Tag: true stories

Old Photo Friday

One thing I like about National Geographic is the Flashback photo on the last page. It’s always something interesting from many years ago. Today, I hereby steal their idea and begin Old Photo Friday in which I will post an old photo from my collection.

This is from sometime in the late 1970s taken with a Kodak 110 Instamatic, my first camera. I was at a car show in Washington, DC where I saw Greased Lightning, the Batmobile, and several other famous cars. The icing on the cake was getting to meet Batman – the real Batman – Adam West.

Batman

You could meet either him or Robin (Burt Ward), but I joined the Batman line, got an autographed 8×10 (since lost) and shook the caped crusader’s hand.

This picture reminds me of a more innocent time in which Batman could get by with nothing more than a stylish set of pajamas unlike today where he must wear a bulletproof armored Batsuit.

The Universe in a Nutshell

May 16, 2006 • James Brush • 4 Comments

(Saturn image from Cassini (3-27-04) courtesy NASA, aquired from Wikipedia. Click image for a larger resolution)

When I was very young, living in Virginia, my dad woke me up in the middle of the night to go outside and look through the telescope. He had it pointing at Saturn, and for the first time, I saw the rings. This was back when the Voyager probes were sending images back from the gas giants, the days of Skylab and the Viking missions. Back then, it was easy to imagine that someday I would travel to the planets.

Those starry nights along with thrilling days spent at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum ignited one of the longest running passions of my life: astronomy.

Eventually, Skylab fell, the Moon got farther away, NASA went from exploring to transporting, the speed of light remained inviolable, and I gave up on thinking I would ever travel the stars. But I kept reading. I kept peering out through the telescope, every winter staring for hours on end at the Pleaides and the star nursery of Orion.

In college my love of observational astronomy developed into a fascination with the bizarre nature of theoretical and quantum physics that always led me back astronomical weirdness: neutron stars, quasars, magnetars, black holes, radio galaxies. Thinking about this stuff is to ponder the very nature of existence.

Endless fascination, of course, always brings me to books and so it was that I read Stephen Hawkings’s beautifully illustrated The Universe in a Nutshell. The book is a wide-ranging overview of Hawking’s thinking about the nature of the universe and indeed reality itself.

He covers general relativity and quantum mechanics before delving into the various attempts to reconcile the two, including: 11-dimesnional supergravity, branes, 10-dimensional membranes, superstrings, and m-theory. Black holes, imaginary time, time travel and the big bang come into play as well.

The all-encompassing M-theory seems the most fascinating and his lucid explanation of the possibility that we exist on a four dimensional brane is particularly compelling. In this scenario, three of the four fundamental forces (strong, weak, electromagnetic) propagate only on the brane while gravity propagates across the interdimensional space (or whatever you’d call it) to other branes. It’s an interesting attempt to unify gravity with the other forces, and one that I’ll definitely have to read more about.

Other than relativity and quantum mechanics, this was all new to me and somewhat difficult to absorb while reading in bed at night. Hawking, however, knows his audience for this book is not one of professional scientists, but rather curious laymen, and his authorial demeanor is that of a kindly guide leading a tour through the most amazing museum, a museum that in fact encompasses everything.

I love reading books like this because they open my mind to ideas that are as exciting and awe-inspiring as when I was a little kid looking into the telescope and seeing Saturn’s rings for the first time.

Oh, Just Burn Me at the Stake

May 4, 2006 • James Brush • 2 Comments

When I used to coach debate I often had interesting conversations and (of course) debates with my students. One young man was a self-described Christian conservative who loved to debate politics with me. It was lots of fun and he hadn’t yet developed the tendency to shut out the ideas of those with whom he disagreed as so many do who are adamant in their beliefs.

One day he asked me why I was a liberal (I’m actually more of a left-leaning moderate, but I didn’t get into that since the reasons are the same). It wasn’t sarcastic or mean-spirited; he was just curious. I told him that there were three institutions in which I was raised that played such a role in developing my beliefs that they continue to inform my thinking today even though I’m not actively involved with any of them anymore.

