My very own Relocation Consultant

This is definately a first. I received an e-mail introducing me to my relocation consultant. First my own employee consultant from Global Employment and now a get-you-there expert. As it stands today, I haven't completed the contingent portion of my hiring. Until the pee is analyzed, the pre-employment health assessment is assessed and the background check is checked, I'm not hired. All this gives me the false impression that I have a lot of time to get my affairs in order. I don't

Friday I returned a call from the Everett plant engineering manager and he offered me a structured interview. "A week too late", I told him. He then said regretfully that it was for a grade 2 position anyhow. That's for someone with 3 years experience. Fate's message is clear go to Portland and here's some more money to convince you. I also got a letter from a headhunter informing me that I was just what they were looking for. I was a generic letter referring to a range of generic jobs and postmarked from Denver. Once a person gets on a mailing list it just never stops.

The longer I mull over a decision the better it seems to turn out. Maybe it is more correct to say that the path to take is more obvious. How things turn out can be a long turn exercise in patience. That's what happened last night. I finally resolved the driveway decision. I'm going to blacktop it. If I had the time I would have used paving stones. The key is "if I had the time". The driveway is 80 feet long and opens up to 16 feet across. That's a lot of pavers to set. Not to mention sand to pour and level. It's over 1000 square feet (or 5000 pavers) big. And it also has a complicated transition that needs to be made at the city street. So the first thing I do Monday is look for asphalt paving companies a estimates.

And now the last feature of today's post is the new feature - the morning work list. This is the way it was in the merchant marine. Asea the first thing in the morning after breakfast was meeting with the B'osn mate and a briefing of the work for the day. It worked well. A simple focusing tool on the jobs that needed doing. So in that spirit, Monday's list includes; a phone call to my relocation specialist to touch base, several phone calls to pavers to find the most eager of them, a drive up to the Ford dealership for the 40,000 servicing, then off to the doctor for my 12:00 appointment to find out how to transfer records among other things and lastly faxing the inventory questionaire to the relocation person. If I can find time I need to check kennels for animal boarding and visit the vet for the dog's rabies shot. If I have the energy I can finish the upstairs bathroom (the door latch sticks and the trim needs to be installed around the toilet. That will also be Tuesday's project, except that I need to deal with the vent and fan. The work is lining itself up quite nicely. It will be a relief to start the first day of work, that's for sure.

Whether it's fate or not; I'm surprised

After a long phone call to my AZ desert princess, I was depressed Thursday night. My life seemed a deep rut, a rut worn very deep by 4 years of stasis. By Friday night everything was different. Different in that way an earthquake leaves you feeling. A DHL package was waiting on my porch when I finally dragged myself in around six. After three weeks of diminishing hopes, after mentally writing the possibility off, I got a job offer.

I wouldn't look in detail, I only read the first word - "congradulations...". About that, for reasons I can't understand, I don't open immediately important pieces of mail. Even mail that I know is good news will sit for days unopened. It's needs savoring I guess. This means I didn't actually read the letter until this morning at breakfast with my brother.

I was unsure about relocating 180 miles. At the same time I was also very happy to be accepted for the position. All of those thoughts disappeared when I saw what they offered me. It was a 45% increase over my previous wage. There had been no discussion of wages. There had been no disscussion of anything at all. All I had was an oral interview. The department offering the job is called ...global employment. How they decided my value to the company is quite beyond me. Oh well any thought of saying no disappeared that minute.

Now everything is set in motion with "to-do" lists everywhere. Now my time is no longer my time - the game is afoot.

What I Learned Today

Portmanteau and treaty of Westphalia, now that's a combination.

In modern day French portmanteau is a coat rack, however in England it was a type of suitcase. A suitcase with two halves that were hinged together. I remember seeing such a thing in my grandmother's attic years ago. Lewis Carroll used it to describe a pair of words linked together such as the word "portmanteau". So that slithy means lithe and slimy. Animatronics is another example of a portmanteau word.

The Treaty of Westphalia on the other hand was a watershed event that I was unaware of. It ended the religious wars in Europe (in particular the 30 years war) and led to the modern concept of national sovereignty. The entities of Europe were now states and endowed with certain rights. The princes religion was the states religion. The national entities could make treaties as they saw fit. This was a hallmark in history and is referred to by a surprising roster of people. Lewis ‘Atiyyatullah of al Qaeda said in 2004; "the international system built-up by the West since the Treaty of Westphalia will collapse; and a new international system will rise under the leadership of a mighty Islamic state". Hitler blamed 200 years of German disunity on the treaty. The birth of diplomacy and the concept of "balance of power" are also linked to the treaty of Westphalia. Lastly let me note that the treaty was actually negotiated in two cities, Munster (for the Catholics) and Osnabruck (for the Protestants), which indicates how poisoned the climate was. Presumably the world is progressive and that our current political system is better, although the Communists and the Islamicists don't believe boundariesies either.

