Our Pacific Northwest: Cain to Commence Giant's 2013 Campaign

Our Pacific Northwest

Cain to Commence Giants' 2013 Campaign
 

Photo Via SF Examiner

The Oakland Tribune reported today the Giants will send right-hander Matt Cain to the mound on Opening Day, April 1st in Los Angeles. The young southern man is coming off his best and most magical season last year. The 28-year-old registered a career high 16 wins (including a perfect game last June), 193 strike-outs, started the All-Star game, locked down a 2.79 ERA, and helped the Giant’s clinch a second World Series in three years. Cain will likely face the young left-hander and former Cy Young winner Clayton Kershaw on Opening Day, who picked up 14 wins, 229 strikeouts, and a 2.53 ERA in 2012. With Tim Lincecum's performance fading the last couple seasons, these newly minted pitching rivals may not only decide this year’s Cy Young winner, but may ultimately decide the outcome of a contentious divisional race between notorious rivals. The Giants have gelled into a team which feeds off its chemistry in the clutch, but it will be interesting to see if the Dodgers can do the same with a loaded lineup after last season's blockbuster deal. Debatably making their regular season series the hottest ticket in baseball.

From the Empirical Archives: The One Who Carries The Sun On His Back

The One Who Carries The Sun On His Back

Louise Young

PHOTO: Jairo BD

Originally Published in the August 2012 Issue of Empirical

Sendero Las Brujas–the Witches’ Trail–climbs steeply through coffee fincas and sugar cane plantations toward the scraggly forest that crowns the Continental Divide. Veils of clouds swirl, alternately concealing and revealing the sensuous curves of the surrounding mountains. At the forest’s edge, the path takes a right angle turn and follows the sweeping crest of a ridge toward the volcano–Cerro Tutu–that gave birth to this landscape in the time before time.

The sendero is different from trails that I’ve hiked in the US, footways that wander through wilderness set aside purely for recreation. The Witches’ Trail is a community path. On any given day, its dust might hold the imprints of the bare feet of native Buglé children trudging to school; the rubber boots of campesinos–cane cutters or coffee pickers–with machetes in hand and lunches slung in string bags over their shoulders; and the slim sandals of women, their otoe and yucca and tomatoes bundled in voluminous rebozos together with one or two sleepy-eyed infants. A mile out of town, I was passed by two unshod horses barely as tall as I am, their panniers balancing paired milk cans. Behind them a young Buglé man wearing bright purple pants and the ubiquitous knee-high rubber boots answered my greeting with a slow smile and an even slower “Bue-e-e-e-nos.”

But that was half an hour ago: I haven’t seen a soul since the trail was swallowed by forest and clouds. This mountain isn’t high enough–or pristine enough–to support a true cloud forest, although today the dripping drizzle and thick mist provide a passable imitation of jungle. What surrounds me, though, is all young growth, disturbed and patchy. On the Caribbean side of the divide, the rainforest is unbroken except by small communities of Buglé people, isolated by hours of mountain walking from the nearest settlement, itself an island in the jungle of green that extends all the way to the Mosquito Coast. A true wilderness: yesterday, when I hiked through that jungle, I encountered a woman who hid her face in fear of my sunglasses.

Today I am without sunglasses. The mist that sits on top of this mountain and saturates the cotton of my t shirt is even more confining than yesterday’s constricted jungle terrain: in the milky atmosphere I can see an arm’s length in any direction, no farther. Instead of softening contours, the overarching clouds sharpen sensory impressions, rendering every sound abrupt and incongruous: the fall of an unripe mango is as startling as a gunshot; the whisper of water in a creek becomes a witch’s song.

Panama
PHOTO: Ken Mayer

And that’s why I almost jump out of my skin when I hear rustling in the leaves at the edge of the trail. I immediately look to the undergrowth for a clue to the origin of the sound. The scraggly leaves of the low bushes tremble and wobble not two feet from my two feet. Something is moving down there, something big: something amorphous, something that I can’t identify. It seems composed entirely of mist, of smoke and fog and–a smile.

That’s the first feature that I make out: a smiling face turned up to me. Calm, composed, at peace: it’s impossible not to smile back in return. But the smiling gray face displays no acknowledgement, no change in response to my greeting. The smile–now seeming more imbecilic than cheerful–remains rigid on the fog-gray face.

The rest of the animal’s body materializes behind the head: it’s a three-toed sloth. About the size of the cur dog that you played with as a kid, the creature is covered from head to toe with long, coarse gray fur that makes it seem more a part of the clouds than a living, sensate being. Perhaps this ghostly creature is the witch for whom this trail has been named: its frozen, non-responsive grin has begun to assume an almost spooky appearance.

The sloth’s attention seems to be focused entirely on me–or at least that’s how I interpret the blank stare in its heavily browed eyes. One lanky arm extends forward as if the animal is reaching out to me. But there’s no hand that I can see, only three scythe-like yellow claws that plant themselves in the dirt at my feet, anchoring the tip of the arm. In painfully slow increments, the rest of the sloth’s body is dragged toward me by the winch-like strength of that one arm. The charge–if indeed that is what the creature intends–is so deliberate that in order to escape all that I need to do is step out of its way.

Which is what I do. My flight seems to confuse the sloth: it pauses for a deliberate moment and then changes direction. Although “changing direction” implies an abrupt turn: the sloth’s reversal is much less defined. When its entire body has pulled up even with its first clawed anchor, the animal extends the opposite arm this time it’s the left one–ahead again. But the line of advance now points toward the other side of the trail: the trajectory of the movement has altered slightly. The sloth is no longer charging me: it now seems intent on crossing the trail.

