the wreck of the Sewol

Well, your TV and news sites are probably teeming with stories about South Korea right now. I wish there was a happier reason for it than the sinking of the Sewol, a large Japanese-built ferryboat hauling nearly 500 people, which sank in the western fringes of the Korea Strait on its way from Incheon to Jeju Island.

                                                                                                      Yonhap News

You're probably familiar with the specifics. Just a few minutes before 9:00 a.m. the passengers on the ship heard a loud bang and the ship started to list severely. A distress signal was sent at 8:55 a.m. The Sewol's captain, Lee Joon-seok (who was recently arrested), failed to issue any sort of evacuation order for a critical 30 minutes, at 9:30 a.m. The ship sank further, rolling over and becoming almost completely submerged by noon, with only the bow remaining above water by 2:00 p.m. The ship in its entirety has since sunk and settled on the bottom 90 meters below the surface. 

Horrifying, heartrending and heroic stories have risen from this disaster. Twenty-nine people are confirmed dead, 174 have been rescued and 239 remain missing. It's a well-known fact that 300 of the 476-odd people aboard were young students from an Ansan high school. (In an earlier draft of this post I wrote Incheon, but I was in error.) One of the crew is rumored to have lost her life ensuring that all passengers had their life jackets. Heartbreaking tales of the students texting their parents and relatives from the wreck on the bottom of the ocean have populated the web. 

Controversy is among the most prominent survivors of the Sewol wreck. Two at the moment are occupying my attention, and they are both mentioned in that link I posted up there about Captain Lee being arrested. The first is Lee's refusal to issue an evacuation order for a full 30 minutes, which has rightly come under harsh scrutiny and criticism; and that the helmsman, Cho Joon-ki (also arrested) made a "sharp turn" just before the bang was heard. He admitted that he was "familiar" with the operation of the helm, but that the wheel "turned farther than expected." This has led to speculation that the turn was too sharp, dislodging some of the containers in the hold and perhaps compromising the integrity of the hull, leading to the sinking. Other parties maintain that a hidden rock was to blame, but that doesn't make sense to me. Ferries have been traveling up and down that same route for decades. If there was a rock, surely it would have been detected by now? 

It seems that, as is commonly the case, human error is to blame for the horrific loss of human life. The ship's authority figures failed to act in a sagacious manner, trapping hundreds of innocents in the wreck of the vessel. 

To many abroad and in the West, this may seem like "just another disaster." Another captain asleep at the wheel, like the Costa Concordia in 2012. But it's more than that, folks. This catastrophe has shaken South Korea right down to its roots. Many of my students at Sejong University are tremendously disturbed, not just by the deaths of so many young ones but the accompanying implications. 

What implications, you ask? 

I've explained before that Korea has a strong Confucian mindset. This has been the case since the Joseon era (1392-1910), when Neo-Confucianism came to dominate the Korean court and both Buddhists and Christians were severely repressed. One of the fundamental tenets of Confucianism is unflinching obedience to one's elders and betters. Korea and China, during their medieval days, had rigid hierarchical societies. Things like birth, wealth, occupation, and even surname determined one's position in the caste system. When confronted with a member of a higher echelon, one must show them the greatest respect. To do anything else would be to violate sacred societal mores and traditions. It goes without saying that children must obey their parents and grandparents as a lowly foot soldier would obey a general. 

And that's precisely what the children aboard the Sewol did. They wanted to evacuate, to leap off the ship into the cold grey seas and swim for their lives, but Captain Lee, their elder and better—whose mind was paralyzed with fears that his passengers would drift away and be lost in the turbulent waters—ordered them to stay put. So stay put they did, in the cabins and corridors. And there they remain. 

Needless to say, many minds in Korea—particularly the younger ones—are beginning to call this whole Confucian system into question. This disaster has highlighted its fundamental weakness: what if the authority figures in question are pure-D wrong? There's little point in unquestioningly following a leader if he or she hasn't got the brains of an ice cube. Many Japanese samurai might disagree, but this isn't the Warring States Period, guys. This is the 21st century. And now, young folks across the Korean peninsula are wondering whether the Confucian ideal is, well...ideal anymore. One of my students, normally chipper and articulate but grave and hesitant when I spoke with him, told me that he couldn't really process the whole affair. 

"I love my country," he said. "I believe in Korea. But this disaster has made me question everything." 

Everyone feels that way, partner. My fiancée, a die-hard Titanic buff, has been quiet and subdued the past few days, shocked to the core that a major maritime disaster such as the Sewol sinking can still happen in this day and age. I must confess that it all seems a bit surreal to me. It's hard to believe that only a few hundred kilometers from where I sit, down in the muck at the bottom of the Korea Strait, sits a capsized ship filled with hundreds of people who may very well be siblings or relatives of the twentysomethings I teach. 

My thoughts and prayers are with them. May justice be served to those at fault. 

30 Days to a Better Man, Day 27: start a book

Silly me. When I first read the title of today's challenge, I thought it meant "start writing a book." For two weeks I was all in a sweat to finish Novel #2 so I could start on Novel #4. (Novel #3 is half-written, but there ain't no way it would have been finished it in time.) I guess that means I'm a writer after all. It came as a shock when I actually clicked over to the AoM article and saw the truth: I just have to start reading a book.

All too easy!

I'm actually in the middle of three books right now. The first is Paul Theroux's Ghost Train to the Eastern Star. Published in 2006, the book recounts the author's retracing of his epic train journey through Asia 33 years prior. I'm frantically trying to get done with the chapters about Vietnam so I can read about Theroux's train trip through Japan while I'm taking a train trip through Japan. This is Theroux's modus operandi, in fact. He buys books about the country he's in and reads them on the train. Sounds like a blast.

I'm still working my way through The Great Shark Hunt: Gonzo Papers, Vol. 1. These are some of Hunter S. Thompson's most notorious and infamous stories, concerning the world-shaking events he covered in the sixties and seventies, articles he published in Rolling Stone and elsewhere: the killing of Rubén Salazar, Super Bowl VIII, the decadence of the Kentucky Derby, and others. Some of these events laid the groundwork for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. (The book was inspired by two trips Thompson made to Las Vegas with Chicano lawyer Oscar Zeta Acosta so they could talk privately about the Salazar case.) It's fascinating reading. The sixties and seventies are vivid and colorful — particularly through Thompson's chemical-laden vision — and the historical events which took place are still relevant today.

...but not that relevant. I'm honestly finding it difficult to get into the stories on a personal level. You had to be there, I imagine. "There is no distance on this earth as far away as yesterday," Robert Nathan said, and he was right. All this stuff went down over forty years ago now. Old news. I'll finish whatever story I'm reading and then lay the book aside.

Finally, I am slogging my way through Anna Karenina. I think I'm a few pages away from Part Three, but dang. This is a hefty book. And again, it's difficult to get into. One of my globe-trotting college buddies, whom I'll call Levi, has read Tolstoy extensively. He did War and Peace first. He called it a "590,000-word page-turner." The way he described it made it sound as though it was impossible to put down. He finished it in a ludicrously short time. Then he turned his attention to Anna Karenina. He, like me, could barely get through it. Compared to War and Peace, Levi said, Anna Karenina was little better than a soap opera.

