Domestic bliss

It's nice to have a man in the house.  It makes it more of a home.  The boys are much calmer now, too.  I'm not sure why, but it's clear they need adult male supervision.  Want it, too.  That's a relief for me.  El jefe gave both boys woodcarving sets for Christmas and he's been teaching them how to use them. They are absolutely absorbed in learning and doing.  It never would have occurred to me to buy them woodcarving knives.  I  could envision them slicing a finger open or even cutting one off.  But with Jeff showing them how to use them and teaching them safe and careful techniques, I don't worry.
 I am very definitely in a family way these days.  I've even moved to a downstairs bedroom to avoid the risk of a fall on the stairs. It's funny: Last year at this time, I was forced to sit rigid in a chair while my broken ribs and bruised and abused thigh and knee healed and this year I have to take it easy because I'm expecting.  So no horseback riding, no skating, skiing, mountain climbing, backpacking...no nothing. Even dancing is out. For the second year in a row.  Oh, well.  Last year it was just to get back to normal.  This year it is to move on to a new -- if familiar -- stage in life, one that I am anticipating.  And also worry about. But I'll manage.  At least, I have in the past.

Aviat Husky

One thing I've gotten out of all the flying I did was the realization that I don't have to drive anywhere that is a serious distance from here, as I did when I went to Gotham City Jr. for various reasons.  I could have just flown there, but it never occurred to me. Not that I plan to visit that burg unless necessary.  I'm just saying.  In fact, now I realize that if I want to enjoy a top-notch orchestra or play or dance band, I can just fly to wherever they are, very likely in less time that it took to drive to GCJ.  I ought to get checked out in our Aviat Husky, though, for shorter trips, or should I need to fly to somewhere there is no air strip, perhaps for some emergency.  It's slower than the Beech, but it can land and take off from practically anywhere, and it uses a lot less gas.  Of course, that will have to wait.  Maybe next year.

Speaking of aviation gasoline, I had to meet with our accountant to discuss whether any of the trips I took in the Beech were tax deductible, specifically ranch business related.  Alas, very few were.  About all that could be done was list depreciation on the airplane, if I understood correctly: all that accounting stuff is Greek to me.  The accountant asked me if there was any way I could reduce the fuel consumption of the plane.  Ditto oil consumption.  He shook his head at the figures I gave him: average fuel burned is 40 gallons per hour, oil, a quart an hour per engine.   I pointed out that the fuel consumption equaled around five miles per gallon which is about equivalent to that of a truck that can carry the same payload.  I checked and the EPA says such a truck gets its best mileage at 30 mph, while the Beech gets its best mileage at many times that speed.  So if time is money the Beech pays for itself.  I invited him to go for a ride sometime but he declined, saying he got airsick easily.

My cousin, whom I've mentioned that I talked out of joining the Navy (or so I thought), and who now works around the ranch, tells me that he has decided that he wants to join the Merchant Marine and has applied to the US Merchant Marine Academy. I checked out the Academy and it seems graduates have an obligation to serve five years active duty in the armed forces, I assume the Navy, or eight years in the reserves.  Well, I tried.  If that's what he wants to do, the career he wants to pursue, I will do what I can to help him succeed.  The Academy seems like a very good engineering school, tuition is free (because of that service obligation) from what I understand. One of the four years of instruction is spent entirely at sea on commercial or naval ships as a cadet. Graduates have the rank of midshipman and are guaranteed a good job in an important profession.  Well, he wanted to go to sea and he's figured out a way to do it without directly joining the Navy.  On reflection, I think it's a good way to establish the career he wants. He is one smart cookie to have figured out this way to achieve his aim, taking into consideration what I told him about how things are in the services under present circumstances. He asked me for a recommendation letter to his congressman. I was happy to supply it and suggested he ask my father for one, too. A lesson I take away from this, or more accurately a reinforcement of a lesson I long ago learned, is that you can't dissuade a person from doing what he wants to do.  He will find a way somehow, no matter what your advice, concerns or cautions may be.  So it's best just to hold your peace.

While talking to my cousin, I was surprised to learn that he has never seen the ocean. Thinking about it, I realized that at his age, living in the inter-mountain and high plains west, he's not really had a chance.  Yet he is enamored of the sea and loves ships and can't wait to sail away to distant shores.  I lent him my copy of Away All Boats by Kenneth Dodson (lieutenant then lieutenant commander during the war years), about an attack transport serving in the Pacific Theater during World War II.  I told him it was the best book I know to understand what it's like to serve aboard a ship, particularly in foul weather, to understand the power and danger of the sea, even in good weather, what is required to be a good naval officer, to appreciate what the ratings do and what difficulties, personal and professional, they face, and what kind of emotional stresses serving in a responsible position aboard ship, even when not in a war zone, place on one. 

APA-50 USS Pierce, the ship Dodson served aboard.

The novel also helps to understand the difficulties encountered and skills required to operate and navigate both small boats and ships effectively and safely.  I told him he should not just read the book, but study it. By the way, Dodson was close friends with Carl Sandburg, who mentored him as a writer and made him a character in his only novel, Remembrance Rock.  In the acknowledgements, he wrote of Dodson, "We could put in bronze the name of Lieutenant Commander Kenneth MacKenzie Dodson, executive officer of a Navy attack transport, a true mariner and a man of rare faith in the American dream." The collection of the letters they exchanged, The Poet and the Sailor, is well worth reading.  (Incidentally, William Manchester thought Away All Boats was so good that he looted portions of it to use in Good-bye Darkness.)

“Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began.
Consider all this; and then turn to the green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half-known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick