Lenten Wave #8

"A generous person will be enriched, and one who gives water will get water." - Proverbs 11:25

From Today's University and College Bribery Scandal

This about sums it up:

How Every Level of Government Spends Our Money

Open the Books, a website that displays, in real time, all money spent and on what or whom from the local to the federal levels.

Needlehooks

Progressives Against Progress: The rise of environmentalism poisoned liberals’ historical optimism.

The Continued Devolution of the College Degree

BOSTON – Thirty-three affluent parents, headlined by famous actresses and CEOs, nine college coaches and others were charged Tuesday in the nation's largest-ever college admissions bribery case that includes allegations of cheating on college-entrance exams and illegal payments to college coaches. 

Naturally, Yale [aka "The Bughouse*"] is included.

*So nicknamed because of what was once, but no longer, the state of the visitors' locker room at the Yale Bowl.

Surprisingly Good Facts, as It Turns Out

Eight surprising facts about getting old in America

Lenten Wave #7

"Water is also one of the four elements, the most beautiful of God's creations. It is both wet and cold, heavy, and with a tendency to descend, and flows with great readiness. It is this the Holy Scripture has in view when it says, "And the darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." Water, then, is the most beautiful element and rich in usefulness, and purifies from all filth, and not only from the filth of the body but from that of the soul, if it should have received the grace of the Spirit."  -John of Damascus

Lenten Wave #6

"The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them." - Thomas Merton

Evil Never Looks Evil

Moral Zealotry and the Seductive Nature of Evil

Super Endorsed

As Daylight Saving Looms, Suppose We Spring Forward, and Never Fall Back?

Lenten Wave #5

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." - Marcel Proust

Lenten Wave #4

"Christians have children, in great part, in order to be able to tell our children the story. Fortunately for us, children love stories. It is our baptismal responsibility to tell this story to our young, to live it before them, to take time to be parents in a world that (though intent on blowing itself to bits) is God’s creation (a fact we would not know without this story). We have children as a witness that the future is not left up to us and that life, even in a threatening world, is worth living—and not because “Children are the hope of the future,” but because God is the hope of the future."

- Hauerwas, Stanley (1989-10-01). Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony (p. 60). Abingdon Press.

The Coracle's Saturday Literary Corner: Only Three?

Three Writing Rules to Disregard

Lenten Wave #3

"When sacrifice is present and respected, life redeems itself...." - Roger Scruton

Gerry Lopez

“Okay...I guess this is a good day to die!" - Gerry Lopez, when first being towed offshore to ride a mega-wave.

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Bear with me, but I find a lot of similarity in the histories of surfing and Christianity.

Both began in simplicity and, over time, became too complicated to carry their own weight. Christianity was a simple movement realized from person to person and nimble in its spiritual expression, especially when compared to the monolithic religions of the era. Surfing was the avocation of people young and old riding wooden boards on unnamed beaches that weren't always the most accessible.

By the fourth century, Christianity had become the "official" religion of the Roman Empire and, while that enabled its rapid spread across the Western world, it became intertwined with empires, kingdoms, and governments to the point that the spiritual and the venal were inseparable.

Surfing, in the days of the wahines, groms, hodaddies, and kooks was a relaxed and uncommon pursuit for a variety of age groups.  In the 1950's, World War II and Korean War veterans, in particular, found it a pleasant diversion from the nightmares caused by long-resolved battles*.  As it became popular in general culture, and the source of a lot of attention from adolescents with money to spend, it naturally attracted the marketers who created the monster known as the "surf lifestyle".  Nowadays a 14-year-old with a natural affinity for reading waves and balancing on a board can become the multi-millionaire spokesman for a power drink company.

Both Christianity and surfing suffered from this growth and both are now entering a post-institutional phase.  While there are a lot of people attempting to lure Christendom back to its effective and simple days of just being Christianity, surfing is still making way too much money for those in charge of merchandising and contests for there to be a general recognition of the effect of the loss of simplicity. However, a growing number of young surfers are attempting to reclaim those days when it was the surf and not the sponsorship where watermen found satisfaction.

The man himself.

And, in that quest, they tend to turn for inspiration to the guy known as Mr. Pipeline.

Once in Huntington Beach, I was in the "green room".  Just that once.  It doesn't happen on the east coast really, so it was rather special.  The green room is that tube formed by a rolling wave in which good surfers in good surf can place themselves.  While mine was a good wave, I'm not that good of a surfer, so it was probably for only five seconds or so, but on my deathbed I will regard it as one of the best moments of my life.  I can't imagine what it's like regularly to abide in the room and, in sublime confidence and ability, reach out and touch that dynamic wall of water.

