jumpingfish

He works in one place. I work in another far away from him. We’ve worked together on a project for several years.

We were talking on the phone about an idea he had, something to fill in now that our project’s being cancelled. But it was an idea that didn’t work out, and so our conversation was really “good bye”, since we won’t be working together anymore.

“You know this really makes me sad,” I told him.

“Well, it’s a small community,” he said. “We’ll run into each other again.”

He knows. He’s been doing this for a very long time.

“You know I started in this business during the downturn of Apollo. I’ve seen this happen before. But this was different. It just wasn’t handled right.”

Too many people not only feel sad about this, about the loss of the distributed, badgeless team that the project built, about the loss of the hardware, software and processes they’d begun to build. They feel betrayed, and they feel as if they were deceived.

You see, this was going to be the real deal. A project done right, built well, built to last. But it was never properly funded and so expectations were always well beyond what had been paid for. And the managers were constantly fighting a losing battle against too little money and too much mass. In the end, those who failed to provide the funds ended up taking pot shots at the technical people in the trenches, slandering their work, trying to pin the funding shortfall on them.

“It was vindictive,” he said to me.

A very sad ending.

A hard problem to solve.

Why don’t you tell me how your happy-talk can stop the spewing oil in the Gulf? Tell me how being a team player would help or how spin and PR will. Show me how the invisible hand will fix the glop and the death. Tell me how innovation that flows from unfettered profit can shut off the spigot. And tell me how thugs keeping the press away contributes.

No…

Happy-talk doesn’t help when you’ve got a hard problem to solve. Being a team player doesn’t help when you’ve got a hard problem to solve. Spin and PR and lies don’t help when you’ve got a hard problem to solve. Blind faith in the invisible hand doesn’t help when you’ve got a hard problem to solve. Innovation that derives from greed doesn’t help when you’ve got a hard problem to solve. And finally covering up the problem by intimidating the press doesn’t help when you’ve got a hard problem to solve.

When you have a hard problem to solve, you need more than good ol’ boys with firm handshakes and cowboy attitudes.

Engineering hats.

And boy do the BP guys have a hard problem to solve. They knew it before it blew up. But they took off their engineering hats and took shortcuts because time was money and money is king and … you know … bad things don’t happen in the land of happy-talk and free markets and captured federal regulators, so who needs good contingency plans.

They took off their engineering hats and put on their management hats, and … kaboom … now their bad problem has become a calamity.

It’s the same calamity, is just so happens, that Transocean (nee Sonat) had with Ixtoc 31 years ago when they poked into the earth and blew up a well and weren’t able to top hat it or top kill it or junk shot it or do anything to stop the spew for 290 days. For years, a trip to the beach meant taking WD40 with you to get the goo off your feet, and heaven help you if it got in your hair.

BP has the same problem: same problem, same company owning the rig, same inadequate backup plans. The same problem … um … except that this one is a mile under the sea. And their engineering hats lay crumpled on the floor!

I know, I know. I’m a cynic and it gets tiresome. But you know when you’re playing with fire, you really ought to consider that the sky really could fall. BP really ought to have had realistic backup plans that were based on more than cut & paste. They didn’t.  (Really: Walruses in the Gulf!?)

1. Hawk

It was early morning. The sun was still low enough that the heat of the day had not yet risen, and there were clouds running low in the sky and even a hint of rain.

We stood at the top of a hill at the edge of a Juniper thicket. Behind us, a few of spring’s flowers were still blooming in the grass where the trees dwindled.

The Golden Cheek Warblers like the thicket, Brandon was telling us. And the Black Capped Vireos like the open, grassy places, although he wasn’t sure if they’d seen any up here.

And as he was talking about Warblers and Vireos and controlled burns, in the distance we heard a Red Tailed Hawk — a long mournful cry that lingered longer than any I’ve heard before. As it was crying, it flew towards us, wings outstretched, tail lit by the morning light. And then it was over us, screeching/crying as if to welcome us. Or maybe to complain. Or maybe, of course, for some reason that had nothing to do with us.

And then it was gone.

