EVOC Ewok

So I finally got to do the EVOC driving course (it stands for something like Emergency Vehical Operations Course or something, which means calling it an EVOC course is akin to saying the Schuylkill River, since Shuylkill is Dutch for river) out at Cheney Stadium. The Pierce County Sheriff's Department Community Academy all got there bright and early.

I was a little antsy because I had to leave shortly to go to Portland for a National Writer's Workshop conference, but how many times can one listen to Chip Scanlan do that exercise where you write as much as you can in 15 seconds about a story you want to write and then he gives you less and less time until ultimately you have ONE WORD that encapsulates your story (he actually did this at his keynote speech and I was a little bummed because the way he phrased it a couple years ago by the time you had one word to write down you were on your way to be executed, and I thought, "I ain't wasting my time on one stupid word! Callie won't go down like a punk biatch!" and now it was just, "write one word." And lemme tell ya, those one word stories are real winners)? So driving fast in a parking lot held no small appeal.

The first thing we did was give the ABS brakes a workout. Those Crown Victoria Police Interceptors hold no small amount of horsepower, either, so when flooring it at the fences, it's pretty wild, and for any cautious driver, it's very hard to do. Mike, the deputy in the car I was in, said he was sure someone was going through the fence during the course. I asked him if he'd care to make that interesting (I was thinking $1 to $5), but he declined, what with being a cop and all.

So we jammed on the accelerator and then slammed the brakes. Fun city. We all did it twice and the second time we got to do it with the lights and sirens, which you can't hear, really, in the car, the acoustics are just that good. With three people (and a cop) per car, we all took turns swapping seats. Let me say that the rear seats of a police cruiser are horrible. First, forget legroom. Second, the kinds of people that get picked up by the cops are not savory, and there was a weird stain on the back of the vinyl seat. But that wasn't the worst, no, that would be the smell. Ye Gods, rednecks and gangstas and street people who drink too much take a shower! You are leaving your gnarly funk in the back of all the cop cars making it hard for decent people like myself and the other academy jokers to not barf our guts up in the back seat!

And the Chicane will make anyone in the backseat want to heave. Although Chicane ("Shih-KANE") sounds like someone who might work outcall at the Calico Cat Motel in Parkland, it is actually a bunch of cones to drive through like the Crown Vic is a snake. There was a row of cones that was not so close together and another set that was closer, and Mike said the trick was to palm the wheel. I knocked out two cones on the short-set course. Oops. Better than barfing my guts out as the other two learners took their turns.

So having done the stopping and the chicane, the deputies assumed we had learned to stop and swerve and, thus, were ready for the collision avoidance test. Basically, they have the cones set up in a Y and some like there's a car or something in the way and the instructor tells you to go left or right at the last minute and, fwip! there you go around the object. The first person to go was a high school senior and she tapped her brakes, which was a mistake. She spun out and the instructor came over the radio, "Does anyone know if Fred Meyer still has that sale on underwear?" Good times.

I had talked my way into one of the first groups since I had the NWW, and was fortunate to be riding with teenage boys. I did great on the course. I avoid crappy PNW and former Californians all the dang time out here — why do they drive so bad? I couldn't tell you. The boys? Well...

This one 18-year-old high school kid did a real spin-out doozy while I was in the back. His pal was taping the whole thing, I was pretty sure that only inspired the marginally experienced kid to go a little more than 10 percent out of his normal driving comfort zone.

Oh, did I mention that behind the fence across the lot there are stacked steel-reinforced concrete slabs? So if you hit the fence, you hit a bunch of hard stuff? No? Okay.

So the second time the kiddo goes through, instead of being freaked that he spun out the first time and hence more inhibited or some other normal response, he kicks it up a notch on the speed. And he again taps his brake or whatever it is you need to do to spin like crazy. It feels different than the first spin, and I might have said a couple of choice Anglo-Saxon words, they're caught on tape if so. That's me, showing teens how to act when in a crisis. At least I didn't say them loudly, although I was probably laughing a little nervously (isn't that geeky and embarrassing). And then we go ass-end into the fence. Luckily, we went in softly, for what it's worth.

It was a ball. I'm super-jazzed I got to ride with the hyper high school guys. The wreck was hysterical.

I can't decide what is the best part for the kid: it's on the county's tab, it won't go on his insurance record and his pal got the whole thing on tape. Although it was Mike's regular duty car, he was laughing till his Bulgari-sunglassed eyes filled with tears (they were light blue lenses). He shoulda taken the bet. Instead, Mike becomes Cassandra. Which I'm sure he'd find very masculine if he knew about this blog.

At class again today it seemed like everyone had read the columny article I wrote about the incident. It's weird to know people are not only reading but paying attention to something I write.

I got to the conference in time for the afternoon sessions by the skin of my teeth due to bad signage on the part of the organizers and terrible directions to the hotel on the part of a guy who didn't realize he wanted me to get off I-5 onto 405, which I should have known from past trips to Portland. The weirdest experience was going through the Portland State University Student Union building and hearing their piped-in music; it's strictly super-rapid drums, like the Powerpuff Girls are going to pop out and give us all kandy or something.

I'm not a gun nut

But this kinda rocks. Even though you should ALWAYS treat every gun as if it were a LOADED gun.

Newsroom gone wild

Michelle finally snapped. Kidding. After a long week of cranking out another edition, not to mention building up a lot of resentment and bile, we need a release. God help me, I did not realize what I was getting into when I mentioned to Lee, the photog, that I was nervous about looking like a doofus when the Community Academy does the firing range test. After all, I had never fired a gun before in my life.

Lee offered to take me to the firing range and teach me basic gun safety and firing. Colello's head popped up. "You goin' to the range? Where do you shoot?" Next thing I know Michelle is mentioning that she has never fired a gun before and Ric is thinking he'd like to come along. A regular journalism armada is fixing to converge on the shooting range.

