on the wings of a goose

My part of Mexico is not blessed with the splendid museums of Mexico City -- or even Xalapa.


But my part of Oregon has several museums of interests.  My favorite being the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum just outside of McMinnville.


We will skip over the reputed connections that Evergreen International Aviation has had with certain government agencies.  They make for interesting tales.  But that is not why I asked you here today.


McMinnville is a smallish (about 30,000 people) college town that has upgraded its image from farm land center to being the aorta of Oregon's wine country.


It seems to be an odd place for a major museum.  But the son of the CEO of Evergreen had the dream of planting a world-class air museum on one of those former fields.  And, with his acquisition of Howard Hughes's Spruce Goose, that dream became a reality.


I suspect most of you have heard the tale of what must be one of the more eccentric dreams of American aviation.  During Word War Two, the United States early on discovered it had a logistical problem.  The American manufacturing base could churn out plenty of trucks and tanks.  But getting them from the United States to Europe was a slow process. 


The navy was the lifeline of supplies.  And the German U-boats were tearing up shipping.


That is one reason it took so long for the Allies to invade Europe.  The basic tools of war needed to be assembled.


Howard Hughes had a dream.  Of the world's largest aircraft.  A huge flying boat made almost exclusively of wood.  A fleet of those airplanes could quickly shuttle the supplies our allies needed to take the war home to the Nazis.


The notion was revolutionary.  As revolutionary as the idea of sinking battleships with bomb-laden aircraft.  The navy had almost an exclusive monopoly on supplying overseas troops.  Howard Hughes was to change that concept.


But not in the second world war.  His dream plane was not completed until 1947 -- after the war was complete, and no one was ready to fight another.  The Spruce Goose flew once.  And then languished as a tourist attraction in Long Beach.


Until 1992 when Evergreen purchased it, had it disassembled, and shipped by barge to Oregon in 1993.  Eight years later, after being restored, it became the centerpiece of the new Evergreen Aviation Museum.


I have visited the museum several times -- because flight flows in my veins.  The Spruce Goose is always the centerpiece of my visits.


I made the pilgrimage again on this past Saturday.  You could feel the damp rising in the day.  A visit to a museum was a perfect match.


I even had my photograph taken while sitting in the Spruce Goose's cockpit.  But I got as much joy out of walking around an F-5, the fighter version of the T-38, the supersonic trainer of my flight school days.


But I made two new visits on this trip.  The first was to the newly-opened space museum -- that is just waiting for a Space Shuttle, if the cards fall right.


And the second was to the IMAX theater.  The 3-D film was about the development of the Boeing 787.  But that was not the most interesting part of the theater.  The lobby is dedicated to heroes of flight.  Amongst the photographs were two of men I know -- General Chuck Sams, one of my legal mentors, and Congressman Denny Smith, one of my political mentors.


It was a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon.  To see a good portion of aviation history in person -- and to remember some of the men who have helped me along the road of life.


Not all Saturdays can be spent as well.

skipping the grace notes

Fall arrived this last week with rain, wind, and plummeting temperatures.


My morning walks to work are now brisk enough to require a light jacket.  And, perhaps a light, as well.  The twenty-minute walk starts in the dark, but the day is in full dawn by the time I enter the shop where people are good enough to exchange a fair amount of money for a bit of my day.


But what I have noticed most are the sounds.  Mainly birds getting a fast start on the day to catch the unwitting worm.  After a bit of song.


The most notable are the Canada geese noisily flying in B-24 formations as if wishing a terrible end for the Ploesti oil fields.  Geese heading east.  Having found their Eden, they are not interested in migrating anywhere.  They can breed and honk here all year long and live the high life without fear of Elmer Fudds trying to turn them into the centerpiece for a Thanksgiving dinner.


As I started through the Capitol grounds, I could hear another gaggle -- closer to the ground.  But it was just a group of state workers chatting on their way to work.


This morning I started thinking about how each day is a gift.  Getting up.  Getting out.  Enjoying.  And all I need to do is share what has so graciously been given to me.


