Corpsman Chronicles XI: It's a gas

No, it's a liquid!

Sarge had an interesting post over at The Chant the other day. All about dermatology and ideal gas laws, more or less. Give it a read, it's great stuff.

His post, which featured warts and liquid nitrogen, reminded me, as everything does, of a navy story.

I have no idea how they do things in the navy these days, but BITD you couldn't operate tactical aircraft without LOX (liquid oxygen) for aircrew breathing and very pure nitrogen for tire inflation and pneumatics. I think liquefied gas was also required for Sidewinder and avionics cooling, but I disremember exact details. (A quick dash through googleland leads me to believe that early AIM-9 models were uncooled, followed by CO2, then LN2 cooled versions. Today's AIM-9X actually has an onboard Stirling engine to provide cooling. Which I have to admit is very cool (pun intended, sue me.)) At any rate, every carrier and air station had an O2/N2 shop BITD.

Here is a short video of activity in USS Saratoga (CV-60) in 1985. Brings a pang of longing to the old heart. You can see some gas servicing and work on LOX carts.



If you're interested, here are navy press corps stories from 2003 and 2015 regarding O2/N2 production.

Making LOX and LN2 (liquid nitrogen) is a fundamentally simple process. First, you liquefy plain ol'/reg'lar ol' atmospheric air by taking advantage of the Joule-Thomson effect, which is basically how your refrigerator-freezer works. You compress the air to about 150 psi, then flow it through an orifice into a container. As the compressed gas expands its temperature plunges, and if you do it right with the right setup the air becomes cold enough to liquefy.

The liquefied air, just like ambient atmospheric air, is about 78 percent nitrogen, 22 percent oxygen, and the remainder noble gasses, hydrogen and helium, and carbon dioxide. There will also be some quantity of water present, depending on the humidity of the air when it was collected.

Separating the molecular components is rather complex in execution but simple in theory and is called cryogenic fractional distillation. That's a mouthful, but you've probably done fractional distillation in junior high or high school science or chemistry lab. The process is the same and relies on the unique properties of the various components, or "fractions,"  each of which boils (shifts from liquid to gaseous phase) at a different temperature (CO2 -57C, O -183C, N -195.8C, H -252.9C, He -268.9C). By carefully warming the liquefied air in precise increments you can remove the pure "fractions" as they "boil off." For the purposes of making pure molecular fractions the water component is considered a contaminant. Water boils at 100C, but it's usually filtered out rather than boiled off.

With the right equipment and correct procedures in place, making LOX and LN2 is dead simple. As I recall the navy O2/N2 plants bitd were operated by a couple of E-2's under the supervision of an E-3.

Filling a LOX cart in CVN-72. Image wickamaedia commoners.

But I digress.

As Sarge alluded to in his post, LN2 is also used in medical cryotherapy, including the removal of superficial skin growths such as moles and warts.

Warts are caused by a virus, which takes up residence in the outer layers of the skin and cause formation of rough growths. Warts are, by definition, benign, self-limiting tumors. In most cases they can be safely ignored, however, they can be cosmetically unpleasing and/or physically irritating. In some rather rare cases they can lead to less benign forms of cancer. For these reasons people often seek to have warts removed, and one approach to this is cryotherapy.

Cryotherapy is a big word, but the idea is simple and straightforward. Warts -- including the HPV (human papilloma virus) which causes them -- are present in the outer layers of the skin. In cryotherapy a freezing agent such as LN2 is applied to the wart and a small portion of the surrounding healthy tissue. This freezing causes a thermal injury which is little different than a second degree burn. The frozen area blisters, which lifts and separates the outer layers of the skin. During the healing process the outer layers slough off, taking all or part of the wart with them. Small warts may be cured with a single treatment, larger warts usually require a series of treatments over time.

There's gonna be an amusing navy story at some point, right?

On the beach at Oceana, when I was an E-3 for the first and second time, I worked mostly in sick call. I stood duty back in the ER, but my regular daily job was sick call. As with most noobs I started at the check in desk, then advanced to vital signs, and finally to seeing patients and doing patient care. I wasn't the dumbest corpsman to come down the pike so I ended up in patient care pretty quickly. Which does not mean that I was in any way smart. I lacked the experience to be anything other than stupid.

Small digression here, I was reading a story from "We Were Crewdogs III" the other evening and I came across a superb line. "I was pretty stupid back then, and might still be, but that's for another book." J.J. Parker, USAF.