Oh, and we didn't go to just any shooting range, no sirree bob, we went to the Bullseye. The Bullseye is one of those gun stores that gets the tag "nuisance." A lot of guns are stolen from there (ahem) every year and end up being used in crimes. Most infamously, the gun that was used by the D.C. sniper pair came from Bullseye. This is not a place where I can feel my dollars were spent bettering the world.

So we get to Bullseye after deadline and Colello rents an AR-15. The AR stands for assault rifle. That's why we're all messing around with this gun. Because we bad.



Indeed, it is bad to pose with guns as if you are a badass. It is particularly bad when you're the product of Quaker schools.



Michelle's from Parkland, and she recently moved from the Gangsta Hellscape of Monterra Apartments so she can get away with this stuff.

So Lee took more photos, which I hope to get copies of to share with you, of us all acting completely inappropriately (all of which was egged on by the Air Force small arms instructor behind the counter). Then we put on our eye and ear protection and went to the range. Well, minus Ric, who had some sort of thing to do with his kids.

Lee and Michael went straight for the gun assembly and loading. Lee fired off a few rounds of his 45 then, because he is a Marine (apparently they're never "former" marines), helped Michael get his rifle loaded and ready to go. Then Lee brought me over to booth 12 to learn to fire a gun.

I learned to load a clip, to hold the gun pointed downrange while I slid that clip up in the magazine with conviction, keeping the trigger finger on the guard until ready to shoot. Then there's this "BRASS" acronym to remember about Breathe, Relax, Sight and Squeeze. Or maybe it's squeeze and shoot and you're just supposed to remember to sight. I dunno. It's about staying calm and then letting the big bang happen.

And a 45 releases a big bang. It didn't kick back as violently as I was expecting, but you feel the vibes go from your wrists to your elbows and through your chest. The brass casings fly out and ping against the stall walls and may pop you on the head or the shoulder or something. There's a killer flash from the barrel. It only takes a moment, and it's very surprising and powerful. I got little red marks between my thumb and index finger on my right hand from the kickback.

I'm not a big fan of the 45.

The AR-15 is a different story. It uses 9mm ammo, so there's no big kickback like the 45 (Lee likes the 45 for its ability to knock over the target. But I think a bullet is a bullet and whatever makes you less freaked out to fire is probably the right handgun to go for, if you're going to go for a handgun). You sight it up, hold the barrel and the grip, put in a ridiculously long clip and boom-boom-boom. The target is toast.

This is how I did with the 45.



I got a little sloppy at the end, when my arms were getting tired, but I like the way that there's a bullet hole nestled under the X in the bullseye. I could be a very good shooter if I wanted. But, I'm not a gun person. I liked shooting that rifle a lot more than I thought I would; I didn't like that it pulled to the left. But I'm not a gun owner, and I don't like the responsibility of holding something that could blow someone's face off, accidently or on purpose. Doesn't mean I won't shoot again, but I'll never be a gun nut.

Holla if you hear me

Apparently I have some silent readers out there in the void. You miss me when I'm gone. I understand, I miss you when you're not around either.

Let's face it, the blogging the PCSD got boring when I didn't have stuff to disagree with people about. Oh, well, I suppose the Successories posters at the 911 call center were worth mentioning — they were "Communication" "Teamwork" something else that made sense in the context of 911 calls and "Change," which I don't really think did. Oh, and two of the phone calls we got to listen to.

The first was known as "The Homosexual Rock Thrower" and it involved a woman who had watched way too much Law and Order and had a guy throw a rock through her window, "and he said he was a homosexual." I know, it only got weirder from there. At one point, the goofy woman started spouting inane legalisms and said "I demand capital punishment on the grounds that he is a homosexual."

The other cool call was a very pissed off-sounding man who just wanted to let the sheriffs know that there was a UFO buried under the lawn of Western State near building E2 (if you are from out of state and hadn't guessed, Western State is the former psychiatric hospital). It was buried by the Cyclopeans from the Andromeda galaxy and he'd been avoiding walking over it for years. Well, at least while he was there.

The other major discovery I made is that Orting is SO CUTE. It freaked me out skating on the foothills trail there, though, because I had recently read up on Lahar stuff and Orting is going to be wiped off the face of the valley by a flow of mud, ice, timber and rock about thirty miutes after the eventual Mt. Rainier explosion. Love the trail. It's super. Orting is super cute. The people wave and smile at you as you skate past and I can't say that for Tacoma or Gig Harbor.

Anyway, if you like to read my blog because you are just bored and checking up I have a favor to ask. You don't need to leave a comment, I've got something else in mind. I am trying to game the Netflix review system. I am one of those jerky writers who demands feedback and positive attention, which is why I'm so bitter about the drying up of checks on the Fray at Slate.com, because I want checks!!

More elusive than checks, though, is becoming one of the writers of the top three reviews on Netflix for any given film. I have scored this once and I think I'm figuring out how to do it. So if you are a Netflix person, you can see this singular achievement for "Proof," which I have to admit I gamed because the review is a little over positive (almost no top review is at all negative), and please hit the helpful button (once a certain mass is achieved I think inertia sets in for people who don't want to check the older reviews, but I am not sure that inertia has been achieved yet) and keep me on top. "Unhelpful" the others if you are so inclined. Also go to the MI-5 series 3 and helpful me (I'm SW from Tacoma). That's one that could bust wide open any day now and I could use the boost.

I am such a little grade grubber. Love ya!

Ride him cowboy!

