A speculative mind

  Much has been made in the news lately about whether soldiers are required to follow an illegal order. That got me thinking. Full disclosure: I am not a legal scholar, nor have I ever been in the military. So, I would not presume to tell you what constitutes an “illegal order.” I presume that is the kind of thing that has to be decided by a court of law. I am not trying to make a political point here for one side or the other. I just have an observation. One thought I keep coming back to with all the discussion is this: if you follow an illegal order, you might find yourself in the shoes of Lieutenant William Calley. Those of us who grew up during the Viet Nam War have the My Lai Massacre seared on our psyches. It was one of the most shameful chapters in American military history, and helped to galvanize the protests against the war. In 1968 a company of soldiers led by Lt. Calley entered the village of My Lai and slaughtered everyone they could find. These were unarmed civilian...

  One time when I was a kid, maybe 9 or so, I was trying to make something in the kitchen. It might have been a chocolate frosting for something. Anyway, the directions said to melt the chocolate. So, I put the chocolate in a Pyrex bowl and set it on the burner and turned it on. The chocolate was starting to melt when all of a sudden, the bowl broke. Pieces of Pyrex and chocolate all over the stove. I was following the recipe, but when my mother came in, she explained to me that you never put the bowl directly onto the burner. You are supposed to put the bowl in a pan with some water and heat the water. Well, the recipe did not say that. Another time I was making cookies. The recipe said to “cream the butter and sugars together.” I tracked down my mom and asked her how much cream to put in it. “Cream?” she said. “There’s no cream in it. I showed her the recipe, and she explained to me what the verb “cream” meant. A lot of recipe writers assume you already know how to do certain...

  I live on the Oregon coast. For part of the year, we have great weather. But part of the year we have storms. We generally don’t get the Summer and fall thunderstorms and tornadoes that the Midwest and southern states get. Our storms tend to be in late Fall and Winter. In recent decades the Weather Service has gotten better at predicting them, so we are usually not surprised. We are too far north to get hurricanes, but sometimes we get the remnant of hurricanes. We usually get a couple of storms a year with wind gusts over 70 MPH and once decade or so we will get a storm with gusts up to 100 MPH. That may not seem so bad for the folks who live in hurricane zones, but it’s enough for me. The worst storm I ever lived through was one I don’t remember (I was 3 years-old at the time). It was called the Columbus Day Storm. This storm devastated parts of northern California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. It was possibly the worst storm ever to hit the region in the historic...

  If you have ever played Monopoly, you have at least a grade-school level idea of what deeds are. In the real world they are a little more complicated. If you own property, chances are you have a deed or deeds for it. There are other ways to acquire property but in America, most property transactions involve deeds. But what does all that language on a deed mean? People go through a realtor and/or a title company when they buy property, and they know a deed is one of those many pieces of paper (or electronic screens) that have to be signed.   What I saw a lot in my career as a Cartographer for a county Assessor’s Office is that mistakes were made because people did not understand what was on a deed. And when I say “people” I am including lawyers. There are lawyers who specialize in property matters and they are generally very good at what they do. The problem is when lawyers who do not specialize in property matters step outside their lane. You would not necessarily want a ...

  Last week my wife and I vacationed in Ashland, Oregon and attended the Oregon Shakespearean Festival. Ashland is close to the California border and close to Medford, Oregon where I was born. When I was about seven years old, we moved away from Medford, but we would return to see friends from time to time. It was during one of those visits that my parents took me to Ashland to see a Shakespeare play (my first one). A couple of years later they took me to see another play. That first time in 1972 I instantly fell in love with live theater in general and Shakespeare in particular. My mother had prepared me by reading me the synopsis of the play we were going to see, The Taming of the Shrew . I liked the fact that I could follow the story well even though they were talking with fancy archaic words. I found it funny. I also did not mind seeing pretty actresses in low-cut costumes (I was nearly a teenager after all). My father was hard of hearing, so my parents paid for us to sit in ...

  The first time I stepped on stage, it was a Christmas show. I was in second grade. I don’t remember the name of the show, but the basic premise was that there was a Santa’s helper, an elf, I assume. This elf boy was always getting in trouble, not because he was bad, just because he messed things up. The last mess-up is when he feeds the reindeer candy. The reindeer all get fat and can no longer fly. I was a reindeer. I was Prancer. The elf boy then redeems himself by inventing a reducing machine. He puts each of the reindeer through it and thus is able to save Christmas. I don’t remember the rehearsal process. It couldn’t have been much for me; I didn’t have any lines. But I remember I was called to the office because somebody decided I would be the model for the reindeer costume. I was standing there in a side office being fitted and pinned, when someone else was called into the office. This boy was not being fitted for a costume. He was there because he was in trouble. I don’...

  At the peak of the Roman Empire, the empire stretched from the Persian Gulf to Brittain, from northern Africa to southern Germany. But the great conquering emperors like Trajan learned that conquering land was easy compared to holding on to it.   In fact, Trajan’s successor, Hadrian, was known for shrinking the empire and consolidating Trajan’s gains into a more defensible set of holdings. This made him not popular among his generals who wanted glory and spoils. But he understood if you stretch yourself too thin, you can wind up with nothing. To consolidate the Empire’s holdings in Brittain, he had a wall constructed from Solway Firth to the Tyne River. Construction began in the year 122 AD. The Empire had never been able to subdue the highland Scottish tribes, so this wall (Hadrian’s Wall) divided the “barbarians from the Romans.” It was a solid piece of engineering with forts and towers scattered along it to keep the “barbarians” out. Hadrian’s successor, Antonius Pius...