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EUROPEAN ODYSSEY, LANGUAGE ODYSSEY

July 27, 2011

I am a lucky person, but I think I make my luck, too.

I started learning German about a year ago.  I didn’t plan to, but on an eclipse trip in Argentina I met two young astrophysicists from Munich, both fluent in English.  We corresponded after the eclipse, and because there is a ring (annular) eclipse in the US in 2012, I invited them over.  I promised I would learn a little German.  Well…a little turned into a full time 5-6 hours a day for 9 months.  I did most of it alone, until I found a couple of language learning websites.  These allow people to correct each other, and through that I met people on line in several countries.  I don’t like to use the word “friend” for somebody I have never met, but on the other hand these people have been available for me to bounce things off more than many of my friends over here.  I regularly correspond with people in Europe and Brazil.

Originally I planned on a short visit to Europe to see the two women I met.  I figured 4-5 days was enough, trying to heed the adage that guests are like fish, after 3 days they begin to smell.  But two of my online “friends” invited me to stay with them when I went over, one in Switzerland, the other in Austria. They were serious, so I changed my plans.  Now 62, my 4 days in Munich turned out to be 26 days abroad in 3 countries.  I spent 8 days in Munich, another 4 in Switzerland, and 14 in Austria, in a small town where people speak dialect and don’t lock their doors.  Yeah, those places still exist.

The first thing I realized was how difficult German is to learn, and that what I spoke was not at all as good as I hoped, nor was my comprehension anywhere near what I hoped.  But the people around me were astounded at my progress, and they were pleased that I was speaking their language.  Not one person said anything derogatory.  Not one.  Oh, I made some funny mistakes, but we all laughed….and moved on.  I asked questions and more questions.  Some things I picked up right away, others just didn’t stick for the longest time.

One of my hosts, Niki, met me in Munich.  He spoke German immediately and I later learned that was his plan–to be “grausam” or cruel–as he put it.  I responded in German, and within 2 days, I decided that in public, I would speak German, no English at all.  There was a lot I would not say, much of which I wanted to, and a great deal I would not understand, but I decided I had to go with the flow, knowing I would do some stupid things and ask a lot of dumb questions.  But I spoke German in Europe almost exclusively.  In Austria, I explained the US financial crisis to Elisabeth in English, both because it was easier, and because I am so angry at what happened that the anger affected my ability to speak German.

As I got more comfortable with Europe, I noted things to compare with here.  Europe sure isn’t perfect, any more than we are.  There are things people on both sides of the Atlantic could learn from one another.  There is too much smoking in Europe, although they are making progress eliminating places where people may smoke.  While many bicycle, there are far too few with helmets, although motorcyclists do wear them.  Yes, I am in favor of helmet laws; as a retired neurologist, I think my credentials to say that are  solid.

Europeans have good public transportation.  With gas $8 a gallon, they need to move a lot of people efficiently.  No, it isn’t perfect.  I missed a train in Salzburg.  But there was another one two hours later.  I was able to get all around Munich using the S and U-Bahns.  They work.  Not knowing the system, I still got around.  Speaking some German helped, but it wasn’t necessary; people were just happier with me when I did speak it.  We need the same public transportation system here.  It can be done, and Portland, Oregon is a good example of how a city can work.  I doubt it will in Tucson.    I have stopped listening to my detractors and those who confuse average with “world class.”  Tucson has major climate problems, educational problems, and an immense number of far right wing people living here.  They are old people, regardless of their age, and they have damaged the state perhaps irreparably.  We need good public transportation, and if it is good, people will use it.  Yes, it will cost money, but it will pay for itself in many ways, not all of them monetary.

The food was great in Europe, and I must have walked most of the calories off, because I did not gain weight, and I ate cheese and pastries by the kilogram.  Oh yes, we need the metric system here, too.  There is no excuse for not using it.  None.  I have for decades, and most Americans don’t know the English system well.  Think you do?  Answer these without looking them up:  How much does a gallon of water weigh?  How many ounces in a gallon?  How many yards in a mile?  How many acres in a square mile?  How many square feet in an acre?  To the nearest hundredth, what is 7/16ths in decimal form?  What is the scale in inches to a mile of a map that is 1:100,000?  What is the approximate conversion for nautical to statute miles?  If you can’t answer most of those questions quickly without looking them up, I rest my case.

Restaurants in Europe open later than I am used to, and you have to get the waiter or waitress to give you the bill.  What that does is allow you to stay longer with your friends, and generally order more food and drink.  I can’t say how many times an American waitress has lost money for the restaurant by shoving the bill under my plate without asking if I wanted anything more.  I would have ordered dessert, but decided it wasn’t worth it.

Internet service fails in Europe, as it does here.  But I had cable high speed Internet in homes, even if I didn’t have wi-fi.  Phone service had its problems, but my National Geographic phone was a nightmare that I finally stopped using.  Customer Service was a long wait, and if you didn’t have minutes you couldn’t call to order them. One has to have a toll free line to the service center, and this telephone did not have that.  Nor did it fill 80% of my request for minutes.  Is that stupid or just American?

In truth, despite National Geographic, I really didn’t spend a lot of time comparing Europe and America.  I simply saw parts of the world I had never seen before with people I had never met until recently.

Europeans usually can speak another language, but I learned that their English was often like my German, passable but not fluent.  That was fine by me.  They spoke English to me, and I spoke German back.  We communicated, and we had fun doing it.  Many have been to America and have a good opinion of the country, especially Mr. Obama.  They wonder why we don’t have national health insurance and why we don’t do something about guns.  I have wondered both of those for years.  I bet my career on improving medicine and lost, and I have long since not bothered trying to fight the National Gun Association (it really is about guns, not rifles, but ‘rifle’ sounds so much better than ‘handgun’).  I don’t interpret the 2nd amendment the way the Supreme Court does, and most of those who tote guns are not US Veterans.  Am I sure of that?  Yes I am, since only 7% of Americans served this country in uniform and a lot more than 21 million people (minus me) have guns.  So much for a militia, unless the Tea Party forms one, in which case I am off to Canada.

Here is a list of what I saw that I doubt I would have on my own or with a tour:

  1. Two visits to a family on a farm outside of Munich.  On my own, I had to deal with Bayern dialect, not understanding a lot of it, but learning a few words and realizing a man my age was calling me “du”, which is something one has to be careful about in Germany.  On the second visit, there was a party of 20 young people, half my age.  Three times, for a protracted period, one of the people engaged me in a conversation in German.  They spoke slowly enough, but still at reasonable speed, that I could ask about them and tell them about myself.
  2. A tour of Munich with one of my friends from the Argentina trip and her husband.  The weather was terrible, but it did not matter a bit.  We had a lot of fun. 
  3. A trip to Chiemsee, a large lake in southern Bayern (Bavaria).  Got out to Herreninsel, and walked around the island, seeing King Ludwig’s Castle.                                4. A visit to the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestial Physics, and a look at the work going into EROSITA, an X-Ray telescope to be launched in early 2013 to L5, the LaGrangian Point (where Earth and Sun’s gravity are equal, so the orbit is stable), beyond the Earth’s orbit.  5.  A visit to Poing, a lovely wild animal park with room for the animals.

Yes, I walked around Erding, a suburb, and I had dinner and coffee with and without others.  I talked German with complete strangers, but these would have been normal parts of a visit. 

In Switzerland, the German is more difficult to understand, and I was with a family where English was spoken only by one son.  I stayed 4 nights in their house in Kerzers, a suburb of Bern.  I got off the beaten track.

