Piz-zilla

Eva loves food. Most people do, or at least the satisfaction that food provides.

One of my first jokes about Eva was that she had a big mouth and her plumbing worked with tremendous efficiency--no doubt she was a Sutherland.

Kate was already a lover of Italian food, and I've only confirmed and strengthened the obsession. Tomato sauce is the one thing I have the confidence to freely improvise with, and Kate's come to have quite a lot of skill herself. Carrots, fiddleheads, even apple shavings on occasion--just about anything (except hamburger! Tasteless bane of tomato sauce) can become an artful and tasty part of dinner. (There aren't many rules, aside from common-sense things like not being jerks to each other, that I ask Kate to abide by: three of those are, If she hears voices in her head, call me (a joke from an episode of House); make sure Eva gets her vitamin C and calcium supplements every day; and never, under any circumstances, add hamburger to tomato sauce. I think I'm pretty easy.)

So we love Italian food. That includes making (sort of) our own pizza--only "sort of" because we buy the pre-made, uncooked dough, and buy our sauce in a jar. But we do put everything together and cook it, so it's more homemade than order-out. Besides, Kate's gotten pretty good at spreading the dough. Not toss-it-in-the-air good (though she could if she wanted), but much better than I am at spreading it out evenly so there aren't holes or rips or thick spots. She hated doing it at first, when I kept on foisting it off on her, but she came to enjoy it, and now she's pretty kick-butt at it.

In the division of labor, that leaves me to chop up the toppings, commonly kibble-sized bits of pepperoni and tiny shards of garlic. Aside from finding (in lieu of actually making) the right dough with a touch of sweetness, we have a few important idiosyncrasies. First, the shape of the pepperoni. Big round slices are hard to eat, because sometimes you can't bite through the whole thing, and it pulls off a bunch of cheese with it. Start with your pepperoni stick, cut nice, thick slices (1/8 to 1/4 inch thick), and then cut those into sixths. Carefully spread the thick little pepperoni wedges around on the sauce, distributing them evenly. (Yes, this is a recipe for delicious pizza. No, this is not a technique for making pizzas quickly and for profit.) Second, use twice as much sauce as is normal on a pizza. It just adds to the savor. Third, the toppings go on the sauce, underneath the cheese. That way they don't char.

So we've got this technique, and Kate says we're going to be the cool house, where kids will want to come because we make great pizza. That sounds OK to me.

And it looks like we're off to a good start, because little Eva is taking after us quite nicely. She has a real and unmistakable fondness for Italian food, mainly pasta in tomato sauce and above all else (even including applesauce), pizza.

Little Eva even knows the difference between homemade sauce and Chef Boy-Ar-Dee. Two mouthfulls of the Chef and she's averting her head. If she can develop similar taste in music...

Anyhow, we've seen her worse and more ferocious instincts come out when we serve pizza. The first time was last summer, probably early or mid-June, before I left for Louisiana the first time. We'd made a few pizzas for ourselves, Ma and Dave, and all sat down at the table to eat. It's too bad I don't have pictures or video to demonstrate what I write: once Eva realized she was having pizza for dinner, she began roaring for more.

Meaning, slamming her palm on the table and screaming "Wraaaaaaaaaaaaa!" at the top of her lungs until we gave her another piece. It was like the first time I gave my cat shrimp, and he reacted by jumping and yelling at me and clawing my leg, only Eva was roughly 200 times as loud. There was no plaintiveness, no crying, no coyness or amusement. The little baby was all aggression, trying to get more in her mouth.

(There's no doubt that infants go through much of the range of human psychology--pretty much everything except the sexual sensations, I'd guess--within the first year or two. Just seeing the intensity--the whole-body-writhing, face-contorting intensity--of joy, fright, pain, peacefulness and rage, is kind of amazing. And of course, Kate blames Eva's temper on me.)

So anyhow, we realized we had a little tyrannosaur on our hands. Infants don't joke around, when it comes to something they need, but in a near-toddler (at that point--she wasn't even crawling yet), it was pretty surprising to see basic instinct rear itself up to near-violence. It became a bit of a joke between us, and I started referring to Eva occasionally as godzilla.

(I've been searching for a good nickname for our daughter, since my father came up with one of the very best I've ever heard of, for my elder sister Julie: J-bird. Even better than Bops' calling my mother "pud"--that's pronounced "pood", as in short for pudding, not as in "pudley" or anything insulting like that. Anyway...)

Plainly godzilla would be a cruel and derisive nickname to give a girl. I might've deserved it as a small boy, but my mother's sense of humor was quite a bit gentler than mine is. In Eva's infancy, I called her "Rocky" because she slept with both her arms raised above her head, as if in triumph. But she stopped doing that so I figured it was time to let that one go. Sometimes I've called her Thumper, because of how she learned to crawl (from me) by slamming the floor with her hands, something she still does. That's a little better because there's a bunny rabbit in children's literature named Thumper, but still, it seems a little mean-spirited. It's not good to be too sarcastic with a child, I think, particularly in how you address her. Who knows, maybe things will turn out like in Dirty Dancing, and I'll just call her "Baby" until she's about 40. I have no idea.

So godzilla was mostly a memory, until Thursday night. Kate having mostly recovered from her mysterious maybe-Lyme disease, she ventured to have a small frozen pizza, while I made some pasta for myself. Things were a bit discombobulated, with Kate taking a late-afternoon nap and Eva threatening to blow up because she was hungry, so I gave the little girl her own dreadfully dull dinner while I began preparing my own meal (garlic and shrimp in tomato sauce--the key is to drain off the water from the shrimp so the sauce stays thick).

True to form, Eva ate quite a bit while I worked, and got things bubbling on the stove. She was done by the time Kate came to, entered the kitchen and got her pizza going. We thought we'd have a more relaxed dinner than usual, since Eva had already eaten and wouldn't need constant tending.

We sat down and she walked over to Kate, put her hands on Kate's leg and began crying. Only she refused mouthfuls of food when offered, turned her head away and began crying even more insistently. We put her back in her high chair and tried giving her a second dinner, with no more success, only a steadily worsening tantrum.

There are times I come close to losing my temper in return, when I see my child in discomfort and she resists my best efforts to help. I know getting angry in return won't accomplish a thing, but it's impossible to avoid the reaction. The little imp doesn't know what's good for her sometimes...

Kate and I were both worrying that this wasn't an ordinary tantrum. Kate herself might have been suffering from Lyme disease, and though it's not contagious, still, any vectors Kate was exposed to, Eva probably was too. What if the little baby was in constant; head-to-foot pain, and every motion was agony? What if she were in serious abdominal distress, and had no words to tell us with?

Kate took her temperature--twice--and confirmed there was no fever. What, then? Kate brought her back into the kitchen, and nearing her wits' end, placed the baby on her lap and gave her a whole piece of pizza to munch on.

Quiet. Blissful, immediate, profound quiet, as the thirteen-month-old girl wrapped both hands around the wedge of pizza, sunk her teeth into it, and began suckling. And that's virtually what she did--take occasional bites, and chew them, but otherwise simply kept her mouth clamped on the pizza, held it firmly in both hands, and looked me straight in the eye with satisfaction and almost a hint of defiance.

For twenty minutes nothing changed, except that 3/4 of the piece of pizza disappeared, and Eva's drool was now dripping off the bottom of the crust onto her pants leg.

If Godzilla were to run into a mountain range made of baked ham, and settle down to eat it for a day or two, the effect would have been similar. The Sutherland house went from baby-induced pandemonium to bucolic in less than a moment.

Next night, more pizza, of course. Because it was Friday, and Friday means homemade pizza in our house (as Sunday means clean-out-the-leftovers). Only this time we were wise to it, and devoted one whole piece (garlic included) to the baby, though we did cut it into smaller pieces (the crust being much fluffier than the frozen one the night before). We ate in front of the TV, watching Celtics preseason basketball (still too difficult to talk about last season), with their six top players on the bench and the subs nearly taking Philly down. (Philly's terrible, and even they know it.) And Eva was happy as she'd been earlier, laughing, smiling, babbling "da-da" and clucking her tongue like she does when she's happy.

And that's good. Because when she's not...

Samwich Fayah

I'm not above a little joking Down-Eastese, since I'm a native New Englandah and the only person I've ever known personally who genuinely spoke in such an accent, and honestly ended every sentence with an "ayuh", was from Cambridge, Massachusetts. It's part of my heritage, you never know where you'll find it, and humor generally involves a bit of affection anyhow. Things we truly despise we don't laugh at.

