Siftings
Aug
08
Marine Biology
This ain’t so bad.
Last time I was standing on top of a ladder, it was forty feet in the air, rescuing a kitten who was fifty something feet up a tree blowing around in the wind. Not a math major, but fifty something minus forty equals something more than my height. So there was some … um …...
Jul
17
Guess I Must Be Having Fun
Write with a smile. Somewhere close by in this tangled garden of narrative those four words are strung together as a guidepost. In “53 Things I’ve Learned”, “Write with a smile” lives one drifting thought before “Life is too short for light beer, lame cars or hard feelings” and four after...
Jul
13
Ride of the Velcroed
If it’s winter toss the jacket, if it’s summer drop the pants after you kick the shoes off. Drop keys wallet and phone in rescue helmet on locker. If winter, add sock layer and maybe vest. Grab boots pants suspender combo from bottom of locker and place on floor. Insert legs. Don’t fall. Pull...
Jun
23
The Narrowing
Facing backwards like a real firefighter, I ask Captain 2 Brandon, “So, where do you see yourself in ten years?”. It was a small joke and he said something about normally being asked about five years into the future, or something like that. I’m not really sure of his exact response because the...
Jun
22
Cooling Off
My pants are a terrarium. It is ninety-something degrees outside and the pager goes off. Barefoot, shorts and t-shirt at the house and there’s no point in wasting time with haberdashery on the way to the Jeep. Drop the shorts at my locker, toss some socks on and jump into the boots/pants...
May
22
Easy Question
Putting out fires is corporate speak for devoting time to problems that need to be dealt with quickly, instead of working in a calm, planned way. So says Google.
How much of my life is a metaphor is open to speculation, but I did spend nearly fourteen years at a time bomb factory. Problem...
Apr
21
No Mosh
The Balcony. An architectural device to elevate views, a capitalist trick to squeeze more money out of a performance venue and the name of Catfish and the Bottlemen’s first album. Also, an organizing principle, hammered into our heads at the Kennedy School. “Get off the dance floor. Get on the...
Apr
11
Dennis Goes For A Ride
Big feet = big boots. Sometimes, too big.
The air horn for Engine 33 is controlled by a foot switch on the officers’ side of the rig. There is a whole bevy of foot switches to make different sirens do different things. As is typical, there is a reason for what is basically a piano of really...
Apr
05
the f word, quietly
Well, that swerved into the ditch faster than Harry Nelson yanking the wheel.
Remember in “Part 1” where I was working on a Firefighter of the Quarter Nomination for (great guy) Troy in my head and then figured out something while driving through Gilroy and (another great guy) Alan won...
Mar
25
t’ = t / √(1 - (v²/c²))
I missed a thousand dinners with the family while working for Davenport. Or, thereabouts, as I did not precisely keep count. Nobody kept count, in a counting sort of way. But I was gone, doing something for the City, and there were conversations, and jokes and things to work through at the...