  1. I was met at the Bahnhof and immediately taken to Enrico’s workplace (the husband of Teresa, whom I met online).  It was a clear Sunday afternoon, and we had unfettered access to the rooftop, where the view of the Alps above the powerlines and houses.  The views were stunning.2.  That night, I was shown a book about the first 26 hour flight with a plane whose wings were completely covered with solar panels.  The propeller driven plane used no fuel, only batteries at night, and flew as high as 8700 meters.  I also saw a DVD of the flight.  There were no American firms in the consortium.  I never heard about this flight.  If we can power an airplane with solar panels, why not a car, an air conditioner,  hot water heaters, and automobile accessories?   3.I was on the tourist track when Teresa took me through the three lakes and two canals on a boat ride.  We saw Merton through her experience, climbing high up into an old church above the old town.  We took the train to the boats, and we walked to the train again.  No cars.4.  One night, the family cleared the table quickly and I noted everybody dressing up.  I was still in shorts, so I decided I ought to put on decent clothes, really not knowing what was going to happen.  Teresa’s look, after I had changed, told me I had done the right thing.  We drove with a son to a school.  I saw a piano and drums on the stage and figured this was a concert.  I could have asked, but wasn’t sure I needed to or should to.  Sure enough, three young women appeared and played two numbers, one on the piano, one on a sax, and the third on a violin.  

But then things changed.  A man started talking, and from a few words, I realized this was their son’s graduation from school!  I was asked to take pictures, which I did, and later there was a reception, where I took the family’s picture.  There might have been other Americans there, but somehow I doubt it.  I was really deep into another country’s culture.

5.  On my second day, Teresa had to work, so I went into Bern, where I met the sons of my only cousin.  Peter lives in Bern, is the oldest, and I met him in Tucson in 2006.  He speaks four languages.  I had never met Richard, who looks like my late uncle.  Both spoke English and German to me, I spoke German back.  They were amazed, pleased, and we had a lot of fun.  They had lived in Bern for years when they were children, so we had a lot of fun together and I saw Bern through their eyes.  I have no parents living, only one cousin, and so to meet anybody in my family was truly special.6.The last day, Teresa took me to Freiburg, where there is an old church and a tower where one can walk to.  We climbed up to the tower, where really quite by surprise, a nearby lightning strike caused me to yell for Teresa to get off the tower.  She said, all in German, that everything was OK.  I screamed at her, again in German, that all was indeed NOT OK, and we needed to get out of there.  We did.

One has to be prepared for changes.  Teresa had mentioned nothing about the last morning, and I had a 0745 train to catch from Bern, meaning I needed to catch the 0650   train from Kerzers.  I was up at 5, and at 6 the house was still quiet.  I ate, expecting to take a walk to the Bahnhof.  At 0615, Teresa appeared in a bathrobe, so I assumed I would still be walking.  About as I got ready to leave, Enrico appeared at 0625, sleepy eyed and saying he would take me.  So I did get a ride, although I didn’t know it until the last minute.

I had no problem getting the train from Bern to Zurich, but I had to ask for directions for the train to Salzburg.  That was no problem, as it turned out, although the train itself was slow, frequently stopped too long, and I realized I would not make my connection in Salzburg for the trip to Oberösterreich, where Lambach was located.  I texted Elisabeth, who told me to take another train that left later, going to a different stop, which would be easier for her.

I have learned that the posted schedules at Bahnhofs are not always accurate, so I went to information to confirm my trip.  I found the train and got off at Wels, where Elisabeth met me.  People don’t use signs very often, but we had chatted on the Internet, and there were not many departing the train at Wels.  She took me to her house, where we had dinner.  I would stay there for two weeks.

Lambach is small, on the Traun River, but has good transportation.  The stores are all closed on Sundays, which is a throwback to many years ago here in the US.  

  1. I went to a school, where I was asked to speak English at Elisabeth’s English class.  She is fluent in English and is the school’s English teacher.  I soon realized that those teachers who spoke English with me were less fluent than I was in German.  I answered in German, they spoke English.  This was a recurring theme in Europe.  The students loved having me there, had many questions, surrounded me afterwards, peppering me with questions.  Later, we had a computer class where I showed them pictures of the US, solar eclipses, and explained the latter phenomenon in German.  I had a blast.2.The next day, we hiked to a Laudachsee, a small lake east of Traunsee in the mountains.  It rained, but not hard, and we walked around the small lake and then had lunch in a restaurant.  The inside was taken up by a wedding party, so we ate outside.  It was cold, but we were given blankets and stayed dry.    We walked back down the mountain and took a visit to Traunsee and a church on a small island accessible from shore.  I almost died on the walk over.  One of my big fears is riding in a car, the other is being a pedestrian.  Most cars will stop for people in a crosswalk.  Fortunately, in this crosswalk, I looked.  A black Mercedes sped through at 80 kph (50 mph), never once stopping.  Illegal, yes.  That would not have saved my life.
  1. The following day, we took the train to Salzburg.  Elisabeth had lived there 3 years, so I had a tour guide.  We saw the city, the Feststellung, high on the hill, had lunch in a lovely old place dating at least 300 years, and at the end of the day had drinks with her sister and brother in law, who lived nearby.  Again, it was a chance to work on my German with strangers, and again I was told I was understandable.  This had been my biggest concern, and I was greatly relieved to know I was able to speak correctly.  Elisabeth and I took the train back and walked back to the house from the station.
  2. I was invited to go to Linz, for a program where schools in the surrounding area (Linz is the capital of Öberosterreich, one of the nine states in the country) put on a show.  Unfortunately, the dancing, athletics, and the fair atmosphere was considerably dampened by the rain.  Still, I got to see the Danube, Brown, not Blue.
  3. On my own, I visited the farmer’s market, several bakeries, and had conversations with people in town.  I had to see a doctor about a small infection that wasn’t healing, and it was interesting to see medicine from a patient’s side abroad.  The visit was 15 euros, the medicine about 7.5.  All drugs are 5 euros for residents, regardless of what the drug is.
  4. Elisabeth and I went to a concert with a Russian pianist, held in a local church.  I figured with a town of 4000, there would be few attendees.  There were 400, and the pianist was superb.  So was the church.
  5. We visited Epps, the oldest city in Austria (800 years next year), and then went to Mauthausen, the main concentration camp in the area.  It took in just about anybody the Third Reich didn’t want, which in this instance led to 122,000 deaths.  It was perhaps the cruelest of all the camps.  Prisoners had to haul 55 kg blocks of granite (120 lb) up an incline which today has about 200 stairs and had me puffing.  Many were lined up at the top of the quarry and told to push the person in front of them over or to jump themselves.  The guards laughed as they called these people “parachutists without parachutes”.  Several thousand were shot as they tried to escape; at least 1500 committed suicide by touching the electric fence.  When liberated by the Americans in 1945, a day before V-E day, they buried 1200 the first day and 300 a day thereafter.  The surrounding countryside is so beautiful, but one cannot not escape the memorials by more than 40 countries, with words almost all in languages other than English. The words struck me deep to my core, as did the place called “Gaskammer”, and a beam where hundreds of Russian prisoners died painful deaths.  These places existed.  I had never been to one.  It is said Austrians won’t take people there, but Elisabeth takes her school children there to show them what their country was capable of.  America has MyLai and Iraq.  No country is immune to evil.  The evil at Mauthausen, however, was beyond compare.
  6. The next afternoon, we had dinner at a house of a friend–fellow teacher–and again, I had to speak German at length.  The way people opened their houses was deeply appreciated by me.
  7. We spent two days in Hallstättsee, spending the night in Obertraun.  The first day, we went up the Dachstein on the Gondola where we saw two caves, the latter the Ice Caves, where there are stalactites and stalagmites, made of ice.  The backlighting was superb, and the caves remarkable.  We spent time on the summit, over the 5 Fingers, which are projections built out over the cliffs.  It became foggy, but we were up there and again beat the rain down.  The next day we explored the town and the gondola up to where the salt mines were.
  8. That night, we had dinner at a local pizza restaurant in Lambach.  Perhaps America has better pizza, perhaps, but if we do, that is the only food I ate over there where our’s was better.  I have never just savored the taste of bread, pastries, and other food the way I did in Europe.  We were part of a group of 8, and again, many were curious about me and my life.  I spent some time talking about German grammar with a man, again, all in German.
  9. Elisabeth and I rafted the Traun, with a friend driving us upstream.  There is a 10 mile stretch with no houses, only clear water and lovely woods on either side.  It is a gentle river and with a raft, no problem.  There are plenty of places to swim or to camp.

