Review: Pirates of the White Sand

The best 14 minutes you'll ever spend

Over at Proper Course, Tillerman has posted his next group writing project: write a review. He goes on to explain that this can be a review of anything at least somewhat related to sailing, such as equipment, books, even movies – although he notes, "your choice is somewhat limited there."

Limited, maybe, but there are some good sailing-related movies out there. One obscure gem is Pirates of the White Sand, which debuted at the 2005 Duke City Shootout film festival. Written by the Seeger Brothers, the script won the festival's Federico Fellini award, earning the brothers a chance to bring the film to the festival, in which directors are given one week to film and edit a 14-minute movie.

The crew experienced some serious technical problems, such as a failure of communication between the film-editing computer and the film-industry expert provided by the film festival to assist the production that resulted in all edited footage being lost just hours before screening time. But after a seriously intense all-night editing session, an extremely rough cut was available for the final public gala, at which, despite the technical issues, it won the Audience Choice award. (Strangely enough, on the Shootout's own web page, Pirates is listed at the winner of the "Palm de Grease" Best Picture award.)

The film itself is a rollicking adventure involving a crew of unruly pirates, colonial Spanish gold treasure, and nuclear weapons. The pirates, led by Captain Moab (Miguel Martinez), descend upon the remote roadside café run by the ever-efficient Ruthie (Deborah Chavez), in their "ship," the Crusader, a 1964 Lincoln Continental. This is the same model used effectively in The Matrix as a trans-dimensional transport device; it serves a similar purpose in this film.

The pirates have been on a search for treasure, a vast trove of gold looted by the Spanish from the Aztec empire, hidden somewhere in what is now the White Sands Missile Range never to be found again. While the pirates are on the trail of the treasure, someone else is on the trail of the pirates, in helicopters and big black SUVs.

After many weeks "at sea," Moab's crew is eager to unwind at Ruthie's café, enjoying "grog" (beer served in a pitcher labeled GROG that Ruthie keeps on hand for the pirates) and, of course, green chile cheeseburgers. The action is frenetic, matched with a punk-rock adaptation of the sea chantey "Here's to the Grog" that underlies the action and also emphasizes the anachronisms that run throughout the film.

Martinez does excellent work as the pirate captain, bringing a wide range of emotions to the role, as the swaggering leader of a crew of brave men, and also the man who is thoroughly in love with Ruthie but knows he will never be able to have her, as his pirate life keeps him from being able to settle down. It is easy to see why he won the Best Actor award at the Shootout. As the film industry's presence in New Mexico increases, look to see Martinez in small but memorable parts in future blockbusters. His talent should take him far.

The directing is good; director P.L. Fuego keeps the pace brisk, although in one or two places the action seems to drag. In on scene, in particular, a sight gag involving a nuclear warhead doesn't quite work right. Mostly, however, the audience will be carried along nicely by the action.

The film is, unfortunately, not widely available. Fuego has been working on a director's cut that fixes the technical problems that marred the film-festival version and adds some material that had to be left out because of the Shootout's time restrictions. He might let you have a copy if you ask him nicely, or you might be able to find a friend of his who has a copy and copy that. Uh, yeah, pirated Pirates.

Disclaimer: I know these guys. Oh, all right … I'm related to them. Uh, yeah, they're my brothers. Still, it's a good film. If it sucked, I just wouldn't have written the review.

Poetry Corner: James Russell Lowell

Perhaps it would be good to define what, exactly, are "perfect days."

Things have been soggy of late, just about everywhere, it seems. The blogs that I follow, whether from California or New England or Europe or wherever, have been reporting major rainfall. And here in New Mexico, we've been getting a lot of rain as well.

Normally, in June, New Mexico is about as dry as it gets. The late spring snowfalls have ended, and the summer monsoons – yes, true monsoons, caused by the same sorts of wind patterns as cause the classic monsoons in India – have not yet begun. Generally, from April through June, we have almost no precipitation, and what water we have in our streams and rivers comes from snow-melt from the mountains. In a good year, with a heavy snowpack, this melt-water comes down through the month of May and, if we're really lucky, into the beginning of June.

This year, however, June has been unusually rainy. The past week, in particular, has seen heavy thunderstorms, especially in the northern part of the state, including Rio Arriba County. Friday, on our way up to Five O'Clock Somewhere, when we crossed Willow Creek, it was flowing full, at a level that is ordinarily seen only during the peak of spring runoff. Normally, in late June, the creek would be nearly dry.

Not that we're complaining. More rainfall means more water in the lake to sail upon, and more water to send downstream to the other lake to sail upon. In the case of Heron Lake, it also means that the marina gangway, which was becoming submerged as the lake level came up, needed to be relocated.

But all of this rainfall is at odds with the way most people think of June weather, as promoted by American poet James Russell Lowell, in the famous couplet, "What is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days." Certainly, especially in parts of the world where rainfall is not seen as a valuable gift from Heaven, rainy days are not considered to be perfect.

Lowell was something of a character. He was a troublemaker at Harvard, but somehow managed to graduate anyway, publishing bits and pieces of satire along the way. He was a journalist, essayist, lawyer, diplomat, and political activist, especially in the cause of the abolition of slavery. He had a sharp wit, and he contributed many epigrams to popular culture, such as , "Blessed are they who have nothing to say and who cannot be persuaded to say it." (You can read more such wit at BrainyQuote.)

The lines about the day in June come from a massive work, The Vision of Sir Launfal, an epic poem set in Arthurian times, dealing with the quest for the Holy Grail. This is merely an excerpt from the prologue to one portion of the work.

What is so Rare as a Day in June?
James Russell Lowell

And what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays;
Whether we look, or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten;
Every clod feels a stir of might,
An instinct within it that reaches and towers,
And, groping blindly above it for light,
Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers;
The flush of life may well be seen
Thrilling back over hills and valleys;
The cowslip startles in meadows green,
The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice,
And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean
To be some happy creature's palace;
The little bird sits at his door in the sun,
Atilt like a blossom among the leaves,
And lets his illumined being o'errun
With the deluge of summer it receives;
His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings,
And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings;
He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest,
In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best?

Now is the high-tide of the year,
And whatever of life hath ebbed away
Comes flooding back with a ripply cheer,
Into every bare inlet and creek and bay;
Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it,
We are happy now because God wills it;
No matter how barren the past may have been,
'Tis enough for us now that the leaves are green;
We sit in the warm shade and feel right well
How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell;
We may shut our eyes but we cannot help knowing
That skies are clear and grass is growing;
The breeze comes whispering in our ear,
That dandelions are blossoming near,
That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing,
That the river is bluer than the sky,
That the robin is plastering his house hard by;
And if the breeze kept the good news back,
For our couriers we should not lack;
We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing,
And hark! How clear bold chanticleer,
Warmed with the new wine of the year,
Tells all in his lusty crowing!

Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how;
Everything is happy now,
Everything is upward striving;
'Tis as easy now for the heart to be true
As for grass to be green or skies to be blue,
'Tis for the natural way of living:
Who knows whither the clouds have fled?
In the unscarred heaven they leave not wake,
And the eyes forget the tears they have shed,
The heart forgets its sorrow and ache;
The soul partakes the season's youth,
And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe
Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth,
Like burnt-out craters healed with snow.

Thanks to virtualology.com for the historical background, and to Pens and Paws for the words.

This morning’s adventure

A pity it had to end

I was sailing. At first, I thought I was in one of the lakes where I often sail, but then I realized this was a bigger place; it was an ocean, albeit a very calm one, and instead of sailing in water that was surrounded by land, I was sailing on water that surrounded land, an island.

From time to time, I would come in to shore along the island, and at each port of call, there were a lot of flashing lights and loud music, and prominently displayed, a ladder of numbers, going from very small (something like $100) to a million dollars. Each time I made port, the next number up the ladder was lit up.

When I got to the $25,000 port, a man in an Elvis-type jumpsuit and carrying a microphone came up to me and said I'd qualified for the main round and asked me if I wanted to participate in it. Curious, I followed him up a hill that looked like it belonged in Tuscany, covered in vineyards, to a crumbling old tower.

When I went into the tower, I found myself on the set of a game show, similar to that of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, but with more audience participation. The stage was set up as a big kitchen, and I was to cook things; with each successful dish prepared, I would move up the ladder toward a million dollars. Members of the audience were invited to come up on the stage with me as sous-chefs. Even though I had gotten to the $25,000 level sailing, for the cooking round, I was to start off back at the bottom of the ladder.

The dishes I prepared started out simple, gradually gaining in sophistication as the numbers on the ladder were lit up higher and higher. At some point relatively early on, it was revealed that everything I cooked was somehow being multiplied by a couple of hundred and served up in a soup kitchen for homeless people.

I had just finished preparing a fettucine alfredo, topped with tender slices of herb-crusted grilled chicken breast, and I was thinking, "Wow, I've got $50,000. Nice. I can pay some bills!" I was looking forward to the next challenge.

Then the alarm clock rang. Bummer.

Light bulb project: results

And the winners are …

… everybody who contributed to the project.

We had a total of 40 jokes, in 19 comments or posts (counting both those left here and those left elsewhere), including my own two samples at the start of the project, and counting the lengthy dialogue inspired by one of the comments as one joke. Depending on how you count things, we may or may not be short of the record that Tillerman's lists project set. The comments/posts count falls short of the record of 30, but the total number of jokes far exceeds the record.

A total of 14 contributors have each earned a pint of their choice at either Socorro Springs Brewing Company or the High Country Saloon: Tillerman, Turinas, Andrew, O Docker, EscapeVelocity, M Squared, darusha, yarg, JP, tim Patterson, 3redbars, David Greenlee/Scuttlebutt, Gerald, and Pat. Thanks to all who participated.

Here are the contributions, in no particular order:

My examples:

How many Etchells sailors does it take to change a light bulb? It doesn't matter, because they're all busy bragging about their fraculators.

How many MacGregor sailors does it take to change a light bulb? Six: one to change the bulb and five to replace the wiring on the boat.

From Tillerman:

How many high school sailors does it take to change a light bulb?
Three. One to change the bulb, one to be a witness, and one to file the protest.

How many Finn sailors does it take to change a light bulb?
Four. One to hold the bulb and three to rotate the ladder.

How many Star sailors does it take to change a light bulb?
115. One to hold the bulb and 114 to rotate the house.

How many Force 5 sailors does it take to change a light bulb?
Irrelevant. There aren't any Force 5 sailors left. They all burned their boats and bought Lasers.

How many Sunfish sailors does it take to change a light bulb?
None. The class rules don't allow the light bulb to be changed.

How many Moth sailors does it take to change a light bulb?
Meaningless question. The light bulb was eliminated to save weight.

How many Laser sailors does it take to change a light bulb?
None. Laser sailors aren't afraid of the dark.

How many Practical Sailor Testers does it take to change a light bulb?
There's no way to find out without signing up to be a subscriber.

From tim Patterson:

How many Hobie Cat sailors does it to change a light bulb? Only two, one to hold the bulb and the other to steer the cat in circles.

From 3redbars:

How many Laser Master's sailors does it take to change a light bulb? Just one because they don't need any coaches or support boats to help them.

From JP:

How many luxury super yacht sailors does it take to change a light bulb? None! There are staff to do that for you.

How many America's Cup sailors does it take to change a light bulb? None! Everything is done by lawyers now.

