Wednesday, December 31, 2014
Tuesday, December 30, 2014
Monday, December 29, 2014
Sunday, December 28, 2014
Saturday, December 27, 2014
So Long, Dad
His family, my family, has been in this country since before it was a country. The Clements are older than the Declaration of Independence; older than the mass migration of the 18th century. We are as old as the soil that fills the land from the Appalachian Plateau to the Till Plains.
My father was born in the middle of central Ohio farmland, a life so simple and rural that in the summer he rarely wore shoes, where he worked a variety of jobs aiding his family as a dutiful eldest child of his generation would, even helping to raise his sister and brother. He was a spectacular student, the first Clements to go to college, as equally adept at mathematics, his favorite subject, as he was in grammar and usage. [He was the proofreader for my dissertation in theology.]
He served as a sergeant in the US Army during the Korean War, then as a high school and college teacher. He showed me how to frame a house and replace a roof. He took us with him those summers when he worked on his graduate degree and, in 1966 when he won a Jennings Scholarship, withdrew me from school so that I could accompany him to Chicago, Washington D.C., Boston, and New York. When he consulted with NASA, he took me with him to see a computer that was large enough to fill a room.
My grandfather, a carpenter, once told me how proud he was that his son was addressed at work as "Mr. Clements".
He showed remarkable patience with his son, even during the obstreperous years. When the son told him he wanted to be a teacher, he smiled. When the son told him he wanted to be a priest, he smiled some more.
He prayed with more sincerity than anyone I have ever known. I think he read a book a day and, when he wasn't doing that, would work out complicated mathematical puzzles. I have served four schools, a college, and a university, and I can objectively state that he is the best math teacher that I've ever seen.
His favorite hymn was #412, I think mainly because of this verse:
Classrooms and labs, loud boiling test tubes,
sing to the Lord a new song!
Athlete and band, loud cheering people,
sing to the Lord a new song!
While I didn't inherit his facility with equations, I did receive his sense of humor. In times easy and hard, that's made all of the difference.
Friday, December 26, 2014
B. Traven
"The creative person should have no other biography than his works."
_________________________________________________________________________________There is a place of ephemeral legend in Mexico, known in Spanish as "El Camino", that doesn't exist on any map, save those written in the hearts of those who yearn. It refers to the experience of outsiders who come to the southern states to find...well, either something or nothing, depending on their desire, and become lost within the quest. It has claimed many people, men and women, through the years. There have been explorers, of course, who have worked their way through the jungles and beaches of Mexico; there have been poets, artists, and any number of musicians. J. Frank Dobie, Ambrose Bierce, William Cullen Bryant, William Burroughs, Jack London, Katherine Anne Porter, Edna Ferber, Jack Kerouac, Hart Crane, and Ken Kesey offhand come to mind as just a few of the gringos and gringas who have, one way or another, hiked the mythical El Camino. Personally, I've known a number of surfers who have looked for oblivion in the Meso-American waves.
During the 1920's and 30's a series of riveting novels, set mostly in Mexico and mostly about the spiritual experience of El Camino, had been best-sellers in Europe. Their author, known only as B. Traven, had remained aloof from any sort of publicity. He lived somewhere in Mexico, no one really knew where, and wrote in German, with his publisher translating his works into the various languages of his continental audience.
In 1946, the filmmaker John Huston began his walk of El Camino. Having spent several years as the ne'er do well son of a recognizable and bankable stage and movie actor, Huston had been a boxer, drinker, flunky, go-fer, writer, and general dogsbody in the film industry until, to quote from Steely Dan, "he crossed a diamond with a pearl" and wound up writing the screenplay for and directing "The Maltese Falcon", a critical and box office hit that earned serious money for his studio, made a leading man out of Humphrey Bogart, and created the entire genre of film noir.
The only problem with being a success in a world of transient fame was that one was only popular until the next big movie came along. This is why Huston was sitting in a humid café in Mexico City waiting to meet a man who did not exist.
Having lived and traveled freely in Europe and familiar with the popularity of Traven's work, Huston was particularly interested in Traven's 1927 novel, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, especially as it was the first and only Traven book translated and marketed in the United States at that time. That the novel was an American best-seller and a terrific story convinced Huston that it should be translated to the screen. Before he could begin to do so, however, the whole world was distracted with World War II.
When Huston returned to civilian life after directing documentaries for the War Department, he again returned to his Sierra Madre project. His first item of business was receiving the author's permission to use his novel, something that was trickier than it ordinarily would have been since no one was really sure of Traven's whereabouts or true identity. Still, Huston was not one to be daunted and he began a near Quixotic quest to contact the author and receive his permission.
