We've made it through another Christmas

Not that I'm happy about that, by any means. Christmas has always been, to me, at least, as Scrooge's nephew noted, "...a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys." (Note: ACOC "moderators" apparently don't go along with this, although they have left me alone for a while now).

Christmas brings back memories of my youth as though they happened just the other day. My brother always got the cool stuff, from guns to, once, a live iguana that we found crawling around in the Christmas tree as ornaments crashed to the ground.

Oh, I got cool stuff too, but most things I can barely remember. I suppose the best things I took away from Christmases past have been memories, which have faded a bit with time but which will never disappear the way old Christmas toys do. It's why cinnamon is still my favorite spice, and why I call vanilla extract "the secret ingredient" -- Katie now calls it that as she helps me bake things -- because these smells conjure up memories of my mom as she got ready for Christmas.

My father always said that "Christmas is for kids," but I don't believe that my mother felt the same way. After we all went our separate ways and were no longer at home for Christmas, my dad's sole contribution to the season was to stick a cardboard tree up on the wall in lieu of an actual tree. I think he realized, when we had him to our house for a Christmas after my mom had died, that he should have taken her feeling into account more than just celebrating his own curmudgeonly tendencies.

My mother instilled a love of Christmas in me, entwined with stories of the Nativity (even though she wasn't a religious woman, she had no doubt what we were celebrating at Christmas, and was sure that we all knew what the holiday was about) and with Santa Claus. Life was different then: when we went to bed on Christmas Eve, the living room was normal, that is, no tree, no decorations (other than any cards my parents might have received, a Nativity scene, and our stockings -- big olive-green jobs left over from my dad's service during WW2) hung on the screen by the fireplace). When we woke up in the morning we found a veritable wonderland: huge floor-to-ceiling tree, covered with lights, tinsel (the real metal stuff) and candy canes; at the other end of the room a big Lionel train was roaring around a track (I've never figured out the train-under-the-tree thing; no room for presents if that had happened). Yep, except for the train, which Santa kindly assembled for my dad every year, Santa brought everything, including the tree. I make it easier for him these days and supply the tree myself, but I often think about how astonishing it was for me when Santa Claus did it all.



My daughter, I hope, will be brought up with my love of Christmas, and will pass it on to her kids. As long as I am around, I hope to pass on traditions to her, or at least preferences (notably big lights and tinsel -- none of those wimpy twinkle lights for me, and for God's sake a REAL tree as opposed to those plastic things).

My mother passed on Christmas baking to me, which my wife is very pleased about, and I look forward to that part of the season, too. Katie, I have a feeling, will be helping me out more and more as the years go by.

The most wistful time of the season begins, for me, at the moment the last present is unwrapped and the wrappings have been disposed of. "What now?" I think. All the buildup to Christmas is done away with in a flash, and I realize that it will be another whole year before we see the holiday again. It's sad in a way, but a relief to my wallet, to know that I won't have to worry about unique presents for a year (or paying for them). My daughter was so upset, two weeks before Christmas, crying that Christmas was still too far away; I wonder if she has begun to think how far away it is NOW.

Oh, well, it was a good one. And it gives me something to look forward to again, as it does every year. And, as Tiny Tim observed: God bless us, everyone.

Why are they following me?

EEEK! I don't get it! Everywhere I go, there's someone with a weird or really scary username following my every move! I comment on a forum -- I'm a midget! My wife posts a YouTube video using my account, and I poisoned my dog! I'm asked to moderate a forum, and people get e-mails telling them I'm an evil bastard who banned Ann Coulter from her own website! AIIEEEEEEE!

No, folks, I'm not paranoid. In fact, I find it even a little entertaining that, two years after a "coup" to remove the EEEEVIL HERP as Coulter's administrator, they can't let it go. Now it would stand to reason, if these were normal humans, that once they got rid of someone they'd say "Whew! Now we can get on with life and never have to even think about this guy again!" But these apparently aren't normal humans. Because of a lack of accountability, and running short of butterflies to pull wings from (I hear they do this, by the way) they use this as some sort of entertainment when times are slow at the Coulter forum. And times apparently ARE slow. You see...

The "moderators" there, apparently drunk with power, ban people who post things on other forums favorable to me, or who post anything at all that they don't like on other forums for that matter. This is a policy that's starting to rankle more than a few people. It's not that this is a surprise, as I've pointed out this behavior in the past. However, they've apparently ramped it up a bit, which is good news for our little forum at Outcast Conservatives . The disaffected and crapped-upon seem to have found a forum where normalcy is back in vogue. One of them is apparently as astonished as I am that these people are so -- um -- nuts that they just can't let it go, and posted this at OC:

This is unbelievable!!!

Who in the hell has the time (or inclination) to stalk someone across the internet, through Youtube , or whatever, just to criticise or taunt someone who isn't even addressing them in any way?

Sheeesh! It is just flabergasting how petty and inane some people can be.

Your house looks fine to me....it looks 'lived-in" and warm.....but... who the fu*k should care besides you guys? Why should it bother anyone what your house looks like anyway?

And your carpets.....? What kind of loser looks at a fun video of your little dog having fun with a bug and notices your carpets, anyway? I didn't notice your carpets. I was looking at your little dog having fun!

Some people are just sick. I mean....truly sick! And if these were assholes that Herp has pissed off in the past, then I suggest that this proves that Herp's instincts about them were correct all along.

It's always nice to feel vindicated!

Yep -- when they run out of anything else they can think of to come up with, by golly they make fun of someone's carpets! Yep, you read it here, folks: CARPETS. WOO!

Now, Robert Schaufelberger, Coulter's webmaster, told me almost two years ago upon my ouster that this harassing behavior wouldn't continue. As many can attest, it has continued. I don't, as noted above, understand it. And I never know when it's going to show up. I can go for a while on the net without a peep, and then, boy, post a dog video and it's THE BIG OPPORTUNITY! We're talking two years, folks, and they haven't gotten over me yet. Could it be that they miss me? Could it be that they have too much money and want me to have some of it in exchange for continual false attacks upon my reputation? Hey! Maybe this will turn out OK after all!

