A snowstorm brings the gifts of solitude and silence

Reply

A snowstorm brings the gifts of solitude and silence

This is my column in today’s Greenville News.  Happy Winter!

http://www.greenvilleonline.com/article/20130217/OPINION/302170007/Ed-Leap-Snowstorm-brings-gift-solitude-silence

When I was in medical school in West Virginia, I was also in the Air National Guard.  One drill weekend, when I was scheduled to drive to my unit, a blizzard blew into town. And I mean the real kind, officially designated by the weather service and properly pedigreed.

I had every legitimate reason to call my Chief Master Sergeant, explain the situation, and stay in Morgantown, tucked in my apartment.  I didn’t.  I decided that I had to make the three and a half hour drive.  Was I patriotic?  Yes.  Was my girlfriend, and current wife, also at the end of the drive? Absolutely.

So off I went, in my little red Dodge hatch-back.  I slid into a guard-rail on the way out of town,  but the damage was cosmetic.  I continued on my way. The snow was thick, and the wind blew it in great gusts across I-79.  It piled up along the way, and at various points I recall that it was difficult to see the lights in business by the side of the road, difficult to make out the lights of other vehicles.  I could barely see road signs until I was very nearly next to them.  I drove behind, and by, snow plows and salt trucks.

As I drove further on my journey, I saw fewer and fewer vehicles, testament to the potential of the storm.  I pulled over at a fast-food restaurant for a break.  My hair and coat were wet with snow just from the walk into the building.  I grabbed a large Coke and a snack, then settled back into my car.

Not much further down the road, I spilled the entire drink in my lap; a sure way to stay awake when it’s below freezing and snow is swirling all about.  I stopped, next, at a shopping center and changed clothes.  Just in time, because wise managers were sending employees home for their safety.  Foolish and intrepid, I pressed on, my clothes dry and my drink refilled.

In the end, it took about six hours or more to reach home.  I made it to drill, and I visited with Jan.  It was a foolish, wonderful, thing to do, traveling in weather like that.  If my children did it, I’d be furious, and worried.  And at least they would have cell-phones, which of course almost no one had then.

But there was something about it that I can’t describe.  There was a beauty in that snow, that solitude, that uncertainty.  Maybe it was spending so much time with so many people in classes and in the hospital.  Maybe it was that fact that as a child, I liked to wander in snowy woods alone, and hide in snow-banks, listening to the wind in the trees.  Sometimes, loneliness is just the ticket.

A few weeks ago I was traveling in Indiana.  A snow-storm came up as I drove towards Evansville.  It was just a few flakes in Louisville.  But as I drove west on I-64, the flakes became more frequent, and ultimately, the roads became slick, the lights dimmed by the enveloping white.  Finally, the snow was blowing horizontally across the road, and cars were fewer.  I found my way to my hotel and settled in for the night.

Mind you, I had a cell-phone, and a more reliable (and likely safer) vehicle than back in my medical school days.  And I’m a better driver than I was then.  And unfortunately, I was driving away from my wife and children, rather than towards them.  But there was a similar emotion, a familiar sense of delight.

The highways of the Midwest are long and often straight.  Even when they snake up and down hills, their vistas are impressive.  Seeing the snow come across those highways, seeing the black clouds coalesce, sitting quietly in my car with the dash-board lights and radio, well that was a kind of quiet treasure; a gift of travel and solitude.

But it’s a gift we rarely receive these days.  Our phones are never at rest, and never leave us at rest. Screens are everywhere, in offices and waiting rooms, in homes and even in vehicles.  We clamor for more information, more entertainment, more people, more connection.  The lights of social media are never dimmed by weather.

It’s a pity, because solitude is often magnificent.  And silence is spiritual.  And few things bring them together like driving alone in a snowstorm.

 

 

 

 

Yes I do need a high capacity magazine! Here’s why.

Posted on by
2

Yes I do need a hight capacity magzine! Here’s why…

 

Who needs a high capacity magazine? Who needs a weapon capable of firing more than ten rounds?  These questions echo across the airwaves and in the pages of magazines, newspapers, blogs and every conceivable outlet.  Well guarded politicians and cultural figures wring their hands in safety and newspaper offices post guards as they debate the merits of regular people with scary weapons.

