David,
Your engineer is not untypical of what I recall. To "don't read much"
they could add "and don't write much either." Hence the need for
English majors who could write -- how else can engineering information
be communicated to a company's customers? I would ordinarily have
written "could" instead "can" in the previous sentence, referring to the
state of Engineering in my day, but your experience suggests that not
much has changed.
Back in my day, Engineering was to a large extent a meritocracy. I was
a Program Engineer during the entire KC-10 Engineering effort, that is,
until it was turned over to Product Support, and I could have
transferred to Product Support but opted for a job on the T-45 program
instead. And then the T-45 was transferred to St. Louis; so I next
opted for a job on the C-17 program in charge of a group proving to the
Air Force that the Air Force's design requirements had been met.
And throughout my career I would be asked surreptitiously to write
various memos and documents for senior engineers who couldn't write.
A couple of days ago my nephew Sean sent me photos of a house he bought
in Costa Mesa. I was reminded of Jim Agrusa, a senior engineer for whom
I ghosted various documents over the years. He used to tell me that I
wrote just like he talked. At some point hubris got the better of him
and he decided to run for mayor of Costa Mesa. He listed me as his
"campaign manager." I needed assurance, however, that writing his
speeches was all I'd have to do. I was relieved when he one day
informed me that he had lost the election.
Lawrence
On 5/30/2021 10:07 AM, david ritchie wrote:
We have been away, visiting J. We have had house sitters looking after the dog, two cats, two chickens. When we stepped in late last night there was a greeting committee, all with views. And tails. The chickens were already safely locked up, so early this morning was our first conversation in ten days. They came running out of Fort Squawk, muttering about how thirsty they were, ignored the food, drank deep of the fresh water, then returned to the food. I had a sense of being invisible…until I spoke.
“Did you miss me?”
They looked up. Mimo, “Oh it’s you.”
Pecorino, “Gods look so much the same.”
“We do?”
Mimo nodded, “Beings that rise into the sky. Seen one, seen ‘em all.”
Pecorino, “Voices, on the other hand, completely different. Ignore differences in sound at your peril.”
Mimo, “At your peril,” said Mimo slowly and emphatically.
“I thought Pecorino was the one who repeated things?” I asked without thinking, which is my state of mind at an early hour after a cross-country flight. Quite automatic of action, me.
“Adjustments,” said Mimo, enigmatically.
And Pecorino echoed.
Two characters on our plane journeys stuck in my mind. The first was a man in his late twenties who had achieved a degree in engineering at one of our large colleges. He said he was greatly interested in history but he responded, when I asked whether he had taken a course or entered that section of the college library, “No.”
“They have a very good history of science group at… [beat] So what liberal arts courses did you take?”
“I don’t recall. They were the kind of thing you took for a B.”
He was a platoon leader in an army reserve engineering unit and so wanted to know more about military history.
“What would you like to know? I’m not expert in everything, but I might be able to tell you where to look.”
“There was, like, a war in Eastern Europe somewhere?”
“Can you give me a little more information?”
“It was in like, the nineties?”
“Nineteen nineties, or earlier?”
“I have a friend who was in it.”
“Bosnia?”
“That’s the one.”
“What would you like to know?”
“What was it about?”
He asked question after question. The next subject was “some library in Egypt.” He’d seen something about it on the television. Eventually I had to withdraw from the conversation, really quite puzzled by the mismatch between his seemingly genuine curiosity and his complete unwillingness to look things up or to read a book. When I asked him about that, he said he “didn’t read much.”
On one of the homeward flights a huge guy carrying a tiny kid folded himself beside me into one of the two-across seats. I said something like, “They don’t design these for people like you.”
“Isn’t that the way?” was his response. The kid smiled; he smiled. I was introduced to the stuffed lamb, who was called “Lamby lamb” or some such name. Such a cute kid. But all kids get cranky when tired and confined, so out came the tablet and the movie. I watched the kid watching the screen. At one point she roared when a large animal joined the action. Roared quietly. And smiled at me. The kid had cute all buttoned up.
I noticed, not because I am ahead of any curve of awareness but because my students write about this kind of thing, that none of the characters in the cartoon on the tablet looked like her. Of course no one looks like three pugs on a plane—you probably know the movie; I didn’t—but there was Santa Claus…white…and other characters…white…and here she was, oblivious as a chicken…for the nonce. Maybe by the time she and her sister grow up—the mother, sitting across the aisle, had the very young baby sister—we’ll have improved humanity’s situation in regard to cartoons and chairs.
(My brother-in-law is very tall. It’s an issue when we rent cars together, pick out which hotel has what kind of bed, play competitive ping pong. Enormous wingspan.)
What a treat to have the whole family together, all four of us in the same car, hiking and touring cideries in the Finger Lakes region of New York. It felt as if the pandemic is fading. Not, however, as quickly as people who step into hotel elevators without a mask seem to imagine. No one has declared vaccines one hundred percent effective.
So yes, traveling is still a little scary, but this was the week J. could get off, so away we went. As did everyone who had a graduation to attend, a wedding to attend, so on. The airports were crowded and the flights all full.
One of the things this Dad has been known to say to his daughters: “conversation is practice.” I don’t know why some people get more aphoristic as they get older, but I do. What I mean by those words is that it’s easy to pick up a conversation with someone with whom you have practiced, so it’s important to practice. If there is a long gap between conversations, all present have to learn again the patterns of intimate speech, speech beyond social pleasantries. Happily I can report that by the end of the trip we not only had managed well together; we were back to family riffing, which is a comedic pleasure. And we all sang, which eventually tried the patience of those who are paid-up members of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Music (SPCM).
On my return I did not riff with the chickens. Who wants to riff at six of the hay hem? Neither did I find any eggs. We’ll have to see what develops.
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