Finally saw "Brokeback Mountain." What a fabulous film. Totally worth seeing. The cinematography is amazing, the acting is incredible, the script is excellent. Although there is not as much, nor as explicit, hot gay man-on-man action as I would have liked, probably some of you would consider that a good thing. Still, it's definitely a romance movie.

So I got to thinking about romance movies, because I have a grand total of one in my Netflix queue and it's "Pride and Prejudice," the new one with Keira Knightly (meh, I think she's gorgeous but conventional) and Matthew McFayden (hot MI-5 guy, I particularly appreciated his unwaxed back that was on display in the episode with the IRA guy, I mean, that's confidence) and I was thinking to myself — gosh, every time I read P&P or watch some permutation of it I have to think historically. Because the kind of sacrifice the audience needs to be aware of on Darcy's part, the kind of social pressures on Lizzie, are just so alien to today's world. If romance movies are boring and cheesy, I'm not saying it's the fau lt of feminism for giving women the freedom of choices about their lives — careers, family planning, marriage, etc. — but there's just no story line anyone can buy that articificially keeps hetero lovers apart.

So the gay romance movie is about the only outlet for a truly ROMANTIC movie. That is where the tension and angst is. All of society is clutching at pearls at the gay thing, the parents can be horrified, people can truly be upset. There are actual obstacles for the protagonists to overcome.

The other romantic aspect that I really liked about BBM is that it addressed class issues. The working class is where dramatic tension lives, people. Screw the lifestyle porn that passes for the contemporary romance movie, with the pottery barn furniture, the La Perla undies and the distressed, glassed-in dishware cabinets near airy breakfast nooks. And screw the magazine editrixes, music industry reps, ad agency execs, lawyers and would-be politicians that litter the romcom landscapes. No, it is the working class — the loggers, longshoremen, diner waitresses, truckers and trailer park managers — that are the repository of the torpor and lack of mobility that makes for obstacles, not those mobile telecommuters.

So, to recap, hot men doing it: Yes. Social stigma makes for good romantic obstacles: Yes. The limited life choices of the working class as repository of the sort of life that prevents one from up and going to SF where there are lots of well-paying jobs and out men in leprechaun bondage gear (hey, I'm assuming it's an acquired taste, and no it's not mine, I just watch the gay pride parades) (also read the same for interracial relationships) as a good way to keep the romantic energy and obstacles going: Yes.

Citizen's Arrest!

Ah, if only the Pierce County Sheriff's Department Citizen's Academy would credential me to do that respectably. Yes, the citizen's academy is my newest challenge as a reporter and blogger.

And a challenge it is. Please, won't you follow me as I endure a 12-week journey of classes with cops? (I missed the first session, coworker Colello covered it, but he can't keep going as he lives in Seattle and it's a massive time commitment.) I know what you're thinking: "12 weeks of classes? Callie, what on earth are you taking 12 weeks of classes for?" The answer is a certificate, thank you very much. But also I will have an opportunity in the later weeks to:

-- Meet the K-9 unit. I love dogs, especially well-behaved ones.

-- Go to the county jail for a tour complete with prisoners (!)

-- Get behind the wheel of a cop car (cop brakes, cop suspension, cop tires ... etc.) and run it through an obstacle course at what cops call "a high rate of speed" after a briefing on how to drive as if you were in "hot pursuit." (!!!)

-- Shoot a cop gun at the range while they run their special criminal simulation projection (!!!!)

As you can see, there are some fringe benefits. Also, as a participant/observer (not plain observer) I get to deliver my devastating wit to the select group of "why do criminals have all the rights"-believing, unwashed-hair having, older white men that this sort of class tends to attract.

But sometimes I have to hold it in check. Like when Deputy Mark mentioned "fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq." Because nobody likes a smarty-pants. Anyway, he was talking about this when I went in — there were two buildings, I waited at the wrong one — because someone asked about the recent bomb threat at Peninsula High School. He also talked about "S.J." by name when discussing an arrest, whose name is put in early novel-style initials here ("a troublesome lad from the surrounds of G__ H_____") because I'm not going to publish it. Apparently S.J. has a brother that's just as much trouble.

Deputy Mark recently arrested S when he caught him hiding in a fence-enclosed construction area. Well, hiding is a charitable way to put it. Basically, it has been raining like gangbusters here for nigh on two months and following footprints is no impossible feat, so when he saw S's footprints it was pretty easy to ask him why he was trespassing. S told him "to steal gas." Why S decides to be honest at that moment, I have no idea. So he's in the pokey.

People hate the brothers J. They are notorious property thieves in the area, apparently, which means, Deputy Mark said, anytime a neighbor sees them coming around the PCSD gets a call. The people are furious. They want to know why the brothers J — especially S — are not in prison (being raped by bigger, angrier men). Short answer: property crimes, people. Get some perspective.

Especially because Pierce County has the HIGHEST crime rate per capita in the state. Great. People are getting raped, beat up and stabbed every day (in fact, Deputy Rusty, who is supposed to be the main facilitator, is late because he's dealing with a stabbing at the moment).

An interesting side note to this fact, Deputy Mark said, is that "COPS" loves to tape in Pierce County because there's sure to be crime to capture. Moreover, because it's so overwhelmingly white, the show is sure to get footage of white guys getting arrested. And they like to tape white guys getting busted as a breather, I suppose, from what they get when they're in New Orleans or New York City or Florida. One classmate said he got homesick watching a Pierce County "COPS" while at music camp in Minnesota.

"They've taped about five," says another classmate.

"Seven," Deputy Mark corrects. The class collectively cringes a little.

Deputy Mark takes the moment to introduce Craig Adams, the legal advisor to the PCSD and a former defense attorney. He likens that to "the Dark Side." Honestly, he's been there, he knows being a defender means little money (for the law) and spending a lot of time with clients who are are often pretty crummy people. It's a noble profession. Oh, and it's playing right into the closed mind set of the 22 students (soon to grow by about six people).

