Bridge Over Troublesome Water

Each morning, I take the kids to the bus stop, it is to a location a short drive from the house that is in another catchment, neighboring to the one we live in. It allows the kids to attend classes that are smaller than the local district is able to offer, and it allows their district to collect Federal funding for a couple of extra kids, to help keep their small schools funded and open. To get to the stop, I go down the hill behind the house to the river crossing, and then just up the other side.

The other day we came back across the river, and I said that I thought there was an unfamiliar sag in the end of the bridge’s platform. We talked a minute beyond it about how they might have to rebuild the bridge soon, and what the alternate routes to the bus would be.

Yesterday I got a call from our son, who said the school was trying to get ahold of me to let me know the bridge was abruptly closed, and that we would need to make arrangements. Oh boy! No warning at all! I called the school and arranged to pick the kids up myself there. Then I called the county to enquire. That alone ought to say how small a county we live in. The lady explained to me that it had been closed, (obviously), and that they were going to have to rebuild it, and that would be started around March. They ‘might’ get a lane open in the meantime, but she was not sure. Well, if it’s safety you’re after, then convenience has to fall by the wayside, I thought.

So next I got ahold of the bus driver. He is a friendly old fella who makes his phone number available, and we set up to pick them up at the next closest stop. That is not as close as the mile to the bridge, and the half mile or less beyond it that I have had to travel each day. The next closest alternative route is down through Utah, then back up again to where his route comes along the highway and has a stop. It is about seven and a half miles each way. After that, the trip to school is the next alternative, at 15 miles each way, making the whole day a 60-mile drive. That’s a bit much. No! I cannot afford that kind of fuel consumption! It’s a struggle as is! But I will bring my camera along, and with any luck, the new route might provide some fresh opportunities. We will see.

So now, here it is, the next morning. I am awake an hour before the alarm, have set the fire going, and had a coffee already. A quick message back to my sister-in-law, who lives in the UK, and has a day off for a couple of inches of snow on the ground there. I think photo she sent showed maybe an inch and a half on the roads. She knows that over here, that would hardly justify a long sleeve shirt and certainly would not warrant a day off! One might consider leaving five minutes early! But of course, we are set to manage it, and the roads here are not near as winding and narrow, and hilly!

Five minutes now till it is time to get up. I am already, but I might as well start getting my bed made and getting dressed. Away I go!

Posted in Journal Entry, Special Update, Weather | Leave a comment

Doctor Marigold and My Memories

I did not read the whole story that comes next in the book of short stories tonight. It was too long for a relaxing read for me. It is called Doctor Marigold. It has been fun so far as it has the voice of a market seller talking about deals to be had and I get to read it out loud to myself in my best English accent. I don’t have a good English accent, but it is one with eight years’ experience in the country, made as a mask to hide myself among them to prevent having to ask the endless barrage of questions; “Are you American?” Easier to just hide under soft vowels and dropped consonants than to have to explain to everyone where I am from and what brings me there. It was also nice to hear the unbiased opinions they have on Americans.

So, I read the huckster’s voice softy aloud and tried to bring back that voice I earned in what seems a bit like another life. This gets mixed up with the Norwegian that Garrison Keillor goes into while telling stories of Lake Woebegone, which I usually play all night long so when I wake up in the middle, I have something to focus on and try to get back to sleep. It’s either listen to that and fall back asleep or spend too much time in front of the fireplace while downstairs putting a log on to heat the house and need a little extra to focus on, so write a blog post that comes out of nowhere and onto the keyboard. Not an interesting blog post, mind you. What could be interesting that someone writes in the middle of the night? That’s probably the worst thing to do. The only thing actually worse is reading such post. But I need not worry, because I never do. I only feel pity on those who do.

It is a good time to think of things that once were and are no more. I remember when I was around five, my mom rented an apartment for a short time that was up a flight of stairs on the second floor of a small white house. There was not much to it. The front door opened to a living room and kitchen combo. There was a door to the bedroom. Honestly, I do not even remember how to put the bathroom into this memory. What I do remember is that when coming down the stairs, one had only to walk through a single row of houses and there was the very beach of the Pacific Ocean. Mom said in years after that the rent price was not bad there, but the liberties the landlord expected to take were. So, she moved out. The memory of the place is very brief. Amazing it is though, to visualize coming down the stairs and into sand right there at the bottom.

My great grandparents liked to travel. They had a Layton trailer, and they took it to places with exotic names like The Fountain of Youth at The Salton Sea, and Flaming Gorge, and Green River. They took me along with when I was quite young to the Rincon Beach north of Ventura, or Wheeler Gorge Campground, truer to north from there, where they lived behind a white picket fence in their E. P. Foster home, built in 1925. It was a white house with dark green trim. There were two large windows on the front of the house, either side of the fireplace. Two windows flanked the same living room on the west wall, catching evening sun through the panes of glass, shaded by the large fuchsia bushes between their house and Dixie’s house next door. One of the things that most fascinated me about this wonderful, airy house was the closets in the bedrooms. They both had windows in them that could open, and air the clothes inside. Great grandma kept the door to that closet open, and the sash’s up in the two windows in the bedroom, delivering a heavy dose of that foggy morning air that is such a grand element of those early childhood memories I have contained deep in my head. How I’d love to throw up the sash and open that air into the lives of my own children, to share it with them. How I miss always that California air.