For what it’s worth, I don’t like the tactic of anyone appealing to what I ‘need.’  It conveys a false concern at best, and at worst a terrible paternalism; the sort of paternalism that the American Left has railed against for decades, whenever fathers told daughters, husbands told wives, churches told believers or government told citizens what they should ‘need.’  But now, it’s positively fashionable to tell gun owners what they do, or don’t, need.

So, since ‘need’ is all the rage, let me explain why we ‘need’ those magazines and those rifles and handguns that use them.

First, our Leftist friends have been misled by media.  I fear that they believe the movies and television shows in which the intrepid, rebellious, foul-mouthed detective always comes out smiling when he uses his snub-nosed .38 caliber revolver to take down bad-guys with automatic weapons.  He pushes the female lead out of the way and fires a snap-shot at the roof-line, and Voila!  The cartel member with the AK-47, 100 yards away, plummets to the ground.  He was dead before he fell.

In short, gun-control advocates like to think that every gunshot wound is the end for the person shot. However, let me lay a little medicine down.  It isn’t true.  While being shot is sometimes fatal, very often it isn’t.  And even if it is ultimately, the ‘shootee’ often has time to a) call 911 for help b) drive away or c) continue to do terrible things to the object of his or her rage and violent impulses.

Many years ago I was privileged to help teach a class on wounding.  The students were a sniper class, which was mixture of city police officers, FBI hostage rescue team members and SEAL team members.  I was an emergency medicine resident then, and it was a hoot.  They were some of the nicest people I had ever met, and after the talk my fellow instructor and I were allowed to ‘play’ with their toys,  such delightful treasures as suppressed sub-machine guns and sniper rifles.  It was, in short, a gun-lover’s dream come true.

But before we went to the range we discussed some important points.  Mainly, for a shot to be instantly incapacitating, it has to do one of three things.  It must either cause complete vascular collapse; for instance, it must cause the heart to cease to function or a large blood vessel like the aorta to be penetrated and cause sudden, massive hemorrhage.  Or, it can strike the central nervous system in such a way that complete neurologic incapacitation occurs.  For instance, it must strike the brain-stem, which is the lower portion of the brain behind the mouth and ears.  If this happens, the heart stops beating and breathing ceases.  Other brain shots may, or may not, immediately incapacitate the individual so injured.  Finally, the wound can cause sudden structural failure; for instance, shattering a femur or pelvis, or shooting away a spinal segment that causes the individual to be unable to support his or herself.

Short of these situations, a person may be shot and continue to fight, continue to kill, well after a wound is inflicted.  The FBI learned this the hard way in Florida, in 1986, when agents found their service weapons inadequate in the fight against two bank robbers, resulting in the deaths of two agents, and ultimately of both criminals.  And in the re-arming of the entire agency.

Now, the average person defending hearth and home may be able to inflict a fatal wound on an assailant. But their odds go up dramatically with a larger number of rounds fired.  Five or six rounds from a revolver might look good in a Western, but the Duke is gone (rest his soul) and Jose Wales has retired, and it’s up to regular folks to do the work of protecting the ranch from marauders.  A rifle with ten, twenty or thirty rounds available might be necessary.

Why is this?  In part, it’s because the kind of practice necessary to make those incredible, one shot incapacitating wounds is not easy to get.  Life is busy.  Suburban and urban shooters can’t go into their back yards and fire off rounds the way rural dwellers, like me, can.  And it requires good coaching from skilled teachers.  A Marine marksman or sniper takes time to create.  In fact, one reason the M-16, and its civilian brother the AR-15, came into the US military arsenal is that it is easier to give soldiers a light weapon, with light ammo and lots of it, capable of semi-automatic and (for the military) automatic fire, than it is to train them to be long-range marksmen.