One day a week at sick call -- I want to say Tuesday but I'm probably wrong -- we held wart clinic. We dealt with all kinds of warts, and for each kind the treatment aim was quite similar, that is, to gradually take away the wart and a small bit of surrounding tissue a little at a time until the wart was gone. Treatment techniques varied. Most could be treated with LN2 and cryotherapy. Some required electrocautery. Still others relied on the application of a caustic or acidic compound, such as salicylic acid or podophyllin.

On wart clinic days, directly after morning quarters, a couple of the sick call E-3's would be sent to collect liquid nitrogen. When I was on the beach my number was usually chosen. So myself and another fellow would check out a vehicle, grab the LN2 containers, and head for the O2/N2 shack. The LN2 containers were Stanley stainless steel thermoses. They didn't have stoppers, which were air tight and would have turned the containers into bombs, but they did retain the screw-on cup, which wasn't air tight. Each thermos was housed in a clever, varnished wooden box with a wide base, designed to hold the thermos vertically and prevent it from tipping (or being knocked) over.

On the ship the process for collecting LN2 was pretty much the same, except you walked to the O2/N2 shop, rather than driving.

But this first one is about wart clinic on the beach, at Oceana.

We did all the usual stuff, freezing and smashing all manner of objects, from superballs to flowers to latex gloves to insects and amphibians. But that got boring pretty quick.

What was fun -- really fun -- was making LN2 bombs.

It's a simple process, really. Take an empty hydrogen peroxide container. You know, the small brown plastic bottles with white caps. They look like they hold between a pint and a quart of peroxide, but they actually hold a pound of the fizzy stuff. Well, that's how they were measured and labeled back in the day anyway.

So, to the empty H2O2 bottle add a few ounces of LN2. Screw the cap down tight, then place the container out of sight but in rather close proximity to some of your co-workers. It's best to do this after hours when just the duty section is in the building, for obvious reasons. Then it's just a matter of waiting.

The peroxide containers are perfect for this job because they are built to be tough enough to take quite a bit of internal pressure and the caps are designed to vent a certain quantity of gas. This is because H2O2 naturally decomposes over time, releasing gaseous molecular oxygen.

The important point is that a peroxide bottle is a lot tougher than a regular plastic bottle, and will therefore contain a lot more pressure before failing. When they do fail, well, more pressure equals bigger boom.

Potential boom of doom. Just add junior sailors. Stolen from the interwebs.

Few things are funnier than the reactions of your shipmates when the quiet of late evening is split by the roar of a reverberating LN2 explosion.

One thing that is funnier is when the explosion occurs at the moment an O-8 (Rear Admiral) is checking in to the emergency room to have a laceration on his hand treated.

I'll leave it to your imagination, but I will note that back in the olden days, not every Admiral was a pure martinet, and some of the lower ranked enlisted folks could think and explain with lightning speed and sincerity. 

I've saved the best (or worst) for last.

This happened on Nimitz on my first deployment. I was a reasonably bright lad and my head was absolutely crammed with knowledge. At that point in my life I had little or no experience to go with the knowledge, so while I thought I was pretty smart, I was in fact pretty stupid. From time to time dangerously stupid.

Anyway, one evening following wart clinic I was on duty and tasked with straightening up the treatment room at the end of the day. The LN2 thermos still contained a few pints of liquid nitrogen, which, being a clear liquid, looks rather like water. I was in straightening/cleaning mode and decided to dump the LN2 down the drain of the treatment room scrub sink. This produced a small cloud of water vapor, and as I turned on the taps to flush the nitrogen down the drain the cloud grew and grew until it filled the treatment room with fog.

That was cool!

Thereafter, whenever there was leftover LN2 available I repeated the exercise. What can I say? The days underway are long and tedious and can be crushingly boring. Little things like a cloud of vapor can provide a bright spot in the midst of the interminable blah sameness of being at sea. A real boost to morale, you might say.

After several weeks of this, however, the treatment room began to smell funny. Then the drains began to back up. Ruh-roh.

Bring on the turd chasers! Turd chaser was the common nickname for Hull Technicians, or HT's. Among other things, they were in charge of the ships plumbing system. Of course there are no more HT's in the navy these days. Everyone is now a sojer.

At any rate, the turd chasers quickly found and solved the problem. The drain piping beneath the deck plates had, of course, broken when the LN2 I poured down the sink froze the water in the p trap. Water expands when it freezes, as we all learned in Kindergarten. This was knowledge I'd long possessed, however, it didn't spring to the fore in my mind until we were all examining the broken fitting. Remarkably, no one in the immediate chain of command was able to connect the dots between wart clinic and a frozen pipe. And I wasn't about to give any hints.

