Book review: “The Dolphin In The Mirror”

May 1st, 2012

“The Dolphin In The Mirror: Exploring Dolphin Minds and Saving Dolphin Lives” by Diana Reiss. 2011, HMH Books.

I wish I had the temperament and patience for science, I really do.  Science requires not merely facility with numbers but the ability to think objectively  about one’s research subject.  Not so hard if your subject is a bug; a little more difficult if it’s a white rat.  But what if your subject is a 400-pound marine mammal with a larger brain than your own?  The logistics are daunting, and the ramifications could be mind-blowing.

In “The Dolphin In The Mirror,” Diana Reiss details the journey that led her from a tomboy bringing home stray animals to a scientist who has conclusively proven that dolphins recognize themselves in a mirror – no small feat, when you consider that, out of all the species on Earth, only primates, pachyderms and dolphins have achieved this pinnacle of self-awareness.

Reiss isn’t afraid to admit that her fascination with dolphins started when she read Dr. John C. Lilly’s books. Those of you who have read Wet Goddess know that Lilly was anathema to other dolphin researchers at the time, but Reiss sought out his advice.  Lilly tried to teach dolphins to speak English, but Reiss realized that wouldn’t cut it, due to the difference in the dolphins physiology and environment.  Instead, she borrowed an idea from primate research and conceived of a keyboard the dolphins could use to communicate basic concepts and ask for objects in their environment.

Reiss first tried out her keyboard idea with a dolphin in a small park in France.  She not only achieved a measure of success but found herself bonding with the dolphin, named Circe – only to find, to her shock and dismay, that Circe was being sold to another aquarium.  With collaborator Lori Marino, she went on to conclusively demonstrate that dolphins looking in a mirror know it’s a reflection of themselves, not another dolphin.

This is where Reiss’s book gets real, for me.  She isn’t afraid to admit a deep and abiding affection for her research subjects, and to discuss not merely the science but the history and mythology of the dolphins’ long and enduring connection to human beings, stretching back to Greek and Roman times.

But Reiss reaches even further.  Appalled by the ongoing slaughter of dolphins in Japanese coastal fishing towns like Taiji, she tried to reason with the Japanese, only to find herself stymied by that country’s well-known intransigence with outsiders.  This led her to collaborate with Louis Psihoyos, director of the Academy Award-winning documentary “The Cove.”

Altogether a moving and well-written account of Reiss’s journey, “The Dolphin In The Mirror” is worthwhile reading for anyone who wants to learn more about dolphins and understand the cutting-edge research that is slowly revealing the remarkable abilities these creatures possess.

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Finding old… friends? Pt. II

April 29th, 2012

Cynthia D. and her late daughter, taken at Santini's Porpoise School, Grassy Key, 1971.

(AUTHOR’S NOTE: If you haven’t read Wet Goddess, this blog entry contains what might be considered a spoiler.  Be forewarned.)

In an earlier post, I talked about my efforts to locate some of the people who used to work at Floridaland, the amusement park that was the basis for the setting of my novel Wet Goddess: Recollections of Dolphin Lover.  I mentioned having located Robert C., the head dolphin trainer, and Jim H., his assistant.

The third person I was looking for proved much more elusive.  This was Cynthia D., the woman who was the template for the character “Salina O’Rourke” in my book.  Her life had been marked by a tragedy, the death of her eldest daughter, a young teen, just a couple of years after the events I wrote about took place.  I remember Cynthia telling me the girl died of an incredibly rare disease; unfortunately I don’t remember what it was.  Ironically, she was in the care of her father, a physician, when it happened.  I guess that’s what led to their divorce.

I had almost given up on finding Cynthia.  She was a heavy smoker when I knew her and I thought that might have brought about her untimely demise.  But Jim H. told me she was still alive and living on the east coast of Florida, so I thought I would try.  Searches under the name I knew her by turned up nothing.  Then I had the thought to search for her children on FaceBook, and I found her oldest surviving daughter.  Her name is so unique I’m not going to print it here, so let’s just call her C.  She’s a river rafting guide in the southwestern U.S., and after about an hour’s search I finally and definitively located her and wrote her a brief e-mail, stating that I had written a novel called Wet Goddess about the dolphins, and that I’d like to get back in touch with her mother again.

C. was a little flipped out to hear from me all these years later – she’d been around 11 when she was visiting Floridaland – but she managed to remember me, and forwarded my message to her mom.  C. was still going under the last name I’d known her mother by, but Cynthia had remarried and was going by a first-name nickname.  Once I realized that, I was able to find her on FaceBook and send her a brief message.  In response I got this:

“Have to know: am I the Wet Goddess? Where can I get your book?”

That made me smile.  Cynthia has a very strong personality; you might even say she is a little bit egotistical, and it seemed typical of her to assume she was the subject of my novel.  I clarified the situation, telling her no, the “wet goddess” was Dolly, the dolphin.

“Good. Dolly is the Goddess, as she should be,” Cynthia wrote back.  “Jim just told me how she died, which is a real tragedy.  My Jimbo should have been in with her, then she wouldn’t have gotten so depressed.”  Notice the language:  ”My Jimbo…” (one of the male dolphins at the park).  Did I mention Cynthia was just a tad possessive?  We exchanged phone numbers, and finally, last week, we spoke.

