The Night the Earth Stood Still

Note: In December of 1999 the editor at Richmond.com, Richard Foster, asked me to do something with the much-in-the-news Y2K scare. He was happy to let me play with it. The gig had me filing the story a few days before New Year’s Day, to be published on January 3rd. This is what I came up with.

The Night the Earth Stood Still
F. T. Rea
Richmond.com
Monday, January 03, 2000

To Whom It May Concern: Greetings from the waning hours of 1999 in Richmond, Virginia, USA. And, in case it matters, on Earth.

Sitting at a table outside of Puddn'Heads Coffee House on an Indian Summer morning in November, I read a Y2K paranoia article with smug satisfaction as I consumed my daily dose of black coffee.

When I noticed a woman walk by with a mischievous Jack Russell Terrier at her side, I paused to think - who actually believed that anything significant was going to happen just because another page of the Christian calendar was about to be removed and tossed into the cosmic trash bin of time?

The woman looked a bit like Patricia Neal, which brought to mind "The Day the Earth Stood Still," the 1951 sci-fi classic that anticipated a modern society's panic from the sudden loss of all electricity.

Alas, that was only a few weeks ago. A few weeks ago, when I felt so unconcerned about Y2K bugs.

Now my nonchalance about this Y2K business has evolved into something else. Tonight, sitting at my keyboard on Dec. 16, I've started to get spooked by contemplating what's actually going to go down when zillions of pulsing gizmos sense that we have crossed the border between 1999 and 2000.

While I am anything but knowledgeable about matters pertaining to computers and the Internet, the fact is I use them both all the time. Frankly, I don't like to think about a world without word processing and e-mail.

At this point, I don't even know whether my computer will be of any use to me once we cross the great divide. I've been told on some good authority, there is a chance my old 486 may just seize up.

Of course that's a practical fear. Being a writer, I'm naturally concerned about my livelihood.

What is this I'm reading? You ask.

It's days after Y2K. We all know by now that (pick one) a) the Earth has been reduced to a still-glowing fireball; or b) it was all a big bore and we'll never fall victim to mass-hysteria again.

Well, reader, you're one up on me. The real problem looming as I type these words is that I have no idea that modern civilization isn't going to melt down over this splendidly ironic glitch in the system. I'm still weeks behind you, still left to wonder if the lights really will go out at midnight, Jan. 1, 2000. Still left to wonder if it's possible that our whole deal could go down the drain.

So think of this piece as a quaint time capsule beamed into the future - January, 2000.

Despite my Y2K blues, however, I believe that this article will almost certainly appear online as scheduled. I fully expect that you are sitting in front of your monitor reading this on richmond.com.

Then the laugh will be on all the people who admitted they were preparing for all manner of catastrophe. And, I suppose to some extent that will mean me. Fine. I'll be laughing then too.

I hope.

Nonetheless as I sit here, sipping on a bitter Pale Ale, I have no trouble imagining that roving bands of thugs could be out the first night without electricity. Looters could come out of the woodwork. If our toilets won't flush, our phones don't work, and all forms of mass communication are kaput, people could wig out big time.

Then, anything from the familiar post-apocalyptic menu could happen. Yes, I admit it - I'm getting a little worried.

In fact, I'm not at all sure when, or even if, anyone is actually going to read this. It has already occurred to me that maybe the only real point to my writing these paragraphs is to keep my squirmy consciousness occupied.

For that matter, every time a wordsmith plies his trade there is some leap of faith involved: Yes, it will be published. And yes, someone will read it.

Fetching yet another perfectly chilled ale, it just struck me that, for all I know, the entire power grid has gone down hard by the time you're supposed to be reading this.

And you, my dear reader, you could be someone who has stumbled across this material decades into the future. You could be an archeologist studying the artifacts of what remains of civilization circa 1999.

Or, perhaps you are reading this less than a month into the new millennium.

You are huddled in a icy bunker. Your generator-powered PC's monitor is providing the only light for you to pry open the precious can of beans you found in a pile of rubble.

And, with good reason you are reading this little essay with one eye peeled on the only doorway. Your revolver, as always, is at your side. You still have three bullets left.

You could even be the last human being alive. On the other hand, maybe you are not human at all. You could be from ...

Maybe everything is still, frozen timelessly in place.

OK, calm down.

If that is the case, there still could be one last chance. I know it sounds silly, but try saying the following phrase aloud: "Klaatu Barada Nikto."*

How could it hurt?

"Klaatu Barada Nikto!"

