National security level is metallic green with hand-stitching and bamboo detail

You know that I have always valued the safety of my colleagues and customers. And when I worked at a prestigious national laboratory, I took my job as the safety officer for my group seriously.

When I became the division environment, safety, and health officer, however, I was thrust into the rarefied world of Bureaucracy Safety, which bears no resemblance to reality as most of us experience it. That the Manhattan Project scientists did not have a formal safety program and relied on common sense had no bearing on present-day operations at the prestigious laboratory. It was enough to know back in 1944 that if you put your lips on a sphere of plutonium, you were asking for trouble, and if you were carrying the business end of a bomb, you'd go carefully with it if you loved your arms and legs.

As the division environmental officer, for example, I attended meeting after meeting on how our administrative operation could reduce its carbon footprint. The meetings were always held downtown, which necessitated using a vehicle, and we had reams of paper to read, reams of paper to write our environmental plans on, reams of paper with notes about our reams of paper. We had to explain in great detail why our administrative operations did not use solvents for removing aircraft hydraulic fluid. Irony was lost on the leaders of the meetings.

We had safety procedures for every imaginable operation. Need to change out the carboy in the water cooler? We had a procedure. Need to insert earplugs when the custodian was vacuuming? We had a procedure ("Do not insert the earplugs into your nostrils."). Need to dispose of a blade used to cut foam core? We had a procedure. Need to use some correction fluid? We had a procedure and a material safety data sheet. No trivial, everyday, ordinary act was so insignificant that the Powers That Be could not throw common sense out the window and create a thorough, detailed, multi-page procedure for doing it in a vain attempt to protect us from ourselves. Naturally, the people actually doing the jobs resented the procedures, and human nature being what it is, they looked for loopholes.

It put me in mind of when I was the municipal judge in Maxwell and had to enforce an ordinance that forbade tying your horse to anything that the horse could nibble on. "No horse shall be tethered, tied, fastened, bound, or trussed to any bush, shrub, tree, sapling, or sprout in such a way that the horse may feed on, eat, masticate, manducate, nibble, or chew on said bush, shrub, tree, sapling, or sprout." So if a person were hauled into municipal court because he tied up his horse at the mercantile and it ate the lilacs out front, he could get off without a fine because he could say he "lashed" his horse to the lilac, and it was "noshing" on the leaves. So the village council would revise the ordinance to include lashing and noshing and hoped that no one would "hitch" a horse in such a way that the horse could "munch." Things could get out of hand pretty quickly.

But I digress. After the attacks of September 11, the prestigious national laboratory instituted a policy to ensure that all bags, briefcases, luggage, purses, backpacks, and lunch buckets were affixed with ID tags with the owner's name and phone number on them. See, in addition to hating freedom, terrorists do not tag their bags. The bomb boys were afterwards regularly dispatched to "disrupt" somebody's untagged lunch bucket. (And yet when the casing of Fat Man was on a flat bed truck in our parking lot, did it turn anyone's head? Nooo-oooo-ooo.)

We had to evacuate a month or so ago because the County guys who were working on the roof of the museum next door had left an untagged cooler in front of the building. The street was cordoned off, the cops told us to evacuate the store, and the bomb boys were called. We were very excited about the prospect of watching them blow up--er, disrupt--the cooler, even though several people were hollering at the cops, "It's the County guys' soda! They're still on the roof. Ask 'em!" After standing out on the sidewalk for 45 minutes or so and explaining to our bemused visitors about laboratory safety, we were allowed to resume business. The bomb boys never showed, much to the disappointment of those of us who were anticipating an appearance by the little bomb-disrupting robot.

On Columbus Day, one of the folks from the museum next door came cantering into the store and said that they had a suspicious package and were evacuating the building. I asked what the package was. He replied, "It's a green purse in the ladies' room! You should evacuate!" I told him that purses left in restrooms aren't really so uncommon and that I'd evacuate when the cops or bomb boys told us to, but in the meantime, I wasn't closing because some visitor left her purse in the john.

Again the cops cordoned off the streets. Again the bomb boys didn't show. The museum guy came in to ask whether we knew the phone numbers of the museum director and safety guy, because nobody knew how to get hold of them. Meanwhile, the cops apparently opened the purse, found the owner's cell phone, called her husband, and made the world safe for democracy.

The museum visitors spent the whole time in the store, and we did land-office business for about an hour and a half.

Have you tagged your evening bag, m'dear?

Hailstorms and Hiroshima

Today a customer came into the store with a gift for us: a copy of a catalog of drawings and paintings made by survivors of the bombing of Hiroshima, Zuroku Genbaku No E: Hiroshima O Tsutaeru = A-Bomb Drawings by Survivors. We were certainly grateful for the book as a welcome addition to our atomic history section; it's beautifully done, with text in Japanese and English, and the images are sobering.