I agree with that assessment. So far we've had Karenin and his philandering wife arguing about appearances, and the adulterous Vronsky losing a horse-race. Oh, and Kitty being neurotic. Nothing even halfway dramatic has happened, unless you count [SPOILER ALERT] Vronsky impregnating Anna and Levin having a fight with his brother Constantin. (That's another thing: I'm still trying to figure out where the hell Levin fits into this story.)

I don't even have the satisfaction of suspense anymore, either, thanks to Miss H. Wrongly assuming that I already knew how the story ended, my lovely fiancée accidentally let slip that Anna [SPOILER ALERT] throws herself under a speeding train and dies at the end. Thanks a heap, lady. Way to ruin the ending. I'll finish the story regardless, before the spring semester is half over.  

But in the meantime, my reading list is backing up. To ameliorate that problem, and fulfill the requirements of today's challenge, I am starting a new book. Coincidentally, it's the first book that I've ever read on an e-reader. Miss H bought a Nook last year in anticipation of traveling, but found it wasn't as functional as she'd hoped, so she bequeathed it to me. I haven't touched it in six months. I can't stand e-readers. I'd much rather have a nice book in my hands and a funky bookmark to stick in it. I'm the ostentatious type who likes to show people all the fancy books on my shelf, or advertise to the world what I'm reading when I'm on sitting on a park bench or a subway train. Reading e-books is just staring at a screen, and goodness knows I do enough of that already. (The results of yesterday's Marine Corps fitness test are proof of that.)

The book I chose is The Terror by Dan Simmons. It's been a while since I read anything without an ulterior motive: research, or getting caught up with the classics, or taking someone else's suggestion. I almost never pick something out and read it because the concept tickled my fancy in some vague, inchoate, intangible way. But when I do, it's always a blast. That's why I chose this book. I'm not going to describe it to you; you can read all about it here. This post's too long as it is. And by now you know me well enough to figure out why I picked something like this.

The novel will be my constant companion on the journey through Japan. One real book and one electronic book should keep me entertained on the Shinkansen ride from Hokkaido to Fukuoka, and assuage my conscience besides.

Tomorrow: read up on Day 28.

beardly updates

As many of you may know, I'm trying to grow a beard. I grew a paltry, thin one last spring when the cherry blossoms were blooming (why should they have all the fun?) but shaved it off shortly thereafter. I sculpted the remains into a Van Dyke, which has sustained me ever since.

But with the approach of No-Shave November this year, I decided I wanted more. A month without shaving would be the perfect chance. That scraggly thing I'd had on my face in spring wouldn't suffice to knock "grow a beard" off my bucket list. I'm aiming for a real beard this time around. Something that would make a mountain man proud, or at least refrain from calling me "pilgrim."

But first, a confession: I have been a bit unfair. I quit shaving halfway through October, and it's halfway through December now, so my nascent beard is obviously a bit longer than it should be. My facial hair grows really slowly, you see. Dang genetics. None of the Post men can grow beards. I suppose my Germanic/Viking ancestors were like cats: they got to the warm, sunny New World and started shedding. The big, bushy, manly beards must've been the first things to go. Accordingly, I had to hedge my bets a little. So I started earlier than everybody else.

This is what I've got now:

These were taken, incidentally, under the Gwangjin Bridge, on the eastern shore of the Han River, during a lovely December day. That's my new Stanwell pipe clenched between my teeth.

I'm going to let nature run its course through Yuletide, January, and the ensuing February. After I get back from Hokkaido on February 9, I'll do another post and show you all what my new-and-improved beard looks like. I've come to terms with the fact that it'll never equal the thick, woolly thing Robert Redford had stuck on his face all through the film Jeremiah Johnson, but I think I've found a suitable middle ground: Jürgen Prochnow from Das Boot.

Minus the weary, haunted look of utter despair. 

I frickin' love that movie, not just for the drama, the splendid acting and the gritty realism, but for the epic beards that the crew sprout over the course of the film. Submarines and submariners have always fascinated me: the camaraderie they necessarily had to have, the insensate dangers they faced on a daily basis, the physical hardships of life in a metal tube, and their downright slovenliness (sanctioned under the circumstances). There was an enthralling article called "Sweat and Rum" in the BBC News Magazine a couple of days ago. It centered around the crew of the HMS Ocelot and other British submarines of the 1960s. "The Queen's Pirates" they were called. Feckin' awesome.

Anyway, Prochnow—who is one of my favorite actors on the basis of Das Boot alone—and I have a lot in common in the facial hair department. His beard runs along his jawline and flows down to his neck, steering clear of his cheeks. Mine does the exact same thing. So that manly chinwig you see in the picture above? That's what I'm going for. Sans blood and sinking submarines, of course.

See you in February... 

sci-fi art, entry #3

I'm not going to say much about this one; just do whatever you brain wants to with it. I will say, however, that this piece inspired a very pivotal scene in Novel #3 (which has just cracked 45,000 words and ten chapters). Make of that what you will. You may wish to click on it to expand it to its full size.

One more thing. The reason I don't usually credit an author for these images is because I found all of them on free wallpaper sites, often without any author's or artist's name listed. And that's kind of nice, you know? Keeping things anonymous. Just letting the dreamers stay in the shadows and do their thing and weave dreams for the rest of us.

an escalating situation

I've never written much about the Democratic People's Republic of Korea on this blog. This is the first time I've ever tagged a post with "North Korea," in fact. I'm reading Barbara Demick's book Nothing to Envy, which follows the lives of six North Korean citizens through the famine of the 1990s; I was probably going to scribble a bit about that at some point. But now that the rhetoric and posturing and threats are escalating, I feel like I should tell you what's on my mind. Just in case I get blown away in the next 48 hours.

As you may have heard, things are getting out of hand over here. The situation here is tenser than I've ever seen in my 26 months of living in South Korea. Kim Jong-un has torn up the armistice, effectively putting the Koreas back into a state of open warfare; disconnected the hotlines between the two nations; mobilized his military and beefed up artillery and infantry forces along the border; refused entry to South Korean workers at the jointly-run industrial complex inside the DMZ; and leveled a constant stream of invectives and hostilities against South Korea, the U.S.A. and their allies.

In its latest move, Pyongyang has gone so far as to threaten a nuclear strike against the United States. Stating that its military has been cleared to use "smaller, lighter, and more diversified" nuclear weapons, the rogue nation declared that war could break out "today or tomorrow."

Although Al Jazeera reports that Korea has threatened the U.S. specifically, by proxy those threats refer to South Korea as well. Expert analysts believe that, despite all the bluster, the D.P.R.K. does not have the capability to deliver a missile to an American territory in the Pacific, be it Guam or Hawaii. (The U.S. recently announced its intention to place a missile defense system on Guam, which might be what's got Pyongyang's panties in a twist.)

If that's true, then the only places that North Korea can hit are South Korea or Japan. Japan would be an unwise choice, as it's a key U.S. ally and bombing it would bring on the wrath of the sleeping giant. South Korea is no less an important friend of the United States, but as we've seen with the Cheonan disaster and the Yeonpyeong Island incident, South Korea's not shy about poking its neighbor with a big stick. The attack that North Korea has threatened may come "today or tomorrow" might be leveled at Seoul or somewhere close by.

