Category: Tributes

Remembering Lenny Skutnick

Last night's  mid-air collision over the Potomac reminded me of January 1982 and the heroism of Lenny Skutnick:

On a bitterly cold and snowy day in January 1982, Air Florida flight 90 took off from Washington D.C. heading to Tampa, Florida.

Immediately after takeoff the plane began experiencing problems from the ice that had formed on its wings. It plummeted, skipping off Washington’s 14th Street bridge and crashing into the icy waters of the Potomac River.

The ensuing rescue effort was broadcast on local television. Frigid temperatures and bad weather hampered the first responders. With time running out to save the crash victims, a bystander named Lenny Skutnik suddenly jumped in and saved flight attendant Priscilla Trijado, who had twice fallen back into the water after slipping away from rescue lines.

A speechwriter for Ronald Reagan named Aram Bakshian was watching the coverage. He immediately thought Skutnik’s story would resonate with the American people and decided to include it in his draft of Reagan’s upcoming State of the Union address.

Here is Reagan's SOTU tribute to Skutnick.

The low level of humanity tempts some of us to misanthropy. But there is no denying that heroes walk among us. Daniel Penny is another. And there is no denying that the White House from time to time is graced with a truly worthy occupant. Reagan, and now Trump.

Malcolm Pollack is Back in the Saddle . . .

. . . with a series of outstanding posts. Start with A Higher Duty and scroll down.  If I have his story straight, he did not attend college. And it shows. 

UPDATE

A correspondent sends the following comment from a post at Powerline that will help you understand the gravity of the situation at the southern border.  It underscores the outrageousness of the 5-4 SCOTUS decision upon which Pollack comments in the entry cited above:

Diego Palma an hour ago

"The disaster on what used to be the southern border has become such a catastrophe that even a large percentage of clueless nitwits among the citizenry are starting to take notice. I appreciate the seemingly increasing interest on the part of the owners of PLB to address and report on the invasion.

Most people outside of Arab immigrants to America and anti semitic democrats were horrified at what happened in Israel on October 7th and what has been happening to the surviving hostages.

I want to tell all of you plainly, clearly and forcefully that there is a terrorist organization, equally as savage and barbaric as Hamas, that is in total control of our southern border with Mexico. Not only are they in control of our border, but they are venturing further and further into the interior of the United States. They are richer than Midas, numerous and armed to the teeth.

On our land here, there is a wash which extends almost to the town of Cananea in Sonora. A wash is similar to a dry river bed. It only contains water after a decent rain. The Narco coyotes used to use this wash as their "highway" into Arizona. One morning I was out checking on the livestock and at the point where the wash enters from Mexico was something I thought I would never see in real life. The Sicarios had taken mesquite limbs, sharpened both ends, put one end into the ground and impaled the heads of 7 illegals who had tried to enter Arizona without paying their fee to the narcos. I rode to Cananea, got the chief of police and took him to see what I had found. The man bent over and threw up for almost a half hour. He returned to Cananea, drove to Nogales, Sonora, and got the head of the Federales and some of his men to return with him to the scene. Our own CBP had neither the time nor the resources to investigate as Biden has them too busy ushering illegals across the border into our country.

After this incident, I most every night go out and keep watch. It's sort of hard to sleep knowing such monsters are prowling very close to where one sleeps. One night as I was headed to my normal lookout. I heard crying and whimpering which I was certain was coming from women. I crawled up to look over a rise and there in a small sand clearing were a group of women tied up, The men were laying on the ground, and I later found out they had all been stabbed to death. The Coyotes were one by one gang raping these women and girls. As I was alone, there wasn't too much I could do other than fire one of my guns into the air. I rode home in the pitch black as fast as I could and called my friend in Cananea. He notified the federales and we led them to where it had happened. We found the bodies of the men and several of the women. They had been brutally murdered.

Your government is betraying you. Your Republican senators eager to make a horrible deal with the government for the sake of expedited aid to Ukraine are betraying you.

I really don't know what else I can say to you people. I look at most of the politicians in Washington and I see bird brains. Nikki Haley, the darling of the neocon GOP establishment wants to bring one million Arabs from Gaza to live permanently in our country. What is wrong with this woman? What is wrong with the people who know what is going on and look the other way? What is wrong with the people who don't even want to look at all? One of these days these monsters will be looking you in the face. What will you do then?"

Bill Keezer Passes On

Word came last night from Bill's wife Jennifer:

Sadly Bill passed away November 29th. His heart just finally wore out. He spoke of you often and considered you a valued friend.
Bill Keezer was a biologist with lively philosophical, theological, and political interests. We met in the early days of the blogosphere circa 2003 and stayed in touch ever since.  And then we met twice in person when he came to visit me in Arizona.  A stalwart supporter of MavPhil, he kept me supplied with links and memes. Our last serious topic of conversation was theological fatalism.
 
I received his last e-mail on 17 October:
 
Bill,

Just wanted to tell you that one of the more rewarding things I have done recently is sign up for your Substack.  The articles are just about right for my level of understanding and reduced attention span. (My mind is slowing down) 

Peace,

Bill

A third and much younger blogger buddy of both of us, Kevin Kim, said the following about Bill back in aught-nine in a piece entitled, The Wisdom of Bill Keezer:

I don't want to embarrass Bill Keezer by making a habit of slapping his emails up here on the blog, but I do want to hold up a recent email of his.

