Reality Island

Copyright © 2010 by Thomas Gangale
@ThomasGangale

With all its problems, still Tonga was a good place to be. Meleline and I didn't care if we never returned to the United States. I wrote, of all things, since it was my least favourite musical genre, a hip-hop song in an attempt to capture some contemporary Tongan social and political issues, yet end on a note of pride. I considered that a distinctly Tongan flavour might be achieved by weaving in stanzas of traditional songs that 'Ilaisa Helu led in the Friday evening faikavas, and 'Amanaki Fifita taught in Tuesday-Thursday afternoon classes on Tongan dance.

'Io!
Mo'oni!
'Io!
Mo'oni!
'Io!
Mo'oni!
'Io!
Mo'oni!

Who among us hasn't sinned
The church bells' constant din
Tells us day out and in
How much we need to pray
'Io!

Screaming yellow zonkers
The 4:30 bongin'
No one sleeps in Tonga
Not too late anyway
Mo'oni!

Limp home late from kava
She's pounding out the tapa
Faka faka faka!
Then nap during the day
'Io!

The barking of the dogs
The squealing of the hogs
There's no sleeping like a log
Not in Tonga anyway
Mo'oni!

[traditional song]

Hens cluck and roosters crow
Cars cruise 'cause they don't know
The house where they should go
No street signs point the way
'Io!

And so they showed up late
And so you had to wait
On the world's Line of Date
Tomorrow is yesterday
Mo'oni!

Since nothing's right in Tonga
Nothing's wrong in Tonga
That'll be five pa'anga
Malo e lelei!
'Io!

[traditional song]

We don't fear global warming
With fifty years of warning
The ferry leaves its mooring
And then we really pray
Mo'oni!

Depletion of the ozone?
Tsunami or a cyclone?
Text me on my cell phone
High ground's not far away
'Io!

Burn Nuku'alofa?
Wake me when it's over
'Ofa 'ofa 'ofa!
And let love win the day
Mo'oni!

[traditional song]

In the Land Where Time Begins
The future isn't penned
But is there a way to win?
Has our chance been pissed away?
'Ikai!

From Sydney to Salt Lake
Just looking for a break
A future we can make
Should we go or should we stay?
Ko hai 'ilo?

If I cross the Date Line
Where Time Begins is still mine
I'm at the end of all time
As Tongan as today!
'Io!

[traditional song]

I'm at the end of all time
As Tongan as today!
Mo'oni!
I'm at the end of all time
As Tongan as today!
'Io!
I'm at the end of all time
As Tongan as today!
Mo'oni!
I'm at the end of all time
As Tongan as today!
'Io!

Among other projects such as my dissertation, I continued to collect popular music about outer space, a project I had begun in early 2009 purely for the enjoyment of Meleline, myself, and whoever else might be interested. I had now accumulated nearly 70 hours of material that I considered listenable, and there was more in the reject pile. Particularly interesting to me was Soviet era and modern Russian music as a window into the culture of the other longstanding human spaceflight nation. I had organised my collection chronologically, and I had interspersed three hours of voice clips from manned missions to give the music historical context. With the 50th anniversary of manned spaceflight coming up in 2011, I wondered whether there might be a business opportunity. I asked Michael Cassutt, a long time friend who was a space historian, science fiction author, and television writer and producer, whether he had any contacts in the recording business that might be useful. His response was disappointing, but it made sense. "My guess is that a space-themed project is going to have a relatively narrow slice of the audience at that.... look at space-related books in the book world."

Based on the trends I was seeing in my music collection, I wasn't surprised. In his blog, Keith Cowing had recently asked, regarding the lack of public response to the cancelation of Constellation, "Where's the outrage?"

I described the music trends to Michael "The chart shows the hours of space music I have accumulated, by year, by three categories: USA, USSR/Russia, and the rest of the world. This is an indicator of the music component of 'space culture.' First, note the similarity between the USA trend line and NASA funding. Second, note that the rest of the world passed the US in space music production in 2002 and has left it far behind. Not only that, but for the first time ever, Russian space culture is passing the US in music production. The centre of space culture has moved outside the US, so if there is any outrage over the killing of Constellation, one must look for it outside the US. I think the US just became a second-rate space-launching nation, and it's because not enough Americans give a damn."

