The Colonel hasn't been out in public much lately, but current photographic evidence perused on social media indicates that it has gotten a little shaggy out there.
The Chicom Cold has shuttered our barber shops, and we've become so starved for any novel stimulation, intellectual or not, that head hygiene and grooming experimentation has become a widespread epidemic...
...too soon?
And..., the Colonel has to admit... he's become part of The Great Shagginess.
There once was a time that the Colonel's haircut motto was "once a week, whether needed or not." In fact, early in his career as a ruggedly handsome soldier of the sea, he bought a set of electric hair clippers and began cutting his own hair (or, at least what was left of it due to early onset follicle failure) every Monday morning shortly after reveille. Set on the lowest level, the Colonel's clippers cropped his blond mane so tightly against his shiny grape that on sunny days he was occasionally buzzed by search and rescue helicopters.
That $20 investment paid for itself in the first month. The Colonel has been plowing the savings on barber shop visits (and comb purchases) back into his gunpowder addiction ever since. He hasn't counted either recently, but the Colonel is relatively certain that the number of hairs left on the top of his brain housing group are greatly outnumbered by the lead launchers in his gun safe.
It occurred to the Colonel the other day that he had the wherewithal to be of service to his fellow man and do his part to fight back against the scourge of The Great Shagginess.
The Colonel's best friend -- the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda -- came looking for the Colonel the other day,
"There you are, knucklehead," she cooed, finally finding the Colonel sitting in a chair at the end of the long drive winding from the Big House down to the county road.
(Some may think her tone was more condescending that coo, but most don't know the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda like the Colonel does. One man's condescension is another man's coo.)
"What are you doing? And, why do you have your generator down here."
"Silly dear," the Colonel cooed (the Colonel doesn't dare condescend to the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda), "they won't run without electricity."
"What won't run?"
"These," the Colonel answered, holding his hair clippers aloft in his palms as if presenting an offering to the gods of shorndom.
"Your hair clippers? You haven't touched those in over two months? Why are you cutting your hair down here at the road?"
"The Colonel is not cutting his own hair, dear."
"Well, why not? You're starting to look like you just staggered down out of the mountains at the end of a long winter."
The Colonel ignored the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda's lack of geographic knowledge -- there's not a mountain anywhere near staggering distance from his vast land holdings here at the shallow northern end of deep southern nowhere. Instead, he addressed her query regarding his operational pause in the grooming standards attack,
"Haven't had a reason to get a haircut or shave, lately. You know the Colonel only shaves when he goes to church, and we haven't been allowed to meet in person for the past two months, so..."
The comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda stood in front of her man with her arms crossed in that endearing way that the Colonel knows means that she's trying very hard to fathom the depths to which her love for him dives.
"I'm trying very hard to remember why I love you," she stated in the matter of fact way she reserves for the moments when she attempts to control her emotions.
The Colonel was beginning to grow uncomfortable with his bride's struggle to find the right words to express her love and admiration for her man, "That's okay, dear. The Colonel knows you love him. But, as important as that is to you at this moment, there is a much more important mission on tap."
The Colonel stood and gestured to the scrap of plywood propped up by a feed bucket at his feet. In the Colonel's practiced military all-caps he had printed,
FREE HAIRCUTS
The comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda looked at the sign and then back at the Colonel. The light in her eyes dimmed ever so slightly as if something in the very depths of her soul had just been placed on life support. She uncrossed her arms and let them fall to her sides in the dainty way that the Colonel knows means she is surrendering to his superior logic and intellect.
"Knucklehead, you aren't a barber. You can't give haircuts without a license."
The Colonel raised his right index finger in his time-worn signal that he is about to achieve and maintain argument superiority, "Don't need a license -- ain't chargin' nothin'. Besides, it's a free country."
"It's a free country."
Seems the Colonel doesn't hear that refrain near as much as he used to.
"It's a free country," used to be one of the more popular statements used in American discourse.
If the Colonel wanted to do something out of the mainstream of popular culture or social acceptability, he placed his hands on his hips and declared, "It's a free country!"
If the Colonel wanted to do something out of the mainstream of popular culture or social acceptability, his contemporaries shrugged their shoulders and expressed their passive disapproval with, "It's a free country."
Seems a quaint notion today.
It once wasn't so quaint. "It's a free country," was once the operating principle upon which Americans based the conduct of their daily lives. It was also the lens through which the free citizens of our republic gauged the actions of those they had placed in government with the express responsibility of protecting their freedoms.
When the founders of our republic crafted the Constitution, they not only established a strong federal form of government -- as opposed to the inherently inoperative confederation that preceded it -- they also carefully placed limits on the federal government, intended to protect the rights of the two constituents to that federation -- citizens and states.
