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another fine little photo from photos8.com
UPDATED TO ADD: The completion of this paper is all the more savory in that my advisor likes it and seems to regard my independent study as time well spent. Whew!
Friday, September 10, 2010
The Paper is Finally Submitted
Better late than never...I hope.
The paper for my summer independent study, unassumingly titled "Principled Security Leadership," had a long and troubled gestation, but finally it sprang forth and has been belatedly submitted to my advisor at Saint Mary's University of Minnesota. Thanks to everyone who responded to my inquiries, emails, forum posts, and requests for interviews. I'll see about posting it once it's graded, corrected, and polished.
UPDATED TO ADD: The completion of this paper is all the more savory in that my advisor likes it and seems to regard my independent study as time well spent. Whew!
UPDATED TO ADD: The completion of this paper is all the more savory in that my advisor likes it and seems to regard my independent study as time well spent. Whew!
Thursday, September 9, 2010
More Things We Learn At The Deer Rifle Sight-In (2006, Take Two)
I just can't get enough of this stuff...another missive to my hunting buddies written in 2006.
I served as Range Officer at the gun club Sunday. It being the last day of deer rifle sight-in we saved the most interesting 150 some shooters for the 11th hour tuneup. There was the usual Upper Midwest glut of Remington 74xx and 76xx rifles. There were all the many shades of Savage bolt actions. Many slug guns were in attendance, from $100 NEFs to $1000 Benellis, though not one wore a decent scope or red dot sight. A couple inline muzzleloader shooters tried to zero their smokepoles (with other shooters waited three deep, of course). None had the correct tiny screwdrivers or teeny weeny allen wrenches needed to adjust their pot metal and plastic fiberoptic sights so perhaps they had never adjusted them before. Their deer are pretty safe.
So are the cervids that will be chased by the pistoleros I watched shoot. Lets call their skill level "minute-of-beach-ball" at 25 yards (well, to be fair, one guy was keeping them on the paper at 50 - the paper being about two feet square).
About half the rifles were in 30'06. Only a few rifles had decent (Burris or better) scopes. The were more Browning A-bolts present than I recalled from years past. There were more shooters shooting at 200 yards this year than in all past years combined. There were even a few shooters on the 300 yard line. Most of these guys were shooting well enough to be pretty certain of inflicting serious injury on their deer most of the time at that distance.
We had a rare surprise - a fella had a rifle with a scope that the gunsmith had "boresighted already" that actually shot to the center of the target at 25 yards! Of course there were dozens that didn't, including one that was not remotely on the paper at 25. "Okay, three turns down and two turns right." "Three clicks?" "No, three full turns of the dial." "Really?" "Yeah, really."
There were a couple Rossi single-shots, in 30'06 no less. Ouch! They are severely ugly little gats, but for $200 with a spare 12 bore tube we have another hunter in the woods.
I finally got to shoot my dream gun. A fella and his son showed up with a Kimber 84M in 7mm08 (yeah, my dream gun will be a 260, but this was pretty close). Seems a friend of his - who is some sort of gun distributor's rep - told him "You can try a bunch of other guns or you can skip to where you’re going to end up". This one had a 3x9 Burris with their goofy three crosswire hunter's reticle. It was a little large on this rifle (the owner didn't care for it either) but it handled like a dream. I was impressed with the trigger and how light the recoil was, even shooting from the bench. The owner was impressed with my pinwheel. The owner says he'll be buying another. After watching his highly figured walnut stock collect raindrops for an entire day last season he wants a matching stainless synthetic Montana for the next time the weather gets snotty.
In the end no one got hurt, everyone got their guns shooting "close enough," and nobody went away mad. All in all a good day.
I served as Range Officer at the gun club Sunday. It being the last day of deer rifle sight-in we saved the most interesting 150 some shooters for the 11th hour tuneup. There was the usual Upper Midwest glut of Remington 74xx and 76xx rifles. There were all the many shades of Savage bolt actions. Many slug guns were in attendance, from $100 NEFs to $1000 Benellis, though not one wore a decent scope or red dot sight. A couple inline muzzleloader shooters tried to zero their smokepoles (with other shooters waited three deep, of course). None had the correct tiny screwdrivers or teeny weeny allen wrenches needed to adjust their pot metal and plastic fiberoptic sights so perhaps they had never adjusted them before. Their deer are pretty safe.
So are the cervids that will be chased by the pistoleros I watched shoot. Lets call their skill level "minute-of-beach-ball" at 25 yards (well, to be fair, one guy was keeping them on the paper at 50 - the paper being about two feet square).
About half the rifles were in 30'06. Only a few rifles had decent (Burris or better) scopes. The were more Browning A-bolts present than I recalled from years past. There were more shooters shooting at 200 yards this year than in all past years combined. There were even a few shooters on the 300 yard line. Most of these guys were shooting well enough to be pretty certain of inflicting serious injury on their deer most of the time at that distance.