I should take the moment to describe the class. I had heard from Colello that this was "soccer mom" city, but instead, it's mostly older white men. There are a couple of women approaching middle age and a few elderly women. There are also quite a few teens. I think that's appropriate. After all, they're entering their misdemeanor years and they need to know a cop can't search them without their consent. It's all white, which is pretty representative of the area, and there's a powerful streak of conservatism and law-and-order mindset from those who speak up (minus me, but I'm not so much liberal as I am contrarian). There's a powerful trust in the police; one woman who has had a stroke actually wants to give her key to the PCSD in case she has a medical emergency and can't open the door for the cops (they respond they'll break the door down instead — who can blame them? It's an emergency, who's going to go fumbling for the keys?). These people really trust that the cops only collar wrongdoers. As we discuss the limits of cops' abilities to search private property, it really cheeses some of the people in the class that something "obvious," like a high electricity bill, can't be used to search for a grow operation. They just don't see why there should be limits to cops' authority — after all, if you're not doing anything wrong, what are you worried about? I chalk it up to privilege — class, race, gender, the works.

Most of these guys grew up in a time when being a teen didn't put you under suspicion as a drug dealer or vandal or school shooter, too, so they really don't have any experience with being under suspicion. I haven't either, by the state, but when I was in third grade I was accused of writing "Tommy N' Jael" on the meeting house wall by Tommy's mother (Tommy did it, though) who was my teacher. I don't need to recall my own anguish at feeling presumed guilty and totally powerless in order to sympathize with people who are accused of crimes that bear a harsher punishment than an afternoon scrubbing the meeting house wall and a stigma among a more permanent community than elementary schoolmates. Haven't these people seen "The Fugitive?"

The thing is, some of these classmates think they'll never be accused of squat. And they think if they are, all they have to do is take a blow test or empty their pockets and that will prove something. Or that they won't be "acting guilty," which is their standard of proof for a search. It's utterly amazing to me.

Luckily, Deputy Mark is on the side of the rules. He says he likes having to do things by the book, it makes his job an intellectual exercise — he's not just a piece of state-empowered muscle. He says he doesn't want to live in a police state. Yay Deputy Mark!

Craig tells us that Washington State has a set of constitutional amendments that supersede those granted by the U.S. Constitution. I love Washington State. The U.S. First Amendment, which I LOVE, takes power from the government, but in this singular state of the union, we citizens have affirmative grants of rights from the state to us. I LOVE that. I wish I'd taken civics here instead of in Philadelphia.

Also, we have privacy rights in Washington, for one thing, and our particulars and papers and property and other "p" words cannot be searched without our consent. The Washington State constitution makes the Fourth Amendment seem a little puny, indeed. And I LOVE the Fourth Amendment. Oh, who am I kidding, I love all the amendments.

Craig says that if you train in Quantico for some reason, in some courses you will hear, "anyone from Washington State? Okay, here is the additional rule you need to obey."

Craig also leads us through some scenarios permissible under the Constitution, which includes animal sacrifice and marijuana usage for religious purposes. He then says human sacrifice has never been tested under the Constitution, sounding a spooky note. "That may be permissible," he said. I'm thinking the human sacrifice cult will likely not have much luck getting the community to accept their place of worship. When I verbalize this, the rest of the class, at least that part that is paying attention, scoffs. Maybe I didn't say it the right way: Should the Supreme Court allow human sacrifice, of willing victims, I am thinking that is a problem with its own solution built right in.

Some of the older, staid classmates are a little irked that neither constitution takes into account "the sensibility of the community."

Craig moves on to the Second Amendment. "Any gun nuts?" he asks. I see one hand go up and put my own up just to be different. I've never fired a gun. I don't think they're particularly necessary, and it seems like too many psychos get a hold of them. Still, I have to say it kinda blows my mind that on this issue the class — particularly the unwashed hair set — is "liberal." I gotta expand my mind.

Craig mentions a bust he's in on of a B.C. bud ring. So far, they've got almost $8 million in cash and property (excuse me, contraband) of which about $7.5 million was found during consented searches the dumb criminal could have refused. Well, that's what pot will do, I guess. I feel a slight twinge of sadness for all the professionals, college kids and musicians that will have to smoke schwag instead of sticky icky for the next couple of weeks until a new method of supply can hit the streets.

There is no future probable cause. Another round of concerned glances. Police do not work on hunches, Craig said. According to Malcolm Gladwell, they do, but those hunches are divined from concrete data that is coallated by experienced cops in such a way the normal person cannot do. Actually, they work kinda hand in hand. You may be suspicious of a home with high electricity usage, especially if it is the only home on the block without snow on its roof. But you can only get a warrant as a cop if you approach the home and, in a place that is available to the public, get a fat whiff of dope. But why would you go near there in the first place? Just to get the factual piece of the puzzle in place, it seems to me.

All of the sudden the firefighter class downstairs starts screaming and hollering. It sounds like a Japanese hard martial art class and they're trying to get all their ki out. Or that they're reenacting that part in "Braveheart" but as firefighters against a burning building. I think fleetingly that I'm in the wrong class. They will continue to holler on and off for the rest of the night. Maybe I should go to fireman classes when I'm done with the citizen's academy.

We go through the Miranda Rights, and I'm thinking I'm going to hear more rumblings because Ernesto Miranda was a child molester and he got off because of the Supreme Court, but I don't. There is more anger, though, when the Sixth Amendment is brought up because it is the accused's right to waive a speedy trial, not the prosecution's. Craig relates a strange, sad tale of a man he defended who said he had an alibi witness for a crime he could not bond out on. The witness had just left to crab in Alaska for the season, and the accused said he'd wait until the crabber came back, it was cool with him, he'd just waive his right to a speedy trial. So three or four months later crabman comes back, meets with the prosecutor and the accused was released that day.