I drove there when I was 23. I was on my own in a car, heading away from Colorado and memories I did not want to live with my face exposed right to them. The power of first love could only be soaked away in the soft, wet, foggy, eucalyptus and salty scented morning air that one cannot experience anywhere else that I know of. It was foggy along the coast when I drove there. Compared to the dry desert, and the thin air of Colorado, it almost seemed like I would have to swim through the thick of the morning. Nothing washes away the past like the new air that has just blown in off the Pacific, unspoiled by all the pollution and combustion of humanity. Great-grandma’s house had gone to my grandmother when she died. It was only a mile from the beach in Ventura. It always seemed kind of empty without my great-grandparents’ voices filling the breakfast nook and the kitchen while eggs and bacon and two ‘flapjacks’ or hotcakes cooked on the old gas stove. On a clear morning the sunlight spilled over the mountain to the west, and into the windows of the nook. I always sat facing the windows, where my great-grandparents always sat at either end of the table, the light raking across them, never blinding them as they talked about life and everything in it. They were always an interesting couple, conversation dominating their every morning, be it just them, or with the company of their family and friends visiting early. Afternoons were TV soaps, gameshows, and for him, a baseball game on the TV while another played on a radio he put between him and the arm of his easy chair. Every room, voices and light. That is what I remember most about it. The cool evenings were when they would come out and work the rose bushes along that white picket fence.

I love that old home, and those two old people. We were worlds away in how we grew up. He was parentless buy the time he was six and ran away and started working as a roughneck at the age of 13. She was born in Eden, Utah, and lived in Lyman, Wyoming when she left school. He was her third husband, and even though she was a faithful Mormon, and he was most definitely not, they got along well together. They were very tidy, neat people. I do not remember a mess anywhere in the place. Ever. All of these memories are so long ago, some fifty years almost, and the voices speak out to me from the hollow spaces in my mind where everything echoes, and the images are greyed out by the wash of time. How I wish I could open these images up and walk into them, and bring my family to them, to show them these wonderful spaces that cannot be found anywhere in this world anymore.

Posted in Family History, Journal Entry, Memories, Regular Update | Leave a comment

The Begging-Letter Writer

18 May, 1850

The amount of money he annually diverts from wholesome and useful purposes in the United Kingdom, would be a set-off against the Window Tax.  He is one of the most shameless frauds and impositions of this time.  In his idleness, his mendacity, and the immeasurable harm he does to the deserving,—dirtying the stream of true benevolence, and muddling the brains of foolish justices, with inability to distinguish between the base coin of distress, and the true currency we have always among us,—he is more worthy of Norfolk Island than three-fourths of the worst characters who are sent there.  Under any rational system, he would have been sent there long ago.

I, the writer of this paper, have been, for some time, a chosen receiver of Begging Letters.  For fourteen years, my house has been made as regular a Receiving House for such communications as any one of the great branch Post-Offices is for general correspondence.  I ought to know something of the Begging-Letter Writer.  He has besieged my door at all hours of the day and night; he has fought my servant; he has lain in ambush for me, going out and coming in; he has followed me out of town into the country; he has appeared at provincial hotels, where I have been staying for only a few hours; he has written to me from immense distances, when I have been out of England.  He has fallen sick; he has died and been buried; he has come to life again, and again departed from this transitory scene: he has been his own son, his own mother, his own baby, his idiot brother, his uncle, his aunt, his aged grandfather.  He has wanted a greatcoat, to go to India in; a pound to set him up in life for ever; a pair of boots to take him to the coast of China; a hat to get him into a permanent situation under Government.  He has frequently been exactly seven-and-sixpence short of independence.  He has had such openings at Liverpool—posts of great trust and confidence in merchants’ houses, which nothing but seven-and-sixpence was wanting to him to secure—that I wonder he is not Mayor of that flourishing town at the present moment.

The natural phenomena of which he has been the victim, are of a most astounding nature.  He has had two children who have never grown up; who have never had anything to cover them at night; who have been continually driving him mad, by asking in vain for food; who have never come out of fevers and measles (which, I suppose, has accounted for his fuming his letters with tobacco smoke, as a disinfectant); who have never changed in the least degree through fourteen long revolving years.  As to his wife, what that suffering woman has undergone, nobody knows.  She has always been in an interesting situation through the same long period, and has never been confined yet.  His devotion to her has been unceasing.  He has never cared for himself; he could have perished—he would rather, in short—but was it not his Christian duty as a man, a husband, and a father,—to write begging letters when he looked at her?  (He has usually remarked that he would call in the evening for an answer to this question.)

He has been the sport of the strangest misfortunes.  What his brother has done to him would have broken anybody else’s heart.  His brother went into business with him, and ran away with the money; his brother got him to be security for an immense sum and left him to pay it; his brother would have given him employment to the tune of hundreds a-year, if he would have consented to write letters on a Sunday; his brother enunciated principles incompatible with his religious views, and he could not (in consequence) permit his brother to provide for him.  His landlord has never shown a spark of human feeling.  When he put in that execution I don’t know, but he has never taken it out.  The broker’s man has grown grey in possession.  They will have to bury him some day.

