Dear Reader,
I’m in southern California for the weekend conducting interviews and research for the memoir I’m helping a friend write. We’ve got a pretty full schedule booked, starting in Newport Beach and heading north to Ventura, east to Sylmar (north of Los Angeles), then south to San Clemente and San Diego, hitting at least four beaches (Zeros, County, Radar Towers, C Street) along the way. That’s about 400 driving miles roundtrip, some of it along Highway 1.
The project is coming along well enough (thanks for asking), with 70 solid pages of basic story line fleshed out and a much clearer picture of themes and direction coming into view. Earlier today, I sent those 70 pages to my subject’s wife, who has not read any of the book yet, and whom I will meet and interview this weekend. For the sake of a place to stay, I hope she likes it.
I heard from a few of you in response to my reflection/confession involving Facebook last week:
“Great newsletter. You have completely summed up so eloquently everything I love and everything I don't about Facebook. While I have loved the ability to see what friends that I've known for years but see very infrequently due to time or distance are up to at any given moment without the formality of waiting for them to send a whole email or their annual Christmas letter, I have also wondered if we are better or worse off as a society with the advent of social media.
I especially think about this with those under the age of 25 who, for all intents and purposes, have grown up with social media as a part of their lives, but often seem to have an inability to just carry on a conversation, particularly by phone. Thanks for your reflection. Plus, any newsletter that can work in Shatner's version of ‘Rocket Man’ has set the bar high!”
Here’s an email from a friend who has walked away from Facebook for a while and is my hero:
“A quick note to say while I am not on Facebook at the moment, I'm catching your essays from time to time on old fashioned email. I dropped FB for some of the same negative reasons you brought up. Ultimately it had become a net negative for an extended period of time. Honestly, your posts were solidly in the positive column.
I appreciate the couple of conversations we had awhile back. I think I could possibly jump back on if I can come up with a healthier approach, like limiting the time to 10-15 minutes per day, and actually sharing more content. It seems like 95% percent of FB users do not even add anything to the newsfeed, self included, and what you have left to scroll through is largely combative and argumentative. Maybe I'll see you on there again. Or maybe not, I'm actually very much enjoying being offline.”
Okay, this Midwestern/Montana boy is off to do my best Jeff Spicoli impersonation in search of some tasty waves and cool buds on a California beach somewhere. Hey, dude, let’s party!
Craig
P.S.: As a reminder, you’re welcome and encouraged to email me directly with feedback, ideas, links, etc. at cmdunham [at] gmail [dot] com. Just know that, unless you specifically tell me not to, I may quote you here (though it will always be anonymously).
Hot Takes
I had more links than time to comment on them this week, so I’m taking a raincheck on the Hot Takes. Check back next week for all the news that drives me crazy.
Sharky
For this week’s feature, I thought I’d share an excerpt from the memoir project. The section below is from the introduction of the book and documents a story that was a significant experience in my subject’s life. I’m excited to see the beach where this happened (though I have no plans whatsoever to don a wetsuit and grab a surfboard to reenact it). We’re hoping to finish the manuscript by the end of the year and then find a publisher, so there are many paragraphs to go before we sleep. Enjoy.
If there’s anything non-surfers love to hear from surfers, it’s a good shark story. By “good,” of course, I mean a story that involves a shark and a close call, but without all the blood. Most surfers (or at least the ones I surfed with) will swear there’s a palpable sense when waters can seem to turn “sharky.” The only way I know how to describe this “sharky” consciousness is the primal feeling that you are all of a sudden prey rather than predator.
My first memory of this “sharky” sensation was off Government Point, a beach extremely remote with access only by boat near Vandenberg Air Force Base (now Vandenberg Space Force Base). There is a sea lion rookery (or breeding ground) nearby, and the underwater shelf drops off quickly to deeper waters, which is ideal for big tanker ships to anchor off the shore without their captains having to worry about running aground.
Whales - especially California grey whales - like coves and take shelter from the west wind of “the lane” in the lee of Point Conception at Government Point, especially when migrating north with their newborn calves, who sometimes need a break from stronger ocean currents further offshore. Sharks - especially Great Whites - also like coves like Government Point because they’re deep, and sharks prefer to attack their prey - especially seals, sea lions, and baby whales, as well as those who resemble them in black rubber wetsuits - from beneath.
Though I didn’t encounter a shark that day, I did take note of the torsos of several dead sea lions lying on the beach. These midsections were missing tails and heads; the former most likely due to a shark playing with them by nibbling off their rear flippers before killing them, and the latter most likely because the heads are a shark’s favorite part of the seal due to their Cornut-like crunch and a lack of chewy blubber.