You might recall that some time passed between the beginning of my magic fog show and the drains backing up. IIRC it was two months or so. Where did the water go?

Well, a Nimitz class carrier is a warship, built to soak up damage and still operate. The drain piping beneath medical was contained in an armored chase, about two feet by two feet by 150 feet. As it turns out, that chase can hold a hell of a lot of water.

Dewatering. Wickimaedia commoners.

It wasn't quite this bad.

And there you have it, a couple of Cold War cold air sea stories.

Foot report

Since my last post I've been quite ill. Fighting this kind of thing is not for sissies and takes a lot of energy. Right now it's looking like MRI time tomorrow followed most likely by the knife. I'm not dead yet, though on Tuesday I thought dead might be a desirable improvement. Felt a good bit better yesterday and today isn't too bad so far. I'll sure be glad to get this behind me.

Autumnal (((UPDATED)))

(See the update at the end of this post)

Well, it's that time of the year again. The days are getting markedly shorter, the nights markedly cooler, and the weather is taking on its usual autumnal character.

Wednesday was a glorious day. It was warm, sunny and only mildly breezy, following our first overnight kiss of frost. For the first time in more than a month my infected ankle felt good. Not better, but far less painful. I took advantage of that to catch up on a few minor chores. I fixed a bit of fence, replaced a couple of valves on a windmill, and did just a tiny bit of walking -- maybe 500 yards worth. Since I've been laid up I've desperately missed my prairie hiking. It felt good to totter around a bit.

It's just silly when the calves are this big.

A fairly fast-moving weather front came through beginning Wednesday evening and clearing out Thursday afternoon. The weather brought about three-tenths of an inch of gentle rain, and the clouds hugged enough warmth that there was no frost or snow. It was wet, but the cows seemed quite content to continue grazing the still-green grass.





Thursday also brought more pain and swelling to my ankle. Did I overdo a bit on Wednesday? Perhaps. Mostly though it's a dammed persistent infection. It's taking more time to heal than I feel is optimal. I'm having a hard time being patient.

Last night the thing "pointed" again for the third or fourth time, forming a bleb of subcutaneous pus. It hurt like the dickens, partly where the egg-sized bleb was and partly from the swelling in the ankle which really seems to bother the lateral ligaments. Each step feels like an ice pick stabbing, which is less than pleasant. Overnight the bleb ruptured and drained, which is all good, but the swelling and infection remain. I'm scheduled to see the doc at noon today so we'll see what we see.

Funny anecdote regarding pus (sorry, you can take the corpsman out of the navy but you can't take the corpsman out of the man); a very long time ago I was changing a dressing on a sailor with some kind of infection. This was at sick call at the Oceana clinic. I was an E-3 as I recall, and wasn't very experienced. Anyway, when charting what I'd done for the sailor I noted that his wound had some purulent discharge, which was the correct medical terminology to use. Only... I couldn't remember how to spell purulent. So I actually wrote, "still shows pussy discharge."

Well, the nurse was not amused. I learned to spell purulent though!

Last evening as the weather system passed the clouds fled, and as soon as the sun fell below the west-southwest horizon the day's warmth fled as well. Overnight the mercury tumbled once again to 31, producing the second kiss of frost but not the hard freeze predicted by the weather guessers.

This morning a spectacularly gorgeous sun lurched over the east-southeast horizon and washed the prairie in brilliant golden light. As solar photons arrived on the scene the light frost fairly leaped from the ground, sublimating directly into a thin mist before wafting gently away on the breeze. Cows and calves were spread out everywhere, heads down for the most part and busily tucking into breakfast.

There's amazing beauty in this place every single day, and I'm blessed to be able to see it first hand. It helps take the grumpy away when I let it.

Update! October 7, 3 p.m. local.

This has been a year for infections on the ol' EJE Ranch. You might recall my posts on the dogs Willie and Red as well as the one on the calf 6042, each of which had abscesses which required incising and draining.

Red's case is, ironically, rather similar to my present pussy (purulent) predicament. As you might recall, she had an infection that wouldn't heal, which almost certainly meant there was something in there that needed to come out. We tried hard to find the object, probing and flushing and even taking x-rays, but when all was said and done we had to open her up to find the culprit. During that entire process I kept thinking, "there has to be something in there, but there can't be, because we've done everything but cut her open and there's just nothing in there."

Now today when I went to the doc she wasn't satisfied with the way things are going and decided to open the area up and look for a foreign object.

