The French Bulldog Days of Summer

It’s the dog days of summer, but no, I’ve not been on vacation, just too busy with my day job and weekend commitments to post anything recently. I keep wondering though; I’m of French heritage, so why don’t I get the entire month of August off from work like all my French compatriots?  They don’t break a sweat all month. This year my August vacation was the first Sunday of the month – from 2:00 to 5:00 PM.  At least it sometimes feels that way.

Actually, the whole issue of vacations is a running topic in our household. I’ve always worked for consulting firms throughout my career – sometimes small ones.  Consulting firms of most any size are not particularly known for a providing a generous array of earned vacation time. My friend Gerry worked as an engineer for the super-paternalistic firm of Anheuser-Busch (before it was acquired by InBev). I recall him telling me once that he had reached his 5 year anniversary with the company and now was entitled to 5 weeks vacation (plus about 16 or more holidays per year). I was working for a 100 person consulting firm at the time and responded, “Gerry, I could rise to the position of President in our firm and I wouldn’t get five weeks vacation after 30 years!”

One of my current clients is a branded boutique in the food industry. Think Ben & Jerry’s and you’d be in the right ballpark. I’m working with the company’s sustainability staff on some management system improvements and the point-of-contact for the project I’m working on is a very nice, bright 20-something. Progress has slowed a bit on the project since she is off on her paid sabbatical this month. Sabbatical. Wow. I’ve been in the workforce 35 years and never come close to that perk.

And don’t even get me started on Federal worker vacation/holiday/sick time benefits. My head hurts just thinking about it in this election year and with the Federal budget mess.

Being a scientist and therefore fond of logic, I can only conclude that I’m a pretty dumb yardbird for staying in the consulting track all these years. Not the brightest Bunsen burner on the bench or shiniest Erlenmeyer flask on the shelf. Why didn’t my French relatives warn me about this while I was still at a tender young age? Maybe they did and I just couldn’t understand them. I took Russian in HS and college. Foolish me. Это жизнь в большом городе.

U-2 Would Want to Avoid Soviet Prisons

Francis Gary Powers was piloting a Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance plane over the central Soviet Union when his aircraft was brought down by a near-miss from a Russian surface-to-air guided missile. 
Russia’s dirty little secret during the Cold War was that their long-range manned bomber fleet was no where near as numerous or sophisticated as the U.S. believed. But rather they were quietly putting their efforts into advancing their missile technology. Powers was shot down on May 1, 1960 (May Day in the Communist world!).

After capture, Powers was taken to Moscow and the famous Lubyanka Building which served as KGB headquarters and where he was held for several months and interrogated constantly prior to his public trial. In August of 1960 he was convicted of espionage and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Upon his release from prison (early release in a spy exchange with the Soviets), Powers wanted his account of the events of that period of his life told, including the interrogations by his captors and his prison experiences. In 1970 he published Operation Overflight to try to set the records straight (as opposed to the CIA’s and Eisenhower Administration’s versions of events).

One part of his account especially struck me – the basic need for human interaction, even under less-than-ideal circumstances. Powers describes the conclusion of the active interrogations by KGB agents and his wait for his trial to begin, or actually, his wait for the pre-trail preparations to begin.

“When the interrogations were in progress, I had dreamed of the day they would be over.  Now, left alone in my cell, I missed them. Deceiving my captors had been a challenge; even that stimulation was gone, and with it any semblance of human companionship. This was the way they intended it, I was sure. No beatings, no torture except that inflicted by the mind. Only an all-pervading emptiness that made you desire even the company of your enemies.”

Brings a bit of different implication to our recently-created term, “frienemies.”

Church Tenure

It’s a pretty obvious statement to say that Christian church membership in the US isn’t what it was just 30 or 40 years ago, especially in most of the mainline or traditional denominations.  Church attendance in general continues its downward trend and the loyalty we exhibit to individual churches or denominations has greatly waned. Some of this is due to our more mobile society and far-flung career opportunities. And there’s the migration out of the Rust Belt and Northeast to the South and Southwest. But even those who stay put are much more prone to job hopping and church hopping than members of our grandparents’ generation. Guilty as charged on both counts.

This week my wife was cleaning out older files and records and set aside a pile of papers for me to go through to confirm they could be banished to the paper recycling bin. Among the various documents was a group of annual reports from a church we attended for a number of years (and were active, voting members). One of the annual reports I came across listed a number of recently deceased older congregants and how many years they had been members. This was a 150+ year old traditional church trying to transition to a more contemporary venue to better match the needs and wishes of younger Christians. The annual report informed us (names altered):

Mrs. Edna Mae Brown – member 1943 – 2005

Mrs. Ellen C. Franklin – member 1950-2006, Sunday School teacher for 50 years

Mrs. Lorraine R. Carter – member 1950 – 2006

Edgar Samuel Hitchcock – member 1932 – 2006 (74 years), Church Clerk for 20 years

End of an era I think. I can’t imagine we of the Restless Society could ever stay put or tie down our church loyalties like those who came before us.