I don't know about you, but this has got me rather worried. I'm not one to panic easily, but things are different now than they were when I lived in Korea before. This time I'm in Seoul, just in case you missed my last six posts. I'm at ground zero, so to speak. The front lines. I've read that an estimated one million missiles will fall upon this city if war ever breaks out. And it's not just me anymore, either: Miss H is here, and our black cat Charlie. Whatever befalls me befalls them as well, good or ill. That would wrack anybody's nerves. Mine are fraying a smidgen.

On the ground, the situation is calm. Everyone here is going about their lives as usual. Blah, blah, blah, we've seen it all before. And I have to admit, I'm pretty blasé about North Korea now, having lived on the peninsula for almost two and a half years without incident.

So why am I so worried? Well, a couple of reasons. First of all, North Korea usually doesn't close the jointly-run Gaeseong Industrial Region. It's a source of hard currency for the regime and closing it hampers its floundering economy. Even when Seoul and Pyongyang are trading rhetorical blows, the complex stays open. The fact that it's closed to South Koreans now is...disturbing, to say the least.

Second, while I've seen heated exchanges between the two nations before, this most recent one is quite a bit more vitriolic than usual. The barrage of threats from the North has lasted longer and been more vehement than any I've previously witnessed (well, since the death of Kim Jong-il, anyway).

And that brings me to my final point: there's been a recent regime change. Kim Jong-un is running the country now, and he may feel that he's got something to prove. His grandfather and his dad kept the United Nations and the U.S. on their toes for 60 years; now it's Kim the Third's turn. He may have a chip on his shoulder. Perhaps he's looking for ways to make his mark, and has decided that a smoking crater in the center of downtown Seoul is just the way to do it. He may even be foolish or naïve enough to assume that he'll get away with it.

So here I am—with my loved ones—at the epicenter of six decades of stewing resentment and barely-controlled aggression.

What's new with you lately?

I finished my first NaNo!

...'nuff said.

But that's not the end of the story (so to speak). My project came out of the oven looking so good that I think I'll try to get 'er published. I'm 20 pages into the first revision, and the prospects are getting rosier all the time.

I'm doing two things with this first rewrite. Well, three. First, I'm converting all of the romanized Korean words to the outdated McCune-Reischauer system. If that sentence made no sense to you, hear me out. At first I was just winging it. The M-R system didn't exist back in the 1860s, and I figured my narrator and protagonist would just make up whatever transliteration looked good. But then I thought I'd better standardize. I don't want to cause my readers undue confusion, or give the critics another reason to howl and dribble. Using this obsolete system does two things. Due to the accent marks and apostrophes and umlauts and stuff, the words look antiquated and alien, which is a rather nice effect for a book about one of the first Western expeditions to the interior of the Korean peninsula. Really heightens the mood, y'know? Moreover, the McCune-Reischauer system was originally created to help foreigners pronounce Korean words. If the book's going to have mass appeal, I can't have my readers chucking it across the room because they can't sound out all the Hangul.

Second, I'm trying to homogenize the tone of the novel. It was written in first-person perspective—the perspective of a 30-year-old Protestant missionary from the Dakota Territory. I'm trying to make sure this book sounds like it was written by a well-educated American man in the 1860s. I've always admired the erudite diction and complex sentence structure I observed in Jules Verne's stories, and I'm trying to emulate it. But I'm not accustomed to it, and regulating it is a constant battle.

Third (and this one's the kicker): I'm revising it for historical accuracy.

Since Miss H was home for two weeks back there in mid-November, she graciously agreed to pick up a book for me. It's called Intrepid Americans, Bold Koreans: Early Korean Trade, Concessions, and Entrepreneurship by Donald Southerton. This slim volume contains a detailed account of the 1866 General Sherman incident (detailed in my previous NaNoWriMo posts), upon which this novel was based. My work is historical fiction, of course, but I'd like for my account to be as realistic as possible, particularly since this is my first stab at mainstream commercial fiction. A fine kettle of fish it'd be if my debut novel got skewered for glaring historical inaccuracies. Even though this is supposedly the crappy novel I promised I'd write, it came out far better than I expected, and have high hopes for it.

Anyway, I've only just begun Chapter 3 of Intrepid Americans, Bold Koreans—the one detailing the General Sherman incident—and already I've made several important corrections to my manuscript as a result. There's been numerous small things, like romanization errors or geographical tweaks. But it looks like there are some big revelations in store, which may lead me to make some major insertions (no dirty jokes, please).

Props to Miss H for picking this up for me. Quite empowering, that woman is. I should tell her that more often.

Anyway, wish me luck in my revision. I aim to get this thing on the fast track to publication the moment I'm satisfied that it's as historically accurate. And once the tone's as homogeneous as it's going to get. When those two conditions are met, it's on its way to the publishers. That's a promise.

Stay tuned...

the home stretch

Well, I have good news and bad news. With one night and one day to go, I have finished my NaNoWriMo story. The bad news is that, due to my complete lack of planning (I always was a pantser), I've come up 2,500 words short.

Shazbot.

The Taedong River, which runs through Pyongyang, in the 19th century. This is where the real story, the one involving the General Sherman, went down in 1866.

Now I gotta comb back through the book and find places where I can pad it out. That's no problem. I was a bit scanty in my description of Ganghwa Island and Chongjijin Fortress (my story takes place on the Han River, which runs through Seoul). So I'll lengthen the story about the crew's expedition on the island. Maybe I'll introduce a new character...some British or American castaway who washed up on Korea's beaches in the early 1860s but can't leave because of the Joseon Kingdom's strict isolationist policies. Yeah, perfect drama bomb.

Wish me luck...

my NaNoWriMo project, revealed

I know I've been cagey about the title and premise of my big sci-fi magnum opus, and for good reason. I'm very protective of it, because, well, it's my magnum opus. It's my baby, and I'm its protective father. I'll die of grief if it gets born prematurely or perishes in childbirth, or it comes out incurably deformed and mangled, or (worst of all) someone kidnaps it. I'm keeping the whole bloody thing under wraps until the proper time.

Concerning this novel, though—the one I'm doing for NaNoWriMo—I'm not guarded at all. It's not nearly as close to my heart as my magnum opus is. In fact, it's that crappy novel that I said I'd write. So here it is—you can have it. It's high time I told you what I was doing anyway:

The title is Mugunghwa: the Wreck of the Rose of Sharon. The Rose of Sharon, obviously, is the name of a ship. Mugunghwa is the title and "the Wreck of the Rose of Sharon" is the subtitle. (Subtitles aren't supposed to be capitalized, right? Or are they? Do I need quotation marks around the ship's name?)

Anyway, Mugunghwa is a historical fiction piece set in Korea (or "Corea" as it used to be known) in 1864. It's based on a true story. In 1866, the General Sherman, a well-armed trading vessel owned by a British company, attempted to open the isolationist Joseon Dynasty to trade relations with the Western powers. Things didn't go so well. The ship sailed up to the Keupsa Gate on the Taedong River (near present-day Pyongyang). The crew made contact with the Koreans and told 'em they wanted to trade. All offers of commerce were refused, but the crew was told that the Joseon Dynasty would provision them for their return voyage. The Sherman was ordered to wait at the Keupsa Gate until higher-level officials in Pyongyang could be consulted, and...

