Rodger’s Top 5: Recent Political Moments

THE NATIONAL ELECTION
Anyone who studies politics, given a few minutes to ponder, can tell you that there are two types of voter. One kind are people who follow the sport closely and elect candidates based on their policies. They favor candidates who favor their own political philosophy. A second kind, elect candidates based on their personality, favoring candidates they “like”, often without studying what the person deeply believes. But the majority of people have a set of favored political beliefs and vote based on those beliefs, unless the candidate who shares those beliefs comes across as arrogant, obsessed, unintelligent or worse, deceitful. Then this majority joins with the personality voters. In the last election, which should have been a bellwether election for conservatives, the Republicans learned that in most districts they need to reach the majority of people in the middle with likable candidates. If they run on views that the public does not believe, they usually lose.

THE EXTREMES ON BOTH SIDES
The far left of the Democratic Party and the right of the Republican party are the catalysts for change. I know that most of us favor the middle and see the extremes as unreasonable. But I believe that the famous playwright and political activist, George Bernard Shaw was on to something when he pointed out, “The reasonable man adapts his life to the world around him. The unreasonable man seeks to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” 

THE MIDDLE GROUND
Those who are not on the extreme edge of both parties, are the ones who will select the policies of what some see as the extremes and modify them and gather support for them and put them into legislation that can pass. This assures there is always movement in the country; slow, one degree at a time rather than lurches. Quantum sudden shifts are almost always reversed because they are too disruptive to our lives.

THE FIFTEEN ROUNDS OF VOTING FOR SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE
It astounds me that so many who advocate for compromise found the rough and tumble give and take of the recent speaker election a bad thing. The give and take of this process is exactly what all politics looked like back when we actually found a way to mold strong opinions into something that we could agree with. Progress often pushes us out of our comfort zone.

THE AWAKENING TO THE MEDIA 
I listened to an NPR reporter this morning who was interviewing a black Baptist minister in Atlanta. The subject was the police brutalizing of a black motorist. The minister’s disgust at what had happened was palatable and justified. I couldn’t agree with his political philosophy of universal victimhood but his concerns about the national media invading Atlanta and stirring the pot in an already volatile situation mirrored the emotions of a lot of conservatives who see the media turning every problem into a crisis. Feeding fear and anger to improve media ratings has become a terrible danger to our nation. Let’s see who in the media figures this out first. 

BONUS: If you recently became WOKE, welcome. Most of us have been AWAKE all along.

Rodger That: A Grizzly Experience

(Roger that is a phrase used by the military and pilots to confirm communications, in this case, it’s between me and my fans.).

Have you ever noticed that, somehow when you need it most, help arrives? Perhaps we are prepared. Maybe by surrounding ourselves with those we can trust. Often in our moment of need, or outright terror, we don’t recognize it, especially if that help isn’t even human.

I raised my family to be adventurous and fiercely independent. From the time they were infants my children had a constant canine companion, and somehow just the right one for the moment. One of our favorites was Red, a full-size Collie, and the perfect dog to watch over the flock especially while we were at our wilderness log cabin. 

The afternoon temperature was in the low 80’s, uncommon for Alaska. Out in the open, where a steady breeze kept the mosquitos at bay it was beautiful, the kind of afternoon that my daughter cherished. While she stretched out on a bench around our fire-pit, reading, her brother and I were working on a project inside the cabin. 

Someone had forgotten to close the door to the screened porch. Red, tired of the mosquitos that swarmed him on the deck, scratched on the heavy door to join us away from the bugs. I let him in, smiling, seeing my middle school daughter completely lost in her book; then closed the porch and cabin door. As Red curled up for a nap, I went back to the project.

An hour later Red exploded from a deep sleep, barking and spinning until, nose pointing toward the front of the cabin, he threw himself against the door. “Hold on,” I offered, “we’re almost finished here.” But Red wasn’t about to ‘hold on.’ He pounded on the door, barking insanely. 

“Okay,” I said, pushing him back long enough to get the door open. Before I could open the screened door, Red launched himself at it, ripping the top hinge free. I opened the latch and he literally ripped the door from my hand as he exploded by me. In four or five leaps he covered the thirty yards to my daughter and launched himself over both bench and girl, barking wildly.

A five-year-old Grizzly Bear stood twenty feet from her. As the bear rose up on his hind legs, Red smashed into the bear’s chest at full speed, cartwheeling the animal. In seconds Red was ripping at ears, then tail, then nose. Every time the bear would turn to face him, the dog would spin past him to tear at a new target. We watched, amazed as that 70-pound dog got that 500-pound bear spinning in circles and then the bear took off on a dead run, the dog at his heels. 

The problem for the bear was a steep bluff in the direction he was running, and the last we saw of him was when he went airborne, tumbling end over end down the bluff. Red stopped to watch, (his mouth proudly full of bear hair), as did the rest of us, then turned, duty fulfilled, and walked calmly back up the steps and into the cabin. I took a minute to calm my daughter before we followed. In less than two minutes from the bear encounter, Red was already asleep. Like I said, the perfect dog for the times, always watching over his flock even while sleeping.

