11-11-2015 in Either Country

Posted on November 11, 2015 by Kelsey

There are lots of important things on my mind today, ranging from politics to religion to the differences between Veteran’s Day, Armistice Day, and Remembrance Day.  But there is one thing that is by far more personal and important to me than all of that. 

Thirteen years ago today my family gathered in a little white chapel on the Las Vegas Strip with a young British lady and her two sons.  She wanted to make life bigger than the little town in the West Midlands that she lived in, and give it more than just a little.  I won’t speak of her love and her feelings, for those are hers to verbalize.  As for me, I joined her in front of a licensed minister, legal to perform marriages, because I wanted to bond my life with hers, and to make myself one with my Best Friend, and to start an adventure together that would be more than a mountain climb, more than a river to paddle, more than a project to compete.  We picked the Graceland Chapel because in part, we were bonded by the music of our favorite artist, who took his bride at the same place. 

Starting out as you do, little things bring a couple together, such as music, and shared interests.  But over time, that grows into more substantive things, such as healing wounds, both physical and emotional, your own, and those of the children you bear together.  Miles apart when young are traded for miles together on a shared path when a couple is older.  Meals are made together, with laughter shared, meals are made apart, with worry and concern.  Meals are made for one another, sometimes with love, sometimes to divert us from anger, sometimes with every effort to bring comfort in pain, and to bring health where it has fallen.  In time, the walks in the graveyard with thoughts of who could be under the stones, deepen to the wonder of what stories lie there, canonized in the mortal record of solemn Earth.  From tight lips to tight budgets, to hands held, and grudges let go, a life of togetherness brings meaning to the otherwise mundane sunrise to sunset to sunrise again cycle that has been going on here for longer than we can comprehend. 

Love is a lot of things.  The only way to really understand it is to live it.  The best way to live it is to define it yourselves, and not let others tell you what it is.  Today brings us to the thirteenth year of doing just that.  We have had the ups and downs that we were promised.  And we still have a long way to go.  I am happy for it all. 

I love you Katrina.  Thanks for loving me, and for always showing me that love is more than I ever knew it could be. 

Kelsey J Bacon

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September Thoughts and a Trip to Colorado

Posted on September 16, 2015 by Kelsey

The weather outside is frightful, and the fire inside is delightful!  Today it poured down rain, early on, the tapered off very slowly till afternoon, when it finally quit and the clods broke, revealing snow on the tops of the mountains around 8,000 feet.  Boy!  There was a reminder that I need to go get the rest of that firewood before winter!  Who wants to be chopping trees down in the snow. or worse yet, finding the fallen ones under the snow!  There we are then. 

The day before yesterday we had a new addition to our farm, from Mystique.  She gave birth to a new little baby girl that we lovingly call Flossy.  Well, it’s important to add this because I don’t have it written down anywhere else.  I need to know Flossy’s birthday!  September 14th, 2015, around 2 PM.  Or was it the day before that?

I cleaned the chimney yesterday for the first time.  I mean first time, as in the first time I have ever done a chimney sweep, myself.  It was not too easy, but with a little strategy, and a bit of work, it could be made to be easy in the future.  I just need a good place close to the chimney to build on a permanent ladder to climb that part of the roof. 

Everything got done just in time to put a fire in the fireplace and watch the weather turn to absolute crap.  It was great!  The only down sides are that the wood seems to burn pretty fast, and not too hot.  And that I still need to fund a woodstove for the dining room.  That will heat the house against the winter cold, and keep us warm, even upstairs. 

I am thinking I am going to try to get up into the mountains on Sunday and get another cord and a half of firewood.  We still have permits for five right now, and even if I do, it will still take more than two more trips to get the rest.  We have some good weather ahead, and I want to get the wood while it is here! 

Last week I went out to Denver to photograph my brother, Kerry, and his girlfriend, Nicole, get married.  It was a darling little wedding up Flagstaff Mountain, in Boulder, CO.  I have some work to do on the pictures though, thanks to a spot on one of the lenses that I didn’t notice till it was too late.  Typical!  Photoshop, here I come! 

