September 29: The Deck Toward the End of the First Night Watch, Job Interview, Brett Kavanaugh

Ahab standing by the helm. Starbuck approaching him.

"We must send down the main-top-sail yard, sir. The band is working loose and the lee lift is half-stranded. Shall I strike it, sir?"

"Strike nothing; lash it. If I had sky-sail poles, I'd sway them up now."

"Sir!- in God's name!- sir?"

"Well."

"The anchors are working, sir. Shall I get them inboard?"

"Strike nothing, and stir nothing but lash everything. The wind rises, but it has not got up to my table-hands yet. Quick, and see to it.- By masts and keels! he takes me for the hunchbacked skipper of some coasting smack. Send down my main-top-sail yard! Ho, gluepots! Loftiest trucks were made for wildest winds, and this brain-truck of mine now sails amid the cloud-scud. Shall I strike that? Oh, none but cowards send down their brain-trucks in tempest time. What a hooroosh aloft there! I would e'en take it for sublime, did I not know that the colic is a noisy malady. Oh, take medicine, take medicine!"

Starbuck, ever even-minded and cautious, tries to convince Ahab on a safer course of action--pulling down the sails, anchoring the ship in the storm.  Ahab, Moby Dick-crazed and unhinged, refuses to see reason.  Full steam ahead, even into the eye of a hurricane or mouth of a typhoon.  Reason plays no part in his decisions.

Over the last few days, I have watched the Brett Kavanaugh hurricane in Washington, D. C.  I'm not going to get political here.  I'm going to try to be like Starbuck--discuss the best course of action for safety and sanity.  I believe that the appointment of a Supreme Court Justice is one of the most important decisions that occurs in the United States, more so than the election of a President of the United States.  This is a lifetime job that affects the lives of everyone who lives in this country.

Brett Kavanaugh is interviewing for a job.  A really, really important job.  I don't know about you, but, when I've gone into job interviews, the prospective employer takes everything into consideration--my past job performance, personality, police record, community involvement, education.  Sure, I try to put forth the best picture of myself as I can.  I WANT the job.

If, during the course of an interview, my prospective employer discovers that I have accusations of sexual assault or misconduct leveled against me, I'm sure my application and resume will go into the rejection pile, especially if there are tons of other people qualified for the position.  Plain and simple.  The decision is easy.  Safe and sane.

What happened this week in Congress was the strangest job interview I have every witnessed.  Brett Kavanaugh has been accused of sexual assault, by more than one credible person.  If he's innocent, he should have agreed to a polygraph test, as his accuser did.  He didn't do that.  (By the way, Dr. Ford passed that polygraph with flying colors.)  The employers interviewing Judge Kavanaugh, instead of asking him the hard questions, spent their time DEFENDING him.  Again, I don't know about you, but, if I admit to taking illegal drugs during a job interview, I don't think the person interviewing me is going to defend my character.  It's not going to happen.

So, again, let me be Starbuck in this moment:  Brett Kavanaugh is interviewing for a job.  He's a prospective employee, who will be working for me and everyone else in the United States.  He has proven this week, over and over, that he is terrible under pressure, cannot control his temper, and is unable to be fair and impartial.

Bretty Kavanaugh's resume and application should go into the rejection pile.  I would say this whether he was Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal.

Saint Marty is thankful this afternoon for sanity and reason.  Things that seem greatly lacking in the capital of the United States right now.

June 27: Great Dome of St. Peter's, Product of Fear, Wade into the Fray

I have given no small attention to that not unvexed subject, the skin of the whale. I have had controversies about it with experienced whalemen afloat, and learned naturalists ashore. My original opinion remains unchanged; but it is only an opinion.

The question is, what and where is the skin of the whale. Already you know what his blubber is. That blubber is something of the consistence of firm, close-grained beef, but tougher, more elastic and compact, and ranges from eight or ten to twelve and fifteen inches in thickness.

Now, however preposterous it may at first seem to talk of any creature's skin as being of that sort of consistence and thickness, yet in point of fact these are no arguments against such a presumption; because you cannot raise any other dense enveloping layer from the whale's body but that same blubber; and the outermost enveloping layer of any animal, if reasonably dense, what can that be but the skin? True, from the unmarred dead body of the whale, you may scrape off with your hand an infinitely thin, transparent substance, somewhat resembling the thinnest shreds of isinglass, only it is almost as flexible and soft as satin; that is, previous to being dried, when it not only contracts and thickens, but becomes rather hard and brittle. I have several such dried bits, which I use for marks in my whale-books. It is transparent, as I said before; and being laid upon the printed page, I have sometimes pleased myself with fancying it exerted a magnifying influence. At any rate, it is pleasant to read about whales through their own spectacles, as you may say. But what I am driving at here is this. That same infinitely thin, isinglass substance, which, I admit, invests the entire body of the whale, is not so much to be regarded as the skin of the creature, as the skin of the skin, so to speak; for it were simply ridiculous to say, that the proper skin of the tremendous whale is thinner and more tender than the skin of a new-born child. But no more of this.

Assuming the blubber to be the skin of the whale; then, when this skin, as in the case of a very large Sperm Whale, will yield the bulk of one hundred barrels of oil; and, when it is considered that, in quantity, or rather weight, that oil, in its expressed state, is only three fourths, and not the entire substance of the coat; some idea may hence be had of the enormousness of that animated mass, a mere part of whose mere integument yields such a lake of liquid as that. Reckoning ten barrels to the ton, you have ten tons for the net weight of only three quarters of the stuff of the whale's skin.