I was not allowed to clean the house or the yard, although I did take it upon myself to empty the dishwasher, take out the trash, and feed her two cats.  We split up expenses, although I paid for dinner one night and gas one time as well.  There were just too many things she was doing for me that I needed to repay somehow.

I brought gifts for Teresa, Enrico and Elisabeth.  I had no idea and still don’t, how they will work, although the SW jewelry bracelet Elisabeth received has been worn several times.

I spoke English with Elisabeth twice, as mentioned earlier.  A third time was at the train station the day I left.  I wanted to be certain I could express myself clearly.

I then had to return to Munich, where the schedule changed, and I went from the Bahnhof to the S-Bahn and then the U-Bahn, taking that to MPE.  I met Maria and Anita and had a snack at MPE.  Maria, Niki and Maria’s uncle had dinner with me in Erding, my last night before flying home.

I was pleased that my German was understood, but I was disappointed that I still could not understand completely the news, although I knew the drift.  Nor could I read the newspaper well, although I read it daily.  I have two German books I am reading, I am spending sometime every day listening to German, and I decided to join the University of Arizona German club so I can meet with them on Thursday nights and both speak and hear German.

I do want my life back, where I am not spending every day learning German.  But I do not want to lose what came at great expense of time and effort, and is really appreciated by the German speakers whom I met.

I’ve seen the ads “Learn German in 20 minutes a day,” or “you will be nearly fluent using Rosetta Stone.”  Do not believe these.  Learning a language is hard work.  It requires mastery of vocabulary, and in German, the noun gender and plural.  It requires knowledge of grammar, which in German requires knowledge of cases and verbs/prepositions that take certain cases (in some instances two different cases for a preposition, depending upon how it is used).  I spent 5-6 hours a day for 9 months. I wrote, I listened, I practiced, I had lists of words, file cards of nouns, whose gender I needed to learn.  But it was worth it.  I could talk in sentences, and I could do more than just order things in a restaurant.  I could speak correctly, and my grammar was good.  There is just so much more I need to learn.  LiveMocha.com defines fluency as being able to carry on a simple conversation with somebody.  I don’t agree.  Fluency is speaking the language clearly with anybody, about anything, at any speed.  I am not fluent.  But I am conversational.  I can talk about any topic I want to.  Sometimes it is slow, and sometimes, I need help for verbs or nouns.  But I can make myself understood.  I just want to do better.  And that will take years.  Being “in country” was essential for the nuances that every language has.  This is a journey that won’t end, but on this particular journey, I not only spoke German, but I got to see a side of Europe that tourists just don’t see.  And I am a different and I hope a better person for it.

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SWIMMING WITH THE ORCAS

July 17, 2011

“In nature, there is no right or wrong, only consequences.”

An Alaskan cruise ship happened upon several deer swimming across an inlet.  Suddenly, several Orcas appeared, attacking the deer, killing the whole group.  The passengers screamed, begging the captain to “do something.”  There was, of course, nothing the captain could do.  Or should have done.  This is how nature works, predator and prey, survival of the fittest.  It is terrible to see it, but deer feed other animals as well as to breed and make more deer.  It is the way of the world.

Unfortunately, I didn’t like the way of the world when lightning caused Minnesota’s Pagami Creek Fire,  It was monitored, because wilderness fires are beneficial phenomena to the ecosystem. Jack pine seeds can only open after a fire, and I’ve seen large forests of young jack pines 10 years after a major burn. Unfortunately, one day the fire exploded, running 12 miles, ultimately burning 92,000 acres.  Regrowth has already begun, but I will never again travel my favorite route to Lake Insula.  It is the way of the world.

Large fires have burned huge swaths of Minnesota, the last big one in 1918.  That fact has not stopped many on the Iron Range from blaming the fire on the Forest Service or “radical environmentalists” like me. Scientists know fire belongs; if there is anything “radical”, it is the idea that forests, like life itself, are immutable.

Often, those who decry big government are first to ask where government is when there is a disaster.  FEMA was decimated in the name of smaller government, until Katrina, proving the adage to some that government can’t do anything right. I might counter with “Lehman Brothers.”  Wildland firefighters, who save so much property and risk their lives, are part of “big government”.  A PCMS member once made a pejorative remark to me about “government doctors.”  I think those of us who were medical officers, including the VA physicians who trained all of us, might feel differently. The previous Vice-President, who never wore a uniform, referred to those 16% of us against the Iraq invasion as traitors.  I want every president to succeed, because if they fail, we are in big trouble. If being against a war is treason, wishing a president to fail is the same, unless there is a double standard.

Big government cleaned the air (under Nixon) and the rivers, because corporations would not do it voluntarily. Accountants do not factor environmental costs in the bottom line.  When free markets fail because of greed or poor planning, big government must step in. If government is bad, then it must not interfere in the bedroom, marriage, and how I should decide to die. Drowning government in a bathtub would appear, in my world, to drown national defense. I don’t want that.

We did canoe in Minnesota, just not where we had hoped. While the fire was beneficial, we are likely to see more of these as boreal rainfall patterns are changing to a savannah-like ones with floods and droughts, rather than even, a phenomenon ascribed to climate change.  The oceans are more acid, the Ksp (solubility product) of calcium and phosphate will now, with 30% more hydrogen ions, cause deterioration in shell formation.  This is a major concern, since the oceans are acidifying at a rate 100 times faster than ever recorded during the past 20 million years.  Carbon dioxide + water=carbonic acid.  Nearly every glacier is retreating, and the volume of cubic kilometers of fresh water entering the ocean will further change the climate.  This isn’t bad, it just is, unless you are human, live on a coast, eat seafood, or get your water from a glacier, as do Peruvians and Indians, in which case it is a huge concern.

Every prediction of the future must quantify uncertainty; to do otherwise is unscientific. Not one argument I have heard against climate change has stated a p-value, confidence interval or margin of error. The late Sen. Moynihan said “you can choose your opinions but not your facts.” The IPCC is 95% confident, which we statisticians consider high. Using a cold week or a record low as a counterexample shows an inability to distinguish between local weather and global climate, which is basic to understanding climate change. For the record, in Tucson there have been 6.5 times as many record highs than lows since 2001 (142/22). This is a fact.

Not one argument I have heard against climate change has been free of personal attacks.  These attacks, having nothing to do with science, obscure the issue, ironically diluting and degrading the writer’s thesis. The subject is climate change, not what hikers wear.  I have discussed the science using statistics, which may be confirmed.  To clarify, I have been to ANWR twice, hiked 120 miles in three of its major river valleys, including 1002, and I find it and Antarctica among the most beautiful places on Earth.  I strongly disagree with those who disparage ANWR or climate change without having ever seen or understanding each respectively, and I have considerable knowledge of both topics.

Of course, some scientists, ever fewer, do not agree, but the vast majority of reputable scientists believe manmade climate change has occurred. Per cent occupancy of the globe is statistical misuse: 70% of the planet is water, and vast stretches are desert.  Fukushima is 0.0003% of Japan’s area, but radioactive Cesium contaminated 10% of the country. It is the way of the world that as a statistician, I frequently see statistics misused (99.999996% of aircraft flights in the US were not hijacked in 2001).  Mankind has never encountered CO2 levels this high.  We are running an uncontrolled experiment; worse, models are under-predicting the consequences. The average temperature has risen, overall weather patterns have changed and the higher sea level has already caused problems. These are facts.  It is the current way of this world.

When I was a neurologist, I often delivered bad news.  I do so again as a scientist and writer.  As a physician, I changed my patient management in the face of convincing evidence.  I believe I have convincing evidence about the world’s climate. I believe if nobody speaks out against those who disagree, and I continue to be polite with my word choice, misinformation will continue. I am calling them out; I will not be silent.  It is the way of my world.

The voters who elected this Congress believe that they will benefit from smaller government.  Ironically, many of these voters will need SSI and Medicare, which may be cut.  They are deer, and they actually want to swim with the Orcas.  It is, sadly, the way of their world.