Come on by Outcast and post your stories about how the very kind, upstanding, and ethical "moderators" at ACOC continue to bully, harass, and ultimately ban people for doing nothing other than not being allowed into the "in" crowd. Might be fun!

I'll just keep collecting information until I can start counting my money.

Herp

Man -- back to school again!

In two days I start at school teaching writing, Earth Science and Biology to high school students. Up to now, it's been up to the eighth grade, but these guys -- I dunno.

It was a little daunting to think about, but Meet The Teacher Night at school wasn't too bad, and they weren't all that scary. Coupled with the fact that apparently the last teacher had the knowledge of a rock and the personality of a turnip, I left feeling a little bit better about my chances.

I will say these high school kids are a different breed than what I had to deal with over the past few years. I'll have to toughen up a bit, but I have the feeling that if you show them you mean what you say, but that you're fair about it, they'll eventually figure out the routine (and so will I!).

First week's under the belt -- grading a chapter test this weekend, and we'll see if they figure out that it's probably a good idea to listen to the material in class and to study rather than to play with the new teacher all class period. In short, I don't have a lot of hopes for the first scores, but I figure it may snap a few of them back to reality.

Ah, high school.

Been a while...

Not to let down my two readers, I figured I'd better write up something here before they decided I was deceased.

Well, I survived the Indiana Jones overkill of a couple months ago. I will say this -- the new movie revived interest in the older ones, and this time around mass-marketing was in full swing, new toys abound, and even a computer game came out based on all of the previous movies. We never had this stuff in 1981. So my action figures are back up to speed, got a new Herbert Johnson hat from the hatters in London (they made the ORIGINAL one for the first movie, and my wife decided I needed it -- it was so expensive I am sort of afraid to wear it), and I'll be all set to dress up as Indy again when I take Katie trick-or-treating on Halloween.

Yeah, I like this stuff, what can I say. This oughta give a few people something to guffaw about, lol:

Top of my desk:



And some Indy stuff:




Anyhow, it's my wife's birthday today, so she gets to goof off. I'm making her favorite birthday cake from childhood -- a red velvet cake (TWO OUNCES of red food coloring in that thing!) with cream cheese frosting. She got breakfast in bed, too. And they say I'm not a charmer!

Cake after attack by wife and child:



I TOLD you it was red.

I took my state biology exams last week in preparation for my new job as a high school science teacher, and next week will consist of mass-producing lesson materials for the students, and working up lesson plans for at least the first month of school, so this weekend I am goofing off. We had visitors for a MONTH of our summer break -- our friends from England and then my dad after they went home, and it will be nice to get back to the regular routine of being slovenly again. No more cooking breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. I'll be able to walk around my house in my boxers without wondering if I'm being uncouth.

In the interest of rambling posts as things occur to me, there's also this:

I also have been informed that my S&W 500 magnum isn't a real sidearm, which I find interesting. Actually, I suppose you could call it a chestarm, since you normally carry it in a holster that straps across your chest. But apparently there are people who think these little 9mm semiautos are REAL guns. You know, the ones like Martin Riggs used in the Lethal Weapon movies, where he empties three or four magazines and three or four people die for the forty or so rounds he's shot at them; the pistol sounds sort of like "bip! bip! bip!" (It must be noted that my concealed carry weapon is a Browning Hi-Power, which is a 9 mm weapon and is MUCH easier than a guy my size trying to hide a 6 1/2" .44 magnum, which is my weapon of choice if I have the option, so I'm not AGAINST semiautos.)

I do have proof positive that a 500 magnum is, indeed, a real gun, and I thought I would share it with you:



If people are happy believing that they will get into real firefights that look like the fake ones they see in the movies, let them be thrilled with their self-delusions. I have it on good authority that:

a. Most gunfights happen in a dark room where the opponents are 12 or less feet apart (you generally don't have the option, as in the movies, to hide behind oil drums and crates, reloading, in a warehouse or swing from things hanging from the ceiling while firing under your armpit at bad guys in your home in real life) and

b. If you empty a magazine or two at a bad guy, the police, should you have actually HIT the bad guy with a round or two, will expect you to account for all other shots fired and to justify why you sprayed the contents of your pistol all around your house. If you're happy with that, great. Now if you are lucky, and all 15 rounds went into the bad guy, I look forward to your explanation of why that is so in a court of law.

Now ME, I like large caliber revolvers. They're mechanically simple, and can't jam. My idea is this: One shot and the guy drops. You can simply piss someone off by emptying a smaller caliber weapon into someone who's all hopped up on some substance, but it's hard to come back in a meaningful fashion if the homeowner dots your eyes with a .44 magnum or larger. The automatic owner: "bip! bip! bip! bip! bip! bip! bip! bip! bip!" *sound of either the magazine being ejected or the homeowner being clubbed to death by a pissed-off perp (if the pistol hasn't stovepiped first)*

The large revolver owner: "WHOOOM!" "Thud."

So, let's see: do I want a gun that I will have to empty at someone in a panic situation, or do I want something that will drop the guy with one shot, no matter where I hit him? Hmm, let me think about this. Gee, I think I'll go for the one-shot gun. Silly, I know.

In short, gun experts, you can all be happy with your Kimbers and those pissant plastic Glocks. I like big Smiths. They're big, they're heavy, and they crack engine blocks and kill Kodiak bears. I look at it this way: if you need a gun that has a 9-17 round capacity, you probably shouldn't own a gun, because your shooting skills obviously suck, and a lack of self-confidence is shown by carrying a gun that can hold a bucket of shells.

I'm going to write to Smith and Wesson, I think, and tell them there's some guy out there who thinks a 500 magnum isn't a real gun. I wonder if they'd pitch in for straitjacket rental.

