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Stuck In Traffic
"Current Events, Cultural Phenomena, True Stories"
Issue #25 - August, 1997
Contents:
Gun Moll
Sarah Ovenall learns how to shoot a gun with style and grace.
The Beautiful Golden Leaf
Is there a place for tobacco in our culture? How could there
not be?
Powers' Index
A couple of interesting statistics to chew on.
Mars Doesn't Attack!
Do you feel guilty about not being excited over the Mars Path
Finder mission? Don't. Here's why it really is boring.
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True Story
Gun Moll
by Sarah Ovenall
Eclectic is a good goal. At least, that's my opinion. So I
jumped at the chance to learn how to use a handgun.
For years I've harbored a low-level desire to try target shooting.
Hobbies that fall within the feminine sphere -- cooking, quilting,
that sort of thing -- seem to come naturally to me. But I can't
throw a football, or change the oil in my car (even after taking a
class in basic car maintenance), or build a bookshelf, or any of
those "manly" pursuits. It felt like a gap in my range of
experience.
One beastly hot Sunday morning in early July, my friend Candi and
I went out with Mark, a local firearm enthusiast (read: gun nut)
to his firing range. The range was out in Alamance County, North
Carolina, so we enjoyed the trip in Mark's tank of a car playing
"guess the music" (Bjork, Fear, the Spanic Boys, and Romeo Void),
then we got into the proper frame of mind with the CRASH
soundtrack for most of the trip.
Once we got to the firing range, Candi and I had a basic gun
safety lesson, then it was time for the real thing. Mark had
brought an assortment of firearms for our perusal: a .22 revolver,
a .22 semiautomatic Smith & Wesson, a tiny 9 mm Colt, a 9 mm
Glock, and a 12 gauge shotgun. He let us try each one, starting
with the easiest (the revolver) and working our way up to the most
difficult (the shotgun).
I've always had terrible aim. I can't bowl. I suck at darts. I
was always the last one picked in sports. I tried archery once,
and was abysmal. Anything that required hand-eye coordination;
you name it, I'm bad at it. So I naturally assumed I'd be equally
bad at target shooting. I had visions of not being able to hit
the target at all, of being laughed off the range, of fleeing in
humiliation and saying to myself, "Well, at least now I know what
it's like, so I don't have to do it again."
But it wasn't like that at all. It was a lot of fun. Almost too
much fun. The shotgun was way too big for me, and the Colt had
such a stiff trigger than I literally could not pull it. The
Glock was good, though it had enough recoil that it was more
difficult to aim. The two .22s, the revolver and especially the
semiautomatic, felt just great.
I had this nagging feeling that I ought to be repulsed by the very
sight of a firearm. I ought to be sickened by the feel of it in
my hand. I ought to be appalled by the sound of gunfire. But I
wasn't. Whatever pacifist sensibilities I possess failed to
manifest themselves. I felt no aversion to pulling the trigger.
In fact, it felt good.
And I was good at it, if I may allow myself a moment's immodesty.
For a beginner, of course. But even so, there's something
immensely satisfying about firing off a round, rapid-fire, and
hitting the mark with every one. I felt that I could see a point
of focus where everything extraneous drops away, where there's
nothing left but the sights, the target and the trigger. I wasn't
there, of course. Not even close to that level of concentration.
Just enough to know that it exists.
It was scary too. There were moments (especially when the
magazine clicked into place) that I would think to myself, "I'm
holding a loaded gun. I could kill somebody if I screwed up."
I need the chance to practice a few more times. To find out if
the thrill was in the novelty, or if this really is for me. But I
could see myself doing this, as a serious hobby.
A few hours on the firing range hasn't left me a gun-toting freak.
I'm not planning to hold up any liquor stores anytime soon, or
move to Michigan and build myself a bunker. What it has left me
with: A sunburn across the left side of my face. Two broken
fingernails. A new nickname (Hopalong). Two targets to hang on
my wall. And the certainty that I'll be back there soon.
About the Author:
Durham gun moll Sarah Ovenall drives an art car, designs Tarot
decks, and views hair color as an avant garde art form. Her
secret life is a boring Web designer preoccupied with wallpaper
and dog ownership. Her self-indulgent tendencies can be viewed
at:
http://www.netenterprises.com/staff/sarah/
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Cultural Phenomena
The Beautiful Golden Leaf
I've always had a fascination with the mathematical field of
fractal geometry, which deals with the notion that sometimes a
thing looks more or less the same no matter how close you get to
it or how far away you get from it. If you look at a cloud
without any surrounding context, it's very difficult to tell how
close or far away you are from it because the big billowing clouds
of vapor bend and curl the same way that small ones do.
