Empathy creates frustration

Rest well, fallen members of the Oakland, California, Police Department: Sgt. Mark Dunakin, 40, Officer John Hege, 41, SWAT Sgt. Daniel Sakai, 35, and Sgt. Ervin Romans, 43. Half a lifetime stolen from each man.

Heads high, Diva and friends ....

When I read Diva's post today, at first I felt badly for the officers and their families, then for Diva and her friends. A few minutes later, I felt like yelling and punching a hole in the wall. Frustration over the inability to pull back the curtain of time and make things right again is a nasty thing, for me at least. Empathy and personal knowledge can create such frustration no matter if an event occurs next door or 2,000 miles away from home.

No one wants his life cut short, but these guys went out doing what they wanted to be doing, being where they wanted to be, and in the company of friends, and as members of an actual brotherhood. Under the circumstances, this is meaningful and is not a little thing. Believe me, I know, that is true.

I felt like reading about cops for a few minutes after learning of this incident. I looked for a book I know I once had, "The Blue Knight," by Joseph Wambaugh, and could not find it. Damn movers, how many boxes did they lose? More frustration. No book, nothing to read. Forced to think, instead.

Wambaugh, a 17-year-old kid in the Marine Corps who later became a Los Angeles copper, wrote a series of novels about life in a blue uniform, beginning while he was still on the force. He ran into all sorts of official flack for portraying the human side of police officers and for being honest about the toll their work often took from them, which too often emerged in the form of alcoholism, divorce, wrecked careers and suicides. One of his books, "The Onion Field," has been compared to Truman Capote's, "In Cold Blood." Some have been made into motion pictures.

Life goes on. It just slows down for a while some days. Usually on the days you do not want it to.

Music Note: Listening to Neil Young ....
Specifically, "Rust Never Sleeps" ....
Some lines from the song: "Hey Hey, My My:"

It's better to burn out 'cause rust never sleeps
The king is gone but he's not forgotten.
Hey hey, my my
Rock and roll can never die
There's more to the picture
Than meets the eye.

Guns & Norwegian liquor

Sunday was a good day, at least in terms of the way I measure them. I drove 250 miles to go to a gun show. Then, I drove 250 miles to return home, having spent only about $50 to purchase an old, new magazine (clip, to the uninitiated) for one of my pistols. I like to have at least two magazines per pistol, and it is not always easy to find spares for some older models. I doubt I would have made today's trip a few months ago when the price of gasoline was ranging around $4.00 per gallon. A man must always be practical ....

This weekend, I also was able to obtain Volumes 1 – 10 of the Norwegian-American Studies series, and at a reasonable price. Published by the Norwegian-American Historical Society, these first ten books were produced between 1926 and 1938. As you might imagine, there aren't a great many of these older publications floating around. I've been working at acquiring the entire series (35 volumes) for four or five years now, so I consider myself fortunate to run across so many being sold as a unit. This acquisition will take care of my reading needs for a (brief) while ....

Just to offer a taste of the Norwegian-American Studies series and maybe to drive you up a wall, here are some of the essays/papers contained in Volume I:

-- Health Conditions and the Practice of Medicine Among the Early Norwegian Settlers, 1825-1865 by Knut Gjerset and Ludvig Hektoen

-- The Norwegian Quakers of 1825 by Henry J. Cadbury

-- Norwegians in the West in 1844: A Contemporary Account by Johan R. Reiersen and translated and edited by Theodore C. Blegen

-- An Emigrant Voyage in the Fifties (that is as in the 1850s) by H. Cock-Jensen and translated by Karen Larsen

-- Reminiscences of a Pioneer Editor by Carl Fredrik Solberg and edited by Albert O. Barton

Sound exciting? It is if you want it to be. All right, time to move along. Today, we will just wander the country of snow and cold, and skip San Francisco. It's time for a bite of lutefisk (think fjord) and sauer kraut (to satisfy the other part of my being), the taste buds first taunted by a bolt (or two) of icy Aquavit .... and, maybe later, a bit of room-temperature Bache-Gabrielson .... life truly can be sweet ....

Music Note: Currently listening to Neil Young .... fantastic stuff ....