Since starting to surf at age 10, I had not thought about sharks at all, but the release of the movie Jaws - which came out when I was 14 in the summer of 1975 - shaped a conviction that, when it came to surfing and swimming in the ocean, if a beach ever felt too “sharky,” I would not take the risk. If I was having a surf session that had started out as “non-sharky” but began to have more of a “sharky” feel, I would be cognizant not to urinate in the water (because that’s what seals and sea lions do) and swim as swiftly and smoothly toward the beach as possible and call it a day.
These convictions served me pretty well; I never encountered a shark, nor did I surf in paralyzing fear of doing so for the better part of the next 25 years.
But then I turned 35. As it’s my birthday tradition to take the day off and go surfing, I headed down to San Onofre State Beach, just north of Camp Pendleton. I checked in at the gate and made the short hike down to the beach at Trail 6. I had a new Rusty board - a beautiful and striking orange and yellow board with five fins - and I was getting really good waves and could feel myself smiling ear to ear.
Seemingly out of nowhere, it began to get cloudy, blocking out the sun and darkening the horizon. I could feel the temperature dropping and the waves got bad, blown-out and crumbly. I looked up the coast at Trail 6 and saw that I was the only one in the water or on land for miles around. Off in the distance, I squinted and saw what looked like a low tide reef. As I got a little closer, I tasted metal in the water, looked down, and realized I was paddling through whale blood; what had appeared to be a low tide reef was actually the carcass of a dead 50-foot whale.
My mind went into analysis mode of mitigating risk and calculating probabilities, arriving at the conclusion that I should not be swimming through whale blood since a shark had been or was probably still in the vicinity. My adrenaline kicked in, and I reminded myself of the importance of not splashing in the water but making swift and smooth strokes toward the beach when a grey dolphin breached the water not three feet from the front of my board and made eye contact. Suddenly, five or six other dolphins did the same thing all around me, forming a perfectly-spaced circle as if we were all about to take part in a campfire sing-along.
“They must love my orange and yellow surfboard,” I thought.
The dolphins stayed in this formation for 3-4 minutes, then one-by-one left as abruptly as they had arrived. Still a little dumbfounded by what had just happened, I remembered the whale carcass, looked down to see that I was still floating in its blood, and started paddling for shore. Making it to the beach, I smelled awful. I knew there was an outdoor shower at the top of the hill, and since I didn’t want the blood to dry on my wetsuit, I ran up the trail.
When I reached the top, I saw the ranger who had checked me in at the gate.
“Did you see ‘em?” he asked, grinning.
“The dolphins? Yeah, I saw ‘em,” I responded, though I was still confused by what I saw.
“No,” he said. “The sharks. There was a 16-foot Great White with its pup tracking you out there. They’ve been eating on that whale for the better part of a month.”
My stomach dropped and I felt weak in the knees. I spun around and looked back over the water, but all I could see were the same dark clouds and grey-tinted water that had sent a “sharky” chill down my spine the first time around. How close had I come to death, I wondered? And on my birthday? Where were the sharks now? And why hadn’t the ranger told me about them and the whale carcass when I checked in? Wasn’t my orange and yellow surfboard a clue as to my intentions?
I gathered myself together, resisted the urge to punch the ranger on my way out, and made it to my car, still a little shaken from what I had just experienced. Driving home, I began trying to wrap my mind around the ring of dolphins and it dawned on me that the dolphins had protected me from the sharks. A smile once again materialized from ear to ear. The whole experience felt intensely spiritual - how does one make sense of such human behavior from flippered friends? - but it’s a phenomenon I’ve since read about happening in other parts of the world. Indeed, dolphins will attack sharks to protect themselves and their young in the face of danger. That day at Trail 6, I was glad to count myself part of their family, not to mention both lucky and blessed to still be alive.
Post(erity)
Each week, I choose a post from the past that seems apropos of something (of course, you’re always welcome to search the archives yourself whenever you like).
A combination of reading this excellent article on writing and the memoir I’ve been focused on led me to an old post from September 16, 2010. I had titled it, “The Write Stuff,” and it captured a time when I rediscovered the joys of handwriting. An excerpt:
“In my handwritten habit of the past, I usually wrote into bound journals, but I was hesitant to write without some degree of concern that what I wrote needed to look somewhat presentable should I die and someone (God forbid) read my journals. I was a victim of the literary version of thinking that if you're going to be in an accident, at least have on clean underwear. Like a new pair of tighty-whities, my journal writing was clean...but it was tight. But no more!”
Fresh & Random Video
Just had to share a video from this week (yes, that’s snow on the ground - we got four inches on Monday, but it’s gone now) capturing part of my company’s celebration of a record fourth quarter and year-end (our fiscal year ends in September 30). It’s always fun working with folks who are (too) comfortable with liquid nitrogen. Physicists rule.
Until next time.
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