And besides, county fairs themselves are about as rural American as you can get, along with huntin', fishin', fahmin' and maple syrupin'. And that's not just to be cliche'd about it. Fairs grew up as exhibitions especially for the farmers. These days the midway rides, shyster games and cotton candy have taken over, but generally half a fair is old school, livestock exhibitions, prize vegetables, horse, ox and tractor pulls, 4-H and a bluegrass band or two.

I'm not saying anything new to anyone from New England, or from further abroad where nature plays much of a role in daily life. Last summer, working in Alaska, I was treated to the weeklong extravaganza known as the Alaska State Fair, just like the Sandwich Fair only about 10 or 20 times as big, and including a demolition derby. Plus, I'll always have a fond spot in my heart for the 4-H exhibit by the teenage girl about slaughtering pigs, which included photos of her picking up a blood-covered knee from one of the dead animals and making like it was a football, or a microphone:

Now that's personality. I admire that.

Kate's no stranger to the harvest-season fair either, having grown up in the general vicinity of the Fryeburg Fair, which ranks between Sandwich and Alaska, but closer to Sandwich, for size. (And for the record, I've never been to one of the really giant fairs in the midwest, like in Kansas or Nebraska or Oklahoma or Texas. All I can say about those is based on an essay by the late (and great) nature essayist, Noel Perrin. He wrote an essay on, I think, the Kansas State Fair, entitled "773 Prizes for Sheep". Enough said.) So I'm dealing with the pipsqueak fairs anyway, even including Alaska (which isn't exactly one of the breadbasket states). But still. In some sense, a fair's a fair and I've been to plenty.

Kate didn't go to any last year, recovering as she was from birth, and Eva still being too small and delicate to spend long periods of time out of doors. (Infants are a lot tougher than their parents generally give them credit for, but then again, why go testing their limits merely for the fun of it? If Kate honestly had no choice but to be outdoors all day with a newborn Eva strapped to her back--say, actually harvesting back in the colonial days--I'm willing to bet Eva would've turned out just fine. Even healthier maybe, for exposure to the air. But neither of us feel like playing with our child's well-being quite so aggressively. Anyway...)

So there's this fair. It takes place in Sandwich, NH, about ten miles north of the house I grew up in. Sandwich is a small--quiet is kind of loud compared to what that town is like--town just south of the White Mountains, and it's been deliberately kept almost comatose by the landowners there, who steadfastly oppose any road connecting their town to the ski mecca just to the north. Sandwich is dominated by wealthy landowners, many industrialists from Boston and elsewhere, and this little town is their retreat. There is a lot of wealth and intelligence sequestered among the pines there, so much that it's sometimes jokingly referred to as the "Athens of the north".

Growing up, I visited Sandwich once a year: for the fair. When I was a twerp, it was billed as "New England's Biggest One-Day Fair!", and we'd be up by 5:30, putting on thermal underwear, long socks and heavy boots, driving up bumpy old Sheridan Road in a freezing cold station wagon, parking along the roadside and walking the last mile or so to the front gate of the fair.

I mean, we earned it.

Now it's a three-day blowout, there's four times as much parking in the surrounding fields, and since winter has virtually disappeared shorts, sneakers and sweatshirts are the most common clothes for kids. Saturday, however, it was actually somewhat cold, in the 60s and breezy, so when a cloud came between us and the sun, it was downright chilly. Even so, there hadn't been a trace of frost, and it was so dry that the normally ubiquitous mud was nowhere to be seen.

Despite all that, the Fair was the Fair, and I hadn't been in close to a decade. For my part, after a big honking portion of fried dough and a cup of coffee, I'd satisfied about half of my craving for the fair, the other half being looking for any chintzy souvenir I might want to take home. But that wasn't necessary, since I already have enough clothes to last me for the next decade or two (unless I get fat), and I have about enough honky tonk wear for my tastes. Like my holstein cowboy hat, my fake-snakeskin-but-really-cowhide cowboy hat, and my favorite, my Kill Bill jacket. (Kate especially hates that one, guaranteeing I'll keep it.)

One honky-tonk... Two honky-tonk...

...three honky-tonk!

So I didn't need any more schlock. (Couldn't afford it even if I did.) After the fried dough and a tour through the arts & crafts, the rest of our time was more spent with the family: Lisa had driven out from Pennsylvania, and Julie & Hals had come up with the boys, spending a day at the Fair before taking a four-day hike in the White Mountains. (Julie's no girlie girl, but I respect how she's willing to do down-and-dirty stuff to keep the men in her life happy. She was upset at the thought of not showering for half a week, but I reminded her that everybody else would smell as badly as she did, so it didn't matter.)

Kate and I had just barely made it up, since Kate spent the entire week home, most of it in bed, with some strange, as-yet undiagnosed ailment that basically paralyzed her for two days. Possibly it was Lyme disease, though the blood test came back negative (though false negatives are common enough with that disease). So far the antibiotics have restored her mobility, but they have other side effects which have laid her low again today.

Kate's two good days were the days central to our plan: the drive up Friday, and the Fair on Saturday. I lightly cracked the whip--I don't give myself much practice at that kind of thing, so I'm really not much of a taskmaster--to get us out of the house by 9:30 Friday morning, to beat the Boston traffic. It's horrific on Columbus Day weekend, leading to 5-hour commutes from Boston to Moultonboro, and 6+ hour commutes from Boston to Portland. We successfully beat it, had time for a leisurely lunch in Concord, and then rambled on up to Wonalancet, a tiny little village north of Sandwich, where we were staying with an old friend of mine, my 5th-6th grade teacher, Chele Miller.

Chele was the first person I told that Kate and I were going to get engaged--in an as-yet unwritten chapter of the Pup & Ben series--in the upstairs lounge at the Corner House (my second-favorite New Hampshire restaurant behind the Common Man). She'd offered to put us up should we return, so we took her up on the offer and all had Chinese that night for dinner before knocking off to sleep.

Our Saturday wasn't too early, considering Kate likes her mornings in (so do I, but she really treasures hers), and it takes about an hour to get Eva ready for anything (food, diaper, change, play a little bit to settle her down). So it was moving toward noon by the time we finally entered the fair.

Eva, just over a year old, of course had no clue as to where she was or what was going on. But when she's stimulated, she shows it, and she loved the midway games. Not long after we arrived, Eva met a miniature horse, and a little bit later Kate bagged a small stuffed crab for her at a basketball game (and we both had to keep her hands off the merchandise in the arts & crafts stalls).

But maybe the high point of the day for her was the merry-go-round, which she actually enjoyed quite a bit. Kate suggested it, and I thought Eva might dislike it as too noisy and fast, but not at all (though she didn't love the saddle at first).

That night at dinner, at the Corner House again (right across the street from the fairgrounds), all of us Sutherlands and Platts sat down with Chele and spent a few hours chowing down and telling stories. Eva amazed us all by drinking a good honest 8 oz of apple cider (more than she'd ever had from a cup), and then more milk besides. (Kate's mother is right: wean the kid, and thirst will teach them how to drink from a cup!)

When things like how much the baby drank are among the headlines of the day, you know it was a very placid day. And that it was: enjoyable and placid.

After Wednesday night's emergency room adventure, placid was just fine. (And maybe the emergency room will merit its own post, but not right now. Suffice it to say, even ordering and eating pizza there is a trial.)

Sports Fan

Last year Kate became a Celtics fan, enough to understand Rondo's contributions on the offensive boards, Perk's ability to be more than a big galoot and Tony Allen's trick-or-treat game. In other words, more than a casual fan. We weren't able to keep our cable subscription past early December, so we only got to see the first few games of the season. But by that time Eva had become a TV veteran, with her daily dose of Signing Time while Kate or I were doing chores or showering. For 30 minutes to an hour a day, Eva would be stationed in her Bumbo six feet away from the TV, watching Hopkins and co. bounce through another day.

Of course, there was dinner too, which in the condominium almost always took place in front of the TV (including Roses & Thorns), so Eva would by default watch what we were watching too--either a DVD, or else a little sports.

And it became quickly apparent that Eva adored sports, particularly basketball and hockey.

And why not? Especially on a hi-def screen, the images are spectacular, there's constant motion, shifting patterns and constant rise and fall in the noise. The ice rink, with all the players drifting smoothly across it, is dazzling. And the basketball players' uniforms are as bright as ornaments, and though not as swiftly as in hockey, the players are in constant motion, gathering, dispersing and recombining later all over the floor. There's a lot for a baby to pay attention to.

