Summer

June 22, 2014 6:41 AM , Leave a Comment ,

[Author’s note:  The last of my season posts and the only one that I actually published even close to on time.]

Summer rarely sneaks in and shows up overnight in Houston.  Rather it arrives in a long drawn out process that starts some time in April or so.  The cool mornings and pleasant days slowly drift by.  We look over and study the temperature forecasts trying, hoping to detect a little dip in the weekly weather report but there’s no respite to be had and we have to admit that another Summer is on its way.

Summer in Houston is different that in other parts of the country.  The same humidity as New Orleans, the same heat as Amarillo, the same smog as L.A.  It all coalesces together into an unpleasant miasma that’s a palpable force and that lingers like an unwanted guest into late October.

There’s a good reason why Houston’s population didn’t begin to grow until the 1950’s and the advent of cheap air conditioning.  I have to wonder how many of those new Houstonians from other parts of the country that have recently emigrated here looking for jobs will fare with the Summer weather.

The sun shines mercilessly overhead.  Pleasant enough when you’re indoors and looking at it behind a wall of cold air but nasty even if you’re just walking to your car in the parking lot.

Those few clouds that dot the Texas sky will glide on through without a thought given towards rain.  Towards the end of July they will totally disappear and not return till September.

The al-Nefud desert in Saudi Arabia is nicknamed the “sun’s anvil”, but surely that nickname better applies to Houston in late August.  The pre-morning hours are hot and steamy and from there things get progressively worse.

The long summer afternoons go on interminably.  June is supposed to have the longest day of the year but the daylight hours in August keep going and going and going well into 8 or 9 at night.  In the mornings the sun roars to life in the east and in the evenings it hangs stubbornly in the western sky, blinding drivers commuting out to the western suburbs.

This is the time of year when new Houstonians either decide to tough it out or return to whence they came from.

But it’s not all about the sun and the heat in Houston.  The city has developed a modus vivendi with its climate and we have learned to function and even thrive in the weather.  We turn towards the outdoors and use the bright light to hold festivals, we have open air stadiums despite the heat are opened up to let in the light.  We adapt to our surroundings.

As August finally leaves we turn our weather eye to the coast and the coming of the Hurricane season.  That in itself is its own adventure.

Posted in: seasons

separating the message and the messenger

June 20, 2014 6:32 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I recently read a book review about a biography of the Author Robert Heinlein.  The review itself wasn’t all that great.  In fact it made me seriously wonder if the reviewer had actually ever sat down and read any Heinlein at all.  The review had many glaring errors and the reviewer drew totally wrong conclusions from his apparently cursory study of Heinlein.

But it did serve to spark a question in my mind.  What happens when you don’t like the author but like his message or when you like the author and don’t like his message.  Are the two inseparable? Or can we look at one without noting the other?

Last year a movie based on the novel Ender’s game was released with a dark cloud of controversy centering on the author Orson Scott Card and his views on homosexuality.  The novel itself came out to great acclaim in the mid 1980’s and won several accolades and awards.  Some in the military study it for its lesson in tactics and leadership.

Card wrote some articles in the 90s that were against same-sex marriage and when these came to light they caused several boycotts to be declared against the movie.  The movie itself bombed in the box office and plans to film the sequels to the novel were permanently shelved.

Card is hardly the first writer or artist to have controversy swirl round his name that would taint his artistic contributions.  The writer, William Burroughs, shot his wife in Mexico and exited the country before he would have been prosecuted.  The director, Roman Polanski, was convicted of rape and to this day will not set foot inside the US.  In their cases however their artistic careers remained largely intact.  Fans seem to have forgiven them for their actions.

This “forgiveness” seems to be tied into the personality of the artist or how popular that their work is.  H.P. Lovecraft is widely reckoned to be the grandfather of the horror genre and most modern horror writers acknowledge his contributions.  What is less acknowledged is that he was an extremely prejudiced individual.  Most supporters quickly apologize for his behavior by saying that his attitudes were commonplace for the era that he lived in.

I find it to be a very complex question.  Bad behavior cannot and should not be brushed aside.  People have to stand by their actions and words.  On the other side of the coin is the argument that a marvelous piece of art or idea is a marvelous piece of art or idea.  That also can’t be just brushed aside.