He has been attached to every conceivable pursuit.  He has been in the army, in the navy, in the church, in the law; connected with the press, the fine arts, public institutions, every description and grade of business.  He has been brought up as a gentleman; he has been at every college in Oxford and Cambridge; he can quote Latin in his letters (but generally misspells some minor English word); he can tell you what Shakespeare says about begging, better than you know it.  It is to be observed, that in the midst of his afflictions he always reads the newspapers; and rounds off his appeal with some allusion, that may be supposed to be in my way, to the popular subject of the hour.

His life presents a series of inconsistencies.  Sometimes he has never written such a letter before.  He blushes with shame.  That is the first time; that shall be the last.  Don’t answer it, and let it be understood that, then, he will kill himself quietly.  Sometimes (and more frequently) he has written a few such letters.  Then he encloses the answers, with an intimation that they are of inestimable value to him, and a request that they may be carefully returned.  He is fond of enclosing something—verses, letters, pawnbrokers’ duplicates, anything to necessitate an answer.  He is very severe upon ‘the pampered minion of fortune,’ who refused him the half-sovereign referred to in the enclosure number two—but he knows me better.

He writes in a variety of styles; sometimes in low spirits; sometimes quite jocosely.  When he is in low spirits he writes down-hill and repeats words—these little indications being expressive of the perturbation of his mind.  When he is more vivacious, he is frank with me; he is quite the agreeable rattle.  I know what human nature is,—who better?  Well!  He had a little money once, and he ran through it—as many men have done before him.  He finds his old friends turn away from him now—many men have done that before him too!  Shall he tell me why he writes to me?  Because he has no kind of claim upon me.  He puts it on that ground plainly; and begs to ask for the loan (as I know human nature) of two sovereigns, to be repaid next Tuesday six weeks, before twelve at noon.

Sometimes, when he is sure that I have found him out, and that there is no chance of money, he writes to inform me that I have got rid of him at last.  He has enlisted into the Company’s service, and is off directly—but he wants a cheese.  He is informed by the serjeant that it is essential to his prospects in the regiment that he should take out a single Gloucester cheese, weighing from twelve to fifteen pounds.  Eight or nine shillings would buy it.  He does not ask for money, after what has passed; but if he calls at nine, to-morrow morning may he hope to find a cheese?  And is there anything he can do to show his gratitude in Bengal?

Once he wrote me rather a special letter, proposing relief in kind.  He had got into a little trouble by leaving parcels of mud done up in brown paper, at people’s houses, on pretence of being a Railway-Porter, in which character he received carriage money.  This sportive fancy he expiated in the House of Correction.  Not long after his release, and on a Sunday morning, he called with a letter (having first dusted himself all over), in which he gave me to understand that, being resolved to earn an honest livelihood, he had been travelling about the country with a cart of crockery.  That he had been doing pretty well until the day before, when his horse had dropped down dead near Chatham, in Kent.  That this had reduced him to the unpleasant necessity of getting into the shafts himself, and drawing the cart of crockery to London—a somewhat exhausting pull of thirty miles.  That he did not venture to ask again for money; but that if I would have the goodness to leave him out a donkey, he would call for the animal before breakfast!

At another time my friend (I am describing actual experiences) introduced himself as a literary gentleman in the last extremity of distress.  He had had a play accepted at a certain Theatre—which was really open; its representation was delayed by the indisposition of a leading actor—who was really ill; and he and his were in a state of absolute starvation.  If he made his necessities known to the Manager of the Theatre, he put it to me to say what kind of treatment he might expect?  Well! we got over that difficulty to our mutual satisfaction.  A little while afterwards he was in some other strait.  I think Mrs. Southcote, his wife, was in extremity—and we adjusted that point too.  A little while afterwards he had taken a new house, and was going headlong to ruin for want of a water-butt.  I had my misgivings about the water-butt, and did not reply to that epistle.  But a little while afterwards, I had reason to feel penitent for my neglect.  He wrote me a few broken-hearted lines, informing me that the dear partner of his sorrows died in his arms last night at nine o’clock!

I despatched a trusty messenger to comfort the bereaved mourner and his poor children; but the messenger went so soon, that the play was not ready to be played out; my friend was not at home, and his wife was in a most delightful state of health.  He was taken up by the Mendicity Society (informally it afterwards appeared), and I presented myself at a London Police-Office with my testimony against him.  The Magistrate was wonderfully struck by his educational acquirements, deeply impressed by the excellence of his letters, exceedingly sorry to see a man of his attainments there, complimented him highly on his powers of composition, and was quite charmed to have the agreeable duty of discharging him.  A collection was made for the ‘poor fellow,’ as he was called in the reports, and I left the court with a comfortable sense of being universally regarded as a sort of monster.  Next day comes to me a friend of mine, the governor of a large prison.  ‘Why did you ever go to the Police-Office against that man,’ says he, ‘without coming to me first?  I know all about him and his frauds.  He lodged in the house of one of my warders, at the very time when he first wrote to you; and then he was eating spring-lamb at eighteen-pence a pound, and early asparagus at I don’t know how much a bundle!’  On that very same day, and in that very same hour, my injured gentleman wrote a solemn address to me, demanding to know what compensation I proposed to make him for his having passed the night in a ‘loathsome dungeon.’  And next morning an Irish gentleman, a member of the same fraternity, who had read the case, and was very well persuaded I should be chary of going to that Police-Office again, positively refused to leave my door for less than a sovereign, and, resolved to besiege me into compliance, literally ‘sat down’ before it for ten mortal hours.  The garrison being well provisioned, I remained within the walls; and he raised the siege at midnight with a prodigious alarum on the bell.

