There is nothing quite like splitting wood.
I got out my trusty splitting maul Saturday and started the long process of reducing a small mountain of treetrunk pieces to stackable, burnable logs for our stove. I wasn't sure how the catalpa tree from our neighbors' front yard would take to splitting, since I've never used catalpa before. This would be a test.
Cue the orchestra. Leonard Bernstein's score swells from the pit as Tony sings from an alley beneath a fire escape on the West Side: Ca-tal-pa, I'll never stop saying Catalpa, and suddenly I've found how wonderful a sound can be, Catalpa! Say it loud and there's music playing, say it soft and it's almost like praying...Catalpa.
In short, the stuff splits like a dream. Nice straight grain, you can slice it as thin as you like. One stroke and it falls apart, clean as can be. Toss the pieces and do another log. Some of them are so big around I get 16 pie-shaped split pieces out of a round section of trunk. If it burns half as well as it splits, this wood will go a long way when it's dried. It passed the test.
It only took an hour or so to clean up the stray chunks around the edges of the pile, barely making a dent. It might have been two hours, who knows, I lose track of time when I get in that zone. It was getting dark, so it was time to quit. Even the bigger chunks, which I can barely lift, cleave open with one hit of the maul. I'm looking forward to several satisfying afternoons splitting and stacking on early spring weekend so it will be ready to burn by next November.
I remember when I was about 15, after we moved to the northside Detroit suburbs and had a fireplace, my Dad showed me how to split wood. Balancing a small log on the chopping block - the biggest, flattest log you've got - and bringing the ax blade down square in the middle of the upright log, relying on the weight and angle of the ax to find its way into the grain. It helps, of course, if the log has dried a little and started to crack in cross-section, so it kind of shows you where to split it.
Chas Golly still prefers a nice sharp ax, probably because that's what he grew up using on the farm when he and his brother Stu chopped firewood. I asked him once, and they used an ax from start to finish; there were no chain saws then, and apparently they didn't use a crosscut saw, the way loggers once did, to cut up logs to stove length.
I've used axes, which have their advantages, and I've used a sledge and a wedge, which give you more power. A double-edge ax is nice, but you don't want it to bounce back and hit you in the forehead. I switched to a splitting maul as a compromise and now use that almost exclusively. It's like a light sledge hammer with a wedge on one side, heavier than an ax but not as sharp, and the wedge is attached to the handle, so it isn't flying around loose. If I didn't miss so often and chip away the handle, that sucker would last forever.
And you know what they say: wood you cut yourself warms you twice.
Monday, February 27, 2006
Friday, February 24, 2006
Pink
Half the people in the office are wearing pink today. Obviously I didn't get the memo. Someone brought pastries, which brought pleasure to everyone, even the Catholics with their special place in Purgatory and well-developed sense of guilt and the Protestants with their shame and blame, righteousness, resentment, and regret. It's a paradox.
Everyone's talking Olympics, which brings out latent patriotism, pathos, power, pain, and platitudes, as our wise uncle Frank Deford is all too ready to remind us radioheads. And it's Friday, and happy hour at a nearby pub is only hours away.
Meanwhile, a picture from early January with Princess Helga in Paris taking a puff.
...and another one (still more pink) in late December somewhere near Picadilly, looking pensive.
Everyone's talking Olympics, which brings out latent patriotism, pathos, power, pain, and platitudes, as our wise uncle Frank Deford is all too ready to remind us radioheads. And it's Friday, and happy hour at a nearby pub is only hours away.
Meanwhile, a picture from early January with Princess Helga in Paris taking a puff.
...and another one (still more pink) in late December somewhere near Picadilly, looking pensive.
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
This Is Not a Novel
That much became clear right away. It is a book, however, and it can be found in the fiction section of the library (I suggest that you go there now and check it out). Yet it doesn't fit any of the usual categories: short stories, poetry, drama, biography. And it's fun to read, you might find yourself laughing out loud, so you know it's not history; sorry, that was a cheap shot. I guess you could call it "experimental" but what would that tell you?
The author is David Markson, the title is This Is Not a Novel, and this is another in a series of nonreviews of real books that somehow, inexplicably thrust themselves into my narrow field of experience and provoke a reaction. Sometimes a chain reaction, when I seek out more of an author's work, let it infiltrate my own work, bring it up in conversation, or prompt someone else to read it, succumb to its influence, and further run afoul of respectable behavior.
And it goes on like that, in thoughtfully spliced-together lines of text about artists of Writer's selection, betraying his special interest in the Romantics, for example, his disdain for the Beats, his fascination with classical composers, the odd intersection of dark or light forces, diseases, and death.
Wee Willie Keeler was five feet four and a half inches tall.
Balzac was five feet two.
Schubert was five one and a half.
Keats was less than five one.
A hyena that writes poetry on tombs, Nietzsche called Dante. (This Is Not a Novel, p. 16)
The author is David Markson, the title is This Is Not a Novel, and this is another in a series of nonreviews of real books that somehow, inexplicably thrust themselves into my narrow field of experience and provoke a reaction. Sometimes a chain reaction, when I seek out more of an author's work, let it infiltrate my own work, bring it up in conversation, or prompt someone else to read it, succumb to its influence, and further run afoul of respectable behavior.
This is even a disquisition on the maladies of the life of art, if Writer says so.
Wanhope.
John Reed died of typhus. (p. 86)
And it goes on like that, in thoughtfully spliced-together lines of text about artists of Writer's selection, betraying his special interest in the Romantics, for example, his disdain for the Beats, his fascination with classical composers, the odd intersection of dark or light forces, diseases, and death.
As a Marine pilot in Korea, Ted Williams several times flew as Colonel John Glenn's wing man.Are these weighty bits of trivia historically accurate? I'm inclined to take his word for it, just because they sound so good, and because Writer says so. Is it still fiction if all the artfully arranged pieces are factual?
Sophocles played ball with great skill, it says in Athanaeus. (p. 144)
Moliere was never elected to the French Academy.
Balzac was never elected to the French Academy.
Was it John Searle who called Jacques Derrida the sort of philosopher who gives bullshit a bad name?
I love the smell of napalm in the morning. (p. 110)
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Appraisal
They call it "real property" as opposed to "personal property" because 'real estate' is something special in the realm of material 'goods', even though everyone knows that property is theft, but don't get me started. And who decided to call material possessions "goods" anyway? Was it John Locke who got confused when talking about "life, liberty, and property" in one breath and his empiricist brethren observing the physical properties of things in the next breath? The language is just a mess, not that I take it seriously, of course.