Mike wrote back, "Before you can ask 'where's the outrage?' you have to ask, 'who knows about Constellation in the first place?' In the past six years or so, I have never met a SINGLE person outside the space community -- that is, astronauts, contractors, commentators -- who ever HEARD of the damned thing. I spent a year trying to pitch a series about the next step in [human spaceflight], beyond the Shuttle, to some very smart folks at AMC.... and they were amazed, flabbergasted, confused and otherwise totally ignorant of the plans that existed, pre 2010. The same goes for family, business acquaintances, etc."

It was a reasonable hypothesis that the vitality of a nation's space endeavours flowed from its culture. In a nation where human spaceflight was off the public's radar screen, where else could government funding go but into oblivion? The Soviet/Russian space experience had suffered from communist mismanagement, low tech, and economic collapse, but never, it seemed, from lack of will. I suspected that what I had so far discovered of the Russian musical culture of cosmonautics was only the tip of the iceberg due to my limited facility with the language as well as the probable relative dearth of Internet sources compared to the totality of that culture's production. I wanted to explore these issues further, but I needed help. I opened my pet project to the Society and Aerospace Technology Technical Committee of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Vadim Rygalov, a professor in the University of North Dakota's Department of Space Studies, was happy to join the project. Vadim had known about my project since late 2009, and we had exchanged some music. He would certainly fill in my weaknesses with regard to knowledge of Russian language and culture. Additionally, I thought that it be helpful to have a musicologist, preferably one who had some knowledge of the history of spaceflight, on the project. We needed more co-researchers. Meanwhile, I helped Meleline write a short article on the subject for the AIAA's glossy magazine Aerospace America.

One day I wore a T-shirt that I had had custom made from one of my high school pencil drawings. It was from a famous photograph of Edwin Aldrin looking at the various experiments he and Neil Armstrong had deployed at Tranquility Base, and it included the American flag and the Lunar Module Eagle in the distance. I wonder whether our visiting instructor in mathematics, Noah, was having a bad day of miscommunication, was being deliberately obtuse, or was joking, because it was hard to believe he was really that ignorant. He asked me what was on my shirt and I explained my drawing to him. "So you were there?" he asked. Well, weren't you? Weren't we all? But then Noah and Meleline chanced to have a short conversation about the paper she was writing for presentation at the AIAA's upcoming Space 2010 symposium, "The Rise of the Transnational State: Space Logistics, Sovereignty, and Diaspora off the Earth," and he remarked that it sounded like science fiction. Nothing else he could have said would have been more insulting to her.


Thomas Gangale's Song Lyrics and Free Verses
Thomas Gangale's Tales of Tonga

Fantasy Island

Copyright © 2010 by Thomas Gangale
@ThomasGangale

Now the semester was over. Except for Meleline and me, all of the palangi in the faculty had plans to travel out of Tonga during the three-week semester break, at least as far as New Zealand; Maikolo flew to Oregon. Firitia stayed put as well, but having long ago become a Tongan citizen, he hardly counted as a palangi. Meleline and I didn't have the money to travel, nor did we have the desire, having been in Tonga only four months.

Besides that, the weather was just getting better and better. Winter was closing in, and one could almost smell the Antarctic ice sheets on the southern breeze. By the middle of June, there were the occasional nights when one needed a light blanket in bed. Nevertheless, the hardy Tongan mosquitoes soldiered on through these cold snaps. Shortly after our arrival in February, I read that the Tongan media never included temperatures in their weather reportage; it was either going to be sunny or rainy, or in the case of a tropical storm, exceedingly rainy. I described it this way to Gail at the end of June, when the winter solstice had passed, expressing temperatures on that quaint Fahrenheit that we backward Americans insist on clinging to:

It's in the 80s here. It's always in the 80s here... except when it's in the 90s. But that would be summer, and it's winter now, so it's in the 80s here. But winter or summer, 80s or 90s, it's always humid. Sometimes we get a nice breeze, sometimes we get a tropical storm.

Actually, it did seem a bit drier now, and it certainly was cooler, which meant that the tropical storm action had shifted north of the equator.