From EscapeVelocity:

How many Catalina 22 sailors does it take to change a light bulb?
They don't, they prefer the old ones.

How many J22 sailors does it take to change a light bulb?
275 kg.

How many J24 sailors does it take to change a light bulb?
Three. Foredeck holds the bulb, pit turns the ladder, skipper yells at them for not doing it fast enough.

From M Squared:

How many Santana 20 sailors does it take to change a light bulb?
Two: one to hold the lava lamp bottle and one to change the light bulb.

From Andrew:

How many Optimist sailors does it take to change a liight bulb?
One, and her Dad
[who will end up doing it for her while she runs round the boat park with her friends]

From yarg:

How many ISAF rule writing sailors does it take to change a light bulb? 1001. 1000 to exchange emails for three years, and one to print them, pile them, and stand on the pile to reach the light bulb.

How many Laser sailors does it take to change a light bulb? Laser sailors don't use light bulbs, they light the room with a computer monitor while reading Tillerman's blog.

How many Laser sailmaker sailors does it take to change a light bulb? It only takes two, but it takes 30 years to do it.

How many US Sailing sailors does it take to change a light bulb? Seven. One to write the book on light bulbs, one to teach the course, one to collect the money, one to issue the certificate for successful course completion, one to maintain the website for certified light bulb changers, and one to change the light bulb.

(Tillerman responded:

Hey yarg. That last one has only six. You missed out the "one to present US Sailing Life Time Achievement Awards For Excellence in Light Bulb Changing to the other six.")

From darusha:

How many cruising sailors does it take to change a lightbulb?
Six. Only one to change the bulb, but 5 others to talk about the time they changed a lightbulb at the top of the mast while in the middle of a gale on the way to the Tuamotos.

From Gerald:

How many college FJ sailors does it take to change a lightbulb?
To be honest, know one really knows. When it went out, someone just dragged the keg out into the beach and the party went on anyway.

From Pat:

How many Arizona State college sailors does it take to change a light bulb?
None. There's not enough money in the ASU budget to buy new bulbs, so the team will have to keep patching the old ones or try to charter a bulb from another team.

How many high-performance dinghy sailors does it take to change a light bulb?
Forty-three. One to change to bulb and the other forty-two to turn the house upside down into its "normally capsized position" and turn it around.

How many certified club race officers does it take to change a light bulb?
Only one, but he or she will spend a lot of time trying to make the electric line perpendicular to the current.

How many International Judges or Umpires does it take to change a light bulb?
Two -- and the second one will penalize the first one for using any illegal kinetics in violation of Rule 42 whilst the bulb is being changed.
Note: The light bulb is not allowed to exit the receptacle with any more speed than when it went into the receptacle, else additional Penalty Turns will have to be assessed.

How many Race Chairmen does it take to change a light bulb?
Hard to say; it depends entirely upon the handicap system, the bulb's measurements, and whether the bulb will be used primarily in windward-leeward, off-wind, or random-leg courses.

How many sailing instructors does it take to change a light bulb?
Four: One to suddenly throw the bulb overboard, one to keep the bulb in sight, one to execute a crew overboard Figure 8 or Quick Stop recovery approach, and one to recover and change the bulb.

How many regatta organizers does it take to change a light bulb?
Twenty-four. Five to find commercial sponsors for changing the light bulb, six to erect the tent for the light bulb changing ceremony, three to make welcoming speeches for the light bulb, two to write press releases, two more to pass out and collect tickets for the light bulb changing ceremony, one to make videos of the changing, one to take still pictures, one to write liability release forms for the bulb to sign, one to obtain Lighting insurance, one to police the light bulb parking area and one to change the bulb.

How many Women Match Racing Sailors does it take to change a light bulb?
You disgusting male chauvinist pig! Why don't you guys do just a little of the housework so we can concentrate on winning races?!

How many Commodores does it take to change a light bulb?
None. That's the job of the Vice Commodore for Facilities or the House Captain.

How many oil tanker sailors does it take to change a light bulb?
None; the bulbs on tankers are very heavy and not light at all, so it takes a well-equipped shipyard to change them.

How many Parrot Heads does it take to change a light bulb?
None needed; they can find the blender, margarita glasses, and large shaker of salt in the dark.

How many Mommy Boat Coaches does it take to change a light bulb?
Seven: One to sign the entry forms, one to scan the Lighting Instructions and Notice of Lighting for loopholes, one to rig the light bulb, one to tow the light bulb to the area to be lit, one to change the light bulb, one to sneak in some last-minute coaching, and one stationed up-current to relay information about current surges and voltage spikes.

How many Zen Laser Masters does it take to change a light bulb?
Only one, but the bulb really has to want to change.

One joke inspired a chain of responses; I counted the original joke, but not the responses, in my tally of jokes. This is a dialogue between O Docker and Tillerman:

O Docker: How many America's Cup sailors does it take to change a light bulb?***

***The correct answer cannot be determined at this time pending a decision of the New York state appelate courts.

O Docker: This just in on the America's Cup light bulb controversy. The answer will now hinge on how the appellate court interprets crucial language involving exactly what constitutes a light bulb. Attorneys for the challenger are arguing that an electrical appliance designed to emit light is not actually a 'light bulb' unless it has been used at least once in the past as a source of light. Thus, a new bulb cannot actually be considered a 'light bulb'. The decision is not expected to be handed down until sometime in October. What's the deadline for this writing project?

Tillerman: Latest legal filing on the America's Cup light bulb controversy just in...

The phrase "light bulb" in the challenge from the Rio Grande Sailing Club is inherently confusing and open to several interpretations. "Lightbulb" is a noun, free of adjective, and is primarily a technical term to describe an electrical device used for providing illumination.

However the Secretary of RGSC chose to issue a challenge to be performed with a "light bulb". In this context it is clear that light is an adjective and bulb is a noun, and that the adjective modifies the noun.

A "bulb" is defined in botany as "a short, modified, underground stem surrounded by usually fleshy modified leaves that contain stored food for the shoot within."

And "light" is defined both as "pale, whitish, or not deep or dark in color" and also as "of little weight; not heavy".

By choosing such vague language, unfortunately RGSC has not made it clear whether the challenge is to be performed with onion bulbs (former definition) or snowdrop bulbs (latter definition), or whether indeed the challenger may choose to compete with an onion bulb against the defender's snowdrop bulb.

In a subsequent filing I will acquaint the court with similar difficulties and ambiguities in the meaning of the word "screw"...

O Docker: And now this on the America's Cup. In a surprise move, the sailors may not be installing a light bulb at all. They're now being asked to fire off a six-foot-long Roman candle, which most agree is far more spectacular to watch than any kind of light bulb. This has raised an uproar between those who would love to see Roman candles lighting up the night sky and traditionalists who claim generations of Cup sailors have changed light bulbs and the Cup just wouldn't be the Cup, and whatever.

The only problem is that now no one knows just where the Roman candles would be fired off and many are so disgruntled by all of this they're starting to use the word 'screw' in contexts not intended by the drafters of the original challenge.

When the Rio Grande Sailing Club holds a regatta, we usually have at least two fleets. We have the racing fleet, for boats whose designers had racing in mind: Etchells, J/24s, J/22s and the like. Then we have the cruising fleet for boats that were not designed with racing in mind, such as the Freedom 21, the Hunter 34, and the MacGregor 26. Depending upon turnout and availability of a support boat, we may also have a dinghy fleet, which consists primarily of MC Scows but also may include the occasional Capri 14 or the like. Here are the winning jokes for each fleet; each winner will get not just one but two pints upon arrival in New Mexico:

For the racing fleet, from David Greenlee/Scuttlebutt:

How many America's Cup owners does it take to change a light bulb? One. He holds the bulb and the world revolves around him.

For the cruising fleet, JP:

How many iPhone owning sailors does it take to change a light bulb? None! You just download the torchlight app dude!!!

For the dinghy fleet, Andrew:

How many Laser sailors does it take to change a lightbulb?
If Part Three does not specifically allow a change or
addition - IT IS ILLEGAL!

Finally, the grand prize goes to Turinas, whose joke sums up wonderfully what this whole blogging thing is all about. He can choose to upgrade his pint to a pitcher, or he may take a dinner entrée plus a pint:

How many sailing bloggers does it take to change a lightbulb?
250
1 to change the light bulb and 249 to write supportive comments, share lightbulb changing experiences, recollections of the time Tillerman invented the first lightbulb holder made of duct tape, Joe to post a girl in a bikini holding a fish with a light bulb in its mouth (not that I'm complaining, Puffy to post why windsurfers are better lightbulb changers, Bonnie to write a great story of kayakers changing lightbulbs in Brooklyn, Christian to paint a lovely water color, Tugster to share photos of lightbulbs on tugs, etc

Again, thanks to all who participated. It's been fun.

Poetry corner: Paul Simon

I got a Nikon camera …

This post is dedicated to two blogsters who both have recently acquired fancy new digital SLR cameras and who are now learning how to get the most out of them: Gerald, who spent the Christmas gift from his grandparents, and then some, on a really cool camera and who has been taking cool pix since then; and Captain JP, who is taking his digital SLR on an adventure from which I hope to see lots of other cool pix (or sure shots or whatever – I don't know what brand his camera is).

The technology may have changed, so now the pictures are recorded as digital bits on a memory chip as opposed to being the result of a chemical reaction of light-sensitive substances on film, but there's still resonance with the song "Kodachrome," the song by Paul Simon that he recorded with Art Garfunkel many years ago.

Kodachrome
Paul Simon

When I think back
On all the crap I learned in high school
It's a wonder
I can think at all
And though my lack of edu---cation
Hasn't hurt me none
I can read the writing on the wall

Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, Oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don't take my Kodachrome away

If you took all the girls I knew
When I was single
And brought them all together for one night
I know they'd never match
my sweet imagination
everything looks WORSE in black and white

Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, Oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don't take my Kodachrome away

Mama don't take my Kodachrome away
Mama don't take my Kodachrome away
Mama don't take my Kodachrome away

Mama don't take my Kodachrome
Mama don't take my Kodachrome
Mama don't take my Kodachrome away

Mama don't take my Kodachrome
Leave your boy so far from home
Mama don't take my Kodachrome away
Mama don't take my Kodachrome

Mama don't take my Kodachrome away

Thanks to SING365.com for the lyrics. Interesting note … when I first arrived at the site, because I have a slow dial-up connection, the advertising wasn't visible. By the time I got to the point of pasting the lyrics into this post, the advertising had showed up for … yeah … Nikon cameras.

Animal rights?

Really, how far is too far?

So our President is now famous for swatting a fly.

This may be disappointing to those conservatives who wish to question his competence to be commander in chief, on the basis that he's going to be reluctant to use force as a means of influencing rogue governments. They can no longer use the saying, "He wouldn't hurt a fly" as an implication that he's averse to getting into a fight.

And of course, the comedians are having a lot of fun; late-night television is full of jokes and spoofs of the incident.

Meanwhile, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has weighed in: the President's act was one of unconscionable cruelty. Not only did he execute that innocent fly, he did it on international television, making a mockery of the creature's death. Worse, afterward, the camera zoomed in on the lifeless body, preventing it from having even the least modicum of dignity. And then the comedians swept in, making a mockery of the loss of this valuable living creature.