I also got to visit with some old friends.  First up was Rusty Stewart.  First because he has always been one of my best friends, and I had no idea what his home address was.  I didn’t want to call him at work, because jobs can be funny about that, and he works for his dad, who is even funnier!  Russ is doing pretty good.  He gets time with his daughters, and has a house of his own.  He still lives in Broomfield, but that’s to be expected with a family business to run.  Tell you this, too, that business has grown since last I saw it.  The building space has doubled.  It is good to see he and his family doing well!  I spent the better part of an afternoon with him. 

The next day after the wedding I had a nice phone call with Adria.Ellerbrock.  I have known her and her twin sister since I was maybe ten?  They are both friendly and wonderful ladies, who apparently live on the same street now.  I admit, I always envy the people in their lives day to day.  They are the types that like to pay it forward, and who like to give a part of themselves to helping others.  Adria always arranges the communications and details for class reunions that I never attend, and even so, I appreciate so much the work she puts into keeping everyone close.  She also gets together with many of our class on different occasions and with her sparkling personality, she again, brings people together.  Andrea has done missionary work of the real kind, helping people in South America to improve their lives.  I have always admired her for taking the time out of her life to do that. 

As I hung up with Adria, Brad Magerfliesch and Lea Martin drove up.  They are married with children, and Brad said that the way Lea thinks, and the way I think, there was no way I was coming to town without meeting up with her.  I applauded his courage and thoughtfulness.  He is a great guy, and I a fun friend.  Lea is smart and dangerous in many ways. Brad used to say that Dynamite comes in small packages, and he found one and married her.  Well done sir!  They have two adorable children, who were understandably a bit impatient, but very good kids nonetheless.  I am glad to know them all now! 

That day had started out with someone of more than an honorable mention.  When my mom and step-dad married, I met Bev and Gene Hansen at the wedding in Oceanside, California.  They let me play with a movie camera they had, fooling around with the focus and zoom.  There was no film in it, but that didn’t stop me from documenting the reception in my mind.  In November of 1979, we loaded up a U-Haul trailer and hooked it to the back of the 1971 Chevrolet Caprice Classic the folks had bought off my great-grandpa Kelsey Raber, and headed off for Colorado.  We lived in Bev and Genes house for a couple of months, and I attended Emerald Elementary School just down the road, where I met Rusty, Adria, and Andrea, as well as lots of other people.  Bev and Gene were instant grandparents to me, and wonderful people in every way.  Many years passed by that they were always the same.  So, when I showed up at their front door, it was wonderful to relive a lot of nostalgia with them, Gene 90 years old now, and Bev 85, and both seemingly in good health and sound mind.  I loved spending the morning with them, and giving them the chance to meet my youngest, Khallarnie.  We caught up, and talked about many things, and I cannot for the life of me find a single bad thing to say of them, at all.   I am also thrilled I have no reason to try to. 

So, these are the wonderful people I got to catch up with in Colorado, in addition to my brother Kerry, and his beautiful and sweet wife, and my sister, Kristina, who is cute in every single picture I take of her.  Kerry is off to a start in building a little family, and with every hope and wish I can offer for a long and happy life doing so together, and Kristina is waiting patiently, even if she doesn’t think she is, for the right man to come along before she starts one of her own.  She said while I was there, all of her three brothers have been married twice now, and she not once yet.  That makes a lot of sense to me, because there is going to have to be one hell of a guy to come along and fill the spot of husband to her.  Not because of any standard her brothers set, but because she is smart enough not to settle for something less. 

Well, it is time for me to go make a lunch for my daughter for school tomorrow, and to stoke up the fire to keep the house nice and warm tonight.  By then, it should be time to go pick Dylan up from work. 

Kelsey J Bacon

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We Need a Wood Stove

Posted on August 31, 2015 by Kelsey

http://www.gofundme.com/jb2s5xc8  <<<<  Link to our GoFundMe site! 