2. Owls

It was dusk of the same day. The sky still glowed with the remnant light of day, but the shadows were deep under the Oak and Ash.  It had been a hot day, and my clothes were wet from sweat. I came around the corner of the house to sit down on the bench and catch my breath and enjoy the little bit of evening breeze.

There was something in the tree—a scratching/scraping sound vaguely reminiscent of cicadas. Or was it a squirrel complaining? I looked up to see and noticed a small silhouette in the branches. It wasn’t a squirrel: I saw no sign of a tail. It wasn’t a broken branch.

Then something flew into the canopy from behind me with great grey wings outstretched. It landed next to whatever that thing was, and the two of them moved closer together. And the scratching/scraping sound continued.

Owls. They were owls. And now a third one joined them from the other side of the street, gliding into the upper reaches of the tree on great grey wings.

I whistled my Screech Owl call, and one of them turned to look at me, rotating its head each time I whistled. Behind me somewhere in the neighbor’s yard, I heard the long low rolling A-song of another owl. I whistled again.

And then they all spread their wings flew off.

3. Cranes

It was night of the same long day. Clouds covered the sky. The dog was off leach, because the soccer teams had left for the night. The field lights were still on.

I looked up at something that was moving overhead and saw a long ‘V’ of bright white birds lit up from below.

I think they were Cranes, although it’s late in the year for them. I understand they fly at night while we’re obliviously asleep. This group flew over the soccer field with it’s glaring lights filling the night, and my oblivious was erased. I stood there, head turned to the sky, and watched. I was facing east and stood there as they flew overhead and southward to the right until they disappeared again into the gloom of night.

They were headed to the coast.

1. Double Takes

When he walked up the to table, the waiter looked to Trudy. She was still looking at the menu, so he turned to me. And when he saw me, he did a little bit of a double take and then smiled and nodded in the slight way he always has.

He was a busboy when I started eating at El Patio more than 25 years ago. They have a pecking order in that place, and back then he was on the ground floor. But in the long time that has passed, the senior waiters from back then have retired, and now he is one of them. We don’t know each other by name, but we know each other by sight. And so when he smiled and nodded, he also said “Hello” in a way that said “It’s good to see you again.”

I said hello in return.

And then he looked at Ben and did another double take and then a triple take as his eyes widened and his mouth opened and he said, “Oh my.”

Ben smiled.

Clearly he recognized Ben, who has been eating there literally all his life. “Oh my,” he said, “hello!”

He turned back to me with a wide eyed look on his face as if to say… And he didn’t need to say it.

“We’re getting old, man,” I said.

He nodded and smiled.  “Yes we are.”

2. Saltines

When I paid the bill at the cash register, I leaned forward and asked David a question I’ve wanted to ask for a while.

“Tell me, why did you switch to chips from saltines?” (A Tex-Mex restaurant with saltines instead of chips always struck us as odd, although we did like them with the butter that David’s dad had out on the tables.)

He smiled and handed me my change. “The cost. They raised the cost of a box of them on me, so I switched to chips.”

“To be honest, I kind of like the chips better,” I said.

“Thanks,” he said. “It worked out better all around.”

“It’s been a while,” I said. “How long has it been since you switched, a few years?”

“Fourteen years.”

Sheesh.

There’s a place on the south side of the lake where the water sits after a rain. Up on the hill, the rains run off the fields and pool around the trunks of the trees and cover the broken branches fallen from above.

Most of the time the place is dry. (It sure has been for the past several years.) But we had good rain this spring, and more than an inch fell this morning, so that place is full of water today.

From the trail that runs beside that place, I saw the muddy water. And I heard the trickle of the sometime stream that runs under the dike and down to the lake on the other side. And it made me think of a time long ago during what must have been another rainy year when I ran past that very spot and looked down on that very place and heard that very stream and saw a turtle in the water.

I’ve wondered about that turtle thru the years — how it fares when the rains don’t come, how it must climb up the embankment and cross the trail to make for the lake. I’ve wondered about that turtle.

And so as I walked past that place today, I peered thru the trees and underbrush down to where the water was and searched for the turtle.

Of course I didn’t see it.  I didn’t see it, but I know it was there.