Oh, well -- happy birthday, dear wife -- and may you have many more.

Enjoy your cake!

Herp

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of CGI

It was sort of a letdown this week -- seeing my cinema hero Indiana Jones back in action after an 18-year (or is it 19?) hiatus. I couldn't believe it had been that long, until my wife told me to look it up. It seemed like about five years ago that Indy and his dad went in search of the Holy Grail in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Man, does time fly.

I was first talked into going to see Raiders of the Lost Ark back in 1981 by my friend Clarke. He was the guy who called me nothing other than Herp for our entire association; in fact, it was so habitual that his mother thought my name WAS Herp, and SHE always called me that, too. Oh well, I digress. A bit. Back in those days, about 27 years ago, I guess, I was a bit more energetic, and I loved guys who could do all the things onscreen that I could only dream of doing. I had seen some commercials for the movie, but it looked a bit far-fetched for my taste. Clarke, however, knew me better than I apparently knew myself, and insisted that I go downtown to see it. Skeptical though I was, from the moment I saw Indy running away from that big rolling stone ball in that Peruvian temple I was hooked.

And his girlfriend, Marion -- man, she had spunk. The bar fight scene with Indy, Marion, and the Nazis and their native toadies -- best I've ever seen.

It also had yet another thing going for it: I have always been fascinated with explorers and Egyptology, ever since I had read Howard Carter's three-volume set on the Tomb of Tutankhamen. Carter, a British Egyptologist backed by a wealthy benefactor (the Earl of Carnarvon -- his castle, Highclere, near London, is still in the family) with a passion for ancient Egyptian relics, lived in the days when there were bandits and grave robbers hanging out near the Valley of the Kings where most of the Pharaohs had their tombs. Carter, a superb and systematic researcher, once tracked down a group of bandits hacking their way into sarcophagi down in a hole on a slope overlooking the Valley, and pulled their rope up, not giving it back to them until they agreed to stop digging. He allowed them to emerge from the hole emptyhanded, with his gun trained on them to keep them from changing their minds before they left. Anyhow, Tut's tomb, which HAD to be somewhere, had eluded every digger for about a century, but Carter, after systematically searching in the Valley, found the first steps down to the sealed, heretofore undiscovered tomb in 1922. When he broke a hole in the wall and shoved a candle through it to test the air, all he could see was the glitter of gold. Carnarvon, waiting impatiently behind Carter, asked him if he could see anything; it was all Carter could do to gasp out: "Yes -- wonderful things!" But Carter wasn't alone in feeding my fantasies: there was also a fellow named Roy Chapman Andrews.

Roy Chapman Andrews was a paleontologist for the American Museum of Natural History in the early years of the 20th century, and is widely regarded as the MODEL for Indiana Jones. Andrews organized huge expeditions in search of dinosaur eggs (he was the first person to find them) and fossils through China's Gobi Desert, with trucks, camels and horses, and was routinely attacked by bandits. They also had a campsite they referred to as Viper Camp, which found their tents overrun by snakes. Andrews ALWAYS wore a ranger hat, and packed a revolver and long guns (no whip, as far as I can remember) but I do remember him writing about one occasion when he was outrunning bandits on horses by putting the pedal to the metal in his big truck, and as he looked in the sideview mirror, one of them took a shot at him and vaporized the mirror as he was using it to look back at them. I believe he shot at least one bandit in his career, due to Mongolian bandits constantly trying to rob and murder people out there. He didn't appreciate it. Andrews was no lightweight, and in those days scientific exploration was a LOT more colorful than it is today. Here's a quote from one of his books:

"In the [first] fifteen years [of field work] I can remember just ten times when I had really narrow escapes from death. Two were from drowning in typhoons, one was when our boat was charged by a wounded whale; once my wife and I were nearly eaten by wild dogs, once we were in great danger from fanatical lama priests; two were close calls when I fell over cliffs, once I was nearly caught by a huge python, and twice I might have been killed by bandits."
—Roy Chapman Andrews
On the Trail of Ancient Man
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1926, pages 20-21

Here's the real guy:




So with true life stories like that under my belt, it was only natural that I would be attracted to Indiana Jones and his adventures. He could do it all. He'd get beaten, thrown down holes, shot, swing across pits with his bullwhip, and he'd always keep going. Indiana Jones is the kind of person that most guys wish they could be.

After all the years of speculation that there would be yet one more Indy adventure after Last Crusade, I had sort of written it off. It had been too long ten years ago, and so when this one came up, I was astonished, and wondering how Indy had weathered all that time. I found out, mostly to my disappointment.

The problem with all of us is that we get old. We don't want our heroes to get old, too -- we want to live through them and to have things be just like the old days. It's why I read favorite books again and again: the characters are just the same now as they were when I read the books at age 15. On camera, however, that's a tough job.

In Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Indiana Jones is now (if we go by Harrison Ford's true age) 65 years old. He's gray, which I can live with, and he's in good shape for his age; he wears the same size outfit now as he did in 1981, so that in itself is amazing. That being said -- he still looks old. His trademark whip was used, what -- once or twice in the movie, and that was it. We have a young "sidekick" who swings with monkeys and has improbable swordfights between moving vehicles, and we have a hero who survives a nuclear blast at ground zero by shutting himself into a refrigerator. Ugh. The original, and best in my estimation, movie of the series was Raiders. Sure, you have to suspend a lot of disbelief to expect ghosts to come out of the Ark of the Covenant and vaporize Nazis. But a lot of that stuff could have been done without special effects, and WAS: being dragged behind the cargo truck (although it was done at slow speeds and speeded up for the movie); swinging across chasms with a bullwhip as a tool, climbing on top of huge statues and bashing through temple walls with them. This movie: Area 51 and aliens? Russian bad guys (we could relate to them when I was a kid during the Cold War, but most kids today are clueless about the Soviet Union; everyone STILL understands the Nazis, who make much better villains)?