I have set up a GoFundMe for our wood stove.  Financially, we are not in the shape to go get one ourselves, but given the way our heating bills have tended to run in the past, we could pay for one pretty quick if we were buying it with what our Propane costs.  But we cannot come up with the money prior to winter as we have so many other expenses, and we cannon come up with it in winter because that is no time to be on a roof installing a chimney liner and repairing the mortar on the existing brickwork that the liner has to go up.  Our credit is crap, so we are a bit stuck here.  I did not think to set up the site earlier in the year, and really should have!  The chimney alone has a lot of work I need to do to it.  I set the site request at $3,500, but could probably get this done for less.  It depends on the hearth work that needs doing too! 

To give an idea, we have two furnaces in this house.  Each heats a level.  They have separate duct work, and they both run off a shared 350 gallon propane tank. Depending on the prices at the time, which are always higher in winter, that can cost from $600 to $1,200 to fill once the season is under way.  I can fill it once in the summer for about $400, but that does not last through Thanksgiving, and we are into those higher bills till May.  Temperatures are not consistent from year to year.  Last winter was quite warm, and we were able to do a lot with electric heaters.  The winter before was what could be called normal, and we used the furnaces and a fire in a very inefficient fireplace.  The one prior to that was brutal, including six weeks hovering around –20F, which is when $1,200 a month stepped out the door and jumped into the propane truck.  Our propane seller was happy to take it, of course, and advised me very sternly against wood, of course.  There is no other fuel source available here, such as natural gas.  Electric heating is also very costly, and inefficient.  Works as a great supplement, but not as a primary source of heat. 

A wood stove in the position one once lived in the dining room would put it in the center of the bottom floor of the house, and I may have to vent the ceiling there to help some heat get up to the bedrooms, but that would be a relatively easy chore, and in any case, all of this would be much easier to maintain myself, than the complex innards of the two furnaces.  So, maintenance costs will go down, fuel costs will go down, replacement costs will go down, and the potential of $1,200 a month but a more realistic $800 a month for six months, will drop to $50 per year for wood permits, and a few camping trips in the mountains with my kids, plus a great workout splitting firewood.

Other benefits include the good we are doing in the forest with our wood permits, which allow us to clear only dead trees, which would otherwise provide more fuel to any fires that cut through there.  I also have made it a challenge for myself to remove trees that have fallen against other living trees, to reduce the danger of them falling on someone out for a walk, or camping in the area. 

We do use gasoline getting up tot he mountains and back, and running the chainsaw.  However, those costs are small, especially compared to buying firewood locally, or worse, paying for propane. 

If we made more money, this would be easier for us to manage.  I don’t work.  There are a few reasons for that, and while they all add up to a sensible decision, the one that matters most to us is that we still have a child who has not yet started school.  I don’t put my kids in daycare.  That is not negotiable.  There is nobody I trust with my kids, especially before they can talk, except for me and my immediate family.  Nobody will care for them and their interests the way we do, and a childhood is far too precious not to assure that it is protected and nourished. 

We just need help getting over this hump.  It is a huge one, and will make a huge difference for us!  It will prevent us from having to repair frozen pipes in winter, and cut our costs for heat tremendously! 

I set the fund at $3,500.  I think we can get it done for less, but I am not positive.  Costs always arise.  This would get us set up with something that is practical, not beautiful, and provides enough heat for the whole home. 

So, if you have read all of this, please consider helping us out.  I am not one for begging, and we take no help from the government in the form of welfare or such.  We seldom go to others for help, but in this case, I think we need to before the cold sets in! 

Thank you!

Kelsey J Bacon

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Kiry’s Front Page Photo!

Posted on July 8, 2015 by Kelsey

Today the paper included an article with a photo of my Kirynie on the front cover.  Okay, so it is a small town paper.  Does it count that it is the town of the one and only Napoleon Dynamite? 

