Announcing the Contest Winner! (Plus Some Interesting US Coin Facts)

The third semi-annual Save Versus All Wands contest - What is the Value of this Coin Hoard - is over.

$1,000 was the winning guess, only a bit below the actual total of $1,216.

It was made by Mark Clover (AKA Dr. Evil) who made his guess via the above funny meme.

Thank you to everyone else for participating!

Mark is the owner of Creative Mountain Games and manages the Lake Geneva Games store in Lake Geneva Wisconsin. He started playing Dungeons & Dragons when it was first released in 1974, and attended the last Gen Con to be held at Horticultural Hall, one year later.

He'll be receiving the four Seven Voyages of Zylarthen booklets plus the Book of Spells supplement. Fittingly, Zylarthen was directly inspired by the original 1974 "three little brown books." 

Curiously, Mark's guess of $1,000 was also the highest guess, with no one guessing over the actual total. Most of the others were in the range of $200 to $500, with the mean being only $400 or so - only one-third of the actual value of the hoard. I'm not sure why the guesses were low. Perhaps it was partly due to the fact that few thought anyone be crazy enough to amass more than a thousand dollars worth of coins for use in a role-playing game.

Though, remember, it's not a sunk cost. In a sense it's only slightly less liquid than keeping money in a checking or savings account. Indeed, by one measure, it's more liquid! And, yes, I've at least partially "cashed out" twice since I started, eight years ago.  

I'm not a numismatist, but I've learned some interesting facts in the process of amassing my "hoard".

Here's one of them: If you throw out the "cheap" coins - pennies and nickels - and the more recent coins - the Susan B. Anthony, Sacagawea and Presidential dollars - the four basic original coins - dimes, quarters, half-dollars and dollars (those large diameter Eisenhowers) - all have  approximately the same volume and weight per dollar value. In other words, if you take a Arturo Fuente 8-5-8 cigar box and fill it to the brim with dimes, quarters, half-dollars or Eisenhower dollars, you'll always get approximately $200 of coins weighing about nine pounds.

Interestingly, that's about the value of the 25 cigars that the box was designed to contain, at least at walk-in cigar store prices. Though if you order a box online you can pick it up for about $125. And, by the way, if you're a cigar smoker, I highly recommend the 8-5-8's, especially those with the unusual green "Claro" wrapper. They're a great value for only five dollars a stick.

The figures below, break down the numbers and properties of the above pictured coins. Keep in mind that the in-game monetary and experience point values are based on the Zylarthen silver standard:      


Totals:

Total Number of Coins: 6,350

Game
Value: 288,870 Silver Pieces
Total Value: 288,870 xp
Total Weight: 5,020 lb. (1004 eu)

Actual
Total Value: $1,216
Total Weight: 60 lb. 4 oz.


Jefferson Nickel (iron scrip)

Total Number of Coins: 1,000

Game
Value: 1 iron scrip coin (1/20 of a Silver Piece)
Total Value: 50 xp
Total Weight: 50 lb. (10 eu)

Actual
Years: 1946-2018
Diameter: 0.835 inches
Thickness: 0.077 inches
Volume: 0.042 cubic inches 
Mass: 0.161 ounces
Composition: Copper
Total Value: $50
Total Weight: 10 lb. 1 oz.


Lincoln Penny (Copper Piece)

Total Number of Coins: 1,600

Game
Value: 1 Copper Piece (1/5 of a Silver Piece)
Total Value: 320 xp
Total Weight: 80 lb. (16 eu)

Actual
Years: 1947-1962/1962-1981/1982-2018
Diameter: 0.750 inches
Thickness: 0.059 inches
Volume: 0.026 cubic inches 
Mass: 0.080 ounces
Composition: Bronze/Copper/Zinc
Total Value: $16
Total Weight: 8 lb.


Roosevelt Dime (Silver Piece)

Total Number of Coins: 2,000

Game
Value: 1 Silver Piece
Total Value: 2,000 xp
Total Weight: 100 lb. (20 eu)

Actual
Years: 1965-2018
Diameter: 0.705 inches
Thickness: 0.053 inches
Volume: 0.021 cubic inches 
Mass: 0.073 ounces
Composition: Copper
Total Value: $200
Total Weight: 9 lb. 2 oz.