The Begging-Letter Writer often has an extensive circle of acquaintance.  Whole pages of the ‘Court Guide’ are ready to be references for him.  Noblemen and gentlemen write to say there never was such a man for probity and virtue.  They have known him time out of mind, and there is nothing they wouldn’t do for him.  Somehow, they don’t give him that one pound ten he stands in need of; but perhaps it is not enough—they want to do more, and his modesty will not allow it.  It is to be remarked of his trade that it is a very fascinating one.  He never leaves it; and those who are near to him become smitten with a love of it, too, and sooner or later set up for themselves.  He employs a messenger—man, woman, or child.  That messenger is certain ultimately to become an independent Begging-Letter Writer.  His sons and daughters succeed to his calling, and write begging-letters when he is no more.  He throws off the infection of begging-letter writing, like the contagion of disease.  What Sydney Smith so happily called ‘the dangerous luxury of dishonesty’ is more tempting, and more catching, it would seem, in this instance than in any other.

He always belongs to a Corresponding-Society of Begging-Letter Writers.  Any one who will, may ascertain this fact.  Give money to-day in recognition of a begging-letter,—no matter how unlike a common begging-letter,—and for the next fortnight you will have a rush of such communications.  Steadily refuse to give; and the begging-letters become Angels’ visits, until the Society is from some cause or other in a dull way of business, and may as well try you as anybody else.  It is of little use inquiring into the Begging-Letter Writer’s circumstances.  He may be sometimes accidentally found out, as in the case already mentioned (though that was not the first inquiry made); but apparent misery is always a part of his trade, and real misery very often is, in the intervals of spring-lamb and early asparagus.  It is naturally an incident of his dissipated and dishonest life.

That the calling is a successful one, and that large sums of money are gained by it, must be evident to anybody who reads the Police Reports of such cases.  But, prosecutions are of rare occurrence, relatively to the extent to which the trade is carried on.  The cause of this is to be found (as no one knows better than the Begging-Letter Writer, for it is a part of his speculation) in the aversion people feel to exhibit themselves as having been imposed upon, or as having weakly gratified their consciences with a lazy, flimsy substitute for the noblest of all virtues.  There is a man at large, at the moment when this paper is preparing for the press (on the 29th of April, 1850), and never once taken up yet, who, within these twelvemonths, has been probably the most audacious and the most successful swindler that even this trade has ever known.  There has been something singularly base in this fellow’s proceedings; it has been his business to write to all sorts and conditions of people, in the names of persons of high reputation and unblemished honour, professing to be in distress—the general admiration and respect for whom has ensured a ready and generous reply.

Now, in the hope that the results of the real experience of a real person may do something more to induce reflection on this subject than any abstract treatise—and with a personal knowledge of the extent to which the Begging-Letter Trade has been carried on for some time, and has been for some time constantly increasing—the writer of this paper entreats the attention of his readers to a few concluding words.  His experience is a type of the experience of many; some on a smaller, some on an infinitely larger scale.  All may judge of the soundness or unsoundness of his conclusions from it.

Long doubtful of the efficacy of such assistance in any case whatever, and able to recall but one, within his whole individual knowledge, in which he had the least after-reason to suppose that any good was done by it, he was led, last autumn, into some serious considerations.  The begging-letters flying about by every post, made it perfectly manifest that a set of lazy vagabonds were interposed between the general desire to do something to relieve the sickness and misery under which the poor were suffering, and the suffering poor themselves.  That many who sought to do some little to repair the social wrongs, inflicted in the way of preventible sickness and death upon the poor, were strengthening those wrongs, however innocently, by wasting money on pestilent knaves cumbering society.  That imagination,—soberly following one of these knaves into his life of punishment in jail, and comparing it with the life of one of these poor in a cholera-stricken alley, or one of the children of one of these poor, soothed in its dying hour by the late lamented Mr. Drouet,—contemplated a grim farce, impossible to be presented very much longer before God or man.  That the crowning miracle of all the miracles summed up in the New Testament, after the miracle of the blind seeing, and the lame walking, and the restoration of the dead to life, was the miracle that the poor had the Gospel preached to them.  That while the poor were unnaturally and unnecessarily cut off by the thousand, in the prematurity of their age, or in the rottenness of their youth—for of flower or blossom such youth has none—the Gospel was NOT preached to them, saving in hollow and unmeaning voices.  That of all wrongs, this was the first mighty wrong the Pestilence warned us to set right.  And that no Post-Office Order to any amount, given to a Begging-Letter Writer for the quieting of an uneasy breast, would be presentable on the Last Great Day as anything towards it.

