Don’t Turn That Dial

© David W Wood­dell, April 2, 2012

When I was younger, I worked in a fac­tory on the other side of town: it was an easy place to make money and the work was not that dif­fi­cult. I was assigned to Eddie’s crew of assem­blers. He was not the fore­man, but thought he was. Eddie was middle-aged, but seemed ancient to me when I was 20. He had a work bench that was per­son­al­ized in a lot of ways, and every­one knew you didn’t fool around with Eddie’s work­bench. His radio was set to GodAw­ful­Coun­try, one of the many local sta­tions that seemed to find one terrible-twang after another.

Eddie was short, prob­a­bly no more than five feet four inches, and more than a bit round at the waist. Tend­ing to wear blue jeans that still had a crisp blue color, they were turned up the reg­u­la­tion two inches at the cuff, and being the sum­mer he wore short-sleeve sport shirts in sub­tle plaids with the short sleeves rolled up to expose the white t-shirt he wore under­neath. He car­ried a gray metal lunch box with a ther­mos of cof­fee in it, and would not ever think of buy­ing any­thing from the roach-coach that came around at break and lunchtime. His wife made his lunch, and it was substantial.

Whether Eddie was or was not the smartest kid in the class when he grad­u­ated from high school was imma­te­r­ial, that had been at least some thirty years before. But he paid atten­tion to news­breaks on GodAw­ful­Coun­try, as did the rest of us in his work gang. And some­times, that was pure enter­tain­ment. For instance, I was work­ing there the year we sent the first moon buggy up in space to land on the moon. Eddie lis­tened to a news report on his ever present radio and then slammed his hand down on the workbench.

“God­dam gomernt,” he pro­claimed, “Ain’t it just like them to send that moon-buggy up there and then leave it for the Rooskies to go up and steal!” He went on about the idea of the Roos­sians “joy-riding around the moon in our moon-buggy,” and had us all in stitches from laugh­ing so hard, it was such a ridicu­lous thought. That just pissed him off even more.  Eddie was the salt of the earth — and of the skies, too, as one of the boys used to jest. No amount of ratio­nal dis­cus­sion would con­vince Eddie that the Rus­sians did not have any intent or need to steal the moon-buggy – they’d never even landed on the moon, and never would.

Those coun­try west­ern songs got tire­some. “Old dog tree, ever faaaaaaith-full” come­dian Jonathan Win­ters once char­ac­ter­ized it, and that pretty much said all that needed say­ing. If you dared change the radio sta­tion to rock or a clas­si­cal sta­tion out of nearby Mans­field, Eddie would absolutely froth at the mouth. “Gawd­dammit! Who’s been fart­ing around with my radio!” He would storm and rage and stomp around and the fore­man would even­tu­ally come over and tell us to knock it off and set­tle down to work. It was good fun, and Eddie played his part well. We did that about once a week for the enter­tain­ment value alone. Repet­i­tive assem­bly in such a fac­tory is easy, except for the bore­dom of doing the same mechan­i­cal process over and over and then some more. We needed lev­ity to keep the mood light.

Eddie was such a fan-boy for cer­tain musicians. “Hello, Dolly,” the man on the radio would sing. “Hello, Porter” we would all war­ble in high-pitched falsetto voices in imi­ta­tion of Dolly Par­ton. Eddie wor­shiped the ground Dolly stood on and would have licked it like a squir­rel clean­ing up spilt gravy if given half a chance. He would lunge to turn up the vol­umn when he heard his crush singing. “That’s Dolly Par­ton and Porter Wag­ner!” 

“Does Dolly Do Porter, or is it that Porter Duz Dolly?” one of us would ask, very solemn-like in ref­er­ence to the then-current tele­vi­sion and radio com­mer­cials for a brand of laun­dry and dish-washer deter­gent called Duz in which the young Dolly Par­ton would crow about the free dishes she received in her box of Duhzzzz.

Eddie nor­mally sat with his back to us at his work­bench. He built sub­assem­blies of the grip­per devices that clamp onto bowl­ing pins when the pin spot­ter swings down at a bowl­ing alley to pick up the stand­ing pins left after some­one misses them with their bowl­ing ball. Another guy was in charge of run­ning matched sets of wires through the tri­an­gu­lar frame where the clam­pers hung after assembly.