What’s the answer?

Posted in: books, culture, ideas, thought

unplugging

June 18, 2014 6:29 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I’ve been noticing something lately.

The other day I was at my favorite writing cafe.  It was a nice Saturday afternoon and conditions seemed perfect for writing.  Yet the writing didn’t come.  This happens to every writer every once in a while.  It’s part of the territory and it’s nothing to stress over.  You just have to roll with it and use the time for some other purpose.

So I decided to spend the time thinking.  Yes, I know.  Thrilling.  But it’s necessary.  I have several plans and issues on my plate at the moment and some free time to contemplate all of these subjects is a real gift.

But just as I was about to get started…. beep.  A Facebook update, or a blue light on my phone indicating a tweet response, or a whistle indicating a text message or the ring of an email coming in.  Little things but they can wreck a thought process or stop it from ever starting.

So instead of thinking about all those other issues I started thinking about these distractions.  When was the last time I had truly been alone with my thoughts for a good long time without any of this coming in and butting in?

Oddly enough it was back in my bar hopping days.  Weird I know but way back when I used to go to clubs and bars I would go to some really loud place where I couldn’t hear my phone and just sit back in some shady corner booth and nurse a drink or two for a couple of hours.  It was like some sort of white noise that separated me from the world at large and really let me think.

Nowadays?  Running gives me a bit of a respite from the world but it’s maybe an hour?  hour and a half and half that time I’m keeping my eyes open trying not to trip up or get hit by a car.  Bedtime?  As soon as I crawl into bed I want to sleep so try as I might I can’t get a thought process going.

So why not just turn off the damn phone or tablet or whatever?  There’s always the fear that the second that you do you’ll miss a phone call or tweet or whatever that you need to answer right away.  Never works out that way…cept when it does.  The minute you turn it off, you know someone will be trying to get a hold of you.

That’s the curse of the instant communications era.  You know that you need to keep awake and aware and that fear robs you of that precious time that you need to think.

And I’m not the only one that this is happening to.  I’ve noticed other people complain about the exact same thing.  These little conveniences are robbing us of the time and opportunity to think.  We desperately need to get away from these things.  They seem to be so innocuous but they’re a real danger to a thinking person.

Posted in: activities, life in general, technology, thought

interesting times

June 16, 2014 6:34 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Last year I was interviewed over the phone for a piece in The Atlantic magazine.  The topic of this unexpected interview was a new company called Skybox.  They had a plan to place into orbit a string of low-cost observation satellites all around the world and to provide almost continuous image coverage over all the major cities of the world.

I should probably first explain that I have been in the remote sensing industry for the past 20 years.  I have been around since the time that 9-track tapes were state of the art and from the time that satellite images were being delivered as film negatives.  My career has taken place as the industry as a whole has seen ups and downs and has been rocked by takeovers and acquisitions.  One company that I have worked with has been taken over and renamed 4 times during my career.  So I’m not exactly  newcomer to this field.

People in business and government as well as private individuals have dreamed of or dreaded the idea of having a satellite overhead watching your every move for decades.  However it has been a fantasy for most of this time.  The technical hurdles were and to some degree still are quite daunting.  Satellites have to be in low orbit to get the level of detail you want but that means that they don’t stay overhead all the time.  This means that they can’t be watching your every move all the time.  You would need several satellite working together to do something like that.

But what really trips up this concept is the lack of ready capital.  Satellites have been the cutting edge of technical innovation for decades.  Components were custom-made for just one satellite and made to fine tolerances.  Entire new disciplines and programming languages had to be developed to make satellites work.  This of course required extremely well-educated and capable engineers and scientists to work with expensive production processes and as a consequence trying to put up a satellite usually depended on having a major corporation or often a large government to foot the bills.

Just the act up putting a satellite, really putting anything into orbit, was and still is extremely high.  On average it is about $10,000 per pound.  Normal observation satellites weigh tons.  Rockets can and do blow up, a tiny circuit can fail and render your satellite useless, a bit of space junk can crash into it.  The task of getting permission to launch something into orbit from a government is difficult in and of itself.  Overall it’s no easy or cheap task.