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NO MORE

May 26, 2011

We don’t learn enough from our mistakes.

Back in 1949, eight months to the day after I was born, 14 smokejumpers died in the Mann Gulch fire in Montana, when the fire suddenly exploded and beat them up a hill.  Fire always wins races uphill. It was a small fire when the jumpers dropped, but it got out of control.

Act of God? I don’t buy it. Study accidents, as I have, and you soon learn that it is seldom one failure but a concatenation of them, as happened here. We fix flawed systems by redesign, not by telling people to be careful.

The famous 1910 fire that killed 86 people brought a change fire management systems. But not enough. Or the lessons learnt were soon forgotten. Proof? About 700 wildland firefighters have died since. Consider this:

* 1994, Colorado: Storm King Fire, Prineville. Ring any bells? Same thing as in 1948. Fourteen dead, caught on a hillside, when a predicted dry cold front caused the wind to shift. A few outran the fire, 14 Prineville hotshots did not. For what? To keep land from being “scorched”, “destroyed” or other jargon which denies that fire changes, not destroys. It is necessary for nature to clear out old growth to allow new. Many trees need fire, either to open seeds or to allow competing species to die.

Both fires were extensively investigated and books were written, one the father of the other. One hoped the mistakes wouldn’t be repeated.  But they were:

* July 2001, Washington State: The smoldering Thirty Mile Fire on a lazy summer day killed four young people, who even a couple of hours before, had no inkling of death. This fire was unimportant, burning where nothing mattered, with plenty of chances to be extinguished. But a pump failed, there were communication breakdowns, the weather changed, safety shelters were deployed wrong….

We talk about firefighting costs in the millions. As a statistician, I count stuff. I learned years ago what is important and countable must be counted. What is important and not countable must be honored. And we need to know the difference.

Deaths in fires can be counted. Not the potential and pain of the lives lost. But we end up counting the money spent and give it the most attention.

“Acts of God” are due to insufficient knowledge or poorly designed systems. We no longer have “Acts of God” deaths from smallpox, measles, polio, rheumatic heart disease, puerperal fever, or infected hangnails. We no longer have commercial aircraft crashes every month.

Deaths from fire are preventable. The firefighters know the rules. We have excellent weather forecasting, every firefighter knows that property destruction is not worth one human life.

The National Interagency Firefighting Center was founded to coordinate firefighting efforts among states, so high priority fires got the most resources. Many gave up turf and power for the greater good. This is almost unheard of in my experience, and those who created the NIFC were remarkable people.

But their job isn’t complete so long as there are purple ribbons.

(Read, edited and improved by Anindita Sanyal of the Hindustan Times, New Delhi, India)

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HUNTER’S MOON

May 7, 2011

Muddy and wet, I reached the end of the portage to Little Saganaga Lake an hour before sunset on a dreary October day.  I pushed the canoe off my shoulders, flipped it over, caught it on my knees and gently lowered it to the ground, pushing the bow into the water.  Wearily, I removed my pack and dropped it in the bow compartment, the sound echoing from the woods across the small bay.  I picked up the wooden paddle, grasped both gunwales, and carefully stepped in, pushing off from the rocky landing.

The rain had finally stopped, but once clear of a nearby point, the cold northwest wind caught me full force, as if to say winter had nearly arrived in northern Minnesota and canoeists were no longer welcome.  For perhaps the tenth time that day, I asked myself aloud why I was out here instead of back in town.  The previous day I had spent in the tent, rain-bound.  After eighteen grueling miles of solo travel through a dozen lakes and as many portages, I was back on schedule but needed to find camp soon, pitch the tent, put on some warm clothes and eat.

The lake, dotted with islands, was undoubtedly pretty in summer, but my mood matched the dark water and low nimbus clouds.  Only with difficulty was I able to keep the canoe on course as I crossed the quartering waves, the splash further chilling my mitten-covered hands.  I was therefore satisfied to land in the lee of a half acre rocky island containing a few groves of cedar and scraggly jack pine.  The campsite would have to do; it was too late and I too tired to continue looking for another one.

I carried the pack thirty feet uphill from the shore to a flat spot, then pulled the canoe up and turned it over, tying the bow to a nearby root.  I unpacked, placing food, tent and personal gear into three piles.  Grabbing a pot, I slid down the gravel bank to the lake to scoop up some water.

I lit the stove and started heating the water as I erected the tent under a small group of cedars.  With a half hour, I had changed into dry clothes, stowed my gear and had a few handfuls of trail mix with hot chocolate.  Marginally warmer, I obtained more water and started preparing my usual macaroni and rice dinner.  As I worked, a change in light heralded sunset, but clouds were too thick to show either color or detail.  The night would again be cold, but I hoped to sleep warm.  Eleven lakes and fifteen miles awaited me the next day.

Eating my rapidly cooling meal, I looked at the gray and rapidly darkening scene, wondering yet again why I had come out here.  At least I was dry and my tent sheltered from the persistent wind.  Had anyone been near to ask, I would have said there was a Hunter’s Moon that evening.  But I hadn’t seen anybody in four days, and seeing the Moon was far from my mind.  Under skies that threatened snow, I retired early, quickly falling asleep in my cedar hollow.

The geese awoke me.

I didn’t know the time, but I immediately recognized the sound.  I hadn’t heard geese since my childhood in upstate New York.  Their honking triggered fond memories when I was a young boy, looking up, fascinated by the formations, wondering how and why they did it and where they were going.  Realizing I still didn’t know those answers made me smile, as I listened to the different calls high over the island, heading south, away from the frozen waters of Ontario and Manitoba.  From the light on the roof of the tent, I realized something else as well.  It was clear.

I unzipped the tent door and slowly crawled outside, stiffly standing, barefoot, on the hard soil.  It was cold, but I was barely aware of the temperature.  I saw a brilliant Hunter’s Moon above the darkly forested south shore, its light rippling towards me across the nearly calm water of a wilderness lake.  Overhead, heading towards the Moon, were scores of geese, honking.  It was magical.  Knowing at last why I had come out here, I watched and listened, silent, until the geese were no longer visible and their calls blended with the light wind that just stirred the trees.

This appeared in the first edition of Firegrate Reviews, put out in 2010 by The Friends of the Boundary Waters

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TRYING TO BE CIVIL DURING A CIVIL WAR

March 10, 2011

Twenty-five years ago, I went to trial for alleged malpractice.  During the trial, the plaintiff’s lawyer kept quoting a neurology book, trying to make it appear that I practiced below the standard.  Each time, I asked to see the passage, and each time, I read the paragraph before and after the lawyer’s quotation.  He was quoting out of context.  He was lying, to make a point.  The third time I asked for the book, he literally threw it at me, on the stand.  Several jurors actually gasped.  For the first time, I thought I might not lose.  I didn’t, but of course in a malpractice trial, a physician never wins: it is lose or not lose.

I question whether the U of A’s new to promote civility will be successful.  I will try to be civil in my comments.

I find it difficult to be civil to those who did not serve this country in uniform, but are quick to support our military in our many misadventures that have cost hundreds of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars.  I was among the 16% of Americans in 2003 who thought invading Iraq was a bad idea.  I was right.  I am often right on the big issues, not that it matters much.  The bullies and the jerks usually win.

I find it difficult to be civil to bullies who use ideology, rather than facts, to call those who disagree with them unpatriotic, and sold a war that has been so costly.  These bullies polarized the country.  Worse, the media supported them in the name of “balance.”  We allowed the debate on health care to be uncivil, allowing words like “death panels” into the national discourse.  My opinion piece was entirely civil, factual, and appropriate, since I have dealt with death and dying many times when my colleagues were quite happy that I, and not they, would.

During the last total lunar eclipse, CNN interviewed two astrologers, no astronomers, because the eclipse happened to occur near the solstice.  Is this what America has come to?  I will ask:  what does a total lunar eclipse require, and why does it occur?  Can you tell me why we have seasons?  Can you tell me how you would determine the number of square feet in an acre and how many square kilometers equal a square mile?  Can you tell me what case follows the word “between”?  Do you know where Guadalcanal is, why it was important and what Marine Division has it on their emblem?

