatness lately. And right now they aren’t producing much for the American people…

We’ve been spinning our wheels on too many important issues because we keep trying to find a way to win without help from across the aisle. That’s an approach that’s been employed by both sides, mandating legislation from the top down, without any support from the other side…”

Mr. McCain has certainly noticed the same problem.

“You write op-ed every week,” Ms. Bauer said. “Do you think you’ve changed any minds?”

It’s a good question and shows that this writing stuff is the very antithesis of a good engineering job.

“We’re getting nothing done. All we’ve really done this year is confirm Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Our healthcare insurance system is a mess. We all know it, those who support Obamacare and those who oppose it. Something has to be done. We Republicans have looked for a way to end it and replace it with something else without paying a terrible political price. We haven’t found it yet, and I’m not sure we will. All we’ve managed to do is make more popular a policy that wasn’t very popular when we started trying to get rid of it.”

The Neil Gorsuch appointment shows how a job used to work:

Goal:
Fill a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Steps:
List the best candidates for the job.
Nominate Mr. Gorsuch.
Hold hearings in the U.S. Senate.
Confirm the appointment.
Make good:
Mr. Gorsuch is sworn in.

Back in about 1980, I honchoed the design of an industrial machine that accepted a flow of books or magazines and stacked them in an even pile so the “extra” paper around the edges could be trimmed off. It worked a treat; we installed them around the U.S. and Europe in printing plants to produce everything from Playboy to Reader’s Digest with a stop at TV Guide.

ChecklistIn order to get those magazines into your hands, I looked at the existing stackers on the market and found that they couldn’t keep up with the throughput particularly of the thin, fast moving magazines like the two-up Digest or TVGuide. That defined the problem. A number of people on my team and over in the sales offices researched what the market needed and how many we might sell because there was no way we’d spend a gazillion dollars of design time and tool up for a machine that sold three copies. The requirements came out of that research. We dreamed up and discarded a lot of solutions and homed in on the best. One of my designers at the time was arguably the best, most creative machine guy I’ve met anywhere; he did the layout. The guys in the model shop downstairs built a prototype and we tested it right there in our own plant. I installed the first one in, I think, Offenburg Germany.

That’s the way it’s supposed to work.

The Pilemaker went from defining the problem to making good on the solution — you reading a magazine. Or at least gazing at the foldout.

That’s the way writing op-ed and governing are supposed to work, too.

I want my columns to change the way you think or, better, to get you to take action. That’s my goal. The make good is when you do volunteer for a community group or throw the bums out of Washington.

We want the legislature to complete the tasks we set for them. That’s our goal; it should be every Congress Critters’ goal as well. The make good is when we see a bridge built across the Rock River or a health care system that works.

I have no way other than persuasion to strong arm you into completing my goal but we can force Congress to do so.

We can elect new ones.

Give them a check list.

Remind them that they lose their jobs when they don’t make good.

And then follow through.

Thank you, John McCain. You got us part way there.

 

Curses! Fooled Again!

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Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of flood stays these scientists …

Um, no.

How, you might ask dear reader, do the scablands of eastern Washington relate to the Antarctic ice sheet?

Two stories from different centuries crossed my desk this morning. They don’t seem to be related but they do point us to a Truth.

Part I: Many scientists believe that Antarctica’s immense ice sheet is doomed. They have no doubt that Antarctica will melt into the sea.

That may not be entirely correct.

“A new NASA study says that an increase in Antarctic snow accumulation that began 10,000 years ago is currently adding enough ice to the continent to outweigh the increased losses from its thinning glaciers.”

Really? NASA’s research challenges settled science of most other studies that show Antarctica is losing land ice at a mind-boggling rate. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) latched onto that factoid in their 2013 report without considering that it might not tell the whole story.

Now that the IPCC science is settled, no further reports are required.

In fact, the Washington Post last year opined that “A key climate change icon has reversed its warming trend, at least temporarily. … has been cooling, but that doesn’t disprove global warming…” (Jul 20, 2016)

There ya go. Since the net gain of Antarctic ice slowed to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008, now we know why the global warming^H^H cooling^H^H climate change community can say Antarctica is melting.

Well, they can say that except for this little quibble about the facts.

Part II: Many geologists believed that the strange topography of eastern Washington State showed “geological change,” formed gradually and uniformly over thousands of years. They had no doubt.

The National Geographic reported about the Channeled Scablands, “The only possible explanation for the all the region’s features was a massive flood, perhaps the largest in the Earth’s history — ‘a debacle which swept the Columbia Plateau,’ ripping soil and rock from the landscape, carving canyons and cataracts in a matter of days. ‘All other hypotheses meet fatal objections,’ [Harley Bretz] wrote in a 1923 paper.”

The former high school teacher committed geological heresy.

The Horseshoe-Shaped Potholes Coulee along the Columbia RiverThe Flood-deniers, the geologists of the day. vehemently denied the Bretz theory. Dr. Bretz did thorough research including actually visiting the channeled scablands but the other geologists called his ideas not just “wholly inadequate” but “preposterous” and “incompetent.”

That’s a good story by itself.

But wait! There’s more!

The Geological Society of America did finally recognize Dr. Bretz’s theory. He received the Penrose Medal in 1979 but the story doesn’t end there.

Richard Waitt, a geologist with the USGS, explored the Walla Walla valley in southern Washington in 1977. He discovered that one of 40 sediment layers there contained ash from an eruption of Mt. St. Helens.

“I knew right away that there couldn’t have been just one flood,” Waitt said.