And let's be clear on the difference between 'worth' and 'value', which is like the difference between the quality of my work and what it will bring in the current economy, not to be confused with 'self-worth' and 'moral values' or other cliches. In short, the market value x of a piece of real property y is what some buyer z will pay for it today, not necessarily what it's worth to owner or occupant.
The real estate appraiser came over the other day to take a look around, check things out, take some measurements with his cool hand-held electronic tape measure, flush the toilets, run the hot water, ask a few questions, such as "What improvements have you made?" to which we quickly pointed out the many new and superior features and amenities we have add to our humble abode, all of which added to its worth (for us) and its value (to someone out there called "the market"). Things like a laminate floor, a tile floor, a new roof, plaster, paint, closets, laundry room, landscaping, a fence. Things we want him to attach (big) numbers to, numbers that increase the appraised value of the real property. Really.
What do we care, as long as our four walls and (new) roof keep out the wind and the rain? Well, like all responsible homeowners, we want to hold onto this piece of real property and continue to upgrade this feature and that amenity, and to do so will require refinancing, or revising the terms of our old loan, in effect paying it off with a new loan with better terms, which depend in part on how much we have increased the (market) value of our humble abode while, incidentally, increasing its worth (for us). He's not there to evaluate us, just to crunch some numbers. We won't take it personally.
And let's be clear on the difference between 'worth' and 'value', which is like the difference between the quality of my work and what it will bring in the current economy, not to be confused with 'self-worth' and 'moral values' or other cliches. In short, the market value x of a piece of real property y is what some buyer z will pay for it today, not necessarily what it's worth to owner or occupant.
The real estate appraiser came over the other day to take a look around, check things out, take some measurements with his cool hand-held electronic tape measure, flush the toilets, run the hot water, ask a few questions, such as "What improvements have you made?" to which we quickly pointed out the many new and superior features and amenities we have add to our humble abode, all of which added to its worth (for us) and its value (to someone out there called "the market"). Things like a laminate floor, a tile floor, a new roof, plaster, paint, closets, laundry room, landscaping, a fence. Things we want him to attach (big) numbers to, numbers that increase the appraised value of the real property. Really.
What do we care, as long as our four walls and (new) roof keep out the wind and the rain? Well, like all responsible homeowners, we want to hold onto this piece of real property and continue to upgrade this feature and that amenity, and to do so will require refinancing, or revising the terms of our old loan, in effect paying it off with a new loan with better terms, which depend in part on how much we have increased the (market) value of our humble abode while, incidentally, increasing its worth (for us). He's not there to evaluate us, just to crunch some numbers. We won't take it personally.
Monday, February 20, 2006
Childish Things
I'm at a party, and people are talking about the kinds of things people talk about at parties, and I blurt to a musician friend that I've been listening to the same album over and over for like two weeks. Maybe that's not so unusual, but my intuitive friend starts telling me about James McMurtry, a singer-songwriter he's been listening to, and by the time I walk out to my car a couple of hours later, he's handing me the CD for "something to listen to on the way home."
James McMurtry tells a helluva story. He also sings with a strong voice and plays a mean guitar. But it all comes together in the songs, which, like all good poetry, somehow fuse tone, rhythm, melody, and texture with an emotional, moral, and political narrative. The CD is the kind of Austin-based alt-country I would easily pass by if all I heard was the first line on the radio, but it gets better every time I listen to it. Gven Golly likened it to Warren Zevon's writing and wry humor.
Some of the songs on "Childish Things" bring my son to mind, and there's a recurring father-son theme, along with other family issues both bitter and sweet, often set in holiday celebrations honoring war and sacrifice in between driving to grandma's and pass the potatoes. Sometimes he writes in the young man's voice and sometimes in the old man's voice. I'm told James McMurtry is the son of the novelist Larry McMurtry; maybe that explains something. I also hear echoes of Neil Young and Lou Reed.
In addition to the coming-of-age songs, there are critiques of globalization and a song about a bear that reminds me of a story by William Faulkner. Lines like "I keep to myself, I like the language." My favorite so far is "Restless" wherein the narrator pretends to talk about the moods of a horse he's fond of, as the Byrds' "Chestnut Mare" did in another era.
It's too hard to sum them up because the songs range pretty widely (I almost typed wisely), and I will have to hear them many times over, meaning I'll have to buy it or burn it, so I can return the CD to the insightful person who put it in my hand.
James McMurtry tells a helluva story. He also sings with a strong voice and plays a mean guitar. But it all comes together in the songs, which, like all good poetry, somehow fuse tone, rhythm, melody, and texture with an emotional, moral, and political narrative. The CD is the kind of Austin-based alt-country I would easily pass by if all I heard was the first line on the radio, but it gets better every time I listen to it. Gven Golly likened it to Warren Zevon's writing and wry humor.
Some of the songs on "Childish Things" bring my son to mind, and there's a recurring father-son theme, along with other family issues both bitter and sweet, often set in holiday celebrations honoring war and sacrifice in between driving to grandma's and pass the potatoes. Sometimes he writes in the young man's voice and sometimes in the old man's voice. I'm told James McMurtry is the son of the novelist Larry McMurtry; maybe that explains something. I also hear echoes of Neil Young and Lou Reed.
In addition to the coming-of-age songs, there are critiques of globalization and a song about a bear that reminds me of a story by William Faulkner. Lines like "I keep to myself, I like the language." My favorite so far is "Restless" wherein the narrator pretends to talk about the moods of a horse he's fond of, as the Byrds' "Chestnut Mare" did in another era.
It's too hard to sum them up because the songs range pretty widely (I almost typed wisely), and I will have to hear them many times over, meaning I'll have to buy it or burn it, so I can return the CD to the insightful person who put it in my hand.
Saturday, February 18, 2006
Dick
Vice Pwesident Fudd insists he wasn’t dwunk but wefuses to apowagize for keeping this tewwible incident...vewy, vewy, quiet.