It is four arm extensions before the sloth attains the vegetation on the other side of the trail, four drags of the limp, apparently muscle-less torso through the bare dust. I’m less than a foot away the whole time, so I can observe in minute detail the dynamics of the animal’s locomotion. The back legs, less than half the length of the forearms, act as levers that help to propel the stumpy body forward. The head remains raised, eyes focused on a tree at the other side of the trail–the goal: the place where the sloth can regain balance and footing and equilibrium. The animal is vulnerable on land, slow and awkward and defenseless.

But you’d never know it to look at its face. The features register no fear, no hope, none of the strain of moving in an unfamiliar terrain, no anger, no aggression: just the sad clown’s smile with which it will greet each dawn and noon and midnight from birth until the moment an eagle or a jaguar or a campesino’s bullet puts an end to its life.

I’ve seen sloths before, hanging pendant from the branches of cecropia trees, or curled asleep like a gray bee’s nest in a convenient crotch. But I’ve never had the opportunity to observe a sloth from this angle, and as I study the animal I am stunned by what I see on its back. Between the sloth’s shoulder blades, the jungle of lank gray fur thins. Like a parting of the clouds, the hair shortens and lightens to a rich cream color. A ridge of black defines the spine, flanked by half a hand of similarly dark dots. But most remarkably, in the center of the sloth’s back is a circle of yellow-orange fur, about the size of a Crusader’s cross, that stands out as bright and colorful and beautiful as the sun. I’ve never seen anything so incongruous, so unexpectedly colored, so incredibly beautiful on any animal in the wild. And seeing this, I now understand the sloth’s slow, deliberate movements, its inability to stand upright on four legs. Carrying the weight of the sun on your back–all of the world’s light and energy and hope, all of the dreams of this generation and of all generations for years to come–is a lot of responsibility for one small, hairy, perpetually smiling creature.

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From the Empirical Archives: Assisted Living by Mercedes Lawry

Assisted Living

Mercedes Lawry

ILLUSTRATION: ALICE Shriver (1906)

Originally Published in the August 2012 Issue of Empirical

Cold will and testament.

Amputated feeling? Replace with thick soup,

nourishment with a slight Proustian moment

that can easily be stashed in a back closet.

Death comes slowly and not so much.

Clatter of pennies for poker

or desperate bingo. Out with the lamps,

the bald carpet, the unruly cushions.

Out with the handwriting and broken chalk.

Here we are in a field with two sides.

It’s hard to decipher the crowd roar

when it’s peppered with lies

and has no bearing on the game.

Ding for breakfast, dong for lunch.

The birds in a cage have no ironic intention

but the larger map laid over it all,

thin tissue from which faint shadows bleed,

shows a fret of boundaries.

Whether lines or walls or holy ghosts,

narrators or snakes, stories or disputes,

evening gives way to complete night.

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Through My Empirical Lens: A Bitter Butter Battle in the 21st Century

Through My Empirical Lens

Nick Dobis

A Bitter Butter Battle in the 21st Century 

Photo Via News.com

This week North Korea initiated its third, and largest, nuclear test in defiance of sanctions and stern warnings from the United Nations. The test was the first under the reign of Kim Jong-un, who became the nation’s leader after his father Kim Jong-il died in December 2011. The following evening President Barack Obama spoke to our nation in his State of the Union address. With the economy,  Afghanistan, education, infrastructure, and gun violence highlighting most of the address,   North Korea’s nuclear goals managed to make a footnotes length in Obama’s speech:

Photo via Salon.com

“The regime in North Korea must know they will only achieve security and prosperity by meeting their international obligations. Provocations of the sort we saw last night will only further isolate them. As we stand by our allies, strengthen our missile defense, and lead the world in taking firm action in response to these threats.”

But if past actions taken by our country and the UN remain the blueprint for handling the rouge nation, it is likely Obama’s assurance this week will merely fade into rhetoric. Since the cease-fire halting the Korean War was signed in 1953, each attempt to isolate North Korea has only laid more bricks for nuclear brinkmanship. I want to make clear I don't support a North Korea who desires to reduce Seoul to ashes, but I think it’s time for our country, and the world for that matter, to come to grips with three realities regarding North Korea:

ISOLATION IS NOT WORKING

As President Obama noted in his State of the Union Speech, further provocations will only lead to further isolation for the communist country. But after reviewing the country’s profile in the CIA’s World Fact Book (because who else would know more about another country), one must wonder if the tactic of isolating them is counter productive and taking its toll on the wrong people. According to the Fact Book, North Korea “faces chronic economic problems. Industrial capital stock is nearly beyond repair as a result of years of underinvestment, shortages of spare parts, and poor maintenance. Large-scale military spending draws off resources needed for investment and civilian consumption. Industrial and power output have stagnated for years at a fraction of pre-1990 levels.”

With their last recorded GDP at $40 billion in 2011 they rank 103rd out of 229 countries, with Sudan, Ethiopia, Yemen, Nepal, El Salvador, Burma, and Panama ranking higher. Despite their stagnated economy, the government has yet to yield its saber rattling. Isolating North Korea hasn’t stopped their pursuit of nuclear proliferation, but instead has fueled it. The desperate economic situation is ultimately Kim Jong-un’s and his leadership’s fault, but the sanctions have certainly pushed them into a corner. They have made it easier for its leadership to vindicate funneling almost all their funds into its military.

Photo Via News.com

CHANGE WILL NOT COME FROM WITHIN

When I discuss this topic with friends and colleagues, some ask “If the people of North Korea are starving, why don’t they revolt?” It’s honestly a good question with many complicated answers. One of those answers I believe has a religious explanation. Although according to the Fact Book “autonomous religious activities are now almost nonexistent; government-sponsored religious groups exist to provide illusion of religious freedom”, there is and has been a long Confucian tradition in the country. In Confucian tradition, there are the Five Great Relationships (Father-son, Elder brother-younger brother, husband-wife, Elder-younger, and ruler-subject).