Cynthia’s voice was just as I remembered it, low, throaty and very sexy, a voice like honey dripping.  She remembered me and sounded genuinely glad to hear from me again, after all these years.  I had told her in an e-mail that I had “fallen in love” with Dolly, but she thought I meant platonically, the way most people “fall in love” with a dolphin, the way she had “fallen in love” with Jimbo, one of the male dolphins at the park.  I didn’t bother to correct her.  She’d find out soon enough.

She told me about her family.  She had lost her only son when, at age 27, he was killed in a traffic accident.  And another daughter (she had 4 children total) had run off and joined a maharishi-type cult. “I haven’t heard from her in four years,” Cynthia complained, “I just hope she’s happy.”  It made me feel grateful that my own daughter has turned out to be so normal and stayed emotionally close to me.

It’s always interesting to me how people remember the past differently than it was.  That kid who bullied you in school, for instance, will remember being “friends” with you.  Cynthia told me how highly she had regarded the dolphins’ intelligence back then, which she did, but – as those of you who have read my book will know – not like I did.  She also told me she thought they were telepathic, whereas if I’d suggested the idea to her back then, she would have scoffed at me and asked what I’d been smoking (to which I would have had to answer, “Some very good weed, and lots of it.” Hey, it was the ’70′s… and the ’80′s… and the 90′s… you get the picture).

Cynthia concluded the call by telling me about her own literary efforts.  Like me, she’d spent a long time writing one book, a ghost story based on a haunted house.  She said she’d lived there.  ”It’s 70 percent true, 20 percent embellishment and 10 percent made up,” she said, and asked me if I wanted to read it.  Of course, I said.

And then she asked me to send her a copy of my book.  I didn’t offer it, she asked me to send it.

I always knew that, if Cynthia was still alive, this moment would eventually come.  And there was nothing I could do to prevent it.  As those of you who have read my novel know, “Salina O’Rourke” is not depicted as a particularly pleasant character.  She is a woman who uses her overwhelming female sexuality to control and manipulate the men around her – everyone except protagonist and narrator Zachary Zimmerman, who seems to be immune to her charms, if not unaware of the effect they have on other men.  Salina gets into a cat fight with the head trainer’s wife, then sleeps with the assistant trainer when she can’t have his boss.  She is demanding, moody, strong-willed and not a particularly sympathetic character, and in the end of the book Zack even hints (and this is entirely fictional) that she might have wanted to have sex with a male dolphin but wasn’t capable of carrying it out, due to Ruby’s interference.

What was I to do?  I couldn’t exactly tell her “Sure, I would love to send you a copy, but my novel contains a rather unflattering portrait of a character who bears a lot of resemblance to you, so I won’t.”  That would have been a dead giveaway.  Or maybe I could have, although that would have raised a red flag in her mind.  She could always buy the book herself (I’d be, at least, $16.95 richer) and read exactly the same thing.  And have exactly the same response.

It seemed best to curry her goodwill by sending her a copy and trust to the fact that what I have written is A NOVEL, that is, a work of fiction, as clearly stated in the DISCLAIMER (thank the gods).  All characters, locations and events are (ahem!) entirely fictional and not to be confused with any REAL people.

That disclaimer covers my ass in the event that Cynthia (or anybody else who thinks they’ve been profiled in my book) objects to their portrayal and tries to sue me for slander or “defamation of character,” that catch-all phrase that covers any sort of perceived insult or slight.  So legally, I am in the clear.

There is, however, another consideration – an emotional one.  This is the woman, after all, who introduced me to the dolphin who became my lover.  Do I owe her anything for that favor?  Should I have been a little more flattering, a little gentler in my portrayal of her?

Well the fact is, I shot the pictures that illustrate Wet Goddess for Cynthia – for a “dolphin training manual” she was going to write with Jim H. that never got written.  And although she was obviously a woman of some means, she never paid me – not even for my film and materials, much less my time.  In fact, she never even thanked me.  And perhaps this is petty and bitter of me, but that has irked me, yes, all these years!

So the answer to that question is no, I don’t think I owed it to Cynthia to sugar-coat the character I based on her.  She can think whatever she wants to about my book, and about me as a self-proclaimed zoophile.  I didn’t write it to gain her affection or approval, as I’ve said before, I wrote it for dolphins.  And we both love dolphins, albeit in different ways – don’t we?

I sent my book last week, and I haven’t heard a word from Cynthia since.  Will I?  I simply don’t know, but I have a very low tolerance for putting up with other people’s shit these days, especially any shit from a overbearing woman who I feel basically took advantage of me without due recompense when I was young and naive.

Still, I feel a little uneasy, and when Cynthia reads the book I sent her, I half-expect to see her reaction expressed as a mushroom cloud of self-righteous indignation rising in the east, over the Florida city where she lives.

Posted in Bitching, God likes me better than you | 1 Comment »

Finding old… friends? Part I

April 25th, 2012

Dolphin trainer Jim H., the prototype for "Hank Pulaski" in my novel, with the dolphin Mitzi, who played Flipper, at Santini's Porpoise School, July, 1971.

My friends and family know that I can be a little obsessive, which was a good thing when I worked as an investigative reporter in Indian Country.  I would drive 100 miles to get a story, if I had to, and the cooperation and approval I received from the majority of the Navajos who read my work made it worthwhile.