The founders knew that they had created a form of national government that would inherently seek to increase its power over the individual sovereign states, at the expense of their right to self-determination; and over the individual citizens, at the expense of their God-given civil rights. The founders thoughtfully debated the tension that would exist between the government and the freely governed, and added amendments to our Constitution -- colloquially known as the "Bill of Rights" -- that specifically addressed concerns about what a government -- any government -- would or could do to its constituents.
The First Amendment addressed freedoms at the leading edge of the individual desires that had driven men and women who, eschewing comfort and security for the hope of greater freedom and opportunity, left the relative comfort and security in the "civilized" Old World to take up the challenges of settling the New World:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
The next seven amendments garner the lion's share of attention. The second and third amendments specifically addressed individual rights that had been abused by the British Crown -- maintaining personal weapons and quartering troops in private residences. The fourth through eighth amendments specifically limit the government's actions, and protect the rights of citizens, within the legal system.
The Colonel thinks that the last two amendments, the two to which too little attention is paid today, are the most important pieces of the entire document.
The Ninth Amendment, "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people," is the hidden jewel in the crown from which all the other jewels draw their stability. The men who put the plan of our government on paper, wise as they were, knew that they could not fathom the depth of freedoms granted men by God. They made sure, in the Ninth Amendment, to place a fence around the government -- a moat around the zoo's lion exhibit, if you will -- to restrain the inherent bent toward federal government over-reach.
But, remember, there are two constituents in our Republic's Constitution -- the people and the states. The Tenth Amendment to our Constitution mirrors the Ninth in this regard: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Why is the Colonel's pedantry on this topic germane today, you ask?
The Colonel answers with a simple question: Where do you sit as you read this, and why?
Our governments -- people we placed in positions of authority and responsibility at the local, state, and national level -- have decided that, for our protection, they must restrict our freedom.
The Colonel has no problem with a government (the lion on the other side of the moat that is our Constitution) recommending that he self-restrict his own freedom of movement and association.
But...,
It's a free country.
Tread on the Colonel's God-given freedoms..., tread on the freedoms of his cherished grand-progeny..., tread on the freedoms of the American people... one step further than is absolutely necessary to address the current crisis and the Colonel, and millions like him, will strike back with venom at the ballot box.
The Colonel can't help but be a bit pessimistic even in the best of times. He's a planner. A military-trained planner.
There is no such thing as "worst-case" planning in the military. The going-in assumption is that something (a lot of somethings) will go wrong. If you don't plan for the worst case as a matter of course, you will most often fail.
Successful military planners never use the word "hope."
So, the Colonel, without a glimmer of hope allowed to rest lightly on his faltering optic nerves, always thinks about what bad thing could happen next.
He doesn't worry. He ain't afraid of nothin' or nobody...
...except the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda.
The Colonel's planning pessimism is not rooted in worry. It comes of a life-time spent in the study of history. Not the inanity of names and dates. No, to study history is to dig deep into the cause and effect of events.
To truly study history is to understand the major events that shaped the arc of humanity in the past, and to gain a healthy appreciation for probable major events that will challenge humanity in the near future.
The current Chinese Communist Party abetted pandemic sweeping the globe is nothing new. Pandemics have swept the globe dozens of times in recorded history. They will sweep again. Humanity will never be completely immune to the effects of viruses whose very existence is based on the natural drive to adapt to and overcome immunities.
So, the Colonel is not at all surprised by the virility and spread of COVID-19. In fact, he's been expecting something like it. Not because he has any special prescience -- he just studies history. And history tells him that these things happen fairly regularly.
This morning, the Colonel has begun to wonder if and when the next shoe will drop.
Major events like pandemics, natural catastrophes, economic disturbances, wars, or social upheavals rarely happen in isolation. They are often inter-connected -- causing, or exacerbating one another. For microcosmic example, local epidemics often follow on the heels of natural disasters that compromise sanitation.
What the Colonel "what ifs" (he doesn't worry, remember) about is the effect a really huge (but certainly not unprecedented) natural catastrophe would have on modern civilization -- particularly at a time when (like the current pandemic) society is already under stress.
What if the New Madrid fault were to slip? (For you Bama and LSU grads, the Colonel ain't talking about some Spanish wardrobe malfunction.) A little over 200 years ago, a series of major earthquakes occurred along a mid-continent fault that runs through and near the town of New Madrid, Missouri. Three of the temblors -- spaced about a month apart -- have been estimated to have been somewhere between 7.5 and 8.0 on the Richter Scale.
Those are big shakes.
Fortunately, the population of the region at the time was sparse. The human death toll was minimal.
The physical effects were, in a word, frightening.