The first was the US Navy. Growing up with the military overseas is to live in something of an ideal, almost utopian, society. There is full employment. Schools are well-funded and high performing. There is universal healthcare. People of all races, religions and ethnic backgrounds work together in an environment of (mostly) mutual respect.

Second was the church. I was raised Episcopalian, and I learned that it was wrong to disregard the needs of the poor and the suffering. I learned that wealth was not the most important thing in life and that it was obscene to pursue material gain at the expense of others. It was quite clear from an early age that the ideals of the Democratic party were less unchristian than the ideals of the Republican party.

Finally, the Boy Scouts of America. When I was involved it was about camping, hiking, boating, and learning to live in and appreciate nature. The Boy Scouts taught me that conservation and environmental protection are the absolute most important issues we face. When choosing between business and the environment, I learned that the environment has to come first.

So there it was. I watched his jaw hit the floor as I explained that I was liberal because of church, the military, and boy scouts. I’m sure this is all heresy.

Thinking About Seagulls

May 3, 2006 • James Brush • 14 Comments

Seagulls have always fascinated me. As a boy growing up on naval bases I used to enjoy watching them dive from great heights and skim across the surface of the water. I always thought of them as the ‘eagles of the sea,’ despite the fact that the sea eagle is an entirely different type of bird. I also conveniently ignored the fact that most seagulls are really scavengers that would prefer trailing garbage scows looking for moldy refuse rather than preying on the creatures of the deep.

Their flocks, which at distances appear to be great swarms of white insects, enthralled me and often, as a teenager living on the shores of Narragansett Bay, I would hike out to a small bird sanctuary and spend hours watching them argue with one another on the beach, chase one another through the air, and at times my gaze would fix upon one lonely gull flying high above the others majestically scanning the world below his steady wings as if he alone were the king of all he surveyed.

Gulls are interesting fliers. They can soar for long distances, gaining speed as they gently descend, or they may flap their long wings and execute cunning maneuvers with great skill and daring, wending their circuitous way among their kin. They are just as interesting in repose, however. They may bob up and down on the swelling waves for hours on end looking more like a duck than the great and mighty seagull.

Occasionally in fits of anthropomorphic fancy, I have decided that seagulls are sentient in much the same way as people. I’ve read that gulls have been known to live up to forty years and one day, as I sat on the railroad tracks on northern Aquidneck Island staring out at the gulls calling and chasing each other away from their food, I began to wonder what thoughts might come to a mind that spends hours on end, year after year, soaring over the desert of the sea.

The Old Jamestown Bridge

April 19, 2006 • James Brush • Leave a comment

I recently posted an old piece I had written about crossing the Newport Bridge, which spans the Narragansett Bay between Conanicut and Aquidneck Islands in Rhode Island, but I did not mention, except in passing, another bridge: the old Jamestown Bridge that once connected Conanicut with the mainland.

Perhaps it was fear that held me back.

Crossing the Jamestown Bridge was terrifying for me when I was a kid. I was small so perhaps the bridge really wasn’t as fearsome as I remember, but it was narrow and it was high and it was steep.

Mainly, though, it was loud.

I remember the sound of wheels rumbling over the steel grating while wind tore through the spans and shook the car, rattling teeth and nerves.

The noise resulted from the fact that the main span of the bridge was nothing more than open steel grating which meant that you could look down and see the blue of the bay directly beneath the tires. Add the bumpiness and the terrible noise to that vertiginous view and it felt like you’d be lucky to make it across alive.

This morning, I saw a picture in the Austin American-Statesman of a bridge exploding. At first glance it appeared to be festooned with flowers. I read the caption to see that it was none other than the old Jamestown Bridge, replaced by a more stable bridge in 1992 and since designated a navigational hazard by the Coast Guard, that was sent to the bottom of Narragansett Bay yesterday morning.

So long, old nemesis.

