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When Peter Heller sat down to work on his first novel, all he knew was that he wanted to have the experience of writing without knowing the ending. As an expedition kayaker, Heller was already the author of many works of travel and outdoor-adventure writing. With his debut novel, The Dog Stars, Heller returned to fiction — his first love. But as the novel took a post-apocalyptic turn, he found himself relying on his real-life scrapes and survival skills.
The Dog Stars follows a man named Hig who survives a superflu that kills most of humanity — including his wife and unborn child. "Our hero, Hig, is very vulnerable every day," Heller tells Fresh Air's Dave Davies. "He's sort of living on the edge, and he never knows when he's going to meet that adversary or situation that might write his ending."
It's a feeling that Heller understands from his often-dangerous adventures around the world. "I think on some of these trips [that I took] ... when you get into the kayak and you stretch the spray skirt over the cockpit, you don't know if that's the last time you'll ever be doing it," he says. "You pray that it's not."
Heller is a contributing editor at Outside Magazine, National Geographic Adventure and Men's Journal. He is also the author of several nonfiction books, including Hell or High Water, about kayaking Tibet's Tsangpo River; The Whale Warriors, about illegal whaling near Antarctica; and Kook: What Surfing Taught Me About Love, Life, and Catching the Perfect Wave.
Interview Highlights
On his protagonist Hig, who must find reasons to live, post-apocalypse
"Hig's challenge is to find a reason to stay alive and to stay connected with the things he loves. I think that's why I named the book The Dog Stars, because Hig sleeps out every night with his dog, Jasper. They huddle up and sleep out under the stars, and every night, Hig names the constellations. He used to have a book of stars ... so he remembers some of the constellations — Orion and the Big Dipper, and the Chariot — but a lot of them he doesn't, so he makes them up, and they're usually animals.
"He makes one up for his wife, and for 'the little angel,' he calls it, which is his child, and he makes one up for Jasper, his dog. It's his way of reinventing the world and also staying connected to the things he loves. That's his challenge every day ... to find a reason to live, to find joy, to find some richness. And I think that's what makes him so interesting; it's not just about finding the calories to stay alive."
On the contrast between Hig and his neighbor Bangley
"[Bangley] thinks Hig lives in the past too much. A lot of the book is Hig's interior monologue, his memories of the past; there's layering of his memories of his marriage, of things he used to love to do, and his impressions, and so he's in his head a lot. And to Bangley, this is just cross-purposes to what they want to do. He's always telling Hig to wake up, to stop — he's going to be trying to think about the past and get blindsided."
On the way poetry influenced The Dog Stars
"I think that the writers I loved most all my life were musical writers, and in prose, it's guys like [William] Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy, just great lyrics ... great music in their language. My dad started reading poetry to me when I was 6, before I'd go to sleep. He would read e.e. cummings' "Buffalo Bill's" ... and that music, as I became enthralled with poetry as a kid, that's what I always wanted to do: I always wanted to write something with the power of song, of music. I would say that all the poets I've read have definitely informed the writing."
On coming up with dialogue during kayaking expeditions
"I once met [writer] John McPhee at a wedding, and I love his writing. I asked him: When you're writing these conversations while you're climbing these mountains and you're hiking along, are you actually writing as you go or remembering, and you just have a good memory? ... He said: 'Always write it down as you go — I carry a little notebook with me as I'm hiking, and I'm writing as I'm walking. If you wait until the end of the day, it'll all just sound like you. You'll remember it, but it'll be in your voice. So to get the authentic dialogue, you have to write it down.'
"And I took that to heart, and I always carried a notebook in a little dry bag between my legs in a kayak. Whenever I pulled over, I would write any conversations I'd heard or anything I'd seen ... I think that's good advice also for writers just getting into that kind of journalism. ... Write down what everybody says, even the errs and the ahhs, and where they cough."
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross, who's off this week. Our guest, Peter Heller, is an experienced outdoorsman and adventure writer who's gone to some pretty remote places and done some pretty dangerous things. His book "Whale Warriors" is about his time on a boat full of environmentalists ready to ram a huge commercial whaling vessel. He wrote "Hell or High Water" about an expedition to an unfathomably deep river gorge in Tibet.
Heller's now written his first novel, and it's, well, kind of about the end of the world. We meet two men struggling to survive at a rural Colorado airport after a pandemic has wiped out most of the country's population. Peter Heller holds an MFA from the Iowa's Writers Workshop in both fiction and poetry. He's a contributing writer to Outside magazine and a longtime contributor to NPR. His new novel is called "The Dog Stars."
Well, Peter Heller, welcome to FRESH AIR.
PETER HELLER: Thank you for having me.
DAVIES: Now, this is your first novel. You've written a lot of nonfiction. Why a novel set in a post-apocalyptic world where civilization has collapsed?
HELLER: Yeah, I'm not sure why. I know why I wanted to write a novel. I've been writing nonfiction for many years and, you know, when you write a nonfiction book, you know, of course I always know what's going to happen next, and I know what the ending is going to be. And all my life I've been, you know, writing poetry and working on little bits of fiction, and that's what I really wanted to do all my life.
And I got into writing nonfiction through magazine work and it was just a great way to make a living, but when I had a little money saved up, I decided to sort of head for the first love and I just didn't want to know what was going to happen next.
And so I went to the coffee shop where I write, and I sat down, and I began with the first line. So - and then, you know, I just sort of wrote in to the story. So I didn't even, to tell you the truth, know that it was going to be a post-apocalyptic story when I started.
DAVIES: Wow. The first line is: I keep the beast running. The beast refers to an old Cessna aircraft. That's how you started?
HELLER: Yeah, and, I mean, I know that this stuff about the unraveling of the ecosphere and the apocalypse is something that I've been thinking about a lot. I write a lot about environmental issues, and - I have a dear friend, he's a paleobotanist, and his - what he does is look at 70-million-year-old fossil leaves. And his specialty is the K-T Boundary. That's the geologic layer that represents the time between when there were a lot of dinosaurs and then when there weren't any.
So this guy, Kirk, is an aficionado of extinction, you might say, and we eat breakfast now and then and we always talk about, you know, this sixth great mass extinction that we're in the middle of right now that scientists, you know, are talking about a lot. We always end up imagining what it'll be like when that apocalypse, this unraveling, you know, begins to affect human society and what it'll look like.
So, you know, those themes had been on my mind, and so when I sat down to write, I think, you know, they had to be central to the book.
DAVIES: You know, I had my own notion about this, which is that, you know, as I read about what you've done, I mean, you've been quite an outdoorsman, you've been, you know, an expedition kayaker, you've gone to some incredibly remote and sometimes dangerous places. And I wondered if you were at times in places where it might have felt like you were one of the last people on Earth.
HELLER: Oh yeah, you know, that's - I hadn't thought of it that way, but I was thinking this morning about sometimes I just - the wonderful thing about, you know, traveling to these places and taking these expeditions is you have these memories and these images that sort of, you know, they form your interior landscape, and you can come back to them.
And this morning I was thinking about the Tsangpo Gorge in Eastern Tibet, and, you know, it's like the deepest gorge in the world. It's right in the middle of the high Himalayas, and it's so deep that it's sub-tropical. And there are tigers in there, and, you know, four species of leopards and 200 species and counting of rhododendrons.
You know, I was on this expedition that went through there, and it did, you know, it felt like the end of the world or maybe like some sort of Shangri-la, some sort of, you know, imagined place on Earth that no one had ever been to before. And so. yeah, maybe so. And I also think, you know, in this book, there is a lot - our hero Hig is very vulnerable every day. I mean, he's sort of living on the edge, and he never knows, you know, when he's going to meet that adversary or situation that might write his ending.
And I think, you know, on some of these trips, actually, you know, when you get into the kayak, you don't even know - you stretch the spray skirt on over the cockpit, and you don't know if that's the last time you'll ever be doing that. And you sort of pray that it's not.
And so I think I think that might have informed some of it, for sure.
DAVIES: Right, you know, one of the things that I thought - I just, I really enjoyed reading this. It's told in the first person. Your character Hig is this guy who was a pilot, and he's at an airport with another guy who's very different from him. And it kind of reminds me of the old jokes or stories about you being, you know, on a deserted island. I mean, who would you want to spend eternity with?
And of course the reality in this circumstance is that you don't get to pick.
HELLER: Yeah.
DAVIES: So let's talk about these two characters. First your character, Hig, the one who tells the story. Tell us about him.
HELLER: Well, he's - he was a contractor. He was married, very happily married to his wife named Melissa. She was seven months pregnant when this super-flu hit and hit, you know, across - it was a pandemic, world pandemic. And so that was their first child. And so in this flu pandemic, he lost his wife, he lost his unborn child, he lost everything.
And in his previous life before that, he had wanted to be a writer. He was - he had written a bunch of poetry and was kind of a failed poet and, you know, had to go to work. And so, you know, he did this job building houses. And he's a big guy. He's a very tough and formidable dude, but, you know, he still has that sensibility of, you know, he just loves to read poetry more than anything.
And he has a sensitivity towards beauty and nature, and he loves to fly-fish. That's what he loves to do more than anything. And, you know, in this situation, in this post-Apocalyptic time that he finds himself in, he'll still at great risk to himself, he and his dog Jasper will head into the mountains just to go fishing.