Washington Quarter (Gold Piece)

Total Number of Coins: 800

Game
Value: 1 Gold Piece (10 Silver Pieces)
Total Value: 8,000 xp
Total Weight: 40 lb. (8 eu)

Actual
Years: 1965-2018
Diameter: 0.955 inches
Thickness: 0.069 inches
Volume: 0.049 cubic inches 
Mass: 0.182 ounces
Composition: Copper
Total Value: $200
Total Weight: 9 lb. 2 oz


Susan B. Anthony Dollar (token for multiple iron scrip coins)

Total Number of Coins: 100

Game
Value: 100 iron scrip coins (5 Silver Pieces)
Total Value: 500 xp
Total Weight: 500 lb. (100 eu)

Actual
Years: 1979-1981, 1999
Diameter: 1.043 inches
Thickness: 0.079 inches
Volume: 0.067 cubic inches 
Mass: 0.260 ounces
Composition: Copper/Nickel
Total Value: $100
Total Weight: 1 lb. 10 oz


Kennedy Half Dollar (token for multiple Copper Pieces)

Total Number of Coins: 400

Game
Value: 100 Copper Pieces (20 Silver Pieces)
Total Value: 8,000 xp
Total Weight: 2,000 lb. (400 eu)

Actual
Years: 1971-2001
Diameter: 1.205 inches
Thickness: 0.085 inches
Volume: 0.097 cubic inches 
Mass: 0.365 ounces
Composition: Copper
Total Value: $200
Total Weight: 9 lb. 2 oz


Eisenhower Dollar (token for multiple Silver Pieces)

Total Number of Coins: 200

Game
Value: 100 Silver Pieces
Total Value: 20,000 xp
Total Weight: 1,000 lb. (200 eu)

Actual
Years: 1971-1978
Diameter: 1.500 inches
Thickness: 0.102 inches
Volume: 0.180 cubic inches 
Mass: 0.729 ounces
Composition: Copper
Total Value: $200
Total Weight: 9 lb. 2 oz


Sacagawea/Presidential Dollar (token for multiple Gold Pieces)

Total Number of Coins: 250

Game
Value: 100 Gold Pieces (1000 Silver Pieces)
Total Value: 250,000 xp
Total Weight: 1,250 lb. (250 eu)

Actual
Years: 2000-2016
Diameter: 1.043 inches
Thickness: 0.079 inches
Volume: 0.067 cubic inches 
Mass: 0.260 ounces
Composition: Copper
Total Value: $250
Total Weight: 4 lb. 1 oz 

Save Versus All Wands Contest: What is the Value of the Coin Hoard?

Treasure Type H 

Announcing the third annual (well, not quite) Save Versus All Wands contest!

You can read about and see the results of the first two - Seven Voyages of Zylarthen: What's in a Name and the Jack Vance Dialogue Writing Contest here/here/here and here/here. They were four years ago. Apologies.

Okay, so here's the current contest question: How much money is in the above picture?

What does this have to do with anything? Well, here's the background:

In Characters and Combat, Vol. I of Seven Voyages of Zylarthen, I talked about using actual United States coins as props for in-game copper pieces, silver pieces and gold pieces.

Using coin props is fun, especially for kids. I should say that I started doing this for AD&D before I wrote Zylarthen.

The idea for using actual coins as props is that U.S. metal currency is worth so little now that if you want props for fantasy money, US coinage is, weirdly enough, your cheapest bet. A penny, nickel or sometimes even a dime is in most cases cheaper than, say, a washer from a hardware store or a plastic toy imitation "dubloon". Plus, US coins look more like, well, coins than, say, washers do, and they clink more than plastic toy coins.

In fact, they're not merely cheaper, they're in a sense, free. You can't trade your washers or plastic dubloons back for what you paid for them. But you can do that with US coins. In a sense it's simply a way (albeit odd) of saving money while getting some neat game props in the meantime.

Here is what I wrote in Zylarthen:

Physical Coin Tokens (Optional): 

In our campaign we actually give players little bags of pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, and (for really nice hauls) half dollars and dollars to represent their coin hoards. Everyone has found this vastly more fun (and potentially less prone to error) than the usual method of crossing digits or hatch marks off of a piece of paper. It makes discovering treasure—or spending it—more real, and even mundane items or inexpensive weapons seem more valuable when you have to pay for them with physical money. 

