Coyote. Small Critter, Big Appetite
Guy M. Townsend
(Posted 17 Febuary 2008)
Coyote.
The word has a distinctly Western flavor to it. Puts one in mind of cowhands and cactuses, cayuses and saddle sores, chuck wagons and tumbleweed–and watermelons.
Watermelons?
Yep, pardner, that’s what ah said. Watermelons.
You see, the coyote–preferred pronunciation is two syllables, KI-OAT–has become cosmopolitan and has acquired new tastes to match. Used to be, no self-respecting coyotes would be caught dead outside of the American West, but somewhere along the line they got uppity and began to move about.
Some coyotes, the more hot-blooded, passionate types, headed south of the border, down Mexico way, some even going as far south as Panama. Others, hardy adventurous souls, headed north to Alaska and Canada. And still others, fast-talking coyotes, migrated eastward to New York and New England.
And then there were the good-old-boy coyotes, who sort of moseyed into this neck of the woods and settled down. Unobtrusive chaps, these; most folks don’t even know they are around. But they are. Hundreds of them.
A coyote, the Encyclopedia Americana tells us, is a “wild dog resembling the wolf but smaller.” It “has a pointed muzzle, large pointed ears, long slender legs, and a prominent bushy tail. Its general color is grizzled gray above, with a dark cross on the shoulder and buffy underparts. The average coyote is about 40 inches long, including a 15-inch tail; 24 inches high at the shoulder; and 30 pounds in weight.”
Yeah, you say, but what about the watermelons? Hold on, I’m getting to it.
The coyote is not a dyed-in-the-wool carnivore. Sure, he likes little mammals and birds and domestic animals, and even deer and antelope when he can get them.
But he has been known to down an insect or two when the mood strikes him, and he even–though it’s bad for his reputation–eats fruit from time to time. The encyclopedia advises that some coyotes eat “the fruit of prickly pear cactus, rose hips and juniper berries.”
Now, I don’t have to tell you that no good-old-boy coyote from around here would touch a rose hip with a stick. You can bet, though, that they would put away the juniper berries by the bushel if they could get them, but they can’t. Same goes for prickly pear cactuses. Can’t get them here, either.
When the good-old-boy coyote gets a hankering for fruit he’s got to utilize his Southern Savvy (similar to Yankee Ingenuity, only better), and that leads him straight to the watermelon patch. In contrast to the rose hip, there’s nothing limp-pawed about a watermelon, and unlike the prickly pear cactus, the watermelon doesn’t have stickers.
Then, too, there’s the fact that just one watermelon can fill a coyote right up to the chops, unlike juniper berries which, whatever their other redeeming qualities, have to be eaten by the pawful even to make a dent in a coyote’s hunger.
One coyote can’t do a great deal of damage to a watermelon patch, but a gang of them can wipe out a crop in no time. Some watermelon growers in other parts of the country have taken strong steps against the creature, leaving poisoned bones in their patches in hopes that coyotes will gnaw on them and die. Unfortunately, dogs also die when they chew on the poisoned bones.
There is some question as to whether poisoning is a wise move. It is, after all, hard on dogs, and besides, serious thought ought to be given to what our good-old-boy coyotes are likely to do when they realize that frequenting watermelon patches can be hazardous to their health.
Keep in mind, now, that here is a creature, weighing thirty pounds on average, who has somehow figured out that those big, green, rock-looking things, some of them larger and heavier than he is, have got something good to eat inside them. Not only that, but he has figured out how to get past the one-to-two inch rind to get to the heart of the melon.
Do we really want to turn this ingenious creature’s attention away from watermelons? What if he decides to take up pineapples, or mandarin oranges? No grocery store in the country would be safe from his depredations.
We would be best advised to leave the coyote to his occasional melon. Besides, wouldn’t you like to find out some day how he handles the seed problem?
Words Matter. Honest!