In addition, those well-placed shots are difficult because of duress.  As an emergency physician, I’ll attest to the fact that stress makes seemingly simple physical skills more difficult.  So when we are afraid, when we are stressed, when we are worried about protecting our spouses and children, when we are fearful for our own lives, it can be tough to keep that weapon on target.  Tough to get the correct sight picture.  Tough to pull that trigger without moving the barrel too much.  Thus, having extra rounds is a good thing, not a bad thing, for lawful citizens.  The police understand this.  Most city and county police officers are no more at war than the people they protect.  But they want weapons that can fire lots of bullets.  Even they are subject to the vagaries of training and the physiology of stress.

But there’s more.  Drugs, and even alcohol, change the equation.  Having seen a 90 pound woman on drugs bite and kick her way through several security guards, having seen the crazy look in the eye of quietly menacing mental health patients whose violent impulses are escalating, having met people in custody for murder and rape, having lived in a county where home invasions have resulted in terrible deaths, I feel that I can safely say that while the world has lots of good people, bad people are more dangerous than ever.  Not only so, home invasions are often accomplished by more than one assailant.  Bad guys have no sense of honor, and aren’t interested in even odds.  More than one bullet, more than one magazine, may be necessary. Especially for those who live in areas further from police protection.

In addition, as drug addiction rises not only to Methamphetamine but to narcotics like Vicodin, Klonopin, Oxycontin, Fentanyl, Morphine and everything else imaginable, (including ever new drugs like Bath Salts being manufactured in clandestine labs), people become more desperate than ever to feed their addictions. They rob pharmacies and break into homes.  They steel from the chronically ill and the dying and they will not hesitate to kill you to obtain money or drugs.  And if you doubt me, ask your friendly local narcotics officer, ER nurse, physician or paramedic about the level of crazy out there these days.

Finally, however, there’s another reason.  You see, we now live and move in a world in which we have ceased to believe in right or wrong.  A society that rejects not only God but natural law; that finds it moralizing or fundamentalist to suggest that we inflect (God forbid) our values on young minds.  Far better if Hollywood (known for its peaceful, gun-free films), or college professors teach our young how to behave.  Well we have sown the wind, and now reap the whirlwind.

The Left has won the debate over morals so far.  They are busily expunging faith from the public square and happily teaching the young that the individual is the only arbiter of right and wrong.    My liberal friends, you got it.  The least you can do for creating generations of violent criminals with no fear of God or man is to allow the rest of us the tools with which to defend ourselves.

In all honestly, I don’t have a black rifle with all the protruding bits that give Leftists nightmares. But if, and when, the price ever drops again, and ammunition and magazines are available again, (thank you Mr. President for stimulating that bit of the economy!) I’ll likely buy one.

Because I do, in fact, need a high capacity magazine.  If you don’t want one, don’t bother.  But my life, and the lives of my wife and children, are worth protecting in the best way I know how.  And as far as I’m concerned, if I should have to protect them with a firearm, I want lots of bullets; which translates into lots of reasons for addicts, psychopaths and every other dangerous nut to leave me alone.  And if they won’t, lots of chances to make them drop where they stand.  That’s what I need.

What you need is for you to decide.

 

When leading is following; my latest EM News column.

Posted on by
Reply

Here is my latest column in Emergency Medicine News.  I hope you enjoy it!

http://journals.lww.com/em-news/Fulltext/2013/02000/Second_Opinion__When_Leading_is_Following.8.aspx

My wife just built a pergola in our yard.  Mind you, a pergola is a thing I never knew existed until it was pointed out to me by my darling.  If I had been asked, ‘what do you think of her pergola,’ I might have thought, ‘well, it certainly fills out that dress nicely,’ or perhaps, ‘I remember that from pathology.  It incubates for four weeks, causes fever and weeping skin sores and is common in the Pacific islands.’

Turns out it’s that structure you see in elegant yards, or in the sacred pages of our Dixie Holy Book, Southern Living.  A pergola is the wooden framed structure that ladies of taste have in their yards, and on which assorted vines grow for shade, and beneath which said ladies and their charming children have cakes and lemonade in oppressive summer heat.  Incidentally, I have explained to my wife that Southern Living is merely house porn…images of things that one desires but which do not actually appear in nature and which are not actually available to mere mortals.  I now stand corrected, though our pergola may have wild animal carcasses dragged beneath it, unlike those in Southern Living.