We keep about $200 worth of coins in a number of cigar boxes (these look very much like treasure chests), and have a dozen or so mock-velvet bags that we purchased for a few dollars at a jewelry store. To those who object that this is too great an expense, we would reply that it isn’t actually an expense—we still have the money (perhaps it’s even an admittedly odd way of saving money), and if we’re ever down to our last $200, we can always go back to hatch marks! 

Penny = Copper Piece 

Dime = Silver Piece 

Quarter = Gold Piece 

Kennedy Half Dollar = 100 Copper Pieces 

Presidential Dollar = 100 Silver Pieces 

Eisenhower Dollar = 100 Gold Pieces 

Small Washer = Iron Coin  

Nickel = 100 Iron Coins

Now, Zylarthen is on the silver standard, where 1 SP = 1 experience point. The exchange rates for coins are these:

5 CP = 1 SP 

10 SP = 1 GP 

4 iron scrip = 1 CP

Beginning player-characters get 30-180 silver pieces, and standard equipment is usually priced in silver pieces, to some extent roughly tracking the prices in OD&D and AD&D, though I twiddled things somewhat to make them more "realistic" relative to actual medieval prices.

I wrote about why I went on the silver standard here.

Among other things, the scheme makes copper pieces more valuable (thus giving people and monsters more reason to hoard them) and makes gold pieces rarer and more similar to, say gems. One of the problems with the treasure schemes in OD&D and AD&D is that gems and jewelry make up 97% (or whatever it is) of the value of treasure found on the charts. A silver standard goes some way towards solving that.

But back to using US coins as props.

I actually changed the original representation scheme, slightly.

The Eisenhower Dollar now represents 100 silver pieces and the Presidential or Sacagawea Dollar now represents 100 gold pieces. (This is because I came to believe that shiny Presidential and Sacagawea Dollar coins look more like gold.)

And nickels are now individual iron scrip coins, with Susan B. Anthony Dollars representing 100 of them.

Finding a large iron scrip hoard might be annoying.

So here's the current scheme:

Penny = Copper Piece 

Dime = Silver Piece 

Quarter = Gold Piece 

Kennedy Half Dollar = 100 Copper Pieces 

Eisenhower Dollar = 100 Silver Pieces 

Presidential Dollar = 100 Gold Pieces 

Nickel = 1 iron scrip  

Susan B. Anthony Dollar = 100 iron scrips

I'll write more later about how things have worked out - including tackling the knotty subject of are the coins really free? - but in the meantime I thought I'd launch a contest in the spirit of the first Zylarthen contest.

Above is my current hoard.

How much actual money (in US currency) is there in the picture?

Hint: it's not $200.

Vote once in the comments on this blog post.

The winner will receive the four original Zylarthen booklets plus the supplement Book of Spells. If you already own the five booklets, they makes a great gift!

Extra credit: What is the total Zylarthen equivalent in experience points? Include this estimate with your money guess. if the winner gets within 50% to 150% of the actual experience point total, I'll throw in the Zylarthen Electronic Edition, or if you already have it, some sort of equivalent.

Contest ends at midnight (CST) on Halloween.

Good luck!

Alternate Weapons and Combat Rules for Seven Voyages of Zylarthen and OD&D

The first edition of Seven Voyages of Zylarthen features melee and missile attack tables by weapon, not class or level. Additional to-hit adjustments are then made for higher-level characters or situational factors. All weapons generally do 1-6 points of damage. 

Here are the two main charts from the revised Electronic Edition and booklets:

I designed the weapons and combat system the way I did for three reasons:

1. I wanted to simulate how different weapons performed against different types of armor—not merely that all weapons become less effective the better the armor, but that certain weapons perform relatively better (or worse) against certain types of armor such as mail or plate. Rather than add yet another set of annoying bonuses or penalties (as was done in Greyhawk and the AD&D Players Handbook), I decided to “bake in” the effects to the main attack charts. Thus, swords and pointed weapons generally have lower target numbers to hit against unarmored or lightly armored opponents but are much less effective against mail and plate (or their creature armor equivalents such as dragon scales). On the other hand, axes and heavy blunt weapons come into their own against metal armor. Another way of putting this is that the declining “curve” on the charts is flatter for axes and heavy blunt weapons. 
2. Not only did I feel that this added more realism to combat (without losing much in playability) but it also gave more meaningful choices to players in their weapon selection. No more were, say, the mace and hammer clearly inferior to the long sword. Swords might be good all-purpose weapons, but if you were going up against heavily armored humanoids or creatures with tough hide or scales, an axe, mace or morning star might be a better bet. 
3. I was able to preserve the original conception of all weapons doing 1-6 points of damage - which, as a purist designing what was in some ways a hyper-purist game, I felt was important - while nevertheless including a mechanism for distinguishing between the effectiveness of different weapons. As a side-note (and this may be annoying to some), I also thought it was more OD&D-ish to base the combat mechanism around a central somewhat mysterious and (I hoped) in practice mathematically uncrackable chart (all those varying to-hit numbers).   