My job was to bolt the clam­pers onto the frame, con­nect the wires in the right order, and then send the frame on to the tester, who ran a diag­nos­tic test through the wires to make sure they were con­nected in the right order and made the clam­pers work a few times to see if they were wired prop­erly. I used an air-powered drill with a quick-change fit­ting on the end to hex-bolt the clam­pers onto the frame, and it made a lot of noise, as I had dis­cov­ered on morn­ings when I was hung-over or suf­fer­ing from lack of sleep from stay­ing out too late the night before.

One morn­ing we came in early to the shop and we super-glued Eddie’s radio dial to the clas­si­cal sta­tion out of Mansfield.

By the time Eddie rolled in, the glue had dried nicely and that radio was never going to play any sta­tion other than the clas­si­cal sta­tion over to Mans­field. It was one of those old-fashioned plastic-housing radios with the mar­bled fin­ish, you could buy them at the hard­ware store back then, with a large twist dial for the sta­tions, a selec­tor switch for AM/FM and a large dial for the vol­ume. FM was new back then, and good FM receivers were not inexpensive.

We all worked in quiet for a while, all of us shuf­fling around and set­ting out our tools and get­ting ready to make some noise. Finally, one of us broke: “Eddie, why don’t you turn on some music,” some­one sug­gested. “Get­tin’ kind of lone­some here with­out Dolly.” The other young’uns, as Eddie liked to call us, snick­ered at our work stations.

Eddie flipped the radio on and went to work, but it was only moments before he dis­cov­ered that his favorite sta­tion had been changed. “Who changed the radio sta­tion?” he demanded. I revved up the pneu­matic drill and let it chat­ter loosely on a hex bolt so no one out­side of our area could hear Eddie’s com­plaint. Every time he demanded who had done it, I did chuchuchuchuchcubr­raaaaaat with the drill. Grins were on every face except Eddie’s as he stormed into the usual routine.

And then he reached for the dial and tried to turn it and the radio turned almost a 360 in his hand. Eddie let out a howl that could have been heard by Billy on his fork­lift at the receiv­ing dock at the other end of the fac­tory. Com­ing out of nowhere, with no warm up to warn oth­ers, since I had cov­ered Eddie’s usual warm-up with the chat­ter­ing of the drill,  Eddie ranted, screamed, swore, and carried-on as loud as he could shout. Then he flipped.

Charg­ing in my direc­tion with a ball-peen ham­mer, he backed off when I revved the drill in his direc­tion. It was clear that our prank had crossed a line, and some­one could get hurt, though it would not be from my hand, the drill was just for scare. He turned in the direc­tion of the guy who wired the frames, but the fore­man showed up and man­aged to col­lar Eddie and turn him around and frog-marched him off the work floor.

We didn’t see Eddie for a few days, the fore­man announced that Eddie was tak­ing some time off. Our prank had turned more seri­ous than we’d thought. Gang­ing up on Eddie had seemed hilar­i­ous at the time, but from such stuff can nascent bul­lies be turned into the real thing with a just a bit more per­sis­tence. It was time to grow up, and the les­son was not lost on me. No more ganging-up on any­one, it was child­ish, rude, and yes, it smacked of the bully. I didn’t want to be that guy.

We were given a talking-to, and told to buy a new radio for Eddie. “Have it ready for him when he comes back to work on Mon­day,” the fore­man told us. When he came back, his face pos­i­tively lit up when he saw the new radio on his work­bench. Eddie sheep­ishly admit­ted he’d been a bit obsessed with his coun­try west­ern sta­tion on the radio. He promised to mix in other kinds of music in the future, and came around and apol­o­gized to us each indi­vid­u­ally, and we said, “Oh, Eddie, that’s all right, and we’re sorry to make you so mad.”

We came in on Tues­day and the radio was play­ing some­thing other than coun­try music. “You boys are right,” Eddie announced, “I’m turn­ing over a new leaf,” proud to be so lib­eral and enlightened. Eddie had found the local sta­tion that played noth­ing but polka. Ooompa, pa pa pa, Ooompa.

***

Athi­ests and non-believers, free­thinkers and agnos­tics recently held a large rally in Wash­ing­ton, DC.

The Rea­son Rally claimed to be the largest assem­bly of athe­ists: it brought together thought­ful peo­ple, some who are musi­cians and satirists, oth­ers who are poets, come­di­ans, essay­ists, philoso­phers, and com­mu­nity activists. They used the rally to express what they believe, and what they think oth­ers should under­stand about athe­ists. They are a lit­er­ate bunch: poetry, song, essay, and humor­ous sto­ries enlivened the con­fer­ence, but the seri­ous work was to demon­strate that there are num­bers on the side of the non-religious, they are not a demo­graphic to be dis­missed. Some­where around ten to twenty per­cent of the US pop­u­la­tion are either athe­ists or are non-believers, free­thinkers, or agnos­tics. Bring­ing them together at one place in a body of peo­ple of all age, race, sex, and pro­fes­sion shows them to be adamant about their rights, insist­ing on the lawfully-given right of the non-religious to define themselves.