As I sit at my desk, I realize how hollow that thought now sounds.  The last two mornings, I have encountered the same homeless man a block from my work place.  Unshaven.  Damp from sleeping outside.  Carrying his cardboard bed.  Waiting in the same place to cross the street.  We have passed each other without making eye contact.


The first time I saw him, I had the urge to stop him and ask him if he would like a cup of coffee.  Something to momentarily beat back the morning chill.  But I didn't.  I walked on by.  Too busy.  I had Important Things To Do.


This morning when I saw him, I started to stop him in the crosswalk.  To invite him into the warmth of our building.  But I was on my way to Eggs Benedict.  A meal I could have shared with him.  But I didn't.  Instead, I turned to look over my right shoulder at him shuffling away to wherever he was going.


Opportunities to show grace to those around us arise every day.  And we too often simply allow the moment to pass.  Unremarked.  Unreflected.


I do not have regrets.  But I want to learn to be more open to these grace notes of life when they occur.


Maybe I will see him tomorrow.  If I do, I will invite him in a for a cup of warm and a chat.  Whether or not I do, I am going to listen for those moments when I can share the joy that is life.


Whether here -- or in Mexico.

weighing heavy

Newspaper layout editors are a frustrated lot.

That is the only conclusion I can draw from an odd juxtaposition in today's local newspaper.  Someone is laughing under his green eye shade.

Story number one, by itself, falls into the "frat boy wants to makes good" category.

"Mexico aims to build record-setting burrito"

You can almost write the story yourself.  Someone wants to get his nombre into the Guinness Book of World Records.  And what better way than food?

Next month, 3000 people are going to roll out the burrito in Mexico.  Well, roll up the burrito.

2.7 kilometers worth of burrito.  (That's 1.7 miles for those of us still stuck with the English system -- even though the English are not.)  That is 700 meters of 12-inch wide (to mix my systems) burrito.

Enough beans, cheese, sour cream, and tortillas to --  Well, to match up with the story just across the page:

"One taco too many"

Mexico is fast pulling up on the United States to earn the award for most obese nation. 


So, says a recent OECD report.  Seven out of ten Mexican adults are overweight; three out of ten are obese.  Mexico actually has a higher portion of "overweight" citizens than does the United States.  Even though the United States holds wheezingly holds the obese title.


I can empathize.  During my six-month sojourn north of the border, I have managed to regain the thirty pounds I lost when I moved to Mexico last year.  And I know why. 


My broken right ankle was an obvious cause.  In Mexico I walked everywhere in my village.  In Oregon, I could not move around without crutches.


But that excuse is dead.  I have been able to get around quite well recently.


The major cause has been my diet.  I have been eating all sorts of foods I cannot get in Mexico.  And they all have two common ingredients: fat and salt.  Sitting at a computer desk all day indulging in nervous eating has strained my belt line.


The good thing is when I return to Mexico, I will be able to shed the pounds again.


But my Mexican neighbors will continue to gain weight.  And there is a price to pay.  Diabetes is the top cause of hospital admissions after childbirth in Mexico, and the second-biggest cause of death.



Mexican food can be high in fats.  Tacos.  Enchiladas.  Refritos.  All cooked with lard.  They are partly to blame.  But those foods have long been part of the Mexican diet.


What has changed is the convenience of middle class living.  Mexicans are learning that food does not need to take a long time to cook.  The resulting reliance on processed and junk foods adds to the weight problem. 


But the Mexican medical community has fingered one food as the main problem: refrescos.  Sugary soft drinks.  Fizzy or still.  But sweeter than your first kiss.


Add an ever-growing sedentary lifestyle in front of the television, and you have -- the second most obese country in the world.


But, just like The States, the problem appears to be somewhat regional.  In my seaside village, most young people are as fit as California surfers in the 50s.  That may be because that is what they are.  The young are active beach people.


Drive a few miles from the beach and people start looking as if they had just driven in from Wisconsin.  (Yeah. Yeah.  I know.  But Mississippi has taken enough hits.)


And for all of the recent ballyhoo from America's first lady to have Mexico join the Get Slim plan (something most of us in Mexico interpret as a revenge plot on Telemex), Mexico will enjoy growing cheek to cheek with its portly neighbor to the north.