Wait, I already told you about this.

Anyway, you know the story. The ship was burned and the crew killed. Nobody really knows why the Sherman sailed on past its agreed anchorage. Whether the crew was motivated by greed, or bravado, or impatience...we may never know. But it makes a smashing good story, so I've adapted it for my own novel. I've changed the names of the sailors and some of the particulars, and I've moved the action to the Han River and Seoul instead of the Taedong River and Pyongyang. But the story's the same. A merchant vessel with an American, Chinese and Malay crew sails to Korea looking to trade. On board is Jabez Fuller, a Lutheran priest and the expedition's interpreter. He's a calm, cautious man, something of a worrywart, unlike any other protagonist I've written. Most of my M.C.s are snarkers, malcontents, cynics or loonies. Fuller is my first man of the cloth, and my first temperate and nigh-timid man. I say "night-timid" because in the end of the book, he...well, you'll find out when it's finished.

Other characters include O'Reilly and Fields, the salty boatswain and boatswain's mate, who have befriended Reverend Fuller; the iron-jawed and icy-calm Captain Richard Henry Pierce; the perpetually grinning chief mate and helmsman Lester Dawkins; the reclusive and neurotic engineer, Isaac Randall; his Chinese assistants Bohai and Chonglin; the fat and friendly Malay cook, Samad; the brave and noble deckhand Tong Lai; and the corrupt, self-centered, and unstable company man H.B. Morton, Pierce's employer and the steamer's owner. There's also the ship herself: the Rose of Sharon, a half-ironclad with wooden uppers—weathered and creaky but armed to the teeth.

The title, Mugunghwa, is a Korean word which means "rose of Sharon." The rose of Sharon is the official flower of Korea and has been precious to the nation's people since time began. In relation the novel, the word mugunghwa encapsulates the Korean's insular nature and their strong sense of nationalism, and the Westerners' misguided attempts at bridging the gap between the two worlds. It symbolizes how even the most genuine and heartfelt gestures can be badly misinterpreted by a radically different culture.

Anyway, that's the story. As of today I'm 14,919 words into it. Our ship and its little crew have penetrated the first line of Korean bureaucracy, thanks to Fuller's negotiation skills. Morton's instability continues to threaten the integrity of the mission and the safety of the steamer's crew. The Rose of Sharon is now steaming toward Seoul, and is close enough to hear the great bronze bells tolling every morning and evening. What will happen when these intrepid men come under the eyes of the suspicious and potentially hostile city, the capital of a hermit kingdom which has spurned all foreigners before? Will Morton's dangerous behavior and bigoted greed bring the expedition to disaster? Or will defeat come from the most innocuous and unexpected source?

I'll have to discover that as I scribble on. This has been my first experience writing fiction under a deadline, and the process has been eye-opening. But there's more to it than that. I started the novel with a clear idea of how it would begin and end, but only the vaguest notion of what would occur in the meantime. In the course of writing, so many unexpected things have danced from my cortex onto the laptop screen, things I didn't see coming until they were literally at my fingertips. The story has changed and twisted and turned in so many unexpected directions, with myriad plot twists and dramatic events coalescing at random. I never expected to have so many characters, for one thing. I started out with only Fuller, Morton, Pierce, O'Reilly and Fields, basically. I knew I'd introduce some other named crew members at some point, but not this many. It's awesome. They're all full-fledged and three-dimensional, too, not flat or generic or stereotypical (I hope). All in all, this novel is fulfilling my dream of writing a book similar in voice to The Mysterious Island (Jules Verne) and similar in theme to The Sand Pebbles (Richard McKenna).

And so, to sum up, here I am. Happy, inspired, energetic, curious, and only four thousand words behind schedule. (Tee hee.)

Further bulletins as events warrant...

sunken ships and captured forts

A Korean junk, circa 1871. (Photo taken by U.S. military personnel; courtesy of Wikipedia.)

Did you think the Korean War of 1950-1953 was the first U.S. military action on the Korean peninsula?

Have you ever wondered who the first American soldiers to receive Medals of Honor in a foreign conflict were? And which conflict it was? 

You're about to discover the truth.

The year was 1866. The American Civil War had recently come to an end. The heart-rending, gut-wrenching conflict was finally behind us, and the process of reconstruction was underway. America now gazed across the oceans, seeking new horizons, searching for trade partners, hoping enterprise would soothe its bruised soul. Commodore Matthew Perry had pried Japan open with a crowbar in 1854, and U.S. interests had been entrenched in China for decades. Korea had been on the table since 1844, neglected due to lack of interest. American eyes now turned to the isolationist empire on its small peninsula. It offered a tempting and pristine target for merchants and traders.

On August 16, 1866, a merchant marine side-wheel steamer named the General Sherman puffed into Korean waters. Belonging to the British trading firm Meadows & Co., the 187-ton Sherman carried a cargo of cotton, tin and glass, hoping to entice the Koreans into a trade partnership. The Sherman was also heavily armed, just in case the Koreans weren't in a listening mood. She was crewed by a Captain Page, Chief Mate Wilson, and almost twenty Chinese and Malay sailors. Also aboard were the ship's owner, W.B. Preston (American) and Robert Jermain Thomas, a Protestant missionary and the excursion's official interpreter. Assisted by Chinese junks, the General Sherman steamed up the Taedong River and anchored just outside the Geupsa gate, at the border of the Pyongan and Hwanghae Provinces.

The traders established contact with the Koreans and told them they wanted to dicker. The Koreans refused, but agreed to supply the foreigners with provisions. The Sherman was told to wait at the Geupsa gate until the Korean regent could be consulted. He would then either send the envoy home or invite them into Pyongyang. For unclear reasons, however, the Sherman weighed its anchor and steamed further upriver, eventually running aground on an island in the midst of Pyongyang. A Korean ambassador was sent to the ship with an offering of food, and a stern warning: the ship must return to the Geupsa gate, or all aboard would be killed.

This is where accounts get muddled. The Koreans claim that the foreigners kidnapped the ambassador and held him hostage. They demanded to be allowed inside the city and even went so far as to fire the ship's cannons into the crowd which had gathered on the banks of the river. This went on for four days. More envoys were sent, words were exchanged, and the vessel kept firing its guns up and down the riverside.

Reality check, here. I'm not an apologist, but I find it difficult to believe that a trading ship would just up and start a war on an isolated nation for no reason. Doing so would hardly have been profitable. More likely there was some massive misunderstanding that took place. The Reverend Thomas was the only Westerner aboard who could speak Korean, and no one knows exactly what his level of proficiency was. After living in this country for almost 21 nonconsecutive months, I'm well aware of just how easy it is to cause massive misunderstandings. The language barrier is pretty thick here. The cultural discrepancies between Korea and the Western world don't seem great at first, but they can sneak up on you. And Koreans wear their hearts on their sleeves: they will react passionately and vehemently if something untoward happens, and they will correct forcibly if they can't make themselves understood. Perhaps Thomas, Captain Page or Mr. Preston all underestimated their hosts' magnanimity. Perhaps they just failed to keep their minds, eyes and ears open.