(I wrote about the historical treatment of weapons vs. armor in OD&D and AD&D here, here and here.)

Recently, however, I have come to feel that the original Zylarthen system may have been too fiddly, as well as arguably not representing the differences between weapons with sufficient magnitude. Thus, it is difficult if not impossible to memorize the charts, and the differences in the "to hit" numbers usually only amount to, say, 5% or 10% (a few pips on a twenty-sided die), which may not appear to matter as much as it should.

So I devised a new alternate system.

The main change is this: All weapons now have, all things being equal, the same chances to hit. Thus, for a 1st level character, the to-hit numbers follow the standard 10/11/12/13/14/15/16/17 progression against armor classes 9//8/7/6/5/4/3/2. This sequence is easily memorized. Though, in fact, if one wishes to suspend purity considerations by substituting an ascending armor class system - 10/11/12/13/14/15/16/17 - it becomes even easier to calculate, where the armor class simply becomes the chance to hit for a 1st level character.

This returns the to-hit numbers to the original OD&D and AD&D scheme.  

What now are the most important combat differences between weapons? There are two: 1. Weapons now have differing damage dice. And 2. some weapons—most edged and pointed weapons—have their damage die halved for attacks against the better types of armor—5, 4, 3 and 2 in a descending system, 14, 15, 16 and 17 in an ascending system or, to put it non-mathematically, metal armor (mail or plate) or the equivalent in creature terms.

This, for better or worse, is obviously much more OD&D Greyhawk than OD&D three little brown books. I suppose history might be repeating itself.

Of course, the above aren't the only combat differences, given that other considerations from Zylarthen have been preserved: Some weapons perform better or worse against large creatures, for example. And there are still other important non-combat considerations. Cost is one of them, though cost often still has an inverse relationship with weapon durability (the “optional” weapon break rules are, in my view, an important part of the overall system). Encumbrance is another. And there are various special rules that add to (or subtract from) the value of certain weapons.

OD&D purists (or, rather, hard-core purists who opposed even some of the changes in weapons and combat offered in Greyhawk) may be annoyed.

But I suppose people who enjoy rolling different-sized polyhedrons for damage will presumably be pleased.

I’m still basically a purist, but I’m comfortable with these changes and feel that they make for a good alternative combat system. I’m even warming up to the idea of ascending armor class . . .

Here are the new charts. They should be read against the background of a few other relatively minor changes—I’ve slightly adjusted the weapon class and encumbrance for a few weapons, for example. And there is now a two-handed sword!

Here is a quick summary of other rules, relevant to the above, from Seven Voyages of Zylarthen:

Encumbrance: Each "dot" or unit of encumbrance is equivalent to 2-10 pounds. Most characters only get 25 to work with, with movement declining from 13 to 12 to 9 to 6 to 3 for every five units. Carrying any item with an encumbrance of 3 or more means that you can only move at a maximum of 9. And keeping in mind that you're probably also wearing armor or carrying food (or gold) or simply trying to keep your encumbrance low so you can do thiefy things or whatever, an extra "dot" or two can often make a big difference.

Weapon Class: Under the initiative rules, the person or creature with the highest weapon class always attacks first. Subsequent rounds feature an initiative die, with ties going to the person or creature with the lowest weapon class. This obviously gives the advantage to long weapons in short fights. For long rough and tumble melee brawls not so much.