I find myself difficult to be civil to those who disparage science, want to take us back several centuries, at the same time enjoying their cell phones, cars, food and water so safe we don’t think about it.  I find it difficult to be civil when I am in a minority of Americans who believe global climate disruption is occurring and man caused.  And I will not argue this with anybody, unless they (1) avoid all use of pejorative language, (2) use statistical terminology and (3) state the consequences if they should be wrong.  I have yet to find anybody who can do this. I find it difficult to disagree so without being disagreeable, for I see these people and others destroying a country that I served as an officer in uniform, and at least 98% of Americans have not.

I find it difficult to be civil, when 10 years ago I proposed a reporting and counting system for medical errors, which failed.   And do we know the scope of the problem in 2011, and have we improved our care?

I find it difficult to be civil to those who received complete data on 6th grader obesity–from 5 middle schools–promised to help, and didn’t.  Tucson has a grant to deal with this problem, when with a few volunteers from PCMS and the school of nursing, we could have obtained data from every middle school in the county–free, since I would not have charged for my data analysis.

Do we have any data this year?  None that I know.  The principal at one of those middle schools yelled at me, uncivil, although we were helping him meet his mandate.  What is happening in his school?  Is the median BMI still at the 89th percentile, rather than the 50th?  Are 14% of his students still above the 95th percentile and 7% above the 99th percentile, 3 and 7 times the expected values, respectively?  Is his school representative of the county?  Does anybody care?

What we need in America are volunteers, service, ideas, hard data, willingness to say “I was wrong,” and polite, respectful discussions with willingness to listen.   It is time we say “no more” to those who deliberately lie to push an agenda.  It is time that we and the media gasp, like the jurors did in January 1986, call these bullies out on their lies, because equal time requires equal facts.  Bullies must be stopped, whether high school students, lawyers or fat old non-veterans who deliberately lie on the public airwaves.

I took my skills out of medicine to other fields.  I now wonder whether I take myself and my skills out of this country, which I see as in major decline, because of lack of MY “family values”:  education, politeness, population control, caring for the Earth and all its living beings.

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MESSING WITH THE MIND

March 10, 2011

How many people do you need in a room before any two are more likely than not to have the same birthday?

Twenty-three.

I’m sure there are those who disbelieve, saying “I know that can’t be right.”  What is disturbing is that even when a simple proof is delivered, many continue not to believe it.  That is stupid, but these days disbelief of reality by people in power is beginning to destroy this country.  The proof looks at the probability that two people don’t have the same birthday.   Here are the probabilities:

 

Number of People Prob (2 have same Bday) Probability (2 don’t)
2 0.003 0.997
5 0.027 0.973
10 0.117 0.883
15 0.253 0.747
20 0.411 0.589
22 0.476 0.524
23 0.507 0.493
25 0.569 0.431
30 0.706 0.294
35 0.814 0.196

 

A disease has a prevalence of 1 in 200 (0.5%), a sensitivity of 98% and specificity of 99%, meaning if you have the disease you test positive 98% of the time and if you don’t you test negative 99% of the time.  Not knowing if you have the disease, you test positive.  What is the probability you will have the disease?   The issue here is that having the disease and testing positive is very different from testing positive and wondering if one has the disease.  If the disease is rare, the likelihood of a positive test’s being a false positive is significant.  Here’s why, using 10,000 people and the above percentages:

 

  Test Positive Test Negative Total
Disease Positive 49 1 50
Disease Negative 99 9851 9950
Total 148 9852 10000

 

If you test positive (148), a third of the time (49) you will have the disease.  The others are false positives.  That’s why we don’t do routine HIV blood tests for marriage.  In a randomly selected individual, and that is important, a positive test for something rare has a significant likelihood of being a false positive.

Many mountaineers defend the safety of their sport by saying one can get killed in a car accident.   We all know someone who died in a motor vehicle accident, but relative to the denominator, it is small, 1 in about 7000 Americans each year.  Mountaineering is a small community, and number of climbs is a small denominator.  Every serious mountaineer has lost several friends in the mountains.  Mountaineering is far more dangerous.

The lottery is a tax on those who don’t understand probability.  The chances of winning the Powerball jackpot are approximately those of randomly picking a minute chosen since the Declaration of Independence was signed, 1 to 110 million.  Yet people continue to tax themselves because “if you don’t play, you can’t win.”

Too many Americans play “I’m sick do I see a doctor?” lottery:  I have abdominal pain, and I don’t have insurance. I hope it goes away.  But it doesn’t; instead, the pain worsens.  I call an ambulance, go to an ED and am admitted with a ruptured appendix.  The costs have increased and are well in five figures.  I’m bankrupted by the illness, nobody gets paid, and my productivity is zero for a long time.  I’ll probably never get out of debt.  If I get sick again, I’ll bet again it goes away.  I will have no other choice. I’m betting that my body’s natural healing ability will bail me out.  Maybe it will.  Or maybe it won’t.

We were once the richest country in the world.  Our annual medical costs are far more than a trillion dollars.  A trillion is roughly the number of days since the Earth formed.  How many these costs could have been avoided by timely prevention?  How many could have been avoided by universal coverage?  I don’t know.  But I do know that our system makes it impossible for at least a sixth of Americans, not Zimbabweans, to get decent, timely care and not be bankrupted by it.  If you don’t want my solution, you fix it.   Here are my metrics:  your fix has to show an increase in productivity, a decrease in emergency department overcrowding, a decrease in bankruptcies that are primarily due to medical reasons and a decrease in late diagnosis of disorders like appendicitis, that should all be picked up early–in America, not Tajikistan.

If that requires I pay more taxes, I’ll pay them.  I’d rather pay taxes for education and health care than for fighting,  foreign aid to countries who despise us and bailouts to car makers who built monstrous SUVs, when it was obvious decades ago we needed to retool.  The selfish say, “I got mine, and the hell with you.”  Liberals like me say, “I got mine, and I want to help you get yours.”

I’m a patient, and I’m tired of waiting weeks to see a physician (I thought only Canadians waited), worrying about medical errors that affected me and three family members and really tired of the bickering and the lies that stalled any meaningful reform.  It is disgusting and un-American.

The above birthday problem was solved by looking at what we didn’t want to find what we did want.  I don’t want a huge national debt.  Here are 2 thoughts:  end our wars, and enact a 90% marginal tax rate on those with incomes over $3 million.

I can live with 70%.

 

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WINNING THE JACKPOT AT AN AUCTION

November 26, 2010

I was recently auctioned off for a charitable event.  No, nobody was buying me, but they bought a dinner with me at a friend’s house with a star party to follow.  My job was to show up for the dinner then show the stars afterwards.

For 20 years, I wrote 750 astronomy columns for the local paper.  I don’t do much observing any more, other than chasing the next solar eclipse, which I’ve done 20 times, successful on 17.  I was once an avid observer of variable stars, sometimes getting up at 2 a.m. to make visual observations on one that the AAVSO (American Association of Variable Star Observers) needed.  I was so good, my eyes could detect a 0.1 change in magnitude.  I’ve seen about 400 galaxies, 2000 double/multiple stars, all the planets and once followed about 25 variable stars without using star charts.

The night sky is predictable enough to be reassuring but changeable enough to be interesting.  In 1999,  I saw 300 Leonids meteors in an hour.  I saw a red glow over the Catalinas in ’89, realized there was no fire but in fact an aurora.  I’ve seen one grazing occultation, where the Moon’s limb was tangent to a star, so that the star blinked in and out of view as the valleys and mountains of the lunar edge passed by.  That was really cool.  For many years, I did photoelectric photometry, then having to reduce the data by hand.  Other than a total solar eclipse or a total lunar eclipse, the occultation of 28 Sgr by Saturn in 1989 might have been the most striking thing I ever saw.  As Saturn covered the star, I could define every ring layer by the star’s passage.  I still have my notes for that one; the star disappeared from view 38 times in 45 minutes!  That was beyond cool.  I stayed out half the night looking, and I had an office full of patients to see the next day.  I’m sure more than a few of those patients noted the doctor was tired, but finally seeing the star in between the globe of Saturn and the inner ring was an image I will never forget.