All throughout this ordeal I've been thinking back to Red's case, and wondering if there could possibly be some foreign object in my ankle causing the infection. But really, there couldn't be anything in there. Unlike Red I had had no trauma, unless you count the original surgery which was nearly 10 years ago. There's just no way the surgery could be the culprit, because the infection would have shown up years ago. Right?

Luckily for me, Doc Holly is a good deal brighter than I. So out came the knife.

Now back in the day when I was on the handle end of the knife it was notoriously hard to get good anesthesia when working in and around infected tissue. This is because the pH of pus tends to be slightly acidic while the pH of lidocaine is slightly alkaline, therefore pus tends to neutralize lidocaine.

Knowing this, I realized there was an excellent chance that I'd have to endure some pain. My willingness to do so is a crude measure of how very sick and tired I've become of this damme infection. I'm a fairly stoic fellow and can tolerate a good bit of pain, but that doesn't mean I enjoy it. The prospect of being cut on with less than effective anesthesia did not put a smile on my face and a song in my heart. But I was willing.

As it turns out, local anesthesia has improved somewhat since the olden days. The mepivicaine Holly employed didn't numb the tissue completely, but it was far, far more efficacious than I expected.

Anyway, to cut to the chase (sorry), she found a big wad of suture material in there. About five inches of what appeared to be 2-0 or 3-0 vicryl (nylon) suture with several knots in it.

In general, you use absorbable (catgut, chromic, etc.) suture material on the inside. The body naturally absorbs these materials over time, once the tissues have healed. Nylon or other non-absorbable sutures are used when closing the skin, and these you have to clip and remove when the tissues have healed.

Absorbable suture materials are less strong than non-absorbable though, and sometimes you need strong suture on the inside. In those cases you might use stainless steel or titanium wire, clips or staples. You might also use nylon, though that's usually not the best choice because it's not unusual for the immune system to react to and reject nylon.

In the case of orthopedic surgery you obviously need to use pretty strong materials. In my experience and understanding (which is far from encyclopaedic) this is more or less exclusively the realm of stainless and titanium.

That being the case, I was reasonably certain that the surgery had no direct bearing on my present infection.

Heh.

So, Holly snipped out what she could of the old suture material, but she couldn't get it all. This means I'll be seeing a surgeon next week, and there's a good chance we'll end up doing a surgical debridement.

I'm not looking forward to surgery. On the other hand, I'm very happy that we've found the culprit and that there's likely to be a solid and lasting resolution.

I said I'm happy that "we've" found the culprit, but all I brought to the party was an infected foot. Holly is the hero in this tale. 

Real Hope

Zeus was pissed.



That sorry little man Prometheus had tricked him into taking the larger portion of a sacrificed ox, leaving the smaller portion for Prometheus and his buddies. But the large portion was only the bones of the animal, slathered in gleaming, unctuous fat. The small portion, seemingly just the stomach of the ox, contained all the meat.

In those days, before the fall, men were less than gods but were still immortal. They were also just men, womenfolk having yet to be invented.

Mightily angered over being tricked, Zeus withheld fire from the men. They could keep their bloody meat, but they'd have to eat it raw.

So of course Prometheus stole the fire from the gods, and carried it to his fellows.

Prometheus carrying the fire. Jan Cossiers, 1637, wikimaedia commons

In his rage Zeus bound Prometheus in chains and set an eagle to eating his liver. Each day the eagle feasted while Prometheus writhed in agony. Each night Zeus caused the liver of Prometheus to regenerate. Godly punishment and revenge were, well, creative. As we will see.

Prometheus Bound, Peter Paul Rubens, Wickimaedia commons.

The suffering of Prometheus was not enough to quench Zeus' rage. With great malice aforethought, he cleverly crafted a maiden out of earth and water. This was the first woman, Pandora. He presented the woman to Epimethus, the brother of Prometheus, who took her as his wife. To Pandora he gave a pithos, or jar (long ago mistranslated as "box"), a wedding gift she was forbidden to open.

Pandora, Wickimaedia commons.

Well, Pandora was only human. She was curious, and more than a bit irritated at owning a gift she couldn't even open. After a time, of course, she opened the container, and out poured the creatures disease, poverty, misery, sadness, death, and all the ills of the world. This was the fall of man, and it was an utter disaster.

Pandora, John William Waterhouse, 1896, Wikimaedia commons.

After the ills had fled the pithos and rushed to conduct their murderous rampage, one last creature remained, and this was Hope. Hope fluttered out of the jar and immediately began to heal the wounds created by the ills that Pandora had unintentionally loosed on man.

