CharleyCarp's

Hell of a thing, time.

I’m writing from our house in Qualicum BC. It’s Saturday — the sale of the house closes on Monday. I drove over to pick up a few things — most of the furniture and household goods are going to the buyer — and, I guess, say some goodbyes.

I was here in December: my dad was in Florida dying of pancreatic cancer, and had been thrilled to get a good offer on the house. I came out to look for a box of receipts he thought was here, for use in filing Canadian taxes. There was no box. And my dad lived only another 10 days after that.

I’m sure I told the story before how we ended up here, how my parents had befriended a similarly aged couple in Connecticut in the 50s, who ended up in Vancouver in the 60s, and then on the island in the 70s. The wife of that couple passed away on Christmas Eve, basically as my dad was making a last trip to the hospital. The man of the couple came by to see me today — along with his older son, who’s my age. We said goodbye, not expecting to see each other again. After 5 decades of friendship, what’s there to show?

He’s moving to assisted living in the next few months, so they don’t need things. I did get him to take a wine glass with the logo of “our” winery etched. It’s a good keepsake.

The sun is out on Hornby Island, north across the water. Lot of things I never got around to doing in 35 years of coming here. The wife says we’ll just have to invent new traditions, and she’s right. Still, the forces are feeling a little centrifugal this day.

Folks who follow me in other ways will know that my mother in law passed away unexpectedly ten days ago. I’m in the wife’s home town, the funeral was a couple days ago, and I’m flying home tomorrow.

Sitting in the house wondering if I’ll ever be back here. Quite possibly not. Her father passed away two years ago, so there aren’t parents any longer. My niece is married, and I doubt we’d come for my brother in law’s wedding, if his gf talks him into one. I guess I’d come to his funeral — hopefully many years hence — if my niece asked us to, but that’s not obvious either. Not likely to use vacation time/funds to come here. (I’ll be in Germany for a few days next winter, but only in Bavaria, not up here in the Saarland.)

My own parents are trying to sell their summer home in BC. People kept coming to look at it when we were there last month: the market isn’t quite right for it just now, so I think we’ll be there next summer. Or not.

Eras end. I guess aging is like this.

So, the moral of the story is, go for the goofball move.

I was lying around my house a few months back, leg in a cast, listening to youtubes, feeling kind of sorry for myself. I saw one by a singer/songwriter I really like– I’ve got 3 or 4 of her albums on my ipod — and thought: what the hell. I sent her a Facebook email, the entire text of which was Missoula Montana. How about it.

Darned if she didn’t respond a couple days later with ‘I think we might be in Billings this summer.’ Naturally I replied that Missoula was more fun, and then she asked me about venues. I sent her some info, and that was that.

Until this week, when I learned that the singer is going to be playing here right after her Billings gig. Tickets went on sale this morning, and sold out in about 4 hours.

How do they do it?

For no good reason, I feel like an update is in order. I’ve just gotten home (yesterday) from a ski trip to Lech, Austria. A fine time was had by all (or nearly all). Actually, most of the group came home Sunday, but I stayed on a couple of days more to visit my friend Urs in central Switzerland.

Pix are on Facebook.

Naturally, there’s some work waiting for me. It’s going to be a busy 2 or 3 months, I think.

Is anything darker than a rainy Fall night on US 12 in Idaho?  I guess so, under the laws of physics, but as an experience, it’s pretty dark.

I’ve been going to Idaho a few days a month since spring — for depositions in a case pending there.  Not much really to say about it, except that I won’t be sorry if I’m not back there for several months.  I like a couple of the lawyers in the case, and am annoyed by another of them.  I’ve seen some interesting sights — particularly Hells Canyon — and had a lively discussion about the Corps of Discovery at the Nez Perce historic site on the way down one time.  Took various different routes back — the St. Joe road up to Avery, and then over the Bitterroots to St. Regis is totally worth it.   I’ll be in Spokane for 3 days next week, but then should be home most of the rest of the month.  And really, there may not be much more travel for this one.