It’s that last Great Relationship I believe the regime has warped to their advantage. Since the North Korean people are so isolated from the rest of the world they believe their government is fulfilling its fatherly role, defending them from the US and its allies. In turn, some may believe it's their responsibility to fulfill their subject role and submit to their ruler. Since the North Korean people have been indoctrinated to believe their “Supreme Ruler" is also a divine being, they will likely continue to follow their leadership blindly. Their borderline brainwashing is best exemplified in this segment from the documentary "Inside North Korea". In the film National Geographic’s Linda Ling poses as a doctor to travel with the renowned Nepalese eye specialist Dr. Sanduk Ruit. She captures chillingly revealing images of the North Korean people in 2007. (The segment of relevance begins at the 2:11 mark in the video).

Watch Complete Documentary

TIME TO RE-CONNECT THE RED PHONE

Even when the world was hours away from annihilation during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev still maintained a direct line of communication over the telephone. Obviously it wouldn’t be accurate to make a direct comparison between the two nuclear crises, separated by both time and completely different dynamics. But President Obama won his Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”. Despite being loathed by many conservatives in our nation, the president is viewed globally in a largely favorable light. With the help of China, North Korea’s closet ally, President Obama needs to use his diplomatic skill sets to walk North Korea away from the nuclear edge.

Photo via Christian Science Monitor

There is a great possibility though the President won’t accomplish this goal in his final term. Why? Many in the Republican Caucus wish to re-designate North Korea as an official sponsor of terrorism. Appeasing Kim Jong-un may poison the well for any or all of Obama’s domestic policy ambitions, a political calculation he and our nation cannot overlook.

My favorite Dr. Seuss book is “The Butter Battle Book”, a children’s book written in 1984 reflecting  the heightened concern over nuclear war with the Soviet Union. In the book, the Yooks and the Zooks dispute over the proper way to eat toast, butter side up or butter side down. Eventually the conflict escalates into an arms race. The book ends with a classic Seuss “UNLESS” moment with the two opposing generals standing on the great divide they built between their people, ready to see who will drop their bomb first. I cannot say we stand on this same brink with North Korea...yet. But perhaps the time has come to realize we both want stability and security, no matter how that toast gets buttered.

Photo Via Good Reads

Northwest Now: Nuclear Tank in Washington State Leaking Radioactive Waste

Northwest Now

Nuclear Tank in Washington State Leaking Radioactive Waste

In a report circulated by the Associated Press, Washington Governor Jay Inslee announced late Friday afternoon a tank at the Hanford Nuclear Plant, the nations most contaminated nuclear site, is currently leaking radioactive waste. According to the report, the tanks which are “long past their intended 20-year lifespan” hold millions of gallons of nuclear waste. The suspected leaking tank holds nearly 447,000 gallons of radioactive sludge from decades of plutonium production. Inslee stated the leak could vary from 150 to 300 gallons over the course of a year, likely resulting in a long term contamination threat to groundwater and rivers. Inslee blamed spending cuts and the incompletion of a $12.3 billion plant to safely convert the waste into a more stable form for the tank’s neglect. The nuclear site sits directly on the Columbia river, the biggest waterway in the Pacific Northwest.

 

 Photo Via No Water-No Life

 

Our Pacific Northwest: An Unexpected Face Makes His Case For Citizenship

Our Pacific Northwest

An Unexpected Face Makes His Case For Citizenship

Photo via San Jose Mercury News

Among the millions of undocumented immigrants in this country are the faces of friends and colleagues we’d never expect, as was the case for the UC Berkeley Math Club. The San Jose Mercury News has reported today that Terrence Park, math club president and bio-statistics student at UC Berkeley, came out to his fellow students about being an undocumented citizen. According to the report, Park arrived in California with his family from South Korea at the age of 10 on temporary visas, which expired. His coming out is part of “The Dream is Now” campaign, an advocacy group captained by Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of the late Apple founder Steve Jobs. The report mentioned Park is one of dozens of students around the state and being video tapped in order to persuade Americans to develop a pathway to citizenship. Park told the Mercury News if the Dream Act passes, he plans on continuing his graduate education at either Brown or Yale University. Empirical commends Terrence for his pioneering courage, and for revealing one of the millions of faces of the undocumented in our Pacific Northwest.

A Week in Our Pacific Northwest

Portland State Reaches for World Record

Cause for Concern for the King?

Shell's Rigs Set Sail for Asia

Newts Renew Their Love in Berkeley

February Excerpt: The Offer by Jennifer Hanno

The Offer

Jennifer Hanno

PHOTO: USFWS

Bob clutched the rifle and considered that this might be a turning point of some kind. He had never been so close to such a great specimen . . . even he could not miss a shot like this. He froze into the background, the cold metal of his rifle burning into his clenched hand. Watching the animal move with majestic grace, he was reminded of the basketball games of his youth, of the strong, young athletes whose fluid movement with the ball seemed a mystery to him as he sat on the bench. 

His grip on the rifle tightened and it seemed as if the animal could sense that imperceptible movement. It lifted its head, suddenly alert and on edge. Yes, this could be a turning point, Bob reasoned, one shot here and he would be the hero of the hunting lodge tonight. They would be telling tales about it for months. This was what Darwin was talking about; this was survival of the fittest. Maybe not actual survival, but social survival, which was more important anyway.

His finger on the trigger, he raised the gun slowly, ever so slowly as he had seen his companions do. It was, after all, the chance of a lifetime. Suddenly, he knew his companions were near. He sensed them even as the animal seemed to become aware of danger. It was now or never, one shot and it would be over and any guilt he may feel would be diminished by the praise of his hunting partners. He could almost see the pictures of him holding the antlers of the dead beast, its eyes a glassy and still window into death.

