The Joy of Small Town Newspaper Police Reports

3:02 p.m. A Kalispell resident called police because a man named Joel turned off his phone, and, according to the resident, Joel’s not allowed to do that.

You Know, As a Surfer, I Want to Do All I Can for the Environment, But Would You Scientific Fellows Please Quit Fibbing?

Investigation finds Swedish scientists committed scientific misconduct: Probe centered on controversial paper that claimed microplastic pollution harms fish.

I mean, it's embarrassing and just weakens your case.

Of Trains and Childhood

In 1965, The New York Times wrote that Joshua Lionel Cowen had made the Lionel name “the third wing of Christmas, along with the evergreen tree and Santa Claus.” Even now, for many of us, a Christmas tree, however laden with colored lights, however lavishly tinseled, seems incomplete without an 027 model train running beneath it on a circle of steel track.

The Need for the Mysterious

This is an intoxicating form of anti-intellectualism that parades as hard-headed rationalism. It is a close cousin to Christian Fundamentalism since both seek to reduce complex things to a simple, declaratory, unambiguous “fact.” Each of these intellectual habits seeks something certain, unambiguous, so as to get the intellectual assurance that eliminates the need for a spiritual journey that would encounter more mysteries than uncover certain answers.

Ideological Messaging in the 21st Century

I've become fascinated of late as to how often I am sent via e-mail "sermon topic suggestions" from obtusely named pseudo-Christian groups that read suspiciously like talking points from the Democratic National Committee.  It's a remarkable way of getting out one's secular messaging through a non-traditional medium.  Since many of my colleagues now see themselves more as social justice warriors than simple parish priests, this serves their needs, too.

In fact, at our recent diocesan convention, I was able to tell which of my colleagues receive the same information when at least two stood up to speak and employed the same statements, jargon, and pseudo-academic word salad as I have received in recent weeks.

I was also interested that something I was sent by the pseuds on Monday is almost exactly, word for word, what was said in a public statement by a New York senator on Tuesday.  That's some real message discipline.  That I can sit at a clergy meeting and listen to colleagues openly discuss their "hatred", "loathing", and "contempt" for the current occupant of the White House, and then shift to earnestly discussing our need to "respect the dignity of every human being" shows how complete the ideological programming has become.  Man, that Orwell was on to something, wasn't he?

For the record, I work for Jesus, not the Democrats, Republicans, or any other collection of secular ideologues.  To do otherwise is to dismiss about half of one's fellow citizenry, and that seems short-sighted and contrary to the challenging Gospel message.

Anyway, much of what I'm sent is also reflected in the statements and jokes of the late night clowns.  In fact, sometimes it's as if they all have the exact same writers.  So, I was interested in one clown's take on recent decisions and how closely it reflected a recent ideological e-mail I was sent; one that I noted particularly as it was grossly inaccurate.

Since this is from the Washington Post, it appears I wasn't the only one to notice.

Fact-checking Jimmy Kimmel on CHIP funding

Not One of Which is in the United States, Despite What is Often Taught in Schools

10 rivers are responsible for 90% of the plastic in the ocean

This is Judged "Acccurate" by The Coracle Foundation

Turning childhood into a mental illness: The therapy industry is in danger of screwing up our kids.

The growing trend for redefining the problems of life as issues of mental health has had a particularly pernicious effect on children and child development. Since the late 1970s, there has been a creeping tendency to portray children as uniquely vulnerable to emotional damage. Before then, it was commonly believed that children could recover their strength and resilience in the aftermath of an emotionally difficult experience. But in the late 20th century, in line with the expanding medicalisation of everyday life, society became preoccupied with the apparent fragility of childhood.

Archaeological News

10 Secrets Of Drone Archaeology

What, Indeed?

While news serves a purpose, is it possible that, as Merton argues, the franticness of modern life and the great uncertainties arising from a hyper-competitive, global economy are further aggravated by obsessing over the perpetual clashes of the chattering class? Our nation is divided, there is no doubt about it. But what would happen if more of us turned off the TV and the radio, if we quit or dialed-back social media, and used our time instead to “root our being”, discern wisdom, and find peace?

Ouf, Je Suis Fatiguee

Traveling today and also recovering from one of those weeks when I realize that I'm no longer in my thirties.

Also, it appears that one of our world's more excitable types has blown pieces off of himself somewhere in the subway system, thus delaying today's travels.  We'll be back shortly, or as soon as we're able to find an internet connection.

Spoof, Right?

Sexual Revolution Working Out Great, Reports Nation Full Of Perverts

According to the country with dozens of famous celebrities, television pundits, and politicians currently embroiled in sexual scandals, the sexual revolution was a necessary period that allowed the nation to throw off the outdated, restricted shackles of religion and biblical morality.

“I really pity all those backward parts of the world that haven’t had the privilege of experiencing their own sexual revolution,” one politician said as he checked Twitter to see if his own personal indiscretions had been revealed yet. “One day, they’ll be enlightened too.”

An Obituary of Note

Bruce Brown, longtime surf filmmaker and director of the seminal “Endless Summer” just passed at 80 years old

He was the creator of the documentary that significantly altered or ruined my life, depending on whom you ask.