Now, I do value much of the work that PETA and other organizations do to protect animals from cruelty and wanton exploitation. Subjecting an animal to pain, and even death, simply for human entertainment, such as dog-fighting and bullfights, is barbaric. Bludgeoning baby seals to death, so those humans who are wealthy enough can purchase coats made from their extra-soft fur, is unconscionable. Raising calves in cramped, dark, dirty conditions so that their meat will be paler and more tender is unthinkable. I respect people who have chosen not to eat meat on moral grounds; they have decided that even humane methods of raising and slaughtering animals are cruelty that they do not wish to support, and I am glad that they take that stand. They raise consciousness even among those of us who do still eat meat.

But a fly?

I once saw a television documentary that was a countdown of the deadliest creatures on the planet. Guess who the winner was? No, it wasn't sharks or poisonous snakes or spiders. It was flies. Through history, the genus, which includes mosquitoes (Spanish for "little flies"), has been responsible for more deaths than any other. Malaria, sleeping sickness, dengue fever, West Nile virus, Ebola, E coli, rotavirus, the list of diseases carried by flies goes on and on. Fleas may have carried the bubonic plague that devastated Europe in the 14^th century, but even with that, the flies have them beat.

I hope Obama grabbed the hand sanitizer after swatting that fly.

Rollin’ on (or near) the River

You don't always have to be on the water to enjoy the water

For those of us who live in the desert, water, any water, is special. It is in short supply, and so it is highly valued.

In a city, a river can also be special. It makes for a ribbon of nature that can transcend both urbanization and blight. Two of the blogs that I frequent, Captain JP's log and Beer and Trucks, have recently made posts about bicycling upon trails that run alongside rivers through urban areas, one along the Thames through London and its environs, and one along the Arkansas through Little Rock and North Little Rock. Albuquerque also has its own Paseo del Bosque Bike Trail alongside the Rio Grande.

I haven't been able to ride a bicycle since I suffered a medical malpractice incident that I'd rather not dwell on right now. But I can and do walk – lately, not as much as I should. Provided everybody is reasonably civilized, trails can be shared by walkers, runners, bicyclists, and equestrians.

JP reports on a bicycle trip he made, Putney to Kingston and back by bike, through a bunch of places whose names will be familiar to fans of the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical Cats, as places terrorized by Growltiger, the pirate cat. He has pictures to prove that, even in a heavily urbanized area, a river creates an environment that feels distant from the city.

Andrew doesn't provide any pretty pictures, but he does give us a map of the bicycle trail system, which is still very much under construction. I'm not sure whether it's coincidence that the Bill Clinton Presidential Center is in the same place as Heifer International. I haven't been to Little Rock since the construction of the bicycle trails began, but I do remember that there were parks along the river that provided welcome green space, and I imagine that the bicycle trails expand upon that concept.

Meanwhile, here in Albuquerque, we are increasingly aware of how precious our bosque is. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, a bosque is a wooded area alongside a river in an arid region – the southwestern equivalent of an oasis. It is a sanctuary for much diverse wildlife. It draws its sustenance from the river, and therefore, it depends on the river to remain healthy. Through the early 20^th century, the river flooded every spring, providing sustenance to the bosque, much as the Nile did in ancient Egypt; subsequent flood control made the land along the river safer to build houses on or to plant farms, but gradually the bosque was dying. Recently, we've discovered how to manage the river with controlled flooding, rather than flood control, and the bosque is coming back.

I know there are other cities with rivers flowing through them, such as San Antonio. I have chosen to feature these three as examples of where the river provides an antidote to the city. If you have other such cities to recommend, go ahead and tell us in the comments, and provide links if you have them.

Technology has been unkind to me

From the simple to the massive, various systems have been coming down with bugs …

Since Thursday, I've been hit by several failures of technology.

Thursday night, the bulb in the halogen torchere in the living room burned out. No problem, I thought, we always keep a spare in the tool drawer in the kitchen. Nope. Apparently the last time that bulb was changed, whoever changed it didn't put a new spare bulb on the shopping list. OK, I thought, I'll turn on the hanging lamp in the other corner. It's not as bright as the torchere, but it's bright enough to read by. It's plugged into a wall outlet that's controlled by a light switch near the door. I flipped the switch, and nothing happened. Well, all right, I reasoned, the living room is open to the dining room; I can turn on the dining room light. Three of the five light bulbs came on, and as I watched, one of them flickered out. OK, I'll just put new bulbs in, I thought. I went back to the tool drawer and found that there were no candelabra bulbs either. So when I'm in the living room, I'm pretty much in the dark. (Of course, there are some who would argue that I'm in the dark most of the time.) Yeah, I'll get to the store eventually and get some light bulbs, but I've had other things occupying my time.

Also Thursday, my ISP was having problems; I could get online, but I couldn't access email. This was a problem, as I had set the email system at the community college where I teach to forward email coming from the student information system. That meant that if my students sent me a message, I couldn't get it. When the ISP continued to have problems into Friday, I reset my account on the student email system so as not to forward to my ISP anymore. The student system was scheduled to be out for maintenance all weekend, but if my ISP was flaking out on me, I didn't really have any other choice.

Then there has been a problem in the blogosphere. It's not earth-shaking, it's just that there's a feature on one of my favorite blogs that isn't working. The cessation of its function coincided both with the blog author's making some changes to improve the feature and with my receiving an upgrade of Java. Since nobody else who visits that blog has reported a problem, I'm more inclined to blame the Java upgrade than the blog owner's revision, although it may just be plain bad luck that the revision and the Java upgrade happen not to agree with each other.

This morning, I was lying in bed, annoyed at how noisy the neighbors' bug-zapper was. Yes, the number of mosquitoes has skyrocketed in Albuquerque lately, but this was ridiculous – popping so often, and so loudly, it was almost as if it was in the house instead of next door. Then I realized it WAS in the house. I jumped out of bed and ran to the computer room, where I found the monitor of the desktop computer was doing a very good impression of a bug zapper, making big popping noises each accompanied by a flash on the screen. Pressing the power button caused no change in this behavior; I had to turn off the power at the power strip.

Late this evening I got an email from a student who didn't pay attention to the multiple announcements I had made in class about the student information system being down for the weekend, who needed to know the homework assignments for tomorrow. OK, so that one's not really my problem, just the student's, but it was annoying. It would have been good of the IT people to have made the major system upgrade between terms.

So today I was working on grading papers, and then creating what I call Reality Checks. These are mini-report cards, about the size of a check, that give each student a snapshot of his or her standing in the class – whether the student is doing well, keeping up with the work, needing to work a little harder, or needing to work a lot harder. While I create all of my class documents on the laptop computer, the desktop computer is what's attached to the printer. Usually, that means I copy the files onto a thumb drive and take it over to the desktop to print the files. With the desktop's monitor doing its bug-zapper impression, I needed to clear space for the laptop on the desktop's desk, unplug the monitor from the power strip, turn on the power strip, plug the printer into the laptop, and wait until the printer and laptop decided they would be willing to talk to each other.

About halfway through printing the Reality Checks, the printer stopped printing and refused to do any more. It had decided that one of its toner cartridges was empty, and it simply would not print until the cartridge was replaced. That is one of this printer's more frustrating "features" – there is absolutely no detectable degradation in print quality, and I expect even when the print quality does decline, it would still be OK for a couple hundred more pages, especially if the toner cartridge gets shaken up once in a while. Sure, the print quality might not be good for important stuff, but it would certainly be OK for rough drafts. It's a huge waste to have to replace a toner cartridge when it's probably still usable. What's even more frustrating is that if one of the color toner cartridges needs replacing, the printer will still refuse to print even if it is told to print in black and white and not even use color. And the printer is clever, oh, so clever – it isn't fooled when the toner cartridge is taken out, shaken, and replaced. Oh, no, it's not going to fall for that trick.

Meanwhile, I'm wishing the desktop computer's monitor really were a bug zapper. I'm getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. They love O-negative.

Going back to the beginning, here's a group writing project that shouldn't take too much time and energy – create a light bulb joke with the format "How many ____ sailors does it take to change a light bulb? ____, (because) ____."

For example, "How many Etchells sailors does it take to change a light bulb? It doesn't matter, because they're all busy bragging about their fraculators."

"How many MacGregor sailors does it take to change a light bulb? Six: one to change the bulb and five to replace the wiring on the boat."

Post your answers here and/or on your own blogs with a link here. Come on, I'm expecting some good ones about Lasers and Force 5's.

Old soldiers never die

… but at least in Texas and New Mexico, we seem to take care of them well

For the past two weeks, Pat and I (especially Pat) have been dealing with the needs of an old soldier whose health has been failing. It's been hard, especially for Pat. He's had to make some health-care decisions for the old soldier, and, once the old soldier's health condition improved to the point that he didn't need to be in the hospital, he was still not in good enough shape to go home, so Pat has been working with the hospital social worker to find a suitable nursing facility.

Pat and Gerald have traveled to the south end of Texas to help with coordinating care for the old soldier. They have more than one mess to deal with; they're working on sorting out about 100 pounds of paperwork that they have found all over the house, stuffed under furniture and in various other random places. In addition, it's been a while since anybody took out the trash.

The old soldier has insurance coverage that will pay for nursing-home care for a while, and he's now on a waiting list to get into a veterans' home, where he will get care for the rest of his life, if he needs it (although Pat hopes he will get better and be able to return to his own home—I have my doubts about that).

I was catching up on back newspapers, and there was an article about selecting nursing homes. It had a link to Medicare's website, in which nursing homes are rated on a scale of one to five stars, based on quality of care. The home where the old soldier is currently residing gets only so-so ratings, but the veterans' home gets really good ratings; there's a good reason for that waiting list.

And then I checked out the veterans' home in T or C, near the lake. I figured that if we could bring the old soldier there, it would be easy for Pat to visit him, and it would also give us more reason to come to the lake, so we would go there even if the weather prediction wasn't for good sailing weather, and if it did happen to be good for sailing, we could go sailing.

It turns out that the veterans' home in T or C is one of the very best nursing facilities in the country. On a scale of one to five, it scored a five on all of the criteria used to make the evaluation. I'm sure there's a waiting list to get in, but those old soldiers who do get in are going to get the best of care.

Rhetoric Moment: Logical fallacies

Making sure your argument holds water

Whenever you write, whatever you write, it's important to know about logical fallacies, arguments that, at first glance, appear sensible – but that don't stand up to closer scrutiny. For that matter, even if you never write anything, knowing how to spot fallacies can help you with the rest of your life.

There are two good reasons to know about logical fallacies. First, you can make your writing stronger by avoiding them; an essay (or blog post) full of fallacies will not be as credible as one in which the reasoning is solid. Second, if you can spot logical fallacies in other material you see, you can develop critical thinking that will allow you to make good decisions. Advertising and politics are full of logical fallacies, and you don't want to fall for them.

Here are some of the logical fallacies that you want to watch out for:

• Hasty generalization. This is jumping to a conclusion when you don't have sufficient evidence to support it. For example, if I ride a city bus once, and the driver is rude to me, I can't logically come to the conclusion that all of the bus drivers in Albuquerque need to improve their manners. It may be that just that one driver is impolite, or it could even be that this driver was just having a bad day.
  
• Slippery slope. This is a subspecies of hasty generalization that uses the reasoning that once a given course of action is started, there is no choice but to continue. Politicians often use this fallacy: "If we legalize medical marijuana, then we will have to legalize it for all purposes, and then we will have to legalize hashish, and then cocaine, and then we will end up as a nation of hopeless drug addicts."
  