From 1999, this is F. T. Rea, over and out ...

Note: *The key line from "The Day the Earth Stood Still" that commanded the all-powerful robot Gort to switch the world's machines back on.

Punch Drunk

Benny Paret (left) died 10 days after this beating.

Note: In this piece I wrote 17 years ago, I anticipated the demise of professional boxing. Looks like I was wrong (again). It was originally published by STYLE Weekly on June 26, 2002

*

In case the sports-minded reader was distracted by the Triple Crown, the French Open, the World Cup, the NBA finals or interleague baseball games during the second weekend of June, please note that pugilist Mike Tyson was in the news as well. This time it wasn't about parole violations. Nor was it anything to do with his oft-stated desire to eat children. It was about the boxing match held in Memphis, Tenn., on June 8.

After an avalanche of pre-fight hype, once in the ring, reigning heavyweight champ Lennox Lewis punished Iron Mike for seven rounds. Perhaps then Lewis was satisfied that the man who had bitten his leg at a January press conference had been sufficiently softened up for the knockout punch. In the eighth, Lewis, 36, sent a bloody and thoroughly beaten Tyson crashing to the canvas for the 10-count. (Click here to see the knockout punch at YouTube.)

The ripples from the Tyson/Lewis affair resonated beyond the traditional audience for boxing. Because of Tyson's much-reported propensity to lose his grip, this was a spectacle with the brand of sizzle that trash culture consumers can't get enough of.

Television's sports talkers went so far as to claim the aforementioned weekend, with its wide variety of stellar attractions, was the greatest weekend of sporting events in history. At this desk it isn't known who keeps track of such records. However, I do have a take on whether professional boxing should still be viewed as a sport in 2002.

In a word the answer is "no."

Boxing is an archaic, sometimes compelling spectacle that features men who bleed for cash. Whether boxers bleed willingly is not the issue. People will do a lot of things for money. Whether the old "sweet science" has overstayed its welcome, that is the issue.

Isn't convicted rapist Mike Tyson, a longtime protégé of boxing boss Don King, precisely the shameless personality we've needed to look directly in the eye to finally ask ourselves, "Why in hell is boxing still around?" Since professional boxing has long been directed by the worst elements of society, why should a civilized people continue to countenance a practice that really has no upside to it?

Boxing calls upon its participants to strive to injure one another in plain sight. No legitimate sport permits that. Violent games, such as football and hockey, allow plenty of contact. But both prohibit players from deliberately trying to injure an opponent.

This scribbler turned the corner on boxing after interviewing a Richmond neurologist, Nelson G. Richards, for a boxing article in 1985. At the time, Dr. Richards was making national headlines for his leadership in persuading the American Medical Association to change its position and call for the outright banning of boxing.

After listening to Richards describe what had been recently learned about how the puncher's blows can move the punchee's brain around inside his skull — apparently it compresses and ricochets like a bouncing rubber ball — boxing's traditional defenses withered for me.

"The public should be made aware of the intentionally dangerous effects of boxing," Richards said.

Beyond the vexing medical and moral considerations of boxing, there are some legal questions, too. Why does the label "boxing" immunize the participants from facing what would be the legal consequences of anyone else repeatedly striking a person with their fists? Why should the presence of ropes, a referee and an audience trump a community's laws against assault and public brawling?

Modern society no longer permits dueling with pistols or swords. Boxing is dueling with fists.

While I don't follow boxing closely these days, at one time I did. I remember watching Emile Griffith literally beat Benny "Kid" Paret to death on TV when I was 14. Paret collapsed into the ropes in such a way that they held him up.

Griffith blocked off the incompetent referee and repeatedly hit the totally helpless Paret until the job was done. It was their third fight, and supposedly, there was some bad blood between them. (Click here to see the almost surreal end of that fight at YouTube, including some commentary by Norman Mailer.)

Given the chance to decide whether this commonwealth should continue to allow professional boxing matches, my guess is, Virginia's voters would say "no." After all, once it becomes an issue, and the pros and cons are debated, how many people would really step forward to defend boxing as a legitimate sport that gives something positive back to the community?

Back to Tyson: Even at his best, 15 years ago, Tyson, 35, wasn't a skilled boxer. He was a hard puncher, a first-round knockout artist. Sonny Liston, a surly heavyweight champion in his day (1962-'64), was a feared puncher, too. But you don't hear many boxing aficionados throwing Liston's name into discussions of the great heavyweights.