Friday, February 17, 2006
The Writing on the Wall
On bright mornings, the sun sliding along her bedroom window stamps the wood floor with a dappled pattern that resembles large scattered petals....If she had the extraordinary powers of Ts'ang Chieh, an ancient Chinese sage credited with inventing written characters, she might be able to read something in the sun's design. (p. 1)
The next in a series of nonreviews of the works of Lynne Sharon Schwartz, my current favorite fiction writer. This new (2005) novel follows the pattern of her earlier books' memoir-like tone in giving an account of intimate personal experiences that interface, sometimes painfully, with large public events. The protagonist is a single woman in New York who lost her twin sister as a teenager, then lost her father in a car wreck, and now goes to visit her mother, who ,to Renata's great frustration, has pretty much withdrawn from the world. She also collects unusual bits of language that cross her path.
There it was, the part of the story Renata liked best: "I suddenly realized." The certainty, the specificity. I won't be this any more, I'll be that....It wasn't that Renata wanted to leave the library and become a circus acrobat or a trainer of horses, the lives she'd dreamed of as a child, with her twin sister. It wasn't the future she wanted to transform so much as the past. She couldn't change the facts, but maybe she could change the way she told them to herself - different words, different emphases. Would that make a new story? Would it make her someone else? (p. 11)
Doesn't everybody do that, or am I the only one? The woulda-coulda-shoulda game, in which the protagonist acts differently in some turning-point moment, thus changing the rest of the story in some important way. I should have accepted the reporting job instead of the advertising paste-up job, and consequently we would have stayed in Chicago a little longer and gotten a different start professionally. Or its variant, the what-if game, in which some outside force acts differently, affecting the protagonist and the story profoundly. What if our offer for that house on Cooper Road was accepted, and we moved out there instead of here in town, would other things be different as a result?
What she thinks about all day long, as she pores over Cochandi (from deep in the Amazon jungle) or Etinoi or Bliondan, isn't the mechanical task of finding equivalents in English, but why language functions at all....The ready, now universally accepted answer that we're hard-wired for grammar, syntax, and connotation isn't enough: she accepts it, then dismisses it. The puzzling question is, Where is the bridge between sounds or marks on a page and our emotional aparatus? What makes us respond to ink strokes with a quickening of the heart or a surge of adrenaline? (p. 43)
I think what appeals to me so much about Schwartz's work is the way she layers the physical sensations with the more heady significance she finds in everyday stuff. The baby she cares for during a family emergency, the young girl wandering the street lost and disoriented, the street vendor who sells all kinds of books for a dollar apiece and refuses to accept more. And her rage at what she calls "false language," the hollow platitudes uttered by public figures for purely manipulative purposes: "Make no mistake, we will hunt them down in their caves and bring them to justice."
Books about writing, like movies about film-making, paintings of paintings, or songs about being a rock star, can be tiresome and self-indulgent. This isn't one of those, because Schwartz has been careful to make a meal of characters she cares about and spice it with the politics of language, rather than vice versa.
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Hello, Rovaniemi!
Sitemeter reports provide interesting information about how widely read one's blog is and, more specifically, where the hits are coming from. This week I see I've had contact in Arendal, Aust-Agder, Norway; Bangkok, Krung Thep, Thailand; London, Lambeth, UK; Mortsel, Antwerpen, Belgium; Rovaniemi, Lapland, Finland; and Shumen, Bulgaria. Not to mention the exotic outposts of Westerville, Ohio, and Hightstown, New Jersey, USA.
Hello, Hightstown! Hello, London! Hello, Rovaniemi!
Not that maximizing hits or being widely read is the goal. Heavens no! How crass that would be, like writing a book specifically to become a popular, best-selling author. No, we thoughtful, literary types write for the sheer joy of tapping out pearls of wisdom for our own edification and that of the few, the obscure, the genteel, the cognoscenti. How? By using really cool words like cognoscenti!
Nor is the goal to remain entirely under the radar, I mean why publish at all? As others have said many times, the beauty of the Web is its capacity for almost anyone to reach almost anyone else with minimal restrictions, such as access to tools, time and inclination to use it, and language. Then, as the folks in marketing know, it's a matter of getting the sender and the receiver together. How does the reader in Finland find the blogger in Ohio?
Randonness, being one of my favorite themes, is a possible explanation. Stuff happens. People go places and run into other people. Messages are transmitted and picked up. Other connections are obviously more systematic, and that's cool too. But it's fun to make those unpredictable connections in improbable places through unlikely occurrences.
So hello, Bangkok! Hello, Mortsel! Hello, Shumen!
Hello, Hightstown! Hello, London! Hello, Rovaniemi!
Not that maximizing hits or being widely read is the goal. Heavens no! How crass that would be, like writing a book specifically to become a popular, best-selling author. No, we thoughtful, literary types write for the sheer joy of tapping out pearls of wisdom for our own edification and that of the few, the obscure, the genteel, the cognoscenti. How? By using really cool words like cognoscenti!
Nor is the goal to remain entirely under the radar, I mean why publish at all? As others have said many times, the beauty of the Web is its capacity for almost anyone to reach almost anyone else with minimal restrictions, such as access to tools, time and inclination to use it, and language. Then, as the folks in marketing know, it's a matter of getting the sender and the receiver together. How does the reader in Finland find the blogger in Ohio?
Randonness, being one of my favorite themes, is a possible explanation. Stuff happens. People go places and run into other people. Messages are transmitted and picked up. Other connections are obviously more systematic, and that's cool too. But it's fun to make those unpredictable connections in improbable places through unlikely occurrences.
So hello, Bangkok! Hello, Mortsel! Hello, Shumen!
Monday, February 13, 2006
In search of the lost cord
Part I: Rude awakening
I woke up from a sound sleep ready to start something on a glorious sunny Saturday morning. The new rec center, strategically located close to both home and work, has an adult open gym for basketball on Saturday mornings, and I've been itching to bounce around the hardwood. So I put on my Chucks, and on the way I clocked the distance for future bike rides, about five miles.
When I pulled into the parking lot, a couple of young guys, wearing sweats and carrying bags, were getting out of a car. Define young: I'm guessing a couple of years out of college, clean-cut frat men with jobs, living in the suburbs and ready to play on the weekend.
In the gym, a full-court game is in progress, so I watch and I like what I see: people who run the floor, play defense, rebound, and actually pass the ball, and I don't like what I see: pumped-up guys too quick for me to finesse and too strong for me to stop. Half of them are playing the kind of up-tempo game I last played in 1975, and the other half are about my speed, mismatched and not keeping up. It's a reality check: Saturday morning roundball is not going to happen. It's time to check out the Monday afternoon 50+ open gym.
