A baseball cracks off of George’s bat and he ambles to first base. The ball bounces off a tree in the infield and it’s foul. Disappointed he returns to the dugout nervously watching for snipers. We take our platoon into the forests of Verdun. But we are in the Pacific, an isolated atoll watching for enemy aircraft. We take some casualties and call on our walkie talkies with giant whip antennas for air support. But it doesn’t come. It is time for dinner.

ON PATROL WE WADE ACROSS a shallow stony creek. Minnows peeking at us from behind dark green slimy rocks. We see a break in the undergrowth ahead and there is a fenced compound full of screaming children dive bombing each other in the sloshing waters of Guy’s Pool. On a hill we see the enemy watching us furtively. Holding sticks and stones in their hands. We know we are not prepared to engage at this time and we duck into the protection of a cinderblock enclosure.

Later we hike, shoulders hunched down to avoid detection, near a fuel dump guarded by German Shepherds. We do not find our enemies so we turn back to our hideout right on the edge of a large refugee camp filled with recently returned war veterans and their families. We dare not share our suspicions with the residents of this camp but confer quietly among ourselves planning our next patrol and readying ourselves for a fight we know we will not win.

WITH SO MUCH OF OUR ARMORY damaged and out of service we have limited mobility and are reduced to using bicycles obtained from the refugees. Meanwhile we send patrols into uncharted enemy territory. They slip under a crumbling stone bridge hiking in the creek to avoid a barbed wire fence. Clearly the fight has not come to this place. There are trees and fields, domestic animals, the rare barn and farmhouse. But it is too far. We cannot leave for this place in the morning and return in time for lunch and so put off explorations for the time being.

Newsreels tell us of growing tensions and we look to the skies in fear of a new kind of military strike. School children practice by hiding under their desks and some of the refugees are building shelters under their backyards. There is no safety we know even deep in the forest we control but we go there anyway in the hope that we can do something that will help civilization survive.

Is it to keep us warm? To protect our heads and thinning hair from the sun?

I have puzzled over these questions and more during the long years I’ve been living west of the Missouri River. A cowboy hat is usually fairly stiff. Sometimes reinforced felt. Others a felt coated shell. Summer uniform accepts a just off-white straw version to keep the head cool. So what IS the purpose of a cowboy hat?

Before I attempt an answer allow me to digress just a bit. My spouse is a Montana girl and hails from a part of the state  where people DEFINITELY wear cowboy hats. She supports my wearing hats. But only one of my collection can seriously deserve the cowboy hat label and she just hates that one. However, much of what I know about the wearing of cowboy hats comes from my experience with THAT chapeau. Also I have gathered some intelligence from real Westerners who wear real cowboy hats.

What I offer here is by no means exhaustive but it’s a start. If anyone reading this has additions or wishes to argue any of my points, your comments are enthusiastically welcomed through the comment utility that follows this missive (please watch your language … this is a family blog).

1. People who wear cowboy hats be they cowboys or drilling rig supervisors are known to spend much of their working day out of doors. Weather here in the West trends toward fewer cloud-covered days and more sunny days. A cowboy hat, as well as the hats I wear, reduce one’s exposure to the sun.
2. In much of the West there isn’t a lot standing in the way of more than occasional robust gusts of wind. Wind can carry with it more than a little bit of dirt and dust. A cowboy hat can be pulled down the forehead to protect one’s eyes from a thorough sandblasting.
3. One aspect of the cowboy hat I’ve found curious is its shape. Turns out this is entirely an evolutionary process driven, I expect, by good old American entrepreneurism in an earlier time. While riding a horse or simply trying to stay stood up in a high gust, a cowboy hat is aerodynamically designed to funnel the wind in a way that keeps your hat mostly on your head. So if you examine the back of a cowboy hat, the bend back there keeps wind from getting underneath the hat giving it unwanted lift. The narrow opening in the front forces air along its curved sides also helping to keep the hat on your head.
4. Similar dynamics apply to snow and rain — the former more common than the latter. Rain in particular is likely to drip over the roll in the back and onto your rain slicker. 
5. Warmth. Cowboy hats worn in winter months (September through June) afford warmth to the head. But with the ears, not so much. One thus supplements with a scarf that runs under the cowboy hat, over the ears and secured beneath an overcoat. While this is a classic look, I tend to depart from cowboy hat protocol when temperatures drop below -19 F. In these more than occasional circumstances I will opt for wool cap equipped with ear, neck and face protection (useful in other applications … bank robberies for example). 
6. Fashion. As has been noted above, the cowboy hat begins as an essential element of western garb. But the cowboy hat has become an essential part of the westerner’s wardrobe. They can be very expensive and wearers are loathe to see one fly off the head and down a 2,000 foot drop-off. Even though The Lone Ranger has a bit of cord to keep his hat from flying away in the Texas heat, folks up this way are not similarly inclined. 