This tale makes me wonder what the crime was in the first place. How come the man couldn't bond out? There must be a more efficient and effective way to run the justice system than on this man's word that he has an alibi as all the rest of the evidence gets outdated and trails grow cold and witnesses move away.

Strangely, the L&O people are a little moved at this tale. One asks if the man was compensated for his time. Nope. Maybe it's the crabbing reference that makes this accused sound not so bad by knowing someone who does such hard, dangerous work. But this guy couldn't just empty his pockets and turn over his home to the police to show his innocence. He was really at the mercy of a guy in the Bering Sea and the cops and the state. And he stayed in jail with no small amount of grace, the way Craig tells it. Maybe he was homeless, or a guy who'd been in trouble with the law or black or a drunk or mentally ill or ugly and dirty or one of any number of factors that leaves him open to prejudice. But at that moment, with so little in the way of personal details divulged, the greasy-haired men maybe could see themselves in that situation.

Aw. I get to wrap this piece up with some unexpected symmetry. I feel so "This American Life."

Before we go, Deputy Rusty tells us the stabber was released from custody because it looked like self-defense, and neither he nor the stabee had criminal records. This fascinates me. Just imagine the narrative, the characters, that these facts suggest not only for that little psychodrama but also for the state of reasoned debate. Also that cops are letting a stabber go free and neither he nor his buddy will necessarily be put into anger management. Blows my mind.

It's beginning to

feel a lot like Christmas. Sooo dark. Singing "Sleigh Ride" in the shower. What a dork I am.

My new favorite Christmas song is Eartha Kitt's "Santa Baby." She sounds so evil and wheedly. Where did she get that voice from? What a talent. Too bad she'll be remembered as the other Catwoman.

Here's my Christmas playlist on iTunes:
"Jingle Bell Rock," Bobby Helms
"Run Rudolph Run," Chuck Berry
"Santa Baby," Eartha Kitt
"Funky Christmas," James Brown (James Brown love you, you lucky so-and-so — that's a lyric to be proud of)
"Silver Bells," The Temptations
"Blue Christmas," Elvis Presley
"Sleigh Ride," Ronettes
"Backdoor Santa," Clarence Carter (this is a must-listen, because it is about as funky and un-Christmassy as a Christmas song can get, if you consider Christmassy to be family-oriented)
"Merry Christmas Baby," Otis Redding
"Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," Brenda Lee
"Silent Night," Al Green
"Santa Claus Is Coming to Town," Jackson 5


Charley made a miniature version of her usual spread. Generally she takes a week off to bake and sets up two tables full of cookies, breads, cheese balls and more. It was only one table this year because she got sick for vacation, but that was plenty. her cheese ball, a combo of cream cheese with mayo to thin a little, scallions, garlic, diced bacon and dill, was killer with triscuits.

This will be my first Christmas without my family, but the people I know have been so good to me, inviting me to thier homes for that day and whatnot. It's enough to make my heart grow three sizes.

The best e-mails

My Pa sends the best emails. He is the squarest beatnik poet you'll ever meet. Here is one of his best missives:

"have arrived, gotten all of the stuff in (not put up yet) changed to MY YALLER PANTS and long sleeved Razorback white shirt, enjoyed the trip to LR and the food and seeing Thomas and meeting Ronnie and the conversation (Carol) and the picture show and all the rest. The drive home was good but windy and how, blowed all the Curl out of my hair. Oh! and I got the mail have not opened it yet. Got an interesting note from a dog setter in Wash thanks Callie ( will try to drop U a line later). All is well that ends well.

Love Big Pa"

He has style.

And he's referring to my last email at the end, where I discuss the travails of dogsitting for three demented dogs. Not all at once. One ran off and was feeling his oats and making me feel guilty, but apparently he's just been off in the woods having an Iron John moment. Another one wasn't demented, but if she didn't want to go out, there was no way she'd go out. The third is an ancient little crone — incontinent, with skin problems and anger issues. I brought her over to the home of the other two dogs on an overlapping day and she, um, expressed her anger or just couldn't control herself all over the kitchen floor. I was just grateful it wasn't on the homeowners' authentic, silk Arabian carpet. She's much better now that she's back in her own home and she's a wonderful companion anyway.

I wish I had some YALLER PANTS. And I wish I could find a wind strong enough to blow the Curl out of my hair.

Post-prandial stompin'

So Thanksgiving doesn't seem like the likeliest holiday to go with shopping at 5 a.m. the next day, what with the massive consumption of (if you were at the home I was at for TG) turkey, wine, roasted yams, cranberry relish, caviar, capicola, shrimp cocktail, pumpkin cake (in a roll, with cream cheese frosting), pumpkin pie, green beans, oyster stuffing and lots of yummy appetizers. It seems like a morning spent sleeping in is the best remedy.

However, there are apparently a lot of people who enjoy getting up early and heading to the local big box store to wait for an early opening to buy specially discounted electronic (and sundry) goods.

I'm beginning to wonder if these one-time-only discounts aren't for more than just attracting consumers, because apparently consumers just want to shop early on Black Friday anyway. I'm beginning to wonder if these deals are meant to inspire good security camera material for the overlords' Christmas parties.

Think about it.

Who do the Wal-Marts of the world hire? Poor, unsophisticated people. What do they do to them while they work there? They strip them of their human dignity and make them put their kids on state health insurance programs. Why do they do it? There's profit to be made.

But something happened on this side of teaching them to sing the company song and do the butt wiggle at the center dash of Wal-Mart. There became a cruelty in the degredation; a pleasure in being telling a woman worker they didn't have to pay for time she spent in the bathroom.

