Tom Bodett

Nan and I just got back from our fifth visit in ten years to Isla Mujeres, Mexico. There will be more on that, including photos, in my next blog post, but I wanted to share something in the meantime, an email exchange I just had with Tom Bodett:

On Oct 14, 2008, at 10:11 PM, John Lichty wrote:

Tom—

I have enjoyed your work for years, from the Motel 6 ads to Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me, including being in the audience for the taping of the show in Aspen a few years ago, but I’m embarrassed to admit that I had no idea you were also a writer.

My wife and I just returned from renting an apartment for a couple weeks on Isla Mujeres. It’s located across from Cancun and is a great place to vacation if you ever get the chance. Anyway, there was a book exchange shelf in the lobby and on it I found a hardcover copy of The Free Fall of Webster Cummings. Wow, I thought, an actual Tom Bodett book! Who knew? I picked it up and started reading immediately. By the time I got to "snap-on crab bait," I was laughing out loud and completely hooked. What a great story, full of unique characters and warm humor. I can’t wait to see what happens to Norman Tuttle in your new book.

Thank you for all you do. Keep up the good work!

—John Lichty
Grand Junction, Colorado

----------

His reply from this morning:

From: Tom Bodett [mailto:tbodett@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2008 5:30 AM
To: John Lichty
Cc: Tom Bodett
Subject: Re: "Free Fall"

Thanks for the note, John. I'm glad to hear these old books of mine are still finding their way to folks like you.

My best,

Tom

----------

How cool is that? If you're interested, here's a link to Tom's website: http://www.bodett.com/.

Captain Fatty's Message in a Bottle

Photograph by Jim Sublett.

Captain Fatty Goodlander and his wife, Carolyn, on the bow of the Wild Card in the turquoise waters off Vava'u, Tonga.

Early this morning, as I was driving to the Tabeguache area for what is becoming a routine weekend hike with Scout, I listened to NPR's Weekend Edition on the radio. Liane Hansen introduced a segment about Captain Fatty Goodlander, one in a series entitled "Captain Fatty's Message in a Bottle." As a recent subscriber to Cruising World magazine, I know Captain Fatty as an editor-at-large and regular columnist for the magazine. So I had one of those "driveway moments" as I sat in the Tabeguache parking lot listening to Captain Fatty for a few minutes while Scout gave me a what-are-we-waiting-for look.

In less than four minutes, Captain Fatty summed up what it means to live the sailing dream. His opinions were so heartfelt that I decided, as I got out of the car, that I had to post his words on my blog. This evening, when I went to NPR's website, I found that the segment was only available in audio format, so I transcribed it in its entirety:

Y’know, I’m astonished how often people ask me if we anchor at night while on ocean passages. The answer, of course, is no. The ocean is very deep, in places over thirty thousand feet deep, about the height that a jetliner flies, which is far, far too deep for a recreational sailboat to anchor in. We just keep sailing, all day, all night, occasionally for months in a row without stop.

We don’t have to steer. We have a mechanical windvane to do that, and it steers us flawlessly without any external power source. But we do have to keep a watch out for ships. I am on watch while my wife Carolyn sleeps. At regular intervals, I wake her up and she is in complete charge of the vessel while I nap.

I don’t find it boring at all to be on passage. Besides sleeping and keeping a lookout, I do navigation, I keep a log, I maintain the vessel. My wife Carolyn cooks. We read a lot, we make love a lot, we argue, we laugh, we get naked, we shout aloud at God, we sing joyously His praises at the top of our lungs, we act like complete and utter fools. In deep ocean, we act like the happy, delirious children that we are. Mother Nature herself entertains us: clouds, birds, waves, stars, planets, meteors, rainbows, moonbows, lightning.

We listen to a shortwave radio, mostly the BBC but we listened to NPR as we sailed past the U.S. military base on Diego Garcia in the middle of the Indian Ocean. How strange to hear All Things Considered so far out to sea, like a lost, century-old radio signal emerging from the ether.

It is hard for me to get my head around the fact that America goes on and on and on as I sail. I don’t feel like an American anymore. I don’t feel like a Chicagoan or a southsider or someone born though lying in hospital on the lip of Lake Michigan on Ground Hog’s Day, February 2nd, 1952. I feel like a sailor. I feel like a seabird. I feel free—utterly, completely, deliciously free. I live in the last place without fences, without rules, without cops, without social restraints of any kind. I am free, free as any man can be, as free as any man ever was.

Almost continuously—sure, I have to occasionally stop, touch land, mingle with dirt dwellers and their slick, glad-handing politicians, and, of course, the related uniform power thugs which anxiously encircle them. Y’know, they don’t talk about extortion these days. Nah, it’s not P.C. They don’t talk about strong-arm tactics or intimidation. Nah, we’re far too civilized for that. Instead we call it taxes and universal health care, and my favorite, paying one’s fair share. Whenever I hear that phrase, I think of it being uttered by Tony Soprano.

No, y’know, I’m far happier at sea. The rules are plain. God is strict. You goof up, you die. That’s plain enough, isn’t it? It’s easy for me, a guy like me, to be happy offshore. You soon realize that all the happiness you’ll ever need is already inside you. The happiness isn’t something you’ll ever find; it’s something that you already have plenty of, that there is no path to happiness, that happiness itself is the path. And thus, I sail and sail and sail.

Right on!