Lucas doesn't get it. Us old-timers who remember movies being done without CGI point to Raiders of the Lost Ark as a good example of a minimal use of this stuff, for the simple reason that it was NEW then. They did a hell of a movie without it. This movie: the WHOLE thing was computer graphics -- at least it seemed like it. Lucas (and Spielberg) had an opportunity to make a plausible story that brought Indy back for one last romp through the desert with plausible relics, and instead we get half the Peruvian jungle swirling around and taking off into space. And a really stilted line, to boot: "Knowledge was their treasure." Weighty stuff. Whew. Or should I say P.U.? Lucas and Spielberg forgot the original "feel" of the series, and threw everything into the CGI pot to make money. It would have made money anyhow, fellas. Trust me. And guys like me would have one more good memory. As it is, I was looking at my watch through most of the movie. Not a good sign.

It's time to close down the series before they damage old fans' memories of Indy any further. The bright spot, as far as I was concerned, was seeing Karen Allen again -- she looked great. Indy, however, made me feel old. That's not the feeling I hope for when I follow Indiana Jones on a trek through tombs and temples. I want to feel young again, and that's why I loved Indiana Jones. For a couple of hours I could identify with him, and live his adventures onscreen. For that, I guess I'll have to fire up Raiders of the Lost Ark on my TV again. This one wasn't a keeper -- I'll buy it to round out the collection, but I doubt I'll have a huge urge to watch it again anytime soon.

I say bring Raiders of the Lost Ark back to the big screen for one month-long engagement in select theaters. I'll see you there.

Herp

Moving on

Well, after an interesting year at my private Christian School teaching four grades of science, language arts, health, current events, and Christian learning I've accepted a job teaching high school science. I've dealt with the youngsters for so long that I am a bit apprehensive about teaching bigger kids, but I like the subject, and I think I can do it, once I crack the code of dealing with high-schoolers.

And my daughter will go with me, on the small kid side of the school, so I will still have her around to cheer me up on bad days. Plus I'll have company.

Nice new, big school. Modern facility, and good stuff for my daughter to do as far as gifted kids go (I think if she's not gifted, she's extremely bright).

So, anyhow, got my contract, started loading all my stuff into the new classroom, and I should be good to go when school starts in August. It will be interesting -- the first time I have taught exclusively science since I changed careers. I guess we'll see how it goes.

First up: I will teach them that to be genetically considered a midget, a human male must be 4'10" or shorter. Oh, and that hobbits don't exist, regardless of those who fantasize about such things.

Herp

Time does fly...

Yesterday I went to an event at my old zoo, arranged for a reunion of zookeepers who all worked together at one time or another. I left the place due to unbearable internal zoo politics (zoos are famous for that, I believe I can safely say) about seven years ago, and haven't been back since (other than a short visit with my daughter a couple years ago). But then a chance e-mail I sent to an old lead keeper thanking her for her help way back when put me on the list to be invited to the Rezoonion.

Not all that long before I left the Phoenix Zoo, my old head keeper, Gene Mohney, died of a heart attack. Until that point I think it was pretty much taken for granted that I would carry on in Gene's place once he retired. I know he said about as much a few times; his wife asked me to give the eulogy at his funeral, which was pretty tough, and the whole place was in tears. He was like the dad I would have chosen, should I have had the chance to choose; no one knew more about the inner workings of animal minds than Gene, and he learned it from the ground up, being the original, one and only, keeper at Phoenix when it first opened as the pet project of the Maytag (washers/dryers, etc.) family in the early '60s. He knew nothing about animals, other than his pets, when someone asked him if he wanted a job -- he told me that at the time he was working as a house painter -- and went on to be a self-taught expert on everything from orangs to big cats to the flagship species of the Phoenix Zoo: the Arabian oryx. This isn't a great shot, but it's a through-the-fence photo of an off-exhibit oryx barn where these animals are mixed and matched, according to optimal genetics, where they can breed and produce more (you can click on the images to enlarge them, if you didn't already know that):



The reason I posted this shot from yesterday is to get a look at the animal, once the emblem of the Phoenix Zoo because Phoenix was chosen to breed the animal, picked over other zoos competing for the privilege, mainly because our hot climate most closely rivaled the animals' natural temperature range. Under the Phoenix Zoo's breeding program, managed by Gene for years, Phoenix took the total world supply of Arabian oryx from around NINE individuals to around 1200 released back into the wild. For those who consider zoos to be nothing more than animal prisons, this refutes that. If not for zoos, the Arabian oryx would be history, viewable only in old books.

One of the reasons I, not primarily interested in hoofstock, took this shot of the old barn for nostalgia's sake, was a memory of helping bloodtest a bunch of oryx. You can see an animal in the left of the photo -- notice those three-foot sharp horns. They can put those easily through half-inch plywood if they're annoyed, so we had to grab an animal by having about six keepers jump on it at once, and each of two keepers would shove a short length of garden hose on a horn to keep the animal from skewering the keeper holding the animal.

For some reason I always got the butt end, which invariably got slammed into the barn wall when the animal tried to back away from the keepers holding it. Once I got slammed a bit too hard, but I didn't know it until we released the animal, and I said, "OK, next!" and reached up for the bar holding the gate closed at the entrance to the barn, and my arm didn't move. The animal had popped my arm out of the socket. I managed to snap it back in, sort of Lethal-Weapon fashion, but whenever I raise it above shoulder level, my arm makes all of these cool popping noises, ten years or so later. I guess this is my keeper souvenir.

You have to love animals to be a keeper, and most keepers don't care for the rest of the human race other than those people who are ALSO keepers. Those, for the most part, they tolerate. Keepers typically aren't all that social, and most of us would just as soon have a zoo to take care of that wouldn't allow the public through the gates. After about the three-thousandth time of having some zoo visitor yell "What kind of animal are YOU?" at you when they manage to catch you out on exhibit cleaning something, you just start wondering if humans are very necessary, or at least if these people who yell this stuff really think they are the very first person whoever thought of such cleverness.