Things I Won't Do Again

Democrites said something about not being able to dip one's toe in the same stream twice or words to that effect. Time passes and we eventually pass on. Now all of this is obvious beyond words, however, there is something perhaps interesting in the triteness.

Today I was thinking about the question: What am I too old to consider doing today. Things I did in the past, but which have exceeded their pull date in 2006.

ZooBomb comes to mind. Quite by accident I found out about Portland's ZooBomb. ZooBomb is an anarchic bicycle event held weekly in at the Portland zoo. It seems a bunch of youngish people gather near Powell's bookstore and take the Max up to the zoo with their modified bikes and once up in the west hills near the zoo they make a mass race for the bottom. There are a number of routes down. And they are all steep. This happens at night for the additional thrill. Each rider makes up to four rides in one night and then the group retires to "the Zombie Doughnut Shop". It's the kind of wild, slightly transgressive merry making that Portland is noted for. Eugene OR of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters is only 100 mile down the road.

What got to me was that I had thought of that idea first. Not only thought of it first but pioneered it. Back in 1983 while I was wearing a suit and tie and riding a desk for a living (designing Nuclear power plant - another story), I rode a bike. I bought one of the first "stumpjumper" off-road bikes that year. I wasn't interested in going out and racing down mountain trails or much of anything to do with the nearby mountains. No what I liked was to ride around the city without having to worry about curbs, potholes and other urban obstacles.

That summer I discovered the west hills. I got out of work at 4:30 and would change into biking clothes and head out. There were 4 or 5 ways up into the hills. Each was steep and challenging. I enjoyed the work and work is the best description. A mile or two up and at the hill top a slow but happy decent on the other side. The western face of the hills are much less steep and a great place to work out the lactic acid. Generally I would explore around until I got hungry. Doughnuts or a quick burger and a look at the evening paper and I was ready to go again. In the west we don't see complete darkness until after 9:00 PM which gave me time to ride back after the rush hour was over and downtown area was quiet. The usually hustle and bustle of Portland was replaced with wonderful peace. The air on the hills cools and pushs down from towards the Willamette river. That's when I would head back home. Home was a downtown apartment or later a shared house on 1st street. I was usually cautious and meandered home, but not always. Once I got on Burnside which is the main East - West axis and rode the whole 3 miles in one swoop. The speed limit was 40 mph and I was passing cars on the right just like a car. No helmet, shorts and a tee shirt, just hunched over the straight bars being one with the road. When a car loomed up in front of me I could have braked. I could have fallen in behind. I could have, but there is a flow state and once I'm was in it I couldn't or wouldn't be stopped. I even went through the highway 26 tunnel. This is called "sunset highway
' and a rush hour there is a perpetual traffic jam heading west. It's kind of nasty because the sun is setting behind the Portland hills and in the driver's eyes. At 7 or 8 dropping down out of the west that wasn't a problem. Keeping the speed down was the problem. It was illegal for bikes to use the highway. The temptation was too great. I could hit 50 mph and take the off ramp one block from my apartment on Columbia. Aah the perfect way to end an afternoon of riding.

Now I find out others have found my little secret. It's a contact high just to read about them and their adventures. I also know that I'll never do that again. I wouldn't have to be in shape to get up the hill, they now have trains to the top. No, I won't risk the chance of an accident. A broken shoulder or a broken hip or a fractured skull could be an unrecoverable disability I'ld have to live with the rest of my life. Sounds kind of weeny doesn't it?

Trip I Have Known

Trips:

I went from Madison to Eugene in a 1955 bread truck 30 some years ago. It was quite an adventure. There were three of us and the truck was fitted out for camping. Unfortunately it wasn't fitted out for power or speed. On the highway we peaked out at 55 mph. That is if the terrain was flat. Once we reached the Rocky mountains it was apparent that we would need to skirt them somehow. We headed south and except for Raton pass on the border between CO and NM we made it. At the top of the pass me David and I had to jump out and push. It was lucky for us that it was late and the freeway traffic was light. Later we took a side road through AZ so late in the night that we never met another car. By the time we got to Eugene 2 weeks later we had chalked up a nice set of memories.

