Captain Curmudgeon's Log

Notes for "Euclid Alone"

2007-11-15T13:16:00.001-07:00

About ten years ago, while reading my parents' autobiographies, I thought about how to write my own. Obviously, I wanted to avoid the chronological approach entirely. It can lead to the drastic kind of foreshortening where the waiter on a cruise my parents took a year or two before gets more space in my mother's autobiography than my brother Jim.

I had two notions. The first was to write the autobiography in many threads. I would take as many aspects of my life as interested me and write about them in some loose chronological order. Instead of my whole life from birth to the present, there would be threads about my developing personal philosophy, my relationships with girlfriends and wives, my experiences as a writer, my on-going vocational crises, my interest in sports, etc.

The second notion was that the whole should be written as hypertext, with links which could, for example, allow a reader to follow my life chronologically, to see what my parents had to write about various events that I was writing about, etc.

About two years ago, I came across a quotation that gave me a further idea:

I hit upon the right way to do an Autobiography: start it at no particular time of your life; wander at your free will all over your life; talk only about the thing which interests you for the moment; drop it the moment its interest threatens to pale; and turn your talk upon the new and more interesting thing that has intruded itself into your mind meantime.

-- Mark Twain.

I found this in Mark Twain: A Biography by Albert Bigelow Paine and immediately noted that Paine did not follow this scheme. Although he was working from dictation from Twain that did wander in that exact way, Paine put it all into chronological order. He judged, and I think that he was somewhat correct, that this "wandering free" was not the way that someone would want to read it.

But it made me think that my approach to writing about aspects was unnecessary. Write it the way Twain suggested and then use hypertext linking to assemble even those aspects.

Of course, producing the autobiography as a book would be clumsy. My current idea is that it will be present on a CD along with a browser that allows readers to follow it any number of ways: aspect by aspect, chronological, in the order that pieces were written, etc. (It may sound morbid, but I intend to have this CD (or DVD or whatever) distributed at my funeral -- sort of a door prize.)

"Euclid Alone" is intended as a bit of that autobiography. It would be found on several threads and would itself link to other pieces and to threads.

Sample internal links:

The title would link to the sonnet by Edna St Vincent Millay from which it is taken.

The first paragraph would link back to my father's autobiography.

"teachers": links to pieces about some of the teachers and classes.

"chess": link to a whole chess thread, including how we learned chess (a hungry cousin thought he was buying "cheese" men), my chess career, my decision to stop serious chess, etc.

"They were not all that common then ..." link to "Delby and the Eagle Defense", a related short-story (memoir).

"reputation": a link to a childhood reputation thread. Because of a lucky judo throw on a popular fellow-student, I never had to fight a lick in junior or senior high school.

"chess board in my mind's eye." Link to a similar incident when a rook suddenly turned into a truck in my lane.

"nudity": naturalist, naturist, nudist thread.

"logical": logic thread with some items like "Busting Santa", how I got thrown out of Sunday School, a childhood invention that tested syllogisms for validity, a piece on bare-handed deer hunting, my Anglo-Saxon verb-parsing slide-rule, my career in computers, etc.

Etc.

--
Posted By Captain Curmudgeon to Naturalist Seeks Nudist Colony at 11/15/2007 01:03:00 PM

"Euclid Alone Has Looked on Beauty Bare"

2007-11-15T08:41:00.000-07:00

In 1932 when my father was a student at Granite High School in Salt Lake City, he wanted to go out for football. But it was the depth of the depression, he'd been lucky to find work at ten cents an hour during the summer, and he couldn't afford the five dollars for football shoes. So he went out for swimming instead: "I always loved to swim and swimming didn't require any special uniform as we swam nude."

Twenty-five years later when I went to Granite, not much had changed. I had the same principal as my father, many of the same teachers, and the same uniform for swimming. I was in boys' PE rather than on the swim team, but suits were still forbidden.