More than one flood? Why, that contradicts Dr. Bretz’s settled science!

When Mr. Waitt published his findings in 1980 that there had been at least 40 ice-age floods in the scablands, he faced such stiff resistance that he felt like Dr. Bretz himself. “Baker and his students were totally against it for years,” he said.

The science is settled, baby!

Oh. Wait…

As Glenn Hodges found in the National Geographic article, “Because scientists are first and foremost human beings, they’re loathe to change their theories or their minds because of mere data…”

 

Monuments

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Sunday will be the 50th anniversary of the Detroit race riots.

“Gun battles raged in Detroit’s streets. Snipers clashed with National Guardsmen and police. Many residents huddled for safety in their homes, while others — both black and white — looted businesses. Many of the businesses were then set ablaze.

“The riots engulfed the city beginning July 23, 1967, and continued for five days — one of many to hit the U.S. that summer. The violence prompted President Lyndon Johnson to send in federal troops to quell the upheaval.

“Forty-three people — 33 blacks and 10 whites — were killed. More than 7,000 people were arrested. Over 1,400 buildings were burned. Fifty years later, Detroit is still recovering.”

We’ll see a lot of news coverage this week and next, alongside laudatory prose of how much the country is doing to remember the events and will use them to assure we never repeat those times.

U.S. Flag Flown Upside DownThe Algiers Motel incident, for example, happened one fire-lit night of the racially charged 12th Street Riot. The building itself is gone and grass grows on its lot. There has never been a monument there to the lives lost but there will be soon.

About a century earlier and some 500 miles to the southeast, we made a different kind of history.

July 21, 1861: The Civil War’s first major battle erupted at Manassas, known as Bull Run, Virginia
July 22, 1862: President Lincoln presented the Emancipation Proclamation to his Cabinet
July 23, 1863: A skirmish at Manassas Gap, Virginia
July 24, 1864: The second Battle of Kernstown, Virginia

Today, we are tearing down monuments to that War. I wonder how long it will be before historical revisionists tear down the new monuments in Detroit.

 

Going to the Mattresses Again

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It’s raining; it’s pouring. The old man ain’t snoring. Darn it.

I sure could use it, too. I slept pretty well, I think, until 5:13 when I woke for no apparent reason. I did go back to sleep and was dreaming at 7:00 when SWMBO startled me right off the mattress by imitating a fire siren. I.Did.Not.Get.Back.To.Sleep after that. I simply played possum until the alarm.

I don’t think my mattress is the reason I don’t sleep as well as I did as a kid but a mattress could well be the reason we don’t sleep as comfortably as we did as kids.

Mattress thoughts have been popping up lately. One of my misc.writing buddies was musing about how to choose one “for a friend.” Liz Arden built one for herself from foam blocks a couple of years ago. And I realized this morning that I have bought exactly one mattress in my life. Part of that may be my pugnacious parsimony.

The Good Housekeeping Guide to Buying a Mattress reminds us right at the start that a “big part of what makes a good one is very personal: One person’s luxury is another person’s backache waiting to happen.”

Even online mattresses can cost thousands of dollars. I simply won’t pay that.

Mattress sellers say we won’t find bedding that can stand up to a decade of daily punishment for under a grand.

Horse puckey.

Part may be that I just haven’t found anything I like better.

SWMBO and I came this >┃┃< close to buying a Sunline TransPort toy hauler this weekend. It’s a pretty good alternative to the not-so-Perfect Travel Trailer and it would be parked here today if I hadn’t built a spreadsheet to run the numbers. Sunline built light but this one was just too heavy for the new truck.

Stack of MattressesIn going through my checklist, I sprawled out on the brand new, pillow top, queen-size mattress and took about a nanosecond to realize that was the only part of the trailer that sucked. It made my back hurt to lie down and it made my back hurt to get back up again.

That would have meant I’d have to buy two mattresses in my lifetime.

<SMH>

The last load of family furniture came north when Boppa moved to the Keys in 1984. That included the full size maple Sheraton four poster bed with tester frame that my folks slept in and now we do. (We had previously slept on a bed I built from 5/4-inch plywood, “decorator” cinder blocks, and a mattress that came from somewhere.) A couple nights on the horsehair mattress my folks had enjoyed was enough to send me to the Scott foam store.

My dad had worked for Scott Paper when they made a foray into the urethane foam business. They opened an outlet store at the Chester plant for foam blocks cut to size for chair cushions, boat cushions, mattresses, and the like. I bought the “green” high density mattress foam, stuffed it into a bedsack, and violas played.

About ten years ago, SWMBO and I decided we needed something different so we tried a couple of the inner spring mattresses on the guest room beds but didn’t like any of them. Next, I replaced the bedboard on top of the saggy, custom made box spring. Finally, I moved the horsehair mattress that came with this bed back on it and put the foam back on top of that.

Wow.

Anyone counting on their fingers has just realized that we’ve used this block of foam for about 33 years. The horsehair under it is easily a century older than that. I lay down on the bed this morning (briefly … that has nothing to do with why this reminiscence is late going up) and realized it is still about the most comfortable mattress I’ve ever tried.

There’s a lesson in here.

Commercial mattresses probably work OK for maybe about half the population. The rest of us would do well to experiment the way Ms. Arden did with blocks of varying density foam. Or try the way I did with foam and horsehair. Or go with toppers on a conventional inner spring mattress. Something will work, but it will take some research.

That and the fact that I should probably go down to UVM for a sleep study.