Skybox did a couple of clever things.  Borrowing from the NASA FBC (faster, better, cheaper) concept of the early 1990s, they created systems that were cheaper than the norm.  By using off the shelf technology and cutting down on many components that would be normally found on satellites they have designed a satellite that is around 100 kilograms and is the size of a small refrigerator.  A normal satellite would weigh tons and be the size of a car.

Still, the costs of launching just this small satellite were a stumbling block.  The second thing that Skybox did that was clever was that rather than trying to go for launching the entire system at one time they decided to do a proof of concept model.

Last year Skybox managed to raise some capital and launch one satellite into orbit (SkySat-1).  The satellite successfully deployed and relayed back images.  Not the best of images from a satellite but images nonetheless.  This proof of concept launch was enough to encourage Google to acquire the company for $500 million.

The acquisition is a perfect fit for Google’s mapping applications.  If implemented correctly it would mean that they can update any outdated map information pretty much on demand.  Road construction closures, new subdivisions, large outdoor gatherings could all be updated when and if the Google programmers wanted them to be.  This along with the aerial drones that Google intends to deploy gives them a potentially crushing edge over Apple in the mapping arena.

In addition to their own mapping revenue there will be the private and government markets that for a long time were ruled by aircraft companies and a small number of satellite companies that mainly did government contract work.

Now mind you this is all still a fairly long way off.  The whole scheme rests on the ability of Skybox to put into orbit entire squadrons of these tiny satellites and have them working in concert to provide coverage all around the globe.  Even Google will be hard pressed to provide the capital to do this but if anyone has the money to pull this off it’s them.  Of course after that they will have to maintain the chain of satellites, replace them as needed, and of course to manage the unimaginable amount of data streaming down from the satellites.  All huge technical challenges but with rich rewards.

This will also potentially bring about changes in my life.  With a centralized source of image data flowing out to clients from a ubiquitous single source this could mean the end or at the very least a radical change in my job.  I have worked in a fairly specialized and obscure field for the last 20 years and suddenly it looks like it may become fairly accessible and commonplace.

Interesting times indeed.

Posted in: business, career, technology , Tagged: , , ,

Comparative Myths II

June 14, 2014 6:58 AM , Leave a Comment ,

It’s been a while since my last post on myths.

The great flood.  Why is it so universal?  What makes it stand out among other shared myths?  Surprisingly the flood myth is even more common among cultures than creation myths

The simple answer would be that it does recall the biblical flood mentioned in Judeo-Christian religious texts

Genesis 6:5

“The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.  The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.  So the Lord said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air for I am grieved that I have made them.”

But really you must look past the superficial similarities and look behind the story as to what caused the flood and how it came to be.

The version of events we know as the great flood can find parallels in earlier stories from Babylonian sources such as the epic of Gilgamesh wherein King Gilgamesh is told the story of Utnapishtim, the only man to survive the great flood, and who tells him how the gods became concerned that mankind had grown too numerous and after trying to cut down human numbers by fire, famine, and disease the gods turned to flood to wipe out mankind.

This story in turn is an almost word for word copy of an earlier Accadian story written down about 1700 BC.  Morality tales about what can happen if man doesn’t mend his ways.

But floods themselves carry different messages.  In Indonesia, the story tells of Naga-Padoha, the great snake that carries the world on its back, and one day gets tired of carrying that load and shrugs everyone off its back into the sea.  The gods saved one woman and later returned the earth onto the snakes back.  Possibly this is a reference to the many earthquakes and tsunamis in the region (see the Indian ocean tsunami of 2006)

In Australia the aborigines tell of a great frog during the dreamtimes that drank up all the water and caused a drought.  The other thirsty inhabitants made the great frog laugh and it released all the waters out at once causing great floods.  Most probably an allusion to the extreme drought and rainy seasons of parts of Australia.

The Germanic tribes speak of Ymir the first giant being killed by the Norse gods and that he bled so much that most of the other giants drowned in his blood save for one couple.  Most people don’t know that the part of the North sea known as Jutland was in fact at one time dry land and that it was indeed inhabited by early humans.