A few years earlier my girlfriend and I took a road trip to TN from GB. As was our wont we drove late. This kept the trip fun. There were fewer cars and fewer headaches out there in the dark. An additional fact was that the puny radio in our Mercury subcompact worked best after dark. In those days AM radio was where the music was and most stations played the same top 40 songs. A new song moving up the charts would be played incessantly which can be either good or bad. "You know what I mean" was good for us. That song wormed it's way into our brains and it seemed that as soon as it ended one could switch channels and hear it again (just like an I-pod on repeat).
Late night on the second day we were on an empty freeway in southern IN when we passed a large moving van. The road had become hilly and although we were small and underpowered we were young and just couldn't abide following a truck if we could pass it. It was then that we noticed the second van ahead. By then we were going down hill and the semis were really moving. Our passed semi passed us and we thought that was that - lets just fall in behind and convoy. It didn't work that way. The two trucks would slow to the point where we would pass them again and then catch us on the next downhill. At some point we realized they were playing with us, keeping us between them most of the time and also dramatically speeding up and slowing down. We were bouncing between 40 and 80 mph and not liking it one bit. Being stalked by two semi trucks , starts to make one nervous. It then makes one paranoid and finally it scares the shit out of you. When you look in the rear view mirror and see nothing but chrome grill and nothing but trailer in front, there is that cold grip of panic that needs to be fought off. After about 20 minutes we found an exit and were able to breath a sigh of relief. Later in 1971 Stephen Spielberg released "Duel" on TV. Anonamous truck driver hunting down innocent traveler in small car - how original!

Years ago one of my friends drove to Denver from Madison to make what was in essance a beer run. He was talking with friends about how special Coors beer was. Of course in those days Coors wasn't pasturized and therefore was only shipped to the local Denver area. This made it a somewhat mythical brew in a brew crazy town. Anyhow to settle the dispute Tom left his short order cook's job at 3 on a Friday and set off for Denver to buy some beer. I think he talked his girlfriend into going with him, I'm not sure. Anyhow by Sunday he was back in Madison with A trunkful of Coors and ice. What do you tell a guy who went all the way to Denver for a beer. Of course "it was the best beer I had ever tasted".

Years later my wife was a manager of a respiratory therapy department in a remote northern ID town. Manager in this case meant supervising and training one employee - Dierdre. D was a single mom who lived in a trailer and had adopted one of our red Dobermann Pinschers. She also had a Chevie Chevelle SS. This was a race car. The kind of car that today we look back at nostagically. Detroit heavy iron. This car was something else she had inherited from her lastest boy friend. She loved this car. She fixed it regularly. She talked more about her car than about her 2 year old daughter. Dierdre was what was known as a party girl, blessed with good looks and a hard personality. She relied on no one. So when she heard there was a "Kiss" concert in Spokane WA (60 miles west), she just had to go. Since she was also planning to visit her father in Phoenix AZ, she just rolled the two together. Friday night after work she got the kid and the dog in the car drove to Spokane, dropped the kid and dog off with friends, went to the concert, picked up the dog and kid at midnight and pointed the Chevelle south and headed for Phoenix. Later she told us the booze wore off by Boise and the hangover was over by Salt Lake City and that everybody was really really cranky by Phoenix. She slept 16 hours straight and showed the kid, car and dog off to her dad and step-mom and on Sunday headed back to ID. Would I have believed such a story if I didn't personally know Deidre? I don't know. There are a many such stories in ID.

When I was living in Portland OR there were occaisions when I would visit ID for a special holiday. One year I went for Christmas. I left Portland late in the afternoon and didn't get to the Tri cities until early evening. It was a snowy winter that year and the landscape was a cheery winter tableau or it would have been if it wasn't night and a storm wasn't moving in. The highway 395 shortcut run diagonally across the plains of eastern WA. The light snow and strong winds blew sheets of dry snow across the 2 lane highway. Somewhere along the way I realized that things had gotten a bit iffy. The only other traffic was the long distance truckers making their last pre-holiday runs. The road was now hardpacked snow on frozen asphalt. I kept lowering my speed until I was gliding along at 40 mph. Even that was too fast, however, any slower and I would turn an 8 hour trip into 16 hours and the weather was only getting worse. Half way to through I noticed that I wasn't able to stop. When I applied the breaks I immediately started to fishtail. From then on it was steady speed and straight steering. I made it to the freeway at Ritzville and I knew the four lanes of I-90 would make my job easier. All during this time I listened to my cassette tapes. Christmas eve is the worst when it comes to music on the radio. So this was the Christmas eve of Don Mclean's "Vincent" not "Rockin' around the Christmas tree". I also stubbornly refused to stop and put on the chains. I had hundreds of miles to go and chains just get destroyed at 40 mph. At last I reached the turn-off to the little house on Bear Creek. I was less than a mile from a warm hearth and more importantly a warm and strong Christmas drink. And I couldn't make it up the hill. I ran at that hill as fast as I could and each time near the top the tires lost traction. After almost going over the cliff while backing down, I finally got out and got dirty and chained up. All the while I was laughing at the irony of driving 10 hours through a snowstorm and then almost flipping my truck down a ravine.