For what it's worth, it says here that Tyson and Liston are roughly equal in the all-time heavyweight rankings. Both were brutal. Yet, neither ever showed the deft skills or competitive heart the most revered champions have exhibited.

This is all to say that much of the drawing-card power Tyson brought to Memphis was due to publicity about his wretched doings outside the ring and the ridiculous Holyfield ear-biting incident five years ago.

Immediately after the Memphis fight, with his face swollen and shredded, a subdued Tyson wasted no time in begging Lewis for a rematch in that creepy baby-voice of his.

Don't be surprised to see Tyson's blood flowing on the small screen, again. For every guy who paid $54.95 hoping to see Tyson win, or bite somebody's nose off, there will be another guy happy to see the washed-up bully get thrashed more severely next time around.

Television or not, eventually the boxing match itself is bound to be banished to Third-World countries and offshore barges. It's just a matter of when. Although men such as Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson were seen as heroes in their day, that day is fading into the mists of history.

Hasn't the time run out for putting up with the stench of professional boxing?

*

They Persisted

First elected to the House of Representatives out of San Francisco in 1987, Nancy Pelosi (1940-) served as Speaker of the House from 2007 to 2011. Her fingerprints are all over some important legislation. Since Jan., 2019, she has been serving her second term in that office. She remains the only female Speaker in history.

It should always be remembered that Pelosi has been standing on the shoulders of many brave women. Some of them attended the Seneca Falls Convention that 171 years ago, to this day, kicked off the women's rights movement in the U.S.A.

For instance, in 1916, Jeanette Rankin (1880-1973) was elected to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1917-19. She was one of two at-large representatives for the state of Montana and she was the first woman ever elected to serve in Congress. Rankin was a dauntless suffragette and pacifist. She also served a second term in the House over 20 years later, 1941-43. She was the sort of Republican we don't see much of, anymore.

In 1932 Hattie W. Caraway (1878-1950) became to first woman to be elected to a full six-year term in the U.S. Senate. As a Democrat in the Depression Era she routinely supported Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal measures.

After serving four years in New York's state legislature, in 1968 Shirley Chisholm (1924-2005) won a seat in the House of Representatives. That made her the first Black woman ever to serve in Congress. In 2015 Chisholm was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Nominated by Pres. Ronald Reagan in 1981 the Senate unanimously approved the appointment of Sandra Day O'Connor (1930-) to the Supreme Court. She was the first woman to serve on the high court. In 1992 O’Connor proved to be the swing vote to reaffirm the Roe v. Wade decision in the Planned Parenthood v. Casey case.

In 1948 Madeleine Albright (1937-) and her family (her father was a diplomat) immigrated to the U.S.A from Czechoslovakia; they settled in Denver. After serving as Ambassador to the United Nations for four years, Pres. Bill Clinton then appointed Albright to be Secretary of State. Thus she became the first woman to serve that capacity, which she did for four years.

Two of the Democratic Party's top tier presidential hopefuls for the 2020 race are women -- Sen. Kamala Harris (1964-) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (1949). Largely, next year it will be how women voters cast their ballots that will decide if America elects its first female president. 

-- 30 --

Courage

Norman Rockwell's painting of Ruby Bridges on her way to 

school in New Orleans, protected by federal marshals.

The older I get the more amazed I am when looking back at the courage of the Americans who took it upon themselves to challenge the hate-driven established order concerning race – the segregated public schools, the withheld voting rights, the whites-only lunch counters, etc., in the 1950s and '60s – all during my lifetime.

We still know the names of some of the heroic leaders; especially a few of them who were murdered. But in this instance, I'm remembering the followers who took the beatings and wouldn't be turned around. The demonstrators who marched across a bridge; the parents who sent their kids to previously all-white schools; the Freedom Riders, and so forth.

So today I'm thinking of the folks who didn't become famous for choosing to risk their lives trying to make the country a better place. What courage they had.

Stone Post Sundays

In recent years our group has played the Stone Post Course on Sunday mornings. It was designed by Leo Rohr, who grew up playing Frisbee-golf in Byrd Park. The downhill approach to that target is pictured above; this view is from a position about two-thirds of the way there.

The nine-hole object course gets its name from the target on the par 5 eighth. As this series of photos shows the stone post, itself, is guarded by three wooden posts. Thus, a good player will usually try to approach it obliquely to have an unobstructed view of it.

Although it's my favorite hole on this nine that isn't to suggest I've usually played it all that well. I like it for its circuitous path with various options.