In the Americas we have flood myths ranging from Canada down to Peru.  The twist here is that some relate to their creation stories.  There is a theme among these cultures that there have been worlds before ours and that they were destroyed before ours came into creation.  One such example is the Navajo story of flood.  Coyote was a trickster and one day he kidnaps a child of the great sea serpent Tieholtsodi.  The great serpent desperate to find its child floods the world.  The people discuss what to do, so they piled 4 great mountains on top of each other and climb, as the flood increased, they planted a great vine and climbed out of their world into the 4th world, but the waters kept rising so they climbed up to the 5th world.  Finally tired of climbing they forced coyote to return the child and the flood stopped.

This idea of emergence and multiple worlds is also found in other cultures, but well explore that at a later time.

So why floods?  Well flooding it IS nearly universal.  Unless you live on Mt Everest, any part of the world can flood.  What better symbol of the displeasure of a deity is there than the horrifying destruction caused by a flood?  Cast your minds back a couple of years after Hurricane Katrina and how some religious leaders claimed it was divine retribution on New Orleans for all its wicked ways.  If anything it was retribution for decades of neglect and mismanagement at all levels of government.  But that’s politics and not mythology.

There are two other possible explanations that do seem to hold a kernel of truth.

Humanity arose just as a great ice age was waning.  Sea levels had been much lower and early humans had settled on land that today is submerged.  As the ice melted and sea levels rose they would find a lot of land being threatened by the sea.  There is some evidence that this happened in particular around the Black sea area where many early communities had settled and that indeed a great flood did occur.

The second explanation is more mundane.  As the earth has shifted and moved due to plate tectonics a lot of fossil beds have ended up on dry land.  Fish, shells, reptiles fossils are found in the rock.  The natural assumption to early man is that the land had been flooded sometime in the past and this is the proof.

However its explained or viewed the universality of the flood myth is one of those shared cultural traits that shows how similar we all are in some very basic ways.

Posted in: culture, myths

the process

June 12, 2014 7:18 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I don’t really have a systematic approach to writing this blog.  I mean I do but it rarely applies.

Sometimes I get super inspired and I have four or five blogs lined up and I have to reshuffle them in order to publish them in the sequence that I consider will be best.  Other times I’m sitting around twiddling my thumbs thinking and looking for something to write.

Inspiration can come from current events, discussions I’ve had, other blogs I’ve read, or sometimes they’re topics that I’ve wanted to write for ages but either didn’t have the inspiration or opportunity.

I try to set aside a couple of hours per night to write this or other pieces that I’m working on but it doesn’t always work out that way.  I sometimes have to grab whatever free moment I have to get down a few words here or there or maybe just scribble an idea.  One of the reasons I like pen and paper notes as opposed to digital note taking is that it still feels more natural to me when getting ideas.  I don’t want to be flipping through apps to find my note taking app and then deal with auto-correct.  I just want to write and go.

So assuming I have an idea I will then start to flesh out the post.  I will just spew out any and every thought I have about it until there’s nothing left.  All of this will look disjointed, rambling, confused, and sometimes even contradictory.

That’s when the editing process begins.

Or rather that’s where I set this aside for a bit and come back to it.  If you immediately edit anything you will miss many tiny details that you might find if you just let it sit for a while.  Approach editing your work as if you were a stranger.

Here’s where the cut down process begins.  Whole paragraphs get taken out, some are moved, more material is added.  I go through three or four different titles.  A new feature that I have recently begun to include in the blogs is multimedia, pictures, videos, and hyperlinks.  Makes the article a little bit more interesting but I try to keep it to a minimum.  Writing should be about the writing after all.

As far as length goes I have had to train myself to become more wordy.  I used to believe in the power of brevity but one of the things I have learned is that more can be better.  I have to stop assuming that my readers will “get” what I mean and explain it a bit.  I don’t want to talk down to people and explain every little thing but I do have to be a little more verbose.

Finally after a bunch of rewrites, sometimes as many as 13 edits, I have to let go and publish.  That’s sometimes hard for a writer to do.  Sending it off to be consumed by the public can sometimes be a nerve-wracking process.  Specially if it’s a topic you really care about.  You never know how well you did and whether people will commend you, criticize you, or just ignore you.

This little blog habit has helped me immensely as a writer.  I find it instills a writing discipline and it lets me practice with different styles of writing.  Just like exercise you get better a little bit each time.  I have compared samples of my writing from the 90’s to today and I already see a vast difference.

