Kite Strings

Tad, as a 30 something year old man, you had a homosexual relationship with a 12 year old boy while you were in a position of trust with regard to that boy.

Do you think you did anything wrong?

In your answer please disregard the consequences of the law and of others who might have penalized or retaliated against either of you. I am only asking if you think you did anything wrong as a 30 year old man having a homosexual relationship with a 12 year old boy in isolation of the societal consequences.

I am sorry to have to ask this question, but I think your answer will be enlightening with regard to your ability to see fault in your own actions. If you really search your soul ... the answer may help you as well.

Thanks.

01. Ya don't hafta shout, Bob - I've got my reading glasses.

02. What the hell, go ahead and shout. There might be some nearsighted English speaking person somewhere on the planet who hasn't gotten into this issue yet.

03. I so do love it the way you never cease to emphasize that it was a HOMOSEXUAL relationship between two people who - by definition - were packing Y chromosomes. It shows a lot of people where you're really coming from and alienates them.

04. Regarding the position of trust issue... When one of the legal guardians of (call him) Tommy's introduces you in the presence of the other legal guardian to Tommy's sister as "Tommy's boyfriend" it's a bit difficult for one to pretend that he is or was totally clueless regarding the depth of the relationship.

05. In answering a question about whether something's right or wrong ONE CAN'T disregard the consequences of the law and of others who might have penalized or retaliated against either party.

Example...

You're a quarter black passing for all white illegally married to someone who IS all white in one of those cotton producing states in the Fifties. If you come clean or get outed maybe you go to the Supreme Court and win one for the good guys. Or maybe you go to prison and one or two of the kids dies as a consequence of the firebombing. Or maybe some combination of the two.

So what's right and what's wrong? Lotsa lotsa questions don't have black and white answers (no pun intended).

06. Name one person in an extended close relationship who never did anything wrong. Yeah, you can take that as a yes - although probably not for the reasons you really wanna hear. But we're all human and I did the best I could at the time with what I understood and the time.

07. And I never did what the person who had the most local control in that organization did to him. I didn't humiliate, undercut, and ostracize him and pressure him to leave.

08. And I didn't do what the rotten national organization some years thereafter did to him - which was go to the US Supreme Court and get a lower court ruling overturned - five to four - so that he could be permanently excluded based solely on the basis of the orientation with which he was born.

09. You don't HAVE TO ask that question. It's none of your goddam business and it doesn't have a goddam thing to do with hang gliding - which I like dealing with because it DOES have EXTREMELY black and white and easy answers.

10. And I don't hafta answer it 'cause it's none of your goddam business. But what the hell.

11. People like me don't have souls to search. God just created us as subhumans without souls so people like you would have something to kick around so you could feel better about yourselves.

12. There is no question whatsoever that Steve Wendt signed off everybody he ever rated in total violation of the USHGA hook-in check regulation - US hang gliding's most fundamental, critical, and ignored law. He taught every student for every rating without exception:

Preflight, Hangcheck, Know you're hooked in.

And on 2005/10/01 Bill Priday - a father of people of varying ages - ran off the ramp at Whitwell without his Sport 2 in the presence of large flock of glider divers mostly signed off at Matt Taber's failure to hook in factory just down the road.

If you interview those people of former varying ages I one hundred percent guarantee you that none of them have any ambiguous feelings or memories whatsoever about finding out what the phone call was about that afternoon. And I one hundred percent guarantee you that their lives were permanently and irrevocably altered for worse.

So if you really wanna do something to make The Bob Show safe for people of varying ages get your fuckin' priorities straight, stop worrying about fake issues that you couldn't possibly understand or do a goddam thing about anyway, and start worrying about real issues in which you could - conceivably - make a significant indisputably positive difference.

http://www.ushawks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=929
Training Manual Comments / Contribution

Bob Kuczewski - 2012/01/14 17:01:38 UTC

Thanks Bill.

You've given a fine expression to the issues involved and said it far better than I could have done myself. Thanks for your level-headed thinking and writing.

Sincerely and gratefully,
Bob Kuczewski

Yeah Bob, every bit as solid on his takes on how to use weak links to prevent whipstalls.

Did you read MY assessment of his fine expression of the issues involved and levelheaded thinking and writing?

Tad, I'm sorry, but I didn't find a clear answer to my post above:

bobk wrote:Tad, as a 30 something year old man, you had a homosexual relationship with a 12 year old boy while you were in a position of trust with regard to that boy.

Do you think you did anything wrong?

In your answer please disregard the consequences of the law and of others who might have penalized or retaliated against either of you. I am only asking if you think you did anything wrong as a 30 year old man having a homosexual relationship with a 12 year old boy in isolation of the societal consequences.

GREAT!!! That's an indication that your reading comprehension level is getting a little better.

Keep up the good work!

http://www.ushawks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=929
Training Manual Comments / Contribution

Sam Kellner - 2012/01/14 21:47:03 UTC

Hello Hawks,

Bob, thanks for the great forum! Job well done!

Yeah Bob, great job with those unilateral lock and ban buttons. Sam probably couldn't have held out much longer without them.

Do we have a template that would guide us in structuring the training manual?

Well, no... But Bill really liked my aerotowing documents!

What's the first step?

You could start by going and fucking yourself.

Thanks Bill, for supporting the Hawks efforts.

You mean Bob's unilateral decisions to lock your enemies down and out? Yeah, right. Glad to see that "Hawks" and "Bob" are being acknowledged to be synonyms.

PTL, I got a house to build .

Yep, PTL. Has The Bob Show settled on an official religion yet? I'm guessing Buddhism.

But my tail is really dragging every evening .

Bummer.

Surely they have a pill for old age.

Nah, Alzheimer's is just one of those things that keeps getting worse.

