Riggings

I’d be out the next three days. “Be nice to the sub,” I tell my students, “Your goals: one, be the class she writes the nicest comment for; and two, on the comment slip, produce evidence of a sub snooze.”

“A subs news?”

“A sub-sunoooozuh.  Sleepy-sleep.  Nighty-night.  If you’re working quietly, her eyelids will flutter, her head will nod, and mouth ajar, her saliva will pool – on the comment slip.”

A student asks, “Why do you even want to go?”  Another, “Didn’t you teach AP Environmental last year?”

I reach for my readers and the conference presentation schedule and, in a professorial tone, read, “A Cautionary Tail: Attempting to Estimate Survival of Gag Grouper (Mycteroperca microlepis) in the Gulf of Mexico Using Acoustic Telemetry,” and, “Georgia’s intertidal oyster and artificial reefs: an aerial perspective on spatial and geomorphological change.”

“Exactly my point,” says the contentious one.

“Here’s one for you,” I read, “Daily Georgia-EPD sewage spills report: how they happen, what’s in them, and what to do about them.”

“Sounds awful.”

“Sounds like science.  On a side note, if any of you is susceptible to separation anxiety, I’ve arranged a number of counselors to avail themselves for your emotional support in my absence.”

“Thanks, Mr. Hogya, we’ll manage. Turn up for FishCon 2019!  Whoo-hoo!”

The Georgia Chapter of the American Fisheries Society held its annual conference at Lake Blackshear in GA Veterans State Park in Cordele, GA, February 5 – 7.  The GCAFS mission is “to improve the conservation and sustainability of fishery resources and aquatic ecosystems by advancing fisheries and aquatic science and promoting the development of fisheries professionals.”

My science department chair, Rebecca, doubles as the Secretary/Treasurer of the GCAFS and conference planner.  A self-coined ‘outsider’, she was awarded the first annual Outstanding Service Award in 2018 in honor of her conference planning skills.  As skipper, she not only sails the conference clipper, practically builds it anew, plank by plank, every year.  The Outstanding Service Award this year would go to a long-time hatchery man who’d swam up the dam ladder from sac fry to Fishery Manager.  An underling would present his award and cite robust egg production and what pleasure it was to work for such a great guy.

I’ve attended FishCon every year since 2015.  The conference is more to me than a three-day break from school: between brisk fishes talk – twenty minutes, one audience question, next – my teacher peers and I help Rebecca tie the knots, secure the ropes, and raise the conference mast fulfilling the odd dirty job, the below-deck logistics.

First mates were KC (Milton co-department chair and environmental science teacher), KB (former Milton AP Bio teacher, now in Forsyth County), and for one day only, GJ, Milton physical science teacher.  Our mission: keep the conference sail taut and Rebecca’s reputation intact.  Like the Vasa, what could go wrong?

Rig (noun) – a tractor-trailer or large truck

In the conference center parking lot Tuesday morning, under a warm hazy sun, I steered clear of the extended cab for a breezy seat on the wheel arch in the bed of Rebecca’s jet black Dodge Vader Ram Death Star 3500, where I secured ten homemade easels: each a twelve-foot, collapsed bundle of weighty, unfinished pine, packaged for transport in green shrink wrap, each bundle handed up to me by a young, buff fishery professional wearing a trucker hat and bushy beard who said, “They’re not heavy, I’m just weak.”  A southern gent’s way of going easy on an old yank.

Rig (noun) – a person’s costume, outfit, or style of dress (“the rig of the Army corps”)

Rebecca tossed the keys to KC.  She was needed in command central, aka, the BlueGill room.  KC drove us the half-mile from the resort’s conference center out past the Visitor Center, which we’d visit later for State Park car decals, only to discover within a small War Museum, stocked with a surprising surplus of cool relics: vintage helmets, tattered flags, typed letters from the field, and soldier uniforms.

Driving past the Museum’s outdoor static display of helicopters, tanks, cannons, airplanes, and centerpiece – a B29 Superfortress, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb – I imagined myself a tail-gunner until KC rounded the bend into a parking lot carrying enough speed I hunkered down, careful not to get flung over the bed wall.

We off-loaded easels and coolers of ice at Shelter Number 2 (never did locate Shelter Number 1), a finished wood hut with an open floor and windows along all four walls, a large wood-burning fireplace, and kitchen equipped with an industrial stove and ginormous refrigerator that we stocked with soda cans and adult beverages for the evening’s poster presentations and social.