The woman, who said she had never been in the store or the Bradbury Science Museum, said that we need at least one book to present the other side of the story in the war with Japan. (If she had browsed only briefly, she would have learned that we do present "the other side," in addition to nonproliferation and peace studies. You can't have a bookstore owned by two left-leaning lesbians and not have representation from "the other side.")

As our conversation continued, it was obvious from the reek of cigarettes on the woman's breath and on her clothes from her raspy voice that she was a heavy smoker. She also had a dandy cough: "I'll tell you why ack-ack-awwrrrgggh! you had that ack-ack hailstorm! It's because of chemtrails. Ack-ack-ack-awwwwrrrggggg! Ack! They're poisoning our lungs with ack-ack-acka-acka-acka chemicals and messing with the environment. If you have chemtrails acka-acka-awwrrrrrgggg! you're going to have violent ack-ack-ack-ack hailstorms. Ack-ack-ack-awwrrrrrrrggggggh!"

My own chemtrails, however, are perfectly ack-ack-awwwrrrrrgggh! harmless.

Childhood fears

Chuckbert's post reminded me of a childhood fear I had when we were living over on Alabama Avenue: I was afraid to sit down in the bathtub when I took a bath. I was afraid I'd fall backward and hit my head. The possibility of drowning always hung over me.

An image straight out of a Hitchcock movie

Jack the Laff Riot

Thanks, Chuckbert, for posting the latest carousel o' slides. I remember when Jack took the picture below at Knott's Berry Farm. He asked me to pose with the burro, and I innocently complied. 

Afterwards he delighted in showing this slide to company. Every time the image appeared, he'd ask, "Now. . . which one is the jackass?" And everyone would laugh, and I'd try to make the best of it. But I felt that he was shaming me. See also Chuckbert's Simple Grudge Index.

It's okay. I'm wearing gloves.

I don't know what's happening with food workers in Los Alamos, but it ought to be stopped.

This week I met one of our local authors for coffee at the Coffee Booth. I stepped up to the counter and ordered a coffee in a mug, and the young man got a ceramic mug and inspected it for cleanliness, as the staff there always does. He found a speck of something, and instead of giving me a different mug, he reached inside, scraped the speck carefully with his finger, dumped out whatever was in there, and handed me the mug. I asked for a to-go cup

Several months ago I was standing in line at the Subway next door. The staff there wears plastic gloves on their hands when they prepare the sammitches. The other customers and I watched in disbelief as the young "sandwich artist" scratched her head with her gloved hand and then went back to the customer's order. The customer said, "You just scratched your head!" And the young woman replied, "It's okay. I'm wearing gloves." We went to Ruby K's.

I gave Subway a wide berth after than, but went back about a month ago. This time the young man who was making a sandwich scratched his butt and returned to making sandwiches. The customer said, "You scratched your butt!" The young man replied, "It's okay. I'm wearing gloves." We went to Ruby K's again. (I'm also writing a letter to the president of Subway.)

Michele recalls a time she was at an ice cream parlor in New Hope, Pennsylvania. It was a hot day, and the ice cream in the cone that the helper was preparing began to drip a little. So he licked the drippy part and then handed the cone to the customer. Michele said the only sounds in the place were those of crickets chirping, pins dropping, and tumbleweeds rolling across the deserted streets.


It's okay. We'll put on gloves.

I'm going to vote Republican come fall.

It's a very compelling video.

Kiss anything that shines

On Wednesday morning I took Ike to the groomer for an early morning appointment. When I got to the store, armed guards were in front of the Bradbury Science Museum. They were wearing sunglasses, so you couldn't see whom they were watching, and sidearms, so you wouldn't feel tempted to ask. I figured they were there for a training exercise or something.

But then a busload of suits hove up, and the director of Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Great Man Himself, stepped smartly out of the museum, marched over to the bus, and shook hands with each of the suits as they stepped off. Then everyone swept into the museum like the chorus of Aida vanishing into the Egyptian wings.

I went outside and asked a woman, "Distinguished visitors?"

She replied, "Maybe. Are you with the museum?"

"I'm with the bookstore," I replied. "Are you with the museum?"

"I'm with the police force," she said. Nuance is not lost on me in such situations, and I took that as my cue to leave.

So I walked up the street to get a breakfast burrito, and behind me in line was my friend JR, who is in public affairs at LANL. I asked him if he knew who the suits were. He thought a minute and said, "This is Wednesday, right? They'd be from the Department of Homeland Security." Cool! I thought.

I cantered back to the store with my burrito and the news. I told the staff to put away any liquids or gels in containers holding more than three ounces and to keep their hands where the DHS boys could see them.

The staff of Otowi Station kept their hands in view while DHS visited.

But the DHS folks didn't come into the store to enjoy some shopping for souvenirs. They all boarded the bus as an armed guard checked their badges. I had hoped that The Great Man Himself would have raised his hat with a flourish as the bus drove away. I had hoped that someone would have shouted loyally, "God bless the young squires!"