Well, ever since I began writing Wet Goddess in 1973, shortly after the events described therein transpired, I have wondered what happened to some of the characters involved… the human characters, that is.  I think we all know what happened to the dolphins, don’t we?  I doubt if any of them have survived this long.  Pro-captivity factions may argue with me, but the best science (again conducted by my friend Dr. Randall Wells of the Sarasota Dolphin Program) shows that the lifespan of a dolphin in captivity is, most often, about half as long as one in the wild, and frequently a lot less.  And when you consider the many threats a wild dolphin has to contend with, from sharks and boat strikes to getting caught in discarded fishing line, that says a lot about the “best level of care” we are able to provide for these creatures.

One person I was able to track down was the head trainer, Robert C., on whom the character of “Beau Coleridge” was based.  He still lives in Gulfport, Mississippi, where he moved after the Floridaland amusement park closed down.  On my drive from New Mexico to Florida in 2002 I stopped off to see him and his wife Carol, who was the basis for “Klara.” Unfortunately Robert was out on his boat shrimp fishing when I stopped by, but Carol was happy enough to see me, even though she seemed to balk a little when I told her I’d had a “relationship” with the dolphin they knew as Dolly, and whom I renamed “Ruby” in the book.  Thankfully, she didn’t make an issue out of it… but I’ve never heard back from her, or Robert. (The Gulfport Marine Aquarium, where he used to work, was largely destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.)

Over the years I’ve made several attempt to track down the other people involved, without success – until now. FaceBook is such a wonderful thing!  The other night, I was able, with just a few keystrokes, to locate the other two people who formed the basis for the main characters in my novel: assistant dolphin trainer Jim H. (on whom I based “Hank Pulaski”) and Cynthia D. (who was the model for “Salina O’Rourke”).

Jim, who is really a Southerner, now lives far from the salt water in Tennessee.  We talked for an hour about old times, about proto-dolphin trainer Milton Santini and dolphin scientist-prophet John C. Lilly, whose “radical” claims for dolphin intelligence and self-awareness in the 1960′s have been borne out by much more careful and methodical research conducted since the 1980′s.  While harking on the fact that Lilly’s early attempts to anesthetize dolphins for brain electrode implants killed five of them at Marineland in the 1950′s, Jim admitted that his own attempts, to capture dolphins commercially with Santini in the Florida Keys, and later with Robert C., killed “three or four” dolphins.

“We’ve all got blood on our hands,” I said, and meant it.  I hold myself in part responsible for Dolly’s death.  Even you, if you’ve visited an oceanarium or aquarium that keeps captive dolphins, have blood on your hands, unless it was someplace like the Clearwater Marine Aquarium that takes only “rescue” dolphins who can, for whatever reason, no longer survive in the wild.  Marineland? Miami Seaquarium? Yeah, you’ve got blood on your hands if you’ve ever been there.  Sea World? Gallons of it… even human blood, from the totally preventable 2010 death of trainer Dawn Brancheau, and two other people killed by the killer whale Tilikum, who should, like all other captive orcas, be put out to pasture – rehabilitated in a wild setting.

But I digress.

In short, Jim hadn’t changed a lot over the years.  He was unapologetic about his role in capturing dolphins, but after talking with some trainers at a Las Vegas casino with a dolphin show, he gave me a fascinating tidbit of information: “The last time I sold a dolphin, in the 1970′s, it went for $600,” he said.  ”The trainers now told me that’s up to $250,000.” That a four-hundred fold increase in price!

Is this a good thing or a bad thing?  Depends on how you look at it, I guess; the dolphin tank is either half-full or half empty.  Half-full because now there is a strong incentive for oceanariums to take care of their dolphins, whereas in the past, if a dolphin got sick or needed surgery, it was cheaper just to let it die and go catch a new one.  Half-empty because it gives those bastards who conduct the brutal, murderous dolphin drive hunts in Taiji and other places a big fat incentive to keep some of their prey alive and sell them to oceanariums and “swim with dolphins” establishments, where they will spend the rest of their lives separated from their slaughtered family, friends and mates, eating dead fish and performing for tourists.

Odd how people remember things, or don’t.  Jim said that back then in the 1970′s, he realized, working with dolphins, “that there was somebody inside there,” meaning, I guess, that he understood they were self-aware.  I remember just the opposite; as recorded in my novel, I recall him saying “Yeah, they’re smart, all right, but not THAT smart,” and comparing them to well-trained dogs.  Which most assuredly, they are not!

I’ve written quite a bit today, so I need to turn my attention to other projects.  Tomorrow I’ll finish this update by describing how I found Cynthia D. and what she has to say about our days at Floridaland.

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Posted in Incoherent rambles, Ranting and raving | 3 Comments »

Dolphin gangs of Shark Bay

April 24th, 2012

About a month ago (from when I write this), stories began to appear in the popular press about the remarkable social structure of male dolphin alliances in Shark Bay, a W-shaped inlet on the western tip of western Australia.  Shark Bay, a sparsely populated region of a sparsely populated continent, contains Monkey Mia, the small peninsula in the middle of the bay famous for its friendly and human-acclimatized dolphins.

But out in the waters of Shark Bay proper, it seems like some else is going on… something that might have vaguely sinister overtones, if you choose to think about it that way… but that would be anthropomorphic.

What’s going on in Shark Bay is the first observation, by a team of four scientists from the University of Massachusetts, of any non-human male animals that form second, and even third-level social bonds.  It’s been known since the pioneering Sarasota Bay studies of my friend Dr. Randall Wells in the 1970′s that bottlenose dolphins don’t live in “pods,” or stable social units, like some of their cetacean cousins (think of killer whales).  Rather, dolphins have what’s known as a “fission-fusion society,” similar to that of chimpanzees, wherein individuals associate with different other individuals and different groups at different times.