He could feel the other hunters bearing down on them and he felt more like the prey than the predator. His hand cramped as it held tightly to the instrument that would bring death to one of them and an assertion of manhood to the other. Sweat collected on his brow, his chest tightened. Not too far off, he heard a footstep. The animal heard it, too, but seemed frozen, as though Bob held it immobile in the scope of his gun.

Suddenly, he lowered the rifle.

“Run, you idiot,” he hissed to the majestic beast. “Get out of here.”

Like the bullet that might have been fired from his gun, the buck shot through the woods and out of Bob’s life. Later on, his companions would ask him how he could have missed it. He would make up a story about how he fell asleep, drowsy from the drinking the night before. They would laugh and jest at his expense for some time to come, but he would dish out the mushroom stew he had meticulously prepared and all would be well. He would settle back into the bench.

Ah well, he sighed. He went to the woods so that he could live deliberately, he told himself, as he shivered in the tree stand. With a sigh, he took out the tattered copy of Walden he always carried with him when he went hunting.

If you would like to read more of this article in Empirical, the February issue is now available at your local bookstore and online at our website.

Our Pacific Northwest: Newts Renew Their Love in Berkeley

Our Pacific Northwest

Newts Renew Their Love in Berkeley

 

There is plenty of love in the air this Valentine’s Day, and homo sapiens aren’t the only ones feeling it. The Oakland Tribune has reported this week the newts of UC Berkeley’s Botanical Garden have returned, keeping their prompt annual schedule for mating season. According to the report, these newts return to the pools on the Berkeley campus yearly to reproduce in the same pools they were conceived in. The Botanical Garden’s website states the pools are home to two different species of newt, the Taricha torosa (California newt) and the Taricha granulosa (rough-skin newt). In a report filed by the Contra Costa Times, the newts were first spotted in 1964 by a zoology undergrad and have been an attraction to students, professors, and amphibian enthusiasts ever since. Empirical wishes you and your special newt a happy Valentine’s Day . If you don’t have one keep your head up and keep swimming, they may be only be just a pond away.

 

 

 

From the Empirical Archives: Sneakers by Aaron Gudmunson

Sneakers

Aaron Gudmunson

PHOTO: Angelo Gonzales

Originally Published in the August 2012 Issue of Empirical

Terrible Teddy walked off his last sneaker just after five o’clock. It happened on the corner of Melrose and Damen outside an all-night pharmacy. He felt the sole stretch against the arch of his foot before it sheared away. Teddy looked at it the way someone might a dead fish on a riverbank before removing the remains of the shoe. His other foot was wrapped in two-day-old newspapers and cinched with a length of twine. He retrieved the busted sole, tucking it into his waistband, and entered the pharmacy.

The clerk gave him a side-eyed once-over. Maybe it was the smears of soot on his face. Maybe it was the disheveled, patchy hair. Maybe it was his bedraggled trousers or filthy flannel shirt. Perhaps it was all things about Terrible Teddy that made people sneer. But how could he help it? The magic carpet that had been his foundry job for fourteen years had been yanked from beneath his feet. Soon after, Melinda had taken the boys and flown off to who knows where. For three years, Terrible Teddy had lived Out Here, in the streets of this jagged city. For three years he had begged his meals and shelters. For three interminable years, Terrible Teddy had been a creature reviled and rejected.

PHOTO: James Emergy

This clerk was no different.

“Scuse me, ma’am? How much is shoe laces?” The clerk stocked cigarettes on the shelf behind the counter and hummed to herself. Terrible Teddy cleared his throat. “Ma’am, don’t mean to be a bother, but could you tell me how much is shoe laces?”

She turned, slump-shouldered, and pointed to a display beside the counter.

“Sorry, ma’am, didn’t see them,” Teddy said, fishing in his torn pants for the required forty-nine cents. He thought maybe there was a way he could rig the laces to reattach the sole for a bit longer. He wished he could afford some Cra-Z-Glue, but the tag on the three-ounce dispensers read $2.69: no small change. He pushed two moist quarters across the counter and said, “I’ll take the laces please.”

She regarded the coins as if they might have been steeped in anthrax. “It’s fifty-four cents with tax.”

Teddy dug out four pennies. The clerk grimaced.“You know what? Just take them.”

“I owe,” Teddy said, not understanding, understanding all too well.

“No, really. It’s all right.”

Teddy watched for some hint of a joke, for her to suddenly laugh and point the way the kids in the park sometimes did. Maybe she would wait until he had taken the laces and his money and then call the police. Maybe they would charge him with retail theft and throw him back in the cooler. It was possible, right? Maybe she would be more than happy to see one less bum on the street.

But the time for maybes was done. Teddy snatched up his laces and coins and fled. He jogged through two alleys and ducked through a broken fence between tenements. A cat with a torn ear perched atop a barrel hissed at his passing. Only when he’d made it to the breezeway behind Hegeland’s Restaurant did he stop. This was his place, after all—his alley. He slept beneath cardboard and paper in the unused doorway of an abandoned art supplier across the way. The restaurant threw away more food in one day than Teddy had seen in his whole life. Most of it was edible, but when it was not the waitresses would slip him some bread butts or cold soup. It was also one of the only restaurants on the north side that had not taken to pouring ammonia over their trash and rendering it useless to those Out Here.

Heart stabbing his ribs, Teddy tried to correct the ruined shoe. The laces kept slipping and would not hold the pieces together. Heaving a sigh, Teddy hurled the whole caboodle into the Dumpster behind the restaurant. He kicked Tuesday’s sports section off and sat barefoot against the wall with his fists against his eyes.