Kiry Preston Citizen July 8 2015 Front Page

There were some factual inaccuracies in the article, which come as no surprise as the reporter, who is the paper’s editor, didn’t write much down.  But we hope it will help draw attention to our little farm and help us get some business going. 

Kelsey J Bacon

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Working On The Farm

Posted on May 27, 2015 by Kelsey

I have been busy with so many things around here that it’s hard to guess where to begin with telling about it all.  The kids are a handful as always, and keeping them fed and clothed and clean and educated, and everything they need is a full time job all by itself, before even getting to home maintenance, the farm with its chores and animals, and the older boys and their need and rides to and from, my own hobbies, and my requirements as an admin on a Facebook group, any hope of social time, which is always restricted to Facebook, budgeting and finance, house cleaning, and about an hundred other roles I have to fill every week. 

I have been working in the woodshop when I can, starting to build crates for toting things around in, or storage.  I have also been running my own baseboards for the house, so that I can use the same router bit to make the crates, keeping my accent pieces in style with the house.  I have also built my own break-away box as a soap mold, using the same box joints I used on the crates.  Then I made an olive oil soap with sand as an exfoliate.  The soap has two more weeks to cure before it is on the close end of ready to use.  It could take another five, depending on conditions. 

I have also been perfecting my seasoning and care of the cast iron pans, which is not a lot of work or time, but the method of oiling after a wash, and leaving it to set till next use, then cooking it to a polymer seems to be working the best.  Also, heating the pan fully before cooking is contributing to not sticking with pancakes and eggs. 

We are up to five llamas on the farm now, and I have sheared three of them, missus has sheared one, and I have one more to do.  I can mark that off my bucket list now!  I didn’t even know it was on it! 

I think the most exciting part of farming is that I am gaining new experiences every week and sometimes daily.  That is building my confidence and makes me feel like I have actually accomplished something.  I am no expert in anything.  But I am a fair hat at writing, photography, basic car maintenance, cooking, woodworking, basic irrigation setup and maintenance, mixing my owl laundry detergent powders, computer repair, animal husbandry, plumbing, electrical work, and many more.  I can build and keep an electric fence, install gates, have a fair understanding of what the weather is up to, and most things around me, except maybe some of my kids.  I am not afraid to handle my saws, my chainsaw, or other power tools and equipment, or even lye.  Yes, lye, as in acid.  I am at a point where I am comfortable in most things that need doing around here.  I have built a leach field for our septic system, and nasty plugs in the plumbing.  I have also cleared everything from scorpions to dead cows, although there are no scorpions here in Idaho.  Go back to the Nevada days for that.  I have not done everything yet. but I am happy to roll up the sleeves and put on the gloves if necessary, and give most things a try.  Maybe this is what they meant when they say life begins at 40.

The best part is that there is still so much to do!  I know some people look forward to the day when everything is done and they can just sit back and manage.  I am not one of those folks.  If it is all done, then what am I going to do?  I look forward to the next challenge.  I welcome the next untried task.  I cannot do it all now, but when I have the tools and I have the material, I revel in the opportunity!  Coming soon is the rest of the pantry, and a lot of other shelving and cabinetry.  I have a lot of work planned!  But it is material hungry work!  I have a small seat for the bathroom.  The pantry requires shelving, can storage, a sink, a seat, shoe rack, coat rack, and much more, the living room needs bookshelves, the linen closet need shelves, the upstairs has walls that shelves and drawers could easily be built right into, the little pantry needs food container storage, and the basement entry hole set for easier entry there, as well as a safe cover. 

I need fencing around the south pasture, three acres in size, as well as the west pasture, and gates put in on all, then permanent paddocks set up.  We have raised beds to build in the garden, two out buildings that need painting, doors to rebuild and install on thee out buildings.  an orchard that wants more trees, a fence to build in front of the house to keep the little ones out of the road, and the neighbor’s dogs out of the yard, window boxes and arbors and trellises to make, a path to redo, lighting to install…  There is no point.  I have so many more things to list here that I am not going to for the fact I am going to go to sleep soon.  There is a pile of laundry to wash tomorrow. 