The math is way beyond my capability to grasp, but the idea is
very powerful and appealing. No field of mathematics is useful
unless it helps describe something in the real world, and so with
fractal geometry. And that's the lure. Can I learn something
about the world just looking around me? As I look out the window
of my car while driving to work, can I learn lessons about the
social forces shaping the country? Maybe so, maybe not. But
while driving to work last week I had a tremendous wave of
recognition flow over me as I passed newly planted fields of
tobacco.
North Carolina is a beautiful state, with both a keen sense of
history and an optimistic eye toward the opportunities of the
future; and I count myself lucky to live here. I live in a
suburban community called Cary, located just outside of the
capital city of Raleigh. Cary is often criticized for being too
dull and plain. Heck, I feel that way sometimes too. Sometimes
it seems like the Cary Town Council has passed a law requiring
that every house be painted tan and that every house have exactly
seven shrubs and a dogwood tree in the front yard. Redbud trees
or even an oak tree if you're feeling in a wild mood. Everything
closes at 10:00 at night. I was once stopped by a Cary police
officer for returning a library book at the drive by book drop
because I was there suspiciously late at night. On the other
hand, Cary is safe, with an enviably low crime rate. The schools
are good. The roads are well kept. The water is clean and cheap.
Generally speaking, it's a pleasant place to live. The people
here still have a good natured friendly attitude toward each
other. Even the crustiest Northerners that move to the area
mellow out considerably after a couple of years. It's an
extremely conservative town where deviations from the norm are
noted with raised eyebrows, but it's also conservative in a good
way.
I work for a computer company in "The Research Triangle," which is
area situated in the middle of a triangle formed by Raleigh,
Durham, and Chapel Hill where many companies in high tech
industries like computers and pharmaceuticals have major
development centers. Software companies large and small are
cranking out everything from next season's video games to the next
generation of the Internet. Pharmaceutical giants are
methodically testing new treatments for just about any ailment you
can name, Alzheimer disease, AIDS, high Cholesterol, Sickle Cell
Anemia, etc. etc. The area is also one of the countries leading
centers of Medical research with the renowned Duke Medical Center,
University of North Carolina Medical Center. Even industries that
you wouldn't normally think of needing big research and
development efforts, the textile industry for example, have
facilities in "the Triangle."
So many people in this area wake up in the morning in their
suburban neighborhoods, bastions of safe, conservative living;
hallmarks of traditional living; and drive off to jobs in the
triangle to help build the future. OK, maybe that's being more
than a tad melodramatic, but you get the idea. And I couldn't
help but wonder if this little slice of Americana that I call home
isn't in some sense a bit of the American dream poking through to
reality. Isn't this representative of some unspoken communal goal
that underlies everything we do? How much can you look at this
lifestyle and see the rest of America?
Self centered and arrogant as they may be, these were the thoughts
on my mind when I noticed the fields of tobacco.
The Tobacco Experience:
The drive from my house to my job passes by several large tobacco
fields cultivated by area farmers and I always enjoy noting the
progress of the year's tobacco crops as I drive by each morning.
If you've never had the good fortune of seeing a tobacco field,
then you will just have to take my word for it that tobacco is the
world's most beautiful crop when it's growing in the field.
You start with an empty field, totally plowed under so that all
you see is the rich, red Carolina clay, the same stuff they make
bricks and moonshine jugs out of, and plow it into rows of earth.
This usually takes a day or so. Then the farmers plant the
tobacco seedlings into the rows of earth. They have special
machines that they pull behind their tractors that take the
seedlings and plant them into the earth at just the right spacing.
Although as I understand it, usually someone has to walk behind
and give each seedling a little more detailed attention. In any
event, for a few days, you see these huge fields of red/orange
clay with perfectly spaced green seedlings.
I couldn't tell you exactly when this occurs, but it seems to be
in the late spring, just as the weather is getting warm and you
can expect plenty of sunshine. What I can tell you is that
tobacco grows incredibly fast. In no time at all, you have chest
high tobacco plants filling the fields. The red-orange landscape
is replaced by a lush, cooling green. A tobacco plant stands up
very straight and precise, but it's all leaves. Huge, lance
shaped leaves, one on top of another, almost like petals of a
flower, from the ground on up.