The poor never write these letters.  Nothing could be more unlike their habits.  The writers are public robbers; and we who support them are parties to their depredations.  They trade upon every circumstance within their knowledge that affects us, public or private, joyful or sorrowful; they pervert the lessons of our lives; they change what ought to be our strength and virtue into weakness, and encouragement of vice.  There is a plain remedy, and it is in our own hands.  We must resolve, at any sacrifice of feeling, to be deaf to such appeals, and crush the trade.

There are degrees in murder.  Life must be held sacred among us in more ways than one—sacred, not merely from the murderous weapon, or the subtle poison, or the cruel blow, but sacred from preventible diseases, distortions, and pains.  That is the first great end we have to set against this miserable imposition.  Physical life respected, moral life comes next.  What will not content a Begging-Letter Writer for a week, would educate a score of children for a year.  Let us give all we can; let us give more than ever.  Let us do all we can; let us do more than ever.  But let us give, and do, with a high purpose; not to endow the scum of the earth, to its own greater corruption, with the offals of our duty.

Reprinted from Project Gutenberg.

I read this tonight and found it amazing how I now have documented evidence of what we would call a scam phone call now. It seems the Nigerian Prince has been around much longer than I had suspected. I read it from a book of short stories I am currently making my way through, and afterwards I went looking for it online to find out about the history of the piece. I found it in whole with an absence of copyright notice on Project Gutenberg, so I decided to just go ahead and republish it in whole.

But wait! There’s more!

I was concerned about copyright ownership before quoting or republishing any of it on this site, so I went looking. There was nothing immediately available suggesting that anyone does hold a copyright to any of Dicken’s work. But students of Dickens will know what I did find. It seems that in his time, copyright was not taken seriously in the United States at all, and it certainly did not respect any kind of International Copyright. Indeed, his works were reprinted in butchered form as well as wholly, but he was never properly paid for his efforts. Americans did not acknowledge his works as his property.

So, in the course of having a laugh about this old-time twist on what seems only a modern problem of scam calling, I found that Dicken’s himself fell victim of the same kind of property theft that Americans often find themselves victim to the Chinese of, as the Chinese are blatantly and profusely stealing the ideas and works of American creators on all levels. Even the lowly crafter is currently falling victim of Chinese agents who will go as far as stealing and making not only their products but will also steal their advertising pictures and descriptions to put on the Chinese websites to sell the knock-offs.

Today I opened a Chinese knock-off oil filter I bought for my South Korean made tractor. It is such a rip-off that it even included the warning that it is best to use genuine Deadong parts for the tractor on the filter, while there was a clear “Made in China” on the box!

Posted in Philosophical, Unfiled Customer Complaints, Writing | Leave a comment

A Hollow Feeling

Snow sure fell on us in the valley yesterday, covering the long grass in a rippled blanket of icy white. The season is unmistakably upon us, and the heat and dry of the summer is all but forgotten here. Wood is piled high in the old wood bunk, split and ready to burn over the cold weeks ahead. There are a dozen logs piled up ready to cut and split, should the pile of wood come up short, which is not ideal, but ideal is post punctual. Ideal would have been the woodshed built, and the wood piled nicely in it and kept dry by a roof rather than a tarp. But troubles getting the building built have led to it taking up more than half of the old wood bunk and leaving much less room for a full pile. The Chimney still needs cleaning, but it is taking the smoke up just fine for now. Preparation is not ideal. Then I stop to ask myself if I am prepared for anything at all at this time of my life, and my anxieties arise.

I burned a sign in a piece of wood yesterday with the Glowforge, and am really happy with how it came out. I think I can work with the results and make some signs to put up for sale at the Market. I also tried to burn a picture into the wood to see how it looked, and the result was again satisfactory. I think there are possibilities available there, too. Alignment is not perfect, but I can make the print smaller than the block of wood and then trim it down around what’s printed and center it that way. We will see. I need to get some blanks made of a consistent thickness, and try burning them for a finished project and see how they come out.

I have the big wax melt on, and it is ready for me to pour some more candles. I want to get some more pinecones and trees ready for the Christmas markets coming up. I will do another colonial taper candle pour, too. This reminds me that I have the 9-inch mold in the freezer, needing me to see if I can get the candles out of it. I could not get the thing to release the candles in it, so I gave up and tried freezing. I did get one out, and honestly could not right now tell you where it is. But it is 3:30 in the morning, and I should be asleep right now.

Garrison Keillor is playing on the bedside screen right now. I play the ‘News from Lake Woebegone’ each night as I sleep. I really admire the storytelling involved, and I think kind of hope osmosis delivers my mind the ability to tell a few tales myself. It is an art that seems for me like fruit remaining after winter frost has destroyed the vine and the leaves that nourished it all the summer long. Are those summer days gone? It would be inconvenient for a fellow who still needs to earn a living, and likewise does not know from where the nourishment shall come. Age is a vicious thing. One feels still so viable and so young, but the mirror puts forth a counter argument that looks worse and worse each day. So, I listen each night, and hope that the ability to grow ripe fruit will be fertilized in my sleep.