Whatever the cause of the misunderstanding was, it cost them their lives. The Koreans tied several boats together and filled them with wood, sulphur and saltpeter. They set them aflame and sent them drifting toward the General Sherman. The first two boats left the steamer unscathed, but the third lit her up like a Christmas tree. Unable to quench the blaze, her crew dived into the water, where the Koreans unceremoniously beat them to death.

And so ends the first part of my story. The second now begins.

Nobody knew what had become of the General Sherman, but since there had been American nationals aboard her, it was a cause of concern for the United States of America. So, in 1871, a military expedition to Korea was mounted. Its mission was to ascertain the fate of the Sherman and her crew, protect a new diplomatic legation being sent to open trade routes with the peninsula, and to establish a treaty with Koreans for the protection of shipwrecked sailors. (The Joseon Dynasty, like the Tokugawa shogunate, took a rather dim view of castaway foreigners on its shores.)

American history books (if they mention it at all) call this the 1871 Korean Expedition. The Koreans call it the Sinminyangyo, and it was centered on an island in the Han River estuary called Ganghwa-do. It already had a history of punitive incursions; the French had mounted a military expedition there in 1866, the same year the Sherman was destroyed. The Japanese would later invade there in 1875, and shanghai the Korean regent into signing a trade agreement, thereby ending the Joseon Dynasty's isolationist policies.

The American warships first attempted peaceful overtures, but the local officials dodged the subject of the Sherman incident, perhaps to avoid having to pay recompense. The Americans stated their intention to explore the region peacefully. Official Joseon policy, however, forbade foreign ships on the Han River, which led directly to Seoul. So the Korean troops fired on the American ships from their stone forts on Ganghwa's heights, without inflicting much damage. The Americans demanded an apology within 10 days. None was forthcoming, so on June 10, 650 American sailors and Marines off the Colorado, Alaska, Palos, Monocacy, and Benicia landed at Ganghwa-do. They stormed several Korean forts on the island, one after the other. Set against them were some hundreds of Korean regulars, known as the "Tiger-Hunters" and led by General Eo Jae-yeon.

Another Wikipedia image. This is a posed photo, but these are the U.S. Navy commanders. That's Admiral John Rodgers, the expedition's commander, leaning over the table on the right.

The account of the action is quite thrilling, and can be read in detail here. Suffice it to say that about 250 Koreans armed with outdated matchlock muskets were killed, for the loss of three Americans. The fort defenders were easily defeated by the better-armed Americans, who were also aided by artillery fire from the Monocacy. Five Korean forts were taken, as well as numerous prisoners. The Americans hoped to use these spoils as bargaining chips to force the Joseon rulers to the table. No dice. The Koreans refused to negotiate with the Americans and told them they were welcome to keep the "cowardly" defenders of Ganghwa-do.

So the American ships sailed away to China, and that was the end of it.

But was it? This seemingly insignificant action had far-reaching consequences. Firstly, Daewon-gun, the Joseon regent, saw fit to strengthen his isolationist policies in the wake of invasion—to no avail. The Japanese sailed up the Han River in 1875 and threatened to fire on Seoul unless the Koreans agreed to trade. (The Japanese must have taken a leaf out of Perry's book, huh?) Trade agreements with the Western nations soon followed, including one signed with America in 1882.

Perhaps more importantly, though, nine sailors and six Marines of the American expeditionary force were awarded the Medal of Honor for the actions at Ganghwa-do.

These were the first Medals of Honor ever awarded for action in a foreign conflict.

How about that, eh?

AND NOW YOU KNOW...

recommended reading

Yes, I'm still alive. And boy, have I got some stories to tell you.

But first let me tell you about the stories I read while I was gone.

First, I've finished Moby-Dick.

Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all week.

One-hundred and thirty-five days have passed in this fourth and ultimately successful attempt. I started January 5th. I concluded May 20th. I resisted, a hundred times, the temptation to forge ahead and finish early. Some days, I admit, I read retroactively, making up for days I missed...or intentionally slacked off. (Hey, with my week devoted to the General Atomics MQ-1 Predator and my weekends reserved for my lovely girlfriend, Herman Melville takes a distant third.) I marked my schedule clearly on my World War II airplanes calendar (I'm a complete sucker for vintage warbirds), and read diligently on a near-daily basis. And it's done. I've finished. I've conquered it. I've done something that a satisfyingly large amount of people have never done: read Moby-Dick from cover-to-cover.

Feel free to bask in my awesomeness.

Two important literary objectives completed in one stroke: I've (a) added another classic novel to my "have-read" list, and (b) found out how much different the Gregory Peck movie is from Melville's original vision.

It's a lot different, as it turns out.

Disinterested types and dilettantes may wish to read ahead to my actual review of Moby-Dick. I am about to embark upon an axiomatic rant about the omnipresent ineptitude of the film industry in adequately, faithfully translating fiction from the printed page to the silver screen.

Ready? Here we go:

I'm going to list two suggestions for the Hollywood producers here. If followed, they will ensure that the writer's original vision is left intact, the debilitating cancer of adaptation decay will not blight the project, and the resultant film will not be a total, blatant, festering pile of shit.

Item One: Quit cutting out the supporting characters. The Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings franchises are the worst offenders. I understand that the series have an insane amount of minor characters and not all of them could make it into the films. But some of these guys had really important roles: Tom Bombadil was the deux ex machina responsible for saving the hobbits from the Barrow-wights, and giving them the daggers they used in battle; the Potter films eliminated the character of Peeves the Poltergeist, who, though by no means a driving force behind the plot, nonetheless serves as a catalyst for many pivotal events.

The 1956 film adaptation of Moby-Dick (starring Gregory Peck, Richard Basehart and Orson Welles) is likewise guilty. Some rather vital characters were cut out of the screenplay. The most notable of these is Fedallah, Ahab's Parsee harpooneer. His mere presence on the ship causes unease among the crew, for Fedallah seems more demon than human: he sleeps standing up, stares unblinkingly, and speaks in a low hiss. I'm no book critic, but as near as I can tell, Fedallah's character represents the dark side of ambition, the ruthlessness and bestiality that inhabits the mind bent on revenge, the evil core of the human soul that will cross any boundary, commit any sin, destroy any foe to accomplish a goal.

Predictably, he is the first of Ahab's crew to die. Well, unless you count the poor sap who fell overboard in the typhoon in the middle of the book.

Fedallah's a central figure to the plot, theme and deeper meaning. And just as importantly, he adds color and variety to the cast. Why cut him out? Surely the film could've snuck him in somewhere (like maybe the prow of Ahab's boat?).

A great many other characters had their roles drastically reduced, or downright mutated. Stubb, the second mate, lightens the mood of every somber scene in the novel. In the movie he basically smokes and grinds out one-liners in whatever faux New England dialect Harry Andrews thought would fit the bill. Third mate Flask's role is almost nonexistent. Starbuck's Big Dilemma is a mere afterthought. Perth, the blacksmith, who spends most of the book toadying about the ship acting like Ahab's page, is rendered down to a shadow. The film consists of Ahab acting all portentous and crazy and vengeful, Starbuck vacillating between conspiracy and cowardice, Stubb and Flask being wiseacres, Queequeg a friggin' mystic, and Ishmael blissfully ignorant of everything until the very end.

Me no like.