I am reminded this day of the topic explored herein. Out walking dogs at my sister-in-law’s central Wyoming ranch I became aware of a coming powerful windstorm. My first clue as I looked to the west was a rapidly approaching brown cloud. With no time to seek shelter I jammed my brimmed hat down my forehead, pressed my sunglasses to my nose and made my way back to the house staring at the ground where the wind was carving grooves into the soil. If I’d had the cowboy hat that my spouse dislikes I could have tested my assertions above. Despite my arguments about aerodynamics and what all I think chances were good that in this wind it would have been found in Rapid City, South Dakota.  

Norman Rockwell and The Saturday Evening Post capture this moment from another era in “The Homecoming.” The weary, bedraggled, young man standing there as his family explodes with joy.

In their desert camo carrying huge packs effortlessly man and woman or disguised as civilians with very short haircuts they are everywhere. Most are searching for their next flight. Some are meeting family under the bigtop that is Denver’s main terminal building. I see the family members as I rise out of the underground on escalator. Waving signs. WELCOME HOME FRED. Looking just like the people in the image above. I stop for a moment and watch them when the soldier in question makes his appearance. THERE HE IS someone shouts and he turns seeing their signs huddled so close together they look as though they are a single being … an Aspen grove.

For just a moment he stands there. No smile on his face. A few tears start running down his face as he realizes one part of his life is over and another is beginning. Then out of this collective leaps a young woman. Somehow she flies over the stainless steel barrier and is in his arms for an embrace that seems to have no end.

Those young people still wandering around out in the commuter terminal waiting for their flights to little towns in Nebraska, Wyoming or Colorado will collide with their own family mass of waving arms, cheering, hugging, crying. These children who fight all wars — OUR children — are at last freed from fear of bombs and bullets; of redeployment (hopefully). They have come home. Returned to us from a fight that most Americans barely knew was going on except for the headlines on CNN or Fox News. But for the families receiving their children from this fight, the joy is no less than the moms and dads, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters, sweethearts of another time.

Sunday we all loaded into AF2 and headed for the hills in the area of Centenniel, Wyoming, to hunt rocks. Not valuable rocks. Not rock climbing. Rocks. Big rocks that I can add to the rock garden that has been expanding steadily around our building like creeping charlie.    

The diversity of rocks in many places in the West is remarkable. They come in all sizes and shapes. All the different types of rock: sedimentary, igneous, metamorphic. The big ones that are almost but not quite too heavy for one normal unmuscular guy to carry are what I’m looking for. They give punctuation in the gray river rock that surrounds all of the buildings here. And on some of those steep slopes, they help keep stone (the river rock) from succumbing to gravity’s certain influence.

Upon our return from this little outing we espied a brown mass off in a field some distance. At first we took them to be horses mostly because we couldn’t feature what else they might be. As we got a bit closer we settled on elk: cows and calfs jammed together like Spartans awaiting that last flurry of arrows from their foes. We’d never seen elk gathered together like that.

On we went through hill and dale until another brown mass appeared way over to our left near the top of a small rise. Again we speculated about its makeup. I thought maybe a posse pulled together to figure which way the outlaws went. But again as we drew close it became evident we were looking at another close-knit group of mama and baby elk. No antlers anywhere to be seen.

As we continued on our way we passed under some clouds that seemed so close at hand we could reach through the moon roof and touch them. Swirling and roiling. We couldn’t help thinking about the predicted end of the world as we know it this May 21. Some evangelical types are quitting their jobs, spending all of their savings in preparation for … I’m not even going to say it.

Up ahead we saw town and blue skies. We wondered if the elk knew something we didn’t. But figured if they did, we’d find out soon enough.

Inside, Panera’s Bread Company is nearly devoid of customers. My staring at the menu and series of probing questions draws the attention of the General Manager who knows exactly what she has on the menu that is gluten free. Tomato soup. Bean soup. But the bean soup isn’t on today. I can’t help but think of a certain scene from a Jack Nicholson movie, Five Easy Pieces, as I suggest one of the breakfast sandwiches without the bread. “We can do that” she almost shouts cheerfully. So I am sitting at my table staring at the colorful image captured above when my repast is delivered to me: A seriously flattened and very dry fried egg, a thin slice of cheese, two bits of bacon. No prizes for presentation will be won here but it is sustenance.