I took a different way home that I've never driven before and found out how Worthmore Road connects with Cuyahoga Avenue. While I was out, since it's such a nice day, I figured I would fix my flat, so I went to the bike shop on Schocking Road and bought a new tire for the Schwinn. The old one "lost its bead" and wouldn't contain an inflated tube. I'm not sure how that works as a metaphor, but there it is: old tires eventually go bad. I had a good conversation with the man at the bike shop in overalls and a soul-patch, and he had lots of information about trails cross-crossing Swingstate and our neighboring Mountainstate.
Part II: You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours
I put the new tire and the old tube on the rim and went to put air in it, but the "free air" hose was out of order at four different gas stations along State Street. What is this, an epidemic? However, on the way I passed Big Mike and his crew, barrel-chested guys with ropes and saws, taking down a tree in a front yard on Walnut Street, so I rolled down the window and asked if the wood was spoken for. "Take as much as you want, but it's gotta be gone by Sunday."
I did the rest of my chores and came back late in the afternoon when they were done for the day. Just to be sure, I knocked on the door of the big brick house with wrought-iron window boxes and asked the young mother in the Virginia sweatshirt if the wood was available. She said fine, take all you want, and we chatted. She walks her five-year-old past our little brick house around the corner on their way to school every morning, and it's taking them as long to renovate their 1880s house as it is us. I loaded all the small stuff I could lift. Big Mike just happened to drive by and said he'd cut up the big pieces if I'd haul them away, I said when, he said tomorrow morning, I said what time, he said 8:30, I said I'll be there.
Sunday morning was clear and crisp, and Mike was true to his word. With his big chainsaw, my little truck, his sidekick and me loading, we removed all of the 110-year-old catalpa. I paced it off: 15 feet around at the base. It took four trips in the 3/4 ton Ranger; do the math, that's three tons of firewood drying out in the back yard of Om Shanty awaiting my splitting maul. I figure about two cords, which ought to get us through next winter.
Part III: On a roll
Backing up to the gate to unload wood caused me to look more closely at the hinges that have been coming loose for several months. Maybe I don't have to replace them after all. It's the screws that are too short, not the hinges themselves, so I rummaged through the pint jar of old screws on a shelf in the garage and found half a dozen that are twice as long as the shorties that came with Home Despot's el cheapo hinges. Once the longer screws were in the propped-up gate, they reached through the boards and 2x4 into the post and kept the gate from sagging. This would have been obvious the first time to a skilled handyman, but it was a minor triumph for the mechanically challenged.
As I was putting away the screws and screwdriver, I was confronted by the broken garage-door spring that's been hanging loose for a week. The door continued to work with only one spring, but I didn't want to press my luck. Looking closely at the good spring revealed how it connected to the garage frame on one end (big screw-hook) and the track the door rolls up and down on the other end (little S-hook on a cable). With the door open and the spring slack, it was a simple matter to slide the broken coils onto the intact end of the spring, hook that on the screw-hook, and loop the cable onto the S-hook. Voila!
Was it the full moon making its way around the globe to shine its brilliant reflected light on central Swingstate, or just a burst of creative problem-solving energy released in my obtuse brain by a morning of manual labor? Whatever it was, the forces were with me, and the improvised garage door worked, just as the improvised gate hinges worked, and the impromptu barter of labor for firewood worked. After a large lunch and a long, slow stretch to heal my aching sacro-iliac joint, I even found a gas station with an air hose that worked.
I woke up from a sound sleep ready to start something on a glorious sunny Saturday morning. The new rec center, strategically located close to both home and work, has an adult open gym for basketball on Saturday mornings, and I've been itching to bounce around the hardwood. So I put on my Chucks, and on the way I clocked the distance for future bike rides, about five miles.
When I pulled into the parking lot, a couple of young guys, wearing sweats and carrying bags, were getting out of a car. Define young: I'm guessing a couple of years out of college, clean-cut frat men with jobs, living in the suburbs and ready to play on the weekend.
In the gym, a full-court game is in progress, so I watch and I like what I see: people who run the floor, play defense, rebound, and actually pass the ball, and I don't like what I see: pumped-up guys too quick for me to finesse and too strong for me to stop. Half of them are playing the kind of up-tempo game I last played in 1975, and the other half are about my speed, mismatched and not keeping up. It's a reality check: Saturday morning roundball is not going to happen. It's time to check out the Monday afternoon 50+ open gym.
I took a different way home that I've never driven before and found out how Worthmore Road connects with Cuyahoga Avenue. While I was out, since it's such a nice day, I figured I would fix my flat, so I went to the bike shop on Schocking Road and bought a new tire for the Schwinn. The old one "lost its bead" and wouldn't contain an inflated tube. I'm not sure how that works as a metaphor, but there it is: old tires eventually go bad. I had a good conversation with the man at the bike shop in overalls and a soul-patch, and he had lots of information about trails cross-crossing Swingstate and our neighboring Mountainstate.
Part II: You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours
I put the new tire and the old tube on the rim and went to put air in it, but the "free air" hose was out of order at four different gas stations along State Street. What is this, an epidemic? However, on the way I passed Big Mike and his crew, barrel-chested guys with ropes and saws, taking down a tree in a front yard on Walnut Street, so I rolled down the window and asked if the wood was spoken for. "Take as much as you want, but it's gotta be gone by Sunday."
I did the rest of my chores and came back late in the afternoon when they were done for the day. Just to be sure, I knocked on the door of the big brick house with wrought-iron window boxes and asked the young mother in the Virginia sweatshirt if the wood was available. She said fine, take all you want, and we chatted. She walks her five-year-old past our little brick house around the corner on their way to school every morning, and it's taking them as long to renovate their 1880s house as it is us. I loaded all the small stuff I could lift. Big Mike just happened to drive by and said he'd cut up the big pieces if I'd haul them away, I said when, he said tomorrow morning, I said what time, he said 8:30, I said I'll be there.
Sunday morning was clear and crisp, and Mike was true to his word. With his big chainsaw, my little truck, his sidekick and me loading, we removed all of the 110-year-old catalpa. I paced it off: 15 feet around at the base. It took four trips in the 3/4 ton Ranger; do the math, that's three tons of firewood drying out in the back yard of Om Shanty awaiting my splitting maul. I figure about two cords, which ought to get us through next winter.