Our pergola is almost finished. Thanks to the skill and vision of my Jan (who probably should have been an engineer), and thanks to the strength and agility of my children, the tools and experience of my various in-laws, it has risen from the ground behind our house.  Its posts are set in concrete, its beams securely nailed.  It’s tall posts and well-measured intervals caused me to ask Jan if it were aligned with the summer and winter solstice, and if we’d be dancing naked beneath it.  She smiled and said, ‘maybe!’

Pergola entered my vocabulary because it was something my wife desired; something of interest to her.  I’ve learned other things from that girl.  I’ve learned about leadership skills, which she used to teach to college students and still teaches to our church youth.  I’ve learned about volunteerism, and historical romance.  About Japanese words and her love of Ireland, land of her ancestors.  I’ve even learned things I can’t discuss here.

But she isn’t my only teacher; not at all.  From my children I learned many things as well.  If not for my son Seth, I wouldn’t have my deep love of the bag-pipe.  Many years ago, when he was small, we heard the band Albanach play a show.  They are a group of Scots who play pipes and drums the way Ted Nugent plays the guitar.  Watching their show, one understands why the English viewed Highland combat with a certain reluctance.  But they inspired my son.  And he has played the pipes, better and better, for years.  It was also Seth who led us down the path of learning the ancient art of blacksmithing.  A smithy sits in our yard, and we fire it up whenever we need to shape metal and feel the heat, see the sparks and ‘get our iron on.’

My daughter Elysa taught me the fine art of playing dolls, and endlessly teaches me about fashion and contemporary culture.  She makes me dance in the dining room, and asks me questions about my past, and her mothers.  She shows me how to make movies on an i-Pad and how to do all of the things on my computer I should understand, but don’t.  She also teaches me to see inside the hearts of others, for she is a born healer, all compassion.

Elijah, my 13-year-old, forces me to learn.  I am always behind his vocabulary, and interests, as he quizzes me on German words (I don’t know any, I try to explain), relativity (zoology degree, not physics), Norse Mythology and ancient combat.  (OK, I know a little.)  But his passion for knowing forces me to read, to learn and to never stop loving the act.

And my oldest, Sam, teaches me that there’s always a reason to laugh, always a new ‘Meme’ online that I need to see, always a new idea on BBC news or somewhere else that we need to discuss.  He introduced me to the band Muse, and is my guide to the modern music scene.  In fact, his enthusiasm for his favorite band led his mother and I to drive family and friends to see the band in Indianapolis in the summer of 2011.

What’s my point here, you may be asking?  Not to catalog my family hobbies, certainly.  My point is this.  We physicians can be a focused bunch.  We work, we study, we write or do research, we speak.  For so long, we’ve listened to our own interests and followed our own requirements.  We get lost in education, then in continuing education and in the vagaries of practice.  So lost, in fact, that we lose touch with the very interests and tendencies of the people we love.  And we forget that love is more than an emotion.  Love involves engagement in the lives of others, and sacrifice of some our time, some of ourselves, for their good.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned as a husband and parent, and not always done well, it’s that we have to open our eyes, ears and hearts to the passions of the people we love. I could have devoted my entire life, and all of my time, to me.  But what a loss.  I have learned so much more by being led by my dear family!  Lead on walks, lead to play X-Box, lead to imagine, lead to dance, lead to build a coal smithy and make things, lead to play airsoft, to listen to concerts, to read widely and always embrace life in its wonders.

In the process of following, of letting go of my own agenda, I was lead deeper into the hearts of my wife and kids.  I am safely ensconced there now, and their interests and joys have been welded to my own.  I couldn’t undo it if I wanted. But I don’t.

Because in the process, we have had laughter and love, games and trips, learning and adventure.  I have become so much more than a physician, so much wider in scope, wiser in life, richer in knowledge and skills.

And we have a pergola, for crying out loud!  How cool is that?  And I for one can’t wait to sip lemonade beneath it.