Hopefully in time this will lead to something better and even maybe publishable.

Posted in: blogs, writing

do your own TED talk

June 10, 2014 6:22 AM , Leave a Comment ,

TED (technology, entertainment, and design) is a series of talks given in many locations around the world.  I’ve been a fan of TED talks for a long time.  The thought that people who are out there making a difference in the world would take the time to disseminate those ideas to the public at large is very appealing to me.  Very often those that do make a difference seem intent on keeping knowledge a secret.

The rest of us miss out on a lot because we don’t have direct access to these ideas.  I think the more we hear from each other, then the more that other people will feel compelled to innovate and think new thoughts and make new things that have never been seen before.

one of my favorite TED talks

The format is open and very friendly.  Basically a person stands in front of a group of people and has 20 or less minutes to explain a problem, their thoughts about that problem, why they are concerned about the problem, and what they are doing or want to do about it.

It’s that simple.

And what’s more anyone can do it.  The main requirement is that you have devoted time to a certain problem or discipline and that you feel strongly enough that you want others to know about it.  You don’t have to be a world leading scientist or politician or rock star to do a TED.

And what’s more you don’t have to speak in front of a bunch of people either.  I know some people who hate to speak in front of people or that prefer reading presentations.  If writing your ideas is easier for you then go ahead and do it that way.

The main thing is that you share a part of yourself with the world.

All of you have something special to share, to give, to express to the rest of us.  Do everyone a favor and let it out.  Let the rest of us know about it.

 

Posted in: activities, entertainment, ideas, technology, thought, writing

Hard won lessons

June 8, 2014 7:12 AM , Leave a Comment ,

We entered our 6 month-long hurricane season the other day and all the local news outlets were reminding us what we needed to do.  Useful I suppose as Houston has recently had a major population explosion with people from other parts of the country moving here.

So I guess a word on some lessons learned from hurricanes past is appropriate.  The last hurricane was a bad one.  Over 95% of the city lost power and in some areas power wasn’t restored for a month.  The scale of the physical destruction wasn’t on par with Katrina and New Orleans but Houston is nearly ten times the size of New Orleans and for that alone I think that the destruction involved means that we in Houston know what we are talking about when it comes to hurricanes.

Electricity – It’s not totally necessary but its damn convenient.  We take it so for granted that it’s not really possible to realize all the things that we can’t do without it.  Most power outages last hours, but for major disasters it can go on for days.  During really bad storms even the land line telephone network will go down.  The city will be one huge tangled traffic jam as all the traffic signals will fail and leave motorists relying on common courtesy and yielding the right of way to each other.  Supermarkets will see tons and tons of food spoil and have to throw out it all out.  Well lit streets will become as pitch black as country roads.  Your comfortable home will become a sweltering hot box without any respite from the late Summer heat.  Hope for a short outage but prepare for a long one.

Food – Prepare before the storm.  Stock up on canned foods, shove them into the corner of the pantry, they can stay there for years if necessary.  For your perishable foods, stock up on ice or make your own.  Have a couple small coolers.  The reason for this is that their smaller spaces can keep cool longer than a large refrigerator space.  Although our fridge survived four days keeping cool on the ice we had in there.  Remember that melted ice can be used as drinking or cooking water later on if need be.  If you have any flour or cake mixes or whatever then you can keep busy by baking bread or making cake.  Freeze dried food and military rations?  You really don’t need any of that stuff.  Doesn’t taste all that great and with a little forethought you can do just as well with locally available food

Water –  The electric pumps to the city water mains shut down without electricity and the danger of bacteria seeping into the water supply existed for a couple of days.  Filtered water or water treated with disinfectants tastes nasty.  We had a water filter but luckily didn’t have to use it.  We started the storm with 25 gallons of bottled water and by the time the water was safe to drink again we finished with about 8 gallons.  Fill up the bathtub with water.  Not to drink but to have water to flush the toilets.  Ditch or pool water should be your last option.  Even with filtering or disinfecting I would still advise boiling the water from these sources.