Item Two: Let's talk this out. The dialogue was written the way it was for a reason. Quit mucking it up, switching it around, slashing and burning it, Hollywood. I'm sickened by how much of Melville's wordage didn't make it into the film's script. Dialogue which provided important characterization and foreshadowing was excised. Most of Ahab's soliloquies, which sinisterly document his descent into utter madness, were either drastically shortened or eliminated. And description...oh, Melville's description. It makes the book. He can take an ordinary situation (or an extraordinary one) and describe it so poetically and so realistically that I feel like my head has been dipped into a bucket of paint and used to smear the scene onto canvas.

Who do I blame for this? Ray Bradbury. The novelist. Yeah, him. He was the screenwriter. I know, right? The guy who wrote Fahrenheit 451 is responsible for the truncated, hollow imitation of Moby-Dick which appears on TCM every month or two. Seems Bradbury isn't that good at channeling Melville. But I suppose I should thank him, really. It could've been a lot worse. He actually did a pretty good job, all things considered. Did you ever hear about the 2010 remake?

Oh well. I guess I'll get on with the review.

(I wrote that in big white letters so you could find it quickly if you decided to skip the rant.)

Let's talk about description. It was one of Melville's greatest strengths. His style may be heavy, his plot meandering, his diction chock full of arcana, but Melville's powers of description were second to none. Not only could he capture a scene in vivid detail and florid prose, but he had the unique ability to encapsulate the vagaries of human perception. And he encapsulated them perfectly. In the course of documenting his avatar Ishmael's ongoing assessment of Ahab's madness, Moby-Dick's ferocity, and whaling life in general, Melville constantly captured the most vague and nebulous mental impression out of thin air, gave it form and substance, and presented it to the reader clearly and irrefutably. This had an extraordinary effect on me as I read. Melville would write one or two assertive, graphic sentences, compelling some inchoate analogy or amorphous opinion to condense in my brain; and lo and behold, in the very next breath Melville would come out with that very same analogy or opinion, made whole and healthy and credible, ten times better than I could've said it myself. It instilled in me the belief that, while Melville likes digressions even more than Jules Verne, he can still write a damn good story—but most importantly, an approachable story.

The other thing that made the book so enjoyable was the author's wit. Melville was a lighthearted writer, even when discussing such dark and doughty matters as death, vengeance, hate, and insanity. He punctuated these topics with a whimsical comment about puffy clouds or blue skies or puppies. But he seldom joked. When the rare joke did show up, it caught me off guard, so much so that I found myself second-guessing my interpretation of it and dismissing it. Take this gem from Chapter 53, page 255, in which Melville hotly defends whaling as the noblest of the seafaring professions.

Why is it that all Merchant-seamen, and also all Pirates and Man-of-War's men, and Slave-ship sailors, cherish such a scornful feeling towards Whale-ships; that is a question it would be hard to answer [sic]. Because, in the case of pirates, I say, I should like to know whether that profession of theirs has any peculiar glory about it. It sometimes ends in uncommon elevation, indeed; but only at the gallows. And besides, when a man is elevated in that odd fashion, he has no proper foundation for his superior altitude. Hence, I conclude, that in boasting himself to be high lifted above a whaleman, in that assertion a pirate has no solid basis to stand on.

I didn't even catch that the first time around. Pirates have a "lofty" attitude toward whalemen because they get hung far above 'em. And of course pirates, when in that "elevated position," have no foundation under them. The hangman has yanked the lever and the trapdoor has fallen out. Nice double entendre, Herman. And "superior altitude" is a nice pun on "superior attitude" (though I suspect Melville didn't intend it that way).

So, to summarize, I found Moby-Dick a challenging (and on occasion, wearying) read, but nonetheless rewarding, entertaining and stimulating. The adventure is high and swashbuckling, whenever Melville takes a break from teaching American Whaling 101. The morals are tangible, pragmatic and provocative. The characters are lifelike and endearing, and the whale suitably anonymous. Melville, thankfully, refrains from anthropomorphizing his antagonist, and leaves him to be what he is: a wild animal, a nonsentient entity, and Mother Nature's savage representative. The book is more than worthy to be classified as a "Great American Novel" and has earned its position in the cadre of literary classics...especially since it was reviled after its inception.

To summarize the summary, Moby-Dick: good book.

You won't believe this, but I've completed (not started, completed) two other works in the meantime: At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs and Night by Elie Wiesel. I sort of cheated with Burroughs, though: I started working on him before I finished with Melville. (I'll have to go out and buy Melville some flowers later and apologize.) But both new books are done, and I must needs review them. This review has gone on so long, though, that I think I'll let it slide until next time.

So stay tuned, and keep your nose in.

recommended reading

This is going to be a long one. To save you time and money, I've installed the first-ever table of contents in this blog post. See below.

I. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
II. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
III. current reading list, including such gems as The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky (historical fiction), The Old Patagonian Express by Paul Theroux (nonfiction, travel), Transgalactic by A.E. Van Vogt (science fiction), and The Great Shark Hunt by Hunter S. Thompson (????) 

PART I : A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
I'm finished with Anthony Burgess's masterwork of dystopia and ultra-violence. And whew, what a ride it was. I'd heard some disturbing things about A Clockwork Orange before I even picked it up. The work has a rap sheet a mile long; street cred similar to Jack the Ripper's. The only visual clue I'd gotten regarding its subject matter was a random glimpse of a movie poster, which showed some young, pale, dapper delinquent with a bowler, eye makeup, and a disquieting smile on his face.

The copy I picked up at the used bookshop bore this review from Time magazine on the back cover:

"Anthony Burgess has written what looks like a nasty little shocker, but is really that rare thing in English letters: a philosophical novel."

Well, huh. What am I to think?

So I read it. Ostensibly the novella concerns a gang of young punks with too much time on their hands, high on drugs, who rob, punch and rape their way through the streets of a futuristic English city on a nightly basis. But A Clockwork Orange turned out to be much more than that. It was as the reviewer suggested: on the surface the book was a gut-wrenching investigation of the depths of depravity (and downright evil). The protagonist, "Alex," (our first-person narrator) and his three "droogs" venture forth from their homes, drink drug-laced milk, and beat up whatever hapless victim they come across. Occasionally they'll steal a car, drive into the countryside, break into someone's home and have their way with its tenants. They destroy, steal, smash, and desecrate, all for the sake of the act itself: a pastime Alex calls "ultra-violence."

That's only the first part of the book, though. After a home invasion goes terribly wrong, Alex is arrested and imprisoned for murder. This is all very shocking for a young man, not even fifteen, living with his parents and with a peculiar liking for Beethoven and other classical composers. The worst is yet to come. Alex's less-than-model behavior in prison lands him a job—as the first test subject for a brutal new rehabilitation method, the Ludovico Technique. Alex, injected with nausea-inducing drugs, strapped to a chair, head and limbs restrained, eyeballs pried open, is forced to watch graphically violent films for hours on end, without interruption or respite. As much as he formerly enjoyed viewing and engaging in acts of sadism and brutality, the drugs eventually condition him to feel sick at the mere thought. During a public exhibition just prior to his release, Alex is goaded by a belligerent man and tempted by a femme fatale, both of which reduce him to a quivering, groveling, nauseous heap on the floor.