There are wonderful memories from my time as a keeper, and when I went to this reunion I wore Gene Mohney's old zoo shirt with the oryx emblem on it -- a present from his wife to me after he died. For one more time I put on the khakis and went back to the zoo. It was like going back in time, and I could hear the siren song of the zoo calling me, no question about it. At 55, however, could I hack it? When I worked for Phoenix originally, for seven years I was a relief keeper, which isn't the temporary job it sounds like. Relief keepers are born, not made, I think. To work relief, you have to be trained in every area of the zoo, and know every animal's needs as well as the animal's normal keeper knows them, and it's no LESS than 40 hours, and if something escapes at the end of the day, you stay until it's taken care of. You have a key that universally gets you into every building, closet, storage locker, etc., because if there's an animal escape you are the go-to guy who knows where crates, nets, bags, boxes, capture tools, etc., are, and you are ALWAYS included in animal captures. It is one hell of an exciting job. One day you work with rhinos, lions, tigers, giraffes, baboons; the next it might be coyotes, rattlesnakes, and Gila monsters, and the next day it might be elephants and orangs, like my old friend Bessie here with her youngster:



Bessie is a reason why, of most animals kept in zoos, I am somewhat ambivalent about keeping great apes in captivity. I've worked with every animal group on the planet, I figure, but of all the animals we keep in cages or enclosures, the great apes (I've worked with chimps and orangs) know the difference between inside and outside. And they remember you. I worked with Bessie there, on and off, for about 7 years. Once I left the zoo, I didn't go back and peek in on her for five years. Typically after zoo visitors blab away at animals for hours or days straight trying to get them to look at them for pictures, the animals absolutely ignore them. That was the case on the day of my visit, and I walked up through the crowd and said "Hey, Bessie!" in a low voice. She immediately sat up, looked around, locked her eyes on me and threw me a palm branch from her exhibit like she was throwing a spear. The crowd all turned to look at me with wide eyes. I shrugged, and walked away after a while. I've seen a chimp that worked with one of my co-workers about 25 years before, hadn't seen her in all that time, and when the chimp was shipped to our institution and laid eyes on her old long-lost keeper, she stuck her hands out, made cooing noises...great apes are so close to humans in their perception. You just gotta be around them to realize it. You really do get attached to the animals you take care of, no question, even animals like this guy:



You don't get recognition out of animals like this 100+ year old male Galapagos tortoise, but he used to chase me around his exhibit begging until I popped one of those pads off the prickly pear in the background and fed it to him. Their jaw strength is such that they just shear big crescents out of those pads.

As a zookeeper, you don't have to see humans for at least half the day if you don't want to. You're behind the scenes, cleaning, feeding, and observing. It's quiet. No one gives you any lip. And you think to yourself: I get paid for messing around with animals -- doesn't get much better than that.

Anyhow, as it turns out, the whole administration at the zoo has gone through some changes, and the old director is gone. I wasn't a fan of that guy, but the keepers all seem happy with the new one, to whom I was introduced by the staff vet and executive vice president of the zoo, an old friend of mine from my previous keeper days. They told me to keep in touch, and that there just might be something coming up.

I did love my job. Could I do it again? Views like this reminded me of the old days:



That's the back entrance to the old reptile exhibit and aviary -- I often entered via that gate. Since my day, the reptile exhibit has almost been gutted, and drastically needs an overhaul. I hope they do it, and I wouldn't mind being the reptile keeper again, SHOULD they do it. I do figure I have a few good years left in me, I guess. We'll see what happens.

Once a keeper, always a keeper. And to my old friends Laura, Tawny, Terri, Tracey, June, and all the others who passed through my life at the zoo...who knows. I might be dressed up in the khakis all over again.

Sometimes this teaching gig ain't bad!

Well, folks, while you're all slaving away, I'm one of those overpaid teachers who gets a spring vacation. Actually, since I teach at a Christian school, it's EASTER vacation. And in Arizona, you can't beat the weather. Wait -- out-of-staters, I'm exaggerating. Rattlesnakes attack you when you're eating lunch, and Gila monsters meet you at the airport when you start to get off the plane. Oh, and scorpions are everywhere. You don't wanna come here.

Now that's settled -- Katie and I have had a lot of fun messing around this week. She went out looking for snakes with me one morning, and we went out to a big mountain preserve to scout out an area where I'm taking the whole junior high population on a field trip next week. Spotted a few lizards (whiptails, sideblotched lizards), a snake (desert patchnose), and Katie got a refresher course on what plants not to touch in the desert. There are quite a few of those, actually. Once upon a time, Ann Woodin, author of the old book Home is the Desert, noted that a friend of hers stated: Everything in the desert stings, stinks, or sticks. I suppose her friend wasn't far off.



That cactus is well over 100 years old. I believe they don't even get their first arm before they're about 50. I was thinking about the maximum age estimated for saguaros, and noted to my students that there are more than a few of them in this state that were growing when Thomas Jefferson was president. And you thought that only big redwood trees were old!

Then we have my favorites: any of a variety of plants called cholla:



Chollas have a unique way of reproducing themselves. All the spines on the one in the picture are barbed. One type of cholla (pronounced CHOY-a), called the teddy bear or jumping cholla, is REALLY spiny. Almost furry in appearance, that's where the "teddy bear" moniker came from. As for the "jumping" part: cholla have sort of segmented branches, and the barbed spines catch on animals walking by and pull segments of the plant off to hitch a ride on the poor animal until it scrubs them off on a rock a few miles away. When you brush by these plants, no matter how lightly you do it, the spines will hook on you, thus giving people the impression that the cholla segments "jump" at you. Where the plant segment is dropped, a new cholla begins growing. Unique way of plant propagation, but sort of hard on the animal. I should know. Once upon a time I wasn't looking where I put my feet (not smart in the desert) and kicked a fallen cholla segment with my cloth sneakers. It stuck like a growth, and the spines penetrated all the toes of one foot right through the cloth. Those things are so sharp they go into human skin like a needle into butter. Anyhow, I sat down to remove the thing from my foot and, once again, not looking, SAT on another cholla segment. So now I had a growth on my butt, too. By the time I got everything off, I had no pants on, and no shoes on, and was yanking the rest of the spines out of my clothes before I put them back on, when OF COURSE a group of hikers strolled by, snickering at me standing there in the middle of the desert barefoot and in my boxers.