So it was that Huston found himself waiting for Traven to join him for a drink or three. However, instead of Traven, a man introducing himself as Hal Croves turned up, explaining that he was serving as Traven's representative and had the power of attorney necessary to complete their contractual negotiations. While Huston initially suspected the Croves was Traven, he was willing to indulge him in order to complete the film. The meeting went well and the two met again in Acupulco to finalize the deal and appoint Croves as a "technical adviser" to the film. In 1947 the filming began on location in Mexico with Croves a familiar personality on the set. Once filming was completed, Hal Croves disappeared.
Tim Holt, Humphrey Bogart, and Walter Huston; and maybe Traven in the tent, who knows?
Of course, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, starring Humphrey Bogart and Huston's father, Walter, was a huge success; nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture of 1948 and earning Oscars for Best Screenplay Adaptation and Best Director for John Huston. With the popularity of the film and the reignited interest in the novels of Traven, reporters became interested in the elusive author.
However, the only connection to Traven was Hal Croves, who had not been seen for over a year. A particularly intrepid reporter for a Mexican newspaper began a search for Croves and, instead, found a fellow in Acapulco named Traven Torsvan, a recluse called "El Gringo" by his neighbors. His interest piqued, the reporter discovered through immigration paperwork that Torsvan was born in Chicago and had come to Mexico in 1930, eventually establishing residency. Using questionable techniques, mainly bribery and petty theft, the reporter established that El Gringo was receiving royalty checks in the name of "B. Traven" along with correspondence from other authors. When confronted by reporters, Torsvan, like Croves, disappeared.
A decade later, after interest in Traven and his true identity had cooled, the mysterious Hal Croves, in absentia from the human race since 1947, reappeared to serve as Traven's official representative in negotiation with European filmmakers interested in emulating Huston's success with Treasure. He would even attend film festivals in Europe, only to be peppered by reporters with questions about his true identity.
Croves would die in 1969. His widow, who had also been his secretary, would then reveal the true story of B. Traven. Senora Croves told the press that her late husband had, in fact, been a German anarchist named Ret Marut [aka Otto Feige]. In Germany, her husband published a successful novel, The Death Ship, and edited an anti-government magazine for which he was eventually arrested and sentenced to death. He managed to escape to Mexico, altering his identity to that of an American émigré.
During his years south of the border, in addition to writing over a dozen novels and short story anthologies, Feige/Marut/Torsvan/Croves/Traven also managed to work as a photographer for some expeditions into the Mexican jungles [from which the above photo, maybe of Traven, comes], as a translator and guide, and as an inn-keeper. It was a busy life for him, but since he may have been five or so people, perhaps not that unusual.
There is now an entire industry devoted to claiming to know Traven's real identity and disparaging other theories. It's rather entertaining but largely meaningless. As Traven noted, for a true artist it's about the work, not the biography. His story is yet another tale of those, like his characters, who travel El Camino in search of something that they never entirely find and leave behind a life more full of questions than answers.
B. Traven's novels are now all available in English and most are still in print; some are even available in e-book format.
Traven. Maybe.
Thursday, December 25, 2014
Monday, December 22, 2014
Saturday, December 20, 2014
The Liturgies Of Christmas
Christmas Eve:
5:00 pm Celebration of the Holy Eucharist on the occasion of the Feast of the Incarnation with Carols and Hymns.
10:00 pm Festal Celebration of the Holy Eucharist, also with Carols and Hymns.
Christmas Day:
10:00 am A Celebration of the Holy Eucharist, especially for those who prefer a quieter, meditative experience on the Feast of the Incarnation.
Friday, December 19, 2014
Everyone's An Energy Scold These Days
Be energy smart this holiday season. Follow these Marine Corps energy tips. #EnergyEthos pic.twitter.com/Rve1WWGOZa
— U.S. Marines (@USMC) December 19, 2014
Jacques Piccard
Piccard on the right with a naval officer, having just done something no one had ever done.