Camp stoves and charcoal –  We used both for cooking.  Camp stoves can stay in the box for years.  Ours did and worked perfectly.  A small keg of gas will keep you cooking for days.  Charcoal is useful for grilling perishable meats.  The smoke is also useful for keeping away pests like mosquitoes.  Cooked perishables will keep longer than raw perishables.  If the electricity goes out for an extended period you will want to eat your perishable foods first.  Don’t forget matches.

Batteries –  Probably best not to buy too long ahead of time or they’ll be dead in the box when you need them.  Buy them at the beginning of August, when the chances of a hurricane in Houston really ramp up.  Buy a lot.  a 16 pack of D or AA or AAA batteries sounds ridiculous till you’re on day 5 of being without power and you need them cause your batteries died.  The traditional sources for batteries will be picked clean of batteries really quickly.  Try dollar stores or large warehouse stores.

Lights – You will need not only a flashlight but some sort of lamp to light rooms.  Flashlights don’t need to be giant spotlights but they should be adequate enough to light up an area that you are working on.  Lamps can be gas or electric-powered but I think you will want to reserve gas for cooking purposes.  Candles are more romantic than practical.  They don’t put out much light, they’re hot on muggy warm evenings,  they leave a mess behind, they are fire hazards.  One of those last option type of items.

Radio –  Get one of those hand powered radios.  preferably with AM/FM/TV/weather band dials and one that has a flashlight and cell phone charger.  They work great, and some give money to the red cross when you buy them.  Listen to the news for updates on what’s going on in the city.  Listen for updates on electric repairs, weather updates, and news on where you can find certain resources.

Money –  Yes this is a tool too.  ATM’s may be out of money or out of power after a disaster and almost no one will be taking credit cards.  Get a lot out.  If you don’t need it you can deposit it later.

Generators –  These can be useful but only if you know how to operate them.  Biggest rule is operate it outdoors.  During the last hurricane, 30 people had to go to the hospital because they almost died breathing in carbon monoxide.  Set it up outside.  With a good-sized generator you can operate your fridge for  a few hours and refreeze the freezer and cool the fridge area.  This can extend your food sources for weeks this way.  If your neighbors can provide fuel you should think about sharing this resource.  Don’t forget motor oil.

Gasoline –  Goes without saying that you should top off your car’s gas tank.  Even if you don’t have a power generator you should still have a spare can of gasoline for general use.  During the last hurricane many gas stations had gasoline but the fuel pumps didn’t work due to the electricity being off.  Again, exercise care in the use and storage of this.

Your car –  Make sure your spare tire is filled up and your tools for changing a flat are there.  Try to park your car in an area that will most likely not flood and hopefully away from trees.  Get an emergency roadside kit for your car and shove it into a corner of your trunk.  You can buy them at Walmart for almost nothing.  During the first day there will be flooded streets, debris on the road, and panicky drivers.  Best to stay off the streets till things settle down.

Communications –  During a crisis the emergency people will commandeer all cell phone voice frequencies so calls from your cell phone will usually not work but text messages will still go through.  Land lines may or may not work.  But you can still keep in contact by text messaging.  If you can somehow get online you can also try social media like Facebook or try utilities like Skype to contact people but make sure you keep your usage to a minimum.  Buy a spare phone battery and charge it up.  Get a car charger too.

Guns – If you’ve never handled them before then this is not the time to start.  The rule about guns is that you only point it at what you intend shooting.  So if you know you could never shoot someone then there’s really no point in getting one.

Neighbors, friends, and family –  They are your ultimate resource.  Share your commodities with them and they will share with you.  They can also be relied on to share news or lend a hand in clearing storm damage.

Price gougers –  Price gouging is defined as raising the price of necessities 20% above per-disaster prices.  Necessities are things like food and water and gasoline.  Things like tennis shoes or cell phones are not covered by this, neither are generators.  During the last storm some guys went out-of-town to buy generators and came back to sell them at double or triple the price.  They will usually set up in a strip mall parking lot and work out of the back of their car.  If a cop wanders by then they usually banish.  These guys deal in cash only and are usually pretty sleazy.

Above all try to keep a positive attitude on the ordeal.  Everyday you wake up is a day closer to getting back to normal.

