Did you know that if you fondled a woman’s breast, uninvited, it would cost you a fine of five shillings?

May 13, 2013 by Dana

[from the stabenow.com vaults, 5/13/2010]

1000 I just finished reading The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium, by Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger. Don’t let the title scare you, because I have seldom read a more delightfully informative little book. I don’t know how they crammed so much information into just 200 pages (reminds me of Mark Kurlansky’s Cod in that respect, and this one doesn’t have recipes). The authors take something called the Julius Work Calendar, a medieval reminder of work and faith with wonderful illustrations, and use it to describe daily life in Anglo-Saxon England.

Did you know July was called “the hunger gap” back then, because July was right where the stores of last year’s harvest ran out, but before the new crop was ready to reap? Did you know that if you fondled a woman’s breast, uninvited, it would cost you a fine of five shillings? Did you know there were no surnames in the year 1000? They never left home, you were going to have the same name as your dad and your mom, so you didn’t need them. Did you know Benedictine monks, by oath silent most of their lives, worked out a sign language with over 127 signs? “One gets the impression,” write the authors, “that mealtimes in a Benedictine refectory were rather like a gathering of baseball coaches…” march

The prose throughout this novel is able and vivid, and you can see the twinkle in the writers’ eyes, as in excerpts from a First Millennial medical book called Bard’s Leechbook, which conveniently lists maladies starting with the head and working down. Mid-body we find a cure for male impotence, or “…the Viagra of the year 1000 — the yellow-flowered herb agrimony. Boiled in milk, agrimony was guaranteed to excite the man who was “insufficiently virile” — and if boiled in Welsh ale, it was described as having exactly the contrary effect. Although later the authors do say, “Several of the Leechbook recipes would have done credit to the witches in Macbeth.”

The authors don’t idealize the Anglo-Saxons in the year 1000, but they respect them and their resilience and capability, and they have a knack for making the narrative sound like it’s all happening next door and all we have to do is stick our heads out the window to be eye witnesses. “Here is the earliest surviving example of an Englishman laying out life in a daily routine, juggling time, the schedule of the earth, and the life of the spirit,” the authors write. “These are people like us.”

About the easiest way into medieval studies I’ve ever stumbled across.

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Desiderata

May 10, 2013 by Dana

I was reading Jo Walton’s Among Others a while back and her character Mor says to herself, “No doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.” I knew Mor was quoting someone but I couldn’t remember who, so of course I had to google it and of course it’s from Max Ehrmann‘s poem “Desiderata.”

I can’t believe I forgot it. I had a poster of it on my college dorm room wall. I think everyone in Lathrop did.

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others,
even to the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.

It’s pretty obvious why this resonated so strongly with the counterculture Boomers, in full-blown generational rebellion against their parents’ post-World War II boosterism and consumerism.

…the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals,
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Desiderata is Latin for ‘desired,’ which by implication I take Ehrmann to mean things reached for but not necessarily grasped. So the poem is meant to be a living, continuing, not always successful aspiration, not an end goal of achievement and perfection.

These lines

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

mean a lot more to me now than they did when I was 17, as do these

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

He read Whitman for sure

You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.

And of course

And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

The poem ends

…whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace with your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

I wonder what I did with that poster.

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The Most Fun You Can Have With Your Clothes On

May 8, 2013 by Dana

[from the stabenow.com vaults, 2007]

April 30

The preflight brief consists mostly of what to do A) to stave off disaster, and B) if disaster strikes.

Flight ops. I'm the crew change.

Put on fire retardant jumpsuit, PFD, Kevlar vest, helmet and steel-toed boots, the collective weight of which if we do go into the drink ought to take me right straight to the bottom to howdy and shake with Davy Jones personally. It’s one way to become a shellback. (There are others, but I have been forbidden to go there.) Buckle on safety belt. Don’t bang your head on the helo’s Darwin sorter, a dandy little DNA sampler.

In the event disaster strikes, pull red tab to pop out window. Don’t hit door handle the wrong way or the door will pop open. Do hit it if you need to get out in a hurry. If the helo does go splash, there are flotation devices fore and aft. We will probably remain upright, but if we don’t, pop the window or the door, pull yellow tab to release life raft, get out, inflate your life vest and swim forward to meet the rest of the crew at the nose.