• Either/or fallacy (false dichotomy). This is the assumption that there are only two choices, with no room for compromise or gray area between the options, as in "Either you stay in school, graduate, and become rich, or you drop out and are doomed to poverty for the rest of your life." There are other possibilities: Some people don't get a college degree but go into business, find they're good at it, and make millions. Others major in something relatively useless, like English, graduate, and end up teaching in a community college, where they definitely do not get rich!
  
• False analogy. This is comparing two things that do not logically compare to each other, as in, "If we can put a man on the Moon, why can't we cure the common cold?" Space technology has very little to do with biomedical science.
  
• Bandwagon. This is one of my favorites. It's the argument that because everybody is doing something, it must be right. Parents will be familiar with this one: "But, Mom, all of my friends got new Camaros for their sixteenth birthdays!" The standard response, of course, is, "If all of your friends jumped off a cliff, would you do so too?" The bandwagon fallacy is also represented by a couple of bumper stickers that I have seen. One says, "Eat more lamb; 40,000 coyotes can't be wrong." The other, which I have seen primarily on pickup trucks in Texas, follows the same reasoning: "Eat (excrement); sixty billion flies can't be wrong." (I happen to agree with the coyotes and not the flies.)
  
• Non sequitur (does not follow). This fallacy is drawing a conclusion that cannot readily be derived from the information at hand: "Janet would be a great kindergarten teacher because she loves kids." Loving kids doesn't necessarily lead to a person being a good kindergarten teacher; Jeffrey Dahmer loved kids, but he certainly wouldn't have made a good kindergarten teacher – the school officials might start wondering why the class was shrinking.
  
• Begging the question. This fallacy works by ignoring the real question at hand and assuming it has already been answered. For example, the wife says to the husband, "Honey, we need to talk about whether it's time to get a new pickup truck," and the husband responds, "All right, should we get the Ford or the Chevy?"
  
• Ad hominem (to the person). This is another way of sidestepping the real issue by talking about who the opponent is rather than addressing the points the opponent is making: "Bill Clinton supports the North American Free Trade Agreement, but he cheats on his wife."
  
• Guilt by association. This is a subspecies of ad hominem fallacy that argues that because a person is a member of a particular group, we can expect that person to act in a certain way: "The army is a strictly regimented institution; therefore, General Nimrod can't possibly understand the needs of free-spirited civilians." An uglier form of guilt by association is discrimination, when someone with brown or black skin, especially from a high-crime neighborhood, is automatically assumed to be a criminal.
  
• Post hoc (false cause). The Latin phrase post hoc, ergo propter hoc translates as "after this, therefore because of this." It's the assumption that because event B happened after event A, event A must have caused event B: "I washed my pickup truck this morning, and this afternoon it rained." Politicians use this one a lot, and so do advertisers: "I switched to Super-Fresh toothpaste, and now the girls are crazy about me." Well, maybe it was the toothpaste, or maybe the guy just bought a cool new pickup truck and the girls all want to go for a ride.
  
• Circular reasoning. This is the argument that A is true because of B, and B is true because of A. Since the truth of each argument depends on the other, there is no outside evidence to prove the case: "We know that God exists because the Bible says so, and we know the Bible is true because it is the word of God."
  
• Arguing from strength. This is another way of ignoring the real issue or the merits of the argument. Its reasoning is, "I'm bigger and stronger than you are; therefore, I'm right." In Albuquerque, this argument is often expressed at traffic intersections by the drivers of jumbo SUVs: "I don't care what color the light is; I'm bigger than you are, and I'm going through, so get out of my way!"
  
• Appeal to pity. Yet another way of ignoring the actual question at hand, the appeal to pity tries to tug at the audience's heartstrings instead of looking at the facts: "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, surely you cannot find my client guilty of murdering his mother and father; the poor boy is an orphan!" Conversely, some prosecuting attorneys will argue about how horrible the crime was, instead of looking at evidence that would prove or disprove that the defendant actually committed it.
  
• Appeal to authority. This is calling in an "expert" witness who isn't really an expert. Advertising is full of this type of fallacy. A recent example is the television commercial in which a scantily-clad Paris Hilton washes a car while promoting cheeseburgers. Given her figure, I imagine Paris Hilton is not exactly familiar with cheeseburgers. She's just in the commercial because she's famous and attractive, not because she knows anything about the product.
  
• Arguing from ignorance. This is the argument that, since we haven't seen anything to disprove it, something must be true: "We don't have any evidence that the governor and his buddies took kickbacks; therefore, they must not have taken any." Maybe they did, and maybe they didn't; if we don't have any evidence either way, we need to investigate further.
  

You may notice that there is overlap between some of these fallacies; that's the way rhetoric is sometimes. You may also sometimes run into an argument that contains more than one fallacy. It can be exciting to look at something and say, "Aha! False cause!" or, "Hey, that's a non sequitur." But even more important than being able to put a name to a particular fallacy is just to recognize it for what it is and see that it doesn't logically add up. Beware the politicians and advertisers, and keep your own arguments free of these fallacies that don't hold water.

The Race to the Elephant

A good weekend, despite some miscues

Saturday, the Rio Grande Sailing Club's Anniversary Cup Regatta took on a new format. Thanks to sponsorship from the company that operates the marinas on Elephant Butte Lake, the race also became the Race to the Elephant, designed to showcase the marinas by starting near Rock Canyon Marina, rounding a mark near Marina del Sur, and finishing at the Damsite Marina, with a circumnavigation of the landform that gives the lake its name as part of the grand finale.

I was sailing with Zorro, Twinkle Toes, Penzance and Space Invader on Twinkle Toes' boat, the Hunter 34 Windependent, the same boat upon which we had that peak experience in last year's Anniversary Cup. Gerald, recovering from injuries sustained in a bicycle accident the previous week and eager to play with his new camera, originally was going to go on the committee boat and take pictures, but at the last minute he was persuaded to join Yoda, Esther, and Cherokee on the J/24 Hot Flash, as Cherokee had a seriously injured shoulder that limited her abilities to trim the jib. Gerald joked that with his injured elbow and her shoulder, the two of them added up to one full crew member. That left Pat single-handing Black Magic, but as conditions were light, I figured he could probably handle the boat all right. He'd actually done fairly well two weeks before in the single-handed Joshua Slocum Regatta, aside from being OCS without realizing it at the start, so what would have been a third-place finish didn't count.

At first, winds were nearly non-existent, so we waited for nearly two hours to get some wind with which to run the race. Just before the deadline at which the committee would have called off the racing to try again Sunday, we got some wind – not much wind, but enough to have a race.

We had three fleets, racers, cruisers, and dinghies, with two starts five minutes apart – one for the racers, and one combined start for the cruisers and dinghies (there were only two dinghies registered for the race, and only one ended up starting; if someone from, say, Rhode Island had showed up with a Laser, he would have stood a very good chance of taking home a really nice trophy).

The racers took off with Pat on Black Magic in the lead; for most of the first leg of the race, he and Mother and Dumbledore on the J/24 Kachina would swap leads several times.

Windependent is not exactly a good boat for light air. But we had a very lightweight drifter for a headsail, sort of a cross between a genoa and a spinnaker. It turned out to be a very good sail for us. We totally nailed the start, and we were off. Soon we found ourselves catching up to the racing fleet, while most of the cruising fleet was indistinct in the distance behind us.

Then the wind came up. As the drifter was only good for wind speeds up to 7 knots, we took it down and unrolled the heavy headsail. For about 40 minutes, we had winds in the 10-12 knot range, Windependent's sweet spot. At one point, even with a start five minutes behind, we were ahead of nearly all of the racing fleet; only Black Magic and Kachina remained ahead of us – and those two boats were gradually pulling away from everybody else.

Then the wind faded. We rolled up the heavy headsail and set up the drifter again. But even with that sail, we couldn't go fast. For a while, we did keep up with most of the racing fleet, but a couple of the boats in the cruising fleet were catching up. Meanwhile, Kachina and Black Magic were vanishing over the horizon.

Unfortunately, disaster struck. Because the roller-furling heavy headsail was mounted on the forestay, we had been sailing with the drifter flying from the spinnaker halyard. It was working well for us, until the shackle on the spinnaker halyard broke. The official race photography boat was right next to us at the time, and thanks to serendipity, the photographer snapped a photo just as that shackle gave way. I ended up on the rail of the boat, hauling the sail onboard while Twinkle Toes and Space Invader got the other headsail working again.

Without the drifter, we were toast. The US 25 Viento Bueno and the MacGregor 26C Mac Goddess were right on our heels. Worse, with a retractable keel, Mac Goddess could take shortcuts through shallows. We had some exciting tactical encounters with those two boats as we did the loop around the Elephant, and we were the first cruising boat over the finish line, ahead of a couple of the racing boats even, but on corrected time, Viento Bueno was first, Mac Goddess was second, and we were third in the cruising fleet.

Still, it was an exciting race and a rewarding experience. The day turned out even better for Pat – after the first mark, he had lost ground to Kachina, finishing about 10 minutes behind her, but nearly a half-hour ahead of the next boat to finish. In the overall, corrected standings for all fleets together, Kachina was first, Black Magic second, and Viento Bueno third.

That night, there was a gala dinner and awards banquet. It was expensive (at least by New Mexico standards) at $25 a head, but the food was absolutely fabulous, at least for carnivores. The centerpiece of the meal was a massive, tasty, tender slab of beef – something on the order of 16 ounces of rib-eye. The Damsite has a new chef, and he really showed off his talents. (He had done some awesome dinner-plate-sized sweet rolls for the skippers' meeting breakfast that morning, as well.)

Sunday, it was time to return the boats from the Damsite (where race participants got free overnight slips) to where they live – we had to get Black Magic to the mast-up storage lot at Marina del Sur, while Cornhusker needed to get her boat, the Freedom 21 Free and Clear IV, which she has just bought, to Rock Canyon Marina. Gerald sailed with Cornhusker, while Pat and I took Pyrat on board Black Magic as crew. He's interested in buying an Etchells for himself, but first, he'd like to be crew for us for a few months to learn how the boat works. This works well for us, as our current loyal crew, Penzance, has just bought himself his own Etchells, and we were looking for a replacement.

Winds were much better Sunday than Saturday. They started light and switchy, and then they filled in to somewhere in the 10-15 knot range. Pyrat had a ball – he's been sailing all of his life, especially dinghies, and he was delighted with Black Magic and how she handles. He's super on mainsail trim, and he's going to be a great crew member for the fall racing series. Meanwhile, I hope we can sail together on a regular basis over the summer as well; we're leaving Black Magic at Elephant Butte this summer instead of taking our usual migration to Heron.

Wag more, bark less

It's a good philosophy for more than just dogs

Not too long ago, I spotted a bumper sticker that said in large print "Wag more," with, beneath that sentiment in much smaller print, "Bark less." The same car also had a bumper sticker that said "I (heart) my Golden Retriever" – a breed that is particularly well-known for being friendly.

Cornhusker and Bassmaster have a Labrador retriever, Bo, who embodies that sentiment. When he wags, it's not just the tail; it's the entire back half of the dog. When a person approaches, even a total stranger, Bo exudes enthusiasm, as if he's greeting a lifelong buddy. He's not exactly a great watchdog; he seldom barks, and if somebody is willing to go a few rounds of "fetch" with him, that makes his day.

Dogs do such a great job of being joyful, and retrievers do it better than most breeds. Bo goes even beyond what most retrievers do.