I can just imagine some corporate man of industry telling his cronies, "I'm sure the $30 DVD players will attract the masses to shop ... but let's only stock a few so we can watch the fur fly." Because who buys $30 DVD players because of a marketing circular? Poor, unsophisticated people (and me, but I got mine in the off-season with no lost dignity). It's like two jolly-makers in one.

I bet there is not a person reading this post that didn't watch their local news in some state of horror over the crowds at the big boxes, and the commotions that were caused by the "deals" inside. Or that didn't see some permutation of the 73-y-o grandmother whose leg was broken in the crush to get a cheap laptop computer story in their local paper.

You can say the stampeders were acting like animals, and you wouldn't be half wrong, but there's something wrong with a world that sets up conditions for people to feel crazed and greedy like that. And if it seems crazy that something like this exists in America, well, I sure feel that way.

Justify my FMW

Talked to dad yesterday. He's got a dietician now, and he was talking about good-for-you foods with her. She was mild-mannered about his food choices until he brought up the Frosted Mini Wheats — a cereal he has derided as sugary junk and mocked me for eating so much of — and she went nuts! She got dad convinced that the FMW is about as good as it gets in terms of breakfast food.

So, to all the FMW haters, in your face.

From Russia with Love

These dudes are from the Pallada at the Tall Ships festival in Tacoma way way back in July. The Pallada is a teaching ship that does not carry weapons (unless you count the plumes of cigarette smoke) and isn't even military. They just love the uniform, however, in other countries and so they keep them, with their epaulets and braid and whatnot.

The sailors of the Cuauhtemoc and I could speak in Spanish and I got a couple free posters as well as an illuminating conversation about how they'd been away from Acapulco for a ghastly amount of time and continental civilization for even longer (previous two ports of call were in Alaska and Honolulu, which is unaffordable to regular American sailors, much less Mexican sailors, and they'd been at sea forever. A friend of mine who was a docent and did a little translation told me the sailors asked him where to get typical American food and where to find girls in Tacoma).

From the Russians, though, I left only footprints and took only photos of these strangely peaches-and-cream-skinned chain smokers. All we could say to each other were nonsense phrases like "Da Svidanya," "Perestroika," "Michael Jackson," and "Smoke! Smoke! Ha ha ha ha! Smoke? Nyet? (shrug)"

Stephen and Noga went to Vietnam

You should check it out.

Some Wilmoths, for a change

Rob and Hannah, to be precise. They're my blonde, curly-headed relatives, and this is after Grandma's funeral.

Rob and Carol came in from Steamboat, and it's always great to be around them. They always have such stories to tell. In fact, in June, Rob and I tooled around Etowah and Lepanto and he pointed out all the fields the high school kids used to pull into to have sex back in the day. Northeast Arkansas is as flat as a pancake, and it didn't seem to be very private to be in a field that was essentially in the middle of town, but I suppose the towns are so small not only does everyone know who is doing who anyway, but no one would be around to necessarily witness goings-on in Old Man Whoever's field.

Extreme Reporter

This is me, back at work. Ish. Lee Giles, the photog, jokes that I'm an X-treme reporter because I am not afraid to climb up and down 21 flights of see-through stairs to get to the bridge worksite, nor be on top of the bridge towers (I've been on top of both the new bridge and the one that is currently in use, which can't be called the old one because the actual old one was torn down by wind and then rebuilt). I've also been in a stunt plane, done a Polar Bear jump on New Year's, petted a polar bear (it was under sedation for a root canal at the time), been on a salmon fishing boat and done other various and sundry "extreme" things I can't recall.

Well, I guess you could say this is how I roll.

Charles documents Dad's exercise

Dad was doing really good at his 20-minutes-a-day exercise routine before I left, and it was thanks to the heart monitor on the exercycle (recumbent) that dad realized his heart was beating too fast. In this scene, you may be able to see a bit of the Greenland fishing village puzzle Charles and I worked on. That's Shelby in his little bed. Just watching dad work out wears him out.

Since dad has been doing physical therapy, he's the star patient and the rehabbers are trying to get him to enter a half marathon, which is still more than 13 miles. He seems keen, but if I recall correctly, didn't he have knee surgery at some point?

Charles was later seen helping my aunt Sandy recuperate from her own surgery, upon the heels of which came a hurricane. I'm telling you, this has NOT been the White Family Year of Great Fortune. Sandy is doing great, I hear, and, like with my dad, the surgery didn't end up being as humongous as the doctors at first thought it was going to be.

People, eat your veggies, do your exercise.

Fantastic experiment — sort of.

The Tacoma News Tribune is offering reader comments on their stories, just as if they were blog entries. Through Haloscan, even.

Yesterday I visited the TNT site to read a story that they wrote — with access to a 300-odd page legal filing in another county that I didn't have access to (on deadline, too far and Thurston County charges what I would call a freedom of information-stifling $.50 per page copy of its documents in county court. I mean, that's MORE than the cost of paper, electricity and toner for what is PUBLIC information. Spending $150 bucks is out of the my paper's budget for what amounts to what is now a minimal story).

So there were three comments that were left anonymously that basically mocked the way the state handles its finances. Nothing out of the ordinary for a typical blog entry on a typical popular site. I believe the comments centered on how TNC (the Bechtel-Kiewit company that has been hired to build the bridge by the transportation dept.) gets to pocket the difference for what its subcontractor can save them but my memory does not serve me well.

At any rate, though flip, the comments were quite stinging. And brought up some good points. And now they are gone into the ether. I'm not sure why this is so.

The Seattle PI also encourages comments but only on its blog stories. Which so far are all A&E stuff.

