Priming the pump

By Tom Walker

witsendmagazine 

 

R

ight off the top, I have to admit something: I know nothing about quantum mechanics. The mere mention of the term sends me cowering like a Neanderthal confronted for the first time with fire.

I only mention this because our president, Donald J. Trump, in an interview with The Economist magazine, claimed he coined the phrase, “prime the pump.” If true, this would be downright supernatural, since Merriam-Webster says the term has been around since the early 19^th century.

Priming the pump was something I did every day, working on my dad’s JV Bar Ranch in the desert hills north of Wickenburg, Ariz. Life was anything but easy on the JV Bar, where there was almost never enough feed or water to keep our scrawny herd of 350 mixed breed cattle alive.

Hand pump form of syphon

My job, from the time I was about 12, was to putter around the back roads of our ranch in our World War II vintage Jeep, pumping water from nearly dry wells for  our thirsty, bawling cows.

Some of those wells had gas-driven pumps on them. But a few worked the old-fashioned way, with syphons that had to be primed. I would lower a weighted bucket on a rope into the well, let it fill up with water, pull the bucket up and pour the water into a second bucket that emptied into a pipeline that ran a hundred yards or so downhill from the well into a trough.

And gravity did the rest. The flow from the pipeline created a vacuum that drew water out of the well and kept the life-giving stuff running to the cattle. Until the well ran dry, which it did often.

I

 bet Donald Trump has never driven a Jeep with no brakes or working starter  over ten miles of bumpy roads to prime the pump on a well that’s going to run dry before all his father’s cattle have had enough to drink. I’ll bet he doesn’t even know how to actually prime a pump.

But in a recent Washington Post story, Philip Bump sent me scurrying to Google with this nugget of a sentence: “President Trump’s conversations and statements and braggadocio,” he wrote, “all live in the same nebulous cloud encompassing all of those possibilities, a Schrödinger’s box in which the cat has no fixed state until you look inside — and even then you’re likely to be told that the very dead cat you’re holding is, in fact, alive.”

Wow. A real, maybe live, maybe dead Schrödinger’s cat inside a box. Whatever that is. But thanks to Google, I now know all about that box.

It is, in fact, not a box, but a thought experiment, sometimes described as a paradox. Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger devised it in 1935 to illustrate the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics (Aaaeeeiiihhhh! Quantum mechanics!) applied to everyday objects. Schrödinger imagined a cat that may be simultaneously both alive and dead, a random subatomic event that may or may not occur.

All clear so far? Me neither.

Anyway, Schrödinger coined the term Verschränkung (entanglement) in the course of developing the thought experiment.

Trump probably won’t claim that he invented the term Verschränkung.  And now, with political winds whirling around him after the firing of FBI Director James Comey, he may be wishing  he’d never heard of the term  entanglement.

That’s OK, Mr. Trump. You can claim you invented the term “Presidential Pardon.”

I Trust Rachel Maddow

 I'm not a very trusting person.  It takes awhile for me to trust you, just so you know.  These days I'm more reluctant than ever to trust anyone and especially people who report the news even though our lives right now depend on the courage and honor of investigative reporters.  Since my brother, Tom Walker, retired from investigative reporting, there are two people I trust.  I trust Spencer Ackerman and I trust Rachel Maddow.  I might write more about Spencer later.  He is family.  Right now I want to write about Rachel Maddow and at the same time ask you to also trust her.  Why do I trust her?  For one reason she's smart and she's educated.  We desperately need people who are smart and educated.  Ms. Maddow received a bachelor’s degree in public policy from Stanford University. She earned her doctorate in political science at Oxford University, which she attended on a Rhodes Scholarship. She lives in New York City and Massachusetts with her partner, artist Susan Mikula.  Which brings me to a more personal reason of trust.  She is openly gay and that's not an easy thing to be when you are famous.  She also tells it like it is without a whole lot of bias or bull shit.  And she works hard.  Really hard.  We need the courage of investigative reporters.  We need their commitment to the story.  Let's not forget that the Nixon Presidency ended because of the courage of investigative reporters.  They, more than our elected folks, are our hope for this fragile republic.

Profile in cowardice

A-10 Thunderbolt "Warthog"

By Tom Walker

witsendmagazine

Martha McSally has shown flashes of courage in the past.

     She was the first female fighter pilot to fly in combat, logging nearly 100 combat hours in her A-10 Thunderbolt aircraft, which is nicknamed the Warthog because of its resemblance to that fearsome critter.

The Warthog is a close air support aircraft designed to blow up tanks, armored vehicles and anything else that needs blowing up with weapons that include an armor-piercing 30 mm rotary cannon. You do not want to be in a tank seeing that cannon coming toward you.

 The jet itself is pretty impressive, able to fly with major damage -- one of its two engines blown away, for example, Meanwhile, McSally herself was protected by a titanium steel cocoon. Perhaps the most courageous part of all this was the aircraft itself.

U.S. Rep. Martha McSally

 But McSally distinguished herself in other ways during her military career. While stationed in Saudi Arabia, she challenged a Pentagon policy requiring servicewomen to wear Muslim garb when traveling off-base. Specifically, they were supposed to wear the abaya, a black head-to-toe robe that is perceived as a sign of subordination to men.