So, let me leave you with this.  Put something in your hands and do it, pick up the tools and get to it. 

Kelsey J Bacon

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The Gracious Lies

Posted on January 30, 2015 by Kelsey

I was graciously lied to as a child.  I was told that I was fortunate to have been born in the greatest country on Earth.  I was born in the shining city on a hill, the beacon of hope, the land of opportunity, equality.  I was told I could reach the American Dream, and that that dream was a house.  But they attached meters to that house, and they taxed the house and the taxed the meters, and they taxed the means with which I supported the house and the people within it.  They taxed the measures I took to protect it and the way I took to leave it.  And they told me I was free. 

I had a baby, and I looked into his eyes, a proud father staring at opportunity with hope.  For a moment, one person who really was free.  Free not because he was without cost, and not because he was without a task master, or a duty owed to anyone, or any government or king or ruler or party.  He was free in those ways, true, but he was free in another way too.  He was without the webs of social deception!  You see, I looked into his eyes and told myself about the opportunities he had, a safe childhood, a protective government, an education, the possibility of becoming whatever he should chose, such as a scientist, a teacher, a leader.  He could even one day become the very President of the United States.  But his eyes were blue, and down the hall was a baby whose eyes were brown, and so was his skin, and did his father look into his eyes and think of all the things he would become, or did he look into his eyes and hope so deeply for all the things he would not become?  Because he’d never become President, he was unlikely to be a leader or a teacher, a scientist, or whatever he should chose.  Instead, the opportunities would be closed to him because of the color of his skin, and the dream would be a nightmare and his life a fight just to get a little, never mind getting ahead.  Two proud fathers, two different dreams, one country.  There’s no way this can continue!  Equality means being able to have the same hopes and the same dreams at the same costs.  It means the same taxes, and the same education.  It means the same pay for the same work.  It means brown, black, yellow, or white.  And it means that I can look at my daughters and have the same hopes for them too.

I was not born in the greatest country on Earth.  The opportunity for America to be that has been sucked out of it by those who tell lies, and those who believe them.  But it could be the greatest country when its people remember their roots, and the unclean hands that planted them in bloody soil, and the whips they carried to drive laborers before them, and the guns that tore through flesh in search of oil.  Put down the guns and the whips and the tools of hate, America!  Take up a hand with no thought of its color or its size or gender, and hold it because it is the one closest to you.  That’s exactly where America’s chance for greatness lies, in the hands of each of us.  It lies in a dream all can share alike, and give to our children freely, without reservation because of the color of their skin, the gender of their bodies, or even who they love.  It lies in the eyes of every child, and the determination of every person, not to take those dreams away from any of them.  No more lies.

Kelsey J Bacon

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Saturnalia

Posted on December 23, 2014 by Kelsey

As the end of the year approaches, we are no between the Solstice and the end of the calendar year, when it is time to wrap things up and start out fresh  for the next year.  When I was a kid, I was so literal about the dates of the start of Winter, and the end of the calendar year, that I did no really see the association.  Yes, I guess I was just that particular.  Not the case this year.  And for me to really grasp it, I had to move to the country. 

One of the key observations I have made this year about country life is that life itself feels closer than it ever has before.  I lost two grandfathers this year, the neighbors lost a 12 year old boy, and there have been a few older neighbors who have gone as well.  I also gained a nephew this year!  It has been a busy year in this way.  We have had chickens die, and the goat we gave away also died, and it was Jordan and I who went over to load the things onto a truck for the girls who had taken him.  We had a llama born on Thanksgiving Day too!  We are also finishing a cow, ready to be butchered at the start of the new year.  These events have made me feel closer to life, more a part of living, and more aware of the full circle life comes. 