Anyway, I think it's a fantastic experiment. Sort of. With comments, you kinda have to keep them on if they aren't klantastic or you risk losing your credibility. I wish the Gateway would do something similar. It's a lot of fun to read what people will only say anonymously, because even though 1/2 of it is claptrap, some of it is the honesty of paranoids and more of it is the reflection of regular people.

Oh yeah

While in Arkansas, after dad's first meal out at Star of India, Charles and I were fortunate enough to get a glimpse of The Commander. She was in full regalia, including her phaser, which if I recall correctly, had to be handed in each day she served as a juror during the Whitewater trial to security. It seems unnecessary to carry a phaser, though, when her look is clearly set to "stun." (And I don't mean that in the Seven of Nine way, but rather, in the sense that people can't believe what they are seeing and so they just gawp.)

It was a first for Charles and although I've seen her before, one can never get enough of local eccentrics.

Great chili

Here's a recipe my mom wanted for some turkey chili I made. It's low in salt, fat and other nasty things, but super high on flavor — but surprisingly unspicy considering all the hot pepper that goes into it. Also it will make a ton. I made it like this back in Arkansas:

Chop up an onion and any leftover onion bits you have.
Chop up a green pepper and any other bits of pepper you have.
I forgot to add garlic, but you can squeeze some cloves in iffin you want.

fry above ingredients over med-hi heat in a dutch over/big soup pot. Stir.

When they are kinda cooked down add

two finely diced jalapenos.
A package of v.v. low fat turkey (if you are veggie make this a vegan dish by popping in a couple packages of tofu that has been frozen and defrosted and crumbled)

Make sure you stir a lot and break up the turkey into little bits. Unlike beef, it will stick all together (what with the lack of fat and all).

When turkey is browned, dump in
1 28 oz can crushed tomatoes.

Cuss because you think you screwed up — you bought diced tomatoes special for this recipe!
Add 28 oz (or equivalent) of diced tomatoes.

Dump in three cans of beans, which have been drained and rinsed to get rid of excess salt (and no, that liquid is not all that good for you, it's like it's all full of corn starch!). I recommend two cans dark kidney beans and one can black beans.

Stir and put the heat down so there isn't splatter everywhere.

Now for the spices. Get out your Cumin and put a wooden spoonful's worth in there. A lot of cumin makes chili. Do you have chili powder? A wooden spoonful. It won't burn. Trust me. Cayenne? Sure. I used that before, and a lot of it. I paired it with a bunch of paprika. Add paprika anyway, it's wonderfully sweet and savory. Is that all a lot of spice? Yeah, but you know what, that's going to be a lot of chili, too.

Let everything stew together for however long you want it to. Let it come to a thick, grotty clottiness. Boil off excess water. Eat with relish (although a little diced cilantro or shredded cheddar would taste better). Enjoy the cheapness of your work lunch (for the next week and a half), gross out your yoga classmates afterwards.

For Mediterranean farty goodness, here's my ratatouille recipe (and my mom's, but it's less a recipe than a series of guidelines).

Get the biggest pan you can find — bigger than the 9x13. This will be what you roast in. Keep the dimensions of this big pan in mind as you chop up (but not too fine because all the veggies will shrink dramatically): zucchini (aka courgette, 2-3), an onion (oignon, pronounced "onion" with a fransh accent), an eggplant (aubergine, which does not sound like albourge), roma tomatoes (tomates 2-3, at least. They will not keep their shape too good, but instead melt into a nice tomatoey glaze for the veggies) and mushrooms (champignons, baby bellas are good, a pack or so).

Mix these veggies either in a bowl or, if possible, in the roasting pan, with olive oil. The idea, as mom would say, is to think of it as a salad and the oil as its dressing. I found it's a lot easier if you grease up everything else first (minus the tomatoes) and add the eggplant after everything else is coated. Eggplant soak up oil like a sponge and are not good at sharing. On the plus side, they are the funnest of all the vegetables to cut. I am serious.

Once the veggies are pretty coated, get out the dried oregano and basil. The proportions you are going for are roughly two parts basil to one part oregano. But each part is a big honking part. When the veggies are in the roasting pan, you tump over the basil until it looks like a lawn is sprouting. Then add the oregano in an equal proportion. You will be shocked and offended by the sheer amount of herbage in the pan. Mix everything together until the herbs are kind of decently spread out. But it will never be as perfectly spread as you want it to be, because the basil and oregano will really be kind of sold on the side of the veggies you so lavishly sprinkled them on. So you basil up the other parts of the veggies with a vengeance. You will make yourself sick and giddy at the same time with each shake of the dried basil container. This is how you know you are doing the right thing, when you feel like a profligate wasteful American with the conscience of a European — nay! A citizen of Japan!

The oven should be preheated to 400 or so. I forgot. It doesn't matter. You leave the veggies inside the oven, uncovered, until they are appropriately shrunk. You may have to give the veggies a stir at some point. Some bits might be a little charred. You don't care. You are still under the heady influence of the fragrant fountains of green you let fly from your spice cabinet. I guess the appropriate time to check them is when you are once again able to stand up and concentrate on such mundane matters.

There you go, two recipes that will be so healthy and keep you so regular and yet so offensive to your exercise partners. Being healthy and fiberriffic has its downsides, it is true.

More ER madness

So dad had an appointment with his GP and reported a fast heartrate; the GP agreed and, at 1:30, we hit the ER to meet up with dad's cardiologist, Dr. Garza. He gets an EKG, he gets a chest X-ray, he gets put on a bed in the hall of the ER (not all in the same hour or in that order, come to think of it). Five hours later, we're waiting for either Garza or Singh, the so-called "cardiology gods," to basically confirm the suspicions of about five other doctors that have looked at dad — namely, that his meds need to be upped to control his heart rate. One of them will write him a new prescription and we're outtie.