##########

The ills remain, and wound us grievously, yet Hope is with us still. It is the real Hope of real men, and nothing so worn and tawdry as a platitudinous campaign slogan.

##########

I don't know what I was expecting when I published my previous post. It was devilishly hard to write, and there was a big part of me that wanted to not write it. I can't explain why that is, other than it's easier not to write a tragic story.

On the other hand, it's an event that's been with me for a long time. When you do the job I did, you learn to compartmentalize, to put the misery and sadness and death aside and get on with the job. You lock it away in a box, or perhaps in a pithos, and you drive on. It's not gone, of course, it doesn't disappear. It's there, you know it's there, and you know that eventually you'll have to open it and let the misery, sadness and death wash over you. It's a painful process. It would be unbearable were it not for Hope.

I'd also promised Wayne's sister Crystal that I would write the account and share it with her. I did this several years ago, and have often cursed myself for ever making the promise. It seemed an impossible thing to do. How do you share such awful details? How do you share them with the sister of the man you couldn't save? Yet she wanted the details. She was so very understanding and patient, and never pressed me on the subject. She wanted to know about the last minutes of her brother's life. She deserved no less.

Opening the pithos is a process. It takes time, and reflection, and thought, and prayer. It has to happen at its own pace, in its own time. On October 3 it finally happened.

I published it here, and posted a link on koobecaf.

I'd done my best, yet I was concerned for Crystal and for my Coral Sea shipmates, some of whom would see and read the post. A post filled with misery and sadness and death. I was afraid, at least a little bit afraid, that in opening the pithos and finally purging my heart of this hurt, that I would inadvertently hurt the hearts of others. I'd made a promise, though, and after much reflection and soul searching, decided that I'd have to rely on Hope. That Hope would remain, and do for others what it has always done, soothe and heal wounds. In particular, the wounds that the ills of January 31, 1988 have caused.

I'm not a big fan of koobecaf. The utter garbage that populates that place often drives me to distraction. Nevertheless, I posted the link, which Crystal immediately shared to her timeline, and which an old squadron mate shared to the Coral Sea page. I followed those conversations, and I am humbled and amazed at the sheer volume of love and support that flowed. Scores of comments. So very many shipmates knew Wayne and were profoundly hurt by his tragic death, yet so many offered sincere thanks for finally being able to read about some of the grim details.

When Crystal shared the post she began with the line, "This is the most difficult story I have ever read. This is it.....the story of my brother's last few minutes on earth. There truly are no words.....except thank you Shaun Evertson and the rest of the team for trying to save him."

Humbled is just not a big enough word.

A lot of people visited this place and read the post. More than 1,800 page views in 24 hours. That's insane for my little piddly blog. By far the most visits of all time.

That makes me think that it was worth it to post the story, and that in some small way I've done a service. I know for certain that scores and scores of strangers and former shipmates have done me a huge service. They've rekindled my belief in the power of Hope, and they've provided a powerful pushback against the fear I have for the future of our nation.

This is an enormous, gigantic thing.

Today I feel wrung out and a bit limp. It's been a challenging and emotional couple of days. But I also feel better than I have in some time.

All of you people, all of you wonderful, individual, human, sovereign citizens of this great land, thank you so much for the gift you've shared with me.

Corpsman Chronicles X: Connection

I have a small scar on the inside of my left forearm. It connects me, in a profoundly intimate way, with a young man I never knew.

January 31, 1988.

USS Coral Sea, January 31, 1988.

I was the single hospital corpsman shared between a pair of A-6 Intruder squadrons, VA-55 and VA-65, the Warhorses and World Famous Fighting Tigers, respectively. The squadrons were part of Carrier Air Wing 13, which also included three F/A-18 Hornet squadrons, an E-2C Hawkeye squadron, An EA-6B squadron, and HS-17, Neptune's Raiders, an ASW helo squadron flying the Sikorsky SH-3H Sea King. We were deployed in USS Coral Sea (CV-43).

On this, my seventh major carrier deployment, I was assigned to work in main medical, which for the most part meant seeing sick call and running (more or less) the ship's treatment room, which was the equivalent of an emergency room. I also flew with HS-17 on Search and Rescue, Medevac, and plane guard missions.

At 0700 on January 31 the ship was fighting through uncharacteristically stormy seas in the central Mediterranean. The storm was a big one and the Ageless Warrior was closed up tight, sailing into the heavy seas. White water was coming over the bow, lashing the jets and helos chained to the deck with heavy weather tie downs. The weather was so severe that flying had been curtailed, and the weather decks and sponsons were secured. It was far too dangerous for men to venture outside the confines of the ship.