Weapon Breaks: In Zylarthen, weapons have a chance if breaking not on a fumble but on a critical hit (getting a really hard strike in may have consequences for your weapon) as well as when inflicting death blows against heavily armored or high hit dice creatures. The chance of breakage then depends on the weapon's cost (a good stand in for durability, I think) with swords and great swords having only a 1 in 20 chance of breaking, going up to 3 in 20 for daggers, spears and the like. Obviously magic weapons are largely immune. I think this makes good intuitive sense as well as tracking historical accounts of knightly duels. Often opponents would change weapons multiple times during a fight due to breakage. While things probably won't often come to that extreme in Zylarthen, dungeon explorers are well-advised to carry spares with them, especially when using cheaper weapons.         

But getting back to the alternate rules themselves, I feel that the changes reflect well the philosophy that no weapon is either pointless or perfect. All have advantages and disadvantages. Here is a quick summary.

Dagger: A great all around utility weapon. Virtually everyone has one. It's the only weapon with no encumbrance, at least if multiples are not carried. Once in close-combat it is almost as effective as a sword. It can be used in an off-hand along with another short weapon. And in extremis it may be thrown.

Axe: This weapon has many of the same advantages as a dagger as well as being a passable armor cracker.

Mace: The best armor cracker for only 1 encumbrance unit.

Sword: A good all-around weapon that does the highest potential damage of any of the 1 encumbrance unit weapons. It can be used with a shield, buckler or off-hand dagger or axe.

Hammer: The best one-handed armor cracker.

Battle Axe: The heavy two-handed axe deals out more average damage (however they are armored) of any weapon.

Long Sword: The best one-handed weapon, if price is no object, for fighting an unarmored or lightly armored foe. And it performs as well as an axe against plate.

Staff: We've improved this weapon a bit, giving it some of the defensive bonuses of a shield or buckler and knocking its encumbrance down from 3 to 2. Thus a Magic-User can now run at almost full-speed without having to drop it.

Morning Star: Sort of a cheaper and lighter battle axe for those armor crackers who don't want to be too weighed down. Its length will also allow one to usually attack first on the first round of melee.

Great Sword: I felt the game needed this. The long sword wielded with two hands didn't offer enough of an advantage. However, unlike the Fighting Man's nuke of Greyhawk and AD&D, it's encumbrance of 3 may be a negative for some players. Plus while it holds its own against heavy armor, it's not as effective in that context as a hammer, morning star or battle axe. Still, it partly make up for that by getting a +2 damage bonus against dragons and other large creatures.

Spear: This cheap weapon has a number of advantages, including enabling its user to almost always attack first in the first round and doing double damage against a charge. And it's much more effective when wielded with two hands. Unfortunately, they break a lot.

Pole Arm: Sort of a super spear, but perhaps too heavy to seriously consider taking on a dungeon delve. We've increased its encumbrance to 5.

Lance: Nice if you have a horse.

Javelins: You can take three Javelins with you at a cost of only 1 encumbrance unit, and throw them all in one round (assuming your annoyed opponent doesn't charge you). Not very effective against heavy armor, but you can't have everything.

Sling: A good light missile weapon, especially for Thieves and Halflings (who get a bonus on sling attacks), and you can always try to gather stones if you run out of bullets.

Bow: Not quite as effective as a crossbow, but its lighter. And it can penetrate armor at close ranges.

Crossbow: The king of missile weapons. It's heavy but often worth it.

********

I'll be officially writing up these alternate rules and offering them, along with some of the already existing combat rules and alternate "errata" for some of the encumbrance changes, etc., in a free supplement soon.

It may or may not show it, but I've probably put more thought and effort into weapons and combat than any other aspect of Zylarthen. Perfection is a questing beast, but stupid or "unrealistic" weapons things bug me. This may be a fault.

But to the degree that the game works, I think it does so in part due to the weapons mechanics. Or at least, for me, it does so due to the weapons mechanics. That might be a minority view among  Zylarthen players and readers, but still.

And of course, if one was so inclined, these weapons mechanics are easily usable, without Zylarthen, for OD&D or even AD&D. They're sort of my variation on Greyhawk.   

If you're interested in what I've done here, either from the point of view of being familiar with the Zylarthen rules set or not, I'd love to hear what you think.

Is it an improvement? A sell out? Is there anything I overlooked? What can be tweaked or adjusted to make it better?     

Flight 93 - "Stand Up and Bring the Ship Down!"

The last minutes on the fourth plane (from the film United 93)

This is a repost (with some edits and supplementary comments) of a piece I wrote a year ago on September 11, 2017. Obviously I think the subject is as important and relevant as ever.