It's been a fun week, though. Got a chance to reconnect with my daughter outside of the school community, and just to mess around. Tomorrow we're going to take her bike out to the park, and she'll ride while I do a little coinshooting in the park (metal detecting). And Saturday, I'll finalize my lesson plans for the upcoming week. Argh.

However -- end of May, I'm off for a couple of months. I think I can live until then!

Happy Easter!

I broke down, after having The Passion of the Christ in its cellophane wrapper for over two years, and decided to watch it yesterday. I was sort of shamed into it by one of my students in the 6th grade, whose mother, a rabid anti-Harry Potter fanatic who believes that there are "real magic spells" contained in the writings of J.K. Rowling (she didn't take me up on my offer of a hundred bucks to get one of those "real" spells to work), showed her 11-year-old son (my student) the movie. He saw nothing wrong with it. I'm conflicted, personally.

For years my standard Easter movie has been the 1959 version of Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, starring Charlton Heston and with a wonderful supporting cast which included Stephen Boyd, Hugh Griffith, Sam Jaffe, and Jack Hawkins, among many others. It's a timeless depiction of a man's story on the periphery of the story of Jesus, and how they intersect and the man, Judah Ben-Hur, gains a new faith, remarkable after everything he and his family have gone through at the hands of the evil Roman tribune Messala. I believe Ben-Hur still holds the record for Academy Awards, and with good reason. It was the last of the true blockbuster movies from MGM, right at the beginning of the surge of television ownership. A huge movie, with all the stops pulled out, just the chariot-race scene alone took over a year to film.

At the end of Ben-Hur, we see Jesus being whipped and dragging his cross to Golgotha (or Calvary, depending on your preference), and he is crucified. But here the similarities to The Passion become a bit extreme in their divergence. In The Passion of the Christ, one has to watch different implements being tried on Jesus, both front and back, whipping and scourging him until his body seems to be one open wound. My guess is that Gibson got it down a bit more accurately, but it was so intense, and so brutal, that I had to take periodic breaks. It was extremely tough on me to watch, and I was a bit glassy-eyed at the movie's end.

With Ben-Hur, I find myself with tears in my eyes, and uplifted. With The Passion, I have the same tears, but I find myself dwelling on the inhumanity of the gleeful tormenters of Jesus as they shred his body. It wasn't enough just to crucify him; they had to make him look as though he had been through a huge garlic press. There is no disrespect intended with that description; it's about as close as I can come to what he looked like when he finally died on the cross. With the Passion, I feel sorrow. Not very uplifted. Just stunned.

Perhaps I'm wimpy, and I have posted this question on Outcast Conservatives, but is it really appropriate to show this movie to 11-year-old kids when it damn near kills a 55-year-old man to watch it?

I doubt that I'll be watching The Passion again anytime soon. I note that Mel Gibson released a new version, entitled "The Passion Recut," with less of the violence, possibly because he, or his audience, shared the same concerns I have. In any case, one thing it DID do for me: it made it impossible for me to again rationally repeat the words "he died to save us from our sins" as though he just died. Jesus was tortured, mutilated, and slowly allowed to die, hanging on a cross. I'll never just be able to mindlessly gloss over the thought of his sacrifice again, and God forgive me for having gotten used to the idea so that it seems as just another part of the liturgy. If Gibson's treatment of the events of the death of Christ shocked a few people into believing, then I guess the movie did its job. I think I'll revert to the Ben-Hur tradition next year.

Regardless of what you watch, or what you do, may God bless you all on Easter, the celebration of the event upon which Christianity stands or falls: the resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ. He's waiting for all of us who believe.

On the subject of older dads...

Six years ago on St. Patrick's Day, we had a surprise arrival. Well, sort of a surprise. At 49 years old, I hadn't really considered starting over with kids, having had my first ones fly the coop a while back. My wife surprised me at a dinner party, and once the info had sunk in, we got it checked out and, yep, we had a youngster on the way.

One of the things I found out about myself was that the second time around wasn't as scary as the first. I didn't believe Katie was going to die with every cough or sniffle. At the time I was working on getting a post-baccalaureate degree in education, and so I stayed home a couple days a week with Katie and substitute-taught on the other days. It was a life-altering experience for me. Not only wasn't I disconnected from my daughter's upbringing, but I got to use her as a guinea pig for information I needed in classes like Educational Psychology.

However, Katie has blown our expectations out of the water -- because we apparently didn't expect enough. She surpasses anything I could have imagined in her intelligence -- I only half-jokingly tell people that she'll think I'm stupid in a couple years. Her reading is fluent; she's going to finish first grade when most kids start it, her vocabulary is about fourth-grade level right now, and her oral reading has more expression and correct emphasis than most adults who read aloud (not a common thing these days). She doesn't blow by unfamiliar words when reading -- if she doesn't know what they mean, she'll ask for the definition. I prided myself on my reading ability at an early age. Katie is carrying on the tradition, and I hope for great things for her.