Were a similar earthquake to strike today, the metropolitan areas of Memphis and St. Louis (along with scores of smaller towns in the region) would cease to exist as viable places of habitation. Very few multi-story buildings would be left standing. Highway and railroad bridges across the Mississippi River would be compromised, at least; dropped, at worst. Pipelines of all types -- feeding cities across the nation -- would be ruptured. Electrical transmission grids would be destroyed. Roadways would be impassable. Ten million souls in the region would be instant refugees -- with no way to get away except on foot.
Oh..., and geologists, archaeologists, and seismologists who study the New Madrid Fault, say that earthquakes, like the ones 205 years ago, have occurred every 200 to 500 years in the past.
But, hey, it might not happen again for another 300 years...
Okay, let's talk volcanoes, then.
Cataclysmic volcanic activity has been a geologic constant throughout history of our planet. And, when the Colonel uses the word "cataclysmic," he ain't talking about your run of the mill Pompeii-burying Vesuvius, or the more recent Mount St. Helens or Mt. Pinatubo eruptions. Those were small potatoes compared to what our planet is capable of.
Out west, in our great Republic's fly-over country, is a volcanic caldera the size of Rhode Island. Millions of folks visit it yearly. The geologic wonders of Yellowstone National Park are the result of a thin part of the Earth's crust under which bubbles a monstrous plume of molten rock. The last truly cataclysmic eruption at Yellowstone was approximately 640,000 years ago.
So, we're due, right?
The projections for the effects of another Yellowstone mega-eruption are awe-inspiring. The ash fall, alone, will cover a majority of the continental United States in a layer of pulverized rock thick enough to collapse structures. Actually, it won't be "ash" as in wood ash. It will be microscopic bits of volcanic glass, which will lacerate lungs and kill..., unless you are protected by, get this, an N-95 mask.
A volcanic mega-eruption, anywhere on the globe, will truly alter the climate. No tax in the world will fix it.
Volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis caused by earthquakes -- our planet constantly challenges life's foothold. The terrestrial threat is great -- the extra-terrestrial threat even greater.
Chunks of rock and ice zipping around our solar system have a habit of running into things -- like each other, planets, moons, and our star. Over the last few decades we have become painfully aware of the threat. The Colonel won't belabor it.
The Colonel will, however, bring to your attention an even more likely extraterrestrial threat to humanity -- and it comes from our star.
From casual daily and seasonal observation, ol' Sol seems a constant. Our sun is in fact a changeable and tempestuous star. That it provides a predictable supply of light and warmth allows us the dangerous luxury of ignoring it's life-altering capabilities.
The Colonel refers to what he believes is one of the single greatest threats to humanity's existence on this wet rock -- a coronal mass ejection (CME) from our sun.
A CME is solar burp of magnetized plasma. CMEs occur quite regularly -- three to five times a day, depending on the 11-year cycle of solar activity -- and vary greatly in intensity. Really large CMEs -- fired off in our direction (or rather in the direction of where our planet will be when the CME arrives at our orbital distance from the sun) have very intense effects on our planet's magnetosphere and atmosphere. When a very large CME's slug of matter and electromagnetic radiation strikes smashes into our magnetosphere, it compresses it, wraps around the planet, and snaps back in a burst of terawatts of electromagnetic energy -- creating a planet-wide electromagnetic pulse (EMP). If the EMP is strong enough, it pulses through anything that conducts electricity and fries electronic equipment.
The largest EMP-causing CME on record occurred in 1859; named the "Carrington Event" after the British astronomer, Richard Carrington, who observed the immense solar flare and recorded its effects. And, the effects were incredible. The only "electronic" equipment at the time were telegraphs. During the hours-long impact, the Carrington Event CME/EMP surged through telegraph wires, shocking operators and igniting the wooden blocks on which telegraph terminals were mounted.
When a Carrington Event level CME occurs again (and it will) the EMP will render inoperable every un-shielded piece of electronic equipment, and equipment with electronic components, on the planet -- every car, every radio, every battery-operated watch, every TV, every aircraft (outside of gliders), every computer, every cell-phone, every ICU ventilator, every Keurig coffee machine, every... you get the picture.
Even if some piece of equipment happened to miraculously survive the EMP because it was shielded or wasn't plugged in, it still would be useless -- there will be no surviving electric grid available to power it.
A 2008 study, "Severe Space Weather Events—Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts: A
Workshop Report, National Academy of Sciences, 2008," predicted that a Carrington Event level CME/EMP will cause "$2 trillion in damages with a recovery time of four to
ten years."
Oh, and scientists tell us that Carrington Event level CME occur roughly every 100 years.
Enjoy the rest of your fine day... waiting for the other shoe to drop.