Soon after, a small pickup truck backed up to the shelter with Flint RiverKeepers on the door panel and saggy rear springs.  The bed full, we off-loaded case after case of Shoalie IPA from conference sponsor, Pretoria Fields Brewery, their slogan ‘No Dams Given’.  The next day, I’d recognize the driver’s silver mop-top and beard as he kicked off the Georgia Riverkeepers Symposia with a talk on Georgia instream flow policy.  Silver Hair was the Executive Director of the Flint Riverkeepers.

From Shelter Number 2’s parking lot, we could see the War Museum’s outdoor static display.  GJ wondered at the time whether the B29 Superfortress was a B17.  In the war, GJ’s uncle was shot down in a B17.

My military knowledge near ground zero, I asked GJ, “Which war?”  He laughed, “World War II.  Flying over Austria, the plane riddled, spun out of control and my uncle, the co-pilot, was pinned to his seat by the centrifuge.  The pilot eventually regained control long enough my uncle could free himself and parachute to safety.  The pilot did not survive.”

Rigging (noun) – the ropes and wires supporting the structure of an airship, biplane, hang glider, or parachute.

The B29 was unique for its pressurized cabin and retractable landing gear.  Aircraft mechanics stress the importance of maintaining the landing gear rigging with bullet points and checklists.  On the drive down I-75, KC and I talked shop.  KC discussed his administrative duties, one of which was to read The Checklist Manifesto, How to Get Things Right, by Atul Gawande.

In the parking lot, GJ said, “Which reminds me.  I’ve got a story about covering your seventh period class yesterday after you guys left.”  My spirits descended.  It’s disappointing when your rambunctives misbehave while you’re away.  GJ had just arrived in Cordele that morning, while KC, KB, and I’d left school an hour early the day before.  “You have a boy, Billy Stinger, I believe, who freed himself from his assigned seat.  I couldn’t read your seating chart without my glasses; Stinger made me work to find him.  For my trouble, I gave Stinger and the boy who sits next to him, his wingman, detentions.  Under interrogation, Stinger’s wingman never broke.  It was a reluctant, displaced kid who finally gave Stinger up.”

Back inside, while KB and GJ unfolded metal chairs and tables and spread paper tablecloths across half the meeting room, KC and I used the other half to erect easels and channel our inner Martha Stewart and Marie Kondo, respectively: KC, an organizational maestro and stern taskmaster; me, conflict avoider and seeker of joy.

On Stephen Colbert’s show, after Colbert introduced her, claiming a conundrum even Nobel prize-winning physicists have yet to crack, Marie Kondo pounced on the ultimate domestic riddle – folding the fitted bedsheet.  A contagious smile, Marie collapsed the elastic corners and – pausing to give gratitude to the bedsheet – closed her eyes, spread love through her palms and smoothed and patted and rolled away the airy billows.  Joy.

Rig (noun) – an apparatus, device, or piece of equipment designed for a particular purpose.

KC and I shredded green shrink wrap and extracted the flimsy, stilted easels, positioning all ten easels in a U around our half of the room’s perimeter.  Perfect.  Until we changed our minds.  Utilizing the easel’s back side (cutting our easel needs by half: joy!), we moved five out the door and centered the other five in the space’s interior.  The result, more walkway and elbow room for the college student presenters, the judges (a jury of college professors), and the rest of the 100-plus fishery crowd scheduled for the 7:00pm – 8:00pm student presentations and social later that evening.

Rigged stock – a publicly listed one whose value is increased or decreased through illegal, improper, or contrived methods.  “Very few shares were paid upon in the Company, as it was intended to ‘rig’ them in the market.  The ‘rig’ failed.”

Martha Stewart served five months in a minimum security prison for securities fraud selling stocks on insider information the day before they tanked sixteen percent.  It is unlikely, though not implausible, that one of those stock ticker symbols was RIG, the Swiss off-shore drilling company, Transocean Ltd., implicated in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill that fouled the Gulf of Mexico’s ecosystem for months.