If I think about it (which I don’t) my world has closed in more than a little. My life now is devoid of pretzels, beer, toast, most breakfast cereals, virtually every pastry known to man, Campbells tomato soup. It’s not the most complicated diet imaginable. But society just isn’t ready for it. We live in a world of Gluten Gluttons. I imagine some great evil to associate with this. None occurs except the reason I went on this diet in the first place.

Living for 32 – Trailer from Living for 32 on Vimeo.

Living for 32 is the inspirational story of Colin Goddard, a survivor of the tragic gun shooting massacre which occurred on the Virginia Tech campus, April 16th, 2007. The winning combination of Colin’s passion, charisma and optimism has commanded the attention of the American public and media since the devastating incident which left 32 dead and 17 injured. In Living for 32, Colin shares an intimate account of terror he and his classmates endured and the courageous journey of renewal and hope he chose to pursue.

livingfor32.com

Directed by: Kevin Breslin
Produced by: Maria Cuomo Cole
Edited by: Garrett Sergeant
Director of Photography: Luca Fantini
Music and Mix by: sync2picture/54 Sound

In the aftermath of the Rep. Gabrielle Giffords assassination attempt the governor of Arizona is describing it as a tragedy. As though nothing could have been done to prevent it. Her solution in answer to a question? Increased security. We listened to the Mayor of Tucson, the President of the United States, the President of Arizona State University, and the Tucson chief of police. To all of these people what happened in that Safeway Store parking lot was a tragedy. There was no mention — NOT ONE — about the fact that something other than a single-shot rifle must have been used to wreak this amount of havoc in so short amount of time.

Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. Well this crime was not committed by a sling shot. Rep. Giffords was shot in the head at near point blank range by some sort of automatic rifle. The sort that hunters would need only if they wished to gun down entire herds of elk or deer.

The anchor staff at a local TV station in Tucson were clawing at the air trying to find words to describe their and their colleagues outrage over this incident. It was as though they were describing a natural disaster. These folks were plenty angry but not so angry they were willing to say something about gun violence. No one we listened to on myriad broadcast sources was willing to say the G word. It was as though they had an advance script supplied to them by the National Rifle Association.

This federal public servant was DOING HER JOB. She was giving the people of her district an opportunity to meet with her person-to-person. Retail democracy. If, as Gov. Jan Brewer suggests, the solution is better security, how practical or realistic is it for Rep. Giffords or any other elected federal official to be among the people who elected them? Our democracy does not function well behind concrete balustrades and concertina wire. And we should not ask citizens to put their lives at risk simply for seeking an elected federal office.

If we put a submachine gun in the hands of any citizen who wants one; someone is going to be off their rocker enough to go out and use one for the only purpose for which it is intended — shooting people. No amount of security can protect us. Not if we give a loaded handgun to every man, woman and baby in the United States. But the governor of Arizona won’t hear any of this. She backed Arizona’s constitutional amendment allowing handguns for everybody older than 21 with no background check or permit.  The President of the United States recently signed a bill that includes a rider allowing people to carry guns in their cars when traveling through national parks.

So we are left with no solution really. In my lifetime, Leo Ryan is the only member of a member of Congress to be gunned down while doing his job, 1978, Jonestown. This is truly a dark day for this country. A dark day for “the American experiment.” Can democracy survive if its elected officials must fear the very people who sent them to Washington?

Birthday Bizarities from Patrick D. Sheehy on Vimeo.

It’s Dylan’s 24th birthday and things get a little out of hand after the birthday cake has been thoroughly enjoyed. No libations are involved (children are present after all) so no one can make excuses for his or her behavior (actually I don’t think there are any “hers” involved in this segment … other than laughing).

The blue line marks the way of the new wall

On the west side of “The Wall” is a teeming community that has been there as long as I can remember. Google Earth shows streets on the east side of the wall but few structures. There are more now, plus two car washes. The new is a work in progress. And it’s actually not a bad development with mixed use and relatively dense concentration.

I don’t know how people on either side of The Wall feel about each other. The newbies are tolerated I expect by the manufactured homes park folk on the west side. The newbies to the east are, I expect, worried about their property values. Neither can do anything about the other. Maybe both are happy The Wall is there. But if it weren’t; what then?