So, even though, on her 6th birthday, she'll be getting all the packages, she has given me the present of my lifetime. She goes to the same school where I teach, so we go to work and come home together every day. We talk about everything from Yoda to rhinos ("Dad, it's not a 'rhino!' It's a RHINOCEROS!") and we listen to the same music (she thinks the Doobie Brothers, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, and the Eagles are cool, not to mention Neil Diamond). She has her own lizard, likes snakes, and has told me she wants to learn to shoot when she gets bigger. And sometimes, late at night, I find myself in her room, just watching her sleep, and wishing for her all the contentment and fulfillment that she can have. As a parent, you wish you could foresee the future, and can protect your kids from anything bad. I know this isn't possible, but I think she's well on her way to growing up to be someone special. Or even MORE special, I should say.

So -- to the once-newborn in my arms in that picture (my wife's stepdad took that picture about ten minutes after Katie was born, and caught me telling Katie she was going to grow up to be a Republican nun -- and I'm not Catholic) who is now growing up rapidly -- thanks, on your birthday, for believing in me, for thinking I can do no wrong, for running to me when you have a problem, and for making me realize that there are a lot of things more important than bad people who invent stories about me on the internet. I don't think they'll be taking THIS present away from me.



I love you, Katie.


Dad

Well, the Oscars were boring...

And Daniel Day-Lewis, as predicted, took Best Actor honors (these days they call it "Actor in a Leading Role" so as not to hurt the self-esteem of the LOSERS). The rest of the winners were a hodge-podge. The Best Picture of the year was No Country for Old Men, I believe (not what was predicted).

What I find interesting is that very few people watched the show, although it's not all that surprising. No one saw any of the movies, other than Juno apparently (which took Best Screenplay). The Academy wants to pick "good" movies rather than movies that did well at the box office. This means that few people have an interest in seeing a show about movies they've never seen. I heard on the news that the ratings for the show were lower than they have ever been. And no one was particularly stupid onstage, so even THAT source of entertainment was taken away from me. Argh.

What really bugs me about the Oscars these days is that "And the Oscar goes to...." stuff. As opposed to: "And the winner is...", which is what they did before they started worrying about hurting some millionaire star's feelings. Life is just too weird these days.

Anyhow, I struggled through the whole show. And I'll probably do it again next year, masochist that I am. You can tell that, between work and home, my life reeks of excitement.

So, not a very exciting blog update -- but perhaps next year. My daughter's birthday is coming up this month, and THAT should be exciting.

OK, so I'm boring.

I'm watching the Oscars tomorrow night. I know most of the people who are reading this are rolling their eyes, and I expect a few photoshops of me to immediately start floating around the web as a result. Perhaps I should hold a contest. The one of me as Elmer Fudd seems to appear occasionally, so perhaps that was the pinnacle.

In any case, my mom was a film buff, and turned me into an OLD film buff. I don't like modern movies all that much anymore. I think the last one that really entertained me was Tombstone. Other than that, when The Shawshank Redemption lost out to that vapid piece of crap Forrest Gump for Best Picture, that sort of spelled doom for AMPAS (The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) as far as I was concerned. Having a best picture like American Beauty, another perverted piece of garbage, hasn't helped. However, I do believe that I have seen every Oscar broadcast since I was a kid in the fifties. I haven't missed one, which makes my wife roll her eyes at me and tell me that she'll see me in the morning.

Movies like Saving Private Ryan, The Shawshank Redemption, Apollo 13, Cinderella Man, etc., PROVE that quality movies without some perverted societal message or loaded with nothing but perversion or profanity can still be made. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen much these days. So why do I watch?

Well, I come from the days when the Oscars had some fake Indian ("Sacheen Littlefeather") come up and refuse Marlon Brando's Best Actor Oscar. When periodically someone like Vanessa Redgrave would get up there and make an ass of herself decrying "Zionists." I even remember the famous occurrence when streaking was all the rage in college, and a naked streaker raced across the stage behind actor David Niven, who, without missing a beat, wondered aloud why someone would want to show off "his shortcomings" on international television.

I am always hopeful that someone will once again make a fool of himself/herself on stage and give everyone something to chuckle about around the water cooler the next day. So that's probably the main reason I watch what has become an almost interminably boring program. I keep hoping for a return to former Oscar "glory," I guess. Why doesn't it happen?

Well, my opinion is that no one is really a BIG star these days. The ones who are left from the old days are rapidly dying off or are getting a bit long in the tooth for glamorous roles on the silver screen. One day we have someone everyone talks about -- the next day they're in rehab after throwing their poodle out the window on the freeway because someone made them mad in traffic and they were on a bunch of drugs taken with a water glass full of booze. And no one can remember who the hell they were two weeks later; for instance, who was that youngster who died of mixing drugs a week or so ago? The name meant absolutely nothing to me, but I DID see a few gasps for this unknown actor on various message boards. Wasn't like losing a Bogie, or a Gable, or a Jimmy Stewart, though, was it?

Don't get me wrong -- stars had lots of problems way back when. Bogart was always getting into squabbles, as was Frank Sinatra. Stars committed adultery as a matter of course. The difference? I dunno. Perhaps they could (or the studio execs could) manage to provide a buffer with which to smooth over the private lives of stars and keep their screen personae intact. Regardless -- if you ask anyone who their favorite STAR is these days, I'd be surprised if any standout names come up. They're here, and they're gone. The longest-running name I see for this year's Best Actor nominees is Daniel Day-Lewis, and that's really not all that long.

I will say, however, Halle Berry, a couple of years ago, almost fulfilled my expectations. She shouted away on stage as an apparently self-appointed representative of the black race in film, saying that blacks were finally getting a fair shake. This was from a girl whose black dad, when Halle was a child, ditched her WHITE mother and her, leaving Whitey to raise her on her own. I'll never figure out logic like this. I wonder if she ever remembered to thank her mother.

Oh well, in any case, I'll be watching on Sunday, February 24. With my fingers crossed. At least we can hope that the entertainment will be better than that shown by any of last year's movies.

Now in May, look for 65-year-old Harrison Ford to reprise his role as Indiana Jones. I'll be prepared to suspend disbelief for that one. As a 55-year-old, I want to think I can still do all the stuff that Indy does. Well, maybe not. But it's fun to think about.