The exception to this is the intense pair bonding of adult male dolphins, who typically form what would be called, in human terms, life-long (or at least long-term) bisexual relationships.  Their strongest bond is to another male dolphin, or in some cases a duo, with whom they hunt for fish, play, and seek mates.  These male dolphin duos or trios are known to “herd” female dolphins in heat, keeping them away from other potential rivals… although the degree to which the female dolphin is cooperating, or coerced, is unknown.  Because it is so often carried out by male scientists, science is often biased toward a male-centric point of view.

What makes the dolphins of Shark Bay so unusual is that the males form fluid, “nested” hierarchies.  The first-order duos and trios form larger amalgamations of up to 14 dolphins, and these amalgamations form even larger gangs of up to 40 male dolphins. The question stuck in my mind, at the moment, is “Why?”

They don’t do it to defend the boundaries of physical territories, because the territories of various alliances overlap. At first I thought, from reading the accounts in the popular press, that the reason was, again, to defend females.  Then I referred back to the abstract (I can’t afford to read the full article right now) published in the British journal “Proceedings of the Royal Society B” (for biology).  The authors wrote, “…alliances showed extensive overlap in mating season ranges and consorted females.”  In other words, the males couldn’t – or weren’t – defending individual females.

This raises two questions in my mind: first, what is the purpose of the higher-level alliances?  Second, why did the popular press get it wrong? (I don’t want to hear any answers that “the press always gets it wrong,” because as a former journalist who strove very hard for truth and accuracy in my reporting I find that insulting and demeaning, as well as inaccurate.)

Maybe it’s just because I haven’t read the full paper yet; things are really tight, I can’t afford to.  I wrote to Richard Connor, the main author of the study, and asked him to clarify what it all means, but so far no answer.  What the abstract says, in conclusion, is: “The open social network of dolphins is linked to their relatively low costs of locomotion. This reveals a surprising and previously unrecognized convergence between adaptations reducing travel costs and complex intergroup–alliance relationships in dolphins, elephants and humans.”

To me, this sounds suspiciously like “They do it because they don’t have to spend a lot of energy doing it,” which sounds even more suspiciously like, “They do it because they can!”  Is it really any surprise that dolphins have large circles of friends? To scientists, I guess the answer is yes it is.

Meanwhile, what about the female dolphins’ point of view?  My experiences with “Dolly” (her real name was, of course, an unpronounceable signature whistle), the dolphin who made love with me, suggest that female mating choice plays a large, and apparently unobserved, role in dolphin reproduction.  At first, when Dolly was confined to a sea-level pen by herself, I could rationalize her violent courtship behavior by saying that she was sexually deprived and that I was a “surrogate male dolphin.”  Then she was moved into a pool with five male dolphins… yet her courtship of me continued unabated!  If anything, it became more subtle, gentle and refined as she began to realize my human limitations.  Finally, as the park was closing down and empty, she literally risked her life to slip through a narrow opening between two boards so we could gain some privacy from the last male dolphin left, and make love in a “private” pen.

What this tells me, in scientific terms, is that female dolphins have remarkably strong mating preferences, preferences that apparently have nothing to do with reproductive fitness.

In the opening paragraphs I referred to the nested alliances of male dolphins as “vaguely sinister,” only because press reports have compared them to the Mafia.  Of course the comparison is not merely anthropomorphic, but specious.  Mafiosi consort to control physical territory and scarce commodities, like illegal drugs, gambling activity and the profits from prostitution (let’s not mistake that for “sex.”)  Whoever or whatever the dolphins are controlling with their alliances, it has nothing to do with any of those things; and dolphins who switch alliances, as the study authors report they sometimes do, don’t get killed for it.

So what are the male  dolphins of Shark Bay up to, and why?  The U. Mass study raises more questions than it answers, in my opinion, and I think it is going to take more investigation – including an equally thorough study of female-based societies and mating preferences in the wild – to answer those questions.

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Posted in Incoherent rambles | 1 Comment »

“Spiritually Raw” update

April 21st, 2012

Forgive me, gentle readers, for having been so long in posting.  I have been accosted with a multitude of distractions, from the near-suicide of a dear friend (which fortunately didn’t happen) to doing my taxes and fixing my aging truck.  Please rest assured I am trying to post more, and soon.

Meanwhile, here is a link to my recent (March 20) appearance on the webcast “Spiritually Raw.”  The program about “Wet Goddess” is #10, about halfway down the page as of this writing, listed under April 5, the date it was posted.  Enjoy!

 

 

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Un-friendly fire

March 29th, 2012

I’m living very close to the edge right now, a number of edges: financial, social, psychological.  My life hasn’t always been like this; there have been times of greater prosperity, emotional richness and joy.  There have also been times when things were worse.  The main thing I have going for me is that (thanks in large part to the generosity of my brother) I own this trailer and property, and as long as I can keep paying the property taxes I stay here rent-free.

Be that as it may, I feel a pervasive sense of loneliness and isolation.  The friends I used to hang with when I was still smoking dope don’t seem to have as much in common with me since I quit.  They don’t read books or share my interests; they sit around all day watching TV, and complaining that there’s nothing good on (there often isn’t). I don’t hang out in bars – the gods know I don’t have the money to drink – and I’m not interested in the kind of people I would find there.  I have sought companionship in venues like the local Unitarian-Universalist fellowship, and been severely disappointed in the elitist attitudes and rampant hypocrisy I encountered there.  Unitarians are great at talking that liberal talk, but when you come right down to it they don’t walk the walk.  Their liberalism is largely self-congratulatory.