 

Bagpipes and anvils and music from alt bands

German and physics and myths out of Iceland,

Pergolas, dancing and daughters with bling,

these are a few of my favorite things!

Deciding who needs what…my latest Greenville News column.

Posted on by
Reply

Deciding who needs what can be risk business!

http://www.greenvilleonline.com/article/20130203/OPINION/302030022/Ed-Leap-Deciding-who-needs-what-can-risky-business

What do you need?  It’s an interesting question, much discussed in the wake of the current gun debate.  I frequently hear this statement:  ‘no one needs a rifle with a magazine that holds more than ten rounds.’  One caller on a radio show said, ‘nobody needs more than six bullets.’   Others have said, ‘I can’t see why anybody needs more than one gun; it’s ridiculous.  I certainly don’t need one!’

Obviously, there are millions who take the opposing view.  But gun-control aside (as if that were possible in the current political climate), it’s time we start to ask ‘who decides who needs what?’

I can tell you a lot of things I don’t think anyone needs.  Nobody, in my opinion, needs Methamphetamine. Well, not at first, anyway.  In the big picture, it isn’t essential to life.

Of course, having cared for countless intoxicated individuals, young, old, male, female, rich, poor, comic and tragic, I can say that I don’t need alcohol, so perhaps nobody needs alcohol.  Yes, some research suggests a health benefit to certain amounts of alcohol consumption.  But it’s likely that humans were healthy before the first one found a container of fermented fruit juice, drank it inexplicably and woke up with the first hangover.

Cigarettes come to mind.  Who needs them?  Not me.  They cause enormous suffering and death, even though many find them relaxing and pleasurable.  But then, over-eating causes harm as well.  Do we need access to endless calories all day long, as much as our prosperity and ingenuity provide?  Nobody needs cheeseburgers or fried mushrooms.  Of course, I love them just the same.

Americans love their pets.  But are pets necessary?  Who needs a Pit-Bull? Who needs a Burmese Python? I’ll take the former over the latter any day, but I would never feel that I needed either one.  And really, as much as I like cats, who needs a house full of them?

Advocates against over-population often suggest that no family needs more than one or two children. Polygamists might feel that they need more than one wife.  One man feels he needs to leave his wife for another; one woman is confident she needs to hit her husband with a ball bat.  Need is a little subjective, isn’t it?

Is the Church necessary?  I think so, although I wouldn’t impose it on anyone.  I find it necessary for me and for my family.  I’m certain I could find those who would suggest that it is a remarkably destructive force and not only unnecessary but dangerous.  They would say I don’t need it.

Who needs a fast car?  Who needs a large house?  And what about money?  How much money do the rich need? Or the poor, for that matter?  So much of our economic debate hinges on the idea that some people have more than they need, and some have less, and that some transfer based on need has to be effected.  But who can decide such a thing as financial need?  Oh, right, the government.  But is it based on some algorithm?  Some formula?  On dated, failed economic and political philosophy?  Or perhaps on future votes…

Unless by ‘need’ we mean only the most common and basic things like food, water, clothing and shelter,  the rest of our attempts to determine need are often based on ideology and emotion.

You know the perennial argument that ‘ you can’t legislate morality?’  Well, we do it all the time; sometimes wisely and sometimes poorly.  But seldom do we legislate morality more than when we discuss who needs what; whether it’s money, vices, food, weapons, freedom or family.  Because when you tell me what I need, or I tell you, it’s a ultimately a moral judgment about what one of us ‘ought to do.’

We all have different motivations and different reasons to try to shape society and culture in the way that seems best to us.  But whether the issue is taxes, guns, relationships, free speech, school prayer, or any other hot-button topic, we should remember something important.  That is, our claim to know exactly what another free citizen needs only leads to frustration, bitterness and ultimately revenge, once the pendulum of opinion, or power, swings the other way.

Evil is restrained by the courage of armed citizens

Posted on by
7

Here’s my column in today’s Greenville News.