We had a rare surprise - a fella had a rifle with a scope that the gunsmith had "boresighted already" that actually shot to the center of the target at 25 yards! Of course there were dozens that didn't, including one that was not remotely on the paper at 25. "Okay, three turns down and two turns right." "Three clicks?" "No, three full turns of the dial." "Really?" "Yeah, really."
There were a couple Rossi single-shots, in 30'06 no less. Ouch! They are severely ugly little gats, but for $200 with a spare 12 bore tube we have another hunter in the woods.
I finally got to shoot my dream gun. A fella and his son showed up with a Kimber 84M in 7mm08 (yeah, my dream gun will be a 260, but this was pretty close). Seems a friend of his - who is some sort of gun distributor's rep - told him "You can try a bunch of other guns or you can skip to where you’re going to end up". This one had a 3x9 Burris with their goofy three crosswire hunter's reticle. It was a little large on this rifle (the owner didn't care for it either) but it handled like a dream. I was impressed with the trigger and how light the recoil was, even shooting from the bench. The owner was impressed with my pinwheel. The owner says he'll be buying another. After watching his highly figured walnut stock collect raindrops for an entire day last season he wants a matching stainless synthetic Montana for the next time the weather gets snotty.
In the end no one got hurt, everyone got their guns shooting "close enough," and nobody went away mad. All in all a good day.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
The Fate of the Dudley Docker and the Stancomb Wills
Sir Ernest Shackleton's famous little boat, the "James Caird" - in which he and five others sailed 800 miles to South Georgia Island to secure a rescue for the men of the Endurance - was restored and is on display at Dulwich College in London.
But what became of the other two boats, the "Dudley Docker" and the "Stancomb Wills," both named for patrons of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, which were turned over to serve as shelter for the 22 men left behind on Elephant Island until they were rescued four months later? There is no mention of the boats' recovery and I should think visitors to Elephant Island since then would certainly have made photographs of them if they were abandoned in place. I've seen photos of Point Wild, on which stands a memorial, but there is no sign of the boats. I've sent off a few missives to them as might know. Time may tell. If you know, please share details. Thanks.
UPDATED TO ADD: I received two very detailed emails today from polar educator and logistician Alex Taylor of Endurance Designs (his historical products are sold at retail at Top of the World Books):
"The short answer is that I don't know and can only speculate. If the two other lifeboats had been recovered at the time of the rescue by Shackleton, their location would [be] well known. I have always understood it that during the rescue of the remaining 22 men on Elephant Island, in 1916 with the Yelcho, there was intense time pressure to get the men off the island. They were worried that a wind shift would push the sea ice in and the Yelcho would get trapped (it was not an ice strengthened ship but a tug boat). Consequently they gathered their personal items in a rush and were ferried to the Yelcho as quickly as possible, likely in 2 or 3 boat loads.
Elephant island is frequently visited every autumnal summer by the tourist ships but very rarely landed on. The ocean swell in the area of Point Wild is quite large. The spit of land closest to the island is very narrow. At high tide point Wild is an island now. A century of storms have eroded the beach the men camped on to such an extent that in the very near future Point Wild may become Wild Island. Also, the glacier that one sees in the background of a few of Hurley's photos has receded significantly (500m or more), which probably adds to the erosion dynamic as the glacier may have sheltered the point on one side to some extent.
I have had the privilege of visiting Elephant Island 10 or more times in the last decade and only landed twice. Regardless, it is a truly "wild" and beautiful place, one of my favourites in Antarctica."
"What I forgot to mention, but which may be self-evident, is that the 2 boats remaining on Elephant Island were most certainly destroyed by the tides and winter storms over the years. I think Elephant Island wasn't visited for many years (multiple decades) after the men were rescued. Although I don't know who did first visit the site in later years, there may have been some artifacts of the expedition, but they too are long gone."
Thank you, Alex!
ANOTHER UPDATE: Here's a note from Stewart Hoagland, of the Oceanica Company, which built replicas of the three famous lifeboats for the IMAX movie Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure. Even producing the film was exciting. Mr. Hoaglund was at the helm of his reproduction of the Stancomb Wills when it was caught between shifting ice floes while filming - life imitates art imitating life:
"They were left there. In only a few years the elements ground them to splinters and any bits of wood or fittings left were long since gathered up by visitors. I was there, there is only rock, ice, a bronze monument planted by the [Chileans] to celebrate the captain of the tug sent to retrieve Shackleton's men...and penguins."
Thanks, Stewart!
Shackleton's own book South, detailing the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition from start to finish, is published in the public domain at several places on the web, such as Elegant eBooks and Project Gutenberg. Toward the end of Chapter XII, there is a description of the long-awaited rescue of the men:
"Soon we were tumbling into the boat, and the Chilian [sic] sailors, laughing up at us, seemed as pleased at our rescue as we were. Twice more the boat returned, and within an hour of our first having sighted the boat, we were heading northwards to the outer world..."