I think it is a generational thing that I feel detached from the culture I was brought up in. There are traditions that I remember from my childhood. But those revolve around things like a Christmas tree, some gifts, family, and time together. Of course, being a kid when those ideas were planted in me, I centered the ideas around the gifts and the magic of the season. As an adult, that magic is up to me to create, but I just don’t feel it. It is a commonly told Christmas story, so I don’t quite think that is where I will find the story I am looking to tell, though telling it anyway might be good practice. It just feels like a dead horse. It feels closely related to the story of the aged man who feels like the world he grew up in has faded and been forgotten and left him ready to leave the world that left him behind. It is best described as a hollow feeling. And I am not so sure that is the joy I want to fill the world with.

So, I am kind of down right now. I don’t want to be. But finding the happy droplets to grab hold of is like waving my hands in the mist and grab a handful of water to fill my glass with. It compels me to write when I feel this way, so that is a good thing. And any good thing is worth experiencing, even if it is totally ironic! So, Irony it is!

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Woodwork Adjusted for the Cold

It is amazing to have become a grandfather two more times in the last 30 days. I am blown away by it! One of the kids lives pretty close, and I get to see her fairly often. There is nothing so special as being able to hold her and look at her little face and hands and think of how amazing it is to see a person just starting out. It is time to just eat up and savor!

I spent time yesterday working on candles for the Christmas Markets coming up. It’s good work, but I need to reset where I am working so I have a much better layout and a good place to sit and take the strain off. It could all be done in a way I would not need to move around a lot. I made a few pinecone candles, and I did quite a few beehive candles. I noticed at the previous Farmer’s Markets that people looked at the wax I was selling for use in the workshop or the sewing room and seemed to take an interest in the beehives. But they asked about them as candles, and I did not have them. Next time I will.

I have the Roman Workbench set up on the front porch. I need to get to work on it so I can begin to evaluate how it is for height and worksurface. The room warms nicely in the winter because of the sunlight that comes in. I plan to make or at least work on smaller projects there. I can still run out to the shop for quick jobs or to grab any needed tools or wood. It is honestly tempting to build a mini-Dutch Toolchest to keep a few things handy next to the Roman. Good as anything, and especially a good practice opportunity.

My plan is to work on integrating as part of hyperlocal economy. I want to earn some money at this. I don’t feel like I will need to earn a lot. But if we can get by on arts and crafts, I think we could both be quite happy doing so. We’ll see where our little hobbies can take us.

Another aspect to this Business-business is to get out and shake hands with people. We have tended to remain locked up and hidden in our house, just doing our thing. We need to get to know people. Missus is teaching at 4H, and that is great for meeting the kids, and when the kids have their lessons and tell their folks what they did, then they are in a vague sense being made aware of her. Hopefully there is a chance for discussion during drop-off and such. But I will admit, I have been there at the end of classes, and the parents tend to wait for their kids outside, and never come in to see what they have done or anything like that. It would be good if she could meet them and talk a bit. She is sure good at advertising what she is doing, and how she is able to help others to get to work with their hands and creative minds.

I am still working on habit forming. My health has been the best it has been in years. Years! Those years have made it difficult for me to plan out a full day of work because my body could never have done it if I wanted it to. I need to improve my ability to physically work a full day through, and I need to plan a full day of what to do. They are coming along. And my diet is starting to be a little kinder on my tummy. Though that is still not a sure thing, I can at least sleep through, and not be participant in a disaster first thing as soon as I get up. Will keep on working at it. As for the weight loss, I have still not come to the surface of a scale, but I do work harder to keep my trousers up.

Maybe today I will get some wood gathered up and make a wall hanging candle box. I could use the woodworking, and I could use a nice product to put out on sale at the market. I also think a small project like that would be excellent to work on at the Roman Bench, and get a feel for the thing, and what I need to add or change to make it functional over winter.

Another option would be a loom, be it an Inkle, or even a simple bobbin lace. It’s just that the candle box has repeated angles I’d like to see if I can create well. But I do need to make some simple bobbin lace looms for Missus to sell, too. Decisions, decisions. There is one other item I would like to get to work on soon. It is a, a… This… Tape Loom.

My plan is to model as a recreation of the one pictured above. The measurements in the caption will help. I’d really like to do a couple of them. One for the wall, one to use, and any extras to put on sale. It would be a great and interesting challenge.

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I Voted

Today is a special day. I voted. I am now at home waiting for more news about the coming of the new child in the family. What excitement! Well, I am excited. Now we are betting on times and final weights. And those votes are being submitted on Messenger. I voted 3:10 and 5# 2oz.

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The Labor Movement

Today is Election Day. I think this should be a national holiday, personally. I have taken the kids to the bus stop for school, and our oldest is in the delivery room with his wife right now having their first. Missus is having a nap at the moment, and I will wake her in fifteen minutes then go down and vote. Where things go from there is anyone’s guess! But here we are. Today. What a day!

