Working Stiff I have a strange feeling that 2020 was a buffer year for me, not so much by design, but by happenstance. After many years (I mark them as starting in 1966 at the age of twelve…so call it fifty-five years), the inertia of work has set in. People talk about “failing retirement” as a cute tongue-in-cheek way of bragging that they are so busy in retirement or see such a demand for their…
Weather Station Echo Charlie Alpha Back in January, 1966 we moved from Middleton, Wisconsin to Poland Spring, Maine. The names alone tell you a lot about that transition. Middleton can’t help but sound pretty ordinary. Wisconsin is the Dairy State, where Maine is Vacationland. One doesn’t allow you to buy margarine rather than good ole butter within its boundaries and the other has so many French Canadians in it that one car dealership used the…
Elevating the Lowly Bison My Bison Boulder outdoor sculpture has now been sitting out on the Western hillside for a week. Yesterday’s strong and somewhat violent rainstorm brought with it an almost instantaneous golden patina to the sheet metal “fur” of the bison head, hoof and tail. I knew it would rust to a dark brown in a few months, but it is interesting to see the rapid onset of the oxidation from the rain.…
The First Key to Writing is to Write, Not Think Tonight I stumbled on one of my favorite movies while flipping through the Prime offerings. It was strange because rather than the normal indication that the movie was either included in my subscription or that I could rent or buy it for $X, I was offered the opportunity to view the movies for free if I was prepared to allow advertisements. That was a big…
Ars Gratia Artis When I was in High School at Notre Dame International Prep for Boys in Rome, Italy we had a rotating roster of Brothers of the Holy Cross (the Catholic order founded in France in 1837, but made famous through the founding of Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana in 1841). Being a long-ago lapsed Catholic (lapsed when I was four-years-old, strangely because while in a tropical valley in Costa Rica we…
Hurry Up and Slow Down While I watch what seems like the painfully slow process of my deck going up joist by joist, I keep waiting for the work to turn this magical corner and start racing towards completion. I sort of thought that would happen today, but as the old joke goes, “not so fast, Abernathy”. My new digital, app-based irrigation system was installed in a day and now works great, giving me the…
Consensus Construction I have gotten myself into a funny place…again. That funny place has to do with my deck renovation project. This is unlike any other project I have undertaken before. The fundamental reason is that I probably have too much time on my hands. Precisely speaking, I have both the time and am home-bound by COVID like we all are. That is proving to be a very expensive combination. I write 1,200 – 1,400…
Irresponsibility On Friday, I was in the second day of the administratively enforced blackout (as in total grid shut-down) from our local utility. The cause (excuse?) was the Santa Ana wind and its harsh dry gusts that could easily induce a wildfire that could quickly get out of control and create a liability for said utility. I had had the foresight to anticipate the possibility of this situation earlier in the year and put my…
Stop and Listen to the Wind This is a strange day in a constantly strange year. What is making this day so much more strange is that I was awoken at 6am, somewhat earlier than normal given that I was up until 11:45pm watching Brian Williams trying to once again recap the strangeness of the day yesterday in the news. The reason I woke up early was that I heard a strange sound that I…
Occupying the Suitcase We are on our first road trip (or any trip for that matter) since July. That was four months ago. For years during my active working life, I had a private view that it was important to plan some sort of getaway every two months. Of course, that was in addition to weekends in Ithaca, business trips to here or there and nights out. I mean I would plan something “special” to…