Bill has been sending emails regularly since this crisis began, and was already a correspondent even before that. He maintains an excellent blog called Bill's Comments (with lengthier thoughts posted at Bill's Big Stuff). He and I probably fall on different parts of the political spectrum (Bill leans more rightward while I'd call myself a centrist), but we share a non-traditional view of Christianity and a great love of scientific thought. The major difference here is that, while I'm a scientific skeptic by temperament, Bill is more: he's an actual scientist. Along with that, and despite (or because of?) his non-traditional stance toward Christianity, Bill is highly active in his own church. I don't want to reveal too much about his personal project, but he's putting together a book that I'm very eager to read.

I often feel I don't deserve the wisdom that Bill dispenses so freely. But he's an excellent, thoughtful writer, and he seems fine with directing so much of that excellence and thoughtfulness toward my family, despite the fact that we've never met face-to-face. Bill generally sends his emails to my address, but I often share them, when they arrive, with Dad. As I said earlier, I don't want to embarrass Bill by making a habit of slapping his emails up on this blog (would you write private emails to someone who consistently made them public?), but I thought you might appreciate his latest. [You can read the rest here.]

Another blogger friend of ours from the early days is Keith Burgess-Jackson who recently called a halt to a 20-year blogging run, in which he never missed a day. In his final post, dated 5 November 2023, exactly 20 years to the day from said blog's inception, he too has good things to say about Bill Keezer:

Fortunately, I've also met many good and decent people through this blog, from Peg Kaplan to Bill Vallicella to Bill Keezer to Steve Burri to Kevin Stroup to Reed Anderson. At least one of them (John Sullivan)  is a friend to whom I speak (usually by texting) on a near-daily basis. Despite having to deal with creeps and crazies such as [Brian] Leiter, including, in 2017, a mob of malicious students who tried (spectacularly unsuccessfully) to get me "canceled" (for committing the unpardonable sin of being a conservative professor!), I have enjoyed every minute of my blogging experience.

All this is by way of saying that . . . I'm calling a permanent halt to posting. I haven't posted much in recent years anyway, but that will stop. I have other and better things to do in my retirement. Looking back, I'm honored to have been present in the heyday of blogging. Alas, in 2023, it is no longer (or not much of) a "thing." Other forms of social media have supplanted it. I can say, proudly, that I never missed a day of blogging. Counting leap years (in 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020), I posted at least one item for 7,306 consecutive days. On some days, I posted well over a dozen items, many of them philosophical (i.e., analytic) in nature. On other days, especially recently, I posted only one item, such as the daily feature "Ten Years Ago Today in This Blog." (Speaking of which, here is my post from 10 years ago today, about this blog.)

My blog was never about philosophy only. It was about whatever interested me at the time, and, frankly, almost everything interests me. I wrote about history, law, economics, politics, world affairs, baseball, cycling, running, technology, journalism, academia, language, religion, music, and many other topics.

For those of you who frequented this blog, thank you. I hope I entertained and edified. I'm 66 and a half years old now and in great health. (I ride my bike at least 20 miles per day. I rode 349 of 365 days in 2022, racking up 7,500 miles. I'm riding almost as much this year.) I have a Twitter (oops! X) presence and an account on Donald Trump's Truth Social, but I rarely post anything on those sites. I use them to see what others are saying. I also have a Substack account, but haven't posted anything there in several months. That may change.

Finally, let me express my gratitude to a benefactor (and friend). The person most responsible (and therefore most to blame) for getting me into blogging back in 2003 is John J. Ray of Brisbane, Australia, whose main blog is Dissecting Leftism. I learned much from John over the years, including, significantly, the importance of respecting religion and religious people even though one is not oneself religious. John was always ready and willing to help me with the technical aspects of my blog. Thank you, John. You are an inspiration. I wish you and yours the very best.

Onward!

 

 

Remembering Quentin Smith

My old friend died on this date last year. If in your life you find one truly kindred soul, then you are lucky indeed. Quentin was that soul for me.  This piece captures the man.  

Quentin Smith was exactly the kind person who’s not supposed to exist in modern, ultra-specialized, ultra-professionalized academia. The kind of philosophy professor who is supposed to exist, the one who responds to emails promptly and knows how to tie a tie and writes just enough articles that 10 other specialists in his tiny sub-sub area will read to jump through all the hoops of tenure and promotion but doesn’t lose enough sleep over the underlying philosophical problems to distract himself from pursuing from the PMC rat race, has some real virtues. That professor will be more responsible than Quentin seems to have been about grading. The cleaning staff won’t be overly troubled by the state of that other professor’s office. And that other professor definitely won’t miss as many classes as Quentin did through absent-minded preoccupation with actual, inner philosophical contemplation. Hell, that other professor probably gets to class 15 minutes early just in case there’s a problem with his PowerPoint.

Quentin was more like one of the rail-riding “Zen lunatics” that Jack Kerouac wrote about in his novel Dharma Bums. Or like Diogenes, the philosopher who ate in the marketplace, shat in the theater, and slept in a giant ceramic jar in the middle of Athens. Quentin was pretty much who Santayana had in mind when he said that the ideal job for a philosopher wasn’t professor of philosophy at a university but tender of umbrellas at some unfrequented museum.