DAVIES: Right, now they end up at this little rural airport called Eerie. Is it a real place?
HELLER: Yeah, it's where I keep my plane, the old '56.
DAVIES: A '56 Cessna, an old plane. And because of the circumstances, there are fuel tanks that are solar-powered. So he can - there's enough fuel that he can continue to fly. The other guy at the airport is the one he's destined to perhaps spend an eternity with, this character Bangley. Tell us about Bangley.
HELLER: Bangley's an enigma. You know, he shows up a few months after everything hit the fan with a trailer full of guns and ammo.
HELLER: And he's just a really mean gun nut, and you get the sense that he's been waiting for this his whole life, this sort of survival situation. And, you know, throughout the whole beginning of the book, you know, and as I was writing it, you know, I was discovering these characters that I was writing, just as Hig was. And so it was really fun.
You know, Bangley is a tough nut to crack. He doesn't give away much, and his whole deal is about survival. It is about dotting your I's and crossing every T and about redundancy and about never slipping up and never making a mistake and never letting some situation get out of hand or letting the other guy win.
DAVIES: And treating every other human being you may encounter as a threat.
HELLER: Yeah, definitely. He's a crusty dude for sure.
DAVIES: So tell us, what's the symbiotic relationship? Why does Bangley accept your character Hig into his little world?
HELLER: Well, you know, I think on the surface, you know, explicitly it's because Hig has this airplane, and he knows how to fly it, and every day, after - you know, there's a lot of action in the book, and in one of these sort of attacks that nearly cleans their clock, you know, Bangley sort of realizes that it's Higs' daily patrols in his old plane - you know, he circles out towards the mountain front, which is eight miles away, and then he circles around and does a - out to the south and then the east and to the north, he has a 30-mile radius.
And it's sort of a day's walk for an intruder. So after his patrol, he knows that they're safe for probably a - for 24 hours. And it's that patrol, that perimeter that Hig maintains that, you know, keeps him alive. You know, in Bangley's book, he's useful then.
DAVIES: And your character Hig is not happy just to stay alive, right. He's always kind of reaching for something else.
HELLER: Yeah, I mean, I -Hig's challenge is to find a reason to stay alive and to stay connected with the things he loves. I think that's why I named the book "The Dog Stars" because Hig sleeps out every night with his dog, Jasper. They huddle up and sleep out under the stars, and every night, Hig names the constellations.
And he used to have a book of stars, but now he doesn't, and so he remembers some of the constellations - you know, Orion and the Big Dipper, and the Chariot - but a lot of them he doesn't, so he makes them up and they're usually animals.
And he makes one up for his wife, and for the little angel, he calls it, which is - was his child, and he makes one up for Jasper, his dog. And it's his way of reinventing the world and also staying connected to the things he loves. So that's his challenge every day is to find a reason to live, to find joy, to find some richness. And I think that's what makes him so interesting. It's not just about, you know, finding the calories to stay alive.
DAVIES: And Bangley's reaction to every move is: that's too risky, make sure you're protected, get the right angles on an intruder, that kind of a thing.
HELLER: Exactly. Yeah, they're working at - you know, they have two different tracks they're working on every day.
HELLER: And so their relationship is very interesting, and Hig doesn't like to kill, and, you know, in a lot of ways, I'm like Hig in that way. I mean, I love to fly-fish, almost more than anything, and I hunt elk, and I just can't stand killing things. I mean, I'll - if I see a spider, you know, flailing on the surface of the water, I'll go to great effort to save him sometimes.
HELLER: Don't tell my buddies. But Hig is like that, too. You know, he just - he's in a situation where they do get attacked, and he does sometimes have to step up, and he just can't stand it, whereas Bangley, you know, he relishes that. And, you know, he thinks Hig lives in the past too much.
You know, a lot of the book is Hig's interior monologue, his memories of the past. There's a lot - there's layering of his memories of his marriage, of, you know, things he used to love to do, and his impressions, and so he's in his head a lot. And to Bangley, you know, this is just cross purposes to what they want to do. You know, he's always telling Hig to wake up, you know, stop - you know, he's going to be trying to think about the past and get blindsided by some...
DAVIES: We're speaking with writer Peter Heller. His new novel is called "The Dog Stars." We'll talk more after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.
DAVIES: If you're just joining us, we're speaking with writer Peter Heller. He has a new novel, his first. It's called "The Dog Stars." One of the things that people I think probably think about, if they know they're going to pick a post-apocalyptic story is: Is this just going to be nothing but despair? Did you know as you wrote it how much of that there would be?
HELLER: I was having so much fun, you know, as I was writing it that I never thought that it would be, you know, full of despair. And so I wasn't too afraid of, you know, "The Road" either, or anything like that because that to me is one of the great American novels, almost the last word on the American novel.
And I thought oh, my gosh, you know, am I going to be compared to that? And then I realized that this book was so - you know, I mean, I would be laughing out loud as these guys...
HELLER: You know, as these guys - as Bangley started to say some of the stuff he said, I'd just start laughing or, you know, crying sometimes. I mean, people in the coffee shop must have thought I was going through a divorce or something, I don't know.
HELLER: But anyway, it was fun like that, you know, just to discover - it was sort of like, you know, coming around a corner on a river, you know, that you hadn't done and not knowing what was there; if it was going to be a waterfall or a pool or a bear drinking. And it was like that every day, and it was just a gas. You know, I have to say it was like the most thrilling thing that I've ever done in my life.
DAVIES: All right, and without giving away too much, I will say that it is not filled utterly with despair. You know, but there is this question of - that you think about when you imagine what would it be like if you were really - if you lost not just your own family but that you faced a world when you might never have another real friendship again, kind of sort of that unfathomable loneliness. How do you fathom - how do you find it?
HELLER: Oh, it's interesting. You know, I think we all go through that in our lives, in our daily lives anyway, even with our families, even with our friends. I think that, you know, one of the most challenging things about being a human being is that we do feel alone sometimes. You know, we came into the world, you know, naked and alone; we're going to go out of it that way.
And we have - you know, we're blessed with being able to make these connections on the way, in our lives. But sometimes those connections can feel frayed, and we can feel alienated and not understood. And so I think it's almost just a figure for, or an analogy to just the challenges of being a human being in some ways. It's just the apocalyptic situation throws all that stuff into starker relief, I think.
DAVIES: All right, one more connection that I'm imagining between some of your life in, you know, in wild settings and the subject of the book. You know, you've taken people on some extreme adventures, and, you know, environments can't be controlled. There's weather. There's sometimes dangerous circumstances that arise. And you get to know, you know, to use sort of a cliched term, what people are made of.
And I wonder if you thought about what kind of people would best be able to manage the, you know, the disintegration of civilization. I mean, obviously, some technical skills would be helpful, but then there are also, I don't know, there's sort a mentality and emotional kind of composition that might fit better. Did you think about that at all?
HELLER: Yeah, I mean, it's nothing that again I consciously thought about, you know, as I was writing. But you do see it again and again on expeditions, and, you know, the people that - I did this expedition once that was - it was to a very extreme river in the High Pamirs along the Afghan border in Uzbekistan, and it was in the old Soviet Union. This was just at the end of the Soviet Union, around 1990.
And it was half-Kiwi, new Zealanders, and, you know, they had a couple rafts, and it was half-Russian, and they had these big floats, these big giant rafts. And it was down - the river came out of a hole in the ground, behind the Fedchenko Glacier, and there were snow leopards up there and everything. It was very high. It was very remote.
And the expedition before had lost five of its 11 guys. So it was very dangerous, and, you know, it was kind of intimidating. And that's what this expedition was coming into, you know, it was...
DAVIES: You mean they had been killed?
HELLER: Yeah.
DAVIES: Wow, OK, sorry.
HELLER: So here comes these Kiwis and these Russians, and they come to this thing, you know, they're helicoptered into this high morained, stony camp above tree line. And the Kiwis were so optimistic. You know, you get to some raging rapid and some walled-in gorge, and, you know, the Kiwis would be hopping around the back going, you know, she'll be right - look at the line there, you know, no problem, you know.
And the Russians, they would like squat and just smoke and look really grim.
HELLER: And it was a wonderful sort of contrast, and, you know, tough, capable, competent dudes. And, you know, I don't know. I think they both did really well in the river, but I kind of - I'm in the Kiwi camp, and I think Hig is, too, which is there's that sort of resiliency, that sense of humor that keeps cropping up. You know, it's irrepressible.
Even with Hig, you know, in his situation, he's always thinking of funny stuff. And so, you know, I always found those guys - you know, I've never been, you know, in combat or anything, but I imagine, you know, if you talk to soldiers, it's probably the soldiers who are, you know, very resourceful but also have that sort of flexibility, the sense of humor that are the most, you know, survivable and formidable. I don't know. That's what I found.
DAVIES: You said that you've written poetry, read poetry for a long time. Did that inform the writing of this book?
HELLER: Definitely, yeah. I think that the writers I loved most all my life were musical writers, and in prose, you know, it's guys like - it's the guys like Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy, and this great lyricist - this great music in their language.