When the tobacco plants get to be about chest high, they sprout
stems of small white flowers at the top, a perfect accent to the
fields of green and the red-orange clay underneath. They will
stay like this for a few weeks, then apparently the farmers cut
off the flowering parts. I've never actually seen people doing
this, but it seems like they disappear overnight, just about the
time that I also see crews of migrant workers sweeping through the
fields.
Eventually, the leaves will start turning yellow. For some reason
it's always the leaves at the bottom of the plant that turn first
followed by the ones above. I don't know how a farmer knows when
it's time to harvest the tobacco, but at some point they deem it
the right time and more crews of migrant workers show up. As far
as I can tell, harvesting tobacco must be done by hand because you
have to cut the tobacco plants near ground level. You then haul
the entire tobacco plant away to the curing shed where it is
staked on long wooden poles and hung. In the shed it will finish
turning color from green and yellow in to a rich, golden brown.
Then sometime in the fall, they farmers make huge piles of tobacco
in the backs of their trucks and they haul it off to the market.
Those of you who have never experienced it probably won't believe
me; but, even as a nonsmoker, I think the smell of cured tobacco
is wonderful. The smell of tobacco defines "Good Earth." You
can't smell tobacco without thinking of nature and sun and plants
and the miracles of chlorophyll. In downtown Durham, there are
still tobacco processing plants. I believe they are Ligget-Myers
plants; and during certain times during the fall, the entire
downtown area is filled with the earthy smell of cured tobacco.
It's great. Everyone should experience it at least once.
And while I was musing over the social implications of living in a
conservative town and working on the future I had this huge
feeling sweep over me that the tobacco had to be explained. It
had to fit into the scheme of things. If this was a slice of
Americana, the tobacco had to represent something. It's just way
too big to ignore and way too beautiful to discount.
Tobacco is Key:
At first glance, you might think that there's no place for
tobacco, even metaphorically, in Our Modern Lifestyle. Barring
any future discoveries of a medicinal or industrial use of
tobacco, it's difficult to imagine that tobacco won't be stamped
out in our lifetime. In a culture that won't tolerate body odor,
in a culture where cleanliness is next to godliness, in a culture
where everything has to be buckled in, strapped down, and locked
into place; where everything has to be inoculated, inspected, and
inventoried, where "sanitized for your protection" permeates our
being, it's difficult to imagine that tobacco will be tolerated.
"Tobacco is addictive and unhealthy," the conventional thinking
seems to go, "therefore it must be eradicated."
Certainly those that know how to play the media like an instrument
are thinking along those lines. Over the past few months, how
many times have we heard a talking head pose the question, "What
should the nation's tobacco control policy be?" Note that the
question assumes that everyone is already agreed on the point that
tobacco should be controlled. They would like you to believe that
the only remaining question is regarding the most effective means
of "controlling" tobacco.
The situation is further complicated by the fact that one of the
government's biggest welfare programs, Medicaid, is in serious
financial trouble. Politicians and the spin control experts are
desperate for deep pockets to plunder for funds in order to hide
the fact that Medicaid is near insolvency. They will do
everything in their power to avoid letting the public think that
the reason Medicaid is in trouble has anything to do with the
inefficiencies and bureaucracies of government programs. They
will fight to the last to keep the public from thinking that maybe
this nation can help those in need without a Federal Program.
They will stop at nothing to prevent people from considering that
maybe, just maybe, the government's control of the health care
industry is responsible for spiraling health care costs. To stop
these unthinkable thoughts, the government is working overtime to
convince the nation that it's tobacco related health problems that
are responsible for the Medicaid crisis and that therefore it's
morally acceptable to force the tobacco industry to keep the
Medicaid program afloat.
Insurance companies make their very living by studying long term
trends and using statistics to predict what's going to happen to
people and how often. Then they base their premiums on those
predictions such that they can cover their future claims and still
make a profit. If insurance companies can do it, there's no
reason that the government can't also do it. If the Medicaid
program isn't financially solvent, then it's either because its
administrators failed to predict the long term trends or they
simply offered more to previous claimants than they could afford.
Either way, to blame the nation's Medicaid crisis on tobacco and
tobacco related illnesses, is to blame the symptom, not the
ailments. The number of smokers in the United States has slowly
gone down over the past few decades, so if anything, there should
be a surplus in Medicaid because the number of smoking related
illnesses should also be going down.