PHOTO: Tina Li

The city wheezed around him. A horn blipped over on Belmont. Above him on the windowsills and ledges, gray pigeons clucked and cooed. The Temptations crooned from an open window and an ancient air conditioner churned in another. Terrible Teddy, dubbed thus by the kids in the park, sat alone. His shoes were gone. He needed them back. In a place like this, a place of pestilence, it took shoes to survive.

He walked the length of the alley, skirting a smattering of broken glass. Traffic buzzed and blurred. How easy it would to end everything, here and now. How swiftly blackness would come with cobalt blue speed.

Teddy gathered himself, breathed smog and exhaust, and closed his eyes. He whispered some invocation or other, but the roar of traffic wrenched it from his lips unheard. He inclined his head to heaven, finished his peace, and stuck one filthy bare foot over the lip of the curb. Then opened his eyes.

And so it was that Terrible Teddy, feeling more lost than he had in years, looked up at the darkening sky and quite literally saw the answers to his prayers. They dangled by their laces from the lamppost overhead.

“Lord have mercy,” he whispered. A smile split his grimy face, and any observer who would have bothered to spare him more than a passing glance would have seen that he was handsome. A pair of high-top sneakers dangled from the crooked arm of the post. Some wit, probably drunk, had tied the laces together and tossed with all his might until they hooked. How long had they been there, at the mouth of his alley? Two days? Three? Certainly no longer than a week; he would have noticed them. It was no matter. They were there. And since no one else had claimed them, they were his.   Finders, keepers.

PHOTO: Toby Alter

“I get em,” he whispered, scouting a pathway to his quarry. “I get em, if it kills me.” He placed a hand into a crook of the broken brick of the building–a fine start, but where do we go from here? Teddy licked his lips and spit, unaware he was salivating.

Five feet up hung the remains of a rusted- out fire escape. A faded fly-specked sign advised the potentially blind or fatally stupid: Do Not Use. Teddy was neither blind nor stupid (only desperate), so he would try. He had to. It was a matter of survival.

He dragged the industrial trashcan from its place beside Hegeland’s back door and climbed. For one taut second Teddy was certain he would topple as the can careened first north, then south. His searching, flailing hands found wrought iron and steadied himself. Now, face to face with the warning sign, Teddy turned and eyed his treasure. A pink triangle of tongue poked between cracked lips.

“I getcha,” he assured the shoes, which from this height he could see were Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars. They could have been Dorothy’s ruby slippers. The way the shoes swayed mildly in the crossbreeze that whispered down the alley, the laces creaking against the arm of the post made him want to laugh aloud. No place like home, he thought wildly.

Teddy pulled on the forlorn fire escape to test its salt, eyeing the remaining suspicious three bolts that secured it to the primordial brick. They appeared rusted but intact. Teddy hauled himself up. His movement upset the trashcan and sent it rolling down the alley, spilling coffee grounds and cabbage cores. The fire escape groaned once and fell silent.

He rested to allow the steel a moment to adjust to new weight. Teddy shouldered grime from his cheeks. The sneakers swayed six feet above. He could see the signature star logo on the ankle, could make out the pattern of the almost-new treads. Just a bit higher.

Below, a busboy brought a bag of trash out of Hegeland’s and, ignoring the displaced can, tossed it indifferently to the side of the door. There would be food in there. Perfectly good food. There always was. Teddy thought that maybe he’d get a bite after he’d obtained the prize. Shoe shopping was hard work.

The fire escape on the next story felt sturdier. It held firm without protest when he pulled himself up. As he did, though, two of the remaining bolts below snapped, and the contraption scraped and dangled against the wall with a horrific screech. Teddy lay low, heart thundering, waiting for someone to come investigate the source of such racket and in seeing him, call the police. But no one came. Not even the busboy.

When his fear subsided, Teddy stood and threw a leg over the rail. The shoes hung dead ahead. They nodded in the wind, beckoning. All he had to do, he saw, was scramble onto the ledge of the nearest windowsill, and a three-foot stretch would claim his trophies. He climbed off the iron mesh. Traffic zipped below. The chirping of birds and the laughter of children wafted up and away. Before him hung the Holy Grail. Teddy extended a trembling, tentative hand. His fingers brushed the stiff canvas of the left shoe and it spun lazily away, taunting him closer. He leaned, dangerously angled, and it happened then.

Something arrowed over his shoulder from behind and landed on the left shoe. Teddy withdrew in shock, knocking his elbow hard enough against the corner to numb his fingertips. But the shout of pain and surprise that boiled from his lungs died in his throat when he saw.

PHOTO: Scot Campbell

A dove perched on the tongue of the shoe. Her black eyes regarded Teddy. A crooked worm hung in her beak, writhing. And then, from within that left shoe, arose a chorus of untrained voices. Four tiny pink heads raised up, their beaks aimed skyward, at their mother. Teddy and the dove watched one another for the snap of an instant before she stuffed breakfast into one waiting mouth and winged off again. A matter of survival.

Teddy paused, thinking. He knew what he could do and he knew what he could not. He descended the building much the same as he had gone up, opting to drop the final eight feet to the ground to avoid the busted landing. He sat for a while watching the shoes that with one shake could be shed of their tenants and strapped onto his aching feet.

When the streetlight winked on, Teddy sat up, pulled his knees against his chest, and watched Mama Dove fly back and forth. An indescribable joy seeped through him. He had witnessed something secret, something sacred. Something no one else in this world or the next would ever know. Terrible Teddy wept and grinned, and held his feet in his hands.