And my dad started reading poetry to me when I was like six, you know, before I'd go to sleep. He would read e.e. cummings' Buffalo Bill's defunct who used to ride a watersmooth-silver stallion and break onetwothreefourfive pigeons - read that stuff, and that music, you know, as I became enthralled with poetry as a kid, you know, that's what I always wanted to do. I always wanted to write something with that kind of - with the power of song, of music. And so yeah, I would say that all the poets I've read have definitely informed the writing.
DAVIES: When you've been in the outdoors, and you've been in some incredible settings, do these awe-inspiring moments, I don't know, bring poetry to your head?
HELLER: Yeah, I think so. I can't keep the music out in a way. You know, you hear - you read Yeats, you know, he's like "Prayer for My Daughter," I've walked and prayed for this young child an hour and heard the sea wind scream upon the tower and under the arches of the bridge and scream, in the elms above the flooded stream.
I mean, that stuff is so magnificent, and it's - yeah, and it's nature, too. And yeah, I definitely, I mean, those sorts of - it's sort of like pop songs you can't get out of your head. Those lines, you know, sort of are running around my mind all the time.
DAVIES: You know, I pictured you in these outdoor settings with, you know, guys in kayaks and on - wearing crampons and muscles bulging out of their vests.
DAVIES: And you're this guy among them who sneaks off and reads poetry. I mean, do you fit in? Do you feel different?
HELLER: Oh yeah, those guys love it. I mean, you know, get out on some trip in the middle of nowhere and start reading, you know, reading them Keats, you know. They love the stuff. They just think you're a little odd, that's all.
DAVIES: Peter Heller's new novel is called "The Dog Star." He'll be back in the second half of the show. I'm Dave Davies, and this is FRESH AIR.
DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies in for Terry Gross who is off this week. We're speaking with Peter Heller. He's a veteran adventure writer who's written books about descending into a remote Tibetan River gorge and sailing with radical environmentalists trying to ram whaling ships.
He's now written his first novel, which is set in rural Colorado after a pandemic has destroyed human civilization. It's called "The Dog Stars."
Now you grew up in New York. What kind of neighborhood where you in? What kind of kid were you?
HELLER: So I grew up in Brooklyn Heights, which is, you know, it's a genteel neighborhood above the piers, right across from the Financial District in Brooklyn. And it was a quiet neighborhood. I spent all my time, like, in the bushes when I was really little around the playground. My friends were in the playground. I was like in the bushes. I don't know, just as a kid, I just wanted to be out of the city so bad. I couldn't stand the city. You know, I went to school. I liked school a lot. I liked reading. But I couldn't wait until I got out of there, and so I begged my parents when I was 15 to send me to a school in southern Vermont. I have a lot of cousins and uncle and aunt in Putney, Vermont, and so I went to a school there for high school and I, you know, I was just like oh my god, hills and rivers and it was great. And I loved it so much. I built a teepee and I lived in it, you know, through the Vermont winter when I was a teenager and cut my firewood and all that stuff. I was just, I was just so happy in the country. And so, you know, went on from there, you know, I stayed, I didn't want to go to college in the city so I went to college in New England in the country - yeah.
DAVIES: Right. And you became an expedition kayaker, right? I mean you would take groups of people into these remote settings and with tough rapids bring everybody back alive, huh?
HELLER: Yeah. I was a kayaking...
HELLER: Most of the times on the big expeditions I was on assignment, so I was like the - kayak - I was the writer in the kayak and I didn't lead the trip. But I did a lot of guiding and I did a lot of kayak instruction along the way and, you know, in Costa Rica and the Southeast and in Colorado. So, yeah, did a lot of that. On the big trips, you know, it was really I always just felt like I was so lucky to be along in that I could kayak well enough to be on the trips that I could write about it.
DAVIES: Right. I mean the - I guess the best known is the trip that led to your book "Hell or High Water," and that's this remarkable river gorge in Eastern Tibet. You want to describe the setting here and what this expedition was about?
HELLER: Oh gosh. I mean this thing is like mythic. This - the Tsangpo River runs west-east across Tibet. It drains the entire North Slope of the Himalayas. It's a big river. And then in Eastern Tibet at about 10,000 foot elevation it just drops off the edge of the earth and flows between two mountains - a 25,000 footer and a 23,000 foot peak. The peaks are very close together and the river just drops off between them. And then 150 river miles later, it flows out into the hills of Assam, India at an altitude of 500 feet. So if you think, it drops off the edge of 10,000 feet and 150 river miles later comes out at 500 foot elevation, think of the relief in there, the steepness of this river - and it's a big river.
So these guys, an expedition led by Scott Lindgren and a few of his kayak buddies decide that they wanted to try and kayak this river - and these are the best expedition kayakers in the world - they decide they wanted to kayak it in the middle of the winter when the river was at its lowest level, which was a good idea. And...
DAVIES: But when it's very, very cold, right?
HELLER: When it's cold. And at some point, you know, how many river miles? It's something like 20 river miles and the river gets to a precipitous waterfall that hadn't been described that was, you know, sort of imagined but hadn't described until 1998 by National Geographic. I mean that's how remote this place was. So you get to a place where you can't paddle any more and then you have to climb over a high snow pass. But the thing about it is, is that those passes aren't even, you know, the locals don't go anywhere near them after November. So here we are in February and these guys are carrying their kayaks up, you know these 60 degrees slopes. A guy is cutting step with an ice axe and...
HELLER: ...carrying their kayaks up these, you know, just open snow slopes way up over a high pass. It was epic and I was just, I was on the ground team and, you know, it was, we were 37 days in the gorge.
DAVIES: So now did you have a kayak yourself or you were...
HELLER: No, no, no, no, no, no. I was way past - I was 40-something, these guys were all like in their 20s, you know, nobody really older than 30. They kayaked, you know, 350 days a year, top of their form. And so I was on assignment. I just was on the ground team and I wrote about the story. But, you know, it was challenging enough just trying to get through there. Only two expeditions in history had ever done it.
DAVIES: So what does it mean to be on the ground team?
HELLER: It means that you're with five Nepali Sherpas, like Everest Sherpas, who were there for mountaineering and stuff and 60 porters and then this international team of like mountaineers and you are trying to keep pace with the kayakers, you know, along the side of this precipitous gorge. And so, yeah, it's just, it's a lot of walking, a lot of scrambling and some praying.
DAVIES: And this gorge inspired the legend of Shangri-La? Is that right?
HELLER: Yeah. Yup. It was the inspiration for Shangri-La and the gorge is very sacred to Buddhists and has one of the most remote - had one of the most remote temples on earth and the Chinese destroyed it in 1959. And so we walked among the ruins of that place. You know, you have to sort of picture this jungly(ph), you know, bamboo and rhododendron forest, the sort of the lid of a human skull lying in the leaves, you know, it was this, a ceremonial cup that they use where they kind of saw off the top of a skull that's just lying there in these leaves among these like ruins. It's just wild.
DAVIES: What was the most harrowing moment?
HELLER: I think for me I'm scared of heights so for me was, you know, when we had to do these traverses. You know, you get to a place you'd be, you know, kind of hopping along in the boulders along the bank and then you'd get to a place where there'd just be a big spur and the wall and you couldn't go any further, you'd have to climb up, you know, a couple thousand feet say to get around it and that, you know, that was dicey for me.
DAVIES: And you're a writer. How were you recording this? Did you...
HELLER: I once met John McPhee, you know, at a wedding, and I love his writing. and I asked him, you know, I said: Do you - when you're doing, you know, encounters with the Archdruid and you're, you know, you're writing these conversations while you're climbing these mountains and you're hiking along, are you actually writing them as you go or do you just kind of remember them, you have such a good memory? And he said oh - I think I was like 23 and he said always write it down as you go - I carry a little notebook with me as I'm hiking, and I'm writing as I'm walking. If you wait until the end of the day, you know, it'll all just sound like you. You know, you'll remember it, but it'll be in your voice. So to get the authentic dialogue, you have to write it down. And so I've always done, you know, I took that to heart and I always, you know, carried a note book in a little dry bag between my legs and a kayak. Whenever I pulled over I would write anything I, any conversations I heard or anything I'd seen. Same, you know, hiking along or climbing. And I think that's good advice also for, you know, writers just getting into that kind of journalism. I think any journalism, you know, write down what everybody says even the ers and the ahs and where they cough.
DAVIES: So an iPhone or a Blackberry isn't going to do that for you?
HELLER: It probably would but I'd be so afraid that it would run out of batteries were, you know, get wet. And it's just nothing like, I carry his composition books, you know, the ones we had in second grade - the black and white marbled ones, they're tough. I've had them blown into rivers and stuff and fetched them, dried them out and they still work.
HELLER: You know, it's not like your iPhone.
DAVIES: We're speaking with writer Peter Heller. His new novel is called "The Dog Stars." We'll talk more after a short break.
This is FRESH AIR.
DAVIES: If you're just joining us we're speaking with writer Peter Heller. He has a new novel, his first, it's called "The Dog Stars."
Well, I just wanted to ask you about the time you spent aboard a vessel of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, this led to your book "Whale Warrior." People know about Greenpeace and their efforts to stop commercial whalers. These guys were a little different. You want to explain their approach?