Guy M. Townsend
(Posted 25 January 2008)
In one of his humorous routines from the late fifties or so, comedian Bob Newhart tells the story of a difficult telephone conversation between Abe Lincoln and his press agent. Abe, it seems, wants to make some changes in the speech he is to give at Gettysburg, starting with “four-score-and-seven,” which he wants to change to “eighty-seven.” After trying hard to explain the choice of words to the president, the exasperated agent finally says, “Don’t you see, Abe–that would be like Marc Anthony saying, ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen–I’ve got something I want to tell you.’”
There is almost always more than one way to say anything, but there is usually one best way, and sometimes the arrangement of words, the selection of one word over another where both might be used interchangeably, or a pause in one place rather than another, spells the difference between useful but pedestrian prose, and prose that adds elevation to utility. Everyone knows that four-score-and-seven years is the same as eighty-seven years, but change those words in Lincoln’s greatest speech and you drain it of much of its blood. Its meaning is unchanged, but it loses much of its life. Indeed, that change would go a long way toward moving the Gettysburg Address from the ranks of inspired discourses to the over-flowing dust bins of unremarkable political speeches.
Of course, the use to which words are to be put plays an important role in deciding which words to select. A small, eight-by-twelve tool shed can be as soundly constructed of marble as of concrete blocks, but for that purpose the marble would be wasted. Though it would work as well as the concrete blocks–better, actually–marble really is not suited to the task. Similarly, an advertisement designed to attract customers to Smith’s Store, which is the next to the last building on Main Street, will more effectively refer to it as “the next to the last building” rather than “the penultimate building.” Penultimate is a perfectly legitimate word meaning next to the last, but it is manifestly the wrong word to use in this context.
On the other hand, in a column or an editorial or an essay, where the writer’s purpose is not so much to merely give bald directions as it is to stir the mind to comprehension, or, for that matter, to dissension, the choice of words becomes a more delicate matter. In this context, while it certainly would not be inaccurate to speak of “the next to the last movement” in a musical work, it would be much better to speak of “the penultimate movement.”
The often-heard complaint that “I have to look up all these words in the dictionary” has no validity when applied to anything other than basic expository writing, because we are none of us born with large vocabularies, and, beyond the basic vocabulary we all pick up from the conversations of those around us, most of us acquire our new words through the dictionary–that is, we encounter the word in conversation or in our readings and we look it up in a dictionary. If it is a word we think we would like to use or are likely to encounter again, or if it is a particularly useful word, we commit it to memory and make it one of our own words. And having done so, there is no reason why we should not use it whenever the situation warrants.
There are, naturally, situations wherein the use of certain words is not warranted. For instance, if an obviously harried and out-of-breath man runs up to you enquiring anxiously as to the whereabouts of the fire station, you would do best not to direct him to the antepenultimate building in the next block in hopes that he’s been looking up the same words you have. In a case like that the best bet is to communicate on the most basic level possible. Tell him it’s the one before the next to the last building in the next block (which is what antepenultimate means), or say it’s the red building down the street there, or, best of all, just point.
But there are subjects which require more delicate means of communication than mere grunts and gestures. One would not expect Leonardo DaVinci to create the Mona Lisa with a box of Crayolas and a couple of Number 2 pencils, and the harmonica is not the best instrument on which to perform Beethoven’s “Eroica.” True, any moderately competent copyist could make a recognizable Mona Lisa with colors and graphite, and Beethoven’s piece is recognizable when played on the harmonica, but much of the magic–and virtually every scrap of nuance–would be stripped from the works by the coarseness of the means used to present them.
The same is true of words.
Two things lift writings above the common level: what is said, and how it is said. Sometimes a thought may be so brilliant that it would reward reading even if written in pidgin English or babytalk. Other times, a thing may be worth reading for the masterful way in which words are used, even though the writer may not actually have anything worthwhile to say. But the most effective communication, be it written or verbal, takes place when the writer or speaker has something worthwhile to communicate, and communicates it through the best possible choice of words.