I cancel my road trip

How odd! On the day I decide not to go to WI, I read a blog of someone taking a rt to CA from WI. Maybe it's for the best. I don't have A/C and I remember how it felt the last time. It was in Sept and should have been cool. It wasn't. It was nearly 100 all the way. Barbara and I did it one 47 hour stretch and survived. It just wasn't very pleasant.

Rousseau et le bon mot

"At sixteen, the adolescent knows about suffering because he himself has suffered, but he barely know that other being also suffer; seeing without feeling is not knowledge."

"However great a man's natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once."

"I have always said and felt that true enjoyment can not be described."

"Living is not breathing but doing."

"Little privations are easily endured when the heart is better treated than the body."

"To endure is the first thing that a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know."

I am beginning to believe that psychology proceeds philosophy. Rousseau had an insecure life, his mother died within days of his birth and his father later gave him up. He shuffled through various living situations until he was in essencance an adult. He was bright and adept at whatever he attempted, but I get the feeling he was a difficult guy to like. For instance he had 5 kids with his lower class common law wife and he gave them all up to foundling societies. He said it was because he would have been a bad father, odd for a guy who wrote "Emile" which was about the proper education of a child. Was he unhappy with the world and society around him because he was unhappy in his personal life? It's impossible to know without knowing the man or at least becoming more familiar with his work than I ever will be. Nietchze's last book was a scream at society. A society that had hardly acknowledged his greatness. Could be why he adsorbed referred to himself as the greatest.

Song pain

"Well I'll be damned
Here comes your ghost again
But that's not unusual
It's just that the moon is full
And you happened to call
And here I sit
Hand on the telephone
Hearing a voice I'd known
A couple of light years ago
Heading straight for a fall
As I remember your eyes
Were bluer than robin's eggs
My poetry was lousy you said
Where are you calling from?
A booth in the midwest
Ten yearsago
I bought you some cufflinks
You brought me something
We both know what memories can bring
Theybring diamonds and rust
Well you burst on the scene
Already a legend
The unwashed phenomenon
The original vagabond
You strayed into my arms
And there you stayed
Temporarily lost at sea
The Madonna was yours for free
Yes the girl on the half-shell
Would keep you unharmed
Now I see you standing
With brown leaves falling around
And snow in your hair
Now you're smiling out the window
Of that crummy hotel
Over Washington Square
Our breath comes outwhite clouds
Mingles and hangs in the air
Speakingstrictly for me
We both could have died then and there
Now you're telling me
You're not nostalgic
Then give me another word for it
You who are so good with words
And at keeping things vague
Because I need some of that vagueness now
It's all come back too clearly
Yes I loved you dearly
And if you're offering me diamonds and rust
I've already paid"

It's never been said better. It's only and ever two people and their hope and their pain in final telling.

Quote of the day

"Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor exact truth, but in a way of feeling." Charles Baudelaire

It turns out that clarifying "romanticism" isn't as easy as I had hoped. It seems to have started during the french revolution and maybe ran up to and into the "modernism" movement. It is agreed that romanticism was a response to the Enlightenment's emphasise on rationality.

The reason any of this concerns me is the film I saw last night "Homo Sapiens 1900" and an earlier film "Architect of Doom". Both were documentaries by Peter Cohen. Aside from the completely new to me archival footage, both films had histories of intellectual movements I was interested in - National socialism and eugenics. I didn't understand to what extent the Nazis were romantics nor how "scientific" the eugenicists were.

Apparantly America was the leader in the eugenics movement with traveling exhibits spreading the word everywhere. This was also a scientific period with the people were deeply interested in the science that seemed able to explain everything.

The Soviets took to brain studies and the theories of Lamarck and later Lishenko which differed from Darwin in believing that aquired traits were inheritable by the next generation. This dovetailed so nicely with the desire for Scientific Marxism to create the "New Man" that soon Stalin cut off any debate on the subject (quite literally, by executing the dessenting scientists).

The Germans stayed with the Darwinian side, but started to emphasize both positive and negative eugenics. The SS even had a program to take babies that otherwise would have been aborted and raise them in special facilities. This was thwarted by rumors that the SS was breeding a super race which conflicted with the core Nazi emphases on the ideal family. After that the authorities focused on negative eugenics and the purifying of the Deutcher Volk. We know how that turned out.

Wrong job or wrong life

So it comes to this; waiting for a job offer I don't want. I've worked through the pluses and minuses and I no longer care. It comes down to "it would be a big pain, but it could also be the last train out of town".