HELLER: Oh yes, Sea Shepherd. They've got Greenpeace was, you know, they thought they were, what did they call them? Quakers with attitude. They had no respect for those guys. I got this assignment for National Geographic Adventure. They were sort of loath to do it because they didn't want to send a writer to glorify like any eco terrorism. And these guys are considered eco terrorists by the FBI and all that. So I showed up then, you know, I finally got the magazine to agree and I was, you know, I had to sign a letter saying I was a non-participant and so did Captain Paul Watson. And I showed up in Melbourne, Australia, with my duffel bag at the beginning of the Japanese whaling season in Antarctica. And I walked down to the dock and there was all these cafes and it's very prosperous and restaurants and people strolling along the dock.
And parked there was this all-black pirate ship with a jolly-roger flying at the bow. And I looked at the superstructure, you know, the part of the ship that sticks up with the bridge on it. And I looked at the side of the - and there were all these skulls and crossbones painted on it with the names of ships, Isba I, Isba II, the Morrill, the Sierra, and they were all, it was sort of like notches in a gunfighters belt, they were all ships that these guys had sunk or rammed. And so that was interesting, you know. I found my berth and I was informed that I was supposed to sleep in my clothes in case that there were some incidents like what happened with the Rainbow Warrior where there was sabotage and explosion. You have to be able to get up and out quickly, you could save your life that was, you know, a little bit interesting to hear.
And then we sailed. And I found that it was a vegan ship. I was glad I didn't bring the fishing gear I was going to bring. And straight south towards Antarctica. And after we got a few days past Tasmania, all the welders came on board and welded a big blade to the bow of the ship, and I'm talking about like a triple reinforced T-bar steel-sharpened blade for gutting the hulls of other ships. And that's when I knew that, you know, this assignment was not a lark at all. These guys were really serious about stopping the Japanese whaling fleet.
DAVIES: Right. Now they knew you were coming, right? They accepted you as a trustworthy journalist?
HELLER: You know, that was really interesting. I mean, you know, the letter that I signed said I was a non-participants so, you know, I was standing there with that little marble notebook I was talking about while they were moving stuff around in the deck and I would just kind of step of the way and write stuff down. But, you know, a week into it, you know, I was, you know, picking up stuff and helping them. I mean I'm just not the type of person just to stand there. And as I learned more and more about the crisis of the oceans and as I read more and more on the ship and talked to people - there were environmental film producers on board, they were marine biologists.
As I talked to these people about what was happening to the oceans, I have to say that I became less and less neutral and less and less objective as a journalist. You know, I sort of decided that these guys, what they were doing, trying to stop - I may not have believed in their methods, you know, I certainly wouldn't endorse violence or hurting anybody else. And luckily, they never had heard anybody in their rammings. But I did sort of feel like, you know, the Japanese shouldn't be whaling in an internationally ordained whale sanctuary in contravention of an international moratorium on whaling. They shouldn't be doing that and it, you know, somebody was actually going to go out there and put their lives on the line and stop them, you know, I have to admire them.
DAVIES: I want to talk about their encounter this huge Japanese vessel. But I wanted to ask first, you mentioned that they had some was eight vessels, most of them in port?
HELLER: Yeah. Yeah. Is that the number? I'm trying to remember now. I think it was...
DAVIES: Well...
HELLER: Yeah, it was eight.
DAVIES: A number. And how - why were they not arrested? I mean how can they be at a dock in Melbourne and not be arrested if they've sunk vessels?
HELLER: You know, Paul Watson, I mean, you know, he's a real iconoclast, he's a different kind of dude, and...
DAVIES: He's the commander of the vessel?
HELLER: Commander of the vessel and the director of Sea Shepherd. And, you know, he always does things, you know, his way. And what they did when they saw the ships in, like, in Norway they would be whaling ships, they would search them in the middle of the night and, you know, one time they found a drunken Norwegian watchmen in there, you know, asleep on the galley table. And they just cut the ship loose. But they would make sure no one was on there and then they would open to sea cogs(ph) or a couple of ships they blew the hulls open with limpet mines and sink them. And so they, you know, they got away without hurting anybody. But Watson begged the Norwegians to arrest him and put him on trial. And they wouldn't do it because they knew that it would give him a bully pulpit, that, sort of, podium to talk about Norwegian whaling. They, you know, they didn't want to give him the spotlight. So he was a very canny dude about, you know, keeping away from the law.
DAVIES: So you head off into these waters near Antarctica where you believe there's this Japanese vessel, the Nisshin Maru? Do I have that right?
HELLER: Yep. Mm-hmm.
DAVIES: And how were they able to find it out there in the open sea? This is a fascinating piece of the story.
HELLER: Yeah. So it was two and a half million square kilometers so it was like the area that they were searching was the entire western United States, you know? And the ship that they were on, the Farley Mowat, as menacing a pirate ship as it appears, could only go nine knots. I mean, you know, you can practically run that fast.
So the Japanese whaling fleet could go 25 knots. Way, way outpaced them. So how - sort of like if you were in a VW Beetle sitting in Denver saying I want to find a convey of semi-trucks somewhere in Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, you know, Oregon, Washington, California, you know, I don't know. And radar only goes out to line of sight, you know, 12 miles to the horizon. How do you do it?
And Watson, well, you know, he uses every method at his disposal and he did on one dawn, Christmas morning, in a force eight gale and 40 foot seas find Nisshin Maru. It was unbelievable. I remember I was standing on the bridge with him and it was the weirdest thing because the wind was blowing at whatever it was, you know, 45 knots. Huge seas and there was still fog which is a weird thing.
You know, if you grew up in New England you never see that. And it kind of like - the veil kind of tore away and there was this huge ship right in front of us. And they were idling, just trying to, you know, stay into the seas and idling, you know, against this gale, this huge Japanese factory ship. And they thought we on our little boat, or ship, where it was one of the Greenpeace ships.
So they weren't worried about us at all. They thought we had just come up on them. You know, they weren't expected the Sea Shepherd at all.
DAVIES: Because the Greenpeace ships observe. They don't try and interfere, right?
HELLER: They observe, they don't — yeah. And, you know, Watson attempted to attack them. It was, you know, sort of heart-stopping.
DAVIES: Right. Well, so he's got this ramming bar, I mean, this blade attached to the bow of his vessel and he's going to try and rip a hole in the hull of the Japanese ship, right? What happened?
HELLER: Well, so he had one shot at it because as soon as they would see, you know, who it was they would take off. So here he is. You know, he's coming up on them, pedal to the metal. It's sort of like, you know, give it more, Scotty. You know. Oh, Captain, she's, like, coming apart. It was like that.
And they did. You know, what he wanted to do - his plan was there's a slipway in the back in the stern of the ships where they crank the whales up. It's just a ramp in the stern and what Watson wanted to do was come up fast enough that he could ride up on one of these huge waves and then slam down on the base of the slipway at waterline and crack the hull at waterline.
Was, you know, it was highly dangerous to the crew and the ship, the other ship. That's what he wanted to do. So tried it. They looked out, you know, the bridge, saw who it was, and took off. And then the most amazing thing happened. I will never forget this the rest of my life.
That ship got about two miles out ahead of us and then it was as if the captain, this Japanese captain who had been doing this for, you know, years and years and years - he was so sick of Sea Shepherd. He was terrified of their attacks and it was almost like it was like let's just get this over with.
And I remember seeing that big factory ship just turn - turn to starboard and they slowed down and they were kind of like - we were both coming at an oblique angle towards each other. And he was like let's just get this over with. And the two ships came at each other and the distance closed and the seas were so big that this factory ship, the bow was, you know, three stories high.
It was airborne off of these waves and plunging down and tearing out huge chunks of ocean that were just ripped down away on the wind. And they got within 150 feet and the horns were blaring and then Watson signaled the guys on the stern to unleash a prop fouler.
A bunch of lines to try and foul their props. And it was unbelievable. Someone in the Nisshin Maru must've, you know, got a clue and got some sanity and they threw their wheel over and, you know, for an agonizing couple of seconds both ships just were side by side in these huge seas, you know, feet apart. And then they took off again. He didn't encounter them again for another, you know, uh, couple of weeks.
DAVIES: And is that as scared as you've ever been?
HELLER: I wasn't scared. I mean, it was the weirdest thing. You know, I had a dry suit. I had the little letter from National Geographic saying I was a journalist that I'd laminated. I figured I could wave it, you know, if I got - and I just, I was so, you know, in those situations you're sort of so immersed in the whole thing and you're so, kind of, excited to see what's going to happen, I mean, it wasn't really scary.
It was just more like a big adrenaline rush. But the relief that swept through the ship afterwards was really, you know, incredible. I mean, I think a lot of people on that ship thought that that was their last, you know, minute on earth.
DAVIES: We're speaking with writer Peter Heller. His new novel is called "The Dog Stars." We'll talk more after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.
DAVIES: If you're just joining us, we're speaking with writer Peter Heller. He has a new novel, his first. It's called "The Dog Stars." Your character in "The Dog Stars," Hig, is a pilot and his Cessna aircraft is an important part of the story and, you know, there's some really evocative scenes where he writes about flying. You're a pilot yourself, right?