I’ve been in kind of a low grade panic about my workload for months, moving to mid-grade these days.  There’s nothing concrete to be done about it, though.   

I was reminded today, by an Unfogged thread, of having seen Harry Chapin on TV singing <i>Last Train to Nuremberg</i>.  I’m thinking it must have been 1972, although I guess 1973 is possible.  It was passionate, and made quite an impression on me.  Looking around on the internet this afternoon, though, I can’t find even a hint of it.  And there’s quite a lot written about Chapin.  Someday maybe I’ll get to the bottom of it.

Right now, though, I’m wearing a tie-dyed shirt.  Because were going to the Dark Star Orchestra concert tonight.  I’m sure it will be an absolute hoot.  And that we’ll be higher than kites just for breathing the air in the Wilma.

I’ve probably said before that Fall is a time of nostalgia and reflection for me.  Rainy Fall days like today especially so.  I should probably try to keep busier.

The boy’s spring break is drawing to a close: I think he’s spent 2, maybe 3 nights at home out of 9.  His girlfriend is home from Virginia for the same break, and they’ve pretty much been inseparable.  I guess that’s how that goes.

It was definitely spring skiing on Friday.  Soft and smooth.  I’m hoping for the same tomorrow, but the forecast looks more wintry: wind and driving snow.  Should be good.

I’ve got a couple of briefs to finish by midday Tuesday, and then I’m off to Idaho for depositions.  Home Thursday.

The wife decided to see what all the fuss was about, so we’ve been watching Downton Abbey the last couple of weeks.  Just about done now: one episode left.

I’m less annoyed by these characters than I am by many TV shows.  But I don’t think I’d want to spend an afternoon with any of them.  I’m not particularly interested in England of that era, or the land-owning class.  I thought that show where ordinary people had to play the roles for real for a couple of weeks was pretty good, but it was enough for my curiosity about this sort of life.  I guess I don’t find the balance in DA between the story, and the interplay of upstairs/downstairs, to be exactly right.  Gosford Park was a better balance.  But I suppose it’s easier to fill a single movie that has a single story arc, than to have to try to flesh out all the characters and all their inner lives.

We’ll watch the last episode tomorrow.  Maybe I’ll feel differently about the thing after it’s over.

Thirty years is a long time to be married. Good thing the best restaurant in town is called Pearl.

Probably still the cold doing the thinking, but I guess I’ll jot down some thoughts on the kill list and drone policy.

It seems to me that the law of war certainly allows a belligerent to kill a member of the enemy force in the midst of hostilities, without regard to the citizenship of that person.  I don’t think this is particularly controversial, although I suppose there are pacifists and opportunists who might disagree.  It also seems to me that the law of war allows a belligerent to kill an enemy commander (e.g., Admiral Yamamoto) while that commander is not presently engaged in active hostility.  Indeed, rank isn’t important: it seems to me that the law of war allows a belligerent to attack enemy soldiers who are asleep in their barracks, even if hung over (say from celebrating Christmas).

The troublesome part of the whole thing, though, is deciding in this particular war who is a member of the enemy force.  During active hostilities, one can certainly look at conduct, and make a defensible judgment.  And there are plenty of active hostilities going on.  This is only going to help, though, with people in the lowest ranks: commanders aren’t going to be engaging in active hostilities, so you don’t meet them on a battlefield.  That leaves two ways to find out who they are: they can tell you themselves by press release (as some  senior Al Qaida have done) or through intelligence.

It will surprise no one to learn that I think the intelligence process so deeply flawed that there should be a default presumption that its conclusions, what ever they are, are incorrect.   Indeed, I don’t see how anyone who lived through the last decade can argue the contrary in good faith: you don’t even after to choose between stupidity, venality, and credulity as primary motivations behind the various flaws we’ve seen over the years (and I’m quite sure that the intelligence failures that have become public are but a tiny percentage of the failures that have plagued our efforts to find out what is going on) to be forced to admit that much of what is ‘known’ is simply not so.

