Psst!

"Do you have your Safeway card?"
"Yeah, sure. Here it is."
"What's this? It's a library card."
"Oh, I brought the wrong card in from the car."

"Well, enter your phone number, that'll work."
"Okay. This probably means that my Safeway card wouldn't work at the library."
"That's what I'm thinking too. Here's your receipt."

"Thanks, and would you do me a favor?"
"What's that?"
"Please don't tell anyone that I read books. It could ruin my reputation."

Big Sky

On June 25, 1876, Custer, having brought his isolated column of 660 Seventh Cavalry troopers over a divide into the Big Horn Valley in a night march, intended to lay up all day under cover and attack the large Indian village in the distance below them along the Little Big Horn River the next day after rest and proper reconnaissance by his 40 Crow and Arikara scouts.

These Indian scouts had already seen that the faraway hillside of greasy grass beyond the river was alive with the slow undulating movement of a huge pony herd, indicating thousands of warriors. To the unseeing white officers training their spyglasses on the far distant bank in the morning haze they urged, "Look for the worms crawling on the grass."

Behind them, smoke from the troopers' breakfast fires curled into the air, giving away the soldiers' presence. Custer's encampment was soon spotted by some hunters from the Sioux and Cheyenne village and Custer decided to attack immediately, counting on the adrenaline of battle to offset the fatigue of his sleepless troopers and give his attack the proper esprit de corps.

First he divided his force into four unequal parts and dispersed them on their separate tasks. One part he assigned to guard the slow-moving pack train bringing forward the reserve ammunition, another 150 men under Captain Benteen went to reconnoiter the southwest and prevent any Indians from fleeing in that direction, three companies under Major Reno were to charge the lower end of the village and provoke panic and confusion, while he took the lion's share, 250 men in six companies, across the river bluffs to approach the upper end of the huge encampment.

A world famous battle would unfold over the next two days, highlighted by a thirty-minute whirlwind of death for all of Custer's troopers that afternoon, a half hour that also sounded the death knell for the old way of life for the battle's free roaming Native American participants. I'll be walking those very grounds where heroes tread under the Big Sky next week.

Where's Your Husband?

The sweat rolled off my brow as I struck my shovel into the rocky ground and threw out a spadeful of dirt. For 30 minutes Cecila, David and myself had been digging a hole in a front yard into which we would soon drop a tree, which was sitting a few feet away, its root system wrapped within an earthen ball confined in a burlap bag.

The city's "green department" had dropped the free tree off onto the homeowner's property two weeks earlier. Five days ago a city crew had marked the exact spot where the balled tree would be planted by spraying a circle onto the homeowner's lawn with white paint.

This was a Saturday morning volunteer effort for the three of us diggers. We were tree huggers, do-gooders, giving back to our community.

It was time to roll the tree into the hole and cut away the wire holding its burlapped root ball together. The homeowner's door opened and a woman came out.

"Hey, thanks for coming, it's so nice that you're here to put the tree in," she said as she walked up to us. I thought maybe she might offer us green-earth do-gooders who couldn't figure out anything better to do on a Saturday morning some ice-tea or water, and I was thirsty.

"Lissen, we were thinking and we decided we don't want the tree after all. I'm sorry, but we've just changed our minds."

Dave spoke up, because he's the city employee. "Okay, ma'am, we can just pick the tree up on Monday."

The hole we'd spent thirty minutes digging was between us and the homeowner. I turned my back on her and leaned on my shovel.

"Oh thanks." She went back inside her house and closed the door.

I turned to Dave and said, "He didn't even have the balls to come out and tell us; he sent his wife out instead." Cecila laughed knowingly.

We filled the hole back in, placed the scalped turf back on top and left. I made sure that every toaster-sized rock we'd laboriously dug out of that hole made it back in there.

I think Republicans live in that nice house on the southeast corner of Hillwood Avenue and Brook Drive in Falls Church. They coulda told us little folks to stop before we had finished digging that hole.

Tricoteuse

I went to a school in the South which has an honor code. No lying, cheating or stealing. It's an honor code violation not to turn in anyone committing an honor violation. The single sanction is discharge from school.

I am against honor codes. They institute great uncertainty into the mores of practical folks, and institute a reign of terror, in my estimation, because they set the bar at the personal standard of the most stringent interpretation of "honor" by its most zealous advocate. Lost in this is the notion of "prosecutorial discretion."

In the realm of ordinary affairs, offenses pass a number of preliminary barriers before they appear before the ultimate arbiter, a court of law, where they become fully vetted. First, though, a policeman, or injured consumer, decide if the "offense" (jaywalking, or a dinged car door) is worth pursuing. Only then is it passed up the food chain. We all have a sliding scale of values for this--a tiny pock on the bumper earns the culprit a glare, a dent in the quarter panel elicits an exchange of insurance information (the "referral"). But no one lives in fear that their de minimis standard in ignoring a "violation" will earn them a trip before the tribunal and ultimate ejection from the system.

In honor code environments, cheaters go on cheating but take greater care not to get caught. They can actually thrive in the atmosphere of elevated, but not necessarily warrantedly so, sense of trust. Practical folks maintain a low level of anxiety that their common sense attitudes in how they go about their business, either through omissions or commissions, could come to the attention of zealots with stringent, rigid or tortured idealism, who would feel duty-bound to turn them in to the honor board for potential application of the ultimate (and only) sanction.

How Dumb Am I

In this new year, I have run two races already. The first one was a New Year's Day 5K in Arlington, on the Mount Vernon Trail along the Potomac near Key Bridge. The results aren't posted yet, but I ran the out-and-back course in about 23:28. That's only 66 seconds slower than the last time I ran the race two years ago. I'm being sarcastic here.

There's not much to report on it except I spent the entire race chasing a fellow I know, who is about my age, that normally I am faster than. I never caught him.

I think he's from Texas because when I went by him in a race last summer, about a mile in which is where I usually catch him, he was wearing those thoroughly obnoxious I-am-from-Texas shorts. You know, the red and blue vertically striped ones with a big white lone star on them. He's a prickly guy who is notorious in our running club for arguing with everyone about everything (I think he's a lawyer). When I went by him, I said under my breath, "Texas sucks." Because it does. Texas gave us both LBJ and W, our two worst presidents ever.

Usually I'm supportive of any runner I pass or who passes me in a race, I swear it. But I must not have gotten this unkind statement quite under my breath enough, because he looked at me sharply as I passed. As if he were memorizing my face.

So last Tuesday, at about milepost one I cruised on by this fellow as usual. Only he promptly passed me back. And he kept in front of me the rest of the way, no matter what I did. I hung back and then charged. I rode his shoulder. I gunned for him on the last hill. Nothing worked. He put me away. How dumb am I to have given him that motivation?

Today I ran a ten-mile race, which I'll tell you about in another post. I was only six and a half minutes slower than the last time I ran a 10-mile race, on another course a year ago. I'm being sarcastic here. One good thing came out of the race this morning though. Point apparently proved, this fellow let me pass him today per usual at about milepost one. I went by him very quietly. I also made a point of exchanging a non-descript pleasantry with him after the race.