Part III: On a roll
Backing up to the gate to unload wood caused me to look more closely at the hinges that have been coming loose for several months. Maybe I don't have to replace them after all. It's the screws that are too short, not the hinges themselves, so I rummaged through the pint jar of old screws on a shelf in the garage and found half a dozen that are twice as long as the shorties that came with Home Despot's el cheapo hinges. Once the longer screws were in the propped-up gate, they reached through the boards and 2x4 into the post and kept the gate from sagging. This would have been obvious the first time to a skilled handyman, but it was a minor triumph for the mechanically challenged.
As I was putting away the screws and screwdriver, I was confronted by the broken garage-door spring that's been hanging loose for a week. The door continued to work with only one spring, but I didn't want to press my luck. Looking closely at the good spring revealed how it connected to the garage frame on one end (big screw-hook) and the track the door rolls up and down on the other end (little S-hook on a cable). With the door open and the spring slack, it was a simple matter to slide the broken coils onto the intact end of the spring, hook that on the screw-hook, and loop the cable onto the S-hook. Voila!
Was it the full moon making its way around the globe to shine its brilliant reflected light on central Swingstate, or just a burst of creative problem-solving energy released in my obtuse brain by a morning of manual labor? Whatever it was, the forces were with me, and the improvised garage door worked, just as the improvised gate hinges worked, and the impromptu barter of labor for firewood worked. After a large lunch and a long, slow stretch to heal my aching sacro-iliac joint, I even found a gas station with an air hose that worked.
Thursday, February 09, 2006
On caricature
If you've already heard more than you want to hear about the blasphemy of drawing pictures of prophets, see ya later. If the following thoughts have already received widespread play, I stand corrected, as the saying goes. And if I'm totally missing the point, please edify my sorry provincial mind. But once in a great while, the so-called news media, in spite of themsleves, bring up issues worth thinking about.
So a Danish newspaper dared to publish several cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, which is taboo according to Muslim tradition, with varying degrees of provocative slant, which is the essence of political cartooning. Thus raising all sorts of public questions about responsible journalism, freedom of the press, cultural sensitivity, offensiveness to minorities, jingoism, and tyranny by majorities. Or maybe it's not that complicated; maybe it's just about respect.
They used to call this stuff "political correctness," but the term lost traction from over-use, and it eventually turned back on itself when it became more politically correct to appear to be politically incorrect and vice versa. Are we confused yet? The rub in that debate was - and is - that bigots can dismiss the obligation to show respect for 'others' by calling it all mere "political correctness," which essentially made it okay to act like a racist mysogynist nativist xenophobe.
Back to Danes drawing prophets for fun and profit. The thing that sticks in my recovering-Methodist craw is how effectively the most vehement reactions to such indiscretions prove their opponents right. In a recent Slate, Reza Aslan writes:
For as long as I can remember, I've thought caricature was cool. As a little kid I used to glom onto the Saturday Evening Post cartoons - alas we were not a New Yorker kind of family - and when we moved to Detroit the editorial page became my favorite spot in the Free Press, followed closely by the sports section. Those were the days. Oliphant, Herblock, and Jules Feiffer were my heroes, along with Buchwald and other satirists, their wordsmith cousins. And for what? Doing what they did so well, making fun of other people in public! Identifying and exaggerating other people's physical traits, deeply held beliefs, foibles, misdeeds, and misfortunes. Hello, I'm Joe Bloe, I'm in public humiliation.
You could say that the objects of cartoon scorn asked for it. The really great subjects of caricature - Nixon, for example - made it his business to produce an abundance of material for cartoonists by diligently, patiently, relentlessly acting in absurdly deceitful and destructive ways in the public arena. So he wuz askin' for it, right? Although his sidekick Agnew tried to badmouth the press into self-censorship, it didn't work. Score one for the Fourth Estate.
Now the skirmish is between the European (Christian-dominated) press, with its justifiable resistance to self-censorship, and the wounded sensibilities of Muslims, and I think we can agree that there's enough hypocrisy to go around. At least in public, most Americans and Western Europeans fall all over themselves being respectful of Jews but openly call Muslims backward, inhuman, and worse. And they have their counterparts in southwest Asia who use some of the same names - or their local variants - for Christians and other nonbelievers. Give a demagogue a small crowd, and he'll find you a common enemy to make into the great Satan.
Okay, so the Sharks hate the Jets, and the Jets hate the Sharks, I think we got that. Why do the Jets have to go out of their way to prove their manhood or their piety by taunting the Sharks in print?
So a Danish newspaper dared to publish several cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, which is taboo according to Muslim tradition, with varying degrees of provocative slant, which is the essence of political cartooning. Thus raising all sorts of public questions about responsible journalism, freedom of the press, cultural sensitivity, offensiveness to minorities, jingoism, and tyranny by majorities. Or maybe it's not that complicated; maybe it's just about respect.
They used to call this stuff "political correctness," but the term lost traction from over-use, and it eventually turned back on itself when it became more politically correct to appear to be politically incorrect and vice versa. Are we confused yet? The rub in that debate was - and is - that bigots can dismiss the obligation to show respect for 'others' by calling it all mere "political correctness," which essentially made it okay to act like a racist mysogynist nativist xenophobe.
Back to Danes drawing prophets for fun and profit. The thing that sticks in my recovering-Methodist craw is how effectively the most vehement reactions to such indiscretions prove their opponents right. In a recent Slate, Reza Aslan writes:
Of course, the sad irony is that the Muslims who have resorted to violence in response to this offense are merely reaffirming the stereotypes advanced by the cartoons. Likewise, the Europeans who point to the Muslim reaction as proof that, in the words of the popular Dutch blogger Mike Tidmus, "Islam probably has no place in Europe," have reaffirmed the stereotype of Europeans as aggressively anti-Islamic. It is this common attitude among Europeans that has led to the marginalization of Muslim communities there, which in turn has fed the isolationism and destructive behavior of European Muslims, which has then reinforced European prejudices against Islam. It is a Gordian knot that has become almost impossible to untangle. (Depicting Mohammed: Why I'm offended by the Danish cartoons of the prophet)
For as long as I can remember, I've thought caricature was cool. As a little kid I used to glom onto the Saturday Evening Post cartoons - alas we were not a New Yorker kind of family - and when we moved to Detroit the editorial page became my favorite spot in the Free Press, followed closely by the sports section. Those were the days. Oliphant, Herblock, and Jules Feiffer were my heroes, along with Buchwald and other satirists, their wordsmith cousins. And for what? Doing what they did so well, making fun of other people in public! Identifying and exaggerating other people's physical traits, deeply held beliefs, foibles, misdeeds, and misfortunes. Hello, I'm Joe Bloe, I'm in public humiliation.