Eva would jump and laugh even more excitedly than at the start of a Signing Time video.

I, of course, was thrilled. Kate was kind of happy too.

Fast forward to now. We've set ourselves back up with (less expensive) cable and internet service, including the local sports networks, of course. And today marked the final day of the Red Sox' 2010 season.

A farewell and thanks to two players in particular: Jason Varitek, captain now for nearly ten years and as professional and reliable a catcher as has ever played the game. And Mike Lowell, third baseman and power hitter who quietly and with impeccable grace endeared himself to almost every Red Sox fan--not least by hitting plenty of bombs over the Monster. Mike is almost certainly retiring, and Jason likely not, but just as likely will be playing elsewhere next year, as a Crash Davis-type backup and mentor, providing that vaunted and despised "locker-room presence". (The old debate: if a guy can't bring it on the field any more, what possible leadership can he provide?)

So anyway, we've got TV again. This afternoon, Kate took a few hours by herself to go bargain-hunting at a nearby clothing depot, and I set up my workshop downstairs and did other puttering-type activities. Eventually Eva woke up and wanted food, and she took down a full adult's portion of tuna before I let her loose and started washing dishes.

The Sox' final game was against the Yankees. The Bronx Bumblers came into today's game tied in overall record with Tampa Bay for the lead in the AL East, but trailed in head-to-head record against them. So the Sox, out of the postseason, could play spoiler by beating New York. The two teams split a doubleheader yesterday (both games into 10 innings: the first, 6-5 NY; the second, 7-6 Boston). So it came down to today (since Tampa Bay wasn't exactly helping itself this weekend, busily getting swept by Kansas City).

Of course I was interested. This is a blood feud. This is Lakers-Celtics. This game was not meaningless. By winning, the Sox could send New York to Minnesota (AL Central winners), a much tougher opponent than the Texas Rangers (winners of the AL West). If the Sox no longer have the chance to win the Series, then the next-best thing is at every opportunity to screw up the Yankees' season. This game was exactly that.

Granted, New York was starting a scrub on the mound, so their priority was to rest their best guys over winning first place, but still. Every bit counts. The Twins are a better team top-to-bottom than the Rangers, and the Metrodome is a tougher ballpark than Arlington.

I turned on the TV, so I could listen from the kitchen. And much to my surprise (and the little girl simply won't allow a candid photo when she knows a camera's in the vicinity):

I was too slow. She'd been laughing and clapping and jumping, watching the screen.

Later on, the Sutherland family enjoyed leftovers in front of the TV, a hallowed Sunday tradition from my own adolescence. And while Kate kind of zoned out, the baby didn't:

I mean, every baby starts out with limitless potential, and then winds up cut down to size as an adult, like the rest of us. It happened to me too, I'm fine with the course of life. Eva might wind up loving music (hold her in your arms and bounce to some music, and she'll start dancing too), she might be an intellectual, she might be a hard-core jock. She might be none of these things. It doesn't matter.

It's a whole lot of fun seeing her react to things she really enjoys.

Angel of Destruction

What might the vehicle of God's wrath look like, the instrument of worldwide devastation? A giant horned beast with shadowy eyes, hide like steel, a voice like ten thousand moans and wings which blot out the sun? A majestic emissary from the stars, clad in thunder and lightning, a voice like golden trumpets and swinging a resistless sword?

Or maybe it'll be 500 feet tall, have soft pink skin and wispy hair, and it will babble pleasantly and just blunder into things.

Eva of course is not yet at the stage where we need to punish her for anything. The extent of her rebellion so far is to look you mischievously in the eye, giggle and reach for whatever is in front of her (and usually put it in her mouth). There's nothing to punish. Our main job is to keep her from hurting herself (and the one time I've honestly yelled at her was when she was going for the electrical plugs beneath my desk).

About that. My earliest memory is from when my mother told me I was about 14 months. I nearly electrocuted myself. It's a bit strange. I remember it because it was traumatic, but what's strange is that I remember several seconds leading up to the trauma, not just the trauma itself. Why does the brain work that way? I have no idea.

The memory plays like a film in my head, and seems to have that ambered black-and-white character. Images are coherent and recognizable, but still indistinct, as if due to lack of color. One color, however, did stand out: bright blue. That in a moment.

I remember crawling along the floor, under the kitchen table. There was a set of keys there, apparently my mother's. I remember picking them up, looking at the socket on the wall (not knowing it was an electrical socket, of course), and thinking, "These look like they'd fit pretty nicely in there." So I put one in.

I could see the St. Elmo's fire around the key and my hand--the bright blue arcing--and looked up to my right to see my panicked mother running over to bat me away from the wall.

That's all I remember.

Obviously I survived, and you can insert any kind of joke you'd like (as a substitute for the you-must-have-been-dropped-on-your-head-as-a-child variety). Still, that's not the kind of experiment I'd like my own baby to try. So I really meant to scare her when she approached the outlet.

So far, that's about all the punishment she's needed. (Well, then again, you might want to ask Kate about Eva's tendency to bite when she's frustrated...but even then, it's hard to think that the little girl is trying to cause harm.) For now anyway, she's innocent, if not always happy.

The destructive power of a baby is pretty small, at least directly. A small child can start a chain reaction of things, such as pulling a tablecloth down with other things on it, or tipping a pot or a plate off the edge of a counter, or even pulling a whole shelf down if it's not very stable. When we babyproofed our apartment, aside from the standard outlet plugs and cabinet locks, we firmly wired our heirloom shelf to the wall, because it was a prime candidate for Eva to (a) pull herself up to standing postion with, and (b) pull down on top of herself.

Next after that was the basement door, with those steps down to the concrete wall and floor which terrify me. If even I were to fall down them I'd wind up pretty badly hurt. So even when the door was always shut, I mounted one of those security door chains on it, about six feet off the floor, so that even if Eva worked the door handle open, she'd never fit through. Now that the cat's back, and we keep the door propped open so he can reach his litter box downstairs, the chain is an absolute necessity.

Eva's learning lessons about behavior now, when Kate and I aren't even involved. Now that the cat is back, he's here with Eva. That's a new dimension to his life, since she learned to crawl, and it's one he doesn't really enjoy. I remember how cruel I was to our tuxedo cat Simon when I was a small boy. It wasn't that I hated him, at all--I liked him, but I also liked provoking him to get a reaction. And that's the problem with cats--they aren't scary. Even a moderate-sized dog, say twenty-five or thirty pounds, can bare its teeth and earn the respect of a child. Cats, not so much.

Eva is a gentle baby--she doesn't like pain so she does things carefully--and she adores animals. Every time Jasper walks by she follows him with her head and says "ki-tieh". And she's learning, with steady lessons from Kate and me, to pet him very gently. But it's altogether too easy for Eva to start whacking him instead, and grab for things like the tail, or an ear, or some whiskers. Or even for her to simply chase him all over the place, rooting him out of hiding spots and driving him from one room to the next.

I've got to say, I'm extremely impressed, and a little humbled, by that cat's patience. He's behaving like the classic floppy family dog who absorbs all mistreatment. Most cats I know would have stuck up for themselves in some manner long before Jasper has. And he still has all his claws...

Well, Saturday night things came to some kind of head. With the apartment largely secured, Kate and I feel comfortable letting the baby wander into an adjacent room, and we merely keep our ears peeled for either a big noise or an overly long silence. And that night, there was silence, followed by an explosion of cries from the baby.

Kate was in there in less than two seconds, ahead of me and she was diving for the baby on the floor on the other side of the kitchen table. I noticed the cat hustling out from under the table and out of the room, where we'd just run in. Eva was in a full-steam panicked cry, but we searched her face and most of her body and found no marks, no blood. It seemed the cat had done something to scare her, but hadn't actually broken skin.

And I thought that was good--if Jasper batted at her face, but didn't harm her physically, maybe Eva would learn to give him a wider berth, without needing to be actually hurt in the process. For the one day since then, she's seemed slightly more deferent around him, not nearly as quick to chase him down and slug him. In his reluctant way maybe the cat did teach her a lesson.

So we have this occasionally whirlwind little baby--one of her favorite sports is to flop back and forth across the couch, from one armrest to the other and without regard to the drop on one side. Of course, that means Kate or I play stopper, and prop her up when she comes near the edge. It's kind of Eva's version of swimming laps, or something like that, I suppose. She does enjoy a good faceplant into something soft.