HELLER: Yeah. I came to it in a funny way. I was doing a kayak trip in northern Montana. We had to fly into the river to do it. This is a few years ago, and I found that my favorite part of the whole trip was the flight in. You know, it was just so cool to be flying through these mountains close enough - where the wingtips were close enough to the mountain slopes that you could see, you know, the tracks of elk, you know, going up along the ridge.
And the landing in this little grass strip surrounded by mountains. I just thought it was cool. So I asked them. I got an assignment from Men's Journal. It was sort of like how to be a bush pilot in three weeks kind of thing. And, you know, they gave me the assignment. I went up there to Kalispell, Montana and I got my license in 20 days with these incredible back country pilots.
DAVIES: The assignment was to learn to fly and write a story?
HELLER: Yeah. It was like, could you, like, in three weeks, like, learn to fly, get your license, and then land on a back country strip. And so the guy I learned from, Dave Horner, is one of the truly great back country pilots in the world. He has 30,000 hours flying in the mountains of Glacier National Park and around there tracking wolves and grizzly bears - radio collar tracking.
So he's always flying low and slow with, you know, the mountain peaks all around him and above him. It's very dangerous flying and he's still alive after 30,000 hours. He's extraordinary. It was sort of like learning to play tennis from, you know, Roger Federer. It should never happen.
And he was so fun to learn from because he had been a logger and, you know, I was not a natural (unintelligible). I think it was like day three. We were landing in, like, Polson on the southern end of Flathead Lake and we came in, he goes you drive a truck? I'm like yes, yes, sir. He was like you drive a motorcycle? I'm like yeah. He goes, this isn't either one. It's a bird, damn it. You know, little adjustments, little adjustments.
HELLER: Then when we landed he turned and he goes that was atrocious. He said you landed and that looked like a sick goose. And, you know, for a logger to pull out the word atrocious, I mean, it was a special circumstance and I felt very honored.
HELLER: Anyway, I fell in love with flying and Dave actually emailed me, you know, a couple years ago a little bit after the assignment and said, hey, a buddy of mine who used this plane to track wolves, this 56 Cessna, it's a beautiful plane, he's selling it cheap. You should buy it. And I did.
DAVIES: Right. He will enjoy the book, I'm sure.
HELLER: Yeah. Oh, yeah.
DAVIES: But did I get this right? You're afraid of heights?
HELLER: Yep.
DAVIES: So how do you reconcile that with flying?
HELLER: It's different when you're actually, you know, at the controls and you're flying the plane. I don't know why. It's different than, say, being way up on a cliff with no rope.
HELLER: It doesn't bother me at all. And my wife is really relaxed. This old plane, the engine was timed out. We lost the engine right over the Continental Divide, basically. And, you know, I said Kim, I think we've got to turn back to Erie(ph) and land. She's like, oh, that's a good idea. You know, she's very calm and cool. So good person to fly with.
DAVIES: You lost the engine? The only engine?
HELLER: Yeah. It was starting to go. I mean, what happens is the prop goes over red line and you can't bring it back and so, you know, you know that the engine's getting torn up. And, you know, when I finally landed the guys at the airport who, you know, took the engine apart, said they'd never seen one so torn up that wasn't, like, in a wreck. So we were very lucky.
DAVIES: When you say over the red line you mean, like, what? Short of oil or something? Or burning up?
HELLER: No, the RPMs.
DAVIES: Oh. Revving too high.
HELLER: Yeah, the prop is just, yes, revving way too high and it's tearing up the engine. So that was my fault. I mean, I bought the plane with, you know, a timed out engine. They recommended only so many hours and I thought I could kind of nurse it along past that and I was wrong.
DAVIES: So do you ever think about slowing down and, like, writing about neurotic people in Manhattan or something?
HELLER: Oh, I'd love to. If I were smart enough I would do that. You know, I do. I slowed down a lot. I mean, what I love to do now is fish. I like to surf. Surfing is really a mellow thing, usually. I mean, you go out early in the morning and, you know, hopefully there's just a few people out and it's quiet. You ride up and down on the swell.
To me, catching the wave is just sort of the cream. And, you know, I love to drink coffee and, you know, write at the coffee shop. I love to fish and, you know, I'm married now. And I have a wonderful wife who, you know, I like to go biking around the park with. So, yeah. You know, things have slowed down a lot.
DAVIES: Peter Heller, it's been great. Thanks so much for speaking with us.
HELLER: Thanks for having me. It's fun.
DAVIES: Peter Heller's first novel is called "The Dog Stars." You can read or download audio of an exclusive selection from the book on the NPR website where it's part of the First Reads Series. You can find it at nprbooks.org. You can join us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at nprfreshair and you can download Podcasts of our show at freshair.npr.org. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.


text:
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
Check out the JS Online Packer Blog here for a shot of the new Sports Illustrated cover. This is exactly what I was talking about below. The entire sports world celebrate the greatness of playing America's game in the natural elements and yet unless there is a rule change we will never see a Super Bowl in these kinds of conditions. What a shame. Sports Illustrated thinks it's cool enough to put on the cover, but it's too, um, cool for the big game.
As someone who thinks the NFL has done almost everything right over the past two decades, this remains baffling.


text:
Large Flawed Fire Crystal is a large crystal in Dragon Age: Origins. It is part of the Fire crystals set.
Acquisition Edit
Possible loot from crystal formations in Cadash Thaig or Wilhelm's Cellar or anywhere you can purchase crystals.
Notes Edit
- Acts as armor for Shale.
- The second grade of fire crystal available, it grants an additional +10% fire resistance when combined with one of the Small Crystals of the same type; just as with any other crystal.
Community content is available under CC-BY-SA unless otherwise noted.


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Saudi Arabia has abandoned its traditional policy of discretion in recent weeks, signaling deep anger at the Obama administration's Middle East policies and threatening to break with its most powerful ally and pursue a more robust and independent role in supporting the rebellion against President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.
But privately, Saudi officials concede that their efforts to forge an alternative strategy in Syria have run up against the same issue the Americans face: how to bolster the military might of a disorganized armed opposition without also empowering the jihadists who increasingly dominate its ranks.
And while Saudi officials have hinted at a broader diplomatic shift away from the United States, their options are limited there, too: Saudi Arabia is dependent on American military and oil technology, and the other countries the Saudis have courted — including France and India — can help only on the margins, analysts say.
Diplomats who have spent time recently with Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi intelligence chief running the kingdom's Syria operation, say he seems most preoccupied not with Mr. Assad's forces, but with the number of foreign jihadists in Syria, which he estimates at 3,000 to 5,000, including about 800 Saudis whose identities his government closely tracks. He expects those numbers to double every six months, said an American official who knows him well.
The Saudis work to broaden their support to the Syrian rebels by sending money and arms to nonjihadist factions. But their fear of blowback is a limiting factor, rooted in their bitter experience with Saudis who fought in Afghanistan in the 1980s and later returned to mount deadly terrorist attacks here.
"No Saudis will be trained to fight in Syria — in fact, we don't want any Saudis there at all," said Prince Turki al-Faisal, who was the kingdom's intelligence minister when thousands of Saudis went — with the government's blessing — to fight in Afghanistan.
It is particularly galling for the Saudis to see that their regional rival, Iran, has no such fears as it carries out a far more effective proxy war in Syria. It has deployed its Revolutionary Guards and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah as far afield as Yemen to recruit jihadist-style fighters for the cause, who are then trained and equipped in Iran or Syria, American officials say. The commander of the Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, visits Damascus regularly and is playing a leading role in Mr. Assad's military campaign against the rebels, American and Arab officials say.
In a sense, Prince Bandar is Mr. Soleimani's counterpart, but his failure to shape a cohesive rebel force helps explain the depth of the Saudis' anger at the Obama administration's decision not to launch airstrikes on Mr. Assad's military in September. They feel their hands are tied, and the recent gestures — including Saudi Arabia's unprecedented refusal of a seat on the United Nations Security Council — are rooted in a belief that only the United States has the military power and global authority to make a difference in Syria.
"Refusing the council seat this way, after we had won it, had more impact than if we had just withdrawn two years ago," said Prince Turki, who gave a speech on Tuesday in Washington assailing the Obama administration for its failure to provide more support to the rebels. Prince Turki, who has no official position, said he believed the gesture was aimed in part at a Saudi domestic audience and in part at the United States, in hopes that it could win some leverage for a more aggressive stance on Syria.
"Whether we can get Mr. Obama to change his mind, I don't know," Prince Turki said.
Syria is not the only Saudi grievance against the Obama administration. With Egypt, the Saudis were angry that Washington turned on its longtime ally, President Hosni Mubarak, and accepted the election of an Islamist, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Saudis were again upset that the United States suspended some aid after the military overthrew Mr. Morsi in July.
While Washington may have felt it had no choice but to support the millions who poured into the street calling for Mr. Mubarak's ouster and to show some displeasure with a military takeover, the Saudis saw the United States as having let down an ally in support of the Islamists, twice.
The Saudis also feel slighted by Washington's seeming eagerness to reach a nuclear deal with Iran — negotiations they feel they should be a part of. Iran is Saudi Arabia's nemesis in the region, and the Saudis are worried that Washington is again being naïve in trusting that Iran will offer a sincere and verifiable compromise with its nuclear program.
