Slipstream
Writing the Backwash with R. H. Sheldon
Two, Four, Six, Eight, Now’s the Time to Litigate
A number of years ago, more than I care to count, I fell from an Army helicopter and broke both arms and both legs. I wasn’t in the Army, though. I was a search-and-rescue volunteer living in the Colorado Rockies. On the day I fell, teams from around the state had gathered to practice airlifts with one of the Army’s Chinook helicopters and its crew.
The S&R volunteers took turns being strapped into a jungle penetrator and then being lifted into the belly of the bird. A jungle penetrator is a 90-pound steel cylinder with three bars that fold out to form a makeshift seat, used extensively, I believe, in the Vietnam War. When it came my turn, the sergeant helped to strap me into the penetrator and to hook the penetrator to the cable. He then gave the go-ahead. I traveled upward about 35 feet when the cable shook and shimmied and I was suddenly flying free.
The rest is search-and-rescue history.
Posted in Body, Mind & Soul | Comments Off
Coyote Blues
On the last day of November, here in Seattle, federal wildlife officers shot and killed a renegade coyote only blocks from where I live. They took aim, fired, and dropped the sucker in its tracks. At least that’s what I imagined happened, based on the reports.
I knew something was up before the first bullet flew. I heard sirens crisscrossing the nearby streets and the annoying bleat of a news helicopter circling above. So I headed to my computer and checked a few local websites. That’s when I learned a coyote had been wandering the Seattle streets, with sightings not far from my home, including the park where I often walk, the park we were now warned to avoid.
I tried to return to work. But then received a text from one of my neighbors. He pointed me to a website with the latest news about our four-legged fugitive. I followed the link to a local blog. The situation had been resolved. (more…)
Posted in Body, Mind & Soul | Comments Off
Senseless Sensibility: How To Survive in the Age of Unreason
Yesterday, the manager of my apartment building sent us, the tenants, a group email about the passage of Initiative 502 and the changing legal status of marijuana in Washington. “While it will be legal to smoke pot in our fine state,” he wrote, “please be aware that the Belford remains a nonsmoking building. This applies to any type of smokable vegetation.”
The manager said nothing about vegetation of the ingestible kind.
For those not in the know, Initiative 502 makes the recreational use of marijuana legal in Washington. We voted the measure into law at the same time we voted Barack Obama into office for a second term, supporting pot and the president in about equal measure—the final tallies around 56%. (more…)
Posted in Political & Social | Comments Off
What Would Buddha Do? Coping with America’s Not-So-Great Divide
Not surprisingly, those who supported Mitt Romney this past election felt a bitter disappointment at his loss, the same feelings Barack Obama’s supporters would have experienced had he failed in his reelection bid.
Despite their discouragement, some have been willing to pull themselves up by the bootstraps and get on with business, without resorting to name calling, making threats, or throwing tantrums.
Others have not been so gracious. (more…)
Posted in Body, Mind & Soul | Comments Off
Good Fences, Good Neighbors, Good Grief
The other day, I met a friend for breakfast at a local café here in Seattle. Outside was wet, cool, overcast—a typical fall day in the Northwest. But inside the restaurant was cozy and warm and invited a long, lingering conversation. We jumped around from topic to topic, until we landed on the laundry facilities in our respective apartment buildings. How we got there, I have no idea.
More often than not, when it’s time to do laundry, we have to first clean up the messes left by the other tenants—the scattered and smeared dirt, the spilled detergents and stain removers, the telltale lint and chemically treated paper sheets used to soften (and chemically treat) their drying clothes. For me, cleaning up after my neighbors has become such a part of my routine that I often bring an extra towel or rag along when I do my laundry, just to be prepared for what I’ll find.
But laundry facilities occupied our conversation for only a short time, and we quickly turned from dirty clothes to dirty public places in general. (After all, how much is there to say about a laundry room?) We have both observed that when it comes to shared spaces—those for which we can’t claim direct ownership—we seem to have a cultural mindset that precludes taking responsibility for anything we don’t consider part of our personal sphere, even if we’re paying hefty rents or taxes or fees to support them. (more…)
Posted in Political & Social | Comments Off
Check it Out!