Photoshop, anyone? One of me as Indy?

:)

Herp

Does the tiger attack prove that zoos are dedicated to the suffering of animals? Bonnie Erbe thinks so. Hey, Bonnie -- you're a dipstick.

You know, I subscribe to political cartoons from caglepost.com, and somehow I noticed, on the sidebar, an article heading entitled The Future of Zoos. Being an ex-zookeeper interested in the events surrounding the death, by tiger, of a "poor, innocent kid just going to the zoo on Christmas," I took a peek at it.

This broad just HAS to be a PETA member. Here's some of her column:

A smaller percentage of Americans, enlightened to the suffering animals endure in captivity, mourn as well not only the passing but the life of Tatiana, the Siberian tiger who escaped her cage under the inadequate supervision of zoo authorities.

This terrible and unnecessary loss of life, not just human but animal as well, was not Tatiana's fault. It was the immediate fault of zookeepers who managed her. On a grander scale, it was the fault of a public that continues to demand the right to view wild animals on display.

It is a public that ignores the misery it imposes on the beasts subjected to a dolorous existence indeed.

This was bad enough. As a keeper, if we had maltreated or neglected ANY of our animals we would have been out on the street in about five minutes. But then she continues:

One wonders in this era of virtual reality whether zoos and conservation societies that keep animals on display in artificial, urban environments are still necessary or a sad carryover from a bygone era? The Wildlife
Conservation Society is quick to point out, as noted above, that its captive gorillas are procreating and therefore perpetuating the species. This is critical work. But the same enormous resources needed to keep them alive unnaturally could instead be devoted to preserving native habitat for these animals, protecting against poaching and disease and allowing them to reproduce on their own.

The San Francisco zoo visitor Tatiana killed would still be alive today if the visit had taken place virtually. So would Tatiana. The two she mauled would now be unharmed. It's a question we ought to rethink as technology has changed so much else: has it obviated zoos?

At that point, I had had enough, and here is posted my response to that article (urged to do so by my wife, and thus making for an easy fast blog post, lol):

It's a common misconception, perpetuated here yet again by Ms. Erbe, that animals need hundreds or thousands of acres in which to roam in order to be "happy." First of all, that's stupid, and shows a lack of knowledge of nature beyond occasionally watching Animal Planet. Animals have three needs: food, water, shelter. All these needs are met in zoos, ending an animal's unending (in nature) search for enough calories to stay alive. In nature, when an animal eats its fill, it STOPS MOVING to conserve those calories. It would be stupid for an animal that didn't need to fill those basic needs to keep walking, walking, walking. It JUST DOES NOT HAPPEN. Animals in zoos have it MADE, except for having to deal with the general public.

Additionally, happiness, folks, is a human emotion. Applying human emotions to animals is called anthropomorphism, and downgrades what the animal actually IS, because people who think like this constantly compare them to humans rather than valuing them for what they are.

As a past keeper at the Phoenix Zoo, which is largely responsible for captive breeding and reintroduction to the wild of the Arabian oryx, I get tired of all the bleeding hearts who think animals should be "free!" Yes, animals should be free. However, most zoo animals these days are traded between zoos, rather than collecting them in the wild as was the old way. Should zoos simply release animals that have never SEEN the country from which their genes originated, because the Ms. Erbes of the world demand that this be done to avoid forcing them to have a "dolorous existence"? You want to guess how long a zoo animal would last if we sent it back into the wild to be "free," and it encountered an animal of the same species who grew up out there? Would YOU like to have been the one to stop soldiers in the Middle East from slaughtering the last of the wild Arabian oryx? How about the giant panda (everyone's favorite "cute" zoo animal)? Want to order the Chinese government to stop cutting down the bamboo corridors that allow the animals to eat as they migrate up and down slopes with seasonal temperature change? How much luck do you think you'd have in "educating" these people? HA!

I'm looking at the last section here, which says, in part: "The San Francisco zoo visitor Tatiana killed would still be alive today if the visit had taken place virtually. So would Tatiana." Yes, that's true. So would both be alive if the visitor hadn't tormented the animal until it had had enough.

As a former keeper I saw visitors pitch such things as lit cigarettes, prescription drugs and syringes into animal exhibits. We once had some classy guy use the heel of his cowboy boot to crack the shell of a Galapagos tortoise. I also saw some mother throw a soiled disposable diaper in with the elephants, and one was munching away on it for a while until I could retrieve it. You want to blame someone? It's convenient to blame zoos, and not the jerks who torture animals for their own enjoyment, but I'll tell you this: it's high time people realized that zoo animals aren't playthings, or tame; they are wild animals that happen to live in a zoo. The guy who died no doubt triggered something in the tiger that is hard-wired in the species.

San Francisco Zoo (formerly Fleischacker Zoo) is the zoo of my youth, before I moved to Arizona. I'm still alive, possibly because I was raised by parents who would have beaten the snot out of me if I had tormented caged animals. I'll tell you one thing: Ms. Erbe, your apparent disdain for zoos, in many ways the LIFEBOAT for species extinct in the wild, is misplaced.

Oh, and one other thing: I bet the friends of the dead guy aren't going to abuse any more animals at zoos in the near future. Call it a teachable moment.

An update: Tiger Brothers Had Slingshots.

From the NY Post article:

January 1, 2008 -- SAN FRANCISCO - Two brothers who were injured when a tiger attacked them at the San Francisco Zoo had slingshots on them at the time, a source said.
An empty vodka bottle was also found in a car used by Amritpal Dhaliwal, 19, and his brother, Kulbir, 23, on the day of the mauling, which left 17-year-old Carlos Sousa Jr. dead, according to the source.

The discoveries could be an indication that the brothers may have taunted the 350-pound Siberian tiger before it leapt from its grotto.

Damned dangerous zoos.