The upshot of this is I’ve been spending some time on FaceBook, that modern substitute for actual, authentic socialization.  Here and there, now and again, I encounter amusing, interesting and even uplifting things and people who inspire or encourage me, and with whom I can share that elusive sense we call “community,” of acceptance, or at least tolerance.  This is important, since I don’t seem to be meshing well with the local community.  Charlotte County, where I live, has one of, if not the oldest, population per capita in the United States.  I’m 60, pushing 61, but for some reason I don’t feel “old,” I just feel worn out, or worn down.  I haven’t retired, and I doubt I ever will be able to.  My earlier life and career were just too unstable to allow me to accumulate the wealth and resources necessary to relax now and rest on my laurels.  There are no luxury cruises or golf club memberships in my future… not like I care.

The flip side of having friends on FaceBook is that, just like in real life, you sometimes have to ditch them when they become unfriendly to you.  This happened to me several years ago with my “good friend” James Abraham, whom I met while working at the Charlotte Sun newspaper. James employed me to lay out some book covers for him, but with each successive job he became more and more demanding without any commensurate increase in pay, and finally he was asking me not only to lay out the cover but also to design it, that is, to create original artwork.  When I pointed out that this was a separate job and was not covered under our original agreement, he got very hard-assed with me, like I was an employee instead of a friend who was freelancing for him as much out of a sense of friendship as a need for money.  The breakup of our friendship over a measly $150 was very painful and disillusioning.

Similarly, I have had to un-friend a couple of friends lately on FaceBook, and it hurts.  One of them, Lin Robinson, was the author of the novel Mayan Calendar Girls, which I reviewed back on Jan. 16.  As mentioned in the review, Lin and I go back to the 1980′s in Seattle.  The novel was written as a serial by several authors; I’d read segments on the book’s web site, and it looked interesting.  I thought I’d be doing Lin a favor by reviewing it, so I proposed we swap books and review each other’s work.

Well, Mayan Calendar Girls turned out to be such a chaotic mish-mash of everything and anything that not only was it not any good, it was actually difficult for me to finish, but finish it I did, and I wrote an honest review that reflected my opinion. Lin, however, kept dragging his heels about reviewing Wet Goddess, so finally I poked him about it a couple of times.  In response I got the following letter:

 Hi Mac

Sorry to be so long in replying.  It’s  because I just didn’t want to do it, and found that once again ignoring something doesn’t make it go away.
It’s this.  I seriously doubt I will ever review “Wet Goddess”  I just can’t get into it.  And meanwhile I have about six books stacked up for reviews that would be reciprocating 5 star amazon reviews for my books and books I publish.
See what I mean?
I’m not going to write you a half-hearted review.  That doesn’t help anything. I’d rather have no review than the one you wrote and I don’t like to do that to others.
Reviewing on amazon and such isn’t about “reviewing” in the old sense: it’s about logrolling to gain sales.
Anyway, sorry.  But it’s not going to happen. 
How’s Florida?  Heating up?

Lucky Lin

There are several things I found offensive about this letter.  One is the fact that Lin is lazy; he writes of my novel “I just can’t get into it,” which is a polite way of saying “I can’t be bothered.”  Well, I spent plenty of my good time reading Mayan Calendar Girls cover to cover.  It wasn’t any fun, but I felt I had made a commitment to do it and review it and I kept my commitment.  Now Lin was shucking off the need to reciprocate because it was – oh gee! – just too big of a hassle to do something for his old friend, me.

Lin further tries to pass the buck by acting as if he’s being kind-hearted in saying “I don’t want to write you a half-hearted review.”  He whines that he’d rather have no review than the one I wrote, which it seems to me is another way of saying “I know I wrote a confused, sub-standard piece of work, but do you have to be so tactless as to point it out?”  To which I answer, well, Lin, if you wanted a better review, why didn’t you write a better book?  Frankly, I don’t think he had it in him.  Good writing isn’t easy, and easy writing isn’t good.  You can’t have it both ways.  In that respect, Lin aspires to commercialism, not literature, and he thinks he deserves better reviews than he gets.  I can’t symapthize with his point of view.

But the most egregious thing about Lin’s letter is his statement that “Reviewing on Amazon… (is) about logrolling to gain sales.” In other words, “If you write crap and I write crap and we both lie about it in public that’s okay, because selling more crappy books justifies our need to lie.”  I felt like Lin was trying to pull my work down to his comfort level, and I resented that terribly.

I worked for ten years as an investigative reporter on the Navajo Nation, where I was in daily contact with people who were so poor, so oppressed and so desperate as to make my current conditions seem princely in comparison.  There was one thing and only one thing I could do to help those people, and that was to tell the truth, in public, as I encountered it and exposed it.  People I wrote about died because they couldn’t get the basic necessities of life: health care, mental health treatment, decent housing, jobs.  As a result I developed a high respect for the power of the truth to challenge oppression and corruption.  It was the only weapon I had, and in my hands it was a highly effective weapon.  I am proud to say that my reporting changed things and actually helped those people in some small way.  How do I know this?  I’m not just patting myself on the back; they told me so, and that was greater validation of my work and my worth as a person than all the awards I won from various press associations.