There was an admirable logic to it. We came into the locker room, removed all of our clothes and put them into the lockers. We then went up the stairs to the shower room, took showers, and went through another door to the pool. After swimming most of the period, we came back through the shower room to the locker room, drew towels, dried off, put the wet towels in the laundry hamper, dressed, and went off to other classes. Our gym lockers were as clean and dry after class as before: nothing wet was left behind to cause rust, incubate germs, or grow mildew.

I usually took a second shower after swimming to rinse off the chlorine. Since I had to draw my towel before taking it, I made another trip to the locker room and back and this made me a little late. Since my PE class was just before lunch period and since I brought a sack lunch so I could play in the chess tournament held then, I was not rushed and liked to take my time.

One day after taking my post-swim shower, I was coming down the steps from the shower room with my towel around my neck when some boys outside in the halls pushed some girls into the locker room as a prank. I proceeded calmly, my towel around my neck, to my locker, hung the towel on the locker door, and started to dress in my normal, leisurely fashion. After the girls had escaped, the other guys came crowding around my locker.

"Gee, Despain," one said, "weren't you embarrassed with those girls in here? You didn't blink an eye."

"Why should I be embarrassed? I was doing the same thing I do every swim class, just getting back to my locker. I didn't do anything different, so why should I feel any different about it?"

No one had an answer.

"Well, those girls sure must have been embarrassed."

"Why?", I said. "They didn't do anything wrong. Would you be embarrassed if someone shoved you into the girls' dressing room? I wouldn't be. I'd be getting out of there, but I wouldn't be embarrassed."

"They're seeing a naked guy!"

"Would seeing a naked girl make you embarrassed," I asked.

No one said a word.

Such an admission at seventeen would make you seem somehow unmanly in those days. In fact, we'd all have given a great deal to see a naked girl. They were not all that common then, not even pictures.

So, that was that. Word of the incident spread rapidly throughout the school and gave me a long-lasting reputation for incredible suavity and impeccable logic. An undeserved reputation so far as suavity was concerned. The truth is that while I was coming down the steps, I was playing a chess game over in my head and I really didn't see the girls or much else other than the chess board in my mind's eye.

But if my logic convinced no one else, it did convince me. When I thought the whole thing over, it seemed evident that except for the boys in the hall, there really could be no shame attached to anyone involved in the incident and that, therefore, there was no shame inherent in nudity.

I had taken another step down a path that though logical would eventually lead to conflict.

Thoughts on the two versions

2007-11-08T13:02:00.001-07:00

It's interesting how having an assignment influences writing, sometimes for the worse. The first version of Drill was written with nothing much more in mind than telling the story and illustrating the point in the frame, that simulation isn't a complete substitute for real experience. There's enough detail, I think, for readers to understand the point of the drill.

The assignment that got me re-writing was this (as best I can recover it from my notes):

Assignment. Something you know a lot about and write to show others. Scene, dialogue, feelings, narrative.

That's approximate, but close. But that and reading the original piece to a friend got me thinking that I needed more of an explanation of the steering system and led to all the detail in the second version.

Along the way, I looked at the alternate writing assignment:

What do you feel strongly about? What experiences lead you to that. Be specific.

I realized that I could be doing both assignments, although "strongly" may be an exaggeration. I'd already decided to drop the frame and I was trying to find a quotation to start. I didn't find the one I was looking for but I did find the one from Confucius that seemed on the money. In
fact, it made the old title work even better.

But, when all is said and done, I think the new version is inferior to the old version: too much explanation, really -- enough to stall the narrative. And it wouldn't have been there without the assignment.

That's often the problem with workshops and classes: they produce work that fills an assignment but that are not worth being published.

Drill (071011)

2007-10-15T16:25:00.000-06:00

Learning without thought is labor lost. -- Confucius.

When Jim Hoskins and I relieved the bridge watch well before
midnight, we were looking at what could be a dull four-hour
stretch. Returning from a Mediterranean deployment, our
destroyer was sailing alone in mid-Atlantic, far from
normal shipping lanes. No ships, no aircraft, and no land
were visible, even on radar, and the night orders were
simple: maintain current course and speed and call the
captain only if a ship or plane came within two nautical
miles.