Posted in: current events, weather

the dark

June 6, 2014 6:52 AM , Leave a Comment ,

[ Author’s note.  This story was inspired by an incident several months back.  I was running in the park before dawn and it was very foggy out.  I passed two homeless men sleeping on a park bench and woke them.  As I ran on, I swear I could hear footsteps behind me but all I could see was the fog all around me.  Probably all imagination on my part.  We shouldn’t fear the dark as much as we should fear what’s in our mind.]

 

 

The alarm went off and Beckie slapped at her smart-phone to shut off the alarm. With her eyes half closed she turned on the lamp on her night stand and sat up in bed scratching her head. No interest at all in running this morning but she knew that those were the days she had to do it most of all.

Her french Pug, Rascal, didn’t stir as she got out of bed and got ready to run. She slipped on her shorts and t-shirt, strapped on her pedometer watch and music player, laced up her running shoes and got her key. She made sure everything was secure and headed to the door.

Rascal was finally up and yapping at her. Begging to go out with her. “You’re too little, buddy. You’d never make the 5 miles, baby. But mommy will be back to walk you soon.”

Rascal chased her to the door and she had to nudge him back in to get out. She locked her door and trotted down the stairs to the ground floor. She lived on the third floor of a small apartment building in the city.

She was proud that she had come to the big scary city and made it on her own. Everyone in her home town told stories about how dangerous, rude, and creepy the big city could be but here she had been living in the big bad city for a year now and it had been nothing but awesome.

On the stoop of the building she went through her stretches but was disturbed by a rattle. Turning abruptly she saw Tim. He was a local homeless guy that she had run into a few times. Some said he was a homeless vet, others that he was just another junkie.  Mrs Reznick, the old lady, in 4C just said he was trouble.

Beckie didn’t care. She had been brought up to be kind to everyone and she sometimes sent a couple bucks his way or a sandwich now and then. Hopefully he would get his life together one day.

She waved to Tim and he waved back as she left for her run. She had a 5 mile course that she ran every morning. The cool darkness and quiet helped her think about things. Like maybe Randy from accounts? The tall blond hottie was certainly worth thinking about. He was also starting to take the hint and had started noticing her flirting.  If only that obnoxious Margie Thomas from H.R. would quit trying to steal him away.  Randy wanted a younger woman like Beckie not some old crone like Margie. I mean she was almost thirty!

She was about half a mile out when she heard…something. It wasn’t the normal city noises. She knew those and was comfortable with those. This was different, It was behind her and it seemed to be keeping up with her.

She resisted the urge to look back. She had not been scared of the dark since she was a kid. Her dad used to pull boogeyman pranks on her coming out of her closet at bedtime and made her almost pee the bed but she had long since outgrown those fears.

Was there something to fear back there? Her friend Connie ran the neighborhood watch program and had told her about some bastard wandering round in the area raping and killing women. Connie urged her to get in the group and help take back the night but Beckie thought that Connie was a worry wart. Maybe she was wrong.

Another rattle. Beckie stopped to listen. Nothing.

She started running again and there was that noise. Like a faint scratching. Her heart was beating faster. She didn’t need the wrist monitor to tell her that, she could hear it, and it had nothing to do with her workout.

She picked up the pace but the noise kept up with her. She recognized this part of her run. One of the sodium arc lights sometimes sputtered off leaving the street in pitch black conditions as if it were a country lane.

“Please, please stay on!” she thought as she ran down the street.

Just as she ran under the light it went out. She felt as if she was having a heart attack. Flashbacks of that boogie man coming out of the closet to get her swam through her panicked mind.

“Come back on, come back on! Please!”

She kept running. All she could sense was that noise getting closer and closer.

She picked up the pace as much as she could. Her legs pumping faster and faster. Sweat started running down her face and she felt she would vomit any second.

“Just have to make it home, just get home, girl.”

A hill. One of the few in the city and now she had to struggle up this to get back. Her legs were on fire. “He’s going to get you.” kept running over and over in her head.

She made it up the hill and went faster down the other side but the noise kept up. “Who the hell was this that could keep up with me?!?”

Her legs began giving out. Tears streaming down her face mixing with the sweat, making her eyes sting.

“No! No! Don’t stop now!”

They had no more strength left. But she was so close to home! She started slowing, she couldn’t help it. She was crying and finally collapsed under the glow of a street light. The noise got louder and she looked up to see who it was.