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Our Pacific Northwest: Shell's Rigs Set Sail for Asia

Our Pacific Northwest

Shell's Rigs Set Sail for Asia

Last month, Empirical brought to light a story circulated by the Associated Press stating the Department of the Interior will review Shell Oil’s 2012 offshore drilling exploits in Alaskan waters. Today, the Anchorage Daily News has reported Shell will tow its two drills used in 2012 to Asia for repair and further inspection. The report speculated the move by Shell indicates major work on the rigs may be necessary, and casts doubts on whether the oil mogul will be able to resume its drilling before season’s end. The AP report last month laid out several problems Shell encountered with its drills last year, including a drill barge which ran aground New Year’s Eve, a drill ship which was found to have numerous safety violations, and an oil barge which did not gain certification before the start of last year’s drilling season. According to the Daily News' report, Shell invested almost $5 billion in leases, oil spill response equipment, and infrastructure. But environmentalists in the region claim the risks are too high and call for all offshore drilling to cease.

Photo Via Anchorage Daily News

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February Excerpt: Policies of Polarization by Ahmed M. Soliman

Policies of Polarization

Ahmed M. Soliman

PHOTO: Maria Maddaloni

With the 2012 election now behind us, the country is focused on the importance of uniting again behind our president, and hopefully changing the tone in Washington. It is what we ultimately do as Americans: we aspire to unite in strength and resolve. In fact, it is because our aspiration to solve problems is so innately woven into our DNA as Americans that presidential candidates often make “bridge building” and “changing Washington” a common theme in their campaigns. George W. Bush campaigned on it in 2000, as did Barack Obama in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012.

In 2012, Romney pointed out that Obama had promised to change Washington, but failed to do so because, he argued, Obama was a failed president. The hard truth, however, is that times have changed, and the task of uniting Americans in Washington has become about as feasible as herding mice. But, contrary to the assertions of Mitt Romney and others during the recent campaign, it is not the former community organizer’s fault that Washington remains so divided. Nor was it George Bush’s fault. The fact of the matter is that the divide in America today exists as a matter of public policy, literally enshrined in our modern American law.

One who wishes to understand why America’s divisions have become so entrenched needs only to examine two critical–and conservative ideologically-driven–policy decisions that have fully fermented in the last 25 years: (1) President Reagan’s elimination of the Fairness Doctrine; and (2) conservative Supreme Court Justices’ refusal to rein in gerrymandering.

The first of the two, the Fairness Doctrine, was a Federal Communications Commission (FCC ) regulation that required broadcasters to provide news and issues-oriented programming that fairly presented opposing viewpoints on controversial subjects. The doctrine’s genesis was the Radio Act of 1927, created to regulate competing signals on the finite radio frequency spectrum. The chief proponent of the bill, then-Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, who would later become President Hoover, argued that regulating a limited number of broadcast licenses and requiring the licensees to provide current events programming with opposing points of view satisfied the First Amendment because the freedom of speech listener is paramount over the freedom of the speech maker. This concept was upheld as passing First Amendment muster by the Supreme Court in the 1943 decision of National Broadcasting Co. v. United States. The National Broadcasting Co. decision paved the way for the FCC to create the modern Fairness Doctrine in 1949. Specifically, the FCC required broadcast media licensees to: (1) provide coverage of vitally important and controversial issues of interest in the community served by licensees; and (2) provide a reasonable opportunity for the presentation of contrasting viewpoints on such issues.

The Fairness Doctrine was the key regulation of news broadcasters for nearly forty years, until its demise in 1989, when President Ronald Reagan’s tidal wave of deregulation washed it away. The official removal of the Fairness Doctrine began in 1987, when the FCC repealed the doctrine as contrary to the public interest. The Democratic-controlled Congress then passed a law reversing the FCC ruling. However, President Reagan vetoed that law in 1989, despite the fact that the Supreme Court had again ruled the Fairness Doctrine to be constitutional in Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC.

The elimination of the Fairness Doctrine at the conclusion of the 1980s paved the way for a slew of unchallenged right-wing broadcasts on radio and on television throughout the 1990s. They included the program of Rush Limbaugh on AM radio, and the subsequent introduction of Fox News on cable television. The ratings bonanza of those media efforts soon caused another television news network to follow suit and abandon its self-imposed commitment to a fair presentation of both sides of controversial issues: MSNBC shifted toward an unchallenged liberal presentation of current events.

If you would like to read more of this article in Empirical, the February issue is now available at your local bookstore and online at our website.

Our Pacific Northwest: Cause for Concern for the King?

Our Pacific Northwest

Cause for Concern for the King?

Photo Via El Emergente

The collective breaths of Mariner’s fans will be held today as Felix Hernandez reports to spring training for a much anticipated physical, according to ESPN. The three time All-Star and 2010 Cy Young winner has been working with the front office over a seven year, $175 million dollar deal. What’s been postponing the announcement? According to the report, a concern has risen over the condition of Hernandez’s elbow which is credited for impeding the contract's progress. Despite this setback, the report indicated Hernandez has exhibited a normal throwing motion in pre-training workouts. Last year Hernandez finished 5th in earned runs in the AL (3.06), registered 223 strike-outs, 21 quality starts, and helped the Mariners finish in the top-ten in team ERA in all Major League Baseball. The young pitching sensation only picked up 13 wins last season, largely due to a Seattle offense which struggled to give him more wins. If the Mariners wish to find success this season and stay competitive with a loaded Angel squad, a surging Athletics ball club, and a still-potent Rangers team, they need Hernandez healthy for this season and many seasons to come.