So I don’t lie readily and I don’t lie easily and besides, I am a damn lousy liar.  Lin was telling me that lying about his book would have earned me reciprocal, and equally phony, praise from him.  I was utterly revolted, and it seemed to me that either the person writing that statement was not the one I knew 30 years ago in Seattle, or that I had never known the real person.  Either way, I was profoundly disillusioned.  If Lin didn’t like my book, his honest criticism would have meant more to me than all the lies in the world, but he didn’t see it that way.

I wrote Lin back that he had cheated me, which was the way I felt: I gave him something, and because it didn’t turn out to be what he wanted, but what he deserved, I got nothing back in return except a worthless excuse.  Lin responded with more whining, saying “I’ve helped you promote your book to the extent I can with my heavy work load and quirky health.”  Well, I’ve got news for Lin, I never held a gun to his head and demanded that he review my book, he entered into our mutual arrangement voluntarily.  He’s not the only one with problems or “quirky health,” and so far as I’m concerned he hasn’t done anything to help promote my book.  Nada.  Nothing.  Zip.  Zero.  Even a bad review is better than no review at all, just because it happens to be inconvenient.  ”I can’t get into it” works about as well as an excuse as “The dog ate my homework.”

Friendships are based on trust, honesty and mutuality.  Lin broke my trust, asked me to be dishonest and wouldn’t reciprocate the effort I put out for him.  I realized, that night, that he wasn’t really my friend any more; and maybe he never had been.  Maybe we were just doper buddies getting high after work and bitching to each other about the problems of our lives.  So I bounced his last, plaintive letter to me and unfriended him on FaceBook.  I felt sorry that I had to do that, but I also felt like Lin left me no other choice.  It wasn’t easy, and I fell asleep grinding my teeth over the whole matter.  Today, as I write this, I am still getting over it, still feel the need to get it off my chest, which is why I write these blogs, sometimes.  I live too close to the edge, and I don’t need the added stress of people who commit to something, then try to wriggle off with feeble excuses.

I was also going to write about John Sabotta, another ex-friend I unfriended for an entirely different set of reasons, but it seems like this post is too long already.  Maybe I’ll write about him another day… then again, maybe not.

 

 

 

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Posted in Bitching, Ranting and raving | 7 Comments »

A telemarketer no more!

March 28th, 2012

I lasted four days on my job as a telemarketer with “Global Prospects,” a local company hawking vacation packages in exchange for sales tours of timeshare vacation condos, where I’m sure the poor subjects got hammered for two hours to buy, buy, buy!  Since I went into the job with utterly zero expectations I can’t say I’m disappointed to be fired, although I will miss the pathetic income ($7.67 to start, rising to $8/hr after probation, plus $6 for every booked tour, plus bonuses for extra tours, and so on, and so forth).

Reason for my firing: I never booked any tours.  ”We need people who can book right away,” my manager explained; she was actually quite nice and polite about it.  ”It’s just not something everyone can do.  You’re a good communicator, I’m sure you’ll find another job.”  Yeah, right, thanks!

I came home to find a message from the hiring manager at the local KMart on the answering machine, so now I’ve got an interview on Saturday.

I’m relieved not to be a telemarketer any more, the stress of the job was incredible.  Reading the same script over and over for four hours, being hung up on or rejected 98 percent of the time… I tried to make the best of it, but it really wasn’t any fun.  My jaws are tight, and my teeth are still grinding.

The job, or the necessity of getting any job working for somebody other than myself, was one of the elements that threw me into a mini-breakdown on March 20.  The other was the interview I did for the TV webcast “Spiritually Raw.”  The producers, Ajay and April Matta, still haven’t finished editing the show, but when they are I WILL post a link to the web site so anyone can see it.  As interviews go it wasn’t too bad, I’ve been on the show before when it was a radio podcast so I had some idea what to expect.  Still, rather than developing the ideas and themes expressed in the first interview, it was like we went all the way back to the beginning again, as far as my relationship with the dolphin was concerned.

To some extent, Ajay and April began playing “bad cop, good cop” with me.  I don’t think this was deliberate on April’s part, but it was on Ajay’s.  He asked me to explain, for instance, how I knew the dolphin was “coming on” to me, so I described how she would rub her genital slit against me.  ”Right, kind of like a dog humping your leg?” he said, to canned laughter.  To which April replied “Oh come on, he was in love with her!”

And when Ajay asked me why I decided to write a book about the experience, all I could say was that I felt compelled to.  There was, of course, a little more to it than that.  I think if everything was hunky-dory for the dolphins I might have kept my mouth shut, but the fact of Dolly’s death meant that of course it was not, and things have gotten worse since then.  Their environment has been terribly degraded by human activity, fish stocks have plummeted due to overfishing, reefs are dying due to global warming and all around the world, dolphins are being taken into captivity (if not outright killed) for human entertainment and even “noble” causes such allowing autistic children to swim with them — which doesn’t help the kid anymore than spending some time with a dog, it turns out.  And, it’s dangerous.

I didn’t get a chance to explain this to Ajay and April, but suppose I’d made contact with a woman from a tribe living on an island that was about to be taken over and developed for real estate.  The woman and I didn’t speak the same language, but she was nonetheless capable of communicating that she found me attractive and wanted to make love to me.  Afterwards, she died because the real estate developers ravaged the island, forcing her and her tribe to subsist on handouts.

