I was going to call this “midway,” since it is just halfway through this summer of stress and lunacy, and it seems like a good nautical term to mark this point on the calendar. I was about to type the words when I realized a lot of acquaintances and occasional readers might think I was launching off on another old sea-story about a ship I got to ride a long time ago. There is a lot of that going around between my old shipmates, who have been in a high state of alert since the fire started on the Bonhomme Richard out in San Diego. It is highly emotional for a crowd that used to have responsibilities on big boat like that.

It is a useful crisis, since it is not about plague or politics, which actually might just be the same thing. There is a strand in our running back-and-fourths about how the seemingly inept leadership of the Navy has handled a distressingly large number of incidents over the past decade. Some of them have taken lives. So, there is a policy thing in the commentary, and a practical one that focuses mostly on how the fire could have been avoided in the first place. On a couple big ships (when smoking was still allowed below decks) we had a Class-Charlie fire every time the watch changed, and the ashtrays were dumped into the shitcans.

Fixing things is something we were trained to do. These are practical people, after all. The Experts know that, though they don’t seem to be saying it.

I haven’t been drawn into the who-shot-Jane dissection of the event, nor the various changes to the system in which we served a while back. There are plenty of experts to help us out on that. In fact, we seem to be over-run with experts these days. I remember when we all became Constitutional scholars for the fifteen minutes before the Plague broke out, and now we are all amateur epidemiologists. I listen to the experts and the hysterics alike on this one. There are too many unknowns, or at least known things that have to be subject to re-interpretation.

I have been on record about the way we handle it on the farm, which generally comports with what the experts tell us. We rarely leave the property, and deal with outsiders to the smallest extent we can. I know, I know, we are retired and our position is sustainable. But we do have to go out periodically. From a sample experience in urban Northern Virginia and rural Culpeper, I am not in favor of provoking people who have a certain set of experts whose guidance must be followed in the public interest. In their defense, I carry a facemask of modest proportions and a folded bandana around my next, to ensure I can cover up if necessary. Finally, I try to avoid indoor situations around other people and keep the time spent in them to a minimum.

Otherwise, I have not considered a reasonable accommodation to other people’s experts particularly onerous. I hear other folks have become quite emotional about the imposition of the opinion of experts- who are not their experts- about what they consider to be their rights.

Beats me. I just try to be polite. That is what my experts tell me.

Maybe we ought to talk about where that sort of skilled talent comes from some time. Or ask some experts. They seem to know everything, at least half-way.

Copyright 2020 Vic Socotra
http://www.vicsocotra.com