In life, the visible surface of the Sperm Whale is not the least among the many marvels he presents. 
Almost invariably it is all over obliquely crossed and re-crossed with numberless straight marks in thick array, something like those in the finest Italian line engravings. But these marks do not seem to be impressed upon the isinglass substance above mentioned, but seem to be seen through it, as if they were engraved upon the body itself. Nor is this all. In some instances, to the quick, observant eye, those linear marks, as in a veritable engraving, but afford the ground for far other delineations. These are hieroglyphical; that is, if you call those mysterious cyphers on the walls of pyramids hieroglyphics, then that is the proper word to use in the present connexion. By my retentive memory of the hieroglyphics upon one Sperm Whale in particular, I was much struck with a plate representing the old Indian characters chiselled on the famous hieroglyphic palisades on the banks of the Upper Mississippi. Like those mystic rocks, too, the mystic-marked whale remains undecipherable. This allusion to the Indian rocks reminds me of another thing. Besides all the other phenomena which the exterior of the Sperm Whale presents, he not seldom displays the back, and more especially his flanks, effaced in great part of the regular linear appearance, by reason of numerous rude scratches, altogether of an irregular, random aspect. I should say that those New England rocks on the seacoast, which Agassiz imagines to bear the marks of violent scraping contact with vast floating icebergs- I should say, that those rocks must not a little resemble the Sperm Whale in this particular. It also seems to me that such scratches in the whale are probably made by hostile contact with other whales; for I have most remarked them in the large, full-grown bulls of the species.

A word or two more concerning this matter of the skin or blubber of the whale. It has already been said, that it is stript from him in long pieces, called blanket-pieces. Like most sea-terms, this one is very happy and significant. For the whale is indeed wrapt up in his blubber as in a real blanket or counterpane; or, still better, an Indian poncho slipt over his head, and skirting his extremity. It is by reason of this cosy blanketing of his body, that the whale is enabled to keep himself comfortable in all weathers, in all seas, times, and tides. What would become of a Greenland whale, say, in those shuddering, icy seas of the North, if unsupplied with his cosy surtout? True, other fish are found exceedingly brisk in those Hyperborean waters; but these, be it observed, are your cold-blooded, lungless fish, whose very bellies are refrigerators; creatures, that warm themselves under the lee of an iceberg, as a traveller in winter would bask before an inn fire; whereas, like man, the whale has lungs and warm blood. Freeze his blood, and he dies. How wonderful is it then- except after explanation- that this great monster, to whom corporeal warmth is as indispensable as it is to man; how wonderful that he should be found at home, immersed to his lips for life in those Arctic waters! where, when seamen fall overboard, they are sometimes found, months afterwards, perpendicularly frozen into the hearts of fields of ice, as a fly is found glued in amber. But more surprising is it to know, as has been proved by experiment, that the blood of a Polar whale is warmer than that of a Borneo negro in summer.

It does seem to me, that herein we see the rare virtue of a strong individual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick walls, and the rare virtue of interior spaciousness. Oh, man! admire and model thyself after the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter's, and like the great whale, retain, O man! in all seasons a temperature of thine own.

But how easy and how hopeless to teach these fine things! Of erections, how few are domed like St. Peter's! of creatures, how few vast as the whale!

Often, after I read a chapter of Moby-Dick for my daily blog post, I ask myself, "What is this all about?  What does it boil down to?"  Is it about loss?  Or obsession?  Of the natural world?  Whale science or the science of whaling?  Sometimes, the answer comes to me easily.  Other times, it's more elusive, like the white whale.

Tonight, it's all about skin and blood, how the warm-blooded sperm whale can survive in arctic waters.  And how the whale and human beings are somehow connected.  But the whale is something to be admired, even emulated.  As Melville writes, the whale lives "in the world without being of it."

That's a difficult thing to do.  Every day, I find myself being sucked into the daily grind of worry that plagues humanity.  I worry about money and food and mental illness.  Today, I'm worrying about the retirement of a Supreme Court Justice in the United States.  Which leads me to worrying about the Republicans in Congress and the person currently sitting in the Oval Office.  I worry that my kids are going to be perpetually chained to struggle and debt and poverty.

Now, I know that worry is a product of fear, and I know fear is the exact opposite of faith.  As a Christian, I'm supposed to rely on faith, or, as Melville puts it, being in this world without being of it.  Being a part of life without being swallowed by it.  I DO have faith.  I believe that God isn't going to let intolerance and hate and bigotry win this battle, but it's difficult to see children torn away from parents, lawmakers solving gun violence with thoughts and prayers, and not wade into the fray swinging fists.

I'm not saying that I'm just going to sit back and watch my country be transformed into a fascist state.  There is power in prayer.  But sometimes prayer needs to be coupled with action.  I'm not swords and guns.  Gandhi toppled the British Empire by marching to the sea for salt.  Dr. King stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and simply spoke about a dream he had.  Jesus Christ told his followers to love their enemies.

All of those people I just named were in this world, but not of it.  Their visions were vast, like the body of a whale in the Pacific.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for love and resistance.