So really, to complete the image of a gigantic infant bringing untold destruction on the world, the monster would have to do significant damage to itself as well. You know, level a mountain range and skin its knee in the process. Destroy New York but scrape its belly on the Statue of Liberty, and crawl in a bawling rage off to Chicago where it would sweep the downtown violently aside.

This kind of destructive angel would wind up sitting, job finished, in plaintive tears waiting for God to lift it back up to heaven where things are much less painful. An angel more self-destructive than destructive. Maybe not the most effective of biblical images--it's not quite as severe as the author of Revelations was trying for, perhaps--but who are we to judge the inscrutable?

The Cat is Back

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, after a summer's worth of training and becoming, as I must now admit, in fact a moderately accomplished nighttime hunter of chipmunks, mice and even bats, Jasper's back in the house.

Which means he left the other house, being Kate's mother and stepdad's place up in the woods of Maine. I dissed him--terribly--this June as being inept and probably a lifelong failure at catching anything but bugs and ping-pong balls. Well, Jasper proved me wrong. Kate told me a story--left me the story on my voicemail, actually, and it's still there--of how a chipmunk more or less walked into Jasper's mouth while he was asleep. So he managed to catch that one. I also heard about a mouse he'd dropped by the door a few weeks later. Then on one of my visits home, I actually picked up a dead little bat, complete with toothmarks, lying in front of the doorway. How the cat managed to snag a bat I don't know, but it was plain that Jasper was getting his game on.

I hear now that the stereotypical gifts from the cat had become commonplace, and that the squirrels who live in the oak tree outside the door, would chatter angrily when Jasper took up station below it, keeping them from loading their nests for the winter.

I'd seen his outdoor style evolve, from frantic and unfocused in May and June, to tense but controlled in August. I guess one season in AAA has really seasoned the little guy.

Unfortunately Dave, my step-father-in-law, is allergic to cats and the onset of fall, and Jasper's resultant shedding, has brought on a wicked and ongoing case of hives for him. Kate and I don't need much provocation to visit, but rescuing Dave from Jasper, and Jasper from an otherwise uncertain fate, was more than enough. So we made the round trip this weekend--and I rediscovered the joys of a McDonald's vanilla shake, thanks to my wife--and brought the cat back down with us.

Kate had done a splendid job of persuading the landlord--who hates cats--that Jasper would be a harmless addition to the household (which he will be). I actually feel somewhat badly that we pulled Jasper from his new leafy playground, where he'd learned to do what cats do, which is stalk and kill small animals. I feel like he's being busted back down to AA or A ball for no fault of his own. He's my kitty cat, and I do enjoy his company, although Eva and Kate have more than filled the empty space in my life. I certainly haven't missed him these last few months, being in Louisiana or with my two girls, the way I would have as a bachelor. All the same, I'm glad he's back around.

And I know he missed me. As soon as I showed up in Maine, he was at my ankles, and was sitting, if not in my lap, then right next to me (including in the chair next to me at the dinner table. Jasper's pretty charming that way). On the 5-hour drive back down from Maine, the cat spent about 98% of his time in my lap. (I refuse to use a cat carrier.)

So the cat's back. He's christened his litter box, he's eaten half of his food, and almost ventured outside (before chickening out and scampering back in as I closed the door). But soon enough. I doubt he'll find the same rich hunting grounds of critters around here now, and he might wind up in (and lose) a scuffle or two with neighboring cats. We'll see. He was becoming such a happy country cat that I do feel I've dislocated him now somewhat.

Eva's First Steps

Back in Maine for the weekend, celebrating Kate's (24th) and Eva's (1st) birthdays. I'm home from Louisiana, for the time being, though it seems unlikely that I'll be headed back. Now that the well has been killed, the scientific work is being scaled back and its objectives shifted, so my aspect of the expeditionary work is done. Now I'm a stay-at-home dad, and in some ways, it's easier being at sea.

Not that I dislike being with my daughter all day--I like it a lot. Seeing her personality, how she responds to me and watching her do the things she likes to do, are all part--a small part--of being a parent and helping a small child grow up. I'm not as fearful physically as I used to be, of dropping her or breaking her neck by holding her, or something like that. (I'm a nervous enough nellie to have put a chain lock on the basement door, so that she can't open it even if she works the door handle open, however.) I've certainly learned how to be more comfortable handling my baby in the course of a day's regular tasks, such as changing diapers, or bundling her in and out of the car.

And it's a joy listening to her own little language as she goes on talking about things. And she does talk. Many words of her own are recognizable, and will appear fairly regularly (such as "duh-gyieh"--which might mean "doggie", though there isn't always a dog around when she says it. She does seem to know "ki-tieh", for kitty, and of course "mama" and "dada" are certain by now). But otherwise, she mostly babbles.

And when I'm sitting at my desk, and Eva crawls over, pulls herself up to a standing position at me, and begins prattling, well, it's impossible not to look down and smile. Sometimes I let her prattle, sometimes I lift her up onto my lap. Though it's hard to keep her there without her going after everything within reach on the desk, which is where the problems begin.

My sister Julie gave me a bit of advice not too long ago, seeing as I'm the stay-at-home parent: "Give her 5 minutes and she'll give you 30." In other words, 5 minutes of play with her, will give her the ideas and motivation to play on her own for another half hour (or so). Well, I've been trying that, and so far, the rule plays out more like, Give her 5 minutes, and she'll give me 3.

So learning patience is a part of parenthood. I am learning, I can claim that much.

But here we are in Maine again, and the Atkins diet is history for us, as we feasted on a large pepperoni pizza (with extra sauce, of course), and Eva with us. Good to know that we'll be making sure Eva gets her carbos from now on (she gets plenty of protein as it is--she eats an adult portion of tuna every day at lunch).

One year, 21 lbs 10 oz, 31 inches long. Amazon Eve, she's gonna be.

Now by the time she'd learned to crawl--at the end of June, just before I headed down to the Deepwater spill for the first time--she was already trying to stand. Crawling was just never really a priority for her, and to this day, she retains the noisy floor-slapping habit I taught her (trying to emphasize the pick-the-hand-up-then-put-it-down aspect), and she often picks her knees up and goes on all fours, with only hands and feet.

But she's kept on trying to stand and walk, and it's a regular thing now for Eva to stand up beside something, put one or both hands on it, and sidle along while she balances herself against the object (couch, refrigerator, table, person, whatever's handy). And she's been standing, however wobblily, for weeks now.

But tonight she walked.

Not too far--four or five steps--but not the crashing-forward, unbalanced steps before she hits the deck. She took deliberate, planted steps and was just as balanced afterward as before. While Dave was telling me here downstairs about the somewhat tragic case of musician Emitt Rhodes, Kate and her mother were upstairs encouraging Eva to walk. Once they were satisfied with what they saw, they called me in, and of course I brought the videocam:

So there you have it! At a year and five days old, Eva's started walking.

Yuckamuck

Things are going pretty smoothly now that we're out to sea. (There aren't even any hurricanes breathing down our neck.) I've taken on some additional duties, sampling water at the various stations and depths our program requires. Sampling isn't really my strength. I discovered an uncanny talent in college chemistry class (I was pre-med for all of one year, like half of all incoming freshmen) for finding the critical step of any experiment, and screwing it up.

So it was with some reluctance that I agreed to help now, but it would hardly be team playing to refuse. Besides, hours of work are better than hours of idleness (at least, most of the time). But then, I wasn't thinking ahead to a night like tonight, when we shifted all the refrigerated samples into ice-filled chests for transfer to another boat, which will ferry them to shore, whence they'll be brought to the lab for analysis.

All that sounds a bit whimsical but these water samples are the foundation for almost all the scientific work now going on here. Simply put, the remote sensing and nearly all the instruments mean nothing without the water samples to correlate to. Just like with sidescan sonar, you can't confidently interpret seafloor without samples, or some kind of independent knowledge of what's down there. Tens of thousands of samples have been taken all over the northern Gulf this summer. Those samples are the concrete, the rock on which any subsequent scientific structure will be built. More than ever before, this area has become America's marine laboratory.

So it's been a surprisingly long and annoying day, with hauling huge coolers around, loading them with ice, carefully packing the bottles, making sure that the bottles match the packing list, sighing off on everything, and then taping the coolers shut. All told it was nearly four hours' work, and by the end I was getting ready to bark at someone, just out of frustration. (I didn't, but I wanted to.)

So the rendezvous boat came, we gave them our coolers full of bottles, and they're gone. And now I'm going to sleep myself. But not before posting a few photos!