Needless to say, I was not prepared to go from a GP appt to the ER and I have no book and am aggressively bored and, because of the fact that I'm bored and scared at the same time I get angry at these hifalutin doctors who think our time isn't worth it and are making us wait five hours. Also, I have to keep going outside to try to reach mom, who never answers her cell and I have to go through the metal detector each time the security guard doesn't keep his eye on me when I'm trying to get decent cell reception (which is blessedly very little time, but honestly). Finally I reach mom, who is with some people from her Sunday School class who have brought dinner. She comes to relieve me.

When she comes into the room dad has been moved to, Dr. Singh is in there with a coterie of little doctors, standing around an old woman who's had some sort of episode and he's doing the "House" thing, making the little doctors call out diagnoses and I'm sure it would be cute as hell if I hadn't thought he was going to look at dad, confirm the diagnosis other doctors have made and give dad some drugs. I figure mom has come at the last moment and dad is soon to be let go (oh yeah, the nurses withheld water from him for a while and he got whiny, but when he got water he felt better). But I get home, eat and watch an episode of "The Office" and talk with a friend back home before I find out the doctors have three ideas about what might be wrong with him. Two of them are pretty terrible situations, I'll describe them like I was "House." (Okay, I've only seen that show once, I'll wing it)

In the first situation, dad has atrial fibrulation. The atria, a sac within the heart, detaches from the heart muscle. It messes up the beat of the heart and speeds it up. It is dangerous. The EKG has already shown this is not what is bothering dad.

In the second, the sac around the heart is filling up with fluid. This is also a grim possibility. An ultrasound (which takes a while) shows this is not the case.

Or, the alternative, dad just needs more meds. Well, there you go. That's what it was. Mom and dad made it home at 10 p.m. Just in time for dad and me to watch the Daily Show and Reno 911. Trudy's getting married to Craig, the Truckee River Killer. That shouldn't be so funny, but it is.

So mom stayed home today and dad slept a lot and everything is fine.

ETA a description of some of dad's more noteworthy fellow sickies. There was an older man with a distended belly who kept bursting out with, "Praise God!" even though he seemed to be in some terrible pain. I overheard him tell a nurse, "I doo-dooed my pants, and it's bad." I never saw anyone un-doo-doo his pants, either. There was a big old redneck guy with a scrape on the back of his head. His lady came in and she was wearing a very revealing shirt and super tight pants and had a silver-blond eighties haircut — you know the mullet that is for very long, limp hair? Where the top part is parted in the middle and kind of brought back in a wave? That's the haircut she had. Also she had a huge tatoo on her chest and back. And boy was her man proud of her. Also, in the waiting room, was the skankiest little crackwhore you ever saw. Even the nurses were talking about her. She looked to have all manner — and I mean *all* manner — of STDs (she had a bump on her forehead, was skinny as anything, her eyes didn't appear to open correctly, and she was dirty, too), she was in a trashy and dirty little miniskirt and tank top ensemble and she was peripatetic. Either she was trying to get comfortable on the chair with a blanket over her or she was wandering around. Also she was constantly surrounded with trash. Where she was sitting, she was surrounded by chick-fil-a wrappers and chip bags and coke cans and about a jillion wadded-up napkins. She was with her crackpimp (?) who was a big ole ugly dude in a uniform shade of navy blue. I'm serious, his clothes, shoes, skin, hair, all looked to be about the same color of navy blue. He was not healthy. Or maybe it was the fluorescent lights.

Krishna Rocks

I'll get some photos up shortly, but this past weekend Granddaddy White and Uncle Charles came to visit. They drove my granddad's Lincoln Town Car up in spite of the uncertainty of supplies from Katrina, but took the route through Atlanta. They made it in Thursday afternoon — apparently they were just flying from Jackson, Miss., where they had stopped the night before. They were so fast that Charles had to call dad while we were doing his walkies at the Hobby Lobby (we were getting fabric and batting for mom's dinner chairs so there might be a place to sit and eat for the guests. However, that project has yet to get off the ground).

Granddad had a hot date Saturday night with Millie, his secretary from 50 years ago or so, with whom he had re-struck-up a friendship after running into her at a Fayetteville Rotary meeting. My granddad may be in his late 80s, but as a single man of his age he is HIGHLY in demand by the widder women. He cooks, he cleans, he is fully ambulatory and, the kicker, according to Charles, he can drive at night. It is not his preferred time to drive, but it means dinners and shows out on the town.

A little irony: Doug and I are young and good-looking (though not as good-looking as granddad) and not at all in demand for dates. We do, BTW, drive after dark. But that's just totally taken for granted by our Gen-X cohort, I suppose.

When I say a hot date, I mean it. They are talking about going to Branson together and seeing Shoji Tabuchi at his cabaret theatre, where he performs a family-friendly show with his beautiful wife Dorothy and delightful daughter Christina. Also a character in his show, his atrocious bowl-cut.

They also ended up going to Devil's Den park for a picnic, and granddad got a flat on the way back home and drove up the hill to the farm with the donut. It's amazing to me that his car made it up that hill in the first place, much less with the donut.

Charles stayed longer and left his "The Office" DVDs here. It's such a funny show, but nobody wins. Ever. It's kinda sad. I guess that's the dilemma of the modern man. He also took dad (and, I guess, me) on our first lunch out since the heart attack. It was to Star of India, and although Charles hadn't been there in maybe two years, Sami remembered him. Sami gives all the credit for his photographic memory to Krishna. Krishna rocks.

Charles also helped me get closer to completing the puzzle coworkers of dad's have brought him. It's a bunch of seaside buildings in Greenland; apparently there are only about three colors of paint in Greenland.

But Charles didn't have much time to spend here; he had class Monday and you know how those college kids are.