As for me, I long ago learned a simple trick.  If you want to look slim -- hang out with fat people.

hereafter -- here and now

My weekends in Oregon are dwindling.  I make it to be two more before I head off for the bloggers' conference.


A week ago, it was the beach.  This Saturday, it was OMSI, a movie, and dinner.


If you did not grow up in Oregon, that acronym may baffle.  Oregon Museum of Science and Industry.  An idea that grew out of Pacific Northwest Victorian curiosity in the 1890s. 


But that was not the OMSI I knew.  My first memory of the museum in its old home next to the Washington Park zoo.  It opened in 1958.  We went there as a family soon after.


My favorite exhibits?  The meteorites, the pendulum. and the visible woman.  But, my favorite was the visible bee hive -- with the queen marked on her "hump" with a dot of red finger nail polish.  For those of us who were slow enough not to notice that she was gigantic compared to her worker sisters.


Due to an ever-increasing population of swarming school-children visiting the place, the museum moved to larger quarters on the east bank of the Willamette River in 1992.  Handy for freeway passersby to look down from the Marquam Bridge for the startling sight of a submarine -- the USS Blueback -- moored next to the museum.


Even though I have been to the museum for IMAX films, I have not been to the museum since I was in college.


That changed on Saturday.  We arrived with only an hour to look at exhibits.  We decided to limit ourselves to "Identity: an exhibition of you."  Something in the title appealed to me.


We got to change our gender and ethnicity through photos.  Determine whether we were introvert or extrovert; traditionalist or innovator; wired or laid back; male or female-brained.  And the results were not too startling -- even though the photo-morphing was.


And in the midst of it all, there she was.  The visible woman with light up organs.  When I was in the sixth grade, I had her smaller counter-part -- the visible man with painted, but unlit, organs. 


I thought of meeting her acquaintance again when we went to our movie. 


The Clint Eastwood-directed Hereafter.  The story of three disparate characters who have had a close encounter with death.  A talented male psychic in San Francisco with a gift to contact the dead.  A beautiful French woman  telejournalist who nearly drowns in the 2004 southeast Asia tsunami.  And an English boy who survives the death of his identical twin.

  
The film spends most of its time building the individual tales of the psychic hiding from his talent.  The journalist trying to publish her book on the afterlife.  The boy looking for a way to contact his dead twin.


The psychic's love of Charles Dickens's books ends up pulling the three of them together for the film's climax.  Thoughtfully, combining Dickens's fascination with dreams, ghosts, and orphans.


But the film is not really any more about the hereafter than The Christmas Carol is about Christmas.  It is about relationships and people coming to terms with their lives amongst each other.


And it is well worth seeing.  As long as you are willing to be patient and watch simple threads weave together.


One last weekend in Oregon well spent.

steppin' out with my humor

The Capitol Steps have been frequent visitors on these pages.  The political satirist group tends to wander through Portland near election day, and they were in town last night.

Beth (of Minto Dog) and I have a tradition of driving up to Portland to see the Capitol Steps when they are in town.  (They seldom darken the doors of the local Salem theaters any more.)

Portland was one of those cities that had the foresight to save one of its grandes dames of the golden age of cinema.  When the studios were at the height of their powers, they held a vertical monopoly on their products.  Not only did they make the films.  They distributed them.  And showed them in their own theaters.

The vestiges of that control were still around when I was young.  The two grandest theaters in Portland were the Paramount and the Fox.  But, by the 50s, the studio system was disappearing.  The Sound of Music (a Fox production) understandably played at the Fox.  But Cleopatra (another Fox tale) played at the Paramount.


But both of them were mirrors of their times.  The Fox was a gaudy 1910 art deco palace.  The more sedate Paramount did not show up until 1928.  And it is the only one of its ilk to remain standing.  Now, as a live performance venue.


Monday night's performance was a bit off.  Well, the performance was fine.  It was the audience that was off -- somewhere else.  It appeared that at least two-thirds of the seats were empty -- including a huge chunk of the dress circle.