".... And as we were settling this final fathom, I saw a wonderful thing. Lying on the bottom just beneath us was some type of flatfish, resembling a sole, about 1 foot long and 6 inches across. Even as I saw him, his two round eyes on top of his head spied us - a monster of steel - invading his silent realm. Eyes? Why should he have eyes? Merely to see phosphorescence? The floodlight that bathed him was the first real light ever to enter this hadal realm. Here, in an instant, was the answer that biologists had asked for the decades. Could life exist in the greatest depths of the ocean? It could! And not only that, here apparently, was a true, bony teleost fish, not a primitive ray or elasmobranch. Yes, a highly evolved vertebrate, in time’s arrow very close to man himself. Slowly, extremely slowly, this flatfish swam away. Moving along the bottom, partly in the ooze and partly in the water, he disappeared into his night. Slowly too - perhaps everything is slow at the bottom of the sea - Walsh and I shook hands."
_______________________________________________________________________________
When I was nine years old and with my family on vacation in south Jersey, we took a day trip up north to Atlantic City. This was in the mid-1960's and pre-casino A.C. was filled with gloriously wondrous activities, especially on the famous Steel Pier. For example, for a quarter [pricey, I know] one could race slot cars on an enormous track with a number of other competitors, see a live musical act [The Supremes minus Diana Ross; Davey Jones minus The Monkees, Pat Boone plus his wife and daughters], a horse plunge into the ocean from a diving board with a helmet-clad bathing beauty on his back, or, for a nickel, watch a chicken in a lighted box dance "The Twist" to a Chuck Berry 45 while electric current pulsed through a wire under its feet. It really was nothing but non-stop amazement.
My favorite activity was also the most expensive, naturally. At the side of the Steel Pier was a blue and white diving bell affixed to the superstructure. For a dollar, we could stand in a long line, climb aboard, and sink like a rock 22 feet under the surface. The view was ordinary, of course, unless you're excited by discarded cans, carrion crabs, and muddy sand. But still, how many of us really got to travel in an actual submersible? Fortunately, it would also return to the surface. It was so amazing, none of my friends back in Ohio believed it existed.
One of the reasons that I was so determined to spend the equivalent of ten comic books worth of money on this ride is that I had written a report for my favorite elementary school teacher just a few months before on Jacques Piccard and his bathyscaphe Trieste, which had descended to unheard of depths in the Pacific Ocean. The descriptions of the adventure were still fresh in my imagination when I took that two-story plunge into the Atlantic.
The Trieste was merely one of many devices created by a remarkable Swiss family reaching back into the previous century. While it was used to plumb the depths of the sea, the bathyscaphe was actually based on the high altitude experiments of Auguste Piccard, Jacques' father and a physicist at the University of Brussels in the 1930's who decided to test his theories using a new type of pressurized balloon gondola of his own invention that would allow its occupants to reach high enough into the atmosphere that Piccard could study cosmic rays. Auguste would make 27 balloon journeys, eventually reaching the record height of over 27,000 feet, or one-third of the way into space.
During Auguste's work improving the pressurized balloon gondola, now with Jacques as his assistant, they realized that with some minor re-engineering the balloon gondola could be made into a submersible cabin. Using the same physics employed in gauging the buoyancy of a high-altitude balloon, the Piccards fashioned a pressurized sphere attached to a larger cylinder filled with heavy viscous liquids and weighted with simple iron shot. The first version of the bathyscaphe [from the Greek for "deep vessel"] was ready for its shakedown cruise in 1939 when world events delayed its development. After the war, the experiment fell to Jacques to complete, as his father now considered himself too old for such extracurricular adventures.
Jacques was born in 1922, had studied engineering, physics, and economics at the University of Geneva [where his father taught], served in the Free French Army during the war, and was working as a lecturer upon the war's conclusion. As he became more involved with his father's projects, he would leave teaching and dedicate his days to perfecting what would become the third and most famous of the Piccard bathyscaphes, the Trieste.
In 1953, the Trieste managed to descend to a record depth of over 10,000 feet [nearly 2 miles] into the Mediterranean Sea near Capri, but that wasn't enough for Jacques, who was now being recognized in the European press as a "hydronaut". He knew that the Trieste could go much, much deeper. However, such a bold venture required capital and, in the 1950's, the best place to find that revenue was in the United States.
Piccard went to the U.S. Navy with an offer to use the Trieste in their deep-submergence experiments. In those earlier, wilder days at the Defense Department, instead of simply renting the Trieste, the Navy bought it outright and appointed Piccard as its pilot/consultant. Training a Navy lieutenant, Don Walsh, in its operation, Piccard convinced the powers-that-be into making a bold attempt to sink the Trieste into the deepest known portion of the undersea floor.
On January 23, 1960, Piccard and Walsh began a five hour descent into the Marianas Trench in the southern Pacific. Their target, a valley labeled on undersea maps as the "Challenger Deep", was seven miles below, a depth that exerted 4348 pounds per square inch on the hull.