Gerry Lopez has been in the green room so often he should move an easy chair in there.  That really shouldn't be a surprise, given the milieu into which he was raised.  Lopez was born in Honolulu in 1948, educated at the prestigious Punahou School [which, through the years, also counted the dance coach Cari Ann Inaba, the politician Barack Obama, the discoverer of Machu Picchu, Hiram Bingham, pro golfer Michelle Wie, Chinese president Sun Yet Sen, and Olympian and actor Buster Crabbe among its students] which used to stress development of both body and mind.  Lopez extended his education when, at the age of 14, he became the Hawaiian State Surfing Champion.

Nowadays, he would be the toast of every surf beach in the world and a fair number of advertising agencies, too; probably with his photo of the cover of a variety of surfing periodicals.  But, in 1962, he was given a simple trophy in a makeshift ceremony and left to his own devices.  He would, as he matured, develop a recognizable style that, to those who have never surfed, appeared casual and offhand, but was anything but; and he would challenge greater and greater waves.

Lopez and his friends started to experiment with the enormous waves of Oahu's North Shore around the time that surfboard design was changing from the rather simple solid wood boards to those made of fiberglass with channels, subtle curving known as foil and rocker, and downrailers.  The new design made even the most daunting waves accessible.

It's more complicated than you thought, isn't it?

Lopez dedicated himself to what came to be known in lore and legend as the "Banzai Pipeline", a surf break in the reef system that produced massive waves that were beyond the technological capacity of the original surfboard.  From a familiar online source:

Pipeline is notorious for huge waves which break in shallow water just above a sharp and cavernous reef, forming large, hollow, thick curls of water that surfers can tube ride. There are three reefs at Pipeline in progressively deeper water further out to sea that activate according to the increasing size of approaching ocean swells.

In other words, if either the surfer or his/her equipment is not up to it, a rider will be severely injured or killed in rather short order.  In the 1960's, Gerry Lopez took a new board design into the surf at Sunset Beach Park and rode the tubes over and over again.  By his 25th birthday he was recognized as the best tube-rider in the world and earned the nickname "Mr. Pipeline".  A few years later, the annual competition on the North Shore was re-named the Gerry Lopez Pipeline Masters.

It's probably better to simply stand on the beach and admire them rather than get crushed.

There are many athletes who have become champions in their field and then, as age or injury remove them from competition, retire and find pursuits that are fulfilling or, at the very least, keep them mostly out of jail.  Shortly after being recognized as the champion he was, Lopez, while still competing, made a move into the next phase of the sport.  Using his intimate knowledge of what worked on a surfboard and what didn't, he began to design and market his own line of surfboards, memorable for their lighting bolt design.

By the time I had enough money to buy a proper surfboard, Lopez boards were the ones to have. Unfortunately, by then Lopez boards were too expensive even for those of us who thought we had enough money.  Since Mr. Pipeline knew what it was like to ride a three-story wave, these shaped bits of fiberglass and foam were renowned for their stability and speed.  Also, as longboards gave way to shortboards during the 1980's and 90's, enabling surfers to spin, wheel, and climb on the waves as if they were on skateboards, it was the Lopez design that served as the foundation for what was to come.

In other words, this:

Became this:

With his fame within the sport, and his fortune made from his surfboards, Lopez continued to give to the community, enabling scholarships, study programs, and surf competitions.  And, like his contemporary in the martial arts world, Bruce Lee, he discovered lucrative and rewarding work in Hollywood, teaching actors how to look authentic on a surfboard.  He would even take roles in films from time to time.

However, as with any successful venture, Lopez would see his sport become more and more commercialized and complicated.  Somewhere, it had lost its loopy, easy-going fun and become just another over-serious mega-business.  At the nadir of this transformation, Mr. Pipeline, the super-surfer from the North Shore of Hawaii, left the coast, moved to Oregon, and became...a snowboarder.  Yeah, I know.

Now in his mid-60's, Lopez has come to be considered the "Yoda" of surfing.  This summer, in my eccentric role as a chaplain to the Christian Surfers organization, I noticed that Lopez's autobiography, Surf Is Where You Find It, was the second most popular book read on the beach in between wave sets.  [Given the organization, it should come as no surprise that the most popular was The Holy Bible, King James Version.]  When asked about it, the young people confessed a fascination for those early "Gidget" days of surfing, where it was less a sport and more a community-building activity with a mutualized support structure.  It wasn't so much about trying to out-do one another on a wave [although a natural sense of competition is always present] as it was celebrating the joys of a common activity, one that tended to obviate the constraining social structure of its time.  

