One more one more thing--

Victor kinda looked like Sebastian Stan as The Winter Soldier, only with both arms.

quote:

Originally posted by Mary Anna:

It felt like he was enraged in general at the environmental regulations that were being foisted on Amurrica, and he was enraged in particular that those regulations had put a woman in a position of any power over him whatsoever.

This. Just a brat, acting out. I think ignoring it worked out fine, even if it pissed you off.

I literally started having flashbacks from my years as a girl reporter as I read your blog post, MA.

There was the bush pilot who flew for the flying Maine wardens who was assigned by that state to fly me over their north woods for my assignment from Audubon magazine. He was not happy about it, no sir.

He made a similar comment as the geezer in your story about the last enviro he took flying. I told him to bring it on.

Luckily I grew up on the Chesapeake Bay and am pretty much immune to motion sickness. It was one helluva ride--upside down and sideways, spins and dives--he'd been a fighter pilot in Vietnam. I thought for sure he was trying to drop me out the back of the two seater plane.

There have been numerous similar encounters with men who underestimated me because I was young and female, and even worse, I was an environmental reporter!, but that was probably the most dangerous encounter.

As for how to respond--I never got angry. I thought they were much too pathetic in their pumped up machismo to feel anything but sorry for them. I believed that only inadequate, insecure men treat women like that. I pretty much always laughed at them to myself--and laughed off their behavior. To get mad at them is to give them a power and significance they don't deserve. And then I ignored them and did my job.

Carp, now even more stories are coming back to me!

The Mountain Men for Nat Geo was a total epic of misogyny!

Nicely told tale, MA, and a graceful plug for your book!

Thanks, pique!

The helicopter pilots who took us to the offshore platforms were known for liking to buzz shrimp boats. They also liked to be flying along and then just...drop...a goodly distance and then keep going like nothing had happened.

I don't think this was directed at me, although I guess it could have been. I thought it was kinda fun. The pilots had all come through Vietnam alive, so I figured that they knew what they were doing. I always felt safe, but maybe I was just naive.

One of them used to say suggestive, and sometimes just weird, things to me like that he thought it would be really fun to pluck my eyebrows. Right at the end of my time working for Mobil, he got very upset with the company, because they were changing their policy about the pilots' work requirements.

Instead of letting them live onshore, probably in New Orleans, driving down to Venice to fly to work every day, the pilots were going to be required to sleep on the rigs and platforms. This was going to be a huge change in lifestyle and this guy wasn't having it.

It was a Thursday, so our shift was coming in for our week ashore. We ate breakfast and then we waited for our ride to come. And waited. And waited.

He had gotten in the helicopter in Venice, flown it to New Orleans, and left Mobil's very expensive equipment sitting on the tarmac. He disappeared for parts unknown, never to be heard from again, which is probably a good thing as I guess what he did was probably a felony. Another pilot had to drive to New Orleans and fly down to pick us up, costing us hours of thumb-twiddling paid at an overtime union rate.

It was the best take-this-job-and-shove-it moment I've ever observed personally.