[As a helpful example to understand how much pressure this is, a stream of water leaking from a pinhole in the submersible's hull would, before the entire vehicle imploded, have the force necessary to cut through flesh and bone as efficiently as a high-intensity laser.]
While the goal of the mission was to prove the engineering superiority of the Trieste, a secondary, and rather staggering, result was also achieved. Until that time, it was assumed by marine biologists that no sea life existed at those depths due to the extreme pressure. But, as Piccard watched in fascination out his small, thick window, even the ocean deep held a rich variety of God's creatures.
After twenty minutes on the sea floor, Piccard noted that micro-fissures were beginning to develop in the Trieste's port window, so it was prudently decided to get the heck out of there. [He had been warned by "experts" not to include a window in the design, but c'mon....] It took three more hours to surface and, by the time they broke through the waves near their Navy escort ship, the entire study of ichthyology had been re-appraised. The only problem, said the scientific community, was that the Trieste was not equipped to take samples. Piccard decided to address this problem directly.
Piccard designed a replacement to the bathyscaphe, a mesoscaphe that was capable not only of collecting samples and traveling independently at a specified depth, but could also carry a larger crew. The first, the Auguste Piccard, was used to boost awareness of submersible technology and raise funds by ferrying paying passengers under the waters of Lake Geneva during the Swiss Exhibition of 1964. A second mesoscaphe was created under contract with Grumman Aircraft and named the Ben Franklin.
In 1969, carrying a crew of six, the Franklin would drift with the Gulf Stream for over four weeks. During that time, Piccard and the crew would study the current and also the psychological effects on half a dozen men living in tight quarters and engaged in dangerous activity. This latter study was of particular importance to NASA's Apollo space program. After being launched off the coast of Palm Beach, Florida, the Franklin would next surface 1500 miles away off of the coast of Nova Scotia.
[Interesting note: Robert Ballard, the discoverer of the wreck of the RMS Titanic and director of the Mystic Aquarium, would make his first underwater voyage as a crew member on board the Franklin.]
Piccard would continue his research until his death in 2008, winning a number of accolades and honors along the way. While originally disputed by the scientific community, the existence and deep-sea life was eventually proven and Piccard's observations ratified. His early research into ocean pollution and the results of coastal development served as the foundation for the scientific, rather than political, understanding of planetary changes. In so doing, he would found La Fondation pour l'étude des Mers et des Lacs, an organization that works with many of the surf and beach conservation organizations that this writer holds dear. Continuing in the tradition of his family, Jacques' son, Bertrand Piccard, completed the first non-stop circumnavigation in a balloon in 1999.
Jacques Piccard's two books, Seven Miles Down and The Sun Beneath The Sea are no longer in print but can be located for very reasonable prices through used book dealers. Libraries always seem to have copies of them about, too.
And what happened to the diving bell from the Steel Pier, you ask? It is currently beached and on display at the Atlantic City Aquarium.
My favorite activity was also the most expensive, naturally. At the side of the Steel Pier was a blue and white diving bell affixed to the superstructure. For a dollar, we could stand in a long line, climb aboard, and sink like a rock 22 feet under the surface. The view was ordinary, of course, unless you're excited by discarded cans, carrion crabs, and muddy sand. But still, how many of us really got to travel in an actual submersible? Fortunately, it would also return to the surface. It was so amazing, none of my friends back in Ohio believed it existed.
One of the reasons that I was so determined to spend the equivalent of ten comic books worth of money on this ride is that I had written a report for my favorite elementary school teacher just a few months before on Jacques Piccard and his bathyscaphe Trieste, which had descended to unheard of depths in the Pacific Ocean. The descriptions of the adventure were still fresh in my imagination when I took that two-story plunge into the Atlantic.
The Trieste was merely one of many devices created by a remarkable Swiss family reaching back into the previous century. While it was used to plumb the depths of the sea, the bathyscaphe was actually based on the high altitude experiments of Auguste Piccard, Jacques' father and a physicist at the University of Brussels in the 1930's who decided to test his theories using a new type of pressurized balloon gondola of his own invention that would allow its occupants to reach high enough into the atmosphere that Piccard could study cosmic rays. Auguste would make 27 balloon journeys, eventually reaching the record height of over 27,000 feet, or one-third of the way into space.
