04 February 2003

Mopping Up

It is a slow start this morning, not because I am moving slow, mind you. Quite the contrary. There is a lot of mopping up to be done and I am shoveling paper as fast as I can. There is a bushel basket of bills and magazines, nothing personal, of course, since that all comes electronically these days. On the e-mail queue is a flurry of conversation in the e-mail regarding the shuttle. My cousin dropped a note about her son, who is assistant to John Dittemore the Shuttle Manager. He was notified of the loss just after he crossed the line on a fun-run, and then it was a streak to the Johnson Space Center. He handled Dittemore's phone over that awful Saturday.

It was not a good weekend out there at the Johnson Space Center. I sent pale condolences, knowing I cannot begin to experience the agony of the loss in their space family. Then there is the circus surrounding the event and the wrapping up. A physicist pal at the University of Michigan sent along a URL that pretty much sums up our ignorance of the laws that govern the universe.

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/shuttleisfast.jpg .

If you hit the site, you will see the caption indicates says the Shuttle was returning at 18 times the speed of light, which would be pretty fast. So fast that according to Einstein's famous theory, time would come to a stop and maybe start to move backward. I looked at it and thought about the scene in the movie Superman in which Christopher Reeve holds the dead Margot Kidder in his arms and flies backward against the earth's rotation until he reaches a time in which she still lives and makes it all OK.

I wish we could do that, too. I really do.

The real world is still spinning in the ordained direction and is shedding the veil of the tragedy with its motion. People have been busy with their own affairs since Columbia lined-up for reentry. Phil Specter, the legendary record producer, has been arrested for suspicion of murder in his castle-like estate. That one made me blink in surprise. He popularized the "Wall of Sound" and cranked out numbers like "The Do Run-Run." I think he had something to do with the opening to Bruce Springstein's classic "Born to Run." Specter is only in his early 60s, young by some standards. Not that much older than me. Apparently he has been nuts for some years. His last big record was with the Ramones twenty years ago. They say he had a gun to go with every outfit and he made the million dollars in bail in about twenty minutes.

Gerhard Schroeder, the Chancellor of Germany suffered a humiliating loss in his home district. That may indicate that his resolute pacifism is not playing that well in the hustings. I had been feeling a little queasy about the alleged radical change in the German psyche. I mean, can we really modify human behavior and a national character in only sixty years? The Communists had longer to work on it and they didn't succeed. So if the German people are sending a message that a just war, or even a war a little unjust is OK with them, then the world continues to work the way I think it does.

Tony Blair "declared war" on Iraq yesterday, utilizing Churchillian rhetoric and cadence, and damning the public opinion polls that indicate the British have gone peaceful on us. The President is headed for Houston as the chief mourner, and when the service is done, I suspect Colin Powell's address to the United Nations documenting Iraqi non-compliance with the disarmament regime will sweep all in its path. There are some unresolved issues to be taken care of.

Speaking of disarmament, in the bushel basket of mail I got while on the road last week was a buff envelope from my lovely lawyer. She notes that since the Final Decree of Divorce has been entered by the Fairfax court, there are several action items to be accomplished. First is the issue of spousal support, the amounts and frequency of its payment. Then there is a paragraph on my responsibility to provide health care, and a codicil on life insurance. For her part, my ex-spouse and life partner is supposed to re-finance the marital residence and buy out my interest for a pittance of its value. I also must kite a check to cover a portion of her rapacious attorney's egregious fees.

I have already provided a quit-claim deed to that effect and transferred title to the marital mini-van. I will be paying child support until my younger son graduates from high school in a few months, and with that, the letter invites my questions and concerns as we have arrived at the end of a difficult process. My lawyer was good at handling me through the whole mess, which is what they really do, I think.

But as I mop up from this, and as the search crews mop up in Texas, and as the Administration prepares to mop up a little problem in the Gulf, I think I will be just as happy to never talk to a lawyer again. If I could fly at 18 times the speed of light, and make the world turn backwards, I'm not sure just what I would fix first. There is so much that could be done. But it would come with difficult choices.

I guess I'm glad it only turns one way. It is much easier that way.