But Syria has been a special concern for Saudi Arabia's monarch, King Abdullah, Saudi officials say, for two reasons. He feels responsible for halting the wide-scale killing of his fellow Sunni Muslims. And Syria has become the most important battleground, in Saudi eyes, for the perennial conflict with Iran, which is seen here as almost an existential threat to the kingdom because of its goal of exporting its own brand of revolutionary Shiite Islam across the Muslim world.
"Saudi Arabia cannot afford to be encircled by Iran, from Iraq and Syria. That is out of the question," said Khalid al-Dakhil, a political sociology professor at King Saud University who has called for Saudi Arabia to become less dependent on the United States.
The Saudis were initially reluctant to provide military support to the rebels in Syria after the uprising turned into an armed opposition movement in 2011. The interior minister, Muhammad bin Nayef, was against it, and cited the concern that money and arms could flow to jihadists, according to a Western diplomat who spoke with him at the time.
The Saudis began funneling arms to the rebels in 2012, but provided light weapons only, largely out of concern that heavier weapons could get into the hands of jihadists. They mostly worked through middlemen, including Lebanese political figures who had long been part of their patronage network. But that approach hampered their effectiveness, with much of the money landing in foreign bank accounts instead of buying weapons for the rebels.
One of those intermediaries was Okab Saqr, the Lebanese member of Parliament who fled to Europe because of death threats after his role was exposed, though some in the Syrian opposition say he is still involved. Wissam al-Hassan, the Lebanese security general who was killed in an explosion in Beirut last year, also helped to coordinate military support to the rebels, according to a Lebanese official and a Saudi adviser who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal operations.
The Syrian opposition's political arm complained about the intermediary role of the Lebanese, and asked the Saudis to deal with the opposition more directly.
In late 2012, Saudi Arabia grew frustrated with Qatar, which had been financing Islamist rebel brigades, and shifted its focus to Jordan, where it began working with the Jordanians and the C.I.A. in an effort to vet and train the more secular rebel groups. The Saudi effort was largely in the hands of Prince Bandar's younger half-brother, Prince Salman bin Sultan, with Prince Bandar supervising from Riyadh.
Last weekend, Prince Bandar hinted that he would downscale this joint effort, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal, and that he might work more through the French and Jordanians. But French, Jordanian and Saudi officials dismissed those prospects, saying that Prince Bandar's comments were meant to show anger at American inaction on Syria, not an actual plan.
"We can't punish America," said the Saudi official, adding that while the sense of grievance was strong, no specific steps had been taken to break with the United States. "We don't have the tools."
Other Saudis also expressed doubts that the kingdom could easily decrease ties with the United States.
"Move to what?" asked Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist with close ties to the royal family. "There is no alternative. It is just a tactical pressure on the American administration when it comes to Syria," he said. "But Saudi Arabia has so much of value in the relationship with America, in security exchanges and the war on terror. We benefit more from this than the U.S. does from us."
For the Syrian opposition, the Saudi outbursts have been encouraging, but members say they have not seen any signs of a new direction that might benefit them.
"If all this Saudi anger translates into more support for us, great," said Najib Ghadbian, the United States representative of the Syrian Coalition, the opposition's main political arm.
Ben Hubbard reported from Riyadh, and Robert F. Worth from Washington.


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- Fonds
- ? - 2011
The fonds, related to the Swift Current Square Dance Club and the Inner Wheel Club - Swift Current, were accumulated by the source. No other information was captured at the time of transfer to the Swift Current Museum.The content has not been prof...
Swift Current Square Dance Club


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(also nonabelian homological algebra)
A crossed module (of groups) is:
From other points of view it is:
Historically they were the first example of higher dimensional algebra to be studied.
A crossed module is
a pair of groups ,
morphisms of groups
(which below we will conceive of as a map analogously to the adjoint action of a group on itself)
such that
We may use the notation , for this if the action is fairly obvious, including an explicit action, , if there is a risk of confusion.
If one unwraps the definitions in terms of automorphism groups to use merely finite products (for instance, writing the actions as , together with commuting diagrams encoding the necessary properties), then crossed modules can be defined internal to any cartesian monoidal category , namely as a structure involving internal groups in . For instance, one might consider Lie crossed modules, which are crossed modules of Lie groups. These are relevant for certain models of the String group.
Alternatively, one can take another tack, and define crossed module objects in categories that support enough structure without using internal groups, the most general case of which, in practice, are semiabelian categories. There one considers the objects to behave 'like groups' in the sense that the category they form looks very much like the category of groups. Janelidze (Janelidze 2003) defined the notion of internal crossed module in a semiabelian category (so that in the prototypical example of the category of groups, they reduce to the above notion).
A key result, also due to (Janelidze 2003) and generalising the Brown-Spencer theorem from the case of ordinary crossed modules, is the following:
(Janelidze's Brown-Spencer theorem). Let be a semiabelian category. Then the category of crossed modules in is equivalent to the category of internal groupoids in .
Here the notion of internal groupoid is the usual diagrammatic notion.
The two diagrams can be translated into equations, which may often be helpful.
If we write the effect of acting with on as , then the second diagram translates as the equation:
In other words, is equivariant for the action of .
The first diagram is slightly more subtle. The group can act on itself in two different ways, (i) by the usual conjugation action, and (ii) by first mapping down to and then using the action of that group back on . The first diagram says that the two actions coincide. Equationally this gives:
This equation is known as the Peiffer rule in the literature. Another way to interpret it is to rewrite it slightly:
The Peiffer rule can thus be seen as a 'twisted commutativity law' for .
For and two strict 2-groups coming from crossed modules and , a morphism of strict 2-groups , and hence a morphism of crossed modules is a 2-functor
between the corresponding delooped 2-groupoids. Expressing this in terms of a diagram of the ordinary groups appearing in and yields a diagram called a butterfly. See there for more details.
For any group, its automorphism crossed module is
Under the equivalence of crossed modules with strict 2-groups this corresponds to the automorphism 2-group
of automorphisms in the category Grpd of groupoids on the one-object delooping groupoid of .
Almost the canonical example of a crossed module is given by a group and a normal subgroup of . We take , and with the action given by conjugation, whilst is the inclusion, . This is 'almost canonical', since if we replace the groups by simplicial groups and , then is a crossed module, and given any crossed module, , there is a simplicial group and a normal subgroup , such that the construction above gives the given crossed module up to isomorphism.
Another standard example of a crossed module is where is a group and is a -module. Thus the category of modules over groups embeds in the category of crossed modules.
If is a crossed module with cokernel , and is abelian, then the operation of on factors through . In fact such crossed modules in which both and are abelian should not be sneezed at! A good example is where denotes the cyclic group of order , is injective on each factor, and acts on the product by the twist. This crossed module has a classifying space with fundamental and second homotopy groups and non trivial -invariant in , so is not a product of Eilenberg-MacLane spaces. However the crossed module is an algebraic model and so one one can do algebraic constructions with it. It gives in some ways a better feel for the space than the -invariant. The higher homotopy van Kampen theorem implies that the above gives the 2-type of the mapping cone of the map of
Suppose is a fibration sequence
of pointed spaces, thus is a fibration in the topological sense (lifting of paths and homotopies of paths will suffice), , where is the basepoint of . The fibre is pointed at , say, and is taken as the basepoint of as well.
There is an induced map on homotopy groups
and if is a loop in based at , and a loop in based at , then the composite path corresponding to is homotopic to one wholly within . To see this, note that is null homotopic?. Pick a homotopy in between it and the constant map, then lift that homotopy back up to to one starting at . This homotopy is the required one and its other end gives a well defined element (abusing notation by confusing paths and their homotopy classes). With this action is a crossed module. This will not be proved here, but is not that difficult. (Of course, secretly, this example is 'really' the same as the previous one since a fibration of simplicial groups is just morphism that is an epimorphism in each degree, and the fibre is thus just a normal simplicial subgroup. What is fun is that this generalises to 'higher dimensions'.)
A particular case of this last example can be obtained from the inclusion of a subspace into a pointed space , (where we assume ). We can replace this inclusion by a homotopic fibration, in 'the standard way', and then find that the fundamental group of its fibre is .
A deep theorem of J.H.C. Whitehead is that the crossed module
is the free crossed module on the characteristic maps of the -cells. One utility of this is that it enables the expression of nonabelian chains and boundaries ideas in dimensions and : thus for the standard picture of a Klein Bottle formed by identifications from a square the formula
makes sense with a generator of a free crossed module; in the usual abelian chain theory we can write only , thus losing information.
Whitehead's proof of this theorem used knot theory and transversality. The theorem is also a consequence of the -dimensional Seifert-van Kampen Theorem, proved by Brown and Higgins, which states that the functor
: (pairs of pointed spaces) (crossed modules)
preserves certain colimits (see reference below).
This last example was one of the first investigated by Whitehead and his proof appears also in a little book by Hilton; see also Nonabelian algebraic topology, however the more general result of Brown and Higgins determines also the group as a crossed module, and then Whitehead's result is the case with is a wedge of circles.
2-group, crossed module, differential crossed module
3-group, 2-crossed module / crossed square, differential 2-crossed module
∞-group, simplicial group, crossed complex, hypercrossed complex
The concept was introduced in
see also
Further discussion is in
Ronnie Brown, Philip Higgins, On the connections between the second relative homotopy groups of some related spaces, Proc. London Math. Soc. (3) 36 (1978) 193-212.