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Christmas 1978

Grandpa was trying to get the Christmas lights to work, but the strand was not lighting up. He wiggled the bulbs and looked through glass trying to find one with a broken filament. My job was to carefully hold the spare bulbs and pick a color to replace the faulty bulb when grandpa found it. He finally pulled a bulb out of its base then asked me for one of the replacement bulbs I was holding in my tiny seven-year-old hands. I selected a color and handed it to him, then he carefully threaded the bare wires into the base and pushed it into the empty receptacle. The whole strand flashed then flickered then came to life! He set the strand aside then picked up another and replaced its plug in the outlet where the first strand had been plugged in. This one light up, except for one bulb. I really favored this type of strand where a single bulb could go out but it does not affect the rest of them. This strand was not just superior in this matter, but if you like them, it was the type that used the bulbs that were the same fit as the typical hallway nightlight. I was instructed to go ahead and change out the bulb that did not work, and reminded to never ever stick my finger into the empty socket. Then grandpa let me have the last two swallows of his tall beer can.

Grandpa gave the strands of lights over to my uncles to put up on the tree, then said he needed to go out and get something else. I don’t remember what, but he left alone.

The merriment at the house continued for a while as we decorated and got things ready for Christmas Day tomorrow. Then one of my uncles yelled out “Mom! Santa Clause is at the back door! I looked, and there he indeed was, a little disheveled, a little skinny, and a little loose fitting, but Santa was stood at the patio door with a big black bag over his shoulder, and his beard sagging down slightly. He was quickly invited in!

“Ho! Ho! Ho! I hear there have been some good kids here this year!” All agreed, which is rare in any family, but among the younger ones in this family, there was agreement. So Santa laughed and began handing out presents to everyone. He did not have many in his sack, just one for each of my two uncles and aunt, my mom, and myself. Mom got a small parcel that she opened only to find a note inside telling her that her gift was down the road in her apartment. I got a Star Bird electric spaceship, which made a climbing noise as it was pointed up, and a descending noise when pointed down, and came apart into something like four different smaller spaceships. The biggest laugh was my uncle Russ, who got the big plastic bag Santa was carrying our gifts in, and a dog poop scoop.

Santa left, and not long after, grandpa got back from his errand. It sure was exciting to tell him all about what had happened when he was gone, and how Santa had given Russ the poop-scoop. Santa surely was all knowing! He knew we had a dog-poop problem thanks to the Great Danes my grandparents kept in those days.

When the evening was over, mom and I went back to the apartment and were shocked to find a console stereo had been brought into the living room and fitted under the front window. Now she had a place to play her records and listen to her favorite music on HiFi on either the phonograph, the 8-Track, or AM/FM Stereo!

Santa did come back to my grandparent’s house that night and left gifts for everyone. I don’t remember what else I got, or anyone else. But I do remember how sad it was that Santa came while grandpa was away.


I used to think this was Christmas of 1979, but I have since realized that these events occurred in ’78. We drove to Colorado, and I was installed in school there by Thanksgiving of 1979. We celebrated Christmas of 1980 in the apartment in Westminster, then 1981 onwards in the house in Broomfield. I am quite sure of Christmas of 1977 being performed in a little apartment in Salt Lake City when I went to the school on Redwood Road. Those were the days mom had to leave me alone in the mornings with an alarm set to indicate to me when I was to leave for school each morning. I was six. The Seventies were amazing times.

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Last Week of October ’24

This week will be an exciting one for the kids, and for me. The girls are going Trick Or Treating on Thursday night, and I am bringing my grandson along with when we go. I am excited because I am not having joint pain, so I think I will endure it longer, and with a bigger smile than I have been able to before. Grandson is coming along because his parents plan to stay in with their new daughter that night. So, grandson will spend Thursday night at ours and as the kids here in Idaho have no school on Fridays, he will also spend his usual fortnightly Friday night over. The kids are all planning a movie night for Friday! I love seeing them all do happy stuff, so I am excited for them!

The weather has been getting cooler here on the farm in Idaho. We have been putting a fire in the stove in the mornings, and it is threatening to get cool enough to demand them in the evenings too just about every night. We are rearranging for winter. Missus has to get set up for the work she wants to do so she can do it in the places that are easiest to keep warm. She is especially excited to get back to her efforts on mastering the AVL Loom, or as I like to call it, the Big Loom. It takes up most of a room. To be fair, the footprint is like six feet by seven or something like that. Of course, you have to be able to walk around most of it to work it. It leaves a little room in the room it is in. But it sure ain’t the kind of thing I am worried about grabbing if Yellowstone blows. There is a fireplace in that same room, and it is adjacent to the room the woodstove is in, so keeping it warm is not at all a problem. But as things are tight in there, one has to prioritize what is in the space.

Meanwhile, I am going to try to fit a Roman workbench on the front porch. That is a space fairly easy to warm up in the evenings and it warms itself right up in the sunny daytime hours. I can do some work to improve that once I am in there. But I also need to be able to do some woodworking in there so I can make some looms for Missus to sell as a part of her business. We have worked out a prototype and she used the half-dozen I made her in her 4-H class, and said they worked great. I think I can do a fair bit of the work from a bench on the front porch. I just need a spot that is easy to keep warm and easy to clean. I’ll move the potter’s wheel off and put the bench in its place. I’d love to keep it up in my den, but there is that carpet up there. I don’t think the wood shavings would take to it well.