For eight years, McSally fought to get the policy changed, eventually with a lawsuit against Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. “And I won,” as she exclaimed in political campaign commercials that in 2015 won her a seat in Congress, from Arizona’s District 2, which includes part of Tucson. Including my part of Tucson.

Unfortunately, since then McSally has elected to wear the political equivalent of the abaya,  cloaking herself head-to-toe in subservient  garb to follow House Speaker Paul Ryan and the Republican majority in Congress. Last week, she voted in favor of the shameful healthcare bill that would take away the health insurance of some 24 million Americans while giving a tax break to the wealthy, especially billionaires like President Donald Trump.

The abaya

And now that Congress is in recess, McSally has gone into hiding, refusing to take part in town hall meetings with her constituents. After all, they’re angry and might say ugly things about her. And she’d have to stand up there on a stage and    take it, without a titanium steel cocoon  for protection.

Alas, the Warthog Warrior has become the Cowardly Lion.

Someone, however, held a town hall last  night in Tucson: U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego, a Democrat who represents the 7^th Congressional District in Phoenix. Gallego is one of many Democrats around the country who are shaming House Republicans who backed the American Health Care Act last week but now are refusing to hold town halls to defend their votes.

McSally’s office made a meek response to Gallego’s foray into District 2, chiding him for holding a political rally outside his district “instead of spending his time serving his time serving the constituents in his own congressional district.”

Well, I’m a District 2 constituent, and I don’t think I’m being well served at all by Rep. Martha McSally. I have to say, I didn’t vote for her any of the times she ran. And I definitely won’t vote for her in 2018.   

Hide in your abaya all you want, Rep. McSally. It won’t protect you from the backlash over your cowardly Trumpcare vote.

Let's Hope This Plane We're On Doesn't Crash

I used to fly a Luscombe 8A.  While the photograph is definitely of a Luscombe 8A it is not a picture

of my Luscombe 8A.  My Luscombe 8A looked quite a bit different.  It badly needed a paint job so it was kind of a splotchy yellow, metallic color greatly resembling a plane that had already crashed.  The 8A model Luscombe did not enjoy a good reputation.  In fact, a guy named Budd Davisson several years ago wrote that the Luscombe 8A had been voted "The Airplane Most Likely to be Abandoned on the Back Tie Down Line."  The other not so good part of the reputation was that the planes were supposedly "squirrely" on the ground.  Despite all that, I used to fly a Luscombe 8A thus proving that to know a Luscombe 8A is to love a Luscombe 8A.  And I loved that airplane.  It must be noted, though, that I wasn't a very good pilot.  I flew out of a dirt field and discovered that the main difference between dirt and asphalt has to do with glare.  And glare, come to find out, plays havoc with depth perception.  I made that discovery while trying to land on an abandoned air strip.  I thought I was inches above the asphalt.  Come to find out I was several feet above it and dropped in hard.  I wound up with the nose of the plane sticking into a tree.  It must also be noted that the Luscombe 8A is one sturdy aircraft.  Since the propeller had stopped spinning I came to the quick conclusion that the engine was no longer running.  I pulled the plane out of the tree, found some rocks to use as chocks, spun the propeller and the engine started right up.  Being quite the experiential learner, I decided to try that landing again and managed to duplicate the first attempt thus proving that the Luscombe 8A is really a sturdy aircraft while simultaneously confirming my lack of pilot skills.  Those weren't the only stupid things I did in my airplane.  I was a beginner pilot, I had a hard time admitting my flaws, and apparently I did not learn much from experience.  At least I didn't have a twitter account then and I certainly didn't dislike anyone who was a better pilot.  The better pilots just kind of looked at me and shook their heads.  Here's the thing, though.  I truly believe that not one of those many better pilots ever wished me failure.  They never, I'm sure, wished I would crash.  No one should seriously hope for a crash or for pilot failure especially when we are all passengers on the same plane.

Follow up to "How's your connection with God?"

Turns out, I guess, my connection was pretty good. At least, this morning I finally connected with the nurse assistant to my pulmonologist.

As you may recall, my pulmonology specialist examined the results of my recent hospital CT-Scan and concluded that the hospital doctor was wrong, I didn't have a blood clot in my lung that required treatment with an expensive drug, Eliquis, which is advertised heavily on TV. That was wonderful news for me, both medically and financially, but I needed the lung specialist to send his findings on to my Primary Care Physician so I could get off the drug.

And the nurse assistant wasn't returning my phone calls -- any of the four calls in the last four days. Until today.

Finally, steaming at the ears, I let the front desk at the doctor's office know what was going on. And they put me through to the office manager, who immediately put me through to the assistant, who decided, under the circumstances, that maybe he could answer his damn phone, after all.

Instantly cooperative, he sent off a FAX to my primary care doctor, who presumably will straighten out what needs to be straightened with the drug and the hematologist that I was going to have to see for an oncology consultation about what was wrong with my blood.

All of which has reminded me of the days when Dr. Floyd Brallier was my only doctor in my home town, Wickenburg, Ariz. -- and in fact, the only doctor in our town. And whenever something medical went wrong with me -- which was often -- my mother would simply bring me in to his antiseptic-smelling office and without fuss, appointments, or consultations, he'd fix me up. But that's another story for another day.

But meanwhile: Dr. Brallier, I need you now.