Even though humans don't have tails to wag, the world would be a much better place if people would follow the sentiment on that bumper sticker. Be joyful, and celebrate the moment with whoever is around to celebrate with, instead of griping and complaining. You don't have to go chasing a tennis ball; just savor the time you have with your friends.

Top Ten Lame or Not-So-Lame Excuses Not To Get to the Lake

In New Mexico, most of the people who sail have to travel a great distance to get to the lake. That distance imposes hardships. In response to Tillerman's challenge, to create a list related to sailing, here is a list of excuses that have been used by sailors in the desert to explain why they haven't come to the lake to sail on a particular weekend:

10. I went to a party in Juarez, and in the morning I was so hung-over I couldn't even think about going to the lake.

9. My car broke down, so I couldn't come to the lake.

8. I was getting my mortgage refinanced, and the appraiser was supposed to come. I waited all day, but the appraiser never did show up.

7. I had a sick cat that I had to take to the vet.

6. The weather forecast was for no wind, so I didn't want to drive for two hours and not end up going sailing.

5. The weather forecast was for way too much wind, so I didn't want to drive for two hours and not end up going sailing.

4. I went to visit my new girlfriend, and her violent boyfriend (she had lied and called him "ex") slashed my tires.

3. My boat suffered serious damage in a storm last spring; a bunch of other people said they'd lend me boats to sail while mine was getting repairs, but none of them came through.

2. I was getting inducted into the Ohio Track and Field Hall of Fame, and I didn't want to dishonor Jesse Owens by not showing up to be honored alongside him.

1. I didn't know you were counting on me.

OK, it's pretty clear, these are all Zorro's excuses. The thing is, even though some of them make him look bad, I can still forgive him for them. I do love him, and he would have to do something seriously egregious before I would stop loving him. I am, and will always be, his number-one fan.

A bit of fiction

OK, so I don’t have a list yet, but I have a response to somebody else’s

Tillerman has issued a challenge to his readers to come up with blog posts involving lists related to sailing. I haven’t yet come up with my own list, although I promise that I will … I’m working on it.

Meanwhile, one of the regulars in Tillerman’s circle, Captain JP, has contributed not just one but two lists, one on “Why dinghies are better than yachts” and one on “Why yachts are better than dinghies.” Since the boat that I sail has some characteristics of both yachts and dinghies, I found the seemingly contradictory positions interesting.

Now, something I’m aspiring to do is to write novels, and I have a series in progress, centering around a fictional community college English instructor in a fictional coastal town in California, who just happens to be around when murders happen, and so she ends up solving them. (No, her name isn’t Jessica Fletcher, and she’s in her 30s, not her 70s.)

A couple of my loyal readers have commented about how I don’t put as much fiction up as I used to. And then Captain JP made this observation on his discussion of why yachts are better than dinghies:

2. Yachts are romantic, allowing you to sail your love off into the sunset or find a quiet cove to go skinny dipping in

So here is what I hope is a special treat – the closing passage of my first novel, Murder at the Community College, illustrating the point that JP makes. A bit of background is in order: my main character, Hannah, has successfully solved the murders (there were several), but in the process of bringing the criminal to justice, she ended up with a serious brain injury (I wrote this before the incident in which I got clocked by the boom on a sailboat, so don’t attribute any realism to my experiences). In the denouement, she has been convalescing in the home of her new boyfriend, a police detective with whom she originally had no intention of falling in love, and, as far as she knows, the sailboat that used to be her residence is languishing, neglected.

On a sunny, bright, clear day in late fall, Harry’s pickup pulled up at the Siete Mares Marina. Harry helped Hannah out of the truck, and she leaned on him as she walked, unsteadily, with the help of a cane, to the marina gate. She was gaining strength, as her injured brain re-learned how to make her legs walk, but she was far from completely recovered, and she still suffered from some numbness as well as poor control. Harry opened the gate, and he helped her to get down the pier, almost carrying her down the steep gangway until they reached the level floating docks, then steadying her as they made their way to Nice Ketch. “I’ve been doing some work,” Harry said. “I hope you like it.” He picked her up and carried her up the steps and over the gunwale, and then he settled her on a seat in the cockpit.

Hannah noticed several new pieces of deck hardware, shiny and bright – cleats, fairleads, padeyes, shackles, and winches, and she realized that Harry had rearranged all of the lines so that they all led to the cockpit. That meant that all, or nearly all, of the operations of the sails could be handled from there. The boat could be run without anyone having to get out on the foredeck, and it could probably even be run by only one person – not that sailing single handed sounded all that interesting now that she had Harry to sail with. She also noticed that all of the old hardware had been cleaned up, so that it, too, gleamed in the sun, and that dirt, mildew, and seagull droppings no longer marred the sail covers. She imagined that beneath the surface, the sails themselves had probably also been cleaned up, and probably the winches had been taken apart, cleaned, lubricated, and then reassembled. Harry had seemed to be spending a lot of time at work lately; now she realized that he hadn’t been spending all of that time working at the job he got paid for.

“Why,” Hannah said, barely able to speak, “why, it’s lovely! We can sail now, without waiting for me to get better!”

Harry sat down next to Hannah and took her in his arms. He kissed her, and she kissed back, savoring the feel of his arms around her, and clinging to him with all of the strength that she could summon. “Yes,” Harry said. “We can sail right now.” He went below to inspect the engine filters and belts, and then he came back up and started the engine. Unlike the first, balky start, it came to life quickly, and settled into its gentle purr, like a happy kitten. Harry climbed up on the deck to unzip the covers on the main and mizzen sails; the genoa, the large sail at the bow of the boat, was roller furled, so its cover didn’t need unzipping. He then stepped ashore to cast off the dock lines, and then got back into the cockpit, where he pulled the throttle back. The boat shifted into reverse with a satisfying thunk as the reversing prop set itself, and Harry nudged the throttle a little more, easing the boat out of the slip, turning the wheel as the bow of the boat cleared the pier. Then he straightened the helm, pushed the throttle forward through neutral and into forward gear, with another thunk from the prop, gave the throttle another push forward, and steered the boat out of the marina, down the channel toward the sea. Hannah was impressed with his skills; she now almost regretted that it was she, and not he, who had ended up with Nice Ketch all those years ago. Harry and the boat almost seemed to go together. Then she realized, Harry and she did go together. And since she and the boat went together, too, that meant the three of them were all part of one unit.

The boat swayed gently; the waves within the channel were small, and the wind, while steady, wasn’t too strong. Harry turned the boat into the wind, put the throttle in neutral, and then hauled on the main halyard to hoist the mainsail. Once that was up, he cleated the halyard and loosened the topping lift so that the boom was no longer held up by it, but rather by the sail. He then repeated the motions with the mizzen sail, the smaller sail aft of the mainsail. The sails began to billow in the wind, and the boat heeled slightly as the wind’s power pushed on the sails. Next, Harry uncleated the genoa furling line and pulled on the port genoa sheet to unroll it so that it, too, could fill with wind. The boat heeled more, and it surged forward with the power of the wind. Harry switched off the engine, and an uncanny quiet descended on the boat. Now, all of the sounds were natural – the splashing of the waves against the hull, the cry of the seagulls in the distance, the quiet whoosh of the wind, the billowing of the sails, and the occasional creak of the rigging.

“Oh, Harry, it’s so beautiful!” Hannah exclaimed. “Thank you for fixing my boat so we could sail together.”

“It’s as much a gift to myself as to you,” Harry said. “Being on a beautiful boat, on a beautiful day, with a beautiful woman.” He reached out, took Hannah’s hand, and squeezed it.

Harry steered the boat out into the open ocean. The waves were bigger here, but the boat was large enough to take them smoothly, surging up a bit, plowing through the crests with a splash, and then dropping down a bit in the troughs. The wind out here was steadier and stronger, and the boat heeled, just enough, as if to let Hannah know that the boat was eager to go. Harry set the boat on a reach, a course at right angles to the wind, at which the boat would sail the most efficiently, and then he set the autohelm and came to sit next to Hannah on the upwind side of the boat. He put his arms around her, and she put her arms around him, and they kissed, savoring each other’s taste and the warmth of each other’s bodies.

“I love you,” Harry said.

“Love you,” Hannah said.

So it’s sappy. But I really did like the idea of Hannah and Harry literally sailing off into the sunset.

Internet access blues

Whatever happened to all the incentives to get rural and low-income people onto the Net?

As I've chronicled here before, Pat's and my Internet access has been threatened by a battle between our little local ISP and the Big Bad Telecom company, and the Not-So-Big Not-So-Bad Regional Telecom company has also gotten snarled up in the battle, and so have a lot of other little ISPs and telecoms. Now our ISP has been divided up into at least two different divisions (both of whom had been sending us bills, and we thought maybe we had straightened out the situation, but now it seems the wrong one is the one that is getting our money), and that ISP is no longer providing service at Five O'Clock Somewhere.

The problem is compounded by new policies at the community college where I work. Even though the state legislature cut our funding and ordered us to raise tuition in order to make up for the funding cuts, our administration has chosen NOT to raise tuition, reasoning that in periods of financial hardship, the very last thing our students need is a tuition increase. The upshot of that decision is that a whole lot of expenses have to be cut elsewhere.

One of the areas in which we are to cut expenses is paper, and all of the person-hours it takes to handle said paper. No longer will there be paper grade sheets, on which we record students' homework, attendance, and other data. That will all now be on electronic spreadsheets. The burden of keeping records has been shifted to the instructors; the department will no longer maintain file drawers of paper grade sheets, so if a student protests a grade, the instructor's electronic spreadsheet will be requested.

(I consider that system to be flawed, since an instructor could easily alter the spreadsheet before submitting it to the administrator dealing with the protest; it would be much better for the instructor to submit a spreadsheet to be kept on file, just as the paper grade sheets have been kept, routinely at the end of the term. We want to keep the system honest. But that's just a digression from my main point.)

Anyhow, because of these changes in how things are done, I must now keep in contact with the college even when I'm not physically present. I might be able to be out of touch over a weekend, but I shouldn't go longer than two days without checking in. That means no more extended stays at Five O'Clock Somewhere unless I have Internet access.

But, since Pat is currently not working (or at least not working for money – he's been doing some great volunteer work for both the New Mexico and Rio Grande sailing clubs, and some stuff for the sailing folks in Arizona and elsewhere), we can't afford to pay any more for Internet access than we're currently paying, $20 a month (plus taxes) for dialup access.

Here is what we need: Internet access, both in Albuquerque and in northern Rio Arriba County (dialup will do), from a single provider, at a single price of $20 or less.

Here is what we have found: No land-based Internet provider serves both Albuquerque and northern Rio Arriba County. We can keep our existing ISP in Albuquerque for $20 a month, and pay another ISP another $20 a month for service at Five O'Clock Somewhere. We can ditch our land-line in Albuquerque and use our cell-phone provider for high-speed Internet, saving $20 a month on the land-line and $20 a month on what we pay our current ISP but adding $60 a month to the cell-phone bill, and cell signals don't reach Five O'Clock Somewhere, so we'd have to drive to somewhere there was a signal to access the Internet. We can get satellite-based Internet for about $50 a month that would be available anywhere, but right now, $50 a month would be a severe strain on our budget.