I wrote an article for Sky and Telescope several years ago how astronomy and dark skies freed me from my shyness.  After I was auctioned, I didn’t know what would happen; the person who “bought me” was a minister, and I had some trepidation about the evening.  After all, some ministers believe the Earth is 4000 years old and don’t realize that we are made of star stuff; our Sun is at least a second generation star.  I am not religious, but I am intensely spiritual, the idea of the elements coming from stars strikes me to my core.  The iron in my hemoglobin, the calcium in my bones, and the carbon in the fat surrounding the myelin sheaths in the corticospinal tract leading from my brain to my lower spinal cord are just a few examples.

I wore my Argentinian eclipse T-shirt that two delightful women, brilliant German astrophysicists, gave me after the event.    I arrived at John’s house early, set up my ‘scope (20 cm reflector), then had a beer with John  and his wife.  John and I go back a decade as bike riders.  I quit the sport in 2006 after breaking my 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th bones, but we stay in touch.  Just as I finished my drink, the other guests arrived.

We went outside, as the brightest stars appeared.  This is navigational twilight, when the Sun is 6-12 degrees below the horizon, light enough to see both bright stars and the horizon.  I pointed out the Summer Triangle and Jupiter, and described star magic.  In Tucson, the mountains allow a rising star to suddenly pop into view, so if one can determine the exact time of its rising, she can go out 4 minutes earlier the next night and count down 4, 3, 2, 1 RISE!  And the star will rise.  It is like magic, except of course, it is entirely predictable.  I also spoke of “Earthmove” rather than “Moonrise,” for I have learned that if one changes perspective, it is possible to see the Earth rotate, which in fact is what Moonrise is.  I do it many times a year.  Seeing the Earth rotate is primal.

The minister thought all this fascinating.  His wife sat next to me at dinner and is, like me, is a teacher.  Before we finished dinner, she had invited me to her advanced junior high math class next February to talk to them about math in the outdoors, a subject I am particularly interested in.  American kids need to get out more, and this is one way.

After dinner, we went outside, and looked above us.  Even in the suburbs of Tucson, we can see the Milky Way.  I pointed out the beautiful curve of Andromeda, found the Galaxy, showed the star clusters around Mirfak in Perseus, the Pleiades and the Hyades.  I taught them how to use their fist to show that the elevation of Polaris was our latitude, and that Kochab, in Ursa Minor, is Arabic for “Pole Star.” which it was 3000 years ago.

As we turned to look at the southern sky, a minus 8 magnitude fireball, a meteor, shot across right in front of us.  Everybody saw it.  I’m not one into “signs”, but I had to be a bit impressed that we happened to turn at just the right time.  The minister and his wife were fascinated by the Moon.  I pointed out Alpenglow, where the tops of the mountains were lit up away from the terminator.  His wife loved seeing that.  I spoke of nuclear fusion in the center of stars, walking over to the sand nearby, pointing out that the silicon was made inside a star.  Heady stuff.  I showed them Albireo, a gorgeous blue and gold double star at the end of the Northern Cross, which seemed appropriate for a group of Christians.

I spoke so much that once again I forgot that I was a shy person.  I was bubbling over with knowledge about the sky.  I consider myself a profound introvert.  But it is all relative, for once I get talking about astronomy under a dark sky,  a solar eclipse, the wilderness I have seen, or the Sandhill Crane migration in March, I’m a different person.  For a long time, I thought it was the wilderness and the night sky that changed me.  But it’s more than that.  The next day I thoroughly enjoyed myself as a substitute math teacher.  What brings me out of my shell is teaching.  I am a natural teacher.  The minister and his wife learned a great deal about the sky that night, but I was luckier; I learned something about myself I had never realized before.  When I teach, I am a completely different person.  And I like that person a great deal.

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IF YOU WANT TO LEARN, TALK TO THOSE WHO SAY LITTLE

November 26, 2010

In November, I went to the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge for the Festival of the Cranes.  I got to see fellow volunteer crane guides and took a course in Sandhill Crane behavior, with on site examples.  I also visited the VLA, the Very Large Array of 27 large parabolic radio telescope dishes on movable tracks.

Lesser Sandhill Cranes are remarkable birds, some migrating as far as Siberia.  I now can identify juveniles, males and females by voice.  I can identify their unison calls, see the aggressive behavior they may display afterwards, and describe their dancing.  I was a decent guide last spring; I will be a far better one next year.

I stayed at a house in Socorro while the owners were temporarily living at the Refuge, volunteering.  Erv and Sandra are a remarkable couple; both well into their 60s, they are “professional volunteers,” known in the Fish and Wildlife Service as a couple who will go to a place for a few months, make a big impact, then move to another area.  In 2008, when I first met them, they “followed” the Sandhill Cranes north from their wintering spot in New Mexico, to the magnificent staging of 600,000 on the Platte, to Homer, Alaska, finally ending in Fairbanks.  While I was in New Mexico, they received an offer to go to Coldfoot, Alaska next summer.  They are either going there or to the Columbia River.  They are in demand.  Sandra can do it because she has two artificial joints.  Bravo for science, bravo for Medicare, bravo for Social Security.

My first evening, I went with both to watch the evening fly in of the cranes to a wetland.  Unfortunately, there weren’t many when I was there.  The cranes migrate south later every year, because the Arctic has warmed so much.  Indeed, the dates of the Festival will likely have to change.  One can argue about climate change, but cranes don’t argue; they sense warmth, not politics; 65% of bird species in the Christmas bird count, which I help out in, have moved significantly further north.  Erv and Sandra introduced me to several of their friends in a nearby RV park, and I was invited for dinner.  I was going to drive back to Socorro, grab a sandwich and sleep.  Fortunately, I didn’t.

That evening, I spent time with 6 other couples, all of whom older than I.  The food was good, the conversation better.  They were fascinated with my eclipse chasing and experiences.  Politics stayed out of the discussion, and mostly medical issues, too, a rarity among the elderly.   These people had worked for decades and were enjoying their retirement.  I wonder if they would be if it were not for the science so many disparage or the liberal programs of Social Security or Medicare.  I just wondered, but I kept my mouth shut.

I did open it later, however, to speak to the man who owned the RV and had been quiet most of the evening.  Quiet people often have a lot to say, if one can draw them out.  This man was no exception.  He was a physicist who worked at JPL and was surprised that I knew of it.  Are we so “educationally challenged” these days that we don’t know of the JPL, the place that allowed Americans get to the moon and do all sorts of other wonderful things?

The man was a pioneer in fiber optics.  He told me about silica (SiO2), the stretching and strength properties of the pure substance, which is the best spring we know of.  He told me that he thought it was better than satellite transmission, since it was faster and had fewer delays, so long as it was protected.  Satellites, as we all know, are far from safe, given solar radiation and space junk.  Bouncing signals off satellites leads to longer delays.  They are also more difficult to repair.  Fiber optics have revolutionized society, including medicine, although I learned fiber optics were most helpful was in transatlantic cables.

This man disparaged himself by saying that he was out of date.  But his explanation of fiber optics was by far the best I had ever heard.  Perhaps that is because he mentioned one of his teachers in quantum mechanics:  Richard Feynman, arguably the most brilliant physicist in the 20th century, and who single handedly figured out what happened to Challenger using simple science that even most Americans could understand.

I’ve come full circle.  In July, I met a young physicist from Germany, a woman who is working on an X-Ray telescope that will allow us to learn a great deal about X-Ray radiation sources in the universe.  She represents where we are going–brilliant, part of a large team, well educated, well traveled and articulate.

In November, I met an 80 year-old retired physicist who worked on fiber optic cables and studied under Feynman.  He represents the past and helped me understand how we got to where we are today.   Twice now, I’ve gone to see something and discovered far more.  In July, I went to see an eclipse; in November the Sandhill Cranes.  But my memories of both will be of two different people I met on each trip, young and old, German and American, woman and man, same field, different eras.  Both had a great deal to teach me.  All I had to do was draw them out.  For some reason I really don’t know, I did and was better for it.