Preflight, Hangcheck, Know you're hooked in dude!!!

http://www.ushawks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=936
Modern History of the Torrey Pines Soaring Council

Bob Kuczewski - 2012/01/14 23:50:53 UTC

The modern Torrey Pines Soaring Council was reconstituted based on the needs observed at the Torrey Pines Gliderport from 2004 through 2006. During that time, David Jebb became increasingly abusive of pilots flying at the site. These abuses included all forms of flight to some degree, but those piloting hang gliders and RCs were the most frequent targets.

I knew of the problem through my own encounters with David Jebb, but I also began hearing stories of other pilots who'd been bullied at that site. But it was the case against David Beardslee which eventually led to the reconstitution of the modern day Soaring Council.

I didn't know David Beardslee at that time, but he was introduced to me through a mutual friend who thought I might help. At that time, David Jebb had banned Beardslee from the Torrey Pines property without any due process or documentation of what Beardslee had done wrong.

DUDE!!! He was banned without any due process or documentation of what he had done wrong?!?!?! Just 'cause some asshole felt like doing it? What a shit deal!

http://www.ushawks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=903
The hole in Tx's arm where all the $$ goes

Pilgrim - 2012/01/13 15:01:17 UTC

Hi Bob,

I will be careful here because I do not want to offend the owners should they come across this. They hate publicity because of the tresspass issues on their land.

I believe there are three driving forces. The first is that someone died hang gliding there recently. That was the first HG death at Pack ever. Us old timers often thought that is all it would take to loose the hill.

Also, there is an antanea on the hill that Lyndon Johnson put up in the sixties so he could communicate with the White House while at his lake house that is just down the road from Pack. The county had leased this antanea for years to host their communications package. Part of their deal was they kept the road to the top graded. When they left, so did the road maintenance. The owners used this to force the issue. They wanted to raise the lease to 10k per year and they wanted us to pony up an additional 15k to fix the road. We simply do not have those kind of resources. So we could not come up with the ante and they refused our offer of 2k per year on top of the lease of 10k for road maintenance. They wanted us to pay for it all.

Lastly, and in my humble opinion, the overriding problem is that the powers that have controlled Pack for the last several years have failed to develop or maintain good relations with the owners. (And as you can tell by the opinions of Sam and many many others relations with the long time pilots at Pack have been left to rot also). We used to know the owner. She was a friend of the family. We had personal interaction with the owners. In recent years, the land went into and is now on the way out of a Family Limited Partnership. Other members of the family have come into direct control positions. No one bothered to keep up the personal relations. One of the decision makers really does not like us...from my point of view with good reasons.

So they did what any good businessman would do to fire a customer...raise the price past their limit. Well they succeeded and we have lost big. As one of our members recently summarized it... CRAP.

And now it is gone.

I'm sorry Packsaddle's gone too. That's a name I've known for almost as long as I've been in hang gliding. But looking at:

The first is that someone died hang gliding there recently. That was the first HG death at Pack ever. Us old timers often thought that is all it would take to loose the hill.

Not one of you assholes has ever heard of a hook-in check.

You had USHGA instructors throwing people off of there who no way in hell had been adequately trained and qualified.

You didn't do shit about the situation until - and after - John Seward got killed - EXACTLY the same way none of you assholes did shit about the situation at Hobbs until - and after - Eric Aasletten got killed.

And you're in a totally clueless branch of aviation which kills one participant per thousand per year.

What the fuck did you expect?

Good thing Jeff had John flying on the downtubes all that time, though. If he had survived more than about ten seconds of the flight he might have had to land in a narrow dry riverbed with large rocks strewn all over the place or a field filled with seven foot high corn.

Hope that approach was worth the price.

Tad, you seem to be dodging this pretty simple question:

bobk wrote:Tad, as a 30 something year old man, you had a homosexual relationship with a 12 year old boy while you were in a position of trust with regard to that boy.

Do you think you did anything wrong?

In your answer please disregard the consequences of the law and of others who might have penalized or retaliated against either of you. I am only asking if you think you did anything wrong as a 30 year old man having a homosexual relationship with a 12 year old boy in isolation of the societal consequences.

Do you think you did anything wrong or not?

OF COURSE I DO, BOB!!!

I mean it's illegal, right? And if it weren't wrong it wouldn't be illegal, right?

And, in fact, it's SO illegal that the legal - not to mention social - consequences are literally about forty times worse than they are for someone who gets drunk and runs a Hummer at fifty miles an hour over a twelve year old boy and his bicycle.

And that's the way it SHOULD and MUST BE. Because in the process of a male child predator taking advantage of a gay twelve year old boy's unshaped innocence for his own pleasures he inevitably condemns his victim to a life of shame and self doubt or confusion - possibly BOTH.

Ask any gay twelve year old boy... Would you rather:

- have an intimate relationship with an Oscar Wilde, Errol Flynn, James Dean and be inevitably condemned to a life of shame and self doubt or confusion, possibly both; or

- be thrown under a speeding Hummer?

Well, true, a few of them might respond "A" but at that age they're not really capable of making good decisions in the interests of their safety and well-being so a responsible adult - such as yourself or any rated tug pilot - can check "B" for them.

And if a gay former twelve year old boy at age thirty-something were to recall an "A" option as a positive aspect of his life we would hafta discount that data point because he is - by definition - hopelessly damaged and confused and thus incapable of providing an acceptable response.

And because he does not view his relationship as totally and unambiguously wrong he might HIMSELF be a danger to people of varying ages and thus would not be allowed to post on The Bob Show - 'cause nowadays ya just can't be too careful, right?

Now a Mary Kay Letourneau situation... Not such a BFD - a lot less shame and self doubt or confusion, right?