From the helo, look through the window and see LSO Chief Greg Colvin and breakin LSO ENS Jason Berger on the right, Blueberries on the left, two aviators in between.

Point of reference, hand strap over door. Hang on.

Yes, I get to fly in the helo. I get to do flight ops. I get to do take-offs to starboard. I get to do box patterns. I get to do touch-and-goes. I get to watch break-in LSO ENS Jason Berger fancy dance through the take off signal from the front instead of from behind on the flight deck or on the bridge’s CC TV screen.

helo

(For my aunt in Cordova: Aunty Pat, take deep breaths. It’s okay. The Coasties do this every day. For Kathy and Kevin in Anchorage, eat your hearts out. For Lucky in Texas, ya shoulda been here.)

We launched the helo this morning and they did a SURFPAT, looking for go fasts. If they’d found one I would have been schnookered out of my ride, and I can’t decide how I feel about that, but never mind that now. When they landed, I duck-walked down the deck beneath the spinning rotors, climbed in back with the gunner, got my helmet jacked into the comm system, and started hearing all the same communications I’ve been listening in on from the bridge. The only ones that matter today are “Helo is cleared for takeoff to starboard. Take all signals from the LSO. Green deck!” “LSO, green deck, aye!”

From the helo, tiedowns still on, Blueberries waiting.

The green lights flash on the hangar, the pitch of the rotor blades increases, and my door is still open so I have a real good view of the deck of Munro falling away from the side of the helo. The flight deck crew, the LSO and the Blueberries wave us off nonchalantly (don’t they understand that this time it’s ME in the helo?). We hover off the port side of Munro and the gunner heaves a cardboard box with “Shoot me!” written on the side into the water.

Remember the other day when I wrote about the 50-caliber gun shoot? They’ve got one in the helo. It’s what they use to shoot out go fast engines. It’s marginally smaller and lighter than the 50-calibers on the ship, and it’s got a scope. The gunner rests it on a strap slung across his doorway and, well, let’s just say that poor little defenseless cardboard box didn’t stand a chance.

My door is open. It's a long way down.

Then they unlimber the M-240 machine gun, and the gunner runs through a 100-round clip in stitches or lines of shots designed to convince the driver of a go fast to stop. “They never do,” the right-seat aviator says, “but we try.”

helo firing

Then back we go to the ship and the left-seat aviator trades places with me. I get to ride in front. We lift off and we keep going up. I admit to a tiny panicked feeling as Munro shrinks in size but I also have to admit it vanishes along with the ship when at 6,000 feet we break through a big bank of puffy cumulous clouds and up, up and over and down and around the other side we go. We have slipped the surly bonds of earth.

Munro from the helo.

“About time to go back?” the right-seat aviator says.

“I want to go find a go fast,” I say.

A very sexy little radar system (you should see the instrument panel on this machine, it has more bells and whistles than the starship Enterprise) brings us straight home to Munro, no passing Go, no collecting $200, but one more fun thing, we get to do a fly by, straight down the starboard side of the ship, thirty feet off the deck at about 140 knots. There might have been someone watching from the bridge, but I couldn’t see them for the blur. And then the ship asks us to do it again. Well, gee, okay, if we have to. And then home. Fly out beyond the ship, pull what the power and acceleration makes it feel like straight up, bank right, level out, slow to a sedate, matronly pace, and tuck her down neatly inside the white circle on the flight deck.

I wanted to do a hot refuel and get back in the air. Who knew flying a helo was this much fun? I’ll tell you who, our AVDET (Aviation Detachment), that’s who. In fact, “Don’t tell anyone how much fun this is,” they said, scared someone will take their helo away. Too late.

I wish I could talk more about the aviators, but the nature of our mission precludes using their names or their photographs. They’re funny and smart and self-deprecating (“We’re just a bunch of knuckle-draggers”), and they are very, very good at what they do. It was an honor to ride with them.

I have to say it. This really is the red shift limit most fun you can have with your clothes on.

Click here to order a copy.

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