Many athe­ists are moral and eth­i­cal. So then why do the reli­gious claim that Athe­ists are not good peo­ple? Isn’t it up to those who make such a claim to offer some mea­sur­able proof of their asser­tion? As far as I can deter­mine, there are no crime, or sig­nif­i­cant other sta­tis­tics to sup­port the view that there is some­thing wrong with athe­ists, morally, eth­i­cally, or when it comes to crime. It’s all just grum­bling and trash talk­ing from some who claim that only peo­ple of their reli­gion can be good. But what about the sta­tis­tics that show that peo­ple over­all, includ­ing the ones who claim to be reli­gious, com­mit crimes and make morally and eth­i­cally bad decisions. 

Daniel Moyni­han, Sen­a­tor and sage of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics said it best: You are enti­tled to your own opin­ion, but you are not enti­tled to your own facts. 

****

Last week I was down near Quan­tico, VA for some­thing going on at the National Marine Corps Museum. Later in the day I wanted some­place nice to read for a while outdoors. GPS sent me to the near­est park, Prince William For­est. 

Spring was just then start­ing to show, but I noticed how many trees had not lost their leaves from last fall. Yesterday, I was at Calvert Cliffs State Park near Lusby. MD. and noticed some of the same kinds of trees had also not lost their leaves. Maybe it is just some­thing to do with that species. Spring was much far­ther along, of course, as warm as it has been, four days can mean a lot of new growth. Being right on the bay may also give an advan­tage of slighty warmer micro­cli­mate: as we walked toward the Chesa­peake Bay, the plants became notice­ably far­ther along in their spring bloom. 

From park­ing lot to the shore, one trav­els past a fresh­wa­ter marsh, and then a stream. Today is Inter­na­tional Water Day, so my recent explo­ration of the fresh­wa­ter marsh at Calvert Cliffs was a great chance to admire the engi­neer­ing of  beavers. 

A few more images from my field trip to Calvert Cliffs is here.

Humans love their pets, espe­cially those two species we call Cats & Dogs. I’ve been a dog owner for more than a decade, and long before that I was a cat owner. Each type of crit­ter seems to have its own mer­its, as well as down­sides. For­tu­nately, there are few down­sides to our sheltie Kiah. If he had fin­gers and thumbs instead of paws, I think I could teach him to drive the car. 

National Geo­graph­ics Cats & Dogs

I spent a few months this past year work­ing on a spe­cial edi­tion of National Geo­graphic mag­a­zine on this very sub­ject, Cats & Dogs, shar­ing research fact-checking with another for­mer NGM staff researcher, Michelle Har­ris. The text is from Cathy New­man, Vir­ginia Mor­rell, Jenny Hol­land and oth­ers, and the pho­tographs are from the archives of NGS as well as from free­lancers around the globe such as Carli David­son. This is an infor­ma­tive, fun, col­or­ful and heart­warm­ing spe­cial issue. I’m hop­ing the read­ers will buy it at the news­stands, because it is sold only online and at news­stands and your gro­cery checkout.

But back to my dog Kiah. Here’s a recent snap­shot of him at the Col­lege Park Dog Park. He’s a pretty dog, so every­one assumes he’s a girl, or a “Lassie” or is fussy about get­ting dirty. Shet­land sheep­dogs are hearty work­ing dogs, with coats designed to keep off the ele­ments. He does not like to get his boy bits wet, though, some­times attempt­ing “big air” to keep them dry. On sec­ond thought, maybe I won’t teach him how to drive.

Kiah Charges The Water at his favorite Dog Park

Just down the street from Baked & Wired on Thomas Jef­fer­son Street, NW, the Big Cheese truck was doing a fairly brisk busi­ness one day in Feb­ru­ary as I parked my car in front of The Foundry and the offices and stu­dios of CDIA-BU. I sat in my car for a while and watched. Peo­ple passed by on the side­walk, some of them mut­ter­ing and ges­tur­ing at the food truck as though they were offended by its pres­ence. Oth­ers, mostly young work­ers with a han­ker­ing for some­thing dif­fer­ent in the way of fast food lined up, placed an order, and waited a few min­utes until their order was ready. It’s get­ting good press around town. They made the list on Wash­ing­ton Post’s Best Food Trucks this week. Let them know, and they’ll come by your place. 

