09 April 2006

Sign of Weakness

It is Holy Week, Palm Sunday, and I am going to church. A former colleague is singing the tenor part in Handle's Messiah in a few hours at the Methodist church just across the parking lot. It will be the first time I have set foot in a sanctuary since at least 2001, perhaps longer.

It has been busy since retirement. I wondered at what to wear. Something respectful, but comfortable, I thought, and got up early enough to take a long mental stroll through the New York Times and the New Yorker.

I took coffee and walked through the door in the living room and out onto the balcony. The sun's first rays lit the cross on the steeple, and the storms of yesterday were past. The sky was blue and the air crisp, beckoning me to come out and join the new season of renewal.

The weather being what it is here, it could be tomorrow that it is the door not to spring, but into full summer.

I read Sy Hirsch's piece on the Iranian Bomb, and the workmanlike strike planning that some claim is in progress, and with boots on the ground from the Department which has successfully re-invented clandestine intelligence activity as Force Protection Reconnaissance, and not subject to review by the oversight committees in Congress.

Shock and Awe, Part Two, I sighed. Could they actually be contemplating it?

I know some of it to be true, or at least plausible. I hear the echoes of the neo-logic that says we cannot allow whackos who deny the Holocaust to get the bomb. They must not be permitted to gain the means to settle the Question of Palestine on unilateral terms.

But it is déjà vu all over again. I thought we already did this.

It was almost a relief to turn to the question of Duke Lacrosse, and the apparent weakness of the social mooring for those young men. There were perspectives from the conservative and liberal sides, and they seemed to be talking about different events. It was a question of morality and character, or it was about money and class.

Perhaps it was all four. I could not tell.

There was no particular morality in the account of the de-population of North Dakota, and the death of the little towns the decorated the railroad spurs like little pearls, now the track gone and the cities dying one by one with the old folks who hung on.

Some were fighting it, and some were weakening and going into a sort of Prairie Hospice, shuttering the schools and returning to the soil.

I remember the only time I spent any time there, staying with a service buddy from Korea who was assigned to the Air Force Base at Minot.

What I remember most is the eerie span of the horizon, shoulder to shoulder, under the vastness of the vault of heaven. It was more like the moon than America, and I thought perhaps I might just float away into the endless sky.

When I get preoccupied with the general decline of civility, or the realization that without a conflict, more delusional people will have access to nuclear weapons, I think what it would be like to plop down there in a dying village on the great rim of horizon.

Take up occupancy in one of the old buildings, perhaps a grand one, that no longer has anyone to care about it. It would have to be within driving distance of the medical care and Commissary at Minot AFB, and if the next round of base closures kills it, then the rest of the state is not long for civilization. Soon enough I would find myself sinking into the loamy soil and tall grass and vanish altogether.

But at least there are no weapons of mass destruction there, except the ones at the Base.

I wandered out to the balcony, and examined the craftwork I performed on the door. It is what anchors me to this place on this morning.

Standing on the balcony, I have discovered a micro-climate on the western front of the fourth floor. The vast front wall of this end of Big Pink feels the brunt of the prevailing wind from the west. A sheer in the wind's direction causes the flanks and height of the building to act as a venturi, speeding air over the surfaces. It creates lift and drag and making my open door a crude airfoil.

A veer to the north causes the heavy door to crash shut.

A veer to the south causes the door to fly open wildly and crash into the ledge of black stone under the window.

I have been forced to do some archeological work on the structure. This is clearly not the original door. It has been shaved down on the upper right, adjusted to fit the minute differences in the frame common to a building that has settled slightly over thirty years. The old rod assembly that once kept the door in check is long gone, probably ripped out by the roots.

I saw the effect of the wind the other day as an electrical storm slammed into the building. The door was ajar, and the wind grasped it and hurled it open, slamming into the projecting window ledge on the bottom. The twisting force caused a crack along the line of weakness, splitting it up through the lower hinge. It was an ugly break, and I had to jam the thing shut to prevent catastrophic failure.

I traveled to the neighborhood hardware store. It is an old storefront, one of the few that still exist to compete with the mega Home Depots that are their own self contained cities. At the neighborhood store there are no lines and you can talk to one of the fellows that stocks the narrow shelves.

I bought one of the hydraulic closures that fit flat, inside the new door frame, and six stout bolts and a container of heavy-duty wood glue.

I spent a sunny afternoon with my drills and power screwdriver placing a neat line of through-bolts through the bottom of the door, crushing and squeezing the generous dollops of glue out the side of the crack and binding it together once more, and reattaching the bottom hinge with shiny new screws.

I let it set up for a day before I went out on the balcony again, and when the wind tugged at the door I saw that fixing the bottom hinge had caused the top to spring loose, so the door hung awkwardly against the frame, and could only be closed with a bang.

So again I ventured to the little store, and found shiny screws twice the length of the originals and drilled out the holes through the top and middle hinges.

The door now closes properly, and the hydraulic closure has a little keeper so that I can leave the door open enough to get the cleansing breeze without having it sail off on its own.

It is a small thing, I know, but it is under control. But I wondered what it would be like if I lived in a place where the hardware store was closed, and the base shut down, and the nearest store was a hundred or more miles away.

Still, the distance might be a comfort in some ways. It would definitely put some distance between what is coming and where it is going to happen.

I shut down the computer and went off to get dressed to hear The Messiah. Perhaps the Government feels it must act now. After all, what are we to do if the bad guys are permitted to get their bomb?

But how many wars can we fight at once? Should we talk first, or is that considered a sign of weakness?

Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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