PAgent’s Progress

When the Wife and I got married, we were living in Eugene and we had one car — a Mazda 626 that she had purchased in graduate school. This worked out fine, as long as we didn’t have kids and I could ride my bike to work.

However, once we had a house, and I had a new job, having a single vehicle just wasn’t practical any more. Along about 1993, our neighbors down the street decided to sell their 1990 Ford F150 pickup. As a new homeowner, with a lawn that was 2/3 of an acre, I found myself often needing to haul stuff around. Long story short, we bought it.

“Big Red”, as we christened the red truck, was awesome. It was a full-size pickup, with a short bed. That meant it had plenty of hauling capacity, but wasn’t so long as to be cumbersome in traffic. It had a custom rear bumper, and a second gas tank, and was I think the last full-size pickup that you could order with a zero frills interior (no roof liner, no carpet, no fancy seat upholstery). It had a straight-six engine, virtually bullet-proof, and there was enough room under the hood that you could practically stand next to it when you were working on it.

I loved that truck. I used it to haul yard waste to Rexius, and often returned with a load of bark dust. I could get lumber from Jerry’s hardware, or haul a couple cubic yards of gravel. We helped numerous people move. More importantly, I could take that thing down logging roads and up to distant trailheads with impunity. Although it didn’t have 4-wheel drive, it rarely got stuck. It was user-friendly too: I replaced the heater core all by myself one night, in the pouring rain, because antifreeze mist was blowing up out of the defrost vents. It was a great truck.

When the kids came along, they loved it, too. I used to put my daughter’s car seat in the truck and we would go for drives together. She liked being high enough to see what was going on. And of course, climbing in and out of the bed was good for hours of amusement.

The truck became less practical once we had two kids. Now the whole family couldn’t pile into the truck any more. Then we relocated to Portland, and I started using it as a commuter vehicle. I drove Big Red to the Sunset Transit Center every morning and caught the MAX into town. I didn’t get to take it out into the woods as often, but the kids still loved to play in the bed.

One sunny morning in 2003, I was sitting in the turn lane waiting to turn left into the Sunset Transit Center, and the light changed. I began making a left turn, and had just enough time to think “That guy isn’t stopping…” when a convertible ran into me. The guy was taking his kid to school, and the rising sun was directly behind the traffic light as he came up the hill to the intersection. I don’t think he even touched the brake pedal.

I got my glasses knocked off by the impact, and they somehow ended up behind me and got crunched. The seatbelt kept me from getting too banged up, but I had a bruised knee, and bruises across the sternum from the chest belt. I got checked out at urgent care, but I was fine.

Big Red, on the other hand, was totaled. You can see the right front wheel was shoved sideways under the nose of the truck. What’s not quite as evident is the fact that the entire cab was bent at an angle with respect to the bed. It was seriously broke.

Unfortunately, I had to have a car. Equally unfortunately, we didn’t have any kind of a cash sum to use as a down payment (and obviously no trade-in). I ended up getting a 2000 Toyota Corolla, and it’s been a good little commuter car. It gets me to and from work, it gets good mileage, and we can fit the whole family in it, if the trip isn’t going to be too far.

But you can’t haul lumber in it. You can’t take it down remote logging roads. You can’t switch gas tanks and watch the needle magically rise from “E” to “F”. And your children won’t get much out of climbing in and out of the trunk of a Corolla.

At this point in my life, I couldn’t possibly justify getting another truck. The mileage is too poor, and I really do need something small and economical. But I still remember Big Red, oh so fondly; the throw of the stick shift, the bounce in the suspension, and the sure knowledge that when you merge people will get out of YOUR way. Oh, how I miss that truck.

“From the Gospel of Trixie” is a little character study I did over Memorial Day weekend. The truth is, the bare bones of the scene got stuck in my head and just kept playing themselves out. I decided I had to write it up just to exorcise them.

This represents a real departure for me, as I generally try to keep my writing PG-13. This isn’t, so it is not suitable for children. It may also be offensive to you, but I assure you that no offense was intended. It is what it is.

“From the Gospel of Trixie”

You can find a permanent link to “From the Gospel of Trixie” in the new Creative Writing section, which is accessible via that brand-new tab in the page header. Hopefully I will be able to add more material, over time. Your feedback, as always, is appreciated, unless you just want to tell me I suck. Because that I already know.

A friend of mine drew my attention to the Esquire article “Greetings from Idiot America” from 2005. The author describes an America where intellect and education have somehow become suspect, and decisions are increasingly being made from “The Gut”, rather than through some cold-blooded analysis by some ivory-tower elitist. The author uses the Intelligent Design movement as the poster child for “Idiot America”, even quoting a pastor in favor of ID as saying “We’ve been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture.”

If ID is the poster child, the run-up to the Iraq war, and the subsequent invasion, is an entire orphanage of its bastard children.

Part of the problem was that people didn’t want the analytic process because they’d be shown up,” Richard Clarke says. “Their assumptions would be counterfactual. One of the real areas of expertise, for example, was failed-state reconstruction. How to go into failed states and maintain security and get the economy going and defang ethnic hatred. They threw it all out.

“They ignored the experts on the Middle East. They ignored the experts who said it was the wrong target. So you ignore the experts and you go in anyway, and then you ignore all the experts on how to handle the postconflict.”

