Everything I need to know about fire safety I learned in the Boy Scouts

If only there were some real Eagle Scouts among Los Angeles's leadership.

There is a lot that I could say about the wildfires in Southern California right now.   I suppose first and foremost is that the situation might the the worst example yet of ignoring reality for the sake of "feelings".  The requisite water resources, personnel, and methods of delivery for all intents and purposes did not exist.  It had been eliminated in favor of progressive programs and policies.  Like f'rinstance a tiny fish that apparently is not endangered at all.

That alone qualifies the L.A. fires as being a man-bred horror straight out of an Ayn Rand novel.

The thing of it is, fire is not really all that complex a concept.  We learned much about fire in fourth and fifth grade at school, including what is required for fire to start and what to do if God forbid you or someone else catches fire.

I suppose that more than anything right now, watching what's happening around Los Angeles, is that I'm reminded of the Fire Safety merit badge in the Boy Scouts.  Fire Safety isn't required for Eagle Scout, but it's such a basic set of knowledge that the vast majority of scouts who stick with the program earn it and usually sooner than later.  I earned my Fire Safety badge at a "merit badge college" that our local district had every winter at Rockingham Community College.  It was a course that lasted for two hours and we learned quite a bit about fire and how to be cautious with it.  One of the things that came as a surprise to me - I was twelve at the time - was that sometimes firefighters and land management people purposefully set fire to the forest floor.  This is called a "controlled burn" and it is very useful in destroying useless scrub, rotted undergrowth and fetid material that really would be potential fuel for a serious forest fire.  Controlled burning gets rid of that, makes the forest cleaner, and has the added benefit of bringing nutrient back into the soil.

It's not all that hard to do.  I've seen it done before.  I know a lot of firefighters who have taken part in controlled burns.

I mention that because President-to-be Donald Trump and others have touched upon controlled burning.  It is absolutely something that California's government should have been doing for a long time already in preparing for the outbreak of wildfires.  This is a basic tool of wise land management and it is very foolish to not have been employing it.

Folks, fire really isn't that hard a notion to grasp.  When there's heat and air and a source of fuel, they can come together and start fire.  It's then a matter of taking one or more of those elements out of the equation.  A cool head (pun maybe horribly intended) will readily know what is the best way to do this in a particular situation.  Just as that same mind will recognize the potential for fire in an environment, and understand how to prevent it from breaking out at all.

Maybe California should hire some old-school scoutmasters and merit badge counselors to come in and teach basic fire safety to the officials of Los Angeles and the surrounding areas.  If an adolescent can grasp such things, there is no excuse for grown adults to not have that knowledge also.

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Video of Michael Jackson's hair fire made public 25 years later

It's probably going to get yanked as soon as you try to view it, but rest assured: this will be showing up on YouTube for many years to come...

Well, there it is: Michael Jackson's hair catching fire during filming of a Pepsi commercial in 1984, in footage published for the first time by US Magazine. This is something that had grown to legendary proportions long before Jackson's death a few weeks ago. And at the time this was a huge story.

Seeing this at last, the only thought that really comes to mind is "My God..." This was a far more gruesome mishap than I can recall ever hearing it described. Amazingly, Jackson was still dancing for several seconds, completely unaware that his head was ablaze.

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THE DEADLY ART OF DEEP-FRIED TURKEY

While going through some older videotapes I found this, made during the first Christmas that Lisa and I were married. This was at her parents' place in Calhoun, Georgia and is a chronicle of the third turkey that I'd ever fried. Since then I've done many more (and have become much better at it, I think). Lisa was running the camera and the guy you see sitting in the chair with the University of Georgia cap is her dad:

I might make another video about turkey-frying as we get closer to Thanksgiving, this one doing a step-by-step from marinading the bird, to actually frying it. But this one gives a pretty good idea about the process and the extreme danger involved :-)

EDIT 11-18-2007 10:25 a.m. EST: I've decided to stop publicly showing this video, because I'm taking a lot of heat for how "burnt" the turkey looks. And in all honesty... yeah it could look better for the camera. Trust me though: this was much better than how it appears here! I'm going to be frying another one this week, and film it with a new high-definition camcorder, so hopefully it will be a much better show :-)