Brown was profiled in The Coracle a couple of years ago.

Occult Fun!

I'm Really Glad I'm Elderly and Married

The Warlock Hunt: The #MeToo moment has now morphed into a moral panic that poses as much danger to women as it does to men.

Archaeological News

Archaeologists discover two ancient tombs in Egypt

There is always more out there; there is always more to learn.

The Joy of Small Town Police Reports

12:28 p.m. A man was wandering around Columbia Falls with a pitchfork.

Considering this is farm country, I'm not sure what the problem might be.

Tales from Our Post-Christian Society

Atlanta Targets Good Samaritans Sharing Food with Homeless

Feed yourself in a public park. Feed the pigeons and the squirrels there, too. Whatever you do, though, don't share your food with a hungry person.

Zora Arkus-Duntov

"This is the most beautiful car I have ever seen." 

When I was a lay brother at an Episcopal Church monastery, and the junior member of the order, I would be expected to fulfill a variety of obtuse, non-traditional responsibilities.  For example, while I did maintain the altar and its various vessels and appointments, I would also have to re-shingle the tool shed, clean the bishop's guest room on the occasions when he had stayed out too late playing poker and didn't want to return home just yet, extract the honey from the hives that supplied the product sold at our roadside stand, and clear the spiders and their webs from the cloister.  [The other monks were afraid of spiders.] I would also have to maintain the monastery's automobiles, which was the best part of the job.

Monasteries, like churches, receive a variety of in-kind donations, some of which are actually useful.  I've never served in a church that didn't have a closet filled with such things as obsolete fax machines and computers, or didn't have a piano with a cracked soundboard sitting about gathering dust.  I credit our Father Superior with making sure that, if we were to receive an in-kind donation, it wasn't someone's junk being used to pad their tax deductions, but something that would actually be useful to the order.  This meant our stereo system in the monastic enclosure was primo, as was our riding mower and our supermarket account.

Best of all, we had been given a twelve-passenger Dodge van, an Oldsmobile Ciera, a Volvo 240, and the Father Superior's pride and joy, a Mercedes saloon [or, in American, a sedan].  My job was to keep the vehicles clean inside and out, change the oil, rotate the tires, and arrange for repairs when necessary.  [They knew I had once worked at a GMC Truck garage.]  While I had grown up in a Chevy and Ford family, with all car needs met by the corner "filling station", it was a completely different experience when taking the Superior's Mercedes to the dealership's garage.

Instead of Gomer and Goober, I had to deal with Hans and Ignaz.  Rather than oil-stained shirts with their Teutonic names embroidered above the pocket, they wore lab coats.  Stain-free lab coats, like the one worn by the guy who had taken out my tonsils.  They reminded me of the rocket scientists who worked at NASA with my Dad and, also like those rocket scientists, with German accents that were nearly impenetrable.  They regarded any owner/driver with apparent disdain, as if it were personally insulting to them that someone had allowed a fine machine to be less-than-perfect.

One day while I was there, waiting in the well-appointed ante-room with its better-than-gas-station quality coffee on offer [this was in the days before Keurig machines and Starbuck's burned muck]  and with portraits of the great Mercedes cars and drivers decorating the walls, I heard a startling exclamation.

"Vas ist das?!"

Hans [or maybe it was Ignaz] had just witnessed an abomination.  He was joined milliseconds later by Ignaz [or maybe it was Hans] who also stared at this wonder with bulging eyes and slack mouth.  He, too, repeated, "Vas ist das?!"

You see, someone had the temerity to bring before them a Mercedes-Benz roadster, the two-seat convertible, that had been...altered.  The owner, a young executive with the dominant local industry, had outfitted his otherwise perfect car with, Gott mit uns, "mag wheels".  That is, jazzy wheel covers that didn't match the stately dignity of the rest of the car.  They would have looked more at home on a candy-coated, lowered 1956 Chevy.  It was so upsetting that Hans [again, maybe Ignaz] refused to work on the vehicle.

I suspect that a similar exclamation was made by Zora Arkus-Duntov the first time he saw a particular car with its hood open.  The car was the showpiece of General Motors' Motorama auto show of 1953, held in New York City.  Made from that new material, fiberglass, and adorned with a bright perma-white finish, the Chevrolet Corvette was intended as a "concept car", a one-off product designed to bring in crowds to look at the more pedestrian sedans and station wagons that they would wind up buying.  Instead, it was so wildly popular that even the execs at GM realized they were on to something.

Arkus-Duntov, while recognizing the beauty of the car, also noticed its fatal marketing flaw.  Despite that it was the first real American sports car [some claim it still is], its exterior beauty was not matched by the most important part of a sports car's being.  It's engine was a pathetically under-powered 235 cubic inch, in-line six cylinder.

Arkus-Duntov knew something of engines and cars.  He had already, in his native Germany, been a motorcycle racer, automobile racer, engineering student, and the author of several important papers examining issues of automotive engine design.  So revered are engineers in German culture that he was considered glamorous enough to have married a popular dancer who had worked in the Folies Bergère.  When World War II began, Arkus-Duntov and his wife being Jews, knew enough to get out of Germany.  He did so by joining the French air force along with his brother, while his wife, Elfi, moved to Paris.