Last night an old friend from my college days rather abruptly ended our friendship on Facebook, which was the only way we were keeping in touch anyhow.  He was a part of a group I hung out with, but not what I would consider a good friend.  He accused me of not being respectful to others by what I post on my Facebook Timeline, calling my posts of the last 60 days anti-religious.  Perhaps this is so.  I could not say for sure as I have never really come out publicly as an Atheist, and have only recently even really hinted at it in what I post.  So, he could be right in the sense that I have posted in the last 60 days.  But most of what I post has always been science based, and fact based.  Meanwhile, he never gave the slightest consideration of the fact that I am bombarded all the time with religious propaganda from friends who are still actively involved in their religion.  So, I get told I should respect others, and in that light it amounts to “shut up!  You are not allowed an opinion if it differs from mine.”  Sadly, I am not at an age where I care to bow down for such.  Why would I forfeit my right to express my views to a Gestapo that publicizes their views at will, and with attitude?  My friend cut me off before ever really even allowing me to express my view, in fact, after only giving me time to comply with his demand to shut up, or not.  Again, I am at an age where I just don’t care.  A friend would never have done that.  So it is not a loss. 

Old things end, and new ones begin.  This should never be frightening.  It can be difficult.  But the timeline of our lives will host many changes that are unstoppable, and interwoven with so many other timelines, from tiny ones, to the lifecycle of our local star.  Of course, as a new year begins, I have long made it a habit to consider the meaning of it all, and my own happiness.  I set goals, usually.  I consider time, and where I am at in life.  I make sure I am happy with how I am progressing on my timeline, and do my best to take responsibility for it.  New things will become old things, and it will all start again. 

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve.  Obviously I hold no religious significance to it, or the day that follows.  But tomorrow is when our family begins a three day celebration of being together.  We begin with Chinese food in the evening.  Then there will be a small gift exchange.  Christmas Day brings more gifts and an all day buffet.  Then comes a full cooked English Meal on Boxing Day, the day after Christmas.  We’ll spend all the time together that we can, all of us, closing out our years, and preparing to open the new one a week after Christmas.  It’s a good time to remember the old and to plan for the new. 

So here I sit, at 43, still trying to figure out life.  I think that I know well enough who I am to be quite happy with myself.  Too many years have gone by where I was not.  I accept who I am, which is probably the most important part of it. I feel capable of defending my position on my thought and beliefs, and confident enough in them not to have to defend them.  That is a nice place to be.  I know that the world does not work in one way, and thus fulfill everyone in it.  Most of what happens is humans contributing to chaos, and looking for patterns to which they can attach meaning, and assign an understanding that is mental or spiritual or whatever else.  I have experienced enough of the patterns of life to have a degree of confidence in them, and how things will likely go tomorrow, and next week, and so on.  I think that as much as anything, that is what makes this portion of life the part often said to be where life begins. 

As a male, I have noticed something.  When I was a teenager, I thought of sex seemingly all the time.  At this age, those thoughts are being supplanted slowly with thoughts of mortality and death, the bits that make one to realize that it really is looming, and I am actually pretty fortunate to be here still, given the many I have known who have gone.  I wonder if in my 60’s or 70’s I will think of death as often as I did think of sex as a teen?  When I was a teen it was all about the act of creating life, and as I get older it becomes all about just clinging to life? Cue the midlife crisis and tell myself it is time to get to living! 

Luckily these are not consuming thoughts for me, but rather minor annoyances in the back of my mind.  I am consumed by my wife and kids, and the farm, and the animals on the farm.  I am consumed about making the right next step, getting more livestock, and treating it properly so that I can raise healthy animals which will provide for our needs.  I am consumed by the smile of my youngest daughter. 

And it is with that blue eyed smile that I wish to leave this collection of thoughts for the night before Christmas Eve.  Happy Saturnalia, or really, whatever Holiday you observe. 

Kelsey J Bacon

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Autumnal Activities

Posted on November 5, 2014 by Kelsey

Have you ever asked a rhetorical question?  It is a question that doesn’t require an answer.  I have sat down to my keyboard so many times since my last post and felt like I was asking myself to write the answers to rhetorical questions in this journal.  Time to move beyond the rhetoric and get down to some brass tacks. 