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THE SEASONS OF MY LIFE

October 3, 2010

I recently took my 58th canoe trip into the Boundary Waters, having spent more than 1 month of my life camped on one lake and more than 1 year camped in the lovely country on both sides of the international border.  I’ve paddled on more than 300 different lakes, traveled 3000 miles, cleaned 500 campsites, and even dug 16 latrines in the 30 years I’ve been going there.  I’ve done half as much traveling in Ontario’s Algonquin Park back in the spring and early summer of my life.  I started 50 years ago and feel more comfortable in a canoe than in a car.  Safer, too.

I don’t travel hard any more.  I used to love to do so, glorying in 20 mile days with 15 portages, carrying a pack under a canoe for up to a mile at regular walking pace through the woods.  Oh, I was good in the summer of my life.  I could reach shore, unload and be portaging in under a minute.  When I reached the other side, I would be loaded and on the water in 30 seconds.  I could make camp at night in 30 minutes, break it the following morning in 45.  Now, however, I am happy to base camp with my wife and do short day trips around a lake we can truly say we know better than anybody else alive.  We have been on every one of the 47 campsites (the maps were in error and the Forest Service didn’t know that), and we now spend 5 nights a year on one campsite so remote that we don’t see any other human being during that time.

While I am not as strong as I once was, I am much more savvy in the wilderness.  I don’t waste effort on portages.  I am a superb weatherman in the wilderness, predicting storm onset and ending accurately with nothing more than a barometer on my wrist, reading the sky, and knowing the wind.  I thoroughly enjoy doing that.

Oh, I could do more if I HAD to.  Maybe.  But I don’t want to any more.  It’s been 9 years since I carried a pack and a canoe together.  I have nothing to prove and a lot I could hurt.  As I have gotten older, my desires have changed.  Do I miss the strength I once had, propelling me miles and miles to the next campsite?  A bit.  Do I need to do it again?  No.  For some reason, I revel in the fact that I once could do it but comfortable I don’t need to any more.  I know now that I probably took my last trip into Kawnipi Lake in 2005.  At the time I thought it would be.  Then I figured…maybe one more time.  Now, I’m not so sure I either need to, or more importantly, want to. I still want to see the northern sweep of Agnes Lake again, and a fellow teacher, who desperately wants to go, may be my partner on that trip.  The two of us could do it.  Gee, maybe Kawnipi, too, but nature may have other plans.

I have nothing to prove in the canoe country, although occasionally I still enjoy doing so.  My wife and I paddled 12 miles into our destination lake in 6 hours, with 7 carries, when several people we met, 20 years younger, were unable to get there in 3 days of work.  Neither of us is strong, but our experience, organization and leveraging of our skills, working together, enables us to still accomplish a good day’s work in a few hours.  Neither of us thought it was a difficult day.

Do I miss “roughing it”?  Not really.  I once liked sleeping under the canoe and paddling in a driving rain, but I don’t need to do it any more.  The way we camp is comfortable.  We eat well, stay clean and dry, and sleep better than we do at home.  The midnight bathroom breaks are a chance to look at one of the darkest skies in America and perhaps see an aurora, which we did a few years ago.

I find it interesting that as I have gotten older, my needs have changed, and I get pleasure doing different sorts of trips I once wouldn’t have enjoyed.  The trips I used to do no longer appeal to me.  I am at peace with that.  I expect more changes, and hope I still can paddle and portage for many years to come.  But I expect I will be doing so in a different fashion, and I believe that I will be enjoying it just as much.

We were in the canoe country in autumn, present when the colors peaked. In the autumn of my life, the colors are starting to peak.  I don’t have the strength and growth I had in the spring and summer of my life, but I have found my own inner beauty that mirrors the external beauty around me.  I still see new country, but I enjoy visiting familiar country the way some like meeting new people but enjoy old friends.

I tell myself I won’t be able to do this forever, but I am glad for the now.  I hope in ten years, in my seventies, I will be still be able to canoe and set up camp.  The gear is getting better, and my knees and shoulders are strong.  Whether my neck holds up is another matter, but I bet I could figure out a way to get a canoe on my head without stressing my neck, should that come to pass.  If not, I can paddle lakes where I don’t portage, because there are many of them, too.  In short, my body is like a well-used Old Town.  It won’t last forever, and it is showing use.  The paint is scraped, there are a few cracked ribs, but it is still sound and seaworthy.

I hope that as the winter of my life approaches, the white in my hair will mirror the brilliance of new fallen snow, untouched, in those areas of Alaska’s Brooks Range that I have been so fortunate to have explored four different times.  Could I canoe into my eighties or even nineties?  I can dream, for this year two very special people, different sex, different countries, different professions, and different beliefs had a profound influence upon me.  From each, and quite by accident, I learned that while I am a scientist and statistician, consider myself a practical person, not far below the surface lies a kid–a deeply emotional, spiritual dreamer.  I’m not planning to mentally ever grow up.  When I arrived in Fairbanks, many my age or younger went to the Princess Cruises sign.  I picked up my backpack.  In Minneapolis, I feel a bit unusual at 61, walking through the airport with my canoe pack on.  The white I want to see is not a golf ball but an eagle’s head.  With luck, I have just started autumn.  May it continue to be as brilliant inside as it was along the Fernberg east of Ely, Minnesota.  May the winter that follows it be as brilliant as the snow that made Mt. Igikpak so beautiful over the Noatak last August, up in Gates of the Arctic.

Eventually, of course, my eyes will finally close forever.  I hope at the end I feel the same as Sig Olson, the famous North Country writer, who still had written, in his typewriter, the day he died, snowshoeing, “I am ready for the next stage.  I know it will be a great adventure.”

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…AND THAT CHANGED MY LIFE

September 1, 2010

On an early March afternoon this past year, I was on my hands and knees building a large sundial at Rowe Sanctuary in central Nebraska, where people stand on the date and their shadow tells the time.  From the second week in March through the second week in April, Rowe is busy as visitors arrive from all states and a few dozen countries to witness the Lesser Sandhill Crane migration, one of the three greatest natural sights I’ve seen  and one of Jane Goodall’s top ten.  I was working pre-season and decided a nature center like Rowe needed a sundial.

I was using markers, T-squares, a calculator and duct tape when a good looking young man stopped by.  He was friendly,  and I knew him as the Great Plains photographer Michael Forsberg.  Mike was interested in what I was doing with trigonometry and ellipses and then asked if I could find him information for the full Moon azimuth as it rose. He wanted to know exactly where in the eastern sky he would see it rise.

Fulfilling a request from Mike Forsberg suddenly became my top priority, so that evening I sent him the information.  He later e-mailed me pictures he had taken out in the viewing blinds, including an incredible shot of 4 different species of geese flying together.  Imagine, the premier wildlife photographer in the American midwest e-mailing me pictures he took!  Later that week, when I saw Mike again, I had him sign one of his books for me.  I just happened to be making a sundial when he walked by.  He just happened to stop.  And that changed my life. I just didn’t know it at the time.

When I left Nebraska in early March, I felt I had unfinished business.  I had not been there when the migration was in full swing, nor had I led tours to the viewing blinds, which had been a goal–a dream–of mine.  Four weeks later, I flew back to Nebraska, to volunteer at the height of the crane season, when 600,000 birds are on a short stretch of the Platte River, flying in at night to the safety of the braided channels and flying out to the fields in the morning to eat waste corn.  That week, I worked 17 hour days, sleeping on the floor in the visitor center, because local housing was full, listening to the cranes call on the nearby Platte.  The first night I shared a floor with– Mike Forsberg– who now knew me.  We didn’t talk much but I soon learned Mike is modest as he is good.  He deeply respects Rowe volunteers, because we help make some of his photography possible.  His nature photography is the best I’ve ever seen.