Rigmarole (noun) – a senselessly cumbersome, hassle-filled procedure

After noon, a band of college dudes in ball caps and Chacos and a clutch of girls in skirts and trendy shoes trickled in with their youngish professors carrying tubed research posters.  They struggled with push pins and binder clamps to affix their posters to our easels.  An easel leg would kick out, skid, destabilize and pop a push pin or unleash a binder clamp snapping into the air to leave the poster sagging like a flag on a windless day, a rip hazard.  Cardboard backing would fix (an item for next year’s checklist), but we had none and KC was determined to soldier on.  KC, a decision-maker, passed on radioing superiors back in the BlueGill room.  After a struggle, all collegiate hands on deck, a poster would be tentatively secured only for the next presenter to come along, set-up on the easel’s back side, bump and dislodge everything all over again.  The easels were missing a stabilizing cross-bar or strap-rigging.  One group gave up, ignoring the only framed wall ‘art’ in the entire shelter, an 8 1/2” x 11” print:

DO NOT TAPE OR PIN

ANYTHING TO THE WALLS,

SIGNED,

LAKE BLACKSHEAR MANAGEMENT

They’d used 81,211 push pins to stick their trophy-sized fish banner to the wall: The Molecular Evolution of the DNA Methyltransferase Gene Family in Fishes.

Jurisprude – a person who makes ostentatious show of learning in jurisprudence and the philosophy of law or who regards legal doctrine with undue solemnity or veneration.

Only after they’d left, I noticed their poster pinned to the wall like an exotic moth.  Feeling the boat should be rocked, just not by me (ref: seeker of joy), I elbowed KC, stiff spine and department stickler, who marched over grumbling about kids these days and Rebecca’s security deposit, and unpinned the banner.  He mounted it to an easel after a rewarding wrangle all by himself.  The Old Man and the Gene poster.  He’d landed the big one.

One of the poster presenters hung around and chatted with us.  Attentive blue eyes behind wire rims, he introduced himself, “I’m 30-years old, a non-traditional student, former Navy.”  Slight build, loose-belted khakis, he looked less mariner more Big Bang Theory.  Proud to be off the NFL Super Bowl grid, he and his wife, beyond the call of duty had actually missed the Super Bowl a week early, getting the date of when not to watch wrong.  Hearing he was from southeast Georgia, I asked if he was familiar with Colquitt County and he smiled, rolling up a plaid sleeve to reveal a forearm of inked skin: swirling blues, greens and yellows, “The locals pronounce it Cull-quit.”  Colquitt County is the high school football team that Milton battled this year in the 7A State Football Championship.

I searched the swirls for an anchor as Inked Sheldon planted himself near when he talked.  If Inked Sheldon had watched the Super Bowl, he’d have seen his semblance in Luke Wilson in the Colgate commercial:

Now there’s no such thing as too close.

Yes.  There is.

No. There’s not.

Yes.  There is.

Rig (verb) – make (a sailing ship or boat) ready for sailing by providing it with sails and rigging

He vacillated between me and KB.  KB is about Inked Sheldon’s age and shared that his dad was Navy and asked where Sheldon served.  Or was stationed.  I have no working military vocabulary and stayed mum.  My dad was Navy too, but I know nothing of his Navy years.  No pictures in uniform, no stories, no artifacts.  He served during the Korean War, the little I do know, his boots never touched ground in Korea.  Whether my dad ever set foot aboard a Naval vessel is unknown to me.  I should probably ask my mother. Embarrassing.

KB asked Inked Sheldon if he’d served at sea.  “Yes, beneath.”  About Navy life on a submarine, Inked Sheldon said, “Submarine guys will find the one thing that bugs you, your pet peeve, and they’ll jab and jab and jab.  Relentless.”  Inked Sheldon inched closer to KB.

Jury-rig (verb) – an authentic nautical phrase, dating from the early 17th century.  Derived from jury-mast ( = a temporary replacement for a ship’s broken mast), the jury part here has nothing to do with 12 peers deciding someone’s fate.

I didn’t discuss Inked Sheldon’s pet peeves or his research project.  I did take a picture of two of the ten posters – The Southern Appalachian Snorkeling Trail: Preserving Water Quality in Appalachian Communities by Promoting Native Fish Diversity, andComparison of Methods for Estimating White Shark Abundance.  Later that night, the social went off without a hitch.  A jury of college professors scored each project, the top three recognized at the following night’s awards banquet.  I rooted for Sheldon’s, but it would not pass muster.

At Wednesday night’s awards banquet and raffle, Rebecca presented KC with an Outstanding Service Award.  She announced her indebtedness to her ‘right-hand man’.

In a further show of gratitude, Rebecca gifted twelve raffle tickets to all her first mates.  I purchased twelve more and dropped most of my twenty-four between two prizes, each a pair of Tifosi sunglasses.

There were at least 50 baskets of prizes to drop tickets.  Rebecca is responsible for sponsor donations: Orvis carbon-fiber fishing poles; hunting knives; blind auctions for Southeast Adventure Outfitter canoe trips on St. Simons Island; Chattahoochee River Guides kayak trips; wine, cheese and jam baskets; Tifosi sunglasses; Yeti cups, thermoses, and coolers; heavy-duty flashlights; Bass Pro Shop hammocks; and framed fish prints.