The past few months has seen me getting the house ready for winter, which is a big deal around here.  We air it out in the summer, but we also hit the relax mode as far as winter in the house goes.  That just cannot be so when the snow hits the tops of the mountains, and that it has done.  There is snow up there right now, looking down over the valley with its glare.  The last couple of winters the snow has basically fallen in November and we have not see the grass again till March or April.  The last frost comes around the first of June, leaving us little time to do outdoor growing to start the season off.  So the goals this year are to ready ourselves for the winter now, and the spring when the snow settles in.  If there is planting we can do indoors, then we are going to do it. 

The cow is coming to his butchering date.  I have only a few days to get him into the small pasture for graining before I start to miss the proper graining schedule.  Grain puts a bit of fat in among the muscle, adding flavor to the meat.  If I don’t do it, then the meat will be bland, so it is important if we want to reduce what gets tossed out at the end of a useful meal.  No sense in wasting any of the cow if we can help it.  Where I run into problems is getting the cow moved across the street without losing him into the neighbor’s yard or onto the road.  I need help with it, but neither of the boys are prone to helping out with anything on the farm.  I need a cattle prod, and not just for the cows. 

I have learned from winters past that sitting indoors and staying warm induces laziness and an general ill feeling that is hard to get over in the spring.  That has got to be avoided, not just this year, but every year.  How can it be healthy?  I am not an animal that hibernates!  Yet, I find myself already sitting too much now trying to keep my youngest daughter occupied in things that suit her age and interest.  We are going to have to be sure we are well invested in cold weather clothes! 

We have picked up our first cord of firewood already, and have been using it, even though it has not been that cold out lately.  This has concluded the warmest October I have experienced here yet.  Maybe we will see the grass till December? 

Today I have started a roast in the little roasting oven that sits on the worktop.  I have got roast, a lot of potatoes, bell pepper, bacon, corn, green beans, and a stick of butter in there.  It promises to be pretty good!  But I had better go and stir it now!

Kelsey J Bacon

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Robin Williams 1951-2014

Posted on August 16, 2014 by Kelsey

I don’t know squat about Robin Williams, apart from what I have seen of his work onscreen, his standup routines, and interviews with the likes of Johnny Carson, as well as hearsay passed from those who knew him.  His personal life is personal, and I don’t know anything about it, as it should be.  So everything I could write about him is based on the impressions I have of his work, and of a tiny bit of hearsay that I have picked up about him from a few select people who knew him and published whatever they knew.  I don’t know anyone who knew someone who knew him.

My impression of Robin Williams, is that he was a very good man with a big heart, and the desire to make people happy.  I also believe that he was a genius.  I have seen him slip up a word in his standup routine and then tangent on that slip for some time, showing how extensively and how quickly his mind worked on coming up with new material.  I truly believe that he could have taken any stage at most any time, and adlibbed for longer than most in the audience could bear to sit in one place. 

I have enjoyed his work over the years, as early on as watching original episodes of Mork and Mindy, his standup routines, and his dramatic appearances such as Good Will Hunting, or The Dead Poet’s Society.  Upon reflection on his drama, and much of its meaning, his end was ironic, and tragic.  For the joy he brought through his work, and the meaning, I am sure I am only one of so many who would like to have put arms around him in what ended up being his last moments and told him not to, please don’t take such a treasure from us all.  Just as it has been so sad to lose him, it has been so good to have him at all, and like with anyone who lives, it will always come at a price, that final toll that life requires.  Bittersweet.  Someone said that with his passing, we have lost a world treasure.  I very much agree with this sentiment. 

I have myself this silly notion that likened his life as a quest to bring light and laughter into every corner.  But there was always one dark corner that his light could not fill, and it was one into which he had to go in order to clear away the darkness.  Since his suicide, more people than ever have been talking about depression, suicide, and even genius and mental illness.  I do not know where Mr. Williams fit onto any spectrum containing these traits.  To my mind, he was probably the guy who put all the happiness he could in the world, then looked at it and saw war and rage and conflict, hunger and agony, and all that the world has wrong with it, and figured he did all he could, and it was still not enough.  So he left.  That is not right to think that.  But it answers to me the way in which a human can be out of place in a world that is sort of beneath him.  And that is a way for me to say I respected him. 