And so the novella's title is thus vindicated. "Clockwork orange" is a term which author Burgess explained thus:

"...an organic entity, full of juice and sweetness and agreeable odour, being turned into an automaton."

Not a pleasant prospect, is it?
I won't spoil the rest. Needless to say, Alex's troubles are far from over. But this is no tale of triumph and redemption, nor a cold, impartial philippic of social justice; suffice it to say that though Alex is not out of the woods (not one malenky bit, my droogs), his fate is not beyond hope.

The point, as far as I can see, is best framed by the question which the prison chaplain, who attempts to mentor young Alex shortly before the latter's Ludovico baptism, contemplates aloud:

Is forced goodness truly superior to chosen evil?

Which is better: a life lived poorly but freely, marked by willful corruption? Or a life spent in preconditioned sanctity, involuntary virtue, unadulterated moral slavery, as it were? The life of a clockwork orange?

Burgess reports, you decide.

A Clockwork Orange is a disturbing and yet wickedly fun read, made all the more so by Burgess's experimental use of a fictitious dialect, Nadsat. Described in the book as an amalgamation of gypsy talk, Cockney rhyming slang, and Slavic lexicon (ostensibly gleaned from Soviet propaganda), Nadsat is a herky-jerky, nigh-incomprehensible mélange of anglicized Russian and teenage argot. It's tricky to get into at first, but if you stick with it and pay close attention to context, you'll puzzle it out. It took me a while to understand "gulliver" (head), but I got "litso" (face), "malenky" (little), "rooker" (hand), "viddy," (see), and "droog" (friend) reasonably soon. The more esoteric terms like "cutter" (money) Burgess allows Alex to explain to his audience. My personal favorites were "chelloveck" (man), "govoreet" (talk), "groodies" (the part of the female anatomy below the neck and above the stomach), and "horrorshow" (a sort of catch-all term meaning "good" or "awesome").

In summary, I've never read anything quite like A Clockwork Orange. It's graphic, violent, dark, and ominous; but Alex's brash, sardonic narrative and the aural hilarity of Nadsat temper this darkness effectively. The book is not without its judgment or morals, but it passes them along barehanded and unvarnished, without allowing itself to become preachy or pretentious; and the ending (make sure you get the version with the long-lost 21st chapter) lifts the book out of shocker status and propels it into the realm of speculative fiction and psychosocial analysis. It's deeper than it appears to be. Keep that in mind, droogies.

And now for the big one:

PART II : MOBY-DICK
It ain't just about a whale.

That much has become apparent, now that I'm halfway through this tome. (I'm up to Chapter 77 or something.) This is much farther in than I've ever penetrated into Melville's opus before.
The action's shaping up well. There've been a few tantalizing tales of the white whale bandied among the whale-ships sailing off the Cape; Ahab's clumping about and muttering darkly; Stubb is eating whale-steak, ordering the cook to proselytize to the sharks; Ishmael is on lookout duty, basking in tropical sunshine and musing on the wider issues of life; at least two self-styled prophets have laid odds against the Pequod; and Gregory Peck still can't even begin to portray just how determined, ominous, and downright crazy Ahab is.

I'm not into sinister books with sinister characters, honestly. It strikes me that I went from one book with a scary anti-hero to another, even longer book with a scary anti-hero. Coincidence, I assure you.
What I've noticed so far is this: Melville, perhaps in keeping with other 19th-century authors like Jules Verne, likes to digress. Scientifically digress, mind. The Pequod will be sailing along, Ahab will be angrily pacing the deck, Ishmael will be in the crow's nest or the poop deck or the scuppers or whatever, and all of a sudden, WHAM! Didactic interlude. Take five, guys, let's break for Whaling 101. Melville, through his mouthpiece Ishmael, will go off on a tangent: factoids about the whaling industry, mostly. The percentage of the GNP based on whale-oil; that the corsets of queens and the lamp-light of civilization have been wrought from whale-bone and spermaceti; the demographics of your typical whaling crew; and zoological points of interest, like what whales eat, what eats whales, which parts of the whale are good for eating, which parts of the whale will kill you, and so on and so on and so on. You can tell that, if Melville were alive today, he'd be working with the guys at The Guinness Book of World Records. He loves to wow his audience. It's his privilege as well as his prerogative; most of the American public was (and undoubtedly still is) horrifically ignorant about sailing, whaling, and cetology in general. Melville knew it. And in Moby-Dick, he took it upon himself to throw off the veil, dismantle the rumors and half-truths and display his subject in its truest form. Therefore, he is constantly breaking off from the plot to discourse about the differences between sperm whales and right whales; the complete form and function of a whale-boat, including all the ropes, oars, harpoons and fitments found on board; and a few choice matters applying to krill, baleen, and giant squid. I'm impressed with the amount of knowledge Melville exhibits regarding cetology, a primitive science in those days. Many of the theories he puts forth on the behavior, morphology and habits of whales are dead-on. Melville confirms what marine biologists would discover centuries later. Sperm whales are bad-ass. They do, in fact, dive insanely deep, battle it out with giant squid, use their heads like battering-rams, employ spermaceti like a fish's dive-bladder, keep warm with blubber, and travel vast distances in short spans of time.

Now on the one hand, these diversions do round out the picture. They give the novel a grandiose sort of air, a subtle majesty, realism and truthfulness both refreshing and satisfying. Whaling is an arcane sort of business, and a lot of the jargon and technical whiz-bang has to be set aside and explained at length. I get that. But on the other hand, these digressions do the same thing to Melville's epic that they do to Verne's science fiction: they break up the story. They interrupt the action. They take what would otherwise be a fast-moving adventure (with metaphysical and philosophical implications) and turn it into an awkward, choppy hunk of academia.

To lecture, or not to lecture? That is the question.

The other thing I've noticed is that I like this book. I do. Honestly. I hated it the first few times I tried it. Found it as dry as a piece of ship's hardtack biscuit. This time around I'm truly engaged. I know next to nothing about whaling, so Melville's frequent lessons are informative and pleasant. As for the action, it's suitably intense, well-paced (considering), and told in an erudite yet passionate style, which (now that I'm old enough to understand what all the big words mean) I appreciate both for the fun of reading it and the obvious challenge. I'm having a grand time. Nearly 80 chapters in and still going strong. I'll have no trouble finishing, unless I hit a chapter that's 50 pages long or something. (Unlikely; most of 'em haven't even been two pages.) In fact, I think I'm still on schedule. I started January 5, and by that measure I should have precisely 77 chapters read by today. How about them apples?

PART III : READING LIST
Well, I could tell you what my reading list consists of, but (a) that would be rather ostentatious, (b) I've already mentioned the pertinent components in the table of contents, and (c) I added a reading list to the bottom right-hand side of this blog's home page last night. So go there if you want to see what I'll be reading next. Otherwise, you'll just have to stand the suspense. This post has gone on long enough.

Peace.

out of the doldrums

I'm reading a book called Race to the Pole by Sir Ranulph Fiennes. It's the last word on Robert F. Scott's ill-fated second expedition to the Antarctic. Scott and four companions made the South Pole, only to find they'd been beaten to the punch by the dastardly and deceitful Roald Amundsen. To add insult to injury, all five of them died on the way back to Ross Island and their ship, the Terra Nova. (That means "new land" in Latin, doncha know.)

