Trego's Mountain Ear

"Serving North Lincoln County"

Author: michaelmccurry

  • When Castro Was Cool

    I wasn’t yet ten, and Castro was cool. From 1953 on, he was a revolutionary, fighting to remove Fulgencio Batista from Cuba’s presidency. In 1938, speaking of Nicaragua’s president Somoza, FDR described the dictator with the phrase “He may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.” President Roosevelt died before Batista took power in Cuba, so we don’t know how he would have evaluated Batista – but my bet is about the same.

    I turned 9 after ‘los barbudos’ (the bearded ones) came from the mountains into Havana – so I was probably 7 when I started watching the news about the Cuban revolution. Castro was cool – he was a pitcher. At 7, the world was open – I too had pitching potential. By the time I was 10, like everyone who watched me, I knew better. But Fidel Castro had tried out for the Washington Senators (the story was he almost made the Yankees, but the truth was impressive enough for a 7-year-old).

    Each weekend, ‘los barbudos’ would capture another town – after the newspapers with Sunday comics came to town. Like me, ‘los barbudos’ read Al Capp’s Little Abner comic strip. I could understand the need for a skirmish to get to Little Abner – as my family’s new reader, I got the comics section after Dad got his chance at it, and often after Mom.

    And, naturally, ‘los barbudos’ were cool. The only revolutionaries I had heard of at that time were the American revolutionaries – and they were the good guys. In 1957, I had no idea that revolutionaries could be bad guys. I guess I had a lot left to learn.

  • You Have To Beat Darwin Every Day

    There are Darwin Awards out there – and you have to win every time you’re in a spot to get a Darwin. (The Darwin awards are in recognition of removing oneself from the gene pool by one’s own foolish actions) Darwin, like Malthus, only needs to be right once. Winning means not getting a Darwin award.

    It’s why stupidity, according to Heinlein, is a capital offense. Martin Luther King said “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” Jennifer Lee Carrol described it: “Stupidity makes you dangerous to yourself and everyone around you.”

    Perhaps John Farnam’s rule of stupid is what we most need: “Don’t go to stupid places; don’t associate with stupid people; don’t do stupid things.” In Minneapolis, we saw Farnam’s rule violated – and then, seeing the results were not what they wanted, the folks against deporting illegals doubled down, even more came out of the woodwork, with a story that denied Good’s contribution to her death. Then ICE doubled down and sent in another thousand agents.

    Some of our mojados survived the trip through the Darien Gap, the rest of central America, Mexico and across the Rio Grande – others died on the way. I think of Gonzalo’s mother – a pregnant teen, sixty years ago, going north from Yucatan so her baby would be born in the US and Gonzalo would have opportunities that she didn’t. She took the risks knowingly, won her gamble, and was promptly deported back to Mexico, with newborn US citizen Gonzalo. That was a different, calculated decision.

    In the woods, don’t hang out under widowmakers. I have one here on the place, that my father pointed out to avoid over sixty years ago. I’m looking forward to sharing it with my grandsons – let’s see how many generations can share that hazard. There’s a reason to wear a brainbucket when you’re using a chainsaw.

    Hanging out with stupid people can be hazardous – the type of friend that says or does exactly the wrong thing and gets the entire bar PO’d at two or three people. Come to think of it, part of that may include going to stupid places and doing stupid things. Right now, the news kind of focuses me on Minnesota and ICE – but there are a lot of other opportunities to go to stupid places and do stupid things with stupid people. The point is to avoid them – and at 76, I’ve probably been lucky more than skillful. Not having a Darwin Award for the wall is a good thing.

  • Computer Repair by Mussolini

    My cat decided my laptop needed to be kicked to the floor. Everyone who has a cat has experienced it – the cat jumps to a flat surface, and makes the decision that whatever is there needs to be pushed to the floor. While cats have a tendency to land on their feet, laptop computers have a tendency to land on their corners. And on most laptops, two of the four corners include the hinges that let you lift the screen.

    So my laptop had the right hinge still connected, and the left side of the screen was hanging free. There are an amazing number of problems in using an HP where the left side is loose – all sorts of shut down and start up problems occur because that’s the corner with the switch. I thought of epoxy – but hinges have to move, and generally, anything I fix with epoxy needs to be thicker than the original piece or it will break again.

    I pulled out the dial calipers – a handy tool. The computer, at the spot where it was broken was just under half an inch. So I started looking through the scrap for a chunk of aluminum with a half-inch channel. No such luck. I couldn’t find the piece that did what I needed. Then remnants of my early years struck my mind – could I find a piece of metal in the clutter of a half-century of gun repair and modification. Maybe an old Carcano or Steyr clip? The Steyr clip was angled, but Cartridges of the World told me that the rim diameter was0.470 – the right size, but the angle wouldn’t work well. On the other hand, the Carcano rim was .450 – and if memory served, the clip was all right angles. It was a question of looking through 40 years of collected miscellaneous junk for something that looks like this:

    Well, it took a while to find it – (I haven’t had a Carcano around in over forty years. Nice enough little carbine, but less practical than an M1 carbine. Thought I was doing great when I swapped it off.) Took a grinder and removed the right side, and I had my brace to repair the broken computer. It took a lot longer to figure out the part I could repurpose and then find it than it did to modify it and fix my computer. And if the cat gets ambitious and breaks the right hinge, I still have one more perfectly original Italian Carcano clip on hand to use for one more repair. I am sure that Mussolini never expected that parts for the rifles he used to invade Ethiopia would be used to repair computers.