The double-bladed moon is the result of my shaking hands, but I like the effect.


I love my hard hat.

Emendation

Since I posted several items--the list of 7 whoppers I'd seen attributed to Matt Simmons--in respect of Matt's reputation and overall body of work, and simply in the effort to be intellectually fair, I hunted through some YouTube, CNBC and MSNBC video archives to hear and see for myself what Matt was saying this spring and summer.

I will say, I turned up some interesting conspiracies. There's plenty of junk on YouTube--a nice microcosm of the internet in general--and to be fair, Simmons wasn't saying things one one-hundredth as moronic as some of these other geniuses. My favorite was how the Gulf blowout was really the start of a volcano, controlled by a rapacious, advanced intergalactic race of predators known as the Gorgons, spoken of in several ancient myths worldwide. Those who do not believe in the Gorgons' presence only hasten their takeover.

It didn't sound like Matt saying these things, and I was relieved to hear the speaker's name was something else (I don't remember it, and didn't want to waste more time listening).

But there was plenty of Matt Simmons' actual words, on TV and radio interviews, to pay attention to. And it was dismaying to hear such a respected person launch into borderline incoherence, talking in circles and being eagerly led on by smallminded interviewers. He spent a full hour on a radio show called TruNews, self-advertised as the only news program counting down the time to the second coming of our lord! (Small surprise the host spoke with a drawl.)

Poor Matt was led into some pretty dumb statements by this guy (fire? volcanoes? methane eruptions?), but the truth is that he didn't need very much help. A list of the things I heard Matt say, and it's not very different from my list of yesterday's post:

1) There's a lake of oil below the surface of the Gulf, either (a) 120 miles wide and 4-500 feet deep, or (b) covering 40% of the Gulf, or (c) somehow both.
2) There is only one blowout, but the real source of oil is an open hole 10 miles away from the reported site. BP has no idea where the blowout preventer is, and all ROV images are only of the dribble of oil from the riser (pipe) which had connected the well to the Deepwater Horizon rig;
3) 120,000 barrels of oil are spilling from the well;
4) The well site is a "cauldron" spewing oil and flames (underwater!);
5) The well might have pierced the earth's crust and created a volcano (as prompted by the millennarian host);
6) Methane is more poisonous than mustard gas;
7) A hurricane would drive the methane ashore and poison the entire Gulf Coast region. Evacuations were necessary;
8) 40% of the Gulf had become anoxic.

Some are not as bad, some are even worse than what I'd read.

Of all those statements, #3, the 120,000 barrels/day claim, I give some credence to. I dismissed out of hand the 150,000 barrels/day estimate in my first writing, but there have been wells (mostly in the mideast) which have produced over 100,000 barrels/day, and they were much shallower. This well is under 5,000 feet of water, and 13,000 more feet of rock below that--in other words, an awful lot of pressure (estimated at roughly 11,000 atmospheres). So if allowed to flow freely, at the initial stages, the oil could well be coming up at a horrifically high rate like 120,000 bbl/day. But the well wouldn't sustain that output. The MC252 reservoir is not Ghawar, giant among giants, in Saudi Arabia. (If it were, other wells in the area would've tapped it earlier. Ghawar is over 100 miles long.) So there's a strong element of truth in that claim, in my opinion.

As for the "lake" of oil...not enough oil had spilled to create a pure oil lake of that size (certainly not covering 40% of the Gulf!). Dispersed particles, possibly...a steady stream of oil from the well, flowing for weeks on end, would create a stream of particulate oil stretching closer to 200 miles in length...not so much in width, however. And it wouldn't be a pure stream of oil, it would be particles suspended within the water. Not all that close to Simmons' outlandish claims.

The rest of the statements are too foolish to consider. I will, however, address one thing the host added on, as encouragement to Matt when he was rambling on about the methane. The host mentioned a lake in Cameroon--Lake Nyos--which killed 1800 lakeshore inhabitants with a methane/carbon dioxide eruption several years ago. And this is, in fact, the case. Lake Nyos is one of several central African "exploding lakes", known for the fact that they grow saturated with gas (carbon dioxide and/or methane) over time. Think of a bottle of soda, filled with carbon dioxide. Then shake it up.

That's what happens to these lakes--they fill with gas, most likely from volcanic seeps below the surface. Then a seismic shock--landslide, earthquake, volcano--can destabilize the gas/water suspension, and cause the gas to come rushing out exactly like the carbon dioxide bubbles and bursts out of a shaken-up soda bottle. Only, there's not one single, gigantic bubble that comes floating out--it's more like a violent fizzing all over the lake. And enough gas emerges, apparently, to slaughter thousands of humans.

Now there's no evidence that the Gulf of Mexico has become similarly saturated with gas--the water is moving around constantly, and can hold a pretty huge volume. One of the issues with those lakes is that they're smaller than the ocean (obviously), and they don't turn over seasonally, since the seasons in that part of the world aren't as severely contrasting as, say, in North America. So, the gas can slowly build up inside the water, and it's never exposed to the air, and so the gas never vents slowly and peacefully (the equivalent, in my analogy, to gently cracking the bottle and letting the carbon dioxide seep off without foaming over). Of all the scientific alarm--genuinely well-founded scientific alarm--I've read and heard about this summer, the Gulf of Mexico becoming an exploding gulf isn't an element.

Simmons gave all of these interviews from his house in Maine, and he didn't quite sound like the firm, authoritative speaker I'd heard in other venues (speaking on peak oil in previous years, for example). He dithered, dwelled on inanities and engaged in some pointless hyperbole ("the finest oceanographic vessel ever built, the Thomas Jefferson"--it's a fine ship, but that's pushing it). Matt's every claim--from the real well being 10 miles away, to the gigantic lake of oil, to the methane bubble--was placed sqarely on the shoulders of ther TJ crew. And their official report (which he cited) doesn't support a single thing he said.

A sad demise to a proud career. I fell apart in college--I have no intention, especially now that I have a family to look out for, of doing so again, whether in the noon or the twilight of my own career.

One more thing: a shot of me, passed out from seasickness at my workstation in the control van. Thanks a ton, Grant.

Heading Out Again

Back in Houma after three altogether too short weeks with Kate and Eva. Despite all the excitement and challenge of the summer's work in the Gulf, I also felt defeated at losing two months with my girls, up in the land of forests and lakes. They managed quite nicely without me, being with Kate's mother and her husband Dave, but among other things, nearly all of Kate's and my to-do list went undone. A few items on the list which we didn't get to:

1) Visit cousin Drew on Moosehead Lake;
2) Visit Uncle Jack and Pat again, and help him build his house addition;
3) Go dancing at the Silver Spur;
4) Play some pickup lacrosse one Sunday evening in Portland;
5) Check out a race or two at Oxford Plains Speedway.

I'm sure Kate could add several more, but those stick out in my mind.

Now I'd come home from the last voyage fairly fried mentally, and the low-key birthday celebration (I turned 40 this year, and I think I'm still in a kind of denial--at least, I still want to be immature) was just fine for me. Only I didn't realize how devious Kate and her mother (not to mention Dave) can be.

They'd put together a surprise party, involving all the nearby family, and those of my friends who could make the trip up to Maine. But the leadup was even more impressive than the party for its level of deception.

Kate's mother needed me out of the way on Saturday, while she decorated and while people arrived. So they gave me a gift card to LL Bean, a surefire method to get rid of me...only they also needed to ensure that I'd go on Saturday and not before. (I suggested driving down Wednesday night, but allowed Kate to shoot that down.) So, to keep me there Thursday and Friday, Dave had ordered a delivery of cut & split firewood, which I was to haul and stack in the garage.

I EARNED that party, I tell you. I loaded two and a half cords of wood inside that stupid garage Thursday and Friday...well, not just I alone. I whined to Kate Friday morning that I wanted to go to Freeport then, and finish the wood on Saturday. In somewhat of a panic (though keeping outwardly cool), Kate offered to help me with the wood if I'd do it then.

And I'd thought Kate wasn't capable of lying. How foolish was I?

So we left Saturday, and bought some stuff, and came home around 4 PM (Kate had even learned the back-road way, so as to avoid the parked cars), and I got my big surprise. It was a great party, a fun way to end the summer, and I got nice & sloshed on cold duck. Cold duck! Cheap red spritzy wine, who'd'a guessed it tasted so good? Fortunately I only finished three bottles, so I have over a case left.