This post is not about Islam.

It's certainly not about any sort of "tragedy."

It's about heroism.

Another word for that is love. Love for one's neighbor. Love for justice. And, yes, love for life. Even if you think you might lose it.

"We've nothing to fight with, and may wind up dead,
But we've voted to stand up and fight them instead,
And we might keep them from getting through."

United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a Pennsylvania field on September 11th, 2001, killing all aboard - 34 passengers (including a near-term unborn baby) and 7 crew. 4 hijackers also died. The plane had been comandeered 45 minutes after takeoff by terrorists - confederates of the men who steered their 3 hijacked planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

These hijackers were a few minutes late in their mission (the plane had been delayed taking off), which gave the passengers enough time to figure out what their mission was - a suicide strike against the U.S. Capital Building or the White House.

"One man's been stabbed, and we can't reach the cockpit,
But somehow we'll alter the flight.
We've guessed that the target is likely the White House,
And if we fail, we'll surely die."

The lines above were composed and sung by Leslie Fish.

Who is Leslie Fish?

Leslie Fish is a writer, folk singer and "filk" musician - "filk" being the term for music tied to the science fiction and fantasy fan convention scene. She is a libertarian anarchist whose political activism has spanned the breadth of the movement. She has protested the Vietnam War, worked with the "Wobblies" (Industrial Workers of the World), defended gun rights and praised the Moon landings. On anarchism she wrote:

What sort of anarchist future would I like to see? There's no reason for a government-free society to be nothing but agrarian, no reason at all that it couldn't be industrial and space-faring.

She is a quasi-pagan. And a Trekker. Or "used to be," according to Fish:

I sort of lost interest when NEXT GENERATION came along; it's just too pussy, Yuppie-ish, and bloodless for my tastes.

Fish also wrote "Flight 93," the most moving and inspiring artistic tribute yet made to those heroes of 9/11.

"We've nothing to fight with except our bare hands,
But we'll keep on trying until the plane lands
One way or the other. We've taken our stand.
My darling, I love you. Goodbye."

If you listen to it and are not moved, listen to it again. If you still are not moved, then I cannot help you. If, on any listening, you do not cry, at least a little, then you are much stronger than I.

He watched while the passengers battled and died,
And knew that no help would be found.
The guard was distracted. Just one chance to win.
There's one case where suicide isn't a sin.
He weighed all his chances. He said: "Auger in!"
And drove the ship into the ground.

The passengers on Flight 93 almost succeeded in wresting control of the plane from the terrorists. Most believe that they effectively breached the cockpit. But there is controversy over who was at the controls at the end. The song implies that it was a passenger - "Jason the pilot" - but the cockpit tapes appear to indicate that a hijacker crashed the plane, fearing that he was seconds away from being overpowered. It's also possible, of course, that there was a fight over the controls.

Flight 93 hit the ground at full speed,
And no one aboard her survives.
But the White House still stands, and a few thousand folks
Can thank those aboard for their lives.
There's no guarantee, when the Bad Guys come in,
That they won't kill you all to a man.
So when some fanatics are out to have fun,
There's nowhere to hide and there's nowhere to run.
Then pray that the law lets you carry a gun,
But fight back however you can.

So the song is a tribute but also a lesson. Don't expect the bad guys to have any scruples or mercy. Sometimes, they just want to kill you, and perhaps thousands more in the bargain. No hero wants to die. But there are worse things than natural death. And better things than giving in.

Flight 93 no more will fly.
Dead on the ground or dead in the sky:
You might not survive, but at least you can try.
Stand up and bring the ship down.

A YouTube link to the song follows, along with the full lyrics. Here are links to a few of Fish's other more notable songs - The Day it Fell Apart, a righteous anti-corporate ballad, also about heroism, in this case, hospital workers dealing with the results of a mine explosion, Valhalla (warning: graphic paganism), one of her most well-known "filk" efforts, and Gamers (warning: graphic nerdity), a light-hearted hymn to gamers and their battles against prejudice and the government. She currently has a blog, LeslieBard, whose most recent post has a distinctly nonconformist take on Charlottesville.

For Flight 93, I highly recommend United 93, a straight-ahead, non-ideological narrative of the events, which manages to also be moving and inspiring.