Under those circumstances, I would feel morally, ethically and emotionally compelled to speak out against the injustice of the situation, which I might decide to do by telling my story.  That’s sort of what Wet Goddess is all about, except with the added peculiarity that I found myself communicating, in one way or another, with another species whose legal status isn’t as humans, but as chattel.  Even worse for them.

After the interview, I felt both exhausted and nervous.  I went for a bike ride but it didn’t help, so I found myself stopping at my friend Cay’s house which is just down the block.  Once inside, I just began pouring out my feelings to her: my fear of going back to work for somebody else, my struggles to get clean so that I could go back to work, and my profound sadness over losing the dolphin, which still wells up in me from time to time.  I just felt like there was no place for me in this world, that I can never fit in.

Cay, bless her, was very understanding.  She ended up bundling me into her car and taking me down to Ponce de Leon Park in Punta Gorda, which is right by the water’s edge.  Not a big park, but it has some boardwalks through mangrove tunnels that are a little bit of beauty and mystery.  It was a cloudy day, and we ended up getting caught in a rain shower and running back to her car, where we sat inside, wet and laughing.  It was very therapeutic, and the next day I faced up to becoming a telemarketer.  But you already know how that ended, don’t you?

What will happen next in my checkered career?  I have no idea, either!  Stay tuned.

 

 

 

 

 

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Posted in Happiness and Joy, Incoherent rambles | 3 Comments »

Bestiality bond: $11,000

March 25th, 2012

Down in Metairie, Louisiana, a 21-year-old guy named Blake Sanderford had sex with his two-to-three year old female Siberian husky.  I don’t know all the details, only what this news report tells me, but the husky (name not given) was old enough to be mature, and if she was in heat and receptive she probably had no problem with Mr. Sanderford mounting her.  Female dogs are, for the most part, just like that; in heat, they are receptive to any kind of sexual stimulation and they don’t particularly care whether it’s coming from another dog or a man.

But Mr. Sanderford was guilty of a “crime against nature” under Louisiana law.  He might have gotten away with his act of bestiality if he hadn’t been dumb enough to post a video of himself and the husky getting it on to gaybeast.com, where some anti-zoophile troll picked up the video and alerted the local chapter of the SPCA, which forwarded the video to the Louisiana State Police.

As a result of that, Mr. Sanderford now finds himself sitting in jail on $11,000 bond, accused of not only “crime against nature” but also “aggravated cruelty to animals.”  To which I wonder: if it’s not “aggravated cruelty” for two dogs to mate, get stuck and drag each other around by the genitals, why should it be “aggravated cruelty” for a man to have sexual intercourse with a dog?  And what about the nature of this crime justifies an $11,000 bond?  Admittedly, Mr. Sanderford may not be the brightest bulb in the box for broadcasting his video on the World Wide Web, but I fail to see how someone having intercourse with a large mature dog — which can presumably defend itself from unwanted advances, canine or human — makes him a threat to the community at large, the way a murderer, rapist or pedophile is.

Laws like “crime against nature” are not based on common sense or the notion of the actual harm they cause, they are founded in Biblical law, specifically Leviticus 18:23 and 20:15.  In nearby, relevant passages we can find laws commanding the death penalty for cursing your father or mother, for adultery, incest, homosexuality and conjuring or mediumship with “familiar spirits.”  What is it, I want to know, about bestiality that makes it so offensive that the ancient Hebrews were commanded not merely to kill the offending man or woman but also the offending animal?  I believe it is the superstitious concept that the animal could be inhabited by an “unclean spirit,” or as some among us would now call it, a “demon,” that seduced the human offender.  Surely, most of us have given up on ascribing our undesirable actions to the influence of “demons”… haven’t we?

I don’t know if Mr. Sanderford is an actual zoophile, that is, someone sexually attracted to animals, or whether he was just an unpopular young man who took advantage of his dog’s estrus cycle to satisfy himself.  Either way, he has been marked for life.  He faces a $2,000 fine and up to five years in prison for having sex with his dog.

Here’s the state statute:

§89.  Crime against nature

A.  Crime against nature is the unnatural carnal copulation by a human being with another of the same sex or opposite sex or with an animal, except that anal sexual intercourse between two human beings shall not be deemed as a crime against nature when done under any of the circumstances described in R.S. 14:41, 14:42, 14:42.1 or 14:43.  Emission is not necessary; and, when committed by a human being with another, the use of the genital organ of one of the offenders of whatever sex is sufficient to constitute the crime.

B.  Whoever violates the provisions of this Section shall be fined not more than two thousand dollars, or imprisoned, with or without hard labor, for not more than five years, or both.

Amended by Acts 1975, No. 612, §1; Acts 1982, No. 703, §1; Acts 2010, No. 882, §1.

“Unnatural carnal copulation?”  Will somebody please explain that to me?  While the law somehow makes exceptions for anal sex, it seems like fellatio (getting a “blow job”) would qualify… if that’s the case, then about half the men in America are guilty of breaking this law!

But with presidential candidates talking freely about banning birth control because “it’s not God’s way” and dismantling Planned Parenthood, which provides much-needed healthcare to women, why am I surprised that Blake Sanderford is rotting in a Louisiana jail for fucking his dog?