After the enlisted personnel of the relieving bridge watch
had settled in at their stations and I had taken the conn,
the actual control of the ship, Jim and I went out on the
starboard bridge wing to plan. One way to enliven an
uneventful watch is to run drills and the midwatch has a
nightly opportunity because of the steering system.

Steering a vessel souped up to 70,000 horsepower, carrying
300 souls, and having no brakes is something you don't want
to fail, even if the ship is severely damaged. What
actually forces a turn is the rudder, a massive fin under
the stern that is rotated by the steering engine. This
engine is a giant piece of hydraulic machinery powered by
electric motors that are controlled by small electrical
signals. The steering engine is inside the ship in the
aftersteering compartment on the very bottom deck and the
signals must come from the bridge, on the very highest deck
and 300 feet forward.

The steering signals are generated by the helm, a vertical
steering wheel whose outward appearance hasn't changed that
much in 400 years. If you've seen any pirate movie, you
know what a helm looks like. The signals first go to the
steering alarm box on the forward bulkhead (or wall) of the
bridge. The steering alarm can tell if there's a complete
circuit from the helm back to the steering engine so that
the signals can get to it. If not, the alarm sounds, a loud
ringing like an old-fashioned school bell.

From the alarm box, the signals go to a brass rotary switch
on the after bridge bulkhead. This switch can choose
between two independent electrical cables on each side of
the ship that run back to aftersteering. In aftersteering
the two cables come into an identical rotary switch that
selects which cable to connect to the steering engine. Both
rotary switches have a neutral setting which isn't connected
to either cable.

So, for signals to pass from the helm to the steering
engine, both rotary switches must select the same cable.
Alternately, the steering engine can be connected to a wheel
in the aftersteering compartment and be controlled from
there instead of from the bridge.

If only half the ship is destroyed, you can steer from the
bridge using the surviving cable. If both cables or the
bridge have been destroyed, you can steer with the helm in
aftersteering. If that helm is destroyed or you're without
electrical power, you can actually move the rudder by
mechanical means, using the hydraulics if they've survived
or rigging blocks and tackles if the hydraulics are gone.

If a ship is still afloat, you want to be able to steer it.
And you want to be sure you can steer it by testing as much
of the steering system as you can every day. On the
midwatch the system changes from one steering cable to the
other. Even if both rotary switches are changed at the same
time, there will be a momentary loss of the signal path
while passing through the neutral position and this is the
basis of the drill:

(Scene: the bridge at midnight. The watch officer without
the conn approaches the steering cable rotary switch and
stealthily turns it, disconnecting the helm from the cable.)

Steering alarm (from the forward bulkhead): BRINGGGGGGG!

Helmsman: Bridge has lost steering control, sir.

Conning Officer: Very well. Tell aftersteering to take
control and steer course 255.

Bridge talker: Aye, aye, sir. (over sound-powered telephone
circuit) Aftersteering, bridge. Take control and steer
course 255.

(A pause while aftersteering disconnects from the steering
cable, mans its wheel, and steadies on course.)

Talker (hearing from aftersteering): Aftersteering
has control, sir. Steering course 255.

Conn: Very well.

(After a decent interval, long enough to give aftersteering
a good workout, the conning officer turns the rotary switch
to the other cable.)

Conn: Tell aftersteering to relinquish steering control and
switch to the port cable.

Talker: Aye, aye, sir. Aftersteering, bridge. Relinquish
steering control and switch to the port cable.

Helmsman (after discovering that the ship responds to the
wheel): Bridge has steering control, sir.

Conn: Very well. Steady on course 255.

Helm: Aye, aye, sir. Steering 255.

Conn: (ending the nightly loss-of-steering-control drill)
Very well.

This tests the steering alarm, both cables, both helms, and
insures that the watch knows how to handle loss of steering
control.