Rodger’s Top 5: Loves

Family
I’m married with two adult children. My wife is in community philanthropy, my daughter, a theater grad works in environmental construction management and my son followed my dream and is a commercial pilot. I have three amazing grandchildren. All these people, their spouses, and a remarkable ex-wife are the focus of my life.

Outdoors, Especially the Wilderness
From the time I was five, I have craved the wilderness and places where I can be alone with my thoughts. From The Russian Far East, to Mexico, and the Yukon to Florida I have found special places where, if man has been there at all, it was with a gentle footprint. My favorite place is the porch of the family fly-in log cabin on Lake Iliamna in Alaska, a lake just about the size of the state of Rhode Island.

Fly Fishing
I am never happier than sitting on a rock watching a river run. From the Mississippi to Alaska’s crystal-clear streams, and dozens of other waters around the world, I often rise from my rock, string up a seven-weight fly rod and test the waters. If I catch something, great, and if not, that’s fishing. I love deep sea fishing in Zihuantanejo, Mexico and Southeast Alaska, but there is nothing better than running water and the flash of a leaping rainbow trout.

Hunting Camp with Friends
I was raised by a single mom, but still had early experiences with my father and uncles in deer camp. Since those early days, every year I spend a week with family and close friends in hunting camp where harvesting is secondary to men’s tales around a campfire, and especially the sharing of the kind of grey hair experiences that mold younger hunters. Today the camp is in a moose camp in Alaska where our idea of roughing it is red wine with fish.

Travel Into Other Cultures
Being married to a Latina woman has enriched my lifetime love of the melting pot of American culture and fascination with peoples and other nations. My two favorite destinations in North America are New Orleans and Victoria, British Columbia, both because of the diverse community of people of different ethnicities and origins. Close behind is the southern Pacific Coast of Mexico where we vacation every year. I love the Russian people and wish that they weren’t born to suffer. Among our closest friends are a French couple who love to share the cultural wealth of their country. People everywhere share human traits that bring us together and other traits that create the same struggles all over the world. With that said, the one great gift of those who created the USA is the foundation of personal liberty, seen nowhere else.

BONUS
I must admit that I have one more passion, aviation. I was bitten by the flying bug when I had my first airplane ride, in an old Stearman Biplane when I was eight. I’ve been a pilot for decades and someday will be a talented enough writer to explain the sheer joy of sweeping around huge cumulous clouds on a bluebird day, or of landing on a remote lake that may have never seen a floatplane before.

About Rodger: Rodger That...

(Roger that is a phrase used by the military and pilots to confirm communications, in this case, it’s between me and my fans.).

I picked up my new Helio Courier airplane from the Seattle company that installed the floats. With six hours experience in the plane and only ten hours of flying on floats, a friend and I headed for Alaska. We flew north, planning to reach Alaskan air space at the end of a long day. Three things were working in our favor: clear skies, a stiff wind from the south and the long summer daylight of the North.

“We’re missing some of the nicest people and best beer in the world by not stopping in Canada,” offered my buddy. 

“I get it,” I said, “but I really need to get home.”

“Your loss,” he replied just as a huge red light lit up on the instrument panel that said, ‘engine oil pressure just went completely to hell.’

From ten thousand feet, the community of Prince Rupert, British Columbia, only 90 miles from our destination of Ketchikan, looked as small as a football field. Still, it was better than the white caps we could see in the channel that separates B.C. from Alaska. The oil pressure gauge confirmed the warning light; we were heading towards a total engine failure.  

I pointed to the small harbor that looked more like a postage stamp. My friend nodded as I pulled the power to idle and pointed the nose down. It took five minutes to descend almost two miles, the plane pounding, the wind increasing with each drop in altitude. The obvious channel to land in was long but narrow, with a severe crosswind. My buddy pointed to the small boat basin, tiny but wind from the right direction. A minute later, we splashed into the water, thanking the designers of the Helio for its short landing characteristics. I applied a little power and headed towards the boat launch, shutting down the engine when the oil pressure gage went to zero. 

The plane slid to a stop and we both exited just as a police car pulled up. “Nice landing,” offered the officer, and a minute later he handed me a ticket for landing in a part of the harbor closed to air operations. 

“Nice people my ass,” I muttered, a little shocked.  Still, I was thankful that we were down and safe. Three hours later we found ourselves in the bar of a small hotel. 

After a great dinner and finding a mechanic to work on the plane the next morning, we were comfortable ordering a third beer. “You were right about the beer,” I said to my friend, but I don’t know about the people. I had just put a hundred US in an envelope and mailed it, unsure of the exchange rate for the $75 ticket fine.

But I changed my mind as the waitress handed me the check, marked paid. Noticing my surprise, she looked over to a table where three men, including the cop who had issued the ticket smiled and called, “nice landing.”