A few minutes after a particularly severe wave-crashing shudder, "Medical Emergency" was called over the 1-MC. A man had been securing equipment in the hangar bay when a wave smashed open a hatch. Tons of seawater had lifted a piece of ground support equipment and flung it across the hangar, crushing the man against an armored bulkhead. The medical response team dashed off. Reports began coming in, and they weren't good.

"CPR."

"Can't get an airway."

"Defibrillating."

As the stretcher bearers bustled into the treatment room with the injured sailor, the surgeon took one look and told me to scrub.

"You'll have to rub his heart."

I scrubbed and donned gloves.

With the casualty on the table the surgeon called for a knife, then slashed the chest open on the left side.

"Spreader."

As I turned from donning my gloves I heard the ratcheting sound of the rib spreader opening, allowing access to the heart. I slid my hands into the sailor's chest and clasped the heart between opposing palms. The heart should have been turgid with blood and beating, but it was flaccid and still.

"Heart's flat," I reported.

The surgeon glanced at me and mimed "heart compression" with his bloody hands, then quickly performed a stab thoracotomy on the right side of the chest. The internal pressure of hemorrhage in the chest was relieved, finally making it possible to get air in. The nurse anesthetist quickly placed an endotracheal tube and began squeezing the ambu bag.

As I compressed the heart, I could feel the left lung inflating. A good sign?

The ship was still shuddering and moving about. On the floor of the treatment room a pool of blood began to grow, supplied by a steady stream flowing out of the young man's mangled torso.

The ship took a big, shuddering, three-dimensional roll, and with the deck slick with blood it was all the medical team could do to keep the casualty on the table. As the ship lurched it's complex motion caused the unresponsive man to roll to his left, toward me. My hands were buried deep in his chest, rhythmically squeezing his heart. As he rolled, a shattered rib bone stabbed into the flesh of my left forearm. In that situation it was less than a minor inconvenience. I continued massaging his heart. What else would I do? We were all working as hard as we possibly could to keep our shipmate alive.

A pair of flight surgeons started large bore IV's, one in each arm, and began administering Ringer's Lactate as fast as it would flow. The gas passer injected a cocktail of medicines to make the heart beat and raise blood pressure.

Within my hands the sailor's heart began to quiver in fibrillation. Another good sign?

The heart quivered, then began to beat erratically. This lasted about 30 seconds. The heartbeat slowed, then the heart began once again to fibrillate. As room-temperature Ringer's Lactate replaced warm blood, I felt the sailor's heart began to cool.

Then it stopped fibrillating.

The senior medical officer stuck his head in the compartment.

"I've activated the walking blood bank," he said. "How much will we need?"

The surgeon glanced at the casualty and quickly, silently polled the treatment team. He sighed.

"We won't need any."

##########

David Wayne Cornell was born on October 16, 1966, in Cairo, West Virginia. He would have turned 50 years old a week from this coming Sunday, but he died in Coral Sea 28 years ago, a little more than eight months shy of age 22.

I didn't know him. I'm sure I'd seen him around, and I'm pretty sure I'd seen him in sick call once, but I could be mistaken on that.

His family called him by his middle name, Wayne. His sister, Crystal, was just a little girl. She thought the world of her brother. January 31 was her birthday. While she was sleeping in West Virginia, perhaps dreaming in anticipation of a happy birthday celebration with cake and presents, I held Wayne's heart in my hands as it became finally and forever still.

He is buried in the Cairo, West Virginia IOOF Cemetery.

##########

Through the modern miracle of social media, Crystal has invited people who knew Wayne to celebrate his 50th birthday on October 16 by committing a random act of kindness in his memory. She invited me to do so, even though I never really knew him, and I think it's a fine idea. I'd like to invite you readers to do the same, if you'd care to, and even though you surely didn't know Wayne either.

I'd also personally like to ask that you consider -- and I'm obviously stealing a famous phrase here -- but I'd ask that you consider taking increased devotion to that cause for which Wayne (and so many others) gave his last full measure of devotion.

##########

Wayne has been gone for a long time. We were shipmates, but I didn't know him. Nevertheless, he will be with me until my time on Earth is done.

Punkin assumptions

There seem to be fewer and fewer people around who realize that the food they purchase from the supermarket actually existed before it magically appeared on the shelf.

"It comes from farms, right? Yeah. Farms."

Which is pretty much the same as saying it comes from the "country."