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Telemarketer blues

March 24th, 2012

I have become a telemarketer, trying to talk wealthy older people into taking a two-hour tour of vacation condos in exchange for a vacation package.  That’s one of the offers I’m moving.  It’s a bizarre way to make a living, I admit, and not one I would have chosen if I’d had any choice, but I have to do something to earn an income while I find a better job.  We work four hours a day, sitting at computers, waiting for the computer to make a call, then reading from a page-and-a-half of script, over and over.  Most people, of course, don’t want it, and many hang up.  It pays $8 an hour after probation, but I’m not there for the hourly wages, I’m there for the bonus you get when you sign someone up for the tour.  The rejection rate is rather high; so is the turnover on this job.  You’ve basically got two weeks to sell some tours or you’re out the door, and even after you sell the tours, you don’t get paid unless your clients (I was tempted to say “marks,”) show up.

Seeking alternative employment, I went to an interview at KMart this morning, only to be told at the service desk that the appointment had been generated by a computer error and the personnel manager wasn’t in!  ”You’re not the only one this has happened to,” the thoroughly bored looking customer service woman told me.  She wrote down my information and assured me I’d get a new appointment.  That in itself was not reassuring.

On the way home I stopped at Auto Zone and spent over $100 on parts and supplies for a tune-up and oil change on my aging, 1997 Nissan truck.  Mileage: going on 212,000.  Pray for me.

Needless to say, I feel a sense of desperation and futility these days.  I am also severely constipated, which seems so stereotypical for an old guy that it would be funny if it wasn’t so serious.  I need to keep my attitude cheerful and remind myself that I have survived worse than this, that everything changes and things can always change for the better… but sometimes it’s hard to remember that.

Meanwhile, scientists studying the dolphins in Barataria Bay, Louisiana, find they are severely sick as a result of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.  According to the Times-Picayune, the dolphins were “underweight, anemic, had low blood sugar and/or some symptoms of liver and lung disease. Nearly half also had abnormally low levels of the hormones that help with stress response, metabolism and immune function.”  Thank you, BP.

And Morgan, the killer whale that stranded in the Netherlands and was moved to an oceanarium in Tenerife, a Spanish protectorate, isn’t getting along with her tank mates.  It seems that regardless of whether we leave dolphins in the wild or bring them into captivity, we are still messing up their lives.

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Posted in Bitching, Moaning | 3 Comments »

Selling my lens

March 22nd, 2012

I sold my large Canon 100-400 mm zoom lens yesterday to a nice guy from North Ft. Myers who saw the ad on Craigslist.  I had avoided the usual low-ballers and Nigerian scam artists, but this guy just called me up and said he wanted it, so I agreed to meet him in a little cafe in Punta Gorda.  He showed up in an old Alfa Romeo car, barefoot, tan and in his 50′s I guess; said he used to work in the production end of newspapers in the days when printers had to make color separations from slides.  Really old school technology.  I liked him.

The lens was worth about $1400 new.  I got it as a package of Canon equipment two years ago from a guy down the street who inherited it from a dead friend.  The package included a lot of very valuable stuff — a Canon 30D body, a 10-22mm wide angle zoom lens, a dedicated flash, a 28-135 zoom lens and the massive 100-400, as rugged as a battleship gun barrel.  The guy who sold it all to me wanted only $400 to have some work done on his truck.  $400 for the whole kit, that was his asking price.  I didn’t try to low-ball him or anything.  Of course I went for the deal, but even then I had to pay him in two payments.

Last year I sold the 10-22mm zoom.  It was literally too wide for my work and the editor at Harbor Style said it made everything look distorted, especially people.  She didn’t like it.  So I sold it, paid the property taxes and bought a more moderate 17-50mm zoom instead.  Now that I don’t have the job with Harbor Style, of course, it doesn’t matter.

It was the same thing with the 100-400 zoom.  I’ve never resolved being trespassed from Babcock Ranch, so I really don’t have anywhere to go to take the kind of wildlife pictures one would need that lens for.  And besides, my DSLR, a Canon 30D, is only 8 megapixels.  That was OK for a local magazine, but if I’m trying to sell stock photography I’m up against shooters with 16 and 21 megapixel cameras, people who are far, far better than me.  So who am I kidding?  I sold the lens, went and paid the property taxes and still had some money left over.

So good bye to my big lens, I hope the guy with the bare feet and the Alpha Romeo takes some wonderful pictures with it.

Next year, of course, I’m going to have to do something different because there’s nothing left to sell.  I am looking for work and even going to work this afternoon as a telemarketer, a job I’m sure I’ll hate, but I have to do it, it’s the only thing I’ve been offered so far.  I interviewed at Staples yesterday but the fact that I’m a Mac user was a strike against me as I am not really familiar with Windows 7, and PC’s are the only kind of computer they sell at Staples.  Saturday I have an interview at KMart.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

The day before yesterday was stressful, and I ended up having a mini-breakdown of sorts.  I have been in ill-health anyway, clogged up with constipation for almost two weeks now.  In the morning I did an interview on the podcast “Spiritually Raw,” the second time I’ve been on.  The co-hosts are April, a woman, and Ajay, a guy, and they are man and wife.  After the first interview I sent them a copy of Wet Goddess, and I know she read it but I’m not sure he did.  As a result he was comparing the dolphin masturbating on me to a dog humping my leg, while she was saying “Oh come on, he was in love with her, he really was!”

Which is true.  I can’t think of any other reason why I would expose myself this way.  All I can tell you is that when that dolphin embraced me with her flippers, laid her snout on my shoulder and stared into my eyes, something inside me changed, and I have never been the same since.  Whatever happens to me as a result of publishing Wet Goddess will be as nothing, compared to the sacrifice that beautiful, loving dolphin made for me.

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