You could say that the objects of cartoon scorn asked for it. The really great subjects of caricature - Nixon, for example - made it his business to produce an abundance of material for cartoonists by diligently, patiently, relentlessly acting in absurdly deceitful and destructive ways in the public arena. So he wuz askin' for it, right? Although his sidekick Agnew tried to badmouth the press into self-censorship, it didn't work. Score one for the Fourth Estate.
Now the skirmish is between the European (Christian-dominated) press, with its justifiable resistance to self-censorship, and the wounded sensibilities of Muslims, and I think we can agree that there's enough hypocrisy to go around. At least in public, most Americans and Western Europeans fall all over themselves being respectful of Jews but openly call Muslims backward, inhuman, and worse. And they have their counterparts in southwest Asia who use some of the same names - or their local variants - for Christians and other nonbelievers. Give a demagogue a small crowd, and he'll find you a common enemy to make into the great Satan.
Okay, so the Sharks hate the Jets, and the Jets hate the Sharks, I think we got that. Why do the Jets have to go out of their way to prove their manhood or their piety by taunting the Sharks in print?
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Make art not war
It was an unusually full and satisfying Monday. I got some work done, though not as much as I wanted, and not enough to complete the technology project I've been plugging away at for two weeks. I went out at lunch time, which I rarely do, and talked to the staff people at the new recreation center near the office. Based on what they said, it might be a good place to teach taiji, or play basketball, or both! I touched base with a close co-worker who has been out of town in several cities, and it was good to reconnect and hear about her week of meetings and some of the strange characters she encountered. And it turns out her brother might adopt one of the golden retriever puppies that are allegedly free at the animal shelter. That would be cool.
After work there was a new student waiting for me at the yoga factory, an exceptionally well-prepared student around my age or older who has studied dance seriously and has an amazing base of movement knowledge to build on. She talked about Martha Graham, Eric Hawkins, and Merce Cunningham theories and technique, comparing the Basic Movements we were doing with those modern dance pioneers. Turns out we have mutual friends at OSU. Small world or small town? Will she continue with taiji? Will the other new student I talked to on the phone join her in the Monday night class?
Instead of staying for yoga, I went home and listened to the record I couldn't get out of my mind, and it still rocks. I ate some supper and went to the monthly drum circle at Central Swingstate Percussion across from Graceland. It's great! The first Monday of every month, they let anybody pick a hand drum from their extensive selection and sit in a circle for an hour and a half banging away and building rhythms. A guy who teaches at the arts-impact middle school usually leads, but once the group gets started he relinquishes the lead and everybody plays on top of everybody else in an open-ended collective improvisation. There were times when I wasn't sure which sounds were coming from me and which from someone else.
I went home and ate again, since Gven had cooked, had a glass of red wine, and read a little. Walking the dog in the cold, clear night kind of topped it off. It's been so warm lately that a cold February night was a novelty. It got late too soon, and I brought in more wood and built up the fire so it was last until morning. I think I slept so well because of all the varied aesthetic input, kind of like the way Arnold Palmer described his best rounds of golf when he used every club in his bag.
After work there was a new student waiting for me at the yoga factory, an exceptionally well-prepared student around my age or older who has studied dance seriously and has an amazing base of movement knowledge to build on. She talked about Martha Graham, Eric Hawkins, and Merce Cunningham theories and technique, comparing the Basic Movements we were doing with those modern dance pioneers. Turns out we have mutual friends at OSU. Small world or small town? Will she continue with taiji? Will the other new student I talked to on the phone join her in the Monday night class?
Instead of staying for yoga, I went home and listened to the record I couldn't get out of my mind, and it still rocks. I ate some supper and went to the monthly drum circle at Central Swingstate Percussion across from Graceland. It's great! The first Monday of every month, they let anybody pick a hand drum from their extensive selection and sit in a circle for an hour and a half banging away and building rhythms. A guy who teaches at the arts-impact middle school usually leads, but once the group gets started he relinquishes the lead and everybody plays on top of everybody else in an open-ended collective improvisation. There were times when I wasn't sure which sounds were coming from me and which from someone else.
I went home and ate again, since Gven had cooked, had a glass of red wine, and read a little. Walking the dog in the cold, clear night kind of topped it off. It's been so warm lately that a cold February night was a novelty. It got late too soon, and I brought in more wood and built up the fire so it was last until morning. I think I slept so well because of all the varied aesthetic input, kind of like the way Arnold Palmer described his best rounds of golf when he used every club in his bag.
Monday, February 06, 2006
Bonnie
I don't know what possessed me to take the bass out of the case Saturday afternoon, but it was worth the sore fingers to mess around for an hour, playing along with an irresistible record. So first of all, let me credit my old friend Mark Ornery of Birmingham and Ann Arbor for "lending" me his Hofner in 1971, and Bonnie Raitt of Hollywood and Cambridge for inspiration, perspiration, respiration, communication, and plain everyday love.
It's one of her less famous records, "Green Light," from 1982, and it didn't get much attention at the time, but who can keep track of these things? The LP has been sitting in a box in the garage for a couple of years after sitting in a cabinet in the living room for several more years, and I'm not sure where it came from in the first place, probably the used bin at a record store on some annual holiday foray for new/old music when the kids were little. It's a transitional, pre-Grammy-winning Bonnie Raitt in full rock and roll mode, not the traditional blues revivalist of the seventies, when I first fell in love with her.
There, I've said it. It happened so suddenly, in the tastefully funky room of a friend of a friend named Al Gold. I wasn't there to listen to music, but he put on "Give it up," and I was hooked. I immediately bought that lavender album and for the next year or two became an evangelist for Bonnie and her musical mission of bringing the music of Sippie Wallace, Fred McDowell, and other legends to another generation of rock and rollers. I did a lot of traveling that year, and I took her records with me, pressing them on everybody I knew like the recent convert I was. I imagined myself in the role of her bassist, Freebo, whose Converse All-Stars and Fender neck graced one of the covers.