Ronnie Brown, Groupoids and crossed objects in algebraic topology, Homology, Homotopy and Applications, 1 (1999) 1-78.
George Janelidze, Internal crossed modules, Georgian Mathematical Journal 10 (2003) pp 99-114. (EuDML)
Ronnie Brown, Philip Higgins, and R. Sivera, Nonabelian Algebraic Topology: Filtered spaces, Crossed Complexes, Cubical Homotopy Groupoids, EMS Tracts in Mathematics, Vol. 15, (Autumn 2010).
Last revised on April 26, 2019 at 09:38:26. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.


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Big Machining for Big Machinery
A significant investment in machining equipment, including an advanced five-axis, 6-meter profile grinding machine, is enabling this Southwestern shop to be more competitive at producing large-scale gears, shafts and other mining components.
The very large gears, shafts and related mining components that are machined at L&H Industrial's Tempe, Arizona facility are impressive to see. What's just as impressive, however, is the investment that the Wyoming-based company has made there since purchasing the operation in 2008. In the past few years, the company has invested more than $20 million in the facility by adding machine tools, refurbishing existing equipment and expanding the building. And this is just the beginning, Wayne Myers notes.
Mr. Myers has been employed at this facility for nearly three decades under three different owners. He's worn many hats there over the years, working as a machine operator, sales representative and operations manager. He explains that until L&H purchased the operation, the shop (like many others that perform this type of work) relied on dated, manual equipment and traditional processes to produce large gears and components for mining machinery. Recently, however, the company has taken significant strides to make this operation more globally competitive, including the addition of an advanced 6-meter, five-axis profile grinding machine (one of only three such models currently installed in the United States and seven worldwide) to produce higher-quality gears with vastly improved surface finishes. It has also installed a huge, multifunction CNC lathe that will enable the shop to produce—in one setup—the types of long shafts that often accompany large gears.
Featured Content
A visit in early March with Mr. Myers (now a territory account manager) as well as Bart Wood, general manager, and Scott Bradley, area manager, enabled me to take the following snapshot of a transformational point in the shop's evolution. While there, I was also able to learn about the additional investments that are on the horizon as the company strives to be a premier manufacturer of rebuilt and redesigned components for mining applications.
Gear Production via Conventional Means
In 1964, Leon Wandler founded L&H Industrial in Gillette, Wyoming with six employees. Today, the company has offices on four continents and more than 450 employees. L&H is a leader in the design and manufacture of aftermarket parts for mining shovels, draglines and drills. The company also specializes in providing field, repair and remanufacturing services for the global mining industry.
L&H is now owned by Mr. Wandler's sons, Mike and Jeff, who purchased the Tempe facility so the company could expand its reach into Mexico and the Southwestern United States. The business at this location is split fairly evenly between rebuild work and new product design and manufacturing, the latter of which is exemplified by the company's expanding Omega line of higher-quality replacement components and systems for OEM mining equipment.
The Tempe facility was established in the 1970s to manufacture large gears. Until recently, it has primarily used World War II-era manual equipment and applied conventional large-scale gear-making processes. For instance, new gear blanks start at a gashing machine that roughs gear teeth profiles by removing much of the material between the teeth. Workpieces are then delivered to either a hobber or a gear shaper to complete the tooth profiles.
Hobbing machines feed rotating cutters ground with a specific involute profile into workpieces to create the teeth (hobbing cutters for large gears can cost as much as $20,000 apiece). Conversely, a gear shaper moves a relatively inexpensive planing-type tool (one that many shops can make themselves) up and down in one axis to create the tooth profile. During the tool's non-cutting up-stroke, the machine's saddle and rotary table move simultaneously a bit to mimic the motion of a gear tooth rolling in and out of mesh with its mating component. A tooth profile is completed with multiple downward passes of the tool along that path. Depending on the job, adjustments to the machine can be made to change the number of teeth and the tooth profile or pitch. This concept dates back to the early 20th century, but it has remained one of the most popular methods for machining teeth for large gears. Until recently, in fact, L&H's Tempe operation used a 1950s-era gear shaper for final machining of gear teeth.
Improving the Process
Although designs for gears haven't drastically changed over the years, the quality specifications that mining equipment OEMs demand have become more stringent. U.S. gear production is governed by the American Gear Manufacturer's Association (AGMA), which establishes grades or classifications for geometric gear tolerances. A high AGMA number indicates a tight-toleranced gear in terms of tooth spacing, profile and lead.
Prior to L&H's purchase, the highest rating the Tempe operation could achieve was an AGMA 8 on its gear shaper. However, many of today's mining equipment OEMs now require gears with AGMA 10 quality. Realizing this, the company tasked Mr. Myers a couple of years ago with identifying the types of gear-making technology and processes that might enable the shop to attain an AGMA 10 quality level for large gears. Mr. Myers spent a year traveling the world networking with the gear-making community, and considered equipment such as a seven-axis milling machine and even a used gear shaper that was a prime candidate for a CNC retrofit.
However, he and others at the company understood that producing a gear with a quality tooth surface finish was just as important as achieving a high AGMA rating. Obviously, a finer surface finish means there's less friction between mating teeth, minimizing the chance of pitting that can lead to premature gear failure. Mr. Myers notes that any hobbed or shaped tooth will have feed lines, and surface finish quality will not be better than approximately 100 Ra (as in the case with the shop's existing gear shaper, even though it uses new-technology cutting oils and tools with advanced coatings).
This prompted the decision last year to purchase a new five-axis Rapid 6000 profile grinding machine from Höfler, which can accommodate gears measuring 236 inches in diameter. Since being installed last year, this machine has enabled the shop to surpass its initial AGMA goal and finish-grind shaped gear teeth to AGMA 14 quality and 24-Ra surface finish.
Adding Grinding
The Rapid 6000 is a five-axis profile grinding machine that accommodates workpieces with diameters ranging from 9.5 to 236 inches and a maximum face width of 80 inches. Mr. Myers says it has a number of features that enable it to effectively grind quality gear teeth profiles. For instance, the machine uses a mineral cast bed, which is said to provide improved damping and thermal growth qualities compared to cast iron. Therefore, processing and ambient facility heat have a significantly lower effect on the machine component expansion during operation.
The machine's 2,350-mm-diameter table has a 50-ton load capacity and moves axially and radially on hydrostatic bearings. The table has a center bore with a diameter of 750 mm and a depth of 1,300 mm to enable shafts to be fixtured for teeth-grinding operations. In fact, the first part ground on the machine was large ball-mill pinion for iron-ore mining, which conventionally would have been gashed and hobbed. These operations could take as long as 50 hours to complete, but that first pinion took just 18 hours to gash and then grind.
Another advantage that Mr. Myers points to is that the machine uses table drives with torque motors for smooth, backlash-free motion. Its table indexes to within a millionth of a degree and can rotate as high as 70 rpm. In addition, the machine's grinding head also features a torque motor with a direct-measuring system for accurate position control. A dressing system with two dressing wheels is integrated directly into the head, too. Dressing routines are called up automatically when the machine senses an increase in grinding pressure due to wheel build-up. After dressing, the machine's control calculates the wheel diameter to automatically determine a new radial in-feed value.
During grinding, the machine can adjust its head's helix angle and shift the grinding spindle tangentially for simultaneous five-axis motion. There is no limitation for the pressure angle, and helix angles can range from -45 to +120 degrees. The machine also has an internal grinding head installed on its tailstock that can be used to grind internal spurs or helical profiles.
But beyond these machine design features, Mr. Myers appreciated the positive feedback about service he received from other Höfler equipment users. As he networked through the gear community, users of multiple grinding equipment brands said Höfler service personnel notified of an issue would be on site within days versus sometimes weeks with other builders.
The Rapid 6000 has been in operation for just a year, so the shop is still on a bit of a learning curve with it. Rory Tagle, who has been an employee at this location for 12 years, is the machine's first-shift programmer and operator. He has vast experience running manual machines whereby essentially every machine motion requires some bit of human definition, and admits that this mindset caused the move to CNC to be initially intimidating. However, the machine's control with intuitive interface made programming relatively easy to pick up, he says, and he's not tasked with programming or calculating every single machine movement or action (such as compensating for wheel wear, which the control does automatically).
Instead, he uses Höfler's GearPro conversational-type programming system to simply enter a handful of parameters for a specific job. The standard software enables dressing of almost all involute profiles, and profile modifications are displayed graphically on the CNC's monitor. In-process probing routines determine how much material remains left to grind after a pass. Plus, the machine's touch probe is also used during final inspection after which an inspection report is automatically generated.
Grinding Sans Gashing
To date, the Rapid 6000 machine enables the shop to produce AGMA-14 gears with an excellent surface finish to ensure longer component life and quieter operation. However, a gashing operation followed by either hobbing or gear shaping is still required to create the rough teeth profiles prior to grinding. Therefore, the shop is investigating a process to enable the machine to completely grind gear teeth from a blank in one setup without pre-machining work.