It is not merely a matter of choosing big words over little ones. Observe: “When the sun rose on that partly-cloudy morning the courthouse clock read 6:30.” Or, “The first rays of morning sunlight pierced the fleecy white clouds and fell upon the face of the courthouse clock, whose hands both pointed directly downward.” The two sentences convey the same basic message. But while the first only tells the reader that the sun rose at 6:30 on a partly cloudy day, the second, despite its hokiness, provides the same information plus a feeling for the event–it paints a picture of the event and gives it life.
Words are tools for communicating, just as scalpels and paring knives are tools for cutting. Either cutting tool could be used for peeling an apple or removing an appendix, but only one is best suited for either job. The same applies to words.
A Christmas Wish
Guy M. Townsend
(Posted 5 December 2007)
The approach of winter is a holy time for followers of the three major religions whose roots go back to Abraham and Moses. Moslems have a holy month, Jews have a holy week, and Christians have a holy day.
For Moslems, it is the holy month of Ramadan. For Jews, it is Hanukkah. And for Christians, of course, it is Christmas Day itself, which has been celebrated on December 25th since the early days of the founding of the Christian faith.
I say “of course” when it comes to Christmas, because most of us in the United States are Christians of one stripe or another and to a greater or lesser degree, and virtually all Americans, whether Christian or not, celebrate at this time of the year by the exchange of gifts, a practice which transcends denominational and doctrinal differences and goes to the very heart of our humanity.
In a way, this gift-giving aspect of Christmas more or less forces us to think about others, to go out of our way to do something for other people. Since each one of us is the center of our own personal universe, it is both natural and understandable that our primary focus should be on ourselves. To be “self-centered” may not be a desirable trait, but it is in fact the default condition of humankind. Most of us strive, with varying degrees of success, to move beyond that state, and many of us perform truly selfless acts from time to time. Very few of us actually achieve a state of total selflessness, and it can even be argued that those who do achieve that state have actually left behind an essential part of their humanity.
Indeed, in the early days of the Christian faith the very idea that Jesus himself was not really human–that he was fully divine–was branded a heresy (docetism, by name), for the very good reason that if Jesus was not human he could not have suffered and died for the sins of mankind.
In fact, the Gospels are replete with instances of the “human-ness” of Jesus, from his understandable impatience with the denseness of his disciples which is so evident in the first-written Gospel, that of Mark (not Matthew, which came later and was derived in part from Mark), to his penultimate words on the cross in the last-written Gospel, that of John–“I am thirsty.”
This idea, that perfection is antithetical to the condition of being human, is wonderfully evoked in a haunting tale by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Collected in Mosses from an Old Manse, “The Birth-Mark” tells the story of one Aylmer, “an eminent proficient in every branch of natural philosophy,” whose wife Georgiana escaped being perfectly beautiful only by the presence of a birth-mark upon her cheek in the shape of a tiny human hand.
“Had she been less beautiful ... he might have felt his affection heightened by the prettiness of this mimic hand.... But, seeing her otherwise so perfect, he found this one defect grow more and more intolerable, with every moment of their united lives. It was the fatal flaw of humanity, which Nature, in one shape or another, stamps ineffaceably on all her productions, either to imply that they are temporary and finite, or that their perfection must be wrought by toil and pain.”
Aylmer determines to rid his wife of this imperfection, and, being the great man of science that he is (“natural philosophy” being the nineteenth century term for “science”), he concocts a potion and browbeats Georgiana into taking it. In so doing, Aylmer achieves his purpose. Sort of.
“As the last crimson tint of the birth-mark–that sole token of human imperfection–faded from her cheek, the parting breath of the now perfect woman passed into the atmosphere, and her soul, lingering a moment near her husband, took its heavenward flight.”
The main theme here, obviously, is Aylmer’s hubris, but equally obvious is the message–more a passing observation, really–that imperfection is the natural condition of humankind.
But acknowledging the impossibility of achieving perfection does not relieve us of the responsibility of trying to be as good as we can be within our limitations, and one measure of how much we develop our potential goodness is how selfish or unselfish we are in our dealings and relations with others.