From the Empirical Archives: In Paris by Catherine Edmunds

In Paris 

Catherine Edmunds

PHOTO: Dmitry B

Originally Published in the August 2012 Issue of Empirical

I think you have many such pyramids in Paris,

she said, and I couldn’t deny it, though this one—this

was something new

she walked away and into a kiosk

I followed, but all I could see was an elderly woman

dressed in blue stripes

far too short to see across the counter

her eyes on a level with Marie-Claire

but that wouldn’t satisfy her ugly demands in her stockings

criss-crossed with veins and treachery

I left

rested my eyes on pale plants

and between them, a movement—

a cat swept by, mimicking shadows

then gone, and all I had left was a memory

of pyramids, splashed with graffiti

PHOTO: Archibald Ballantine

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Our Pacific Northwest: Portland State Reaches for World Record

Our Pacific Northwest

Portland State Reaches for World Record

The Oregonian reported yesterday Portland State University is working on what may end up being, when finished, the tallest barometer in the world. When completed the barometer will stand 46’6’’, beating the previous world record by over six feet, according to the report. Barometers are used by weather forecasters to measure the “weight” of the air. When the air pressure is high, it typically indicates nice weather. But when the barometer drops, it indicates a storm system is likely on its way. What else makes the Maseeh College Barometer at PSU unique is its shift from the industry’s standard. Typically a glass tube which helps operate the barometer is filled with the highly toxic mercury. But because of its digital capabilities, the barometer at PSU will use water instead. Empirical would like to congratulate the staff and graduate students of Portland State on their eventual accomplishment, further proving our Pacific Northwest is never afraid to push scientific boundaries.

 



Photo Via The Oregonian

February Excerpt: Why Human Rights Matter by Emanuel Stoakes

Why Human Rights Matter and How They Get Sidelined

Emanuel Stoakes

UN Building, New York
PHOTO: Phillip Capper

When, on occasion, I get challenged about why I bother with human rights, I’m usually surprised. The questioner must, I am often tempted to reply, be happy for me to come over to their house that night with an armed gang and torture them, and follow that by kidnapping them without trial for an indefinite period, only to be protected under law because I’m friends with the attorney general? (This is all hypothetical, of course.) When I sink to such an artless rejoinder, no one ever says “Yes” and means it. While I concede that the above may be a fatuously extreme thing to say, it raises meaningful points. If we want to be free from unimaginable suffering and injustice ourselves, then we surely have to accept in principle that all human beings should be free from it. It is this notion (the universalist principle, one which runs counter to the intellectual constructs that have so long supported the conceits and whims of power) that is found immovably at the heart of the philosophy of human rights.

Of course, this concept is nothing new. It is so ancient as to be an almost archetypal principle. In this sense, the human rights movement is a meeting place of apparently irreconcilable streams of thought, in that it echoes values common to intellectual movements both modern and ancient–for example, the enlightenment and the Abrahamic religions.

What’s more, it posits an equality of worth for all human beings that political systems devised to empower the poor, such as Communism, failed to grant in practice. Indeed, in some cases, the human rights movement has achieved what the various left-leaning political revolutions have always aspired to bring about: radically positive transformation in the lives of the most needy. Moreover, such advances did not come at the cost of individual freedoms or through the agency of an intrusive and corrupt government, as in many ostensibly socialist societies.

A case in point occurred in India in 2001, when a group of campaigners managed to secure school meals for 50 million children, many of whom suffered from extreme malnourishment. This was achieved through public interest litigation in which the indivisible right to food was invoked. This legally mandated system already looks set to reach out to a further 50 million children–and is continuing to expand its reach. It is easily the biggest program of its kind in the world.

The central text of the rights movement, the Universal Declaration of 1948 asserts that certain fundamental entitlements are granted to all global citizens, without distinction. This was adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 10, 1948. The principles it contains were timely and momentous: they prefigured the end of American segregation, the break-up of apartheid and the final collapse of European colonialism. The Declaration, and the codification of the values it upholds, represented a landmark moment in the modern era, one that has helped to form the world that we inhabit now with laws and protections we take for granted. Its span covers all the essential human requirements for life and dignity ranging from freedom from slavery to the right to food.

The declaration also calls for “an international order in which human rights can be fully realised”–something that, to this writer at least, sadly remains an aspiration for the global community, the world being as it is. This is something to which I will return.

Above all else, the great beating heart of the human rights cause is its affirmation of the importance of humanity, its ability to transcend normally incommensurable differences without alienating anyone; and doing so by appealing to that most definitively human of our instincts–our ability to feel compassion for our fellow human beings.

If you would like to read more of this article in Empirical, the February issue is now available at your local bookstore and online at our website.

Through My Empirical Lens: A Darkness More Than Dorner

Through My Empirical Lens

Nick Dobis

A Darkness More Than Dorner

Photo Via Welt.de

Big Bear Lake can be a wonderful and safe place to live. A quaint mountain town nestled in the bosom of the San Bernardino National Forest. As a kid, your mind and body can easily wander away from society, losing your sense of the world in its imminent wilderness. I know this because it is where I was born and raised.

It is also here where Christopher Dorner, the man suspected in three murders this week in Southern California, chose as his location to set fire to his truck and leave only footprints in the snow for law enforcement's massive manhunt. When I received the news the schools where my parents work were under lockdown because Dorner was likely in the area, my stomach dropped faster than a bag of bricks and my anxious mind began to conjure the worst. In the days since the Sandy Hook Elementary shootings last December, receiving this news had been a subtle nightmare of mine. But as the afternoon unfolded and I began to learn more about Christopher Dorner, I eventually realized he is a man  dedicated to the method he crafted in the depths of his madness. A man coldly calculated in his logic, and ruthlessly callous in his intentions.