So I bought more of her records, and each one captivated me in a different way. "Give it Up" had a country flavor; (the next one) was all acoustic blues, kind of a homemade album recorded at somebody's camp in Minnesota with Junior Wells and a bunch of friends. "Taking my Time" was a much more polished studio work that a friend in the U.P. swapped me for (the next one) in 1974. Gven and I went to see Bonnie and her band of former Little Feat (minus Lowell George) at the Harvest Moon Saloon in Atlanta around 1985, and we saw her again with a different band at the Palace Theater in Columbus in 1987 with Richard Thompson opening.
Our kids grew up listening to Bonnie's slide guitar solos, her sexy feminism, and her activism against racism, war, and heartless conduct in all its forms. Once in a great while I get on a Bonnie Raitt jag. Unpacking a box of vinyl set me off last week, so now I listen to it over and over and can't get some of the songs out of my head. The second track, "I Can't Help Myself" is a straight-up rocker that sounds a little like the Stones on "Tumbling Dice" and sort of describes that phenomenon. Even more visceral is "Baby Come Back," originally recorded by the Equals in 1968 and played at top volume in my '66 Mustang driving up Telegraph Road on a summer day. It couldn't be much simpler, but it does what all good rock and roll does, it makes you wanna move. The first track on that side has a bit of The Who sound and is appropriately titled "Me and the Boys."
Now that my fingertips have had a day to heal, I can't wait to get back to the bass and play along again. I never did have the chops of a real musician, and my fingers, weak from lack of practice, can barely reach some of the frets, but you know what, who cares? It's too much fun not to.
Just a brief note on strong women who shake things up a bit.
It's one of her less famous records, "Green Light," from 1982, and it didn't get much attention at the time, but who can keep track of these things? The LP has been sitting in a box in the garage for a couple of years after sitting in a cabinet in the living room for several more years, and I'm not sure where it came from in the first place, probably the used bin at a record store on some annual holiday foray for new/old music when the kids were little. It's a transitional, pre-Grammy-winning Bonnie Raitt in full rock and roll mode, not the traditional blues revivalist of the seventies, when I first fell in love with her.
There, I've said it. It happened so suddenly, in the tastefully funky room of a friend of a friend named Al Gold. I wasn't there to listen to music, but he put on "Give it up," and I was hooked. I immediately bought that lavender album and for the next year or two became an evangelist for Bonnie and her musical mission of bringing the music of Sippie Wallace, Fred McDowell, and other legends to another generation of rock and rollers. I did a lot of traveling that year, and I took her records with me, pressing them on everybody I knew like the recent convert I was. I imagined myself in the role of her bassist, Freebo, whose Converse All-Stars and Fender neck graced one of the covers.
So I bought more of her records, and each one captivated me in a different way. "Give it Up" had a country flavor; (the next one) was all acoustic blues, kind of a homemade album recorded at somebody's camp in Minnesota with Junior Wells and a bunch of friends. "Taking my Time" was a much more polished studio work that a friend in the U.P. swapped me for (the next one) in 1974. Gven and I went to see Bonnie and her band of former Little Feat (minus Lowell George) at the Harvest Moon Saloon in Atlanta around 1985, and we saw her again with a different band at the Palace Theater in Columbus in 1987 with Richard Thompson opening.
Our kids grew up listening to Bonnie's slide guitar solos, her sexy feminism, and her activism against racism, war, and heartless conduct in all its forms. Once in a great while I get on a Bonnie Raitt jag. Unpacking a box of vinyl set me off last week, so now I listen to it over and over and can't get some of the songs out of my head. The second track, "I Can't Help Myself" is a straight-up rocker that sounds a little like the Stones on "Tumbling Dice" and sort of describes that phenomenon. Even more visceral is "Baby Come Back," originally recorded by the Equals in 1968 and played at top volume in my '66 Mustang driving up Telegraph Road on a summer day. It couldn't be much simpler, but it does what all good rock and roll does, it makes you wanna move. The first track on that side has a bit of The Who sound and is appropriately titled "Me and the Boys."
Now that my fingertips have had a day to heal, I can't wait to get back to the bass and play along again. I never did have the chops of a real musician, and my fingers, weak from lack of practice, can barely reach some of the frets, but you know what, who cares? It's too much fun not to.
Just a brief note on strong women who shake things up a bit.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Balancing Acts
Another in a series of nonreviews in this space. Call them reflections, refractions, reactions, what you will. This week: Lynne Sharon Schwartz's second (1981) novel, Balancing Acts, which she dedicated to her father, Jack Sharon (which I am now pronouncing shuh-ROAN, as in Ariel, rather than SHARE-uhn, as in Stone).
It's an intergenerational tale of the talented protege who importunes, irritates, and ingratiates the unwilling mentor. It's a coming-of-age story of not fitting in, not wanting to fit in, finding something you're good at, and giving it everything you've got. Which the author does, though not as deftly as in her later, mature works, and which the characters do, especially Max, the old circus acrobat, and Alison, the precocious middle-school fiction writer, as funny and exasperating a pair as you'll find this side of Huck and Jim.
Alison has some laugh-out-loud introspective moments that are worth the price of admission. She latches onto Max because her parents, teachers, and erstwhile friends are either boring or gross or both. She reads like crazy, flaunts her depth of understanding, evades her captors clumsily, and pours her creative energy into Alice, the fantasy heroine of her journal. Clearly she will grow up to be the successful author of several well-received novels - if she can survive puberty.
On the other hand, Max has already survived the death or demise of all his friends, and he mainly wants to be left alone to sulk.
This and his acute somatic sensitivity to what works and what doesn't make him a sympathetic old coot I wouldn't mind having a drink with. I give this short, entertaining, well-conceived but ill-wrought novel a B+ and look forward to Schwartz's next one.
It's an intergenerational tale of the talented protege who importunes, irritates, and ingratiates the unwilling mentor. It's a coming-of-age story of not fitting in, not wanting to fit in, finding something you're good at, and giving it everything you've got. Which the author does, though not as deftly as in her later, mature works, and which the characters do, especially Max, the old circus acrobat, and Alison, the precocious middle-school fiction writer, as funny and exasperating a pair as you'll find this side of Huck and Jim.