Here is what we have not found: Where the money is going that you get charged on your telephone bill that is supposed to subsidize Internet access for rural (e.g. Rio Arriba County) or low-income (e.g. AGI of $16,000) people. Yeah, look at your phone bill, your cell phone bill, your Internet bill … how much are you being charged in taxes that are supposed to be helping people like me and Pat? None of these ISPs make any mention of any way for rural or low-income people to apply for subsidies. We did find one ISP with a great discount for educators in Taos County, but that was just that ISP's special program, and it had nothing to do with the federal system.

An interesting thought … if you would rather not spend your money on these strange fees that you see on your telephone bill, you could send them to Five O'Clock Somewhere instead. I guarantee you that they will actually be used for what they claim to be for, Internet access for rural and low-income people. If some angel were to pay for satellite-based Internet, we would probably erect a shrine.

The weather was perfect

And not just on average!

This past weekend had its ups and downs. Saturday was the Joshua Slocum single-hand race, while Sunday was the Jack and Jill his-and-hers race. The plan was that I would be Principal Race Officer on Saturday, allowing Pat to sail Black Magic in the Slocum, and Pat would be PRO Sunday, so Zorro and I could defend our title in the Jack and Jill on Constellation.

The club has recently been given a small motorboat for use as a race committee support boat. It's old, it's been sitting in a back yard neglected for some years, and it needs some work. However, it is a basically sturdy boat, and it's already beginning to prove its worth (more on that in a moment).

Pyrat and Goldilocks, who donated the boat to the club, have been enthusiastic about getting it fixed up and outfitted as a race support boat. Goldilocks is an artist, and this project is giving her creativity a new outlet – the boat is developing a distinctive Sierra County feel. For example, instead of a bimini top, she found an inexpensive beach umbrella to put into the fishing-rod holder at the center of the boat. It's not good in higher winds, but it's distinctive; sailors can recognize the boat because it's the only one on the lake with a parasol.

Goldilocks was delighted to learn that I wanted to use the motorboat for race committee duty Saturday. The boat gives her an opportunity to support Pyrat's racing, but she wants to learn more about how things work, so she can be more help in the future. Pat had given her a notebook with procedures of running races, but she wanted some hands-on experience. Gerald, after finishing his college finals, had driven all night to join us at the lake; he came on board the motorboat as well.

To begin with, there was almost no wind on the lake. Since only one of the boats racing in the Slocum had a motor, we towed all the rest out to the race area. Score one for the motorboat. Once we got to the race starting area, we did have to wait for wind, but because all the racers were there, we could start a race immediately when the wind did come up.

Just as the wind came up, Pyrat's MC Scow capsized, and although he got the boat upright, he wasn't able to get himself back up onto the boat. Compounding the problem was that he hadn't completely buckled up his PFD, and he was gradually slipping out beneath it. We zoomed to the rescue, deploying the motorboat's boarding ladder so Pyrat could get aboard and then onto his own boat. Score another one for the motorboat. Goldilocks thought maybe we should then tow Pyrat to shore, but he assured her he was all right and could keep sailing. With the temperature in the 90s, there wasn't much worry about hypothermia, so he finally persuaded her to let him sail.

We then set a starting line and called a course, and Goldilocks got to learn about how to run a starting sequence, with timing, flags, horn signals, and such. Pat even provided an extra learning experience when he had Black Magic over the line early, so she learned about recall procedures. She already knew that we should have fishing-rod holders on the boat to hold flags; now she knows how many we need and where they should go, and she's eager to get to work on that project. This boat had originally been abandoned in the back yard by the previous owner when she and Pyrat bought their house; now, instead of a decaying eyesore, it's a fun project. Score yet another one for the motorboat, although this one is more about personal fulfillment than sailing regatta duties.

When the wind came up, it did so nicely. Conditions were perhaps a bit on the stiff side for single-handed racing, but all of the racers handled it well. The motorboat's anchor – another great find that Goldilocks had come by – held well. By the time the race finished, the wind was beginning to scream. Gerald, at the helm, cranked the motor up and we roared back to the boat ramp, getting somewhat wet in the process, but glad we had a way to get back to port quickly. Score another biggie for the motorboat.

Sunday's weather shaped up similar to Saturday's, calm to start with winds showing up around midday and increasing – the main difference was that the temperature was about ten degrees warmer.

Zorro had had to go back to El Paso the night before for a special event at UTEP, but he had told us that he planned to return in the morning so he and I could sail in the Jack and Jill. Cornhusker had talked Bassmaster into being crew on her boat for the race, so I rode with them to the marina where both her boat and Zorro's are docked, while Pat and Gerald went to the other marina, where the motorboat lives. It had taken Bassmaster some time to get his stuff together, so I was worried about being late to meet Zorro. It turns out I didn't need to worry; there was no sign of him.

So, while other sailors got ready and set sail for the Jack and Jill, I waited for Zorro. I tried calling him, but the call went straight to his voice-mail.

Meanwhile, Pat and Gerald got the motorboat out to the race start area, but then the motor died. Yoda was preparing to sail the race with Esther; he got onto the motorboat to see if he could do something with the motor. He came to the conclusion that probably there was a problem with the carburetor, such as a stuck valve – as old as that motor is, it has a lot of, to use a technical term, gunk in it.

When it became obvious that Zorro wasn't going to show up, one of the other racing boats, Cultural Infidel, came to the marina to pick me up, so I wouldn't be roasting in the sun at the marina all day with no boat to ride, no money, and no vehicle, as Cornhusker and Bassmaster had given me a ride to the marina. We got to the course while Yoda was still working on the motor; eventually, he and Gerald managed to get the motor to where it would run, sort of, and then he got back on Esther's boat and I got onto the committee boat.

As on Saturday, we had to wait for the wind, but when it arrived, it came in nicely. If Zorro had showed up, he and I would have had a great afternoon on the water, with wind that remained mostly steady, a little on the light side but not frustratingly so, with some gusts to make things interesting.

While the wind was far from frustrating, the fact that I was sitting on an anchored motorboat instead of out sailing in the race was more than frustrating. I was watching my bucket go away. The trophy for the Jack and Jill race is, appropriately, a pail. The tradition is that each year, the previous year's winners provide a bottle of champagne to put into that pail, along with ice, for the new champions. The past few years, Zorro and I have simply been buying ourselves champagne every year (he likes pink). But Sunday, I was left to watch and see who Zorro and I would be buying the champagne for this year.

Cultural Infidel was first over the line. However, Esther and Yoda on Hot Flash were right behind and won the race on corrected time. So they will get the champagne and custody of the bucket. However, since Team Infidel came to my rescue, I plan to buy them a bottle of bubbly as well.

Once the race was over, it was time to start the motor and get back to the boat ramp. The motor ran rough, and it wouldn't put out much power, but it did get us there, stalling out just as we reached the courtesy dock. Gerald was able to paddle the boat onto its trailer. We'll be having one of the mechanically inclined members of the club look at that carburetor; it shouldn't be too hard to fix.

Meanwhile, the question remained … where was Zorro?

Late Monday, we finally heard the story. After the event at UTEP, instead of going home to rest up and prepare for the Jack and Jill, Zorro decided to pay a visit to his new girlfriend in Juarez. I have my doubts about this particular girlfriend, but then, well, he's in love (or at least thinks he is), and there's nothing I could say that would change his mind. Still, the decision to go and visit her wasn't exactly wise; while he was there, somebody slashed the tires on his car.

So, because of the slashed tires, Zorro didn't make it to the Jack and Jill race. It would have been nice if he could have phoned or otherwise communicated, so I could have made other arrangements. Penzance was at the lake, working on his boat, and he and I could have sailed Black Magic. Or Pat could have done committee boat duty solo and I could have had Gerald as crew. Or I could have twisted Teddy Bear's arm – he's regaining confidence about racing after recovering from some health problems, and Sunday's relatively gentle conditions would have been just right to take Warm N Fuzzy out.

But since I didn't hear from Zorro, I never got a chance to make other arrangements. Later, when Pat brought up that issue, Zorro claimed that his cell phone wasn't working, so he had told one person to give a message to another person to give a message to me – and both of the persons in that chain are not known for being reliable, and neither of them is particularly interested in sailboat racing or the Jack and Jill race or anything of the sort. I strongly suspect Zorro never gave the message in the first place, and he's blaming those other persons for my not receiving it to avoid taking any blame himself. But even if he did give the message, he should have known that the likelihood of my getting it was remote. He knows my cell phone is set to take his calls as high-priority 24/7. And even if I were asleep and not answering the phone, he could have left a voicemail that I would have gotten as soon as I woke up Sunday morning.

Final report on the weekend:

Motorboat for race support: big thumbs up, especially when we get the carburetor fixed and additional flag holders in place. And Goldilocks has other improvements in mind – those are going to be fun to see.

Zorro: thumbs down for leaving me high and VERY dry on the dock. Yeah, I can be sympathetic about the slashed tires. But he definitely could have done a much better job of communicating so I could have made other arrangements. I could be enjoying that champagne with Penzance, Gerald, Teddy Bear, or somebody else.

New Mexico in sports headlines

The state’s been getting some respect lately

This past weekend was the final regatta of the Rio Grande Sailing Club’s spring series. It turned out to be one of those “on average, it’s perfect” weekends, with way too much wind on Saturday and very little wind on Sunday.

Saturday, most of the boats in the racing fleet went out, but conditions were so rough that nearly all of the boats headed back to the marina before the racing even began. After getting boats put away and securely moored in the marina, a large number of sailors ended up in the living room of the J/24 Fleet 141 Headquarters, with a television on, tuned to that little horse race in Kentucky.

We watched as the horses left their stalls to be led to the starting gate for the race. Among the audience was Zorro, who often goes to Sunland Park and generally does well at assessing the horses he bets upon. I can’t reproduce the dialogue exactly, as I can’t remember exactly who said exactly what, but it went something like this:

Oh, I like that one, he’s my boy. Look at how long his legs are …

Now that’s a pretty horse …

Look at how that one is jumping – he has so much energy, but he’s nervous; he’s not going to do well …

Hey, here’s our hometown hero – he’s from New Mexico!

Nah, he’s too small.

What an ugly horse.

He’s a fifty-to-one long shot; maybe I oughta put money on him.

He came in fourth in the Sunland Derby – how’d he get here?

I like that tall gray one, what’s his name?

I gotta go for Pioneer of the Nile, he’s my boy.

And so on and so forth … and now anybody who hasn’t been living under a rock somewhere knows that the little brown horse from New Mexico, Mine that Bird, won the Kentucky Derby. He bears a strong resemblance to Seabiscuit, not just physically, but also in the emotional response he draws from fans. He’s the little guy, the ordinary person, who somehow manages to pull off great things.

But Mine that Bird isn’t the only New Mexico sports success recently … last year’s Baja Ha-Ha sailing race was won by three desert rats from New Mexico.

Zorro has his eye on a boat in the San Francisco Bay area that he wants to buy. Maybe next year, he and I can do the Three Bridge Fiasco.

Swine flu and The Cough That Will Not Go Away

I am still suffering lingering after-effects from the cold or flu that I had five weeks ago. While most of the symptoms have gone away, I still suffer from The Cough That Will Not Go Away. It nags at me, giving me coughing fits that make my ribs ache. It keeps me from sleeping at night. At times, it's so severe that it upsets my stomach, and it often causes incontinence.

I know from past experience that when I get The Cough, what makes it go away is the cough medicine that has codeine in it. For some reason, the codeine shuts down the cough, and in only 24 hours, The Cough is gone.