‘Evil is restrained by the courage of armed citizens.’

http://www.greenvilleonline.com/article/20130113/OPINION/301130016/Ed-Leap-Evil-restrained-by-courage-armed-citizens?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|Making

 

Despite the assertion that gun-owners like me are dangerous Neanderthals, we do have a few good points to make in the current debate.  So allow me to ‘fire-off’ some reasons the current initiative is, quite frankly, stupid.

Gun control advocates are typically ignorant of the objects of their disdain.  Most of them don’t know the difference between automatic and semi-automatic; nor that you need a special FEDERAL permit for automatic weapons. (You know, the kind of weapons used by the body-guards of important politicians, businessmen and celebrities, and used in every violent film vomited from endlessly sanctimonious Hollywood.)

And few of them know the difference between a pistol and a revolver, a 12 gauge and a .38.  One of them wrote on my blog, ‘I suppose I could see having a .22 for hunting, but I don’t understand why you need anything else.’  Which .22 is that, ma’am?  Because there are a boat-load of them, and some are meaner than others.

I suppose her reasoning is that if you don’t understand, just ban all of them.  They’re guns, after all!  Of course, I don’t know why anyone needs more than one type of beer or wine.  They’re all alcohol, and lead to drunk-driving!

Another ridiculous part of the current media fire-storm over gun control is the deeply held belief that concealed weapons permit holders are especially dangerous and that gun owners should be ‘outed’ to the public. In a kind of homage to the much detested (by Communists) witch-hunts of ‘tail-gunner’ Joe McCarthy, gun-owners have been ‘outed’ by some newspapers.  Painting with a broad-brush, they’ve been ‘profiled.’  A thing which we x-ray, grope and strip to avoid in the nation’s airports.

The uncomfortable reality is that states with concealed weapons permits have seen decreased crime rates.  And even if they hadn’t, the permit holders aren’t committing crimes.  A person willing to have fingerprints and background checks, and even take a class, is not the guy we need to fret about, or identify.  (Unless it’s to make friends.)

But there’s more from this conservative curmudgeon.  And this is more personal.  I’ve seen people who have been killed and cruelly attacked.  I’ve seen them killed with guns, of course, but more killed and maimed with knives, blunt objects, boots to the throat and assorted other weapons. Death is death.  (Hammers and ball-bats killed more Americans than rifles last year, incidentally.  Even black, scary rifles!)

The thing is, the enlightened UK (which indeed has a lower gun-crime rate than ours) is one of the most violent nations in Europe.  It turns out, you don’t need a gun to be violent.  Who knew?

Sadly for civilization, in such ‘gun-free’ settings the strong and brutal thrive.  Small women or men, senior citizens and disabled individuals are all victims ripe for picking.  Abused spouses or single parents, citizens with alternate lifestyles, late-night clerks and all kinds of others are sacrificed on the altar of ‘safety.’  Darwinian survival of the fittest at it’s most despicable.

A gun in the hand of a physically weak person makes that person safer…in evolutionary terms, we could say it gives them a ‘survival advantage,’ maybe the chance to live and reproduce, or protect their young.  Unfortunately, victim-hood is the new religion of our elites.  (Who often have body-guards, incidentally).  It’s better for everyone if a mother and child are murdered, rather than a firearm be in the hands of anyone outside the military or police.  Ideology trumps biology.  And ethics.

I understand the desire to keep firearms from the mentally ill, so long as we’re careful about that determination.  But are we really ready to use emotion to trump logic, fact, evidence, tradition, law and culture?  Is the President prepared to instantly criminalize millions for owning something that had been legal all along?  To confiscate property and prosecute people who never harmed anyone with their weapons?  Especially when our own government has been supplying the same weapons to criminals in Mexico?  (And can this nation even afford such an initiative?)

I hope we can come to our senses.  I hope we can realize that new laws don’t change the hearts of law-breakers.  That collective punishment is tyranny.  That since about 47% of US adults own a firearm, the numerator of criminals is tiny compared with the denominator of the lawful.

And I hope to heaven we can embrace the fact that evil is not restrained by law, but by force of arms and the courage of free, and armed, citizens.