I would much prefer to spend my time studying. Studying what, well I've never lacked for interests. For instance I got caught up in symmetry, algebra sets and monte carlo methods a few days ago and wasted hours and hours reviewing and learning.
I can look forward to taking the Dante Alighieri Society language classes this fall where i can pretend once again that I'm prepping for an Italian holiday. In truth I'm interested in the language for the language sake alone. I don't say that because it sounds pedantic and pompous. It's the truth. I still fondly recall sneaking off to the mostly empty cafeteria with Karl and whiling away the time with our bibles. I wasn't engaged in bible study, at least not in the religious sense of the phrase; no we were translating passages from competing bibles. I brought my Italian bible and my French bible and Karl brought his Portugese and Latin versions. Aside from the pleasures that playing hookey from an otherwise routine assignment at work.
Our theory was that the bible was an excellant source for learning a language. It has most of the common day verbs. Verbs that are used throughout the day in a normal life. You'll also find the verbs associated with more esoteric thought. The future and past tenses as well as the subjuntive and conditional are to be found as well. The nouns are lacking the names of the lastest objects such as cars and airplanes. What they don't lack is a full range of items in normal life, such as foods, animals and natural objects of all sorts. As far as the prepositions, articles, adverbs, adjectives and conjuctions they are all there.

Anyhow we would pick an topic such as the "Lord's Prayer" and go through it in that days chosen language. Generally these phrases were familiar enough that I could get the gist at first read and we could then dig in a bit deeper an go through the passage word by word. Karl knows 6 languages besides his native Hungarian and for him this was review, but he is also picky about exact meanings of things and he was always a good sport about the further mulling over of a sentence. What was really fun was that we used the other texts whenever we ran into trouble. No dictionaries were allowed. We would flagrantly waste hours on this interprise. The songs of David were a particular favorite of ours.

This is what convinced me I was doing the wrong job.

Ah yes listening to Laurie Anderson and her violin on "Born, never asked"

It was a large room.
Full of people.
All kinds.
And they had all arrived at the same buidling at more or less the same time.
And they were all free.
And they were all asking themselves the same question:
What is behind that curtain?
You were born.
And so you're free.
So happy birthday.

And that's how her show began. In the Portland Woodsmen's Hall in 1979, sitting on a folding chair, waiting. A slight woman in white appears with a violin and starts to talk.

Oh very young

Oh very young
What will you leave us this time
Youre only dancing on this earth for a short while
And though your dreams may toss and turn you now
They will vanish away like your daddys best jeans
Denim blue fading up to the sky
And though you want them to last forever
You know they never will
You know they never will
And the patches make the goodbye harder still
Oh very young
What will you leave us this time
Therell never be a better chance to change your mind
And if you want this world to see a better day
Will you carry the words of love with you
Will you ride the great white bird into heavenAnd though you want to last forever
You know you never will
You know you never will
And the goodbye makes the journey harder stil
lOh very young
What will you leave us this time
Youre only dancing on this earth for a short while
Oh very young
What will you leave us this time

Rhea was colicky and I was alone in the house. I played this song over and over and danced in my own fashion with her in my arms for what seemed like hours. The opening chords never fail to bring a stifled sob. I so wish the best for her.

I'm thinking I don't want to put in 80 feet of arbor vitae. It's the most logical choice. If I select the right cultivar I can guarantee that the total size of the plant will be about 2 feet in diameter. The height also can be selected for. Arbor vitae have deep taproots which would be perfect for stabilizing the hillside. And lastly arbor vitae are cheap and available just about everywhere. I still resist the idea. It's sooo.. Bourgeois to have the edge of my driveway lined with evenly spaced identical green towers. I want this last yard project to have panache or at least a bit of "wow" factor. I'm going to go with the evenly space evergreens and do everything I can to add a bit of aesthetic color somewhere in the project. The deciding factor is the ease of maintenance that I know from past experience comes with arbor vitae, that and the fact that arbor vitae at the top lip of my hill will help prevent disaster from happening. That's the one time I come home to fast for my driveway and leave the pavement, bounce over the rocks and plow through the cedar fence and drop in on my neighbor below. The drop off is both at 75 degrees and 25 feet straight down. In 20 years I haven't been worried much, but it's almost a lead pipe cinch that one day it will and probably to some innocent visitor. One other redeeming thought is that after the neighbor's cedar fence rots out there will be a nice trimmed, green privacy fence to shield their backyard windows from my 2nd floor view.

So tomorrow it's off to Home Depot to get 20 A. V.

Paul Harvey was a friend of mine

Growing up for reasons too complicated to go into, the three of us kids came home for lunch. This wasn't way back when horses and buggies roamed the streets; no this was in what is nominally called the modern era.