Officially, the medicine with the codeine is over-the-counter, but with restrictions, so the person getting such medicine must sign for it and provide identification. In practice, no reputable pharmacy wants to provide this medication to anybody who doesn't have a prescription. There's too much risk of providing something addictive to people who are addicted.

Since I don't have medical insurance, it would cost me an arm and a leg to go to a doctor to get a prescription. And since I don't have any money to pay for a doctor visit, I have no way of getting a prescription for the medication that will work.

I wonder what would have happened if the current swine flu outbreak in Mexico had happened five weeks ago, at the same time as my flu symptoms were at their peak. Would I have been forced into a treatment program, regardless of my ability to pay for it? Would I have been forced to abandon my students, either to a substitute instructor who wasn't up on what my classes were doing, or to not having class at all?

My latest success in alleviating The Cough has been herbal tea based on Ayurvedic healing principles. This tea has been especially effective at easing chest congestion. It's not perfect, but at least it lets me sleep at night.

The last firewood

Spring has arrived in the mountains at last

The weekend was cold and blustery, but the past couple of days the temperature has risen into the 60s, the sky has been mostly clear, and winds have been light. As if to emphasize that spring is finally here, a hummingbird just whizzed by my window. We used to have a friend in Santa Fe who kept a garden diary; she reported that in her yard, the hummers always arrive on April 14. It takes them a little longer to get up here, but now they have arrived, and spring is officially in progress.

The timing was perfect; we have just used up the last of our firewood. We've discovered that the fireplace makes a nice supplement to the propane-fired furnace for keeping the house warm in winter. It's a high-efficiency fireplace that draws air for combustion from outside the house, so we aren't losing heated air up the chimney. Except in the very coldest part of the winter, we can often do without the furnace altogether – as we did about a month ago when we ran out of propane.

A few years ago, Consumer Reports tested high-efficiency fireplaces and wood stoves and came to the conclusion that heating a home with such a fireplace would cost just about the same as running a gas-fired furnace. CR made some assumptions, however, that relate more to running a fireplace in their neighborhood in Connecticut than in the mountains of northern New Mexico. For example, CR's comparison involved natural gas piped into the home; propane, delivered in a truck, costs about twice as much per therm as natural gas.

And then there's the firewood. CR used oak, purchased for about $800 a cord. In our fireplace, we use mostly pine, which produces about a quarter less heat than the same volume of oak, but we pay only about $100 to $150 a cord. We buy it in the spring, when the lumberyards are switching from their winter business (firewood) to their summer business (lumber) and they need to make room for inventory. A couple of years ago, we got a really good deal on some piñon – it's a slow-growing tree, like oak, and so its wood is denser. The area around Santa Fe had an infestation of beetles that killed many trees, and the Forest Service wanted to get the dead trees removed as far as possible. We did have to put the wood under a tarp in the sun to bake the beetles to death, but we had all summer to do so.

And sometimes, the wood is free. For example, when we cleared space on the lot for Five O'Clock Somewhere, we tried to situate the home so as to preserve as many trees as we could, but we did still have to cut down a few. And there were some dead trees that could have blown down and caused damage in a windstorm, so those had to be removed.

Finances are, unfortunately, tight this spring, so we may not be able to cash in on the spring firewood sales. But still, using the fireplace makes sense to heat this place. And noting beats the warm cozy glow.

Cats have Got It Good

It's got to be the perfect job description …

Imagine you saw this help-wanted ad in the newspaper:

Administrative Supervisor. Primary duties include looking cute and acting sweet; other duties include making sure all staff perform tasks to your standards, including food service, janitorial duties, and personal grooming services. Salary includes room and board, full medical care, and at least one full-time personal servant at all times.

Yep, that's Dulce's job description. Of course, she might disagree with the job title; she considers herself imperatrix mundi.

A salute to Robin Knox-Johnston

A truly extraordinary seafarer, but also ordinary

On April 22, 1969, Robin Knox-Johnston (now known as Sir Robin) completed the first ever solo, non-stop, round-the-world sailboat race, the event that is now known as the Vendée Globe. In fact, he was the only competitor to complete that first race.

In celebration of that feat, Adam of Messing About in Sailboats has proposed that today be Robin Knox-Johnston Day on the Internet, and he has requested that other bloggers create posts with their own takes on the sailor and his accomplishment.

In some ways, it is hard for me to come up with anything to say that hasn't already been said better by someone else. However, many of the visitors to this blog are not sailors, so I'll try to fill in some background to allow readers to see just how special RKJ's feat was.

The race began in 1968, a scheme derided by many as scatter-brained. At that point, nobody had ever completed a solo, non-stop circumnavigation in a sailboat, and to make such a journey the goal of a race just seemed crazy. Technology back then was primitive – no satellites, no GPS, no computers, no radar, no weather-fax, no Internet. Fiberglass was in its infancy, so most boats were made of wood, including RKJ's Suhaili, which had actually been built in 1923 and was not designed to go fast. It took him 313 days to complete the race.

Among the general public, the consensus was that the race was crazy, and that anyone who chose to participate in it was crazy. In fact, some of the other racers did prove to be something other than perfectly sane. One, Donald Crowhurst, started sailing in circles in the middle of the Atlantic, radioing in fake position reports to make it seem as if he were making progress, and then, apparently in despair at the prospect of getting caught, committed suicide. Another racer, Bernard Moitessier, decided not to finish the race and just kept on sailing; he went around the globe nearly two more times before stopping.

RKJ, on the other hand, calmly went about the business of sailing the boat, maintaining a regular daily routine, using the discipline he had learned in the Royal Navy. It almost seemed that he wasn't up to anything unusual, and nothing seemed to ruffle him. When storms came up, he trusted the solidly built Suhaili to stay afloat, and she did. He maintained the calm and businesslike manner that seems somehow to be quintessentially British, the ability to get the job done, no matter what, and without making a big fuss about it.

In a race that was itself deemed crazy, and in which participation was seen as a sign of insanity, RKJ was, in the words of a reporter who interviewed him after the race, "almost depressingly normal."

Sir Robin has since become one of Britain's, and the world's, most well known figures in sailing. He's still active in the sport, and he has spent much time promoting and improving sailing and sailboat racing.

In honor of Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, Scuttlebutt is recommending a salute with a single-malt Scotch whiskey, a libation of which RKJ is particularly fond. I am making such a salute, and I recommend that all of my readers do likewise.

The Tantalus parking lot

Oooohhhh, it's just soooo close …

Before the current hard times hit, the state legislature approved some major bucks for the community college where I teach to make some major capital improvements. One of those improvements was the construction of a new campus bookstore at the campus where I teach most of the time. It's going to be great, once it's done – a new and much bigger bookstore that will include a coffee bar, and that will have a second story devoted primarily to office space, so we faculty won't be packed in quite so much like sardines.

A side effect of the construction was that a parking lot has been removed, and while the parking at this college is not in as dire short supply as on many other campuses, it's still less than is really needed. Students and faculty have been inconvenienced by the shortage of parking, and at peak times, it can take a half hour or more to find a parking spot. The light at the end of the tunnel is that the construction plans called for adding a new parking lot that is much bigger than the one that was lost.

That parking lot is almost reality. In January, at the beginning of the spring term, the area had been graded, and concrete curbs had been installed, delineating the perimeter of the lot and the landscaped islands within it. Word was that the lot would be paved and open for parking within about a month.

About a month later, the first layer of pavement was laid down, and about a week after that, additional paving was added, bringing the surface of the lot level with the curb gutters. Okay, the project was a little behind schedule, but in New Mexico, what project isn't? Surely we were going to have that new parking lot soon.

Then many weeks went by with nothing much happening at all. The office area in which I have my cubicle has a wall of windows facing northeast, allowing a fantastic view of the Sandia Mountains in all of their close-up majesty – and also of that expanse of blacktop, vast acres unused except for the occasional construction vehicle. We watched as late-winter and early-spring snows piled up and melted, piled up and melted again. We observed the spring winds, bringing twisting swirls of dust that left the surface dulled with a tan tint, looking used when it had hardly seen a single vehicle. And we wondered when we might actually be able to park on it.

Three weeks ago, activity resumed. Workers came and left chalk marks delineating parking spaces, and then they waited for a relatively non-windy day (there aren't many of those in New Mexico in the spring), on which they came back and painted lines. Ah, we thought, maybe now we will be able to use the new parking lot.

Not quite. About a week later, the workers brought in concrete parking blocks, which were then installed in all of the freshly-painted parking spaces.

It's now the last week of the term. The parking lot still has not been opened. But there's a good sign. A portable fence has been erected, separating the westernmost end of the lot, the end adjacent to the building still under construction, from the rest of the lot. That leads me to believe that most of the parking lot is about to be opened to general parking, with just that end fenced off for continuing construction.

Just in time for the end of the term.

Still seeking Visitor 50K

Prize package remains unclaimed

We’re still hoping the lucky 50,000^th visitor to Five O’Clock Somewhere will come forth.

This visitor didn’t reveal specific information about location, but we know he or she was in North America, in the Eastern time zone, using an ISP whose territory is in the southeastern United States. He or she visited in the early afternoon of April 16, on a Mac using Firefox.

Most important, this visitor didn’t arrive via a web search or a link on another website – this visitor has Five O’Clock Somewhere bookmarked, or possibly typed the link in directly, although that’s unlikely.

So there’s a valuable prize package remaining to be claimed. Sorry, I can’t provide airfare, but once you get to New Mexico, here’s what you get: Beer and dinner for one, or just beer for four, at the Socorro Springs Brewing Company, plus a sailing experience on the sexiest boat on Elephant Butte Lake.

If the winner doesn’t come forward within four weeks, I will hold an alternative selection process to determine who will receive the prize.

Grammar Moment: Pronoun conventions

We want to sound educated; we don't want to sound stuffy

While some issues related to pronouns (agreement, case, reference, avoiding shifts) are primarily matters of grammar, there are some other principles that deal with style rather than grammatical correctness. One such principle is choosing the right person and number in keeping with the expectations of academic writing. The goal is to have writing that is clear, and that treats readers as respected individuals – not buddies in the dormitory basement rec room.

Using the correct pronouns serves both goals. Pronouns that are used according to academic readers' expectations will have clear meaning, and they will also communicate the proper level of respect. Here are the generally accepted conventions for pronoun usage:

• First-person singular (I/me): This is used for narrative of the writer's own experiences and actions. Some instructors will forbid the use of the first-person singular; that's not necessarily because it's wrong, but rather, because personal narratives often turn into stories without a point, and academic writing should always have an underlying point. Also, in much academic writing, such as lab reports, the emphasis is on the procedure, not the experimenters, so instead of saying, "I decanted the solution …" you will say, "The solution was decanted …"
  NOTE: You should never use phrases such as "I think" or "in my opinion"; such phrases convey a sense of apology for what you're saying and weaken your position. Stand firmly.
  
• First-person plural (we/us): In academic writing, this is the conventional choice for referring to society in general ("We must take measures to keep our nation safe …"). It is also used to refer to groups of which the writer is a member ("Women still face a glass ceiling; we must therefore …").
  
• Second-person singular and plural (you): For most academic writing, the second person is considered too informal. It is acceptable in more casual sorts of writing, such as blog posts, and for instructions, in which there is a clear rhetorical position of the writer speaking directly to the reader.
  Don't use you to refer to people in general, as in, "You don't see many drunk drivers in Connecticut." Well, of course, I've never seen any drunk drivers in Connecticut; I've never been to Connecticut. In academic writing, it would be better to say, "Drunk drivers are seldom seen in Connecticut." Also, don't use you to refer to groups of people that may not include the reader, as in, "What if you were pregnant and you didn't know what to do?" About half of the human race is biologically incapable of becoming pregnant.
  