Reading about people dying in the middle of a wasteland (and ships getting stuck in ice) has made me think a lot about my own situation. I'd love to be off on my next adventure, giving Indiana Jones a run for his money, plumbing unexplored territory and discovering new lands. But I'm a bit stuck. There's a few things to finish, and some money to save; then I can go. In the meantime, I'm stuck in the pack ice. I'm working my way out of it with patience and tact, but it still seems like I'm in the slump of my life here.

And as a very intelligent man once wrote, "un-slumping yourself is not easily done."

But it seems that, after a full year of stagnation, during which I have accomplished practically nothing (except for finishing a novel, becoming a travel writer, acquiring a bartender's certificate and nearly polishing off a pilot's license), things are finally about to pick up.

There've been a few new developments. I'm taking some proactive steps to improve my situation (and hasten my eventual departure from said slump). There've been a few other things that have happened of their own accord, too, which stand to shake things up around here in the coming weeks.

Let's begin with the latest:

Dawg (Boss #3), lately returned from Colombia, has informed us that the Reno Air Races are coming up in mid-September.

And we're all invited.

I'm going to the air races.

Stop a moment and consider what that means to me. You know how plane-crazy I am. I'm not the most die-hard enthusiast you'll meet, and I could be doing a lot more to familiarize myself with the mechanics of engines and the principles of flight. I'm not yet a professional aviator.
But I do like airplanes, as you've probably guessed. I go absolutely nuts when I smell a warbird in the vicinity. And there's a great many civil aircraft that can make me go ga-ga as well. Air races are the province of some of the fastest, most nimble, most sporty airplanes in existence, moreover. And I'll be going to one of the most well-known and prestigious races of them all, the last bastion of the world's fastest motor sport. The Reno Air Races (formally known as the National Championship Air Races) includes the Unlimited class of aircraft, which apparently "consists almost entirely of both modified and stock World War II aircraft [which] routinely reach speeds in excess of 400 miles per hour." Some of these beasts (like September Fury, pictured above) look like they were plucked right from TaleSpin or a comic book about air pirates.

Hot. Diggity. DAMN.

I was about eight years old the last time I was involved with anything resembling a race. The vehicles were seven inches long, 2¾ inches wide, weighed no more than five ounces, and were made of pinewood.

Reno is going to be an absolute blast.

Go ahead and turn green, suckers.

Moving on...

More about what I'm doing to un-slump myself: my father recently informed me (in a nonchalant sort of way) that I have a mutual fund sitting in the pipeline. It was created soon after my birth and has endured nearly 24 years of stock market ups and downs. It's not enough to retire on, certainly, but it'll take care of the urgent things on my to-do-before-I-go-to-Spain-or-Australia list: namely, car repairs and pilot's licensing.
I think I'm going to use it for car repairs. Those could potentially cost more than $700, which is the amount I've budgeted for finishing my pilot's license. I'll knock off new shocks, new tires, new brakes and new coolant with my mutual fund and use my next paycheck to kill off the pilot's license.

And then, ladies and gentlemen...there will be nothing holding me here. I can gallivant off to a far corner of the globe, or procure any decent radio job in the Western United States and finally move out of my parents' house.

I'll let you know what I decide. This should all be resolved within the month. As of September 1, 2010, you shall be privy to the doings of Postman, the pilot (and owner of an upgraded 1995 Jeep Cherokee).

If you want to hear some writing updates, here they are:

My good buddy Nick, whom I met in college, a student of animation and visual design, who is currently working for a private animation studio near Orlando, Florida (and, with any luck, will soon be moving to Blue Sky Animation, the folks who brought you Despicable Me)...

Well, he got in touch with me a few weeks ago. We'd been in and out of contact since graduation, but never routinely. Out of the blue he dropped me a line. Prior to this, I'd talked with him at length about my novel idea, and he was very intrigued. So intrigued, in fact, that he asked me to send him some stuff and he'd draw up some sketches and pictures.

Awesome.

I'd been stressing about finding an artist for my comic book, worrying myself sick over procuring one that I could rely on and work well with. And then BAM, an old friend whom I know and trust offers me his services, which I already know to be top-flight.

Sometimes I get so lucky I feel almost ashamed.

Anyway, not much had come of that arrangement, but Nick and I renewed the promise over the phone. That was the purpose of his call, in fact. That, and to catch up. He's a good guy. He's had some hard times out there in Florida. One of the studios he was working for got shut down for want of money, which was a pity, because Nick really enjoyed what he was doing there. He's been getting by with freelancing and semi-regular work for Campus Crusade for Christ. He's been offered a half-year contract with CRU, and he's taken 'em up on it for the time being. But he's sent out applications to a half-dozen other studios, and has his eye on the aforementioned Blue Sky.

In the meantime, he said he had time to illustrate my stuff! So I said, "Heck yes! I'll send you some character bios and outlines right away."

And so I did. Nick and I are meeting every Monday evening now on Skype to exchange ideas and material (and catch up with each other's lives). It's incredible. Feels like the dream is coming alive, seeing my characters and settings leap into vibrant existence, born of Nick's pencils and pens and agile mind. His work is more than I could have hoped for. We have slightly different visions of the world I'm creating, of course, but that's what our meetings are for: to hash out those disparities and come to mutual agreement, exchange thoughts on character and detail, and just build the series from the ground up.

We're just doing it for fun, of course; neither of us is anywhere near being ready to find an outlet for this yet. Heck, I haven't even gotten the novel published (though my novelist cousin is finished reading it, and is sending it to me next week; she wrote in her e-mail "GOOD JOB!" I think she liked it!).

But when we are ready to go public with this...well, shoot. We'll have the groundwork laid already.

One last thing. My first science fiction novelette is pretty much edited. I'm handing it over to a friend tomorrow to proof, and then I'm [gulp] sending it to Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine, double-spaced, formatted and numbered, with a self-addressed stamped envelope and my little fingers crossed.

I should have lots of news for you in two weeks...stay tuned.

P.S. You know, I worry about these posts. Sometimes I think I'm going to bore you guys to tears with all of this crap. The doubts, the obstacles, the struggles, the triumphs, the baby steps forward. Posts like this grate on my nerves sometimes. Jeez, aren't there enough people in the world who are going to make me feel insecure without me making myself feel that way? I'm not a whiner, I'm a winner! C'mon, Postman, buck up!

But remember, I'm reading about Robert F. Scott. And in Race to the Pole, I learned that for all his brilliance, tact, courage, stamina, and fortitude, Scott was about as insecure as I am. He constantly blamed himself for making stupid mistakes, not doing enough to correct his personal flaws, his inherent lack of willpower, his physical frailty (he couldn't stand the sight of blood), and failing to live up to his personal standards. He got on his own case even when others praised him. After he'd accomplished a great deal, Scott still fell into depressed moods, feeling inferior to those around him. Even the fortune-teller could see that this maudlin melancholy was part of Scott's personality.

So now all of a sudden I don't feel so bad about waxing pathetic all the time.

If one of the most famous explorers in history got away with it, what's to stop me?

If I ever buy a boat, I'm calling it Terra Nova.