Now Jim had become concerned that through constant unvaried
repetition this drill had degenerated to an automatic
routine -- almost to a ritual -- performed by the watch
members without conscious thought. While lounging around
the bridge in port, he had discovered that by jamming his
toe into the underside of the steering alarm box, he could
make the alarm go off even though steering control had not
been lost and he hoped to revitalize the drill with this
device. We decided on the details of a little trap and
returned to the bridge.

"Mr. Hoskins has the conn," I said.

"Aye, aye, sir."

"Steering 255, sir."

"Very well."

"Both engines are ahead full, indicating turns for 24
knots, sir."

"Very well."

Jim walked to the forward bridge window, near the steering
alarm box, and stared out into the darkness. I baited the
trap by nonchalantly going to the chart table on the after
bulkhead, right next to the rotary switch. I killed some
time making an entry in the ship's log.

BRINGGGGGGGGGGGG!

"Bridgehasloststeeringcontrolsir."

BRINGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG (no answer) NNNGGGGGGGGG!

"Sir: bridge has lost steering control, sir!"

The alarm stopped as Jim wheeled away from the bridge
window and stalked back to the helmsman.

"Test your helm," he said.

"Aye, aye, sir. Bridge has regained steering control, sir."

"No it hasn't. You never lost it. That bell doesn't steer
the ship; you do. Check your wheel and your compass.
They'll tell you whether you have steering control or not."

"Aye, aye, sir. Sorry, sir."

"Don't be. Mr. Despain and I will see to it that you get
plenty of practice in the next two hours."

We did: we interspersed false and real alarms; we arranged
to have after steering disconnect while we both stood
innocently clear of the bridge rotary switch; sometimes we
had after steering take control and sometimes we kept
control on the bridge, coming up directly on the alternate
cable; we traded the conn back and forth, once having loss
of steering control occur at the same time. After two
hours, we'd covered every combination of circumstances
involving loss of steering control that we could think of.

Toward the end of the watch, Jim took the conn while I wrote
up the watch log entry. I checked the rotary switch and
discovered that we had ended our intensive drills on the
wrong cable for the day. I joined Jim on the wing and we
arranged one last drill. Jim came back and took his
position at the front of the bridge, once again near the
steering alarm box. I turned the rotary to the neutral
position.

Nothing happened.

The one thing we couldn't rig had occurred: perhaps because
of Jim's frequent prodding, the alarm had hung up, giving no
warning that the bridge had, in fact, again lost steering
control.

I glanced at the helmsman, wondering how long it would be
before he sang out, starting the drill. He was watching his
compass and noticed that the ship was drifting off course.
He put the helm further over, without effect. Suddenly he
shifted the helm, turning it as far to the left as he had had
it to the right.

Good, I thought. He's figured it out. As I waited
expectantly, he turned the wheel back to the right. I
decided he needed a little jog, so I left the cart table and
went to the radar repeater alongside the helm.

"Anything wrong?" I said, thinking he would now realize
that he'd lost control and sing out.

"Gee, Mr. Despain, I don't know, but I think this
son-of-a-bitch is broke."

So much for two hours of drill. We had learned that the
alarm did not necessarily mean loss of steering control.
But we had somehow missed the essential principle: steering
control is when the ship responds to the helm. Just that.
And the alarm is just a fallible hint.

Evasion

2007-10-15T16:10:00.000-06:00

As I wrote earlier, I reactivated this blog as a place to stash various things connected with my activities with the Community Writing Center . For reasons that I'll discuss later, I decided to rewrite Drill for this workshop and I handed the new version out Thursday with a pointer to the old version here on the blog. It would be interesting to know how many people actually come here to read it. I hope they leave comments, if only to show that they were here (hint, hint).

I'm going to post the new version next but I'm avoiding talking about it here until I get reactions from my workshop mates next Thursday. I don't want to contaminate those reactions because they are important to me.

On the other hand, I have no reason to believe that anyone will get here from the workshop (or anyplace else). This blogging often feels like putting messages in a bottle. ("Fan mail from some flounder?")