High in blissful escape from his loving home, he juggled soda bottles left by teen-aged neckers; when he dropped them they bounced neatly on the sun-baked tar....His father was another warning example: a faded man, thankful for small decencies like the roof over his head, he had never dared expect life to yield much joy, and so never exerted himself to procure any. Max had no intention of aging and dying before his time. Spoiled by books and dreams and sky-gazing, he wanted transcendence. The roof was his jumping-off point....He knew he was Urban Jew at play like Tarzan; but defying the social odds, he stayed up there half a life. Now there was no escaping. (p. 51)
Alison has some laugh-out-loud introspective moments that are worth the price of admission. She latches onto Max because her parents, teachers, and erstwhile friends are either boring or gross or both. She reads like crazy, flaunts her depth of understanding, evades her captors clumsily, and pours her creative energy into Alice, the fantasy heroine of her journal. Clearly she will grow up to be the successful author of several well-received novels - if she can survive puberty.
On the other hand, Max has already survived the death or demise of all his friends, and he mainly wants to be left alone to sulk.
He peered down. They were dark-brown leather clogs on cork heels, unadorned except for one braided horizontal strip. "Uh-huh. Simple but elegant," he said.
"They're very comfortable. You don't feel the ground under you."
He gave a short laugh. Time passed.
"Max, are you going to sit in that same position forever?"
"Maybe."
"I'll fix you something to eat. It's nearly seven."
"You do that. I wouldn't want to die of malnutrition, with so many more interesting choices available." (p. 173)
This and his acute somatic sensitivity to what works and what doesn't make him a sympathetic old coot I wouldn't mind having a drink with. I give this short, entertaining, well-conceived but ill-wrought novel a B+ and look forward to Schwartz's next one.
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Next up: Roger B. Taney (or someone like him) for Supreme Court
If all the liberals, or Progressives, or whatever they're calling themselves this week, would just calm down about the right-wing track record of Judge Elito, we could all settle on a perfectly qualified replacement for Sandra Day O'Connor and get on with the business of keeping people quiet and taking over the world.
Granted, Elito is an eastern pointy-headed intellectual AND an Italian, but he has demonstrated many other redeeming qualities in his career-long campaign for the job. Hey, that lady from Texas with the spooky eyes, whatshername Myers, saw the handwriting on the wall and withdrew her name for the sake of the greater good - just as instructed, according to the plan - making the impeccable credentials and legal mind of Elito (or my Great Aunt Clarabelle) look good by comparison.
But that's old news. Now the majority members of the Senate Juciciary Committee are openly attacking Ruth Bader Ginsburg for her "judicial activism" and, in the same breath, pledging to overturn precedent when it's needed. One guess which precedent in particular they have in mind. The goon they had beating the drum on NPR based his argument on the brilliant observation that NOWHERE in the Constitution does it say that a woman has a right to an abortion. Or did he say "abolition"? Maybe they'll overturn both of those 'A' words.
It's going to take more than a limp filibuster by a couple of Micks from Massachusetts to derail this railroad. Now that the party of Hayes, McKinley, Taft, Harding, Taft, Coolidge, Taft, Hoover, Taft, Nixon, et al, has the momentum, we can expect the next vacancy to be filled by someone in the mold of the respected jurist Roger B. Taney. As the author of both the historic Dred Scott v. Sandford and Plessy v. Ferguson decisions, Taney sets the standard by which to measure any aspiring reactionary judge.
You want credentials? How about upholding the property rights of responsible, God-fearing Missouri planters? How about limiting the overburdened court system of frivolous lawsuits by noncitizen laborers? How about upholding the right of states to maintain their own apartheid (but EQUAL) facilities without interference from Big Government. The man is a compassionate conservative's wet dream. I bet he was a believer in manifest destiny, too, clearing the way for God's chosen white Anglo-Saxon Protestant people to, in the words of Ann Coulter, take over their country, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity.
Except he's dead. So that just creates an opportunity for some young, ambitious Elito-like lawyer to begin building his or her own resume along the lines of the Taney prototype, just as Elito did. Defending a tobacco company here, an oil company there, a drug company would look good, definitely something back-tracking from affirmative action or medicare, in short, anything to impress future employers, clients, nominators, advisers and consenters of our new unitary government.
Granted, Elito is an eastern pointy-headed intellectual AND an Italian, but he has demonstrated many other redeeming qualities in his career-long campaign for the job. Hey, that lady from Texas with the spooky eyes, whatshername Myers, saw the handwriting on the wall and withdrew her name for the sake of the greater good - just as instructed, according to the plan - making the impeccable credentials and legal mind of Elito (or my Great Aunt Clarabelle) look good by comparison.
But that's old news. Now the majority members of the Senate Juciciary Committee are openly attacking Ruth Bader Ginsburg for her "judicial activism" and, in the same breath, pledging to overturn precedent when it's needed. One guess which precedent in particular they have in mind. The goon they had beating the drum on NPR based his argument on the brilliant observation that NOWHERE in the Constitution does it say that a woman has a right to an abortion. Or did he say "abolition"? Maybe they'll overturn both of those 'A' words.
It's going to take more than a limp filibuster by a couple of Micks from Massachusetts to derail this railroad. Now that the party of Hayes, McKinley, Taft, Harding, Taft, Coolidge, Taft, Hoover, Taft, Nixon, et al, has the momentum, we can expect the next vacancy to be filled by someone in the mold of the respected jurist Roger B. Taney. As the author of both the historic Dred Scott v. Sandford and Plessy v. Ferguson decisions, Taney sets the standard by which to measure any aspiring reactionary judge.
You want credentials? How about upholding the property rights of responsible, God-fearing Missouri planters? How about limiting the overburdened court system of frivolous lawsuits by noncitizen laborers? How about upholding the right of states to maintain their own apartheid (but EQUAL) facilities without interference from Big Government. The man is a compassionate conservative's wet dream. I bet he was a believer in manifest destiny, too, clearing the way for God's chosen white Anglo-Saxon Protestant people to, in the words of Ann Coulter, take over their country, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity.
Except he's dead. So that just creates an opportunity for some young, ambitious Elito-like lawyer to begin building his or her own resume along the lines of the Taney prototype, just as Elito did. Defending a tobacco company here, an oil company there, a drug company would look good, definitely something back-tracking from affirmative action or medicare, in short, anything to impress future employers, clients, nominators, advisers and consenters of our new unitary government.
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