Morality and Practicality

A couple of months ago, NPR's Talk of the Nation featured psychologist Steven Pinker discussing the evolutionary roots of morality with host Neal Conan (Steven Pinker on Morality as a 'Sixth Sense'). About ten minutes into their talk, Dr. Pinker mentioned a bumper sticker I have also seen: "If you're against abortion, then don't have one." As a person who supports abortion rights, I have thought this made good sense, but Dr. Pinker argued that it misses the point: "If abortion is a moral issue to anyone, then just agreeing not to do it yourself is not an option.... The very fact that it's considered moral by some people means that, necessarily, it has to apply to everyone."

I had always thought of morality as a set of principles shared by a common group of people for their mutual benefit. For example, it is wrong to steal, or it is right to give to charity. These are black-and-white examples, but what about the many gray areas? At what point does a practical matter become a moral issue, or vice versa? Meat is considered a component of a normal diet by most people, but there are strict vegetarians who would argue that it is immoral to kill animals for food. Divorce was considered immoral by most people up until recently; now it is more commonly viewed as unfortunate but sometimes necessary.

In most cases, it is the attitude of the majority that determines whether an issue is widely considered to be practical or moral. Our laws generally support the majority, but the opposite has also been true. Prohibition was passed when alcohol consumption was considered immoral by a powerful minority, but making liquor illegal did not change the attitude of the majority and the law was eventually overturned. The abortion issue is similar. A vocal minority is trying to make abortion illegal, but until they convince the majority that abortion is more a moral issue than a practical one, they will be unsuccessful.

The difference between morality and practicality then becomes a matter of extent. If you believe a principle to be a moral imperative, that it is universal and applies to all, then it is not enough to follow that principle yourself or within your like-minded group; you must fight to ensure that everyone believes as you do. This provides some excellent insight into the thinking and actions of abortion opponents and other moral crusaders.

Life without Television

Click this thumbnail for a full-size version of "Flowers for Trinitron"

For the past two months, Nan and I have been without TV. The neighbors next door to the house we are renting in Basalt had some excavation work done around their foundation back in June. In the process, our cable was cut, or more likely it was just disconnected since I finally traced the cable back to its end and there was still a muddy connector attached. It turns out it was not a legitimate hook-up, which meant there was no calling the cable company to get it reconnected. We stewed about this for quite a while, partly not wanting to pay for something we had been getting for free and partly out of fear that there would be repercussions if we called the cable company to order new service.

For the first couple of days, we would turn on the TV periodically to see if by some miracle the service was back on, but all we ever got was a blue screen. We didn't miss it in the mornings when we normally listen to NPR on the radio, but there was a definite void in the evenings. Fortunately, it was the summer rerun season, so we weren't missing much. Still it would have been nice to watch the news or a sports event or an HBO movie once in a while. Instead we would read both Aspen daily newspapers, follow sports on the Internet, and watch DVDs on my laptop. Nan spent more time emailing family and friends, and I spent more time practicing guitar. We went to bed earlier and felt better rested and more productive at work.

It occurred to me after a couple of weeks that we were living Ruben Bolling's "Flowers for Trinitron" existence, based on one of his old Tom the Dancing Bug cartoons. Hopefully, we won't see it through to its logical conclusion and return to our previous viewing habits, even though we recently gritted our teeth and ordered new cable service--without threat of arrest!--in time for football season. Go Packers!

Giving thanks

On this Thanksgiving day, few of us stop to think about what exactly it is we are giving thanks for, or in some cases, giving thanks to. I am thankful for my wife Nan and my dog Charlie, my family and friends, my health, and for a life full of opportunity and experience. To whom am I thankful? I am thankful to all the people in my life for sharing their lives with me. I am not thankful to God because, like Penn Jillette of the comedy and magic act Penn and Teller, I don't believe in God.

Here is what Penn had to say about God on Monday's National Public Radio segment, "This I Believe" (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5015557):

There Is No God
by Penn Gillette

I believe that there is no God. I'm beyond Atheism. Atheism is not believing in God. Not believing in God is easy -- you can't prove a negative, so there's no work to do. You can't prove that there isn't an elephant inside the trunk of my car. You sure? How about now? Maybe he was just hiding before. Check again. Did I mention that my personal heartfelt definition of the word "elephant" includes mystery, order, goodness, love and a spare tire?

So, anyone with a love for truth outside of herself has to start with no belief in God and then look for evidence of God. She needs to search for some objective evidence of a supernatural power. All the people I write e-mails to often are still stuck at this searching stage. The Atheism part is easy.

But, this "This I Believe" thing seems to demand something more personal, some leap of faith that helps one see life's big picture, some rules to live by. So, I'm saying, "This I believe: I believe there is no God."

Having taken that step, it informs every moment of my life. I'm not greedy. I have love, blue skies, rainbows and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It has to be enough, but it's everything in the world and everything in the world is plenty for me. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more. Just the love of my family that raised me and the family I'm raising now is enough that I don't need heaven. I won the huge genetic lottery and I get joy every day.

Believing there's no God means I can't really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That's good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.

Believing there's no God stops me from being solipsistic. I can read ideas from all different people from all different cultures. Without God, we can agree on reality, and I can keep learning where I'm wrong. We can all keep adjusting, so we can really communicate. I don't travel in circles where people say, "I have faith, I believe this in my heart and nothing you can say or do can shake my faith." That's just a long-winded religious way to say, "shut up," or another two words that the FCC likes less. But all obscenity is less insulting than, "How I was brought up and my imaginary friend means more to me than anything you can ever say or do." So, believing there is no God lets me be proven wrong and that's always fun. It means I'm learning something.

Believing there is no God means the suffering I've seen in my family, and indeed all the suffering in the world, isn't caused by an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent force that isn't bothered to help or is just testing us, but rather something we all may be able to help others with in the future. No God means the possibility of less suffering in the future.
Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-o and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best life I will ever have.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!