Because the wheels that were supplied with the machine were designed for finish grinding of carburized or induction-hardened material, Mr. Bradley has been working with Norton Abrasives to develop wheels capable of producing gear teeth complete, rough-grinding the profiles in the soft state and finishing the teeth in the hardened state. In fact, the shop planned to begin testing this process the week after my visit.
As part of this new approach, a new coolant nozzle system from Cool-Grind was added to the machine. These nozzles use coherent-jet technology that features an internal nozzle geometry to create a tight, coherent jet when the coolant exits. This is especially important for grinding, because most of the heat goes into the part, not away with the chips. The stream's high impact energy removes the boundary layer of air that oftentimes stops low-pressure coolant from wetting the wheel surface at high speeds. The concentrated stream enables the wheel to carry the coolant directly into the grinding zone. During installation on the machine, a miniature laser fitted to the tip of the nozzles enabled precise aiming of the jets.
Although this process will require much greater material removal and will take much longer than conventional skim grinding, the shop believes it will benefit by consolidating the operation on one machine to minimize setups and transport of the large workpieces.
Adding Capacity, Capabilities, Floor Space
Not all equipment the shop has recently purchased has been new. In fact, it's had good results purchasing used machines. The huge, multifunction Ravensburg CNC lathe the shop recently installed is a good example. Although it had a VTL that could turn 29-foot-diameter parts, its horizontal turning capacity was limited to 40 inches in length. The Ravensburg, one of the largest CNC lathes in the Southwest, enables the shop to turn parts as long as 354 inches. And in addition to offering a 55-inch swing capacity, the lathe has a milling spindle and 12-station ATC providing the possibility to produce splined shafts, ball-mill pinions and similar components in one setup instead of moving workpieces across a lathe and a mill.
The shop has also had some of its existing equipment remanufactured and/or modified. For example, its British Craven gear hobber has been retrofitted with a CNC and modified to perform gashing work. In addition, the shop created a custom attachment to enable it to machine internal splines, starting with a straight end mill and finishing with a full-form end mill. Similarly, its Carlton five-axis CNC horizontal boring mill will soon be modified to provide more floor and head travel to machine larger gears in fewer setups. During my visit, the shop's Betts horizontal boring mill was being retrofitted with a new FANUC control and drives. In addition, a 120-inch Betts VTL remanufactured by New Century will soon be delivered as will a retrofitted G&L internal splining machine.
The G&L will be delivered after the shop completes its facility expansion. A new welding shop is being added, and the existing welding area will become another machining bay. This, combined with additional office space, will increase the facility's total space from nearly 36,000 square feet to approximately 58,500. Air conditioning will be added to the entire production area, too.
Mr. Myers says the Wandlers' openness to make these types of investments is one reason why L&H's annual business has grown from $10 million to $100 million. He also says this is why the last few years has been the most exciting time he's experienced at this facility.
Learn about Klingelnberg Corp.
10 Things to Know About Creep-Feed Grinding
Because of the high material removal rate creep-feed grinding can deliver in challenging materials, grinding might not be just the last step in the process—it might be the process.
Vertical Grinding Has Advantages
In vertical grinding, the workpiece is held upright in a rotary chuck with the grinding spindle overhead. This configuration can improve roundness, facilitate single-setup processing and prolong the life of the machine. Loading and unloading may gets easier, too. Workpieces with relatively large diameters and short lengths benefit the most from vertical grinding.
Choosing The Right Grinding Wheel
Understanding grinding wheel fundamentals will help you find the right wheel for the job.


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Chopa is known for being the leader in Zen home décor and Zen-inspired living, with an unparalleled selection of Shoji room dividers, Japanese furniture, garden fountains, kimonos and meditation gongs, among many other Japanese and Zen items in our online store. One would expect a purveyor of "all things Zen" to sell quite a few books, DVDs and CDs on meditation and yoga, but up until recently Chopa has had a very small selection of these.
Now, thanks to our recent inventory expansion, Chopa is proud to offer a whole new line of books, CDs and DVDs that will teach you how to properly meditate. Several other yoga meditation books are available on this new section of the site. Now, in addition to finding great gift ideas and terrific new home furnishings, you can count on Chopa for Buddhist meditation CDs, or a book on how to meditate for beginners. (more…)


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Ahmadinejad is a monkey, and 6 other examples of John McCain's peculiar sense of humor [Updated]
On Thursday, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) set Twitter ablaze with a tweet comparing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to a monkey. The senator's "joke" referenced last week's strange story about an Iranian primate that was launched into orbit — an event that may have actually been an elaborate ruse.
So Ahmadinejad wants to be first Iranian in space - wasn't he just there last week? "Iran launches monkey into space" news.yahoo.com/iran-launches-…
— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) February 4, 2013
Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) promptly lit into his GOP colleague.
Whoa."@senjohnmccain: So Ahmadinejad wants to be first Iranian in space - wasn't he just there last week? "Iran launches monkey into space""
— Justin Amash (@repjustinamash) February 4, 2013
Re: Iran space tweet - lighten up folks, can't everyone take a joke?
— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) February 4, 2013
Maybe you should wisen up & not make racist jokes. "@senjohnmccain: Re: Iran space tweet - lighten up folks, can't everyone take a joke?"
— Justin Amash (@repjustinamash) February 4, 2013
Of course, this isn't the first time McCain has found himself in hot water for his peculiar sense wit. Far from it. At its best, the 76-year-old's humor, often vulgar and impish, feels like the type of off-color ribbing that endears him to his male colleagues in the Senate. At its worst — and man, does it get bad — McCain comes off like the offensive old uncle who never got with the program. Here, a sampling from McCain's comedy hall of fame:
1. In January, Senator McCain earned some chuckles when he jokingly told reporters that the Senate would waterboard Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) during his confirmation hearings for secretary of state. "We will look forward to interrogating him at his hearing next week, mercilessly," McCain said. "We will bring back — for the only time — waterboarding, to get the truth out of him." Watch:
The joke was signature McCain, a flash of unvarnished humor that can sound almost startling coming from the lips of a politician, particularly in a politically correct age in which even harmless jibes can become controversies. (And lest anyone gets up in arms, let's recall that McCain has long been a fierce critic of waterboarding and other "enhanced" interrogation techniques.)
2. McCain claims he's converting to Judaism
At a farewell party for former Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) hosted by Israel's ambassador to the U.S., McCain said he had spent so much time with his Senate buddy that he had decided to convert to Judaism. "I had to put up all the years with the bullshit of religion, I might as well convert," he said, to roars of laughter. He continued, in some strange mash-up of Andrew Dice Clay and Jerry Seinfeld, "Why in every fucking kosher meal do we have to have salmon?" McCain also recalled waking up on a plane to see Lieberman wrapped in a Jewish prayer shawl. "I see this guy wrapped in a shawl," McCain said, "I thought maybe I died."
3. McCain takes on seniors
In his first presidential run in 2000, McCain was hounded by a couple of old-folks jokes that many found offensive. He referred to "Leisure World," a home for senior citizens, as "Seizure World," and also once cracked wise about Alzheimer's disease, saying, "The nice thing about Alzheimer's is you get to hide your own Easter eggs." McCain said he regretted both jokes, though he later reprised the Alzheimer's crack during the 2008 campaign, this time at his own expense.
4. McCain reinterprets The Beach Boys
In one of the more controversial moments of the 2008 race, McCain kidded (we think) about bombing Iran, to the tune of The Beach Boys' classic "Barbara Ann": "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran." The audience he was speaking to loved it, but some liberals were outraged.
5. McCain slams a young Chelsea Clinton
In 1998, speaking at a Republican fundraiser, McCain told one of the most infamous jokes of his career. "Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?" he asked. "Because her father is Janet Reno." McCain later apologized for his remark, saying it was "insensitive and stupid and cruel."
The all-time worst. The Tucson Citizen in 1986 reported that McCain, then a congressman running for Senate, had once told an audience this "joke" about rape victims: "Did you hear the one about the woman who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly and left to die? When she finally regains consciousness and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and to feebly ask, 'Where is that marvelous ape?'" McCain responded that he didn't "recall" making the joke.
This article — originally published on January 23, 2013 — was last updated on February 4, 2013.


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Griffin's StudioConnect unites your iPad with other pieces of music making hardware in your studio.
The unit has seven ports in total: headphone out (on the front), 3.5mm stereo in, 1/4-inch audio-in jack, five-pin DIN MIDI in and out, and left/right RCA line-outs (for connecting your sound system).
Those five-pin MIDI ports require your gear to be mains powered, meaning that USB-over-MIDI gear won't cut it.
These gripes aside, this gadget delivers everything it promises. Our MIDI keyboard worked perfectly with the GarageBand and Animoog apps, with audio crisp and clear. It was more satisfying to play a real keyboard rather than poke away at the virtual keys on a screen.
But we quickly came across a problem when recording vocals. The unit doesn't offer XLR sockets with phantom power, and there's no pre-amp, so you'll struggle to record vox that sounds any better than those gained through the iPad's built-in mic. A missed opportunity.
While the StudioConnect does what it can do well, it doesn't offer all we'd expect. It's a good-looking, fuss-free, high-quality way to get MIDI and audio into your iPad's clutches, and we'd recommend it as long as you don't plan on recording many vocals.