I wrote the above a year ago. A few days later I exchanged a number of neat letters with Leslie Fish. She is a true individualist in the common sense meaning of the term. One way of putting that is that she doesn't give a damn what anyone else thinks, and follows her ideas wherever she belives they lead, even if that's in a different direction from what some might predict. One of her recent posts (Fall, 2018) is a quasi-tribute to (of all people) John McCain. At the same time she has also often made a libertarian defense of Trump-like immigration controls.  

I disagree with a few of her opinions. But I love more that she doesn't give a damn. Would that more Americans were like her.

"Flight 93"

by Leslie Fish

She took off from Newark on a warm autumn day,

With forty-five travellers and crew.
They all were unarmed at the will of the law;
Security passed them all through.
An hour into flight-time, four Arabs jumped up --
Two Ahmeds, Ziad and Sa'eed --
Announced a hijacking and waved knives around
(Razorblades, box-knives and steak-knives they'd found),
And a box that they swore was a bomb up and down;
They thought that was all they would need.

Flight 93 no more will fly.
Dead on the ground or dead in the sky:
You might not survive, but at least you can try.
Stand up and bring the ship down.

CeeCee the stewardess had a cell-phone,
And called up her husband to say:
"The plane has been hijacked. We'll do as we're trained;
Be quiet and humbly obey.
They'll dicker for money or some social cause.
The government surely will pay.
They'll put us out somewhere and leave with their score,
Or maybe police will come catch them and more.
That's always the way this has been done before.
With luck, I'll be home in a day."

Flight 93 no more will fly.
Dead on the ground or dead in the sky:
You might not survive, but at least you can try.
Stand up and bring the ship down.

Next was Mark Bingham, who had a phone too,
And used it to call up his Mom.
He said they'd been hijacked by "three foreign men"
Who had knives and said they had a bomb.
But some of the passengers plotted, he said,
To take back the plane as it flew.
"But first tell me, Mom, is it true what they say?
That three other airplanes were hijacked today,
Flown straight into buildings and blew them away?"
His mother cried, and said: "It's true."

Flight 93 no more will fly.
Dead on the ground or dead in the sky:
You might not survive, but at least you can try.
Stand up and bring the ship down.

Jeremy Glick called his wife on the phone,
And told of the bomb and the knives.
He said: "If these stories we're hearing are true,
We might as well fight for our lives."
His wife told him: "Yes, the World Trade Center's hit,
And maybe the Pentagon too."
He left the phone hanging, then came back and said:
"We've nothing to fight with, and may wind up dead,
But we've voted to stand up and fight them instead,
And we might keep them from getting through."

Flight 93 no more will fly.
Dead on the ground or dead in the sky:
You might not survive, but at least you can try.
Stand up and bring the ship down.

Thomas Burnett phoned his wife several times,
Reporting the course of the fight.
He said: "One man's been stabbed, and we can't reach the cockpit,
But somehow we'll alter the flight.
We've guessed that the target is likely the White House,
And if we fail, we'll surely die.
We've nothing to fight with except our bare hands,
But we'll keep on trying until the plane lands
One way or the other. We've taken our stand.
My darling, I love you. Goodbye."

Flight 93 no more will fly.

Dead on the ground or dead in the sky:
You might not survive, but at least you can try.
Stand up and bring the ship down.

Jason the pilot could hear the whole tale.
He'd signaled as well as he could.
He saw that the terrorists still held the cockpit --
And one way to stop them for good.
He watched while the passengers battled and died,
And knew that no help would be found.
The guard was distracted. Just one chance to win.
There's one case where suicide isn't a sin.
He weighed all his chances. He said: "Auger in!"
And drove the ship into the ground.

Flight 93 no more will fly.
Dead on the ground or dead in the sky:
You might not survive, but at least you can try.
Stand up and bring the ship down.

Flight 93 hit the ground at full speed,
And no one aboard her survives.
But the White House still stands, and a few thousand folks
Can thank those aboard for their lives.
There's no guarantee, when the Bad Guys come in,
That they won't kill you all to a man.
So when some fanatics are out to have fun,
There's nowhere to hide and there's nowhere to run.
Then pray that the law lets you carry a gun,
But fight back however you can.

Flight 93 no more will fly.
Dead on the ground or dead in the sky:
You might not survive, but at least you can try.
Stand up and bring the ship down.

Leslie Fish

Cross posted at Mahound's Paradise.