What on earth does this have to do with Christmas? Just that we can use all the help we can get in our efforts to be better people, and the gift-giving aspect of Christmas encourages us to think of others, to be less selfish and more selfless, which is a goal worth striving for whatever ones religion.
At this one time of the year we have to give some thought to the likes and wishes and feelings of others. If we didn’t, we might give the swing set to our grandmother and the knitting needles to our pre-school niece.
The Christmas season, therefore, has the potential to make us better people quite aside from its religious aspect.
There are some who bemoan the commercialization of Christmas, who see the emphasis on buying things which sometimes seems to overshadow everything else between Thanksgiving and December 25 as being something bad and demeaning and shabby. To be sure, there is that part of it.
But there is a good part as well. After all, most of the buying that goes on around Christmas is buying for others. It is true that it tends to even out, that most of us end up getting gifts from the same people that we give gifts to. But even if it were a complete wash–even if for every dollar’s worth of gifts you give to others you receive a dollar’s worth of gifts in return–even then the process has a net positive and beneficial effect. Because in the process each one of us has had to think about others, about their wants and needs and wishes, and in so doing we have moved a little distance along the way toward being better, less selfish people, whatever our religious orientation may be.
The real challenge, though, is to extend our selflessness beyond our immediate circle of family and friends, to give to those who don’t or can’t give back to us, to care for those whose only connection to us is that we belong to the same species, the human race. And the giving need not only be material. It can be spiritual as well. When we relax somewhat our rigid prejudices and acknowledge the inherent right of every human to his own beliefs, even when they are not identical to our own, then we are giving the gift of tolerance, which is one of the greatest gifts we humans have to give each other.
And it, like love itself, has absolutely no value at all until it is given away.
So, my Christmas wish for you all, Christians, Moslems, Jews, Druids, and atheists alike, is this: may you give more than you receive, for in so doing you will receive more than you give.
Merry Christmas.
Hey, there's a reason they're called Turkeys
Guy M. Townsend
(Posted 15 November 2007)
Most Americans have a special place in their hearts for the turkey, which we associate with the founding of our nation and with Thanksgiving, second only to the Fourth of July among our national holidays. The turkey is indubitably American–it originated in this hemisphere and did not appear in Europe until well into the sixteenth century–and there was even a serious effort made to have it named our national bird when the United States was being formed. Oddly, the promoter of this idea was Benjamin Franklin.
This is odd because, while Franklin ordinarily had a great deal on the ball, his idea of adopting this creature as our national mascot was, well, a turkey. In a contest of intelligence, you see, the turkey finishes in a dead heat with that other traditional Thanksgiving food, the pumpkin.
Turkeys–not to mince words about it–are dumb. They are so dumb that they actually domesticated themselves. They wondered into Indian camps and refused to be run off, and the poor Indians were driven by sheer desperation to eating them in order to keep from being completely overrun.
And once they became domesticated the turkeys became even more dumb, if that’s possible. Things got so bad that they actually had to be taught how to eat. Honest. Your average turkey would just stand there, ankle-deep in grain, and starve to death because he didn’t have sense enough to eat. They had to be taught how to eat!
The method of their education was simple, as befitted a creature of their intelligence [sic]. Colored pebbles were mixed in with the grain and the turkeys were just barely curious enough to peck at the pebbles. In so doing they occasionally got a grain or two in their beaks, and it finally dawned on them that eating beat starving.
Now, can you imagine having so stupid a bird as our national mascot? It is true that there have been a number of occasions when our politicians have made us look like turkeys, but surely we don’t want to draw attention to the fact by adopting the turkey as our national symbol.
And then there’s that embarrassing noise that turkeys make. Bears growl and lions roar, but turkeys–well, there’s just no way of hiding the fact that turkeys gobble. Gobble, gobble, gobble. It’s really quite undignified.
Fortunately, Ben Franklin was overruled by his fellow founding fathers, and the eagle was selected as our national mascot. Eagles shriek, you see.