Before we moved from St George street to Clay street, we all came home from Nicolet grade school for lunch every day. It wasn't a long hike, 0.4 miles according to expedia.com, and I barely remember anything other than eating lunch. Mom was home in those days so that the meal was hot and ready by the time we arrived. Apparently the whole child feeding when by without a hitch, as I have nothing in the old memory hole to recall. No lost kids. No family fights. Just a full stomach and back to school. I recall that everything was timed perfectly. We never got back to school more than a minute early and we were most definately never tardy. No one wandered in late. I'm not sure what would have happened if you did, but it wasn't something I expected to ever experience.

Later I went to Washington Jr. High and ate lunch in the "lunchroom". This was a mini auditorium across the hall from the principal's office. It had fixed chairs with pull down worktops and fold up seats. Once in you had to stay the entire period with no exception. I would sit there with friends and eat my sandwich. My lunches sucked. I might never had known if I hadn't sat next to John Rose on occaision. Someone I knew, knew John and we sort of sat in these ad hoc groups that teens do. John was the son of the bank president and had a maid who would make him what today would pass for an average lunch. He had these little wax paper bags with chips which he would share with me once in awhile. The prize was the ham sandwich. John didn't care much for it and used to give it to me. Smoked ham, real butter, crustless bread and a sliver of real cheese. Not the velvetta we ate at home, real flavorful cheese. I never ate once in the cafeteria. The other option was to peddle home on my bike for lunch, which was the more usual lunch. This was a 0.8 mile jaunt that in nice weather was over in no time, except for the time I ran over the cop at three corners. Later during the three years in High school I never once missed going home for lunch.

This was in northern Wisconsin so the weather was sometimes unpleasant, but it didn't matter. In fact one year I rode my balloon tired single speed bike to school everyday. There were days when my bike shared the rack at school with only one other lonely bike. So there I was at 11:45 racing down the stairs from my locker, jumping on my bike and then pumping my way home. No one gave me a hard time about it although I'm sure there was a high weird factor to my behavior. I didn't notice, all I knew was I was free and flying. By this time in our family my mom was working and my dad was finally on a consistant day shift. This left me the ranking Boye and the first one home. I opened the can of ravioli or the can of corned beef hash or whatever was on the menu that day. After the meal was on the stove on went the radio which was welded to WDUZ and Paul Harvey at noon. "Hello Americans, stand by for the news". By then we were eating. After the "Good Day" on went the TV to catch a few minutes of cartoons and then dragging it out to the last minute we finally left for the afternoon at school.
So with the exception of a few months in total for 12 years I never missed Paul Harvey at noon. And if I were to apply my patented total human benefit theory to dear ole Paul he would rank as one of the greatest. If one could add up all the warm moments, all the amused moments and all the just plain old good times Paul Harvey gave me he would rank, over most people in my life. If you add up all of those moments from the millions and millions of people who have listened to him over the years, you would have a stunning total.

Now I have a second cousin - Karen. I kind of figured that Philys had kids I just never heard about it. She's interested in genealogy which comes as a surprise. On that side of the family I am woefully ignorant. For the longest time I didn't fully grasp the real relationship between my family and their family. Roger is my 1st cousin once removed as is Audrey and Philys. Also at last I've finally got a handle on how this cousin thing works. You just look up the tree if you have a common grandfather you are 1st cousins, if you have a common great-grandfather then you are 2nd cousins, etc. If your common parent is off by one generation then you are once removed.
I hope Karen has some old pictures I can add to the project. I also hope she can give me the location of my only living uncle. We'll see

Excuses, excuses, excuses

Yesterday it was too hot to break out the ancient asphalt in my driveway and today it was to cool. That's not entirely correct. The reality was that it was so nice and cool last night that I slept late and didn't start my project until... And in reality when is 85 degrees too hot. Maybe I'm just unwilling to get diown to the hard work because I'm wondering where I'll be in two weeks. I'm quite prepared to move the 200 miles; I just am resistant to getting that busy so suddenly. I'm leaning toward the "add a small building to the backyard" solution. This would be done instead of moving all my stuff to a new house and then 4 years from now moving it all back. Change can be good, but a real challenge.

Not that old canoli again

It's too hot to sleep and Daisy dog doesn't want to come in yet. As is the custom the front door is open and the cool breeze keeps the downstairs very very pleasant. Unfortunately I sleep upstairs and it doesn't cool off fast enough to be of much use. Daisy faces a dilemma tonight; it's dark, it's a quiet dead end street and the mini-forest below the house provides just enough doggie sensory impute to keep her on the grass in front of the house. Too bad the occasional firework is discharged which Daisy doesn't care much for. So she's in and out every half hour and becoming a bit of a pest in the process.