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MAN ON FIRE: What ALMOST happened to protest uniforms at Reidsville schools

This morning I was going back though the past few months of blog posts looking for something I'd written pertaining to education. In the course of searching I found the video of WGSR's Star Talk on June 14th where Mark Childrey interviewed me about my plans to address the July 9th meeting of the Rockingham County Board of Education while dressed as a Jedi Knight. It was all to protest the "Standard Mode of Dress" (legalese for "school uniforms") at Reidsville Middle and Reidsville High schools that the board had approved.

As was reported here a few weeks later, the board wound up rescinding the earlier vote to implement the policy after POTSMOD (People Opposed To Standard Mode Of Dress) turned the meeting into a media spectacle with picketing by students, black armbands and not just a Jedi but an "escaped convict" too :-)

Well, I watched the video again and it got to the part where I was alluded to Mark that I had "something much more outrageous" in mind if the board continued to refuse to acknowledge us. What this was, I told Mark, would "drop jaws all over the place".

Fortunately, the board did hear us out. And we are thankful that they did and that they overturned their initial vote for the uniforms.

But I was not bluffing. There was something that I had planned to do if the board, at the July meeting, continued to deny our protests.

If the Jedi Costume didn't grab their attention, I was seriously intending to escalate this thing, big time.

The only people who've known about this before now were my wife Lisa, Samantha Fettig of POTSMOD, Richard Moore, "Weird" Ed Woody, and just a few others. They were all sworn to secrecy about it. They also, every single one of them, tried their darndest to talk me out of doing this.

But after studying it long and hard and figuring that (a) if it was in the public interest to do this then I'd have no problem with attempting it and (b) it would be an awesome experience if I survived, I was all the more bound and determined to be ready to do this.

So what was it?

If, after the July 9th meeting, we could not help but believe that the Rockingham County Board of Education was not interested in our concerns about the school uniforms and why we did not want them, then I was going to pick a date and send out a whole wazoo-load of press releases, telling every TV and radio station, newspaper, blogger and whoever else came to mind to be at a certain spot at a certain time.

When the press was all situated, I was going to come out wearing one of those flame-proof suits that cover you from head to toe, set myself on fire, and with the cameras rolling stand there with a sign saying "SCHOOL UNIFORMS BURN ME UP!"

The effect was hopefully going to be like what you see in the photo on the right.

The plan was for me to stand there for several seconds all lit up holding the sign, long enough for everyone to get good footage and pics, and then have volunteers with fire extinguishers douse out the flames.

So intent on going through with this was I, that the announcement of my plan for it was written into the first draft of my speech before the board. Luckily a cooler head (bad pun I know) prevailed and the "threat" didn't make it into the second version of the remarks. But I can only imagine what the look of horror on the faces of all those board members might have been, had I gone through with publicizing it that night...

...and especially what the reactions from a certain few of the members would have been. You see, they're the ones who know me. We've been friends for many, many years. And they would be the first to tell you that they KNOW that I am outrageous enough to try something like this! Emphasis on "try": they're well aware that I would take a stab at it even if success wasn't guaranteed. If the stunt might be glorious and spectacular, that's all I need to know to want to attempt it. Although so far as physical danger goes, this would have been one of the more daring things that I'd have ever considered.

Would I have really done this? For my brothers and sisters in POTSMOD and for the kids at Reidsville Middle and Reidsville High schools, you bet that I would have.

Thankfully (and I really can't stress that nearly enough), things didn't get to that point at all. The board voted 7-3 at the July meeting to overturn the uniforms policy at the two schools. So ever since classes started a few weeks ago the middle and high school students in Reidsville get to wear whatever they want, so long as it adheres to the reasonable dress code.

But for a few weeks there, in the summer of 2007, Rockingham County was almost the site of its very own version of the Burning Man tour.

Look, it could have been worse. At least I didn't have The Wicker Man in mind when I hatched this crazy plot...

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