And because it is a live performance, the lack of an audience, no matter how enthusiastic, inevitably affect's the performers.  And this audience was not enthusiastic.


As political animals, we tend to take ourselves far too seriously.  We have no trouble laughing at our political enemies.  After all, we all know they are boobs.  But, let someone poke fun at our own sainted political heroes, and we grimace while sitting on our hands.


A lady sitting next to us took that division a step further.  Whenever the performers were portraying a political figure she did not like, even though the skewering was thorough and hilarious, she would merely glare at what she perceived to be the devil incarnate. 


But I think she may be one of those people who lacks a sense of humor.  She was even offended by one of my favorite non-political bits: a satirical rendition of prescription drug abuse, Ten Pills and You're Fine, to the tune of Windmills of Your Mind.  She found nothing amusing.  Even though the actress who performed the piece nailed it.


That may say something about civic America.  Politics -- even the humorous variety -- is simply not that interesting to us any more.  Maybe because politics isn't.  Disillusionment is running pretty high these days.


But it does interest me.


There are things I miss when I am in Mexico.  This is one of them -- knowing a political culture so well that you can enjoying watching its entrails being eviscerated.


I guess I will have to rely on P.J. O'Rourke to keep me laughing.

fleeing the flu

You should be reading a new post today.  And -- you should read one yesterday, as well.


There are post topics aplenty.  Unfortunately, I have not been feeling well.


Nothing big.  Just another of those anonymous "flu-like symptoms" conditions.


Headache.  Fatigue.  Muscle pain.


Every time I sit down to write, I feel a nap would be a better investment.


If you hang on, so will I.

marking time

There are plenty of signs on this toll road we call life that tell us we are not as young as our heads tell us we are.


The first sign is the most annoying.  The letter from AARP that arrives proximate to your 50th birthday -- inviting you to stick your snout in the slop trough of special interests.  That one was easy to ignore.  Into the trash it went along with the rest of the junk mail.


Then there was 60.  Not as easy to ignore -- because my father's reflection started showing up in the mirror each morning.  Proving that aging is not an incremental process.  It comes on in surges -- like a melting glacier.


And then retirement.  Giving up a profession that had kept me well-fed and mentally alert.  In exchange for a very nice retirement in Mexico.


But none of them had a great impact on me.  After all, I am a boomer.  Sixty is the new twenty -- or so our besotted minds like to believe.


Until reality hits.  And it hit me last week.


There are terms our culture assigns to the old.  Bingo.  Ball room dancing.  Cruises.


But nothing says senior like "Social Security."


I mentioned earlier this month in spinning the wheel that I was considering taking my Social Security retirement benefits early -- at 62, rather than waiting until I am 66.  I am not 62 -- yet.  But I am old enough that I can apply for my retirement benefits.


And apply I did.  On line.


Anyone who has read my blog for very long knows I am a skeptic when it comes to government.  I have not experienced either efficiency or effectiveness in most of my contacts with government.  For that reason alone, I was shocked at how easy it was to apply for my retirement benefits.


I decided to apply before I left for Mexico -- fully anticipating that an in-person trip to the local Social Security office was a high probability.  But I was wrong.


The electronic form was well-designed and easy to use.  The questions were easy to understand.  The multiple choice options were thorough and made sense,  And it was quick.  I probably spent no more than ten minutes filling out the form.


One day later, a very polite woman called and asked me to clarify two of my answers.  And the application process was complete.  I should be receiving my first check in a few months.


It was so simple, I could have completed the entire process at my computer table in Melaque.


I made a point of thanking the young attorneys at the lunch table for their generosity.  After all, the withholdings from their paychecks will just about equal what the government is about to put in my account.  A great little shell game that is.

One of my favorite episode of The Simpsons involves this exchange.  It is Bart’s birthday.  Grandpa Abe Simpson gives Bart a big box of money.

Marge Simpson: Where did you get all the money?
Grandpa: The government. I didn’t earn it. I don’t need it. But, if they miss one payment I’m gonna raise hell!

Sometimes, there is true pleasure in being old.