  • Getting Alberta Oil to Market

    I saw this map on Small Dead Animals (when you’re this close to the border, following Canadian blogs makes sense):

    The map suggests that the challenges involved in holding Canada together may be greater than I had realized. Saskatchewan is looking at a similar route to get their fertilizer to the Pacific – though that may wind up being truck and rail.

    I’ve seen a poll taken on the Alberta separatist movement – while I have no idea how good the pollster is, results of 19% for Alberta independence and 75% who want to stay Canadian seem pretty solid. We shall see – they’re gathering signatures for the election, and I am sure it will occur. Who knows – they may even get a pipeline that runs through British Columbia.

    Ten days later – and before I got back to this map and Alberta’s resources, the Venezuela strike came along. I don’t know a whole lot about the oil business – but the little I do know tells me that Venezuela’s thick crude isn’t a whole lot different than Alberta’s oil. Heck, Venezuela’s oil was being refined in the US before World War II. It’s back.

  • Thus Spake Zarathustra – One More Time

    I’ve never before been tempted to steal a title from Nietzsche – but the furor in Minnesota, the street riots in Iran, the raid in Venezuela, and who knows what else may occur before I post this.

    It applies more to the rioting in Iran – Zarathustra founded Zoroastrianism – the Persian religion before Arab conquerors brought Islam into the country that we know as Iraq. The present rebellion is symbolized by attractive women setting photographs of Supreme Leader Khamenei on fire, then lighting a cigarette from the flaming photo. Apparently, its illegal to burn Khamenei’s photo, and Iranian women really aren’t allowed to smoke. The guy on the media said this was becoming a symbolic part of the revolution – and its possible that they’re right.

    I didn’t get into reading of Persia and Zoroastrianism from reading Nietzsche. The author who dragged me into the topic was a brit poet named Fitzgerald, who loosely translated the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Khayyam had a verse that motivated me to read of both Islam and Zoroaster:

    Myself when young did eagerly frequent
    Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument
    About it and about: but evermore
    Came out by the same Door as in I went.

    And this I know: whether the one True Light,
    Kindle to Love, or Wrath consume me quite,
    One Glimpse of It within the Tavern caught
    Better than in the Temple lost outright.

    Oh Thou who didst with Pitfall and with Gin
    Beset the Road I was to wander in,
    Thou wilt not with Predestination round
    Enmesh me, and impute my Fall to Sin?

    Oh Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make,
    And who with Eden didst devise the Snake;
    For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man
    Is blacken’d, Man’s Forgiveness give—and take    !

    So I read of religions – and, like Khayyam, usually found myself walking out the same door as I walked in. Islam lacked appeal, excepting the Sufi teachings. Zoroastrianism was written up as an essentially dead precursor to Judaism and Christianity – yet a little more research showed that it still lives in the religion of Yazidi. Big point of this is that Zoroastrianism still exists among the Yazidi and the Parsees (India) and there are a whole lot of fire temples still operational (well, 150 in India, anyway). Not a worship of fire – but the idea that fire is a symbol of cleaning, of ritual purity, and that a sacrifice through fire leads to happiness.

    The talking heads may be right. The burning photographs that light cigarettes may be the symbol on their own – but Persia spent a long time as a center of knowledge, and Zoroastrianism did stress fire as a cleanser. Thus spake Zarathustra. I even stole Nietzsche’s end line.

  • You Haven’t Met All The People . . .

    One morning I saw a meme – maybe an unattributed quote: “You still haven’t met all the people you’re going to regret ever meeting.” I’d been ill with chest congestion for several weeks, so on that hand it was an upbeat message. On the the other hand, it’s a depressing description of the world as it is. On the third hand, I may well be one of the people folks regret ever meeting.

    So I got to thinking – and the people I remember have all enriched my life in some manner. The narcissist, whose rage provided the motivation to study up on narcissism, taught me to look beyond the presentation of self. It’s a wonderful gift, to see others more as they are, and go past the disguises that cover up the problem. Some people really do have value as bad examples.

    Others add amusement to life just by being there – I recall one character on one of the main drags of Missoula, as I walked from the motel to a restaurant for breakfast. As he stood in front of me, and whipped his overcoat open, I had time to think, “I surely don’t need a flasher this morning.” I was wrong – the lining of his coat was covered with bible verses that he used in his missionar2y work of bothering people before breakfast.

    In South Dakota, we had biennial visits from Wisconsin Jehovah Witnesses – nice people on a mission to spread their gospel in an area they believed was devoid of their reality. They’d stop by for 15 or 20 minutes, every other year, with no real expectation of making converts. I liked them. Missionaries that stop by for 15 minutes every other year are very tolerable people. More frequent encounters may lead to becoming people you regret meeting.

    The one man I quickly regretted meeting was the county cop who busted me for speeding through Ashland on my next to last trip moving back home to Montana, He did make a point of cheerfully welcoming me back home – but he did it with a forty-dollar bond I forfeit for the crime. Never saw him again, but I was still out forty bucks.

    In general, karma tends to reach a balance – and that’s enough for the people I regret meeting.