So, what are we supposed to do?  As an unapologetic procedural liberal, I guess what I think ought to be done is indict people you think are committing crimes, and attempt (with cooperation of appropriate authorities) to arrest them.  I think, though, that one has to recognize that this is not going to be feasible in many instances.  And also that a belligerent has a legitimate interest in engaging with members and commanders of the enemy force, without regard to their citizenship.

I haven’t really thought this all the way through, but I’m wondering whether it wouldn’t make plenty of sense to publish the ‘kill list’ and allow any American on it notice and an opportunity to be heard.   Looking at the Aulaqi example, no harm seems to have come from his knowledge that he was on such a list.  He specifically declined an opportunity to litigate the legality of his inclusion on the list (hence I find myself less sympathetic to his situation than many others seem to be, or than I am for his son).  I suppose there might be some risk of exposing intelligence sources, but I’m frankly ok with imposing that sort of requirement before the person can be executed.

Certainly, the unwillingness to publish the list, and allow someone erroneously listed to contest the listing, gives the lie to the supposition that execution is made necessary by the conduct of the target.  Mr. Brennan can say ‘they can surrender’ all he wants, but people who do not belong on the list — and do not even know they are on a list — can have no obligation to ‘surrender’ whatever that even means.

The list is said to be quite short, so the burden of litigating this doesn’t seem excessive.  Obviously, you’d have to work out ways to keep some things classified.  But, in reality, I expect virtually every person who belongs on the list to behave exactly as Aulaqi did: people are not going to litigate losing cases, but only where they have a reasonable chance at showing that the intelligence showing them to be a member of the enemy force is completely incorrect.

I have a cold.  It started yesterday at about 4:30 pm.  Didn’t sleep that well, and ended up getting up on the early side.  But I’ll be damned if I’m going to let a stupid cold get in the way of my regular Friday afternoon ski trip with my friend Randy.  And why should I: fresh air, sunshine, some exercise, can’t but be good, right.

So I had lunch at home, took a Dayquil, and Randy came by to pick me up.

Now as usual, the wife has to be up at the hill earlier than we do, so she’d already gone.  My poles are in her car, and skis on the rack on top, but that’s no big deal, she just has to leave the keys in the console,  We’ve done this a bunch of times, without a hitch.

We find her car easily, and I go to get my stuff while Randy parks.  And find all the doors locked.  Shit.  No way to get skis or poles.  I’d forgotten my phone, but there’s no reception at the base, and, anyway, I was sure that the wife didn’t have hers either.  She was on the upper part of the mountain, not to be expected at the bottom before the end of the day.  I figured that she had figured that I wouldn’t be skiing, what with the cold and all, and had just gone ahead up.

Maybe it was the Dayquil doing the thinking, but I decided to demo some of those fat skis I see everyone using.  Went to the shop — it took maybe 20 minutes, but I ended up with a beat up looking pair of K2 something or others.  Very fat.  And what do you know, I liked them!

Snow was fine, on the groomers, not anything to write home about.  Some fog, sometimes thick, and a few splashes of sunshine around the end of the day.  On the last run down, I spotted the wife about 50 yards ahead, and sped forward.  She must have seen me too, because she went even faster.  We were totally bombing the thing — way faster than she usually skis.  I finally caught her at the bottom — and asked if she had the keys.  Nope, they’re in the car.

AAA was surprisingly fast.  Friends at the bar were characteristically friendly.  It ended up adding 30 minutes to our end of day ritual, but, as First World Problems go, that’s pretty small stuff.  (The ritual includes having a shot or two of Jamesons.  It seems to go well with the Dayquil).

Probably not skiing tomorrow — although we might go watch some of the dogsled racing over by Helena, and maybe we’ll XC or snowshoe some where over there.  Sunday is a friend’s birthday, and we’ll all ski Discovery.  No time to have a stupid cold!