(Make that one bottle fewer, since Kate enjoyed a bottle last night while watching Kung Fu.)

We then moved back down to RI, and hauled most of our possessions to our new apartment (fortunately with a basement), and began post-condo life. I was bitter for a day or two, but once we'd arranged enough furniture and could live more or less normally in the new place, I settled down. Considering our desperate circumstances of last April, the progress we've made in five months to clear debt, lower our cost of living and clarify our longer-term plans, we've turned things around quite a bit. We arrested a freefall and are now stationed rather comfortably.

Of course, the most obvious constant this whole time has been Eva, our burbling little ball of fidget. She's not quite walking yet, though she's getting all the practice she can, hauling herself up on whatever's handy and sidling along. Kate and I have agreed many times that Eva's coming along so early in our relationship cut off a lot of the light-hearted play we might've had before getting married. But in times like these, when anxiety and tension have been such constants in Kate's and my lives, Eva has been our (mostly) placid relief, our happy little reminder that life is infinitely more than bills and plans and careers.

We say, not really joking at all, that Eva is now the head of the family. Her physical needs trump everything else, nearly all the time. (And, as conscientious parents, Kate and I do try to distinguish between Eva's needs and her moods--and the moods are becoming more prominent with time.) But throughout the winter and spring, when I had a job that I knew was going badly, my standard of measurement was Eva's behavior. If she stayed happy, and glad to see me and Kate, then I knew we were doing well.

The responsibility and joy of raising a daughter has provided Kate and me with continuity and satisfaction that might not have been possible otherwise. So now that we're here, on the verge of autumn (the little bengal's and my favorite season), Eva's state of mind and health remain our basic family measure. We have a home, we both have jobs, and we're steadily regaining financial health. But all the while, the baby's been growing and the coccoon we're trying to provide her seems to be intact.

I type this as we're steaming south through the bayou toward the open water, which is still hours away. I'll be asleep before we reach it, and awake again before we arrive at our first station to begin testing equipment.

This summer's work on the Deepwater spill has brought about a professional renaissance which I desperately needed. I'd stalled out almost completely at URI. This spring, when I began obsessively following the spill in the news, part of me sensed that I was partly trying to escape the doctorate, looking for any worthy distraction. Only, this blowout was far more than a distraction: it was an opportunity to learn about some new worlds to me, the engineering, economics and politics of energy.

I've begun to learn. I'm an environmentalist in general, not the fiercest but I do recycle, economize on fuel and electricity, and try to live simply. Questions of how global society obtains and consumes energy, and the physical toll this takes on the planet (an unsubstantiated bit of trivia: it requires three gallons of water to produce one gallon of gasoline--factoids like that earned me the nickname "Bankrupt Intellect" from my fourth-grade teacher), have become fascinating to me. You might say that I was more in tune with the act locally aspect of environmentalism; now I'm learning more about thinking globally.

It will be quite some time before I'm any kind of authority on the topic, whether in petroleum, nuclear, coal or renewables. I've learned about petroleum exploration, and some of the particulars of oil wells, and how oil reservoirs can be managed or mismanaged. I've learned some basics of the scale on which the global economy operates, and about the impacts of that scale economy on local production around the world. It really is a new world to my mind and I feel like a child exploring it.

Granted, when the topic involves concepts like peak oil, carbon emissions, economic warfare and political control, child's play might seem like a poor comparison. But when the complexity and depth and overall motion of a set of things is unfamiliar and mesmerizing, it can take on the brightness and fascination that comes over children with their toys. (And after all, even in major industries of global importance, we talk about "players.") I feel like a little kid who's walked into a gigantic toybox full of ideas and histories and consequences and it's all bright as sunshine--though oil itself is thick, dark and rather poisonous.

Enough about my foolish state of mind. The things I'm learning are at some levels quite frightening, and when I begin feeling that reaction, I have a few reminders for myself. First, I'm still new to it all. First impressions can be prophetic, but not always. Besides, I refuse to let myself be ruled by fear (for example, of sudden global economic and political collapse due to scarcity of oil). A measure of reassurance comes from an intellectual hero of mine, Joseph Campbell, the comparative mythologist. He set himself the task of identifying the biological causes for the various mythologies which humanity has created for itself--original biological causes growing later, of course, into historical trends all around the world, but still maintaining their biological and psychological significance. If the myths were to lose their contact with human psychology, then they would cease to be relevant. But that's a tangent I don't need to explore.

Campbell had a point concerning end-of-the-world doomsayers of all stripes, including environmentalists. Fear of impending disaster is one of the universal themes of myth. Whether by flood, or fire, or armies of locusts, some terrible judgment is generally coming down the turnpike toward us deserving infidels. You can seamlessly substitute modern science, with its fears of rising seas and warming air, for earlier mysticism. Campbell was on record as saying that in 10,000 years, humans then will have some other unavoidable catastrophe to worry themselves with. (This is where we venture into the psychological side of things, and I won't go further, knowing just about nothing about psychology.)

Anyhow, oil and water shortages fit this pattern perfectly. Except that complacency is an ignorant response. The science which has led us to the patterns of consumption we have now, also provides evidence of the consequences. The world, the universe, even our own bodies and minds are complex beyond the possibility of our imagining. But we can still measure aspects of the world around us, and try to act intelligently. (That is, after all, partly how we came to possess these brains in the first place.)

And when it comes to our consumption of fuel, every measure we have says that there isn't enough oil in the earth to support the amount we use now. The concept of "peak oil" isn't of a sudden drop of oil production to zero. It rather is the concept of a worldwide production maximum, after decades of increase, after which point production of oil must irreversibly decrease. Gradually, most likely, and over the course of decades, but still, oil production must become less as we deplete our best (and second-best, and third-best) resources. Common sense agrees: we as a race wouldn't be drilling for oil in a mile of water, and two miles further into the earth's crust beyond that, if there were still shallow oil fields to be found on dry land. We go way offshore, and extremely deep, because that's the easiest oil left. Kind of like scrabbling for change on the floor of your car because your pockets are empty.

One of the leading voices of peak oil (his term is twilight) over the past several years has been investment banker Matt Simmons. He specialized in energy investments, and over several decades had been quite successful. Matt's single largest contribution to thinking on energy was his 2006 book, "Twilight in the Desert", which profiles Saudi Arabian oil production, in the effort to determine how much oil that nation produces, and how much it has left. Saudi Arabia, like the other members of OPEC, doesn't publish any detailed production information, and even its yearly national statistics are dismissed as falsehoods. As the title "Twilight" implies, Matt's assessment is that Saudi Arabian oilfields are in decline after nearly 50 years of heavy production.

I first heard of Matt this year, of course, as a result of the Deepwater accident, but not in a complimentary way. He was apparently making the rounds of talk shows, spreading fantasy and malicious lies about the situation in the Gulf. I'd become a devoted reader of an expert energy website, The Oil Drum, run by a group of energy professionals, and through that site learned about many of Matt's most ridiculous statements. Not knowing who this person was--a longtime, respected authority on petroleum markets--I imagined an ignorant commentator in his 20s, armed with intensity but no knowledge, inventing things he thought were real.

A list of some of the falsehoods attributed to Simmons (I haven't tried to YouTube any clips, but these statements were corroborated by many different people posting to the website):

1) The so-called blown-out well was actually a second blowout. The first blowout had occurred six miles northeast, and was still flowing freely and was unattended to, as late as mid-June;
2) The blowout preventer (BOP) at the so-called blown-out well, had been ejected by an explosion from the real, first blowout six miles northeast, and had flown the six miles through the air and landed at the site of the second well;
3) The oil gusher would result in a gigantic crater in the northern part of the Gulf, and billions of barrels of oil would come flooding out at once when it collapsed;
4) There were giant bubbles of methane gas in the Gulf, which would float to the surface and then float ashore and likely explode over land, or at least poison everybody there;
5) The federal government was actively evacuating 20 million people from the Gulf coast as a result of the methane explosion threat;
6) The oil was gushing out of the well at the rate of 150,000 barrels per day;
7) There was a subsurface lake of oil in the Gulf, as big as Montana and 75 feet thick, resulting from the blowout.

Now all seven of these are ridiculous statements, and again, I didn't hear them come from Matt's mouth, but read repeated attributions to him. In perhaps related news, Matt Simmons died in the hot tub at his home in Maine this summer. In addition to his finance firm based in Houston, Matt led an ocean energy think tank and venture capital group, based in Maine and hoping to turn that state into a global center for renewable energy. He was clearly a leader, a forward-thinking person who could motivate people. How optimistic he sincerely was seems to be in doubt in light of his behavior this spring and summer.