They had little chance to engage in dog fights, as the French surrendered shortly afterwards.  With their countrymen now rapidly invading the rest of France, Arkus-Duntov and his brother hid in a...well...a house that supported what is certainly the oldest profession, while Elfi raced their MG roadster ahead of the invading panzers, meeting the Arkus-Duntov siblings and fleeing to the ports of Portugal and, ultimately, a ship to New York just in the nick of time.  [I'm trying to imagine the conversation upon their reunion.  "You were hiding...where?"]

The Arkus-Duntov brothers started a successful business in New York, eventually becoming the manufacturers of the aluminum overhead valve combustion chamber used on what is easily regarded as the best auto engine of the era, the Ford V8 flathead.  [Still the engine of choice for hot-rodders.]

So, imagine what it was like, not long after the Motorama, for the chief engineer of Chevrolet to receive a letter from Arkus-Duntov offering his services in any way that General Motors saw fit, as long as it included making the Corvette into a true sports car.  Not only was the car to be attractive and functional, but it was to be powerful enough to give an enthusiast a thrill and compete against the European marques in continental road racing.  They said "yes", obviously.  So, Zora Arkus-Duntov, late of the race tracks of Europe, author of numerous, groundbreaking studies in engineering, French air force hero [almost], and the enabler of the single best engine yet in existence, became an assistant engineer in Detroit at the age of 44.

The pre-Arkus-Duntov Corvette

And the initial Arkus-Duntov version

Not caring about his status, and completely committed to this new project, Arkus-Duntov wrote the seminal paper in American sports and muscle car development, "Thoughts Pertaining to Youth, Hot-Rodders, and Chevrolet".  In it, he established the philosophy of the Corvette, almost a theology, actually, that determined everything from construction to appearance to marketing.  Not only was the Corvette to be a pretty car, albeit one with a massively powerful engine, and not only was it to be a popular plaything of gearheads, but it would challenge in both showroom and track the products of Porsche, Ferrari, and Mercedes.

Corvettes on the track

General Motor's reaction to his all-encompassing philosophy was to grant him a new position within the corporation: Director of High Performance.  Not satisfied with simply having a desk job, Arkus-Duntov fitted a new version of a small block V8 in the Corvette and raced it himself in the Pikes Peak climbing competition, setting a record for a street vehicle.  He also took the Corvette to Daytona Beach and drove it to a speed record of 150 miles per hour, an unheard of figure in 1956.  In between racing adventures, Arkus-Duntov found the time to design a fuel-injected engine and disc brakes, both firsts on mass-produced automobiles.

The famous and extremely innovative wrap-around split window 1963 version,
continuing Arkus-Duntov's record of innovation

While Arkus-Duntov would retire in 1975, indelibly recognized as the "Father of the Corvette" and the creator of its lasting brand and image, he maintained his participation in the marketing of the car as he was very much in demand at auto shows and other gatherings of gearheads.  Even into his eighties, he continued to push the Corvette as the one vehicle in the GM stable that represented the newest and most innovative engineering and would perpetually stir the heart and imagination of any car enthusiast.

The 1975, the last to be directly supervised by Arkus-Duntov

Zora Arkus-Duntov would die in Detroit at the age of 86, not too many weeks after an appearance at a trade show where he was the keynote speaker.  His ashes would be interred at the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky.  There are a number of magazine articles and some books about Arkus-Duntov and the Corvette, and a particularly important obituary written by George Will for The Washington Post that sums up his contribution not just to the development of a particular car, but of the can-do attitude of the post-WWII United States.

As Will writes: " Zora Arkus-Duntov died the other day in Detroit at 86. And if, 700 words from now, you do not mourn his passing, you are not a good American."   Thus, yet another immigrant used his vision and talent to contribute to the multi-faceted and ever-protean experience that is America.

Before People Get Too Hysterical about the Jerusalem Decision...

From USA Today:

When running for president 25 years ago, Bill Clinton promised to “support Jerusalem as the capital of the state of Israel.” President George W. Bush criticized Clinton for not following up on that commitment, but then W failed to make good on his too. During Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, he stated that, “we should move our embassy to Jerusalem” but never recognized the city as the capital once he was elected.

Update: At 5:32 p.m. on June 5, 2017, 90 senators, including many currently criticizing yesterday's action, voted to reaffirm Jerusalem's status as Israel's capital.  It's not about principle, it's just about party.  Choose your heroes wisely, kids.

More Needlehooks

“I just want to say that, predisposed as I am to think of Weinstein as an evil power-abuser, I don’t accept the portrayal of all of his facilitators as machine parts. He couldn’t have built a machine out of people. They had to make themselves complicit. An individual can go wrong in many ways (including through mental illness or substance abuse as well as through evil), and those who form relationships and do business are morally responsible for noticing such a person in their midst and not becoming part of his ‘machine.’ I’m going to be tough on the unwitting as well as the witting. If this really is The Reckoning, let’s look at the whole picture.”