Rascal came out of the darkness. His little claws making that odd scratching noise on the concrete. He yapped at her and came to lick her face. She laughed and cried hysterically. Rascal just tilted his head and looked at her blinking a couple of times.

“How on earth did you get out you little monster!?”

She took the little darling in her arms and walked back the rest of the way. As she rounded the corner to her street she saw three police cruisers in front of her building as well as a funeral hearse. She approached a police man and asked what had happened.

They had been called to the building about a break in and found the local rapist that everyone was looking for and killed him in a shootout. Connie approached her. “He was in your apartment, Beckie. Waiting for you to get home.” A gurney rolled out with Tim lying dead on the slab. Mrs Reznick approached them.

“Told you he was trouble.”

An hour later Beckie saw the last of the policemen off. She thanked them for their kindness but she wouldn’t need a policeman outside her door. She locked the door and sighed. She put Rascal on the sofa and went to her room.

“What a morning! They will never believe this at work.”

She went to her closet and moved the clothes from one rail to one side. She unlatched the secret crawl space in her wall and opened it. Margie Thomas was still in there. Bound and gagged, Her mascara had run as she had been recently crying. Beckie smiled.

“That rapist dumb-ass nearly ruined everything. But don’t worry Margie. I’m going to take care of you real soon.”

Margie tried to scream through her gag as Beckie locked the crawl space again to get ready for work. She wondered what Randy would like to see her wear today.

 

Posted in: Horror, short story

Lee memories

June 4, 2014 6:34 AM , Leave a Comment ,

My niece graduated college the other day and someone on Facebook noted that they graduated high school in 1989, the same year I did, and that it happened to be the 25th anniversary this year.  So I decided to blog some high school memories about old Robert E. Lee high school.

What can I say about Lee High?

It was nice….once. Built in the early 60s, to teach the then prosperous Galleria area kids.  It was a direct pipeline to the University of Texas.  A lot of rich people came out of that school back then.  Though the only really famous person that ever came out of there was Billy Gibbons from the band ZZ Top.

By the time I got there in 1985 it was starting to get run down.  The rich families that supported it had moved farther west so there was less money to spend on it and it was crowded.  I think around 2500 kids.  There was a shortage of teachers so they hired just about anyone that walked in off the streets.  One teacher quit in the middle of the school year and took off never telling anyone.

We didn’t realize how crappy an education it was till we got to college.  I think of the seven of us that tried to study engineering in college, not one of us made it past two years before changing majors or dropping out.  The high school diploma I got was nothing more than a cheaply printed piece of cardboard.

Besides the education it was a fairly apathetic experience, the football team lost more than they won.  At one point the marching band was down to 10 people.  Clubs of course and I got into those mainly for my college application but there wasn’t all that much enthusiasm.  Drugs hiding in the background, not much gang activity.  Like I said apathetic.

I think people just wanted to get through high school and get on with their lives.

People ditched classes a lot, but really I never got the sense that the staff cared all that much if the kids attended class or not.  There were parties of courses but it was all very cliquey and you had to be in “the group” to be invited.

My fondest memory of that time is that I finally got a job and a car and I had some limited freedom to be out on my own.

As far as my future education went, I was uninterested in school until I got placed into home room with Stan Pipkin.  Stan was one of those guys that could do anything or be anything that he wanted.  He was ridiculously intelligent (went onto be the valedictorian), He was a baseball player, he got along with everyone, and everyone wanted to be his friend.  I think he inspired me to take school seriously and think about college.  He did way more than any teacher or counselor in the school to get me into college.

Time passed and we graduated and went to college or got on with our lives.  The school district got tired of the school’s controversial name and changed it to just Lee high school and disbanded the football team that had no student support.  The school is still there of course.  It now sits in a fairly overcrowded part of the city, and there’s already talk of demolishing it.

I haven’t seen most of my high school companions in ages.  I went to the 5 year reunion.  If you saw the movie “gross pointe blank”, it was somewhat like that (same 80s music, same type of people) but with less murders.  I’ve thought about going to another reunion but I don’t sense much enthusiasm for it from the people who I do keep in contact with.

Some things are best left in the past.

Posted in: aging, school