Photo Via Los Angeles Times



The story of this former cop transformed into suspected cop murderer reads as chillingly surreal as a Hollywood novella. It begins in 2007 when the former Navy Reserve Lieutenant filed a complaint against his LAPD partner for repeatedly kicking a suspect after they had him in cuffs. Dorner filed the complaint two weeks after the incident, and the LAPD concluded after its investigation Dorner’s complaint was “unfounded”. Dorner was suspended, and later dismissed in January 2009 by the department for filing a false complaint. Dorner tried to sue the LAPD, but inevitably lost his case. In an 18-page manifesto he allegedly wrote and sent to LAPD headquarters, Dorner viciously described an LAPD rife with racism and conspired to bury the truth about his innocence. He vows “…this is a necessary evil that I do not enjoy but must partake and complete for substantial change to occur within the LAPD and reclaim my name.”

That brings us to the events which unfolded this week in the Southland. Dorner began hunting his targets named on the manifesto Sunday evening by allegedly shooting Monica Quan and her fiancé Keith Lawrence to death in Orange County (Quan’s father was involved in the review process leading to Dorner’s dismissal from the LAPD). On Wednesday, an eyewitness saw a man matching Dorner’s description attempting to steal a boat from the Southwestern Yacht Club near San Diego, but his likely escape to Mexico failed when the boat itself failed, but Dorner eluded police once again. Around 1:30 a.m. Thursday morning in Corona, two LAPD officers providing protection for a target in the manifesto engaged with a gun battle supposedly with the suspect, with one sustaining a graze wound to the head. Later that morning, two officers from the Riverside Police Department were ambushed waiting in their patrol car at a stop light. One of the officers was critically wounded and taken to an intensive care unit, the other was killed.

Photo Via Los Angeles Times



Dorner’s whereabouts became unknown once again until Thursday afternoon, when the truck he was driving was found in flames near Club View Drive in Big Bear Lake. It is at this time local, regional, and elements of national law enforcement descended upon my mountain hometown to engage in a manhunt the likes of which its citizens have never witnessed. Schools were locked down, and a door-to door search was conducted throughout the valley. Despite law enforcement’s efforts, and a winter snow storm which blew in inches of snow and frigid winds dropping the temperature to nearly zero degrees, Dorner still remains at large as of this posting.

As strange as it sounds, I stopped worrying for my family and friends as soon as I realized the location of Dorner’s burning car. Not too far from Club View drive is 2N10, a fire trail which leads up to the southern ridge of the mountain valley. My friends and I used this trail in high school for many of our off-roading exploits. On the other side of the ridge is another valley containing mostly wilderness, an ideal place for this maniacal killer to utilize his military training and survival skills. It is here I think he left a trail as cold as the winter storm he may have used as a cover to once again slip from law enforcement’s fingers.

Photo Via Los Angeles Times



What frightens me is not the thought of Christopher Dorner lurking and waiting to fulfill his manifesto. Although I hope he is apprehended, or based on his apathy for living in his manifesto, killed soon. What frightens me is the growing number of Dorner admirers which manifested since the LA Times released his manifesto.

Within hours of law enforcement engaging their manhunt in the mountains, an “I support Christopher Jordan Dorner” page on Facebook was created and blossomed in macabre popularity. One posting stated “I don’t doubt that the cops shot up their own just to blame him so everyone can be scared and turned him in.” Thousands flocked to his Facebook page, sending messages of encouragement, fantasizing about his true whereabouts, and commending his cunning elusiveness.

Many responded back in outrage, and the overall number of fans was low, but seeing fellow Americans avidly support a suspected murderer filled my heart with fear for the direction of our country’s moral conscience. When I was a student at Big Bear High School, one of my favorite novels I read for class was “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad. A novel about one man’s journey into the heart of the African continent in the late 19th century, and inevitably into the heart of our species potential for evil. In this passage, the main character is on a boat in the Congo, and witnesses natives intimidating them from the shore:

“It was unearthly, and the men were-No-they were not inhuman…They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity-like yours-the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you-you so remote from the night of first ages-could comprehend...”



I fear some will read the manifesto and lose sight of Dorner’s misplaced sense of self-righteousness and become transfixed with the aspirations of a cold blooded murder. I fear some will ignore Dorner's morbid message to the children of police officers and become inspired by his mostly well composed, but horridly monstrous writings. Violence has been a part of human nature for millennia, as well as a part of American history. But with the breathtaking level of violence our nation has endured within the last year, it makes me wonder how much farther we are from a breaking point. I fear some may look into the images of Christopher Dorner and see themselves.

The German Philosopher Freidrich Nietzsche once stated “When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you.” I fear for those who instead of reaching out for help will continue to stare into the abyss, infatuated with their reflection.

Our Pacific Northwest: Region's Deadliest Predator Endangered

Our Pacific Northwest

Region's Deadliest Predator Endangered


In the same week wolverines in our Pacific Northwest received consideration for more protection,  the most feared and misunderstood creatures in our waters will temporarily receive the same consideration. The San Francisco Chronicle reported this week the California Fish and Game commission unanimously voted to advance the Great White Shark’s candidacy to the list of endangered species. According to the report, the commission will conduct a one-year review of the species in which the species will be carefully examined and receive temporary protection. The review was prompted by the findings of two recent studies on the species whose range in the Pacific reaches from Mexico to Hawaii and Alaska. The studies found the number of female Great Whites mature enough to reproduce was estimated to be less than 100, according to the San Jose Mercury News. Not only will the sharks receive more protection during the year-long review, but it also includes a ban on incidental catches by net fisherman, according to the Chronicle. The review exemplifies our Pacific Northwest's progressive commitment to protecting all of our region’s creatures, no matter how feared or beloved they may be.

Photo Via National Geographic







A Week in Our Pacific Northwest

Wolverines Struggle to Weather Climate Change

UW Aims to Restore Sight to the Blind

Tsunami Debris Continue to Invade PNW

Portland's Urban Forest Ranked Amongst Top in the Nation