I made the mistake of going to Althouse's blog and read about her day. I got envious and then a bit sad. I can remember all too well those idle days I spent in Madison. I didn't have a car the entire time I was in Madison and I walked extensively. There wasn't a part of town I didn't walk to either alone or with my wife. It's coming back very clearly; taking off from Spring Street down to the Arboreum entrance, through the arboreum, over to the high school track to run laps. Or a walk up to the capitol square for an amateur bike race or the farmer's market (the early version). I forget the name of the mall, but for shopping we would march to East town which was about 7 miles away. In fact we also went to the West end mall even more often. Shop and load the groceries into backpacks and do a quick pit stop at Rennebaums for a cherry coke and home. I suppose most college students did that sort of thing, especially if you didn't have a car, but we did that for years. Odd when I look back.

The summers were the best. At times it felt we had the whole city to ourselves, with all the time in the world to enjoy it. We use to keep tabs on our expenses and I'm astounded at how cheaply we lived. I never noticed as I was doing pretty much as I wanted (probably the best time to experience hedonism). There were people to visit and a never ending variety of new things to taste.

One summer I took my old Schwinn 10 speed up to Sun Prairie and back and discovered the corn fest. Back then it was a simple affair with a conveyor belt loaded with just picked and steamed corn. To have corn on the cob, tubs of Wisconsin butter and paper cups of soda after a long hot ride, was simply heaven. Later we geared up to fancy French race bikes with sew-up tires and traveled much further.

I imagine this memory stuff is bubbling up because of the job interview I had last Friday. I'm under consideration for a plant engineering job for a big manufacturer down in Portland. It's a job where I would be a one man show and frankly I'm not sure I'm interested in being that responsible. Living in Madison was in a way just the opposite. I was responsible for very little and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I also know that I have the tendency to go to the other extreme at times. I'm afraid it wouldn't be long before I was on call 24/7 and tethered to a cell phone. So I'm worried - life style concerns I suppose. It doesn't help that I had a wonderful 3 years in Portland. Three years of new adventures that I was especially open to. I don't think I could come close to that this time around. I call it the "Canoli effect". Before Portland I was almost off the grid in remote Idaho, then I was thrust into Portland with a bicycle, backpack and $200. Within a week I had a job, friends and new girlfriend. qand everything was new (at least to me). I lived above the best foreign movie house in Portland and only 5 blocks from my job. And on break two of the women after introducing me to "French roast" coffee took me to the local Italian deli for a canoli. It was a very heady time indeed. Today I'm set in my ways and probably will find a pattern in a week. A dull pattern no doubt. Last night Patricia surprised me with a call from Sedona and I reminded her of the year of Mt St Helens and my first canoli. She said she felt very old.

I was old enough to be wistful

I must post this before I forget. I was thinking about my rowing days on Lake Washington and more particularly my state of mind at that moment. While I was thinking about this I recalled an even older memory.

Our family used to go up to the north country often during those long lazy summers of my youth. Because dad had the kind of job that left him with his days off often in the middle of the week. Mom was a stay at home and we kids had all the time in the world. It seems like we drove north every week although I doubt it was that often. Due to our poverty we only went to places that were free; our grandfather's cabin on Thunder River, our grandmother's house in Marinette or best of all Bergie's place.

Bergie's cabin was a hunting cabin, unimproved by today's standards, but adiquet for the late 1950s. It shared a lake (which name is forever lost down the memory rathole) with only one other cabin. It was crude, cramped and filled with Wisconsin hunter memorabilia. Odd things stuck up on every vertical surface and old magazines piled on each horizontal area. It did have a hand pump and a cast iron wood kitchen stove. We however had no electricity so we used those neat old kerosine lamps. The road in was sandy, rutted and long. The entire journey in was more suited for today's SUVs rather than our ancient (then) 1949 Dodge sedan. To us however it was like one of those childrens story books - a forgotten world.

Never once in the years we went there, did we see another soul. We did see plenty of wildlife and we were always excitedly hoping to see more. Mom would always precook a batch of broasted chicken so we would have something to eat the first night without her having to do too much work. chip and a jumbo can of beans along with the recycled bottles filled with Kool-aid.

The three of us kids were pretty much allowed to run loose as hard as it is to imagine today. The lake was medium sized with plenty of interesting shoreline to explore from morning until it got too dark. And yes there was darkness of the kind that used to be so common and is now so rare. We ate up every moment we were up there. My parents must also have been happy because the fighting would stop completely (sad note). We didn't hang around bugging the adults about what to do and how bored we were. In fact everyone slipped into their roles without complaint. Mom cooked and puttered and read, Dad cut wood repaired thing and fished and the children exercised their imagination.