Remarkably, at a time when young Christians are attempting to do the same with their faith, young surfers are trying to find that meaningful center in their pursuit; the center that has been obscured by much less important concerns.  Perhaps both surfers and Christians should take heed of Lopez's wisdom, "Life is an adventure, and when we see it as such it becomes more fun and enjoyable and less of a burden and toil."   If faith is life, then that sagacity is doubly true.

[*I'll bet that you never realized surfing was once an effective treatment for what's now called Post-Traumatic Stress Reaction.]

Thursday's Place: Don the Beachcomber's

Don the Beachcomber's
Huntington Beach, California

In both the creation of "tiki culture" and the support of the local, middle-class surf community, this week's place has been irreplaceable.  Actually, we'll see about that, as Don's closed last year; although the owners assure the public that it will be opened, elsewhere, again.

When your name is Ernie Gantt and you're from some dough-pop town in eastern Texas where there isn't much at all to do and nothing going on, you grow up yearning for a world of adventures in exotic locales.  When you're old enough to leave home, the best way to realize those dreams in 1926 is to become a merchant seaman and sail off to those realms of exotica.

No one really knows what happened during Gantt's five years in the South Seas, but when he found himself beached and working as a bartender in Hollywood, he began to build his personal legend around his merchant experiences, however fanciful they may have been.  When he opened his own bar he began his metamorphosis from Ernie Gantt to Donn Beach, adventurer and world traveler.  To facilitate this transformation, he jammed any kind of nautical or tropical flotsam and jetsam he could find on the junk market into his bar, now named Don the Beachcomber's, and began his real adventures.

It wasn't just the tropical ambiance that his customers enjoyed, it was also Gantt's Beach's talent for mixing drinks; a talent that was truly remarkable.  As he was a small businessman always struggling to make payroll, he relied on recipes made from rum, which was in those immediate post-prohibition days the cheapest booze on the market.  The rum also complimented his decor.  From that base he patented around thirty distinct concoctions.

Drink after drink was invented by Beach, including favorites such as the Navy Grog, the Cobra's Fang, and the classic Zombie.  Between the drinks and the rattan stools and the ferns, not to mention the first examples of "Chinese cuisine" to be served in the United States, Beach created the tiki bar in that windowless and dark saloon.  When celebrities [Bogart, Bacall, Howard Hughes, Erroll Flynn, Clark Gable, Bing Crosby, David Niven, Ernest Hemingway, etc.] discovered the place, Beach was able to expand from the original location to a chain of Don the Beachcomber's that ranged from L.A. County to West Lafayette, Indiana.

While in my New York years I was familiar with Beach's biggest competitor, Trader Vic's, from its location at the Plaza Hotel, I didn't discover what was the last remaining Don the Beachcomber's in Huntington Beach until a furtive, four-day surf trip to SoCal about a decade ago.  On the final night, my surf buddies suggested dinner at the quintessential tiki bar and it was perfect.  Not only was it still a place that served over-sweetened "Chinese" food and tiki drinks, but we were entertained by a collection of Polynesian musicians and hula girls.  The indoor waterfall was particularly splendid, as were the tales told by the local surf bum habitues.  

As Huntington Beach is known colloquially as "Surf City", and as surfers on both coasts are as appreciative of irony as the next person, Don's was a pleasant hang-out for the middle-class and wealthier shredders.  Well, until the local taxes worked their inevitable magic and it closed last year.

The final owners maintain a lively Facebook page and website, however, and the big fish sign is still in place on the Pacific Coast Highway, just waiting for someone else to come along and resurrect that tiki god one more time.

Lenten Wave #2

" … the world is a work of art, set before all for contemplation, so that through it the wisdom of Him who created it should be known …"  — St. Basil

Lenten Wave #1

Acknowledging the old surfing expression that a surfer learns something from every wave, big or small, junky or sublime, we again offer during this Lenten season a quotation to serve as an aid in daily meditation.  If used so, one may learn something from every quote.

Today's quotation is from Alan Watts, who was, before he become the premier apologist of Eastern religion in the United States, an Episcopal priest:

"Religion is not a department of life; it is something that enters into the whole of it."

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