And now to suicide.  That breaks my heart.  I did not know him.  Still it breaks my heart.  There are those who have since said he is in Hell for what he has done, for taking his own life.  As usual with me, I only wish there was a Hell for such people and their self-righteous attitude towards those who break, or break-out, or break down, or  however you look at it.  Nobody can know the life, the pain, the heart of another.  Nobody can know it, no matter how similar the path taken.  Nobody can know the mind.  How can one who brings so much laughter into the world bring his own life to an end?  I do not know.  I cannot judge.  I will not support or endorse those who do.  For any who leave us in this manner, I only have sadness and loss, and wish so much that the world would have offered you enough.  Mr. Williams made a very good living, so this is obviously not what I mean by enough. 

So I hang my head down, with so many others in the days since his passing.  I think of the mime that he once saw, an actor without a voice.  I hear in my head that unique voice calling out loudly, proudly, begging the world to look at itself and just relax, and don’t take itself so seriously.  I can see his face, like so many, as though he was a close friend.  I shed tears, my heart beats harder, and I feel the loss.  Unlike most distant or celebrity deaths, I am among so many who feels this one so close, so near the bone, so deep in the heart.  In perhaps this way, the lack of understanding of why, I understand better than ever why some people chose to die.  I understand better that it is just not something to be understood.  The greatest comedian of all time in his final bid for irony, to help me to know the unknowable. 

Thank you Robin, for all of it.  You gave so much.  I never knew you.  Yet I received. 

Kelsey J Bacon

Posted in Philosophical, Special Update | Comments Off on Robin Williams 1951-2014

Redecorating the Dining Room

Posted on July 24, 2014 by Kelsey

This morning I got out of bed, shut off the irrigation at 6:00AM, and came back and started taking the drop ceiling out of the dining room.  That made the room feel so much bigger than before!  Then after missus was off work for the day I moved the light that hung over the dining room table from the drop ceiling location to the old position in the center of the room about 18 inches higher than where it hung before.  That made it finally hang high enough nobody would bump into it!  I really liked that, especially as the tallest one in the family.  Hanging the light back at the middle of the room took the focus off the off center location it had been hung in, and no longer obligated the dining room table to be right under it, so I moved the table to a spot in front of the window.  That put a huge empty spot in the middle of the room where a line could easily from in front of the built in buffet, or what the Hell, I could dance with my wife!  Finally, I rewired some faulty wiring on a lamp and put in a bright LED bulb to set the lamp in the middle of the dining room table.  I cannot wait till sunset so I can see how the lighting actually has worked out in the new format.  20140724_141535

Here is the light in the old position after I removed the ceiling.  This put it right over the dining room table, just off centered in the room, with the wire leading to the original position above.  I removed the bit of wire and hung the lamp above on the ceiling. 

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The drop ceiling hung to the top of the transom window, so I have to make a bit of molding from some pine in the garage, and stain it up, as seen in this photo. 

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Removing the drop ceiling not only stopped the center of the room from being the dining room table, but also made the built in hutch appear much smaller, removing the focus off it too.  The dining room table is now free to sit wherever it wants in the room.  I am also seeing the space for a nice 8 foot Christmas tree fitting with plenty of room for a topper on it, and it still not hitting the nine and a half foot ceiling.  The only question now is, when we walk into the room, what era do we want to walk into?  Will it be the 1920’s, or the ‘30’s?  Or shall we focus on the country cottage look instead? 

The best bit is that the house is getting back a touch of the glory it had when it was built.  It has been some time since it has seen itself shine, and I think that a good bit of un-decorating will have as much value as a lick of paint and a bit of wood stain. 

Kelsey J Bacon

Posted in Journal Entry, Special Update | Comments Off on Redecorating the Dining Room