I finished my training and became a lead guide, meaning I could take visitors to the viewing blinds.  I got to talk about Lesser Sandhill Cranes; I watched people smile and heard them cry when they saw the cranes land, “dance,” and call before them.  Sandhills are large and loud, their voice primitive and deeply primal, echoing across 3 million years of time.  My enthusiasm outweighed my shyness, and I thoroughly enjoyed guiding.  We volunteers were a cohesive group, all of us working together to do whatever needed to be done, even if it wasn’t our “job.”  That week, I felt alive in a way I seldom have experienced.  So often, I told visitors, “I work 17 hour days, make coffee at 5 a.m., clean toilets, sweep the walk, give “Crane 101 talks,” do odd jobs, get dinner, sleep on the floor and see the cranes morning and night.  Am I lucky or what?”  When I called home, my wife commented my voice sounded different.

Mike stayed in the visitor center a second night:  two Mikes, two nights, too cool, two of his books I bought.  Mike signed the second one, too, adding a stunning phrase, calling me “a man of great spirit,” for he had quickly recognized something in me that I had not fully appreciated:  I have a deep spiritual connection to nature, the outdoors and wilderness. Mike is a man of faith and told me he felt closest to God when he was in the photography blinds, where people are taken in late afternoon and cannot leave for any reason until mid-morning the following day.  He said the experience was beyond comparison.  I’m going to do it next spring.  It has become one of my dreams, and while I, a scientist and a statistician, consider myself a practical person, not far below the surface lies a deeply spiritual, emotional dreamer.  Somehow, Mike knew that and how to help me understand myself better.

Last July, after the eclipse in El Calafate, Argentina, I sent Mike a picture.  I was a bit embarrassed to be sending a handheld shot to a famous photographer.  Mike, however, immediately replied “very, very cool,” saying I must be the only guy in the world who was going to Patagonia in July and to northern Alaska in August.  I wrote him after I returned from the Brooks Range, 118 degrees north of where I was in South America, telling him I would be ordering one of his pictures as a gift.  I am becoming friends with a special man, because we share a spiritual bond with the outdoors, especially Sandhill Cranes.  If he hadn’t stopped when I was making the sundial, this never would have happened, and my perception of myself and indeed my life wouldn’t have changed.

*                                *                                 *

July 9 is a holiday in Argentina, independence day.  I was in Buenos Aires, appropriately staying on Avenida 9 Julio, the largest street in the world.  That day reminded me of Christmas, for it was a winter holiday at a similar latitude south of the equator as I live north.

I went to a restaurant as part of a tour, going up a narrow set of stairs to a table with other people on the tour.  One of the guides asked me to sit in the middle of the table next to a young German woman.  And that changed my life and hers, especially hers. She and I will never be quite the same again.

The woman, Maria, was a young German scientist on her first trip out of Europe.  She, like me, was in Argentina for the solar eclipse.  Both of us had expected to take a plane to fly over the clouds to see the eclipse, but the flight had been cancelled.  My trip down to Buenos Aires involved barely making a connection; had I missed it, I might have gone home, since the probability of seeing an eclipse in Patagonia in winter is poor.  What kept me going was the idea if I didn’t go, and people saw the eclipse from the ground, I would never forgive myself. I didn’t know at the time the details of Maria’s trip, but it seemed clear we would be “clouded out.”  I later learned she had been at a conference in California, had a car accident on a freeway, and brought no winter clothes with her, since she was also planning to see the eclipse from the air.  To say we were both depressed and having an awful trip was an understatement.

Maria was completely fluent in English.  I asked her what she did, learning of her work in preparing an X-Ray satellite for launch to the LaGrangian point furthest from the Sun.  Fortunately, I knew something about LaGrangian points, where the Earth and Sun’s gravitational pulls are equal, leading to stable orbits for bodies located there.  Because I had studied physics, I was able to ask intelligent questions, soon learning about the LaGrangian point 1.5 million km beyond the Earth where the satellite was going.  Because I knew about conics, the concept of parabolic and hyperbolic mirrors was understandable, and the major and minor axis of the elliptical orbit clear to me.  I listened to Maria for a good 30 minutes.  When she asked me what I did, there wasn’t much to say except I chased eclipses, taught math as a substitute, once practiced neurology, liked cats and was a vegetarian.  She taught math, liked cats and was also a vegetarian.  Naturally, she was most interested about my eclipse experiences.

On the afternoon tour of the city, we spent some time together, Maria convinced she wouldn’t see the eclipse.  This being my 20th eclipse trip, I told her many times:  “Maria, it isn’t over until it is over and we didn’t see it.”  Indeed, a year earlier, in China, a small window opened up through thick clouds right at totality.  We went absolutely nuts.  It was the only eclipse I ever saw while I held an umbrella.

I didn’t see Maria again until the next afternoon in Patagonia, when she was an invited speaker at an eclipse conference.  I asked a question, later going up and telling her she gave a good talk.  She looked like she needed to hear that.  That night, at the hotel, I invited myself to Maria’s table of 4, since I was otherwise going to eat alone.  I was the de facto trip weatherman; I was following several South American weather models, knew the barometer was rising, the streaming moisture into the “cone” of the continent was cutting off, and high pressure was building over the eastern South Pacific.  Maria wanted to know my forecast; I was cautiously more optimistic, telling her to ask me about the barometric pressure the next morning.

That night, the barometer rocketed upward, the sky cleared, and we awoke to a beautiful sight:  the southern hemisphere stars were visible.  Maria had never seen the southern sky before.  I didn’t sit on the bus with her but with Anita, a senior colleague.  When Anita pointed out the Southern Cross on the bus ride to Perito Moreno glacier, I did something quite uncharacteristic for me:  I went to the front of the bus and asked how many wanted to see the Magellanic Clouds under a dark sky.  A lot of sleepy faces raised hands.  Nobody objected.  We stopped for 5 minutes so everybody, including Maria, could view our companion galaxies.

That afternoon, I worried about clouds interfering with the eclipse, but Anita fortunately kept Maria far from me.  When totality was imminent, Maria and Anita joined me, and Maria cried as the Moon completely covered the Sun.  I shouted, as did others, and I stared in awe of the shadow cone of the Moon, which I had never seen so clearly.  But my greatest memory is hearing Maria cry.  It was one of the most moving experiences of my life, and I’ve seen totality 12 times.

The next morning, I said goodby to Maria, and I haven’t seen her since.

But unlike every other eclipse trip I’ve been on, we’ve corresponded.  First it was by Facebook then e-mail and frequent Skype chats.  That has never happened before.  Maria told me that she almost had a panic attack in the restaurant, and my listening to her calmed her down.  Just my listening.  She got so excited from the eclipse that she has cast off shackles that led her from living a full life.  My wife and I invited both Maria and Anita to the May 2012 annular eclipse in northern Arizona, so they can see the Grand Canyon and the eclipse.  Maria will cry at both. I know she will.   Recently, she went skydiving for the first time.  She is learning C++ programming so she can become indispensable on the Australia eclipse in 2012 and get a free trip there.  Maria has been the best correspondent I’ve encountered in my life and we’ve become good friends.  Because of her, I’m learning German, and I plan to visit her next year.  Maybe every year.  And that has changed my life.

Had we not had such bad starts to our trips…Had we not been seated next to each other in Buenos Aires…Had I not known something about LaGrangian points and infrared radiation…Had I not been an amateur meteorologist and in demand…Had I not stopped the bus so people could see the Magellanic Clouds…Had we not seen the eclipse, none of this would have happened. Maria would still be wanting to see her first eclipse, and I would  not be learning the four German cases.  In August, when I returned from northern Alaska, I had a four hour layover from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. in Anchorage.  Had I not met Maria, I would have been bored, tired and cranky.  Instead, I chatted with her on Skype, passing the time quickly.

The older I get, the more unpredictable my life has become.  If I hadn’t been making a sundial, if Mike Forsberg hadn’t stopped by, if I hadn’t been seated where I was, and if I hadn’t known about LaGrangian points....

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Posted in 2010, COLUMNS IN "REALITY CHECK", ECLIPSE CHASING, UNPUBLISHED OUTDOOR WRITING | 1 Comment »

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