The city is ask­ing for per­mis­sion for Food Trucks to park along 7th Street at the Mall, but the National Park ser­vice is quib­bling over this. They have a rule that no one should trans­act busi­ness on park prop­erty. Evi­dently, hot­dogs and indi­ges­tion from their sanc­tioned food stand is ok, and should be all that is needed by way of food down on our big walk­way past the mon­u­ments and muse­ums. Some of those hot dogs ought to be encased in plas­tic for your pro­tec­tion. Why not allow the food trucks? Surely, peo­ple will walk on your grass at the curb, but don’t you think that too is part of Amer­i­can life? Get­ting a decent grilled cheese sand­wich instead of the age-old tubesteak?

Every now and then I con­tribute a lit­tle bit of time help­ing out at the Cen­ter for Dig­i­tal Imag­ing Arts — Boston Uni­ver­sity (CDIA-BU) in George­town. A cou­ple weeks ago I helped by arrang­ing per­mis­sion for an archi­tec­tural pho­tog­ra­phy class to make images on the cam­pus at National Geo­graphic Soci­ety at 17th and M Street, NW.

It wasn’t acci­den­tal that I asked NGS for per­mis­sion to do this. I worked there for a cou­ple of decades and know the employ­ees of NGS are very proud of their work to make the phys­i­cal build­ing oper­a­tions at National Geo­graphic as eco-friendly as pos­si­ble. Accord­ing to, Robert Ciine, Vice Pres­i­dent in charge of the building’s oper­a­tions, they are once again appy­ing for LEED cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, a mark of approval for envi­ron­men­tal aware­ness and good prac­tices. They are the lead­ers in the field of LEED for exist­ing build­ings. It is a worth­while achieve­ment, and has demon­strated to other busi­nesses how they can save money while help­ing the environment.

The other major rea­son I asked NGS for help may seem a bit absurd, but it has to do with per­mis­sion to use a tri­pod, or even to pho­to­graph at all within the Dis­trict of Colum­bia. They under­stand pho­tog­ra­phy at NGS, but the rest of the city doesn’t really get that it takes time and patience to make a really good pho­to­graph. In DC, it’s a mat­ter of access, too. Pho­tog­ra­phy is a first amend­ment right, but some­one for­got to tell that to the var­i­ous gov­ern­ment author­i­ties in DC that have reg­u­lated the who, what, where and when pho­tog­ra­phy can be done “for com­mer­cial pur­poses.” (and yes, they con­sider a pho­tog­ra­phy class a com­mer­cial purpose)

The DC gov­ern­ment wants $150 for still pho­tog­ra­phy. And they want proof of a mil­lion dol­lar insur­ance polcy “list­ing the “Gov­ern­ment of the Dis­trict of Colum­bia” as addi­tional insured.” The city is will­ing to waive the insur­ance clause for studnts, but not the $150 fee per stu­dent for the per­mit to make still photos.

The Capi­tol Police con­trol per­mits for tri­pod use and all pho­tog­ra­phy on any of the grounds of the Capi­tol, or within the build­ing itself.

All of the green spaces in the city are under the author­ity of the National Park Police, who may or may not  give per­mits for tri­pod use.

Pri­vate build­ing own­ers are ever more wary of grant­ing per­mis­sion to pho­tog­ra­phy stu­dents to allow them to pho­to­graph their build­ings. Many of the build­ing own­ers in George­town reg­u­larly send their secu­rity guards out to move the stu­dents away with threats of arrest for trespassing.

Add all of that up, and find­ing a decent place for a photo class to make archi­tec­ture shots in DC becomes a ridicu­lously dif­fi­cult endeavor. 

Thanks, Bob Cline and NGS for help­ing us out. The pho­tog­ra­phy stu­dents did well that day, accord­ing to their Teach­ing Assis­tant Kat Forder and Instruc­tor John Pel­let. Here are a few of my snap­shots of the class catch­ing the light com­ing up on a cold morn­ing in the court­yard at National Geographic. 

The Allegheny Moun­tains were named by Native Amer­i­cans for the most impor­tant resource that comes out of the ground – clean water. I can say first­hand that the name is well deserved. Those moun­tains pro­duce water that comes up through the rocks and then spills back down, clean and use­ful for all ani­mals and plants liv­ing and grow­ing on its flanks and in its valleys. 