52

March 24, 2006 • James Brush • 2 Comments

Last week, while driving down North Lamar, I came to the light at Airport and rolled to a stop. In front of me, a well used Toyota (I think, but we’ll call it that nonetheless) vibrated in time to the thumping bass within.

As I sat there waiting for the light to change, mentally reviewing the long list of errands I had to run, I noticed that the back end of the Toyota was slowly rising. I’ve seen plenty of rides (though I had thought this was just a car rather than a ride) pimped out with hydraulics so this wasn’t anything special. Not yet.

Once the back end of the car had reached its summit, the trunk popped open. Now fascinated, I found myself gawking and wondering what could be trying to escape from that trunk. Garish red light bathed the interior and before I could ask myself why the trunk needed to be filled with red light – or any light for that matter – I noticed that a pair of neon tubes affixed to the inside of the lid were the source of that light.

The lid continued to rise until it was fully open at which point I could see that the tubes were not meant to illuminate, but rather to enlighten. It was a sign. Actually a number. 52.

I stared at it for some time trying to think of all the 52’s I could. Cards in a deck. Weeks in a year. After going two and out and still pondering it when I got home, I checked Wikipedia and found that 52 also represents the number of white keys on a piano, the atomic number of tellurium, and the international direct dial code for calling Mexico.

Whatever it was, the stoplight turned green, the trunk closed, the Toyota jacked back down, and we drove our separate ways with my life having been made just a bit more surreal. Perhaps the owner of the car was helping to keep Austin weird or maybe I was just the random victim of a drive-by numbering.

Outlaw Country

March 18, 2006 • James Brush • 5 Comments

When I was growing up there were certain artists whose music was always in the background. Foremost among them was Willie Nelson, and frequently heard were Willie’s fellow Highwaymen: Waylon, Kris and Cash. I always dismissed this stuff as my parents’ music, but it wasn’t until I was on my own without any of their albums that I realized I liked it and that I missed hearing it.

The moment came when I was in college, still new to Austin and Texas, and I found myself sitting around playing guitars with a friend. The conversation turned to secret musical fixations and I admitted to Willie.

My friend, a lifelong Texan, informed me that Willie didn’t count.

“Why?”

“Because everyone likes Willie. They just don’t always admit it.” We took a break from Joy Division and the Grateful Dead, and he showed me how to play a few Willie tunes. I finally had to fess up to something else, but what he said was spot on.

I’ve realized over the years that I can’t stand Nashville country, which sounds to me like it’s in, shall we say, its hair metal phase, but I do like the old outlaw country guys: Willie, Waylon, Kris, Cash, Jerry Jeff as well as some of the new country that comes out of Austin. It’s simple, nonpretentious music with a kind of hard-edged honesty and dark sense of humor that lends it a quality similar to old school punk or gangsta rap.

This all surfaces because of two events. Last week I saw Walk the Line, which put me on a Johnny Cash thing, and tonight I’m going to go see Willie at the Backyard. This will be the second time I’ve seen him play. The first was one of those God-I-love-Austin kind of days.

Back in the early ’90s, word got out that Willie was going to play a free show on the south steps of the capitol building. It was a Sunday afternoon, I think, and I decided to check him out. I rode my bike down to the capitol and waited with the small crowd. Finally, Willie came out and stood in front of the single microphone. He had no band; it was just him and Trigger, all beat up and full of holes.

He played a solo acoustic set that included many of his most famous tunes. I remember the weather was beautiful, the crowd was happy, and Willie seemed so pleased to just be making music for a small group of fans in his home city. Afterwards, he stayed up on stage while people passed him boots, belts, LPs, guitars, and posters to sign. He joked with the audience and didn’t leave until he’d signed everything that anybody wanted signed.

I’ve always associated Willie with Austin and as much as I love this town, it’s surprising that I’ve never made it to a real Willie show so I’m looking forward to tonight. Despite the forecast for rain, I’ll be there. After all, what would Willie do?