Drill ('8?)

2007-10-11T13:14:00.001-06:00

A few night ago on TV, a military pilot and a computer
scientist debated the value of flight simulators in
training. While conceding some value to the simulators, the
pilot argued that nothing could replace actual flight
time. The computer scientist disagreed. "On our simulator,"
he said, "you can do everything you can in the aircraft --
except use up fuel and crash." Even though he failed to
explain how to load 229 people into the simulator and fly
them to Chicago at $154.75 per head, I thought he had a
point. Then I remembered an incident when I was an ensign
on a Navy destroyer.

We were in mid-Atlantic, well away from normal shipping
lanes, returning from a Mediterranean deployment. When my
watch-mate, Jim Hoskins, and I relieved the bridge watch
shortly before midnight, we saw that were were in for the
worst: no changes in course or speed all night, no ships in
company, and very little chance of seeing anything --
merchant ships, land, or aircraft -- even on radar. We were
faced with the prospect of a long, dull four hours.

After the rest of the bridge watch -- the helmsman, the
bridge telephone talker, the man on the engine order
telegraph, the petty officer and the quartermaster of the
watch -- had been relieved, and I had taken the conn, the
actual control of the movements of the ship, Jim and I went
out on the starboard bridge wing to talk. Jim had made a
discovery about the steering control alarm which he thought
we could put to good use during the usual mid-watch loss of
steering control drill.

This drill comes about because of the navy's desire to make
a ship at sea as damage-resistant as possible. The helm,
the ship's steering wheel on the bridge, must send its
control signals more than three hundred feet to the steering
engine in the very stern of the sip. As a back up, these
signals have two possible paths, a cable running on the port
side of the ship and a second cable running to starboard. A
large brass rotary switch on the after bulkhead of the
bridge can connect the helm to either cable or disconnect it
entirely. Thus, should one cable be damaged -- say by
collision, enemy gunfire, or simple malfunction -- the helm
and steering engine can be switched over to the alternate
cable. Further, should both cables be damaged or the bridge
destroyed during combat, a member of the watch in after
steering, the compartment containing the steering engine,
can use a similar rotary switch to disconnect the bridge
helm and steer himself.

At sea, the two cables are used on alternate days. When the
switchover is made during the mid-watch, there is a
temporary loss of steering control on the bridge. Most
watch officers use this loss as a drill for both the bridge
watch-standers and the man in after steering. Jim was
concerned that through constant, unvaried repetition this
drill had degenerated to a routine -- almost to an automatic
ritual, performed without conscious thought by the conning
officer, the helmsman, and the bridge phone talker, with
some off-stage assistance from after steering:

(Scene: the bridge at midnight. The watch officer without
the conn approaches the steering cable rotary switch and
stealthily turns it, disconnecting the helm from the cable.)

Steering alarm (from the forward bulkhead): BRINGGGGGGG!

Helmsman: Bridge has lost steering control, sir.

Conning Officer: Very well. Tell after steering to take
control and steer course 255.

Bridge talker: Aye, aye, sir. After steering, bridge. Take
control and steer course 255.

(A pause while after steering disconnects from the steering
cable, mans its wheel, and steadies on course.)

Talker: After steering has control, sir. Steering course
255.

Conn: Very well.

(After a decent interval, long enough to give after steering
a good workout, the conning officer turns the rotary switch
to the other cable.)

Conn: Tell after steering to relinquish steering control and
switch to the port cable.

Talker: Aye, aye, sir. After steering, bridge. Relinquish
steering control and switch to the port cable.

Helmsman (after discovering that the ship responds to the
wheel): Bridge has steering control, sir.

Conn: Very well. Steady on course 255.

Helm: Aye, aye, sir. Steering 255.

Conn: (ending the nightly loss-of-steering-control drill)
Very well.

Jim's discovery, by which we intended to revitalize the
drill, was a method of using his foot to make the steering
alarm sound, even though the rotary switch was still in
position and the helm connected to the steering engine. We
decided on the details of our little mouse trap and returned
to the bridge.