 

 

Water is the sub­stance from which all life flows. Very few bio­log­i­cal processes exist with­out water. A new­born baby is as much as 75% water. Our food has water in it, or requires clean water to grow and be healthy. Restau­rants and bak­eries need it to cook and serve foods, as do the can­ners and pack­agers of veg­eta­bles and fruits.  Schools need it for thirsty stu­dents. Physi­cians and sur­geons need it, den­tists need it, and sports teams need it. Our fac­to­ries need clean water to man­u­fac­ture goods, and the short­age of clean water is already hurt­ing indus­tries around the world. The US mil­i­tary has defined the lack of clean water as one of the most impor­tant resources that could cause wars in far away lands, it is that important. 

 

Why should we in Amer­ica not think it is impor­tant to safe­guard our clean water? 

 

I have been doc­u­ment­ing our old fam­ily farm on top of Allegheny Moun­tain for a good part of my life. My great-grandfather started the farm, along with his Civil War-widowed mother in the 1870s, mov­ing up there from the Green­brier Valley. Over the years our family’s land has been “hus­banded”, to use an old fash­ioned con­cept, or pro­tected and conserved.

 

The past few years I’ve been fol­low­ing sto­ries about hyrdro-fracturing for nat­ural gas. It always sounds so ideal for landown­ers: the gas com­pany assures all kinds of stuff, includ­ing fat pay­checks to the landowner, and these days the pitch is even wrapped in patri­o­tism, remind­ing us that our coun­try must have energy sources to break our depen­dency on for­eign oil. Kind of makes you think you should salute when you see that drilling truck come crunch­ing down the two-lane road, break­ing off pieces of pave­ment under it’s over­weight tires. 

 

What is unsaid is the dam­age done at sites across the US as energy com­pa­nies drill and frac­ture rocks at depths unimag­ined by the nor­mal human. Using high-pressure water mixed with toxic chem­i­cals to frac­ture the rock strata and force nat­ural gas to escape from the earth’s depth, “frack­ing” as a min­ing prac­tice has proven to be the very stuff of night­mares. Inject­ing toxic chem­i­cals into the strata of the earth in order to force the trapped nat­ural gas up to the sur­face has poi­soned water wells and streams, and has brought radioac­tive and toxic chem­i­cals into the back­yards of some parts of America. 

 

There is a lot of money involved, and wher­ever there is money there is also greed and flex­ing of mus­cles. In some states, protests against nat­ural gas drilling are met with out­right hos­til­ity from the local police, who main­tain the first pri­or­ity is to pro­tect the rights of the gas com­pany and landowner who owns the min­eral rights being exploited by the min­ers. States like West Vir­ginia claim jobs are cre­ated by the drilling com­pa­nies, and money is injected into the local com­mu­nity. Some is, that is true. 

 

What is not said is that prop­erty own­ers who are neigh­bors to the frack­ing oper­a­tions need and deserve clean water for their fam­i­lies, agri­cul­ture, and busi­nesses. They have the right to use their land in an unpol­luted, and uncon­t­a­m­i­nated way, unsul­lied by the chem­i­cal spills or water-table destruc­tions that had hap­pened repeat­edly next to frack­ing operations. 

 

I recently wrote a let­ter to the edi­tor of the Poc­a­hon­tas Times, the small-town weekly news­pa­per that is pub­lished out of the county seat where my great-grandfather’s farm is sit­u­ated. It’s a good let­ter, but there are a cou­ple of infor­ma­tive arti­cles in the same news­pa­per that relates first­hand to what has been seen in another county where frack­ers run hog-wild. One landowner was required to put on a flame-proof suit in order to visit his own land. It was a place he had thought to even­tu­ally build a house and live. Sounds to me like it would be liv­ing in hell if he tried that today.

 

I don’t want “Allegheny” to be changed in mean­ing to “mother of poi­son.” I don’t want toxic chem­i­cals to some­day bub­ble up on our farm.  That will not be con­ser­va­tion or good stew­ard­ship of our land. Some things can’t be bought – and some things can’t be changed once they are destroyed. No one today knows how to clean the con­t­a­m­i­nated water that is despoiled by nat­ural gas frackers. 

 

It is not a rad­i­cal idea to con­serve the land, to care about the envi­ron­ment and to pro­tect the nat­ural resources that we have on earth. The radical’s are those who want to destroy it by care­less use of tech­nol­ogy in pur­suit of some­thing that has lit­tle worth com­pared to clean water.

 

Take a look through my ongo­ing cov­er­age of the Wood­dell farm and you’ll see what I want to protect.

 

- David W. Wooddell

 

***