================================================================= 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. ==================================== 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/ ==================================== 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. ==================================== 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 ==================================== 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. ==================================== 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 (powers@ibm.net) or by mail (2012 Talloway Drive, Cary, NC USA 27511). Copyright Notice: Stuck In Traffic is published and copyrighted by Calvin Stacy Powers who reserves all rights. Individual articles are copyrighted by their respective authors. Unsigned articles are authored by Calvin Stacy Powers. Permission is granted to redistribute and republish Stuck In Traffic for noncommercial purposes as long as it is redistributed as a whole, in its entirety, including this copyright notice. 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