• Third-person singular (he/him, she/her): Use the third-person singular to refer to an individual. This could be a specific person who has been named ("Wally is rich, and he is single"), or to a singular noun representing a group ("A student should keep his or her backpack neat"). Notice that in the second example, you can't use the plural their. This is not merely an issue of style; it is an issue of grammatical correctness; you can't use a plural pronoun to refer to a singular noun. That leads us to …
  
• Third-person plural (they/them): Use they and them to refer to specific groups of people. If you want to be grammatically correct and gender-neutral while avoiding the awkward phrase his or her in the previous example, you can simply make the entire sentence plural and make the problem go away: "Students should keep their backpacks neat." If you're having problems making pronouns agree with the words they refer to, you can solve the problem almost every time by making everything plural.
  On the other hand, some lazy writers use they to avoid thinking – as in, "They don't like drunk drivers in Connecticut." Who the heck are they? The entire population of Connecticut? The Connecticut highway patrol? Connecticut traffic-court judges? A careful writer will think about who it is that dislikes drunk drivers and then name that entity clearly.
  

You will note that I don't list one as a pronoun. That is because, in English, it's not a pronoun; it's a noun. In some languages, such as French and Spanish, there's a gender-neutral third-person-singular pronoun that usually translates into English as "one," but that often actually means "people" or the informal, non-academic "they." Yes, it is grammatically correct to use one, but then it has to be followed by the awkward pronoun phrase he or she (obviously, one is singular), or else you have to keep saying one. That leads to some really stuffy-sounding writing. Yes, academic writing has its formality, but when you get to sounding like a caricature of a constipated elderly British noblewoman, you're going too far.

You will also note that some of the recommendations I make above encourage use of the passive voice ("The solution was decanted …" vs. "I decanted the solution …"; "Drunk drivers are seldom seen …" vs. "You don't see many drunk drivers …"). Some well-meaning pedants in your academic past may have told you to avoid passive voice at all costs. That advice was misguided. When you wish to emphasize the action rather than the performers of the action, the passive voice is the best choice. It also allows you to avoid pronouns altogether, rather than using one that may not be appropriate for the academic writing task.

Big events in May

If you've never thought of coming to the desert before, now you have not just one, but two reasons to visit!

Mark your calendars for May 30. That's not Memorial Day weekend; it's the weekend after. The Rio Grande Sailing Club's Anniversary Cup regatta will be bigger than it has been for many years. We have corporate sponsorship from Lago Rico, the folks who operate the marinas at Elephant Butte Lake, and with this sponsorship, the race will be a long-distance Race to the Elephant, starting near the Rock Canyon Marina, passing by Marina del Sur, and ending at the Dam Site Marina and Resort. There will be fleets for racers, cruisers, multihulls, and dinghies. The folks at Lago Rico have commissioned a local artist to create trophies, and the $15 entry fee includes a free overnight slip and breakfast at the Dam Site. The awards banquet, also to be at the Dam Site, will be $25 a person and will feature some nifty door prizes.

Yeah, I know, who ever heard of a major sailing event out in the middle of the desert? Well, actually, the folks in Phoenix put on a biggie every January, so it's not unheard-of. And we have better mast-raising facilities, thanks to Dumbledore, a retired lineman for the state's largest electric utility, and his former employer, who sold used high-tension poles to the club for the cost of scrap. The Marina del Sur boat ramp is also better than what the folks in Phoenix have. So if you're trailering, you don't need to worry about rigging and launching.

If you're interested, call 575-744-5462. The deadline to enter is May 15.

Still not sure you want to travel all the way to the desert? Here's the icing on the cake: There will be a major cultural event that weekend as well. The Elephant Butte Inn & Spa will be hosting the State Karaoke Championship. Forget whatever you have heard or experienced of karaoke in the past; this is not some drunken, overweight bubba slaughtering "Achy-Breaky Heart." Cornhusker and Bassmaster have been traveling the state as judges for local qualifying events, and they have seen a lot of talents out there, of which only the best make it to the championship.

So, let's see a show of hands … who's coming?

Descansos

Some thoughts about roadside shrines

Here in New Mexico, with a large Hispanic-Catholic population, descansos are a common roadside sight. The literal meaning of descanso is "a place to sit down," and historically, they were roadside shrines marking the location where somebody died, at which the weary traveler could stop, rest, and say a little prayer for the dead.

This past week, Holy Week, many of the descansos along New Mexico's highways have been visited and decorated by the families of the deceased. Some of the decorations have been quite elaborate.

I have heard arguments against descansos, that they clutter up the landscape, that they create a safety hazard by distracting drivers, that they make a public display of mourning that the family and friends of the deceased ought to keep private. A few years back, the state of Texas attempted to ban the shrines, on the grounds that if they were in a public right-of-way, they constituted a violation of the constitutional separation of church and state.

I don't see it that way. A beautiful descanso doesn't clutter the landscape; it adds an emotional element – albeit a bitter one – that wouldn't otherwise be there. It doesn't distract drivers so much as it gives a warning: Somebody died here; drive carefully! There's an intersection in a school zone south of Española on the highway to Los Alamos that has 14 descansos – 14 schoolchildren, picked off one or two at a time, by careless drivers who didn't slow down to the 15-mph school zone speed and kept barreling along at the 50-mph highway speed. (After many long years, the state highway department redesigned the intersection, improved signage, and lowered the speed limit on the stretch of highway leading to the school zone. The death toll has remained 14 for a long time.)

As for the supposed violation of the separation of church and state, that argument doesn't hold water. While the vast majority of descansos are erected by Catholics, I feel that anyone, of any religion or of no religion, should be able to honor a dead family member or friend in whatever way feels right. In Europe, bicyclists will honor a fallen comrade with a "ghost bike" – a bicycle, painted solid white, erected as a shrine at or near the site of the fatal accident – regardless of the bicyclist's religion.

Unlike Texas, the government in New Mexico has recognized the value of descansos. It is now against state law to remove or deface a roadside memorial. If a shrine is in the way of road construction, the construction company must, when the construction is done, replace the shrine as close as possible to where it originally was.

Some people may be uncomfortable being exposed to other people's mourning. But if the family and friends of the deceased have chosen to put up a shrine, it is because they want to share with the community. I respect that.

Vice revocation

Techno orgy what surfs know Hun

About three months ago, Pat finally got his own cell phone. One of the "features" that it comes with is a voice-recognition program that converts all voice mail into text messages.

It sounds like a good idea at first, but it fails somewhat in the execution. It doesn't do well at transcribing people who speak with accents other than middle-American (e.g., Penzance), people who speak fast (e.g., Zorro), people who use specialized vocabulary (e.g., sailors), or people who call from locations where there is a lot of background noise like wind (e.g., sailors at the lake).

Sometimes the software admits it has problems; when it thinks it might not have the right word, it follows that word with a question mark in parentheses, and sometimes it totally gives up and puts a long dash where the word would normally be. But sometimes it just plain gets the wrong word without admitting it.

The result has been that in some messages, more than half the words are either wrong or missing. One of the most glaring examples is when Penzance calls – the software transcribes "Hi, this is" correctly, and then it goes on to give a first name that resembles his actual name only in that it has one syllable with a percussive consonant at the beginning.

We have, however, received a couple of messages in which the software worked perfectly, not missing a single word – from the billing department of a hospital, seeking payment for services provided to somebody we've never heard of.

A blog post about not much

Oh, I have all sorts of topics, but …

Over the past week, I've had all sorts of ideas for blog posts, including immigration, health care, money issues, a grammar moment about pronoun reference, commentary on the sense of entitlement of today's young people, an update on this weekend's visit to Five O'Clock Somewhere, how cats have Got It Good, and, of course, chronicling my battle with The Cough.

However, none of those posts has materialized. The Cough is sapping my energy, forcing me to expend hundreds, possibly thousands of calories a day, while not allowing me to eat or sleep much. I'm drained.

Maybe I should be hitting the Slivovice harder.

Not dead yet

But I sure feel like it

Last weekend (March 21-22) was the first spring series regatta for the Rio Grande Sailing Club. Winds for the weekend were mostly brisk, sometimes stiff. I had Penzance on Black Magic on helm, with me, Pat, and Cornhusker as crew. We didn't win any races, but we were in the running on all of them, and on one we came in a very close second to Zorro – we were ahead for most of the race, and only a random wind shift at the end allowed him to edge us out.

I came out of that weekend rather the worse for wear, with bruises on top of bruises and lots of muscle aches.

By Tuesday, I was feeling even more muscle aches, and I realized I was coming down with something. In addition to being achy, I was starting to develop a cough. Oh, no, I thought, not The Cough … the one that settles in and lingers, making life miserable for days, weeks even.

By Wednesday night, it became clear that, yes, I was coming down with The Cough. In addition to serious head congestion and fever, I was suffering a dry, racking cough that would not give me peace. I let my night class out early, and I headed home, stopping to pick up some extra-strength cough-suppressant/expectorant syrup. I dosed up with that, a heavy-duty analgesic, and some maximum strength decongestant. I also started downing herbal teas containing slippery elm, thyme, and other such good stuff. I settled into bed with a warm cat, with the bedroom humidifier on full blast.

All of these measures helped to make the cough less miserable, but still, I was coughing so hard my ribs were aching. I stayed in bed most of Thursday, and by the time of my Thursday night class, I was feeling a bit better.

There's something going around … only two students showed up, so I cancelled class. Pat, Dulce, and I headed north to spend at least the first part of the weekend at Five O'Clock Somewhere. He had a community center board meeting scheduled for today, although he also wanted to get back to Albuquerque this evening and then go to the Butte Sunday to work on boats and sail with Zorro, Penzance, and Ribbons.

From Santa Fe on, we were driving through blowing snow; by the time we got to the cabin, there was an inch or two on the ground, and the temperature was 19 degrees. We worked on getting the house warmed up, and I checked that we had a good supply of the medicinal teas.

Since then, I have spent most of my time either in bed or in front of the fireplace, guzzling tea and keeping myself dosed up on the conventional medicines. My throat is sore, my head feels like it's full of wool, my ribs ache, I can barely eat, and all the sleep I can get is cat-naps between coughing fits.

I suppose I could go to a doctor. But I'm pretty sure all the doctor could tell me is that this is a virus, and the thing to do is just what I've been doing. Without any health insurance, all a doctor visit would be is an expensive way to get a note that would allow me to take sick leave.

Maybe I should ask fuego what his Czech mother-in-law would prescribe. The Czechs have two powerful spirits, Becherovka and Slivovice, and one or the other of those is supposed to be good for whatever ails one.

Step One: Retrieve Motor

I learn so much from my students!

In a community college, perhaps more than in other educational institutions, learning happens both ways. I may be helping my students to learn how to write in coherent English in a way that communicates with the rest of the world. But at the same time, I learn a lot from my students.

This week, I was grading papers written by an English 0750 (Practical Writing) class. The assignment was to write a set of instructions. One set of instructions began, "First, retrieve your motor from the bottom of the lake …"

What followed was a set of instructions that could be valuable to a lot of boaters – how to resuscitate a drowned outboard motor and make it live again.