But wait, there’s hope! After all, President Obama was elected on a platform that was at least partly based on listening to experts in their field, and getting out of the way of science. Can it be that respect for achievement and intelligence is becoming mainstream? Hank Campbell of Scientific Blogging believes so, and in his article “Elitism is Back, Baby!” he asserts that the new Star Trek movie offers proof. After a passing mention to the anti-equality message of Pixar’s “The Incredibles”, Mr. Campbell launches into his primary thesis–that this younger Star Fleet crew “are not chosen because of their diversity or to satisfy some notion of fairness, they are chosen because they are the best at what they do. The elite.”

This, says Mr. Campbell, represents the new ascension of intellect and excellence over political correctness and artificial metrics. Unfortunately, I think Mr. Campbell is suffering from that most painful of maladies, wishful thinking.

I think that although it can be argued that the ascendancy of the Bush administration and the Republican right-wing is a high-water mark of sorts for “Idiot America”, it’s foolish to say that it’s going away. The fact is, people have always resented the intelligent and the gifted. Epithets like “college boy” and “egghead” were not invented by the Bush administration. Propeller-headed engineers have always been mocked by the general population. In particular, it has always been a popular pastime for the average Joe to highlight the failings of the educated (whether real or imagined), particularly where the benefit of so-called “common sense” saves the day.

What the new Star Trek movie really signifies is that geeks love stories where geeks win.

I was once chatting with a friend of mine, and told him how much I enjoyed the Miles Vorkosigan books by Lois McMaster Bujold. I was in the midst of a description of the main character, and an overview of his adventures, when he gently interrupted me: “So Miles is a physically weak, socially ostracized genius that succeeds because he is smarter than everyone around him? Of COURSE you like him.”

Ouch. The Truth hurts.

It’s not an accident that there are so many Sci-Fi and Fantasy stories with misfits and outsiders as protagonists, and it’s no accident that so very often brains beat brawn and the hero wins against overwhelming odds. For one thing, that makes a great story — everyone loves an underdog. But for another, you just described the fantasy of every abused middle school nerd in history. Of course we revered intelligence and skill, we HAD it. And we just died inside waiting for SOMEONE to recognize it.

I grew up well before this current anti-intellectual mentality, and yet in grade school I was told to “stop using so many long words, they make the other children feel stupid.” I had a teacher that took points off my tests if I failed to do the extra credit work (“because you’re so smart”), and who used to send me out in the hall when I hadn’t done anything wrong (“it isn’t fair that you never get in trouble”). She also threatened to hold me back in fourth grade, when I was reading at 12th-grade level. In middle school it wasn’t the teachers, it was the other students. Oy.

And I was not a special case. People resent the above-average. They always have. Rather than hoist the new Star Trek up as some kind of portent, just accept it as a summer movie packed with simple geek wish-fulfillment, and enjoy.

I just had my regular morning meeting with my interim assistant. He let me know that in his opinion, in order to be effective in the position, my assistant would have to have excellent organizational skills, a broad knowledge of both US and foreign patent practice, and a great deal of experience.

He then explained further that no one with those kinds of credentials would ever consent to work in a position that consistently demanded such high-stress, high-volume, and quick-turnaround work.

Crap.

How is it that a 13-year-old would not understand that it is okay for Dad to open a can of paint with a screwdriver, but it is NOT OK for HER to open a can of shellac with Dad’s best wood chisel??

Last Thursday was the “World’s Fair” at my daughter’s middle school. It was also the debut of this year’s marching band, and therefore the debut of my daughter IN a marching band. She is playing sousaphone–the few, the proud, the very low.

I’ve discussed my feelings about school functions previously. To be succinct, they are an endurance contest for me. So I was less than thrilled about having to go to this one straight from work.

But when they marched the band into the gymnasium, to the steady cadence of a single snare drum in the drum line, it was a different story. I get a little silly about marching bands, which is a little odd because I never marched in one. But I love to hear them.

The band had worked up two classic tunes, “Jenny (867-5309)” and “Carry On My Wayward Son”, and the audience definitely appreciated both of them. And they were really quite good, much better than I expected them to be.

What really warmed my heart, though, was seeing my daughter. When the band marched out of the gym, unlike some of her peers, she was still keeping an even cadence, head high, and a blank expression. She was taking this very seriously.

At a time when we are having such trouble getting her to take so many things more seriously (especially things like her grades), it is a special gift to see her work so hard on something, especially when she does so without urging.

And that seriousness was still there on Saturday, when the band marched in the annual St. John’s parade. The Wife took her to school, and acted as chaperone on the bus ride, while I stayed home and cleaned the house with The Boy. I got a phone call mid-morning from my wife’s cellphone, and when I picked it up, it was my daughter. It was hard to hear her over the sounds of happy screaming in the background.

“Dad! We won!” I could hear the excitement in her voice. Her band had taken first place in the band competition before the parade. Their victory was made all the sweeter because some kids from another band had been mocking their uniforms before the competition. Our middle school opts for an affordable approach, consisting of matching T-shirts and embroidered baseball caps. The caps, in particular, look very nice, and very professional. But of course there are schools that spend hundreds of dollars on band uniforms, and they can look very spiffy, indeed.

It just may be that those snarky kids, and their condescending attitude, provided that last little bit of motivation to really solidify the performance. I don’t know. What I do know is that, in addition to learning discipline, cooperation, precision, and musicianship, her experience with marching band has started teaching her that practice, showmanship, and talent will trump a fancy uniform. And that’s precisely the kind of lesson I want her to learn.