A shriek may not be as impressive as a roar or a growl, but it’s a marked im-provement over a gobble. (Of course, even a squeak would be an improvement over a gobble ....) Eagles are carnivores, too, which is more in keeping with our national character. And nobody ever laughed at an eagle–folks may snigger and chortle at a turkey, but never at an eagle.
Besides, there is a far more serious complication which would arise out of the adoption of the turkey as our national bird. No patriotic Russian would ever eat a bear, and no loyal British subject would eat a unicorn (even if they weren’t so hard to come by). So, what would we red-blooded patriotic Americans eat for Thanksgiving if the turkey were our national symbol?
It’s a sobering thought.
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!
On freedom ... and tolerance
Guy M. Townsend
(Posted 20 September 2007)
The measure of a True American–by which I mean an American who is true to the principles upon which this nation was founded–is not how many rights he claims for himself, but how many of those rights he is willing to allow others to share.
For the True American, for example, religious freedom does not just mean his right to worship as he pleases, but the right of others to worship as they please, even if their choice differs from his, or even if they choose not to worship at all. This is the only sense in which religious freedom has any meaning. The essence of freedom is the ability to choose, and no free choice is possible when only one option is allowed. And this is just as true when the only option allowed is, without any possibility of dispute, the “right” thing to do.
The best way to tell if you are being true to this nation’s founding principles is to imagine yourself in “the other fellow’s” shoes. When things appear so obviously “right” to you, step out of your own shoes for a moment and try to see the situation from the perspective of someone who is not you. It is commonly asserted, for example, that we ought to allow prayer in public schools. But how would you like it if every day that you sent your child to public school your child’s class began with a prayer to Vishnu? Would you be in favor of your child offering up Jewish prayers, or Moslem prayers, or Buddhist or Taoist or Wiccan prayers on a daily basis? Be honest, now. Can you honestly say that you would be happy to have your children participate in Moslem prayers every day they attend public schools?
The government–which is the government of all the people, and not just the people who happen to go to your particular church–is not in the religion business. It is in fact explicitly excluded from the religion business by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. If you want your child to have religion promoted as a part of his or her education, then you have the right to send your child to a religious school. In our free country you get to pick which religion your child is indoctrinated in, by selecting the private religious school your child attends. Religious schools are in the business of religion, and the same Establishment Clause which prohibits the government from promoting one religion over another also protects the right of private schools to teach religion without interference from the government. (As an occasional bonus, in addition to religious indoctrination some religious schools also provide their students with a good academic education.)
Also, it is specious to claim that children don’t have to participate in school prayers in public school if they don’t want to. In fact, the only “choice” they have is to participate or to be singled out as being different. Since very few children have the courage to risk the ridicule, scorn, and even ostracism that goes with being “different,” the effect is no different from actually requiring participation.
So prayer in public schools–by which, of course, we mean Christian prayer–subjects Jewish children and Moslem children and children of every other non-Christian faith to indoctrination in the Christian faith. “Well, what’s wrong with that?” asks Brother Bob. “Christianity is the only true religion, so we are actually saving the little pagans’ souls by bringing them to the true religion.”
Ah, but the problem, Brother Bob, is that the function of democratic government is not to save our souls but to protect our freedoms–including the freedom to believe as we choose to believe, not as you wish to force us to believe. It is only theocratic states, like Iran, which presume to dictate their citizens’ religious beliefs.
Besides, it constantly amazes me that so many self-proclaimed Christians are either ignorant of or deliberately turn their backs on Jesus’s own observations on praying in public:
And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou has shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. Matthew 6:5-6.*
Public prayer is by its very nature coercive, even for adults. Have you ever, in however many years of life you have experienced thus far, ever seen anyone decline to participate in public prayer? When the magic words “Please bow your heads” or “Let us pray” are spoken, everyone assumes a prayerful pose. No one ever says, “I just finished praying in private a short time ago and have no need to pray again just now,” or, “You know, I’m not in a prayerful mood right now.” Nope. All heads drop in unison, like a chorus of puppets on strings. Which, in a sense, they are.