So, the 22 men were transported in three trips to the Yelcho on that ship's boat. Without any further mention the faithful "Dudley Docker" and "Stancomb Wills" passed into history...
photo courtesy of http://www.ibiblio.org/ebooks/Shackleton/South/South.htm
But what became of the other two boats, the "Dudley Docker" and the "Stancomb Wills," both named for patrons of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, which were turned over to serve as shelter for the 22 men left behind on Elephant Island until they were rescued four months later? There is no mention of the boats' recovery and I should think visitors to Elephant Island since then would certainly have made photographs of them if they were abandoned in place. I've seen photos of Point Wild, on which stands a memorial, but there is no sign of the boats. I've sent off a few missives to them as might know. Time may tell. If you know, please share details. Thanks.
UPDATED TO ADD: I received two very detailed emails today from polar educator and logistician Alex Taylor of Endurance Designs (his historical products are sold at retail at Top of the World Books):
"The short answer is that I don't know and can only speculate. If the two other lifeboats had been recovered at the time of the rescue by Shackleton, their location would [be] well known. I have always understood it that during the rescue of the remaining 22 men on Elephant Island, in 1916 with the Yelcho, there was intense time pressure to get the men off the island. They were worried that a wind shift would push the sea ice in and the Yelcho would get trapped (it was not an ice strengthened ship but a tug boat). Consequently they gathered their personal items in a rush and were ferried to the Yelcho as quickly as possible, likely in 2 or 3 boat loads.
Elephant island is frequently visited every autumnal summer by the tourist ships but very rarely landed on. The ocean swell in the area of Point Wild is quite large. The spit of land closest to the island is very narrow. At high tide point Wild is an island now. A century of storms have eroded the beach the men camped on to such an extent that in the very near future Point Wild may become Wild Island. Also, the glacier that one sees in the background of a few of Hurley's photos has receded significantly (500m or more), which probably adds to the erosion dynamic as the glacier may have sheltered the point on one side to some extent.
I have had the privilege of visiting Elephant Island 10 or more times in the last decade and only landed twice. Regardless, it is a truly "wild" and beautiful place, one of my favourites in Antarctica."
"What I forgot to mention, but which may be self-evident, is that the 2 boats remaining on Elephant Island were most certainly destroyed by the tides and winter storms over the years. I think Elephant Island wasn't visited for many years (multiple decades) after the men were rescued. Although I don't know who did first visit the site in later years, there may have been some artifacts of the expedition, but they too are long gone."
Thank you, Alex!
ANOTHER UPDATE: Here's a note from Stewart Hoagland, of the Oceanica Company, which built replicas of the three famous lifeboats for the IMAX movie Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure. Even producing the film was exciting. Mr. Hoaglund was at the helm of his reproduction of the Stancomb Wills when it was caught between shifting ice floes while filming - life imitates art imitating life:
"They were left there. In only a few years the elements ground them to splinters and any bits of wood or fittings left were long since gathered up by visitors. I was there, there is only rock, ice, a bronze monument planted by the [Chileans] to celebrate the captain of the tug sent to retrieve Shackleton's men...and penguins."
Thanks, Stewart!
Shackleton's own book South, detailing the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition from start to finish, is published in the public domain at several places on the web, such as Elegant eBooks and Project Gutenberg. Toward the end of Chapter XII, there is a description of the long-awaited rescue of the men:
"Soon we were tumbling into the boat, and the Chilian [sic] sailors, laughing up at us, seemed as pleased at our rescue as we were. Twice more the boat returned, and within an hour of our first having sighted the boat, we were heading northwards to the outer world..."
So, the 22 men were transported in three trips to the Yelcho on that ship's boat. Without any further mention the faithful "Dudley Docker" and "Stancomb Wills" passed into history...
Can You Spot the Peace Corps Volunteer in this Photo?
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
The Gift of Fear
Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence...from a professional in a position to know.
Gavin De Becker's personal back story is harrowing. His career as a protector of the rich and famous is legendary. In The Gift of Fear he makes a contribution to the survival, safety, and well-being of average people - especially our mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters - that is difficult to overestimate. I'm more than a little embarrassed that I, a security practitioner, haven't read his book until now. If you haven't read this book, whether you ply the security trade or not, you should.
Gavin De Becker's personal back story is harrowing. His career as a protector of the rich and famous is legendary. In The Gift of Fear he makes a contribution to the survival, safety, and well-being of average people - especially our mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters - that is difficult to overestimate. I'm more than a little embarrassed that I, a security practitioner, haven't read his book until now. If you haven't read this book, whether you ply the security trade or not, you should.
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