"Mr. Hoskins has the conn," I said.

"Aye, aye, sir."

"Steering 255, sir."

"Very well."

"Both engines are ahead full, indicating turns for 24
knots, sir."

"Very well."

Jim walked to the forward bridge windows, near the steering
alarm box, and stared out into the darkness. I baited the
trap by nonchalantly going to the chart table on the after
bulkhead, right next to the rotary switch. I killed some
time making an entry in the ship's log.

BRINGGGGGGGGGGGG!

"Bridgehasloststeeringcontrolsir."

BRINGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG no answer NNNGGGGGGGGG!

"Sir: bridge has lost steering control, sir!"

The alarm stopped as Jim wheeled away from the bridge
windows and stalked back to the helmsman.

"Test your helm," he said.

"Aye, aye, sir. Bridge has regained steering control, sir."

"No it hasn't. You never lost it. That bell doesn't steer
the ship; you do. Check your wheel and your compass.
They'll tell you whether you have steering control or not."

"Aye, aye, sir. Sorry, sir."

"Don't be. Mr. Despain and I will see to it that you get
plenty of practice in the next two hours."

We did: we interspersed false and real alarms; we arranged
to have after steering disconnect while we both stood
innocently clear of the bridge rotary switch; sometimes we
had after steering take control and sometimes we kept
control on the bridge, coming up directly on the alternate
cable; we traded the conn back and forth, once having loss
of steering control occur at the same time. At the end of
two hours, we'd covered every combination of circumstances
involving loss of control that we could think of.

Toward the end of the watch, Jim took the conn while I wrote
up the log entry. I checked the rotary switch and
discovered that we had ended our intensive drills on the
wrong cable for the day. I slipped out on the wing and we
arranged one last drill. Jim came back and took his
position at the front of the bridge, one again near the
steering alarm. I turned the rotary to the neutral position.

Nothing happened. The one thing we couldn't rig had
occurred: the alarm had hung up, giving no warning that the
bridge had, in fact, again lost steering control. I was
delighted at the prospect of ending the watch with something
unprecedented.

I glanced at the helmsman, wondering how long it would be
before he sang out, starting the drill. He was watching his
compass and noticed that the ship was drifting off course.
He put the helm further over, without effect. Suddenly he
shifted the helm, turning it as far to the left as he had had
it to the right.

Good, I thought. He's figured it out. As I waited
expectantly, he turned the wheel back to the right. I
decided he needed a little jog, so I left the cart table and
went to the radar repeater alongside the helm.

"Anything wrong?" I said, thinking he would now realize
that he'd lost control and sing out.

"Gee, Mr. Despain, I don't know, but I think this
son-of-a-bitch is broke."

Sea Stories

2007-10-11T12:46:00.000-06:00

Sea stories have a point. They are not mere narrative. Drill may have started as narrative, though.

I've been trying to figure out when I wrote the first version. It's type-written (probably on my old Olympia portable) but on sheets that have perforated edges -- like the old sort of computer paper. The frame makes we wonder if I wasn't connected with Evans and Sutherland when I wrote it. Kind of subversive if that were so.

If so, I would have written it in the early 1980s. My memory is a little hazy about when the events took place. At the end of the first Med deployment -- since I didn't come home from the second -- so somewhere in the range 1964-5. The destroyer in the story is an Adam's class DDG. The picture is, in fact, the original, the USS Charles F. Adams, DDG-2.

Reactivated

2007-10-11T12:23:00.001-06:00

After two years and nine months, it's time for another entry.

I've started writing again, after a 25-year layoff, and I thought this blog might be a place for drafts, discussions, and whatnot for the various groups I'm getting involved with at the Community Writing Center. So far, I've taken the training for the DiverseCity Writing Series monitor and I'm taking a workshop on "Writing From Life."

Placeholder

2005-01-10T08:43:00.000-07:00

Seems like I need something here to get the whole thing created. So, something lux.