One may perhaps be forgiven for wondering what God makes of all these public group prayers which are projected His way from every civic and social meeting held between the Great Lakes and the Rio Grande every day of the year. My guess is He’d rather hear from us individually, but that’s only a guess, since God doesn’t give me daily briefings like He does Dubya.
And what purpose do these public prayers serve, except to enforce conformity? “What’s wrong with conformity?” asks Brother Bob. Nothing at all, of course, if you are satisfied with rubbing sticks together to make fire. Or with bleeding sick people to get rid of evil humours. Or, for that matter, with burning people at the stake who happen to interpret the Scriptures a bit differently from the way you interpret them.
All that is well and good in a theocratic state–in Iran, say, or in Iraq when we finally pull out and leave it it the hands of the Moslem Fundamentalists. (Think of Jerry Falwell in a bathrobe and a turban–if you can stand to.)
But if we have to be coerced into public displays of piety or patriotism, what meaning can they possibly have? Think of all those Germans giving the fascist stiff-armed salute and shouting “Sieg, Heil!” at the top of their voices in a public display of their patriotism. And now think about what would have happened to a German in that crowd who kept his mouth shut and his arm at his side.
Quod erat demonstrandum.
*Forgive me for being old-fashioned, but I’m partial to the lyricism and cadence of the King James Version.
Sailing
Guy M. Townsend
(Posted 11 September 2007)
It is one of the truest cliches that the best things in life are free, at least in the sense that they don’t have a monetary price tag. The child doesn’t shell out hard cash for the love of its parents–or vice versa. Beautiful sunrises and sunsets–and, yes, butterflies–are free. And so is the wind.
Now, some might question whether wind ought to be considered a “best thing” at all. After all, it messes (or, more properly, “musses”) up hairdos, blows off hats, knocks over outdoor furniture, and sometimes flattens entire towns. But if you have ever sailed a boat you know that the wind, though capricious and sometimes unforgiving, ranks among the finest and purest of free things.
Sailing is one of those activities in life which simply have to be experienced to be truly understood. The mechanics of sailing are not, for the most part, all that difficult to grasp intellectually. (I add the phrase “for the most part” to cover the curious fact that sailboats are not always blown along by the wind, as one would expect, but are sometimes pulled along by the wind, which is how sailboats manage the seemingly impossible feat of sailing into the wind. I’ll return to this in a moment, for those of you who remain awake long enough to get to it.) But the sheer joy of being propelled along, sometimes at alarming (or, at least, exhilarating) speed, by an absolutely free power source, delights the soul, the psyche, and the pocketbook. As Ratty famously observed in The Wind in the Willows, “there is nothing–absolutely nothing–half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.” And he was rhapsodizing about rowboats, for God’s sake! How much greater, then, the joy of messing about in sailboats! But, back to earth for a moment.
With just a modicum of skill, any sailor can harness the power of the wind to get to just about anywhere he wants to go without producing even a single atom of pollution. It takes time, to be sure, to sail from one spot to another. Much, much more time than the same trip would take in a powerboat. A powerboat which uses huge amounts of fuel for the distance travelled. A powerboat which spews out pollutants faster than that diesel-powered semi that you sometimes get trapped behind on two-lane roads. A powerboat which makes about the same amount of noise as a chainsaw held a foot or so from your ear. A powerboat which produces a wake that contributes to bank and beach erosion. A powerboat which kills or maims fish, turtles, and even waterfowl which get in its way–to say nothing of the occasional swimmer or water-skier.
A sailboat does none of these things. So what if it is slower. It is quiet, environmentally benign, and utilizes the absolutely free power of nature. About the only cost of getting from here to there in a sailboat is time. And it is time very well “spent.”
How it does this is a wonder.
When a leaf–or a feather, or anything else which is light enough to float with enough of its body above the surface of the water to catch whatever wind is blowing–falls on the surface of a body of water, it may be blown a considerable distance across (if the wind is steady from one direction) or around (if it isn’t) the body of water before it finally sinks or is blown “ashore.” Where sailboats differ from leaves (and assorted items of trash tossed out by powerboat users) is in their ability to use the wind to go wherever the sailor wants to go, even in the direction from which the wind is blowing. This is possible because of two things: the first is the “curious fact” which I mentioned above, and to which I will return in a moment, I promise; and the second is something that you never see while the sailboat is in the water–at least not when it is floating in the water as it is designed to do, which is to say upright.