Before Maikolo departed to enjoy a few weeks of Oregonian summer, he wanted to take Meleline and me on an excursion to Fafa Island. It's a tiny but upscale resort island several kilometres north of Nuku'alofa, where one can go on a day trip for a nice lunch, nice cocktails, nice walk on the beach, nice massage. He was emphatic that the weather must be perfect: no rain, not even a cloud, and on a Sunday. Several Sundays in late May and early June slipped by before nature was able to comply with Maikolo's exacting specifications. Fortunately, 13 June, the last Sunday before Maikolo boarded his flight to the USA, promised to be such a Sunday. He picked us up in the morning and drove us to the wharf. We embarked on a boat that was filled with about two dozen passengers. Maikolo fairly gushed as he confidently predicted that the passage to Fafa would take exactly 35 minutes, and he insisted that I note the departure and arrival times to confirm this. Why this was at all important to him, I have no idea. During the passage I periodically checked our compass heading, just out of curiosity, given that I had trained as a navigator in the U.S. Air Force, and my digital watch just happened to include a compass.

Upon arrival, we made our lunch reservations. The restaurant was on the northwest corner of the island, near out debarkation point. Maikolo advised that we schedule the reservations for the latest slot, 1330 hours, to give us time to walk around the island. At first we walked inland (southward) to examine the conference centre, library, and other facilities in the resort complex, all designed in the traditional Polynesian style. As we passed through this area, Maikolo verbalised in inordinate detail his fantasy of how the 'Atenisi campus would look if money were no object. As we continued southward, we passed the row of guest cottages, also done in the Polynesian style, but with the important difference that they included air conditioners; unlike us, upscale tourists came to Tonga expecting to be comfortable. In Maikolo's fantasy, these cottages would be the campus housing for 'Atenisi students. But would they be able to ring up room service?

In places the path took us through rain forest, which as far as I could tell, had gone unmodified by the human hand. Upon reaching the southwestern corner of the island, we found the shore to consist of coral formations that would not make for a pleasant walk, so we retraced our path to the restaurant and strolled eastward along the northern shore of the island, which was a pleasant beach. I have yet to see waves breaking on the beach; rather, they break on the reefs far offshore, and the beaches are as still as a swimming pool; very unlike California. We rounded the northeastern point and headed south until we reached the southeastern point, where we once again encountered hard coral. Apparently most or all of the southern shore was coral. From here, Maikolo hoped to find a trail coming out of the bush and strike inland. There were no such trails. We were on the windward side of the island, so the island's owner had built no guest cottages or anything else out here. Yes, the beach was nice, and this particular day was quite calm, but what paying tourist wanted granulated coral blown in his face when it wasn't so calm? Once again, it was necessary to reverse course. We trekked north, rounded the northeastern point once more, to find the long, northern beach stretched before us. Maikolo continued to seek a path inland, still thinking that this would be the most direct way back to the restaurant. I pointed out the restaurant in the distance; the beach was now the shortest path. "You're with a navigator," Marilyn reminded Maikolo. Cripes, my grandfather had taught me that much navigation on family camping trips in the Sierra Nevada.

We returned to the restaurant with more than half an hour to kill, having wandered the length of the 45-hectare islet. Not a hardship; we ordered drinks. I had a Campari and soda in anticipation of my upcoming lunch of chicken over pasta. With lunch itself I had a chilled glass of white wine. After the dishes were cleared away, Maikolo excused himself to retreat into the library and work on some papers he had brought with him. Meleline and I broke our laptops and spent the next couple of hours on the Internet. No one was in the mood to swim; we were pleasantly full from the meal and relaxed from our respective couple of drinks.

We re-boarded the boat at 1630 hours, returning to Nuku'alofa shortly after 1700 hours. Once again, [sigh] about 35 minutes. Meleline asked Maikolo how many times he had been to Fafa. He replied that this was his 19th trip. I remarked that I would have been surprised if he didn't know that the transit time was 35 minutes. When I got home I decided to do a simple navigation exercise, which I explained in email t Maikolo the next morning:

From satellite imagery I estimate Fafa to be 3 nautical miles from the wharf on a true course of 023 degrees. Transit time of 35 minutes makes our true speed about 5-1/4 knots. Since average magnetic heading was about 350 degrees, and magnetic declination in these waters is 12 degrees east, making the true heading about 002 degrees, the cross current correction was about 21 degrees, so I estimate that we had a westerly cross current of roughly 2-1/2 knots.

Had I noted the sustained heading on the return trip as well, I could have estimated the north-south component of the current, if any. In any case, I hoped not to hear about the passage time to Fafa or any other minor details of navigation in Tongan waters in future.

Thomas Gangale's Tales of Tonga