But Everyone Dies Of Something:
Just think, if the government could stop people from dying, they
could take all that Medicaid money and spend it on something else.
Silly as it sounds, that seems to be the rationale driving the
antismoking lobby and the government. But no matter what happens
at the end of our life, our bodies are going to weaken and
eventually fail. And because we are human, we will always fight
it. We will always strive to live longer. We will always want to
spend money on our health whether through preventive measures or
by medical treatment. None of this is going to change if tobacco
is eliminated tomorrow. The Medicaid crisis is not going to be
fixed if tobacco is eradicated from the planet, the only thing it
would do would be to rob many people of one of their pleasant
vices.
Because while smoking is generally considered unhealthy, while
smoking is generally considered addictive, it is nonetheless a
pleasant habit to have for most smokers. It is often said that
every cigarette a man smokes shortens his life by 7 minutes. And
so? If a man chooses to give up seven minutes of his life in
exchange for sitting on his back porch and enjoying a good cigar
among friends, has he made a bad choice? Maybe. Is he being
short sighted? Perhaps. But isn't it his choice to make? Who
would be so arrogant that they would try to run the man's life,
change is habits, and force him to do what's "best" for him.
As an ardent liberal, in the truest and best sense of the word, I
for one would never claim to have the right to second guess a
smoker's choices. Certainly if I were asked my opinion of the
matter, I would recommend strongly against smoking. But everyone
has the right to choose their own path. Everyone has to find
their own way in the world. Everyone has the right to choose
their own vices.
And if Medicaid can't keep up, then it should be abandoned and
replaced by private insurance. Insurance companies certainly seem
to be able fulfill claims against their policies and still stay
solvent. And if no one will insure the smokers, then that's their
worry. That's the cost of their choice. It's morally wrong to
start trying to rob people of their self-control and their
independence just to keep a bankrupt federal program afloat.
And as I drove down the road watching those beautiful fields of
tobacco growing lush and green under the hot Carolina sun, I
recognized that tobacco fits into the picture because it
represents the choices we make. The rich earthy aroma of cured
tobacco reminds us that life is an experience, not an elaborate
game of avoiding risk factors.
Life is not entirely a game of building a safe home town to live
in. Nor is life solely an endless march in to the future. These
are important parts of life, but an equally important part of life
is choosing our indulgences along the way.
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True Story
Powers' Index
Number of miles from my house
in Cary, NC to downtown Atlanta Georgia: 328
Number of McDonalds restaurants on the route: 31
Average number of miles between McDonald's
restaurants on the route: 10.58
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Current Events
Mars Doesn't Attack!
In fact it just sits there.
If NASA's Path Finder mission to Mars is so great, why is it so
boring? It's an extraordinary achievement of science. You have
to successfully launch the vehicle from Earth and put it into
orbit. Then you have to break it out Earth's orbit at just the
right time for it to pick up enough momentum to reach Mars. And
all this has to be timed precisely so that the Path Finder craft
will intercept Mars and be caught in Mars' gravity. Then the
vehicle has to descend through the Martian atmosphere, slow down
enough to not burn up and not destroy itself when it lands. And
it has to land upright so that the onboard instrumentation can do
it's stuff.
But wait, there's more. The Path Finder then has to roll down a
special ramp and navigate over Mars' rocky terrain so that it can
analyze the surrounding rocks. The machinery that does the
analysis of the rocks has made the entire trip from earth and must
be stowed in such a way as to ensure that it won't get damage
either on take off or touch down. And then it has to correctly
activate and go do it's thing.
And finally, the craft must maintain contact with Earth to receive
instructions and of course send back all the information that it's
there to collect. Nothing would be more disappointing than to
successfully have sent the Path Finder all the way to Mars and
then not be able to hear what it's trying to tell us.
All this happened with remarkably few mishaps along the way. Of
course a space exploration mission requires constant attention and
baby sitting. I'm not trying to suggest that there weren't more
than a few sleepless nights at the control center. But in terms
of all the major project milestones. The Path Finder mission has
been remarkably trouble free. There are some folks at NASA,
probably a few thousand folks actually, that deserve both a round
of applause and a raise. Not to mention an extended vacation.