This second thing is the boat’s keel (or centerboard or daggerboard, which are retractable keels, which can be drawn up into the boat, as opposed to fixed keels which are, well, fixed), which slices through the water and, so long as the boat has any headway at all, keeps the boat from being pushed along in the direction the wind is blowing (unless the sailor actually wants to travel in that direction, in which case the keel cuts cleanly though the water at its angle of least resistance). Without the keel, the finest sailboat is just another leaf (or fast-food wrapper, tossed out by one of the aforementioned powerboaters).
The keel is the unseen–and unsung–hero of sailing, always taken for granted and sometimes forgotten, except when the sailor ventures into too-shallow water, where the keel can make its presence known in a most unpleasant way.
But let’s leave the keel in its accustomed state of disregard and turn now to the aforementioned “curious fact” which constitutes the second of the two things which makes sailing possible....
... But before we do that, let me mention that the “curious fact” is not necessary–and in fact is not employed at all–while sailing in the direction the wind is actually blowing. When the wind is at your back, the boat is indeed being pushed along by the wind, just like a leaf (or a beer can tossed out by one of those unspeakable powerboaters). The presence of the keel makes it possible for the boat to be pushed along in a direction at an angle to the direction the wind is blowing. It stands to reason, though, that the wind can only push a sailboat in (more or less) the direction the wind is blowing, so how is it possible for a boat to sail against the wind?
The answer is the repeatedly referenced “curious fact,” which happens to be the same curious fact which keeps airplanes from falling out of the sky (most of the time). In the 18th century the Swiss scientist Daniel Bernoulli observed, in what has come to be known as Bernoulli’s theorem, that air pressure decreases as the speed at which the air is travelling increases. Airplane wings are constructed in a shape (called an airfoil) in which the top of the wing, which has a pronounced curve, is longer (in cross section) than the bottom of the wing, which is nearly flat. This means that the air which travels over the top of the wing has a further distance to go in the same amount of time than the air that travels beneath the wing–that is, its journey is longer than the journey of the air which passes beneath the wing, but both journeys are completed in the same length of time–and this has the effect of reducing the air pressure above the wing, in effect pulling up on the wing (and the rest of the plane, of course). In fact, this pressure differential accounts for an astonishing 70% of the lift which keeps the plane from falling out of the sky (most of the time). [The other 30%, for those obsessive-compulsives among you, comes from the positive pressure exerted by the flow of air beneath the wing.]
And the principle which keeps airplanes from falling out of the sky (most of the time) is the same principle which makes it possible for a sailboat to sail into the wind. Not directly into the wind, of course, but pretty darn close–as close, in fact, as 30 degrees. The boat’s sail serves as an airfoil; the wind which flows over the front of the sail has further to travel than the wind which flows behind it, and this produces a pressure differential which actually pulls the boat forward into the wind.
It is possible, therefore, to sail to the south even when the wind is blowing out of the south, by sailing first to one side and then to the other, tacking back and forth between a southeasterly direction and a southwesterly direction.
There’s no point in getting in a hurry in a sailboat. The wind is going to blow, or not blow, when, where, and just as fast as it wants to blow, and there’s nothing the sailor can do to change that. In fact, trying too hard to sail faster usually has the effect of slowing the boat down. Sailing is not an activity for the impatient.
Besides being the ultimate “free lunch” of transportation, sailing is good for the soul. When you are out in the boat, cruising along with a steady wind, or just lulling about waiting for a breeze to come by, it is easy to put the trials and tribulations of our everyday existence into their proper perspective, to be at peace, at one with nature–or, rather, it would be possible, if it weren’t for those damned powerboats ....