I’d won sunglasses in 2017 and again in 2018.  After Rebecca’s largesse, I really liked my chances this year.  Can’t say I was shocked when my name was called, third year in a row.  At my table, KB and KC won too.  If that wasn’t enough, my name got called a second time.   Another pair of sunglasses!  Joy!

I felt sorry for the stately woman whose cane had fallen into my lap at dinner, propped on the table between us, as we forked boiled potatoes together.  The spunky, retiree (former employee of UGA’s Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources) I’d met two years before. Between bites of chicken, without a hint of complaint or explanation, she shared that she’d ‘missed last year to chemo’. She reminded me of her nicknames for us, Rebecca’s crew, two years ago calling one of us, ‘Rocks-In-Head’ due to some forgotten gaffe, and calling another, ‘Rocks-In-Penis’, due to recently passed kidney stones.  She shook her head and held her fork like a trident, staring in disbelief at her unclaimed raffle tickets, strung like junk beads across the tablecloth.

Rig (verb) – manage or conduct (something) fraudulently so as to produce a result or situation that is advantageous to a particular person.

She looked at our loot amassed on the table and said, “You fellas are killin’ me.  Got to be rigged.”

KC salvaged the moment and offered one of his winnings, a Bass Pro gift card, to the spunky retiree.  To my surprise, she accepted.  She was grateful, I was grateful, it eased the tension.  I reached with a comforting arm and drew my winnings closer before anybody got any big ideas, opened a box, and put on my new Tifosi’s.  I took a poker-faced selfie and texted my wife:  Winner winner, chicken dinner.

She texted back: Got to be rigged.

Later that night, my last, I awoke in my room to Prince’s 1999: life is just a party and parties weren’t meant to last through the wall accompanied by a tone-deaf-drunk’s sing-a-along.  The next song, Cheap Trick’s Surrender: mommy served in the Wacs in the Phillipines.  I was afraid to look at the clock.  Whoever this inconsiderate, intoxicated fish professional was, they were my generation with exceedingly good taste in music.  I was fourteen again, listening with headphones in the top bunk, my little brother below kicking my bedsprings to turn off the music.  Joy!  I fell asleep before the third song.

Thursday, Rebecca’s Dodge Vader loaded and secure for her drive home, I drove my car on 280 west out of Cordele with KC riding shotgun, KB asleep in the back.  We passed a sign for Fish Hatchery road.  North on I-75, a sign for Butts County, KC regretted not having his phone ready, “My daughter’s at that age.”  I was reminded of our first day’s odd job, KC and I slipping single raffle tickets into plastic sleeves behind name-tags of pre-paid registrants.  One registrant, Seemore Butts.  Seymore, I thought, a funnier spelling.

Friday morning, at my desk after three days away, I read my sub’s comment slip.  Her sub news was fantastically detailed, itemized daily, class-by-class, a veritable checklist manifesto:

• Tuesday, Feb. 5
• 1st period: Worked diligently.
• 2nd period: Excellent class.
• 4th period: Worked diligently.
• 6th period: Worked diligently.
• 7th period: Encouraged to focus.

• Wednesday, Feb. 6
• 1st period: Excellent class!
• 2nd period: Excellent class!
• 4th period: Excellent class!
• 6th period: Quite talkative.
• 7th period: Very talkative today!

• Thursday, Feb. 7
• 1st period: Students were fine.
• 2nd period: Tornado drill at 9:30am.  No problems.
• 4th period: Students were fine.
• 6th period: Students were fine.
• 7th period: Students were chatty, but fine, until the end of class where I saw a boy holding one of the colored pencil containers leaking a liquid.  And it disappeared.

7th period, WTH?  What was I to make of ‘And it disappeared’?  As for ‘leaking a liquid’, I walked my room and, container by container, popped each lid anticipating some soggy graphite grotesquerie.  To my relief, all containers were peeled-shaving dry.  I returned to the comment slip, re-reading, thinking unwanted thoughts of: a boy – holding one of the colored pencil containers – leaking a liquid.

That afternoon, 7th period, I read aloud the sub’s comment to my rambunctives and saw Billy and his wingman exchange pulled punches and thumping.  I inquired and got as far as name, rank, and serial number.

On howstuffworks.com, I found this description of autolysis, a final step in the decomposition process:

The self-digestion of the body’s cells.  The walls of the cells give way, and their contents flow out, the final stage of rigor mortis.