Shark - White (and Yankee)

You may have read about the shark attack earlier this week on Cape Cod - off an Atlantic-side beach in the town of Truro (one of two towns that still have the feel of Olde Cape Cod, the other being Wellfleet). But I digress. A man and his son were body surfing 400 - 500 yards offshore when he was bitten on both legs, but made it to shore and was just releaded today from a Boston hospital. Shark experts have weighed in that the attack was almost certainly carried out by a Great White. Great Whites have been summering several towns south of Truro in the Chatham area the past few years because of the abundant seal population there (good sand bars for sunning - and escaping Great Whites). You may have caught the photo earlier in July of the shark following a kayaker in shallow Chatham waters.

Non-Yankees need not fret though. The Whites definitely seem to prefer a taste of New England. The kayaker is from Manchester, NH, and the next most recent Great White attack before this week was in 1936 on the other side of Cape Cod in Buzzard's Bay waters where a young boy from Dorchester, MA was killed. I posted on that incident in one of the first pieces I wrote after starting this blog.  Read about it here.

Now this week's Truro victim was visiting from the Denver area, so perhaps the shark realized on first taste that he/she was dealing with a non-Yankee. Maybe Yankees taste a lot like seal?  That's my working theory, for now.

So ya'll Southerners feel free to come on up to the Cape and enjoy our waters - unmolested. What's that, you don't get in the water unless it's 80 degrees or warmer.  Sorry, can't oblige on that count.

It’s Newfoundland, Not Disneyland

Previously I’ve posted references to my wife and I having lived in St. John’s, Newfoundland for a year and a half while I was doing some graduate work – Iceberg Beer and real icebergs. This USA Today travel article profiles Newfoundland and makes it clear that you can expect rustic beauty and reality – not Disneyland.  That rustic beauty and the friendly native population is what created lasting memories for my wife and me. We lived in Maine for three years and certainly appreciate the Maine coast.  But the Newfoundland coastal scenery puts Maine to shame I’m afraid.

The article mentions St. John’s and several communities around the north-facing Conception Bay and Trinity Bay and a few towns we had the opportunity to visit, like Heart’s Content, Heart’s Desire and Heart’s Delight.  But we never did make it to Bonavista Bay, heavily mentioned in the travel article. My graduate research was in the huge south-facing Placentia Bay (separating the Avalon Peninsula from the Burin Peninsula) and I had many opportunities to explore abandoned outports as the linked photos reference. One of these days I’ll get around to posting my photos on-line.

Here's the official travel website for Newfoundland and Labrador (all one province).

Nothing Left But Puddles?

You may have caught this story about extensive melting on the Greenland ice sheet this summer due to a dome of warm air over virtually all of the landmass. Some surface melting occurs every year, but the extent of July's melting is what is unusual, apparently the last such event was 150 years ago.

But what I find most interesting was hearing this story presented by two news organizations, ABC and NPR, where it was quite clear that the news anchors thought scientists were reporting that the ENTIRE ice sheet had melted during the last two or three weeks. And in one case the scientist being interviewed seemed to pass up the opportunity to set the record straight. The Greenland ice sheet averages 2 km thick for crying out loud! So how many viewers/listeners out there believe the entire continental ice sheet melted in two weeks? I bet more than a few.

You can denigrate the climate deniers if you want, but this is the kind of misinformation that gets ingrained into the minds of the public, then lawmakers who react and want to do something rash.

Vending Machine Economic Policy

I think the guy that runs the vending machine concession in our office building must have been an Obama Administration economic advisor – part of the group that hung around for the initial year or so and then split. The group that kept talking about the coming “recovery summer.” 

I do break down and buy a soft drink once in a while but don’t patronize the candy machine very often – everything in there tastes good, but of course nothing is good for you. The machines seem pretty well run and all. But today when passing by I noticed a letter from the vending company taped to the candy machine explaining unfortunately, they had to raise their prices on each item “a modest amount.”  Now I did recall that most candy or cracker items in the machine had sold for $0.85 each. The new prices were all $1.00 each. Let’s see, $0.15 increase on an original price of $0.85 is, well, an almost 18% increase in the price. Candy may not be a consumer staple (or if it is, it shouldn’t be) but anyway you bite your Necco Wafer, 18% is a lot. If I had received an 18% salary increase today, I don’t think that “modest” is the descriptor I would be using. In fact, I’d probably have to rescue Mrs. Sponge from the top of our built-in bookcases where she would have leapt due to the shock and awe factor.

Thinking it through, maybe this vending guy was in the Obama Administration’s PR group after he left the economic advisory’s group.