Why the idiotic statements? Anyone with common sense, and a bit of geological and engineering knowledge, could easily dismiss those seven items above. I'll do so right now:

1) If there were a second blowout, there would have been a second sheen on the ocean surface, but there was none. At some point it would have become clear that there was a second oil source.
2) An explosion powerful enough to send a 45-foot-tall steel machine (the blowout preventer) up through 5,000 feet of water, and then six miles away through the air, would have (a) completely destroyed the machine first, (b) have generated some pretty big waves which people would have noticed along shore. (Not to mention what would have happened to what was left of the BOP once it hit the water again after flying six miles in the air.)
3) Oil doesn't exist in gigantic, cavernous pools underground. It exists in networks of tiny pore spaces within rock. Once the oil is gone, the rock might subside somewhat, especially if the oil has gushed out quickly. The ground over a big reservoir, like the Wilmington oil field in California, might sink by 20 feet or so, but that's fairly rare. They certainly don't collapse like sinkholes.
4) There were no giant methane bubbles. There was (and is) a lot of methane, but it's dissolved throughout the water, not lurking as one gigantic bubble (and if it were, since methane is far lighter than water, it'd come to the surface in a big hurry). Gases spread out and diffuse, they don't float along like giant water balloons. Furthermore, methane isn't a poison. It can asphyxiate you by crowding out the oxygen, but it's not an active poison the way hydrogen sulfide or chlorine are. The exploding/poisonous-methane lie--and Simmons knew enough about gas to understand it was a lie--might be the most malicious of them all, as it left many thousands of people along the coast in real panic.
5) Contrary to Glenn Beck's lies about FEMA concentration camps, there were no mass forced evacuations.
6) Historically, the very largest wells have produced up to 100,000 barrels a day--a very select group. Generally speaking, 65,000 barrels a day is tremendous. (I think wells in the US average 1,300 barrels a day.) 150K barrels per day is a stupidly high estimate.
7) Even if the well were gushing at 150,000 barrels per day, it would take over a hundred years to produce a lake the size of Montana and 75 feet thick.

So the question is: what was Matt up to? Had he just cracked and gone nuts? Did he decide to act like a carnival barker and just spew inaccuracies in order to scare people? Or perhaps something in between? Maybe years of crusading for more moderate energy use and increasing development of renewables, had made him so hopelessly frustrated that he did honestly lose his mind just a bit at the news of this accident.

I've read a Powerpoint presentation he gave on May 6 of this year, more than two weeks after the initial explosion, and it was as intelligent and lucid as his book. It certainly doesn't seem to be the work of a raving idiot. So I'm leaning toward the cynical, lying manipulator theory, but I really don't know, and probably never will.

In some ways, despite his spectacular meltdown at the end of his career, Matt Simmons is an intellectual hero of mine. His natural curiosity, fed by a series of offhand observations and growing suspicion, led him to conduct a large-scale research project on a very important, and largely ignored question: does the reality of Saudi Arabia's oilfield production match the Saudi Arabian government's claims, and if not, what does that imply for the world economy?

Simmons' book hit like a bombshell, and the shock has reverberated throughout the energy industry ever since. He has ripped the veil off the face of mideast oil production.

In some ways, Matt Simmons' descent into utter irrationality this summer, and the confusion it produced in many observers, reminds me of another, much more famous conversion, which has also left people mystified. Though the more famous conversion wasn't into a bizarre pack of lies, but rather into a new religion. Still, the man's own testimony hasn't helped anyone to clear up what exactly went on inside him.

I mean Paul, the apostle, who converted from Judaism to Christianity on the Damascus road. The question people (even my hero Joseph Campbell) ask is, Why? What happened? How could such a strong personality and forceful thinker as Paul suddenly change his philosophy so completely? Was it a cynical story, one he crafted in order to gain favor with the Christians he had decided to cultivate?

I say no. I think it was sincere, and it was longer in the coming than anyone, especially Paul himself, realized.

The clue is in one of Paul's letters (I forget to whom), when he describes his days as Saul, one of the Jewish priests who was trying to re-convert Christians back to Judaism. In the letter, Paul admits to disputing with the Christians, trying logically to convince them of the error of their ways, and to return to the true faith within the house of Yahweh.

In other words, it sounds a lot like what Paul was later doing to gentiles, Jews and believers of other religions, trying to convince them that Christianity was the true path. Whether as the Jewish Saul, or as the Christian Paul, this man was trying to argue and dispute and convince people into accepting his religion.

Only, I think the Christians really got to the Jewish Saul. I think their faith, their emotional need to believe in a god who died and was resurrected in order to relieve them of their guilt, touched a similar, deep, and desperate need in the proud, argumentative Saul. I think Saul's own self-doubt and uncertainty blossomed over the years--years, he writes in his letter--which he spent trying to re-convert Christians. Eventually, Saul's own heart told him that Christianity was the truer religion, and his brain finally realized what his heart had long felt, as Saul traveled on the road to Damascus, and then became Paul.

I think the Damascus light was the sudden decision of Paul's conscious brain to believe what its subconscious had been convinced of for quite a while. It was a divided and unhealthy man who set out to Damascus that day, and it was a restored and whole one who completed the journey.

The application of this idea to Matt Simmons isn't very kind. It makes Simmons look like a petty fool, though a bit tragic. The mounting frustration and despair he felt at not effecting enough change might simply have overwhelmed him. Possibly he made a deliberate, cold-blooded decision to play an on-air buffoon and spout falsehoods meant to terrify the ignorant. (There is a network which uses this as a business model, and Simmons was a very astute businessman.) I don't know.

I do grieve the loss of a fine thinker and visionary. In some measure, I will devote my career to solving the energy crisis. And here as elsewhere, questions will never cease to appear.

Quickie

No, not that. ; )

A quick little post since we're running in to Houma, trying to beat a tropical storm bearing straight down on us from the southeast. Whether I escape Louisiana ahead of the windy deluge is debatable...


Another evening, another spectacular ruddy sunset.

The clouds seem to dance with the sunlight...

...and the sunlight seems to animate the clouds.

Not quite the waterspout. Between water and gray cloud above, in the center-left of the picture, you will see a faint rainbow. The sun was behind us, as the clouds broke up late in the afternoon.

Tampons for Science, or Lifting the Veil

Fine drama this isn't. But it is an account of mischief combining with science to brighten an otherwise ordinary day.

Names have been changed to protect the embarrassed.

* * *

SETTING: On station at some unspecified location on the Gulf of Mexico, aboard the M/V Caroline Hench, a tender turned science vessel., during a hot, blustery summer afternoon.

CHARACTERS:

JOE, survey tech
BIG JIM, surveyor/deck boss.
ETHAN, ocean engineer.
AARON, party chief.
MIKE, oceanographer.
OLIVIA, a geophysicist.

SCENE 1. Fantail of the Caroline Hench. AARON, BIG JIM, ETHAN, JOE, and MIKE are assembled variously around the upright metal frame of an instrument (also known as the fish) about to be dropped via winch and cable into the ocean, for the sake of making observations on petroleum content.

ETHAN. You know, I’d been hoping to put something on the fish that might be able to pick up any oil it goes through on the way down. Paper or something…

MIKE. Yeah, that’s not a bad idea. Though paper might rip.

JOE. How about a sorbent pad?

ETHAN. Might work…are they tough enough?

MIKE (Walks across the deck to a dirty sorbent pad lying beneath a hose valve. Rips the pad slightly.) Well, they rip pretty easily, but I don’t think they’ll fall apart in the water like paper would.

ETHAN. I was kind of thinking of a paper plate. They kind of have a coating that keeps the water off.

MIKE. That’d keep the oil off too.

JOE. How about a facecloth?

ETHAN. Yeah, though we’d need a white one.

MIKE. Hmm… (Leaves)

ETHAN. Well, we might as well use some sorbent. Is there a clean pad anywhere?

JOE. Yeah, over in the box. (Goes to the box and retrieves a soft pad of sorbent.)

BIG JIM. Yeah, that’ work…where’s the duct tape?

JOE retrieves a roll of duct tape, brings that and the sorbent to BIG JIM, who tears off a piece of sorbent, wraps it around part of the instrument frame, and begins taping it in place.

Re-enter MIKE, who waves the plate overhead and carries an off-white facecloth in the other hand as he walks toward ETHAN.