Satchmo and me ... Guy M. Townsend
(Posted 12 August 2007)
My maternal grandmother’s name was Minnie Ramer, but we all called her TaTa, owing to her first grandchild’s inability to say “grandmother.” He could say “grand” and he could say “mother,” but when asked to say “grandmother” he invariably said “TaTaTa,” which was shortened to “TaTa” as other grandchildren came along. Before long, everyone in the family, child and grownup alike, referred to her as TaTa, even in public. (It is one of the oddities of human nature that even the silliest pet names are used without the least bit of self-consciousness and totally oblivious to the raised eyebrows and strange looks of strangers and new acquaintances–“He called her what?!”)
Of my two grandmothers, TaTa was far and away the more grandmotherly. My other grandmother–called, with rigid formality, “Mother Anne”–hailed from the drill-sergeant wing of the grandmother party. She absolutely knew what was best for every one of us, and she made sure that we all knew it as well–and that we conformed ourselves to her expectations.
TaTa was different. She was sweet and understanding, if sometimes a bit remote. But she had her dark side as well, as I learned to my considerable dismay at about the age of four.
At the rear of my grandmother’s house in those days stood a small garage which my grandmother, not having an automobile, used for storage.
Now, every male child since Cain and Abel has had a fondness for garages, attics, sheds, and storage buildings of every description. There’s no explaining it. It’s just one of those odd, inexplicable facts of life that make no sense at all but are nevertheless quite true, so we just shake our heads, shrug our shoulders, and accept them. (Like pet names.)
Anyway, TaTa, being a member in good standing of the grandmothers’ union, was well aware of the propensity of boys to stick their noses in places where they shouldn’t, and even if she had played hooky from grandmother school on the day that lesson was covered the fact that I kept leaving the garage door open after my frequent incursions would have tipped her off.
But tipped off–and ticked off as well, if the truth be told–she was, and she laid down the law and placed the garage off limits. Which, of course, only made it more attractive to me. Being a slow learner even back then, I continued to leave behind evidence of my intrusions in the form of a wide-open garage door, until one day I completely exhausted my grandmother’s considerable store of patience and she decided–no doubt with great reluctance (unlike my other grandmother, who would, if similarly tried, have decided with great resolution and probably not a little bit of wicked glee)–to get my attention, so to speak.
Her method was simple, but stunningly effective, and I walked into her trap with the insouciance of the hardened repeat offender. First, a furtive glance around to make sure that the coast was clear (which failed to detect any sign of my grandmother, who I have no doubt was watching my every move from behind the curtains of the kitchen window), then a quick dash up the short gravel drive to the garage door, which even my four-year-old muscles could open without difficulty–and had opened without difficulty many times before.
But this time was different, because this time there was something waiting behind that garage door ...
... which puts me in mind of a story I heard Louis Armstrong tell during a performance more than forty years ago.
It seems that when Armstrong was a little boy his family lived in a house without running water, and they got their drinking water from a nearby bayou. One day Armstrong’s mother sent him off with a bucket to fetch some water, but when he got down to the bank he was surprised by a large alligator. He dropped the bucket and ran back up to the house, where he was greeted by his mother, who wanted to know what he was doing coming back without the water.
Armstrong explained to her about the alligator, and when he was finished his mother said, “Go back down there and fetch me a bucket of water! That ‘gator’s just as scared of you as you are of him.”
To which Armstrong replied, “Well in that case, Mamma, that water ain’t fit to drink!”
... which brings me back to that opening garage door, behind which, right at the level of a four-year-old boy’s eyes, sat the godawfullest ugly scarecrow you ever saw. I get a frisson just thinking about it, more than half a century later.
If you had ever seen TaTa, in her grandmother dress and her grandmother hairdo and her grandmother apron, with that sweet grandmother smile on her gentle grandmother face, you would never have guessed that all that grandmotherliness disguised a mind Machiavelli himself would have envied.
From that day onward I steered clear of that garage. And if I ever mention that Louis Armstrong and I have something in common, rest assured that I’m not referring to my skill as a trumpet player.
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