##########

I'm just now harvesting pumpkins from my garden. Most people I know (not all, but most) are pretty sure that pumpkins are for making Jack O'lanterns. And that to get pumpkin pie, you put punkins in one end of Mrs. Smith's factory and, after magic, you pick up frozen pumpkin pies from the other side.

The really hep, cool, and smart folks know that you can make a scratch pumpkin pie at home, using canned pumpkin. See, the punkins go in one end of the IGA factory and, after magic, you pick up canned pumpkin from the other side.

Of course it's not quite that bad. Not quite.

But give most folks a four pound pumpkin and ask them to make something with it, and 999 times out of a thousand you'll get a Jack O'lantern. And at least 10 lawsuits because the dumb bunnies cut their thumbs off.

##########

Pumpkin Gratin

Ingredients
One pie pumpkin 
Two large eggs
One cup heavy cream
One-half pound bulk breakfast sausage
3/4 cup grated Swiss cheese
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Salt and pepper to taste

Method
Quarter, seed and peel the pumpkin. Don't cut off your thumb. Place the peeled pumpkin under plastic wrap in a glass casserole and microwave on high for 15 minutes. Let cool.

While the pumpkin is cooking/cooling, crumble and brown the sausage.

When the pumpkin has cooled, transfer it to a large mixing bowl and mash it with a potato masher. You can use a food processor, but why would you?

You need one pound, or 16 ounces, of pumpkin for this recipe. The pumpkin I used today yielded 50 ounces. So I weighed out 16 ounces and put the remaining 34 ounces in a freezer bag in the freezer. It'll keep in there until spring.

To the 16 ounces of pumpkin add the eggs and cream and mix well with a rubber spatula.

Add the sausage, mix, add the Swiss, mix.

Salt and pepper to taste.

Pour into greased 1.5-2 quart casserole.

Top with shredded Parmesan and a bit more pepper.

Bake uncovered at 350 for 35-45 minutes.

Not the worst thing I've ever made.

##########

Many, many years ago, when I was in Pensacola attending Aviation Medical Technician (AVT) "C" School, a Chief taught us the perils of making assumptions and shared a neat, simple blackboard trick to help us remember.

"When you assume something," he said, writing out the word on the blackboard (I told you it was a long time ago).

"You make an ASS (slash) out of U (slash) and ME.

ASS / U / ME

That little lesson, one that I suspect countless NCO's have shared with countless juniors over the years, has stayed with me.

It's not that the Chief fixed me, and that from that sunny, winter day in Lower Alabama, I was never again so dumb as to make assumptions. Oh no. I make unsupported and ill-conceived assumptions ALL. THE. FUCKING. TIME.

But thanks to the Chief (I've long since forgotten his name, but do recall that George Dickel was his rocket fuel of choice), and to a little thing that Plato said Socrates said, and to the message set out in documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and to experience and practice and the long, hard road of contemplation and objective self-assessment, I'm no longer a slave to pure emotion and mob-think. These days I'm aware of what a wobbly foundation an assumption is, and I try really hard to avoid making reflexive and unfounded judgments, and when I make them, I work really hard at unfucking myself. It's become a habit.

One thing that really, really irks me is when people hear or read things which never appeared in my spoken or written words. They make an assumption that what I'm really writing or saying is something else entirely. Man, that pisses me off.

And what pisses me off even more is that I get pissed off about it.

A long, long time ago another Chief pointed out to me that when we get pissed at the behavior of another, it's usually because their behavior mirrors an aspect of our own behavior which we do not like at all.

But... I never, ever read or hear stuff that isn't present in the spoken and written words of others!

Except of course, when I do.

Now go make something out of a pumpkin.

Kneeldown

When Colin Kaepernick did his first kneeldown, as I recall he said he was protesting the America that had decided it would be perfectly fine to have either a criminal or a blowhard as president. I think he did mention the social justice view of racist police activity, but that was pretty far down his list.

Since then a lot of people have jumped on the bandwagon. Most of them are young and impressionable, have never been anywhere or done anything, have never been taught or helped to learn about the way our American system is supposed to work.

I have to cut them a lot of slack because they are young and dumb. I'm not giving them a complete pass, but I remember being young and dumb and filled with certainty and self-centered righteousness about complex issues. I said and did a lot of dumb things.

Furthermore, when I was young and dumb the government and media and the educational system weren't openly fomenting race war.

I feel a lot of sympathy for these youngsters. They're being manipulated, being treated as objects to be used by the millions of people who live in this country but do not find fundamental human equality a self evident truth.