During Auguste's work improving the pressurized balloon gondola, now with Jacques as his assistant, they realized that with some minor re-engineering the balloon gondola could be made into a submersible cabin. Using the same physics employed in gauging the buoyancy of a high-altitude balloon, the Piccards fashioned a pressurized sphere attached to a larger cylinder filled with heavy viscous liquids and weighted with simple iron shot. The first version of the bathyscaphe [from the Greek for "deep vessel"] was ready for its shakedown cruise in 1939 when world events delayed its development. After the war, the experiment fell to Jacques to complete, as his father now considered himself too old for such extracurricular adventures.
Jacques was born in 1922, had studied engineering, physics, and economics at the University of Geneva [where his father taught], served in the Free French Army during the war, and was working as a lecturer upon the war's conclusion. As he became more involved with his father's projects, he would leave teaching and dedicate his days to perfecting what would become the third and most famous of the Piccard bathyscaphes, the Trieste.
As you can see, unlike a submarine, it was not self-propelled; able only to go either down or, thankfully, up.
In 1953, the Trieste managed to descend to a record depth of over 10,000 feet [nearly 2 miles] into the Mediterranean Sea near Capri, but that wasn't enough for Jacques, who was now being recognized in the European press as a "hydronaut". He knew that the Trieste could go much, much deeper. However, such a bold venture required capital and, in the 1950's, the best place to find that revenue was in the United States.
Piccard went to the U.S. Navy with an offer to use the Trieste in their deep-submergence experiments. In those earlier, wilder days at the Defense Department, instead of simply renting the Trieste, the Navy bought it outright and appointed Piccard as its pilot/consultant. Training a Navy lieutenant, Don Walsh, in its operation, Piccard convinced the powers-that-be into making a bold attempt to sink the Trieste into the deepest known portion of the undersea floor.
On January 23, 1960, Piccard and Walsh began a five hour descent into the Marianas Trench in the southern Pacific. Their target, a valley labeled on undersea maps as the "Challenger Deep", was seven miles below, a depth that exerted 4348 pounds per square inch on the hull.
[As a helpful example to understand how much pressure this is, a stream of water leaking from a pinhole in the submersible's hull would, before the entire vehicle imploded, have the force necessary to cut through flesh and bone as efficiently as a high-intensity laser.]
Not exactly roomy, either.
While the goal of the mission was to prove the engineering superiority of the Trieste, a secondary, and rather staggering, result was also achieved. Until that time, it was assumed by marine biologists that no sea life existed at those depths due to the extreme pressure. But, as Piccard watched in fascination out his small, thick window, even the ocean deep held a rich variety of God's creatures.
Piccard designed a replacement to the bathyscaphe, a mesoscaphe that was capable not only of collecting samples and traveling independently at a specified depth, but could also carry a larger crew. The first, the Auguste Piccard, was used to boost awareness of submersible technology and raise funds by ferrying paying passengers under the waters of Lake Geneva during the Swiss Exhibition of 1964. A second mesoscaphe was created under contract with Grumman Aircraft and named the Ben Franklin.
This one had enough room for The Professor and Mary Ann, too.
In 1969, carrying a crew of six, the Franklin would drift with the Gulf Stream for over four weeks. During that time, Piccard and the crew would study the current and also the psychological effects on half a dozen men living in tight quarters and engaged in dangerous activity. This latter study was of particular importance to NASA's Apollo space program. After being launched off the coast of Palm Beach, Florida, the Franklin would next surface 1500 miles away off of the coast of Nova Scotia.
[Interesting note: Robert Ballard, the discoverer of the wreck of the RMS Titanic and director of the Mystic Aquarium, would make his first underwater voyage as a crew member on board the Franklin.]
Piccard would continue his research until his death in 2008, winning a number of accolades and honors along the way. While originally disputed by the scientific community, the existence and deep-sea life was eventually proven and Piccard's observations ratified. His early research into ocean pollution and the results of coastal development served as the foundation for the scientific, rather than political, understanding of planetary changes. In so doing, he would found La Fondation pour l'étude des Mers et des Lacs, an organization that works with many of the surf and beach conservation organizations that this writer holds dear. Continuing in the tradition of his family, Jacques' son, Bertrand Piccard, completed the first non-stop circumnavigation in a balloon in 1999.
Jacques Piccard's two books, Seven Miles Down and The Sun Beneath The Sea are no longer in print but can be located for very reasonable prices through used book dealers. Libraries always seem to have copies of them about, too.
And what happened to the diving bell from the Steel Pier, you ask? It is currently beached and on display at the Atlantic City Aquarium.
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