MIKE. Here, is this what you wanted? (Tears the plate in half.)

BIG JIM. No, leave it whole! The edges provide strength.

MIKE. (Staring at the two halves of a plate.) Oh. (Walks over to the garbage bin, places one half inside, and gives the other half to BIG JIM, who begins wrapping it and taping it down.)

MIKE. And I snagged a facecloth too, though it’s a little off-white.

ETHAN. It’ll be off-white by the time we’re done with it anyway.

JOE. I doubt the sorbent or the plate will last, anyhow. They’ll probably just fall off.

MIKE. You know what would work perfectly…?

JOE. I know what you’re thinking.

ETHAN. Yeah, a tampon would be pretty ideal.

MIKE. I mean, it’d stand up to the water, and it’s probably twice as absorbent as the sorbent pad!

ETHAN. So, do you want to go ask?

MIKE. Well…that’s the problem.

JOE. Yeah, wanna get slapped?

MIKE. Slapped with a harassment suit, more like!

AARON. Though a tampon would work perfectly…

ETHAN. Yeah, and who better to do it than the survey chief? (Slaps AARON on the back.)

JOE. Yeah, I say you should go get it!

AARON. Hey, I got you your chair. I’m not getting you your tampon.

ETHAN. (To MIKE.) I’ve got an idea. You could just raid their bedroom.

MIKE. Yeah, they’d never notice, I’d find it immediately, and everything would be OK.

ETHAN. Well, it was just a gag anyway, probably better we not bother.

AARON. And we wouldn’t learn much from it anyway. Better to just leave that one alone.

BIG JIM. Too bad, because those things are probably ten times as absorbent as a sorbent pad. I worked with a guy once…

AARON. Alright, guys, we should start thinking about how we’re going to handle this rising sea state. It’s going to be tougher to deploy and recover. (Enters into technical discussion with BIG JIM and JOE. MIKE zones out.)

ETHAN. (To MIKE.) So what do you think about this weather building up?

MIKE. I’m thinking about going in and asking anyway.

ETHAN. (Chuckles.) It’s up to you, but I think we’re okay without it.

AARON. If these waves continue to rise, this will be our last cast for the day. We’ll need to check the weather and see if we’ll need to lay in or think about heading to shore.

BIG JIM. Aahhh, we shouldn’t give up yet. These things are barely four feet tall!

AARON. Yes, but if they get much bigger we won’t be able to operate. The sonar arm will likely start vibrating as well.

MIKE. Screw it. No guts no glory. (Leaves)

SCENE 2. Control van of the Caroline Hench, a cargo container outfitted inside as a dry lab, both sides lined with desks and computers. Among 8 other people at work, OLIVIA sits at her computer, entering data. Enter MIKE.

MIKE. (Kneels.) Hey, Olivia.

OLIVIA. Yes?

MIKE. I’ve got a question for you, and if it’s offensive or seems inappropriate, please excuse me. But it’s strictly for science…

(OLIVIA looks at him quizzically. Her neighbor at the desk looks over with mild alarm.)

MIKE. You see, we got the idea of putting something absorbent on the fish, which might be able to pick up any oil that it goes through on its way down. We got a sorbent pad, a facecloth and some paper, but I was hoping…

OLIVIA. (Being patient.) Would you like a tampon?

MIKE. Yes. Or a maxi pad.

OLIVIA. No problem. Would you like both?

MIKE. Sure, if you can spare them, thanks!

(Exeunt.)

SCENE 3. Fantail of the Caroline Hench. AARON, BIG JIM, ETHAN, and JOE stand about the fish, talking. Enter MIKE.

MIKE. We’re in business!

JOE. Ask, and you shall receive.

MIKE. Ask nicely enough, and you shall receive. You can’t just be a dick about it.

BIG JIM takes the tampon and maxi pad, removes the wrapper from the tampon, and begins taping it to the frame.

SCENE 4. Fantail of the Caroline Hench. ETHAN and MIKE walk toward the fish, having been reeled back up on deck following two dives. BIG JIM is already there, inspecting the equipment.

MIKE. Well, the tampon isn’t scientifically valid now. We left the same one on for two consecutive casts.

ETHAN. Yeah, but it’s white. It’s a negative result anyway.

MIKE. Still, worth trying.

BIG JIM. Yeah, well I’m proud of that little tampon! It’s still on there!

(All three nod.)

FINIS

* * *

Instruments of science:

The maxi pad.



The tampon.

* * *

Now, any woman reading this might think, You're so proud of yourself for going to ask a humdrum question about a perfectly ordinary thing like a tampon? That took nerve? I'll tell you about nerve. Pass a swollen football through a passage the size of your throat, and you'll learn about nerve.

To which every male can only have the same response: Yes dear.

Legendary

Not legendary in the sense you may have been thinking. (I may be on my way to being legendary, but I will admit that I'm not there yet. Even being the grossest and most disgusting brother in my college fraternity for a while hasn't earned me that honor.) No, I'm talking about something else, which will be made clear a little bit farther down.

In the meantime, a few odd pics sitting in my folder:

A photo taken on our first day out, as we hovered about 24 km out from the wellhead, in the company of a line of tenders standing by in case they were needed at the site. Not sure why, but the line of waiting ships impressed me quite a bit. That much heavy hardware, just idling by, is one small indicator of the size and importance of this whole well-closing project.

Another line of clouds, another red sunset.

Same, a few minutes later and closer up.

And now we come to the legendary part of this entry.

My mother loved Rockwood, Maine, and Moosehead Lake in general. The pine woods were bigger and thicker, the lake darker and wilder, the neighbors much farther away up there. (And that's where country folks go for vacation, apparently: even farther out into the country.)

She also loved moose. Had little statuettes of them, pictures of them, a few sweatshirts featuring them. It never rose to the level of a fully blown mania--say, like my childhood love of owls which led a cousin to think I was possessed--and a few other artifacts. One was moostletoe, a Christmas decoration made out of laquered moose droppings, strung along a cord like beads, with alternating red and green bows. If she was willing to put dried and hardened moose feces on her Christmas tree, it's pretty safe to say she liked all things moose.

She and Dad had many friends from college, a few especially close. Two of them, Dick and Sue Cox, lived on the Cape and, despite having spent four years in Maine for college (albeit in Lewiston--hardly a moose mecca) and having visited my parents several times up on the lake, had never seen a moose. Dick went so far as to disavow their existence, claiming them to be a fiction of Mom's (and it wouldn't've been the first fiction she'd put out there, if Dick had been right).

So Mom tried to rise to the occasion and document their presence. But there were two problems with this: if you aren't willing to tromp through the woods to seek them out, but would rather stay in your car, then you're pretty much out of luck unless it's dawn or dusk. Second, Mom would only use her simple little point-and-shoot, much like my little point-and-shoot except that mine is digital, and takes four seconds for one photograph because it tries to get the light and focus right.

One night, on the drive back from Greenville to their cabin, Mom and Dad spotted a moose, standing about 100 feet away from the right side of the road, at the edge of the forest. So Mom had Dad stop the car, and she whipped out her little point-and-shoot, and shot.

When she got the photo developed...you could see some grass, and then the shadowy edge of a forest. Mom claimed there was a moose in the shadow, and she was brave enough to show the photo to Dick and Sue. But really, it was even less conclusive than a UFO pic. She put it in her photo album with the caption, "Can you find the moose". It became something of a legend in my family for bad photography.

And so we come to this: my entry into the Sutherland "What the Eff is That?" photo pantheon. Behold:

Can you see the waterspout?

I saw my first waterspout today! I was upset with myself four days ago when one of my colleagues said she'd spotted one during a squall, I think while I was busy at my computer. So today someone raised the alarm, and I went bounding out of the control van to see.

It was pretty wimpy--actually, there were two, but that was the bigger--and never touched the sea. It poked tentatively down out of the cloud, and then slowly shrank back in.

We're currently on station, doing an instrument cast. The seas have risen noticeably with the passage of a front, possibly related to a new tropical weather formation southeast of us, still a few hundred miles away. The ship's roll is quite noticeable so I took the precaution of two Dramamine pills. About half of the storm track predictions have this thing--called a tropical wave, one grade below a tropical depression (which is one grade below a tropical storm, which is one below a hurricane) running right over us, bringing 25-mph winds and waves 5-7' tall.

Almost every trade has its version of machismo, and offshore work is certainly no different. However, big storms have a way of bringing out the alarmist in mariners:

When will we bug out? Remains to be seen.