Going Graving

Why is it a "must see" part of any tourist trip of Washington, D.C. to include time at Arlington National Cemetery yet any other part of the country or world visiting graveyards can be viewed as downright creepy? Same thing in Europe where one can hardly consider going without taking in the crypts of Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's Cathedral, all manner of Parisian and Roman Catacombs or even the US National Cemetery at Normandy on the coast of France. Millions of people pay big money to come from all over the world, myself included, to visit the last resting place of the Kennedy Brothers and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier yet few of them wander or even know whom in their own area might be sleeping peacefully just across town.

Graveyards never creeped me out as a child because I never hung out with the kind of friends who wanted to tell ghost stories by the light of a flashlight held under the chin by the side of a tombstone. I was fascinated with them just the same for the simple fact that people were under the ground, as if in some eternal spa, stretched out in their finest clothes and undergoing some long term beauty treatment. Yea, that just got a little macabre, didn't it?

Anyway, the notion of visiting burial grounds in to adulthood stems from still wanting to pay my respects to notable people along with the fact that standing graveside is quite often as close as I'll ever get to some of them in real time. They can't go anywhere and in most cases the entourage of hangers-on and private security have long since died with them or latched on to some other living soul for their livelihood. Add in the fact that most cemeteries and mausoleums do not charge for admission and there's no such thing as a bad seat. Just don't expect them to perform while you're there.

One meaningful visit to a fallen personal hero was the chance to express my condolences and gratitude at the grave of Brian Piccolo who's story was so movingly told in the film "Brian's Song," still a Top 5 favorite movie of mine today.

Thanks to websites such as FindaGrave.Com a particularly enjoyable trip took me one bored Saturday from my then home in Chicago to visit James Dean in his hometown of Fairmount, Indiana. I put a tank of gas in the car and drove through the heart of die hard America, the kind of deep rural country where only people with relatives go. I learned some things along the way, including the fact that Jim Davis, the creator of Garfield is from the same area!

Luther Vandross in New Jersey, George and Martha Washington as well as Abraham Lincoln, Frank Sinatra and Sonny Bono (same small cemetery) in Palm Springs, Marilyn Monroe in Los Angeles, even Buddy Holly in Lubbock, Texas, the list goes on. I never met Michael Jackson in person and he now lies in a restricted area of Forest Lawn in Glendale. Still mourning the loss nearly a year later I have to be thankful at least that I saw him once in concert.

Only, of course, in the middle of 73,000 people, he didn't see me.

Gotta go.

On Eating Organic

The die-hard "meat and potatoes" folks don't know much about wanting or trying to eat right but most other people will at least on occasion pick up an apple or a raw vegetable if for no other reason than they simply taste good. Then there is California where raw, organic and holistic are almost lyrics to the state theme song. After the Galleria arguably the next shrine to west coast living is Whole Foods Market where I decided to go one day for lunch while in Orange County on business.

I remember when "organic" produce was a small table filled with shrunken and shriveled goods still caked in farm dirt at nearly twice as much per pound as the shiny, glowing options on display all around the produce section. Whole Foods Market is a green grocer in virtually every sense of the word "green." Their prepared food section is legendary, offering everything from true vegan to London Broil and the finest locally grown produce around. Me being one who could easily lose a few pounds and trying not to spend every dollar of my per diem at the fast food drive through Whole Foods seemed a perfectly sensible choice to make. Let the shopping begin.

A small green salad with balsamic vinaigrette was an easy choice to begin though it was pure dee murder resisting all of the delectable hot entrees and soups on display, including several chicken dishes, vegetable medleys and rice casseroles. I do love fresh fruit, however, and went for some seedless grapes, a couple of oranges and two organic "Fuji" apples, my favorite type of apple, subtle in flavor and always crisp and crunchy. I wasn't trying to go for a power mix of antitoxins, minerals and vitamins, I just picked up what I like along with a single serve bottle of Odwalla Orange Juice to wash it all down with.

Anybody who has ever purchased that single serve bottle of fresh squeezed Valencia orange juice knows the price of it alone is about the same as any single sandwich at McDonald's. Some twenty dollars later I'm rushing back to the office to eat before my next meeting, cursing myself for the impulse purchases and all the while trying to justify the cost in saying at least the oranges, grapes and apples would last me more than just one meal. A third of that and I could have had some sort of combo meal at Mickey-Ds or Chick-Fil-A, maybe even super-sized.

All of the products were delicious and certainly did a body good but I must admit I didn't notice much difference in taste or texture between my organic apples and the ones laced with carcinogenic pesticides, fertilizers and growth hormones. If the taste is the same and I'm paying a premium merely for not introducing those chemicals in to my body then why not pay less instead of more? Eating healthy with commercially grown produce is costly enough over fast food so why are organic groceries even more expensive than that? Seems to me that if they really wanted to get people to eat better then they would sit between those two options, pricier than a hamburger but healthier and less expensive than "Frankenfood."

Natural, organic food, it seems, has come a long way up. Now if only the price would come down.

Gotta go.

Target Destroyed

I had just gotten home from work, put away some clean clothes and whipped up a quick roasted tomato-garlic pasta dish. Another day near an end as I cast around on the web for something I can read or watch while munching. Sometimes I can indulge a taste of the grotesque or at least unusual during dinner but decided I'd rather not worry about my constitution or moral compass this evening. I'd seen just about every documentary there was on lions, orcas and boa constrictors along with homemade videos of laughing babies, howling beagles and Honey-I'm-Home-From-The-War or Pregnant family surprises Looking around for something, anything old but new, something I at least hadn't seen in a while.

I have to admit I can whip up a fairly quick and tasty plate of pasta so there wasn't much time before dinner started to get cold and I would need that mental cool down from the office. Then it hit me: I'd spool up something from YouTube on Korean Air Lines Flight 007. Back when South Korea had only one international airline, back when long-range flights had to stop in Alaska to make it across the Pacific, back when Reagan was in the White House and the Cold War in full swing, #007 was the regular service between New York City and Seoul with a fuel stop in Anchorage.

The short version is this: a Boeing 747 with 269 passengers and crew on board flew a beeline directly to Seoul from Alaska over Siberia instead of a longer hook-route well to the south over Central Japan to avoid Soviet air space. The beeline route flew first over the Kamchatka Peninsula and then over southern tip of Sakhalin Island, a place few westerners had ever heard of before, alerting the Soviet Air Command to each intrusion. He-said/she-said later, after the second unauthorized incursion missiles were fired that destroyed the airplane and all on board, including 22 children.

The Soviets denied it, then blamed the US for provoking the whole thing as a way to test their defenses. The U.S, of course, went off and the world held its breath, horrified at the loss of life yet far more alarmed that this might be the last straw to a winner-take-all (or what might be left of the world) war between the two superpowers. The investigations that followed pointed to navigational errors (duh), conflicts between Korean top-down societal hierarchy versus cockpit check and balance procedures (did anyone question the captain when clearly someone should have) and the then-standard Western cries of Soviet paranoia and over-reaction. Even today the whole incident may be largely resolved yet still hotly debated concerning the overriding contributing factor(s).

The biggest results from this aerial Titanic? Certain air routes through this part of Siberia are now authorized while Reagan himself ordered the release of then-classified GPS technology to the private sector specifically so mistakes like Korean Air-007 would not happen again. As for the incident itself it is, sadly, largely forgotten save for the families of the victims, aviation aficionados and government watchdogs.

And it all happened on September 1st, 27 years ago today. May they rest in peace.

Gotta go.