I strongly disagree with nearly everything these folks say they kneel for. They're wrong about institutionalized racism and brutality. It's not that there aren't racists aplenty in this country, but the poor dumb clucks of the klan are far outnumbered by sophisticated racists and bigots who will not behave in a civilized fashion.

In a very real sense, the kneelers are correct in that there is something horribly wrong with America, but they haven't yet realized that the real racists are the diseased souls of all color who seek to divide and conquer at any cost.

The kneeldown came to Nebraska last week. I don't approve, however, I have to respect the fundamental humanity of these young men, respect their right to speak and opine, and perhaps most importantly respect their right to be wrong. I cannot be an American if I do otherwise, and god knows I've got more experience at being wrong than these kids do. It's not easy. I feel strongly about the issue. But I have to take up the very hard task of being a principled American, or I am lost.

I very strongly endorse and approve of Mike Riley's leadership and guidance. If you're interested, his remarks on the subject begin at 7:53 in the first video, and at 10:58 in the second video.





#principledAmerica

Reptality

I gave a talk at the local library last week. It was generally about the ranch as an ecosystem with a bit of emphasis placed on seasonal variations, weather, and wildlife.

It was a standing room only crowd -- not!

There were six adults and two children present, and two of the adults were library staff.

I'm not complaining! I doff my hat to the library staff for making the attempt. Maybe we'll develop it into a better and better attended lecture in the future.

I mention this talk only because I ran into a common reaction when I showed my pictures and videos. Everybody loves the antelope and ground squirrels and weasels and baby calves and insects and -- well -- just about everything.

But when I put up the slides of the snakes, the near-universal reaction is negative. Very negative. "Ick, yuck, awful, terrible, ooohhh."

I'm pretty sure I know why that is. It's fear.

Now there are a lot of animals to be cautious of and to even fear. Lions. Tigers. Bears. Bison. Cape Buffalo. Those things can kill us in very short order, and we pretty much all understand that.

But we also seem to find those deadly animals interesting and fascinating.

Our seemingly universal reaction to snakes is very different. In a great many cases just the image of a snake causes revulsion and a deep fear bordering on terror.

I wonder why that is. It seems to be a very deeply rooted phobia, one that lives in the primitive, non-reasoning part of our brain. Why are snakes so fundamentally repulsive and fear-inducing, while other deadly animals are less so?

It's interesting to think about. I don't know the answer, but I get the feeling that snakes were the number one danger to evolving proto-humans, and that deep seated fear has remained with us down through the ages. It may in fact be hard-wired into our very DNA.

Just speculation, of course, but interesting to think about.

And oh by the way, my own visceral reaction to snakes is one of fear and revulsion. I've learned to deal with it and to appreciate snakes intellectually and rationally. But that does not mean that an unexpected rattle at my feet does not instantly shoot adrenaline through my system. And every time I levitate and scream like a girl. My primitive brain and my reasoning brain do not agree on the subject at all.

In the last couple of months I've posted on rattlesnakes and bullsnakes. One of the things that absolutely delights my reasoning brain is the way the bullsnake aggressively imitates the rattlesnake when threatened. It coils, raises its head, vibrates its tail, hisses in a fair approximation of the buzz of a rattlesnake rattle, and strikes at the threat if it comes close.

The bullsnake is, in fact, more aggressively and overtly threatening than the rattlesnake. The difference in behavior is striking. The rattlesnake -- at least the prairie rattlesnake -- is usually quite docile. It will coil and raise its head and rattle, but usually only after some serious pestering. In general the rattlesnake will simply try to slither away. Prairie rattlesnakes actually seem pretty laid back, especially when compared to the bullsnake, which often behaves like a tweaker coming down off the meth.

One other thing that many bullsnakes do is to constrict the muscles right behind the head to give the head a triangular appearance. The rattlesnake head is triangular due to the muscles and joints required to strike and envenomate, and also due to the size and musculature of the venom glands. The bullsnake, on the other hand, has an oval shaped head.

But it can sure make its head look triangular! I found this one sunning on a county road yesterday.

Just soakin' up some rays.

Close up of the oval shaped head.

Presto-changeo! Now I'm a rattlesnake! Note the round pupil.

Very convincing!

For comparison, here's the prairie rattlesnake.

Coiling, tail up but not rattling. Just a gentle "have a care, chum."

Naturally triangular head.

And a vertically slit pupil.

And here's some video of the bullsnake.

All in all, just a slice of nature's wonder. As is our visceral reaction to snakes.