And yet the landing on Mars somehow didn't have the big payoff, in
terms of excitement, that you might have expected such a
remarkable achievement to have had. Even the fact that the first
pictures came back from the landing site on Mars on the Fourth of
July couldn't raise the excitement level of the event. Even the
fact that the landing site was named Sagan station, after the pop
guru of space exploration couldn't add to the excitement. As NASA
scientists and project leaders held press conferences in front of
the entire world, they looked happy and excited. But mostly they
looked tired. You can't blame them of course. They's been up for
hours and hours managing all those last minute details. But
still, it didn't make for very good TV.
When the Path Finder landed on Mars, several NASA astronauts
fanned out among the media to answer interviews and give the
viewers a perspective. CNN was lucky enough to have astronaut
Fred Story on the air who kept reminding the public that the Path
Finder mission "reminds us that the call is there". In other
words, keep the funding up. I'm sure Mr. Story's words were
sincere. But is his perfectly crafted sound bite contains the
explanation as to why the Path Finder mission is a bit lacking.
When one says, "the call is there," there's an implied assumption
that whatever it is that's doing the "calling" is calling a human.
A living, breathing, feeling human. And perhaps the reason that
the Path Finder mission is so anti-climatic is that it wasn't a
manned mission.
In a way it's like instrumental rock music. You can admire
instrumentals for their demonstration of skill and musicianship.
You can be dazzled by them. But you can't listen to them forever.
And they aren't inspirational either. They don't get your heart
pumping fast. Instrumentals rarely, if ever generate adrenaline
rushes.
And so with the Path Finder mission. It's the instrumental rock
album of space exploration. It's great. It's a marvel. Now,
when are we going to see someone do something we can cheer about?
In terms of human drama, in terms of hanging on the edge of your
seat wondering what's going to happen next. The crew of the Mir
Space station are much more interesting to follow in the news.
Who's going to make the critical repairs? When will they attempt
them? Will it work?
Now don't get me wrong. I don't blame NASA. I'm not one of those
disaffected space freaks that writes letters to my congressman
about how it's absolutely necessary to put man on Mars. I can
accept that it just wasn't feasible to put man on Mars this on
this mission, both because of technical feasibility and money.
My big complain about the Path Finder mission is not that humans
weren't along for the ride. My big complaint about the Path
Finder mission is that there is no sign of humanity in it.
Couldn't we have plunked an American flag into the sandy Martian
soil? Isn't it traditional for people, American's especially, to
plant a flag on newly conquered wilderness? To my knowledge,
there aren't even any American flags painted on the equipment. At
least not any that are easily visible in the pictures that are
being sent back. No doubt any display of patriotism in this
outstanding achievement would be deemed far to politically
incorrect.
Would it have been too much to ask for something other than pure
numbers to flow back from the Path Finder? Something like,
"Greetings from Mars! Wish you were here. It's a bit chilly but
there's lots of room for building sand castles! -- Love, Path
Finder"
But no. We couldn't do anything the least bit symbolic on this
mission. We couldn't do anything the least bit fun. It's all
business the whole way.
The one human element in the Path Finder landing on Mars was the
fact that scientists started naming certain rocks that could be
seen. There's "Barnacle Bill", "the Sofa", "Yogi" and "Scooby
Doo". But lest we think that someone at NASA is having any fun
with these names, the NASA press releases and web pages were quick
to point out to us that "The names are used by the Pathfinder team
to help identify and keep track of the many rocks at the landing
site."
It's space exploration by committee.
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About Stuck In Traffic
Stuck In Traffic is a monthly magazine dedicated to evaluating
current events, examining cultural phenomena, and sharing true
stories.
Why "Stuck In Traffic"?
Because getting stuck in traffic is good for you. It's an
opportunity to think, ponder, and reflect on all things, from the
personal to the global. As Robert Pirsig wrote in _Zen and the
Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_, "Let's consider a reevaluation of
the situation in which we assume that the stuckness now occurring,
the zero of consciousness, isn't the worst of all possible
situations, but the best possible situation you could be in.
After all, it's exactly this stuckness that Zen Buddhists go to so
much trouble to induce...."
Submissions:
Submissions to Stuck In Traffic are always welcome. If you have
something on your mind or a personal story you'd like to share,
please do. You don't have to be a great writer to be published
here, just sincere.
Contact Information:
All queries, submissions, subscription requests, comments, and
hate-mail about Stuck In Traffic should be sent to Calvin Stacy
Powers preferably via E-mail (
[email protected]) or by mail (2012
Talloway Drive, Cary, NC USA 27511).
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