This KETO diet has definitely made some adjustments in how my body processes sugars. I had a bowl of fruit in heavy cream this morning, and it shot my blood sugars over 200, and boy, did I feel it! I did not add sugar to it or anything. It was just what the mixed berries had in it. Remember not to do that again! I will need to figure out how to offramp from this diet. I feel a little skinnier, but I definitely still have a ways to go. But wherever I arrive that I want to stop it, I don’t know how to without going all wrong. If a simple bowl of fruit and cream can do that, what would happen if I ever caved to the temptation for a Three Musketeers or something like that? And I cannot be eating virtually no carbs forever, can I? Well, maybe. A lot less, anyway. But there has to be SOME bread or crackers now and then. At the moment, I go goofy over two slices of multi-grain toast. And then there are the much more personal dietary issues. Whoa! Maybe the body just needs more time to adjust?

I have not yet finished my woodshed. The wood is still lay out, some of it fine on pallets, and some on the ground, which is not good. That’s one of the jobs I need to go get on and finish as soon as I can. As it is an unplanned building, I am going along with the thing forming in my head as I go. I know what I need to incorporate into it, such as wind braces. But each thing takes time. And there are joints to cut, and they have to be measured out right. This could be going better, and I suppose it would if I had made drawings. But on the other hand, I don’t know for sure what I need to draw. I am working it out better in the real world than I think I could do on paper. It’s a little slow, but the challenges and problems present themselves. So now I know what is reasonable and what is not. It’s a learning process. Next time I do something like this, I will know what to draw and how it should form. I won’t do like the coat rack I made that required a brace that I had not planned for, so it came out in the wrong proportions because I had to squeeze it into a small space.

Well, that’s a sufficient and sane update for the moment. Time to go get to some work.

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Woodwork and Too Bright Headlights

Yesterday I worked on that board out in the shop. You know, the 8-foot-long board two and an eighth inches thick that was cupped and bowed pretty badly. I think it stood off the bench about an inch when I lay it bow down. I split it in half and turned one side long way and faced it against itself again. Then I slammed it down to the bench and glued it together. Here, let me show you.

This was sitting on the bench with the ends at least an inch up in the air and that’s not even accounting for cupping. Reverse half on itself, and flatten them together for glue up, and this is what you get, still in the rough. I can plane it down by up to five-sixteenths of an inch still, so there is plenty of room to reach a good flat, smooth board.

All of the other boards designated for the kitchen island top are a lot closer to perfect than this one was. This one was difficult to glue up because the clamps I have are weak, and I am not very experienced at hand jointing. I may invest in a little epoxy to do the middle of the glue joint. There is a length where the gap in it reached nearly a thirty-second of an inch wide. Not good, but I think it can be worked around with the modern techniques.

The whole goal of this project is to replace a solid core door that is being used as a countertop with a solid piece of wood made from a tree that I picked up at the dump. I have four pieces a little more than a foot wide each, and just over two inches thick, so the resultant board should be robust, especially as I don’t feel like planing it all the way down to a thin little piece of wood. Going forward, any damages the top takes should be able to be planed or sanded out and refinished. I suspect I may be able to glue two one-foot-wide boards to the two sides of this one, and have a full, nice countertop. But if there is any part that is unsatisfactory, I can replace it in whole or in part with the spare. It’s really a ‘we will see’ kind of thing. I have looked all the boards over, but I may have missed something, and I am ready to adapt as things progress.

My daughter drove to the school bus stop this morning as part of her logged practice required. We got to an intersection on the way where she was required to make a left turn, which she did alright. She lacked confidence, and who wouldn’t when there is a car behind, one coming the other way, and one waiting at the stop sign to the right? That last one was a rather expensive looking SUV with incredibly bright lights, daylight white LED’s. They followed us through as we made our turn. That’s when my daughter got a learning opportunity in patience. There is enough undulation in the road surface after that for a moment we could see our headlights illuminating the road, but when the car behind us came over too, our light all but vanished in the flood of their lights. It was only in the shadow of our car that we could see any of the coloring of our own lights.

I certainly understand driver safety and how nice it must be to see like they can. What I don’t understand is how we have come to the point where drivers are allowed to flood the road in front of them with so much light that anyone in another vehicle cannot safely see? How are people so selfish that they only care about their own safety, and don’t give a toss about others? Light like that would be valuable over 120 miles per hour, but at normal surface road driving speeds, it is not only completely unnecessary, but vision can be supplemented with technology that senses objects around such as that in the Tesla Model 3. When I got to ride in one of those, the in-dash screen was able to show a woman pushing a stroller in the crosswalk as she passed in front of the vehicle in front of us. Certainly, such tech can be adapted to highlight potential risks and alert the driver in a heads-up display or something. But rather, we live in the world where we would rather cause anger and anxiety to other drivers as we blind them while they drive.

The other driver did not take long to cut around and pass us, even though my inexperienced child was driving too close to the center of the road to properly allow someone to pass. Oh, she was there, but she left it narrow. By the time we had gone the last mile to the bus stop, the other driver had gone by fast enough to have been two miles ahead of us, driving at the posted limits. Whatever the other driver’s emergency, I wish them well.

I spoke briefly to two of my old friends going back to late elementary school days yesterday. It is none of your business what either of them had to say, but I will allow you to know that it was good, and I am glad to talk to them, always!

Enough for now. I will enjoy a little rest up while it warms up a little before I go out and get to work getting us ready for the last Farmers Market for this year.

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