Every pimple of an area had a name; the swamp was where the snapping turtle lived, the old snag near the road was where the mouse family lived, it went on and on. We used old tools to emulate the work our father was bury with. Now he had the patience that normally lacked. He would show us how to use the two-man crosscut saw (even when we quickly lost interest and wandered off). Each of us just had to shoot the 10 guage double-barrelled shotgun so that we could experiance the kick and end up on our collective asses.

The memory that comes back from those idyllic times was the chance we had to spend time together in the boat. The boat was an old wooden rowboat that sat on the shore unused most of the year. That is until we showed up. Dad threw it in the water to soak up enought water so that it wouldn't leak and so we could use it the next day. As everyone seems to know the best fishing is in the early morning or late in the evening just before sunset. Well getting kids up in the morning and feeding them is enough of a headache at the cabin mom used to also have to pump the water and start the wood fire in the kitchen stove. Plus you have to wait for the coals to form before you could even think of baking anything. And baking she did, fresh biscuits. That along with bacon and eggs made the wait worth it. After breakfast the party moved outside where the camp fire was stoked for the day and the parents sat back to relax with their morning coffee. Lunch was a peanut butter and jelly affair and grabbed on the run. This was all prelude to the evening fishing trip.

Mom stayed back at the cabin and tended to dinner. She had to time the potatoes baking in the sand under the fire with the beef roast tightly wrapped in foil above the fire, but other than that she was free to just sit back and watch the evening creep up. Dad had to rig up three kid's fishing pole and get the minnows and softshelled crabs ready (they usually survived the drive up and adapted well to the perferated can hung in the lake). It was actually quite abit of work because the kids were of little help and usually took too long. Eventually the whole show hit the road an we shoved off.

Dad would row us out to the low end of the lake. This was where the exit stream was and was the shallowest part. It was also where the lily pads were the thickest. Us little guy were expected to just get the line out somewhere and not entangle each other's lines. To this end we used red and white bobbers and tossed the bait out once and had to wait until a fish nibbled and the bobber started to dance. This waiting game kept us to some extent out of dad's hair. He liked to cast the bait out to a shoreline log and slowly reel it in. All of this was in line with his skill and I'm sure was more interesting for him. Once everyone was set up the time flew. Conversations were kept low because it was so quiet on the lake that you could her mom getting something out of the car even though we were 1/2 mile away. The osprey and nighthawks arrived for their nightly rounds over the lake one looking for fish and the other insects. The resident pair of loons would start their pre sunset singing and the muskeys and pike would start their rolling over in the lake. They would sort of jump, but in reality it was more of a roll and flop. It was always surprising and much anticipated. Everytthing was as expected and to us it was one of those delicious moments when without giving it much thought, everything was right in the world.

And then we returned. The sun was below the tree line, but the sky was still bright; it was time to head to shore and supper. The poles were draped out over the aft board and dad with his back to the cabin campfire started rowing. Another perfect day. He never came in early, so I know that this man who was so hard for me to read was happy, maybe as happy as it would be for him, I'll never know. We kids were happy. We could see the fire. We knew the meal was ready and waiting. And we wanted to hang on to the day. In the 15 minutes it took to row in the night arrived. The already dark water grew black and dragging your hand in the cool water seemed like less good idea by the minute. When we heard the deep resonant thump of our wooden boat on the dock the magic was over. The trip in was usually quiet with everyone lost in their own thoughts and the only sounds were the creaking of the oars and dad's breathes.

The hallmark of this is the contrails. For some reason a jet (B-52 I suppose) flew overhead in the evenings and on one night provided the final statement. There it was glistening like a star in the sunlight still present at 40,000 feet while we were on that dark lake so far below. This shooting star followed by it's long white contrail the only intrusion the "real" world made into my world of family and nature. I was old enough to be wistful.

Is there anymore inspirational song than Crosby, Stills Nash & Young's "Wasted on the Way"? It almost borders on the maudlin. Yes the time is truly gone, isn't now? Strangely enough this was true twenty years ago as it is now. Anyway the instrumental track propells the song along at such a relentless (and I should add happy) fashion that, well it's a bit like life isn't it, before you know it the song is over.

Look around meI can see my life before me
Running rings around the way it used to be
I am older now
I have more than what I wanted
But I wish that I had started long before I did
And there's so much time to make up everywhere you turn
Time we have wasted on the way
So much water moving underneath the bridge
Let the water come and carry us away
[Instrumental (Fiddle)]
Oh, when you were young
Did you question all the answers
Did you envy all the dancers who had all the nerve
Look around you know
You must go for what you wanted
Look at all my friends who did and got what they deserved
So much time to make up everywhere you turn
Time we have wasted on the way
So much water moving underneath the bridge
Let the water come and carry us away
So much love to make up everywhere you turn
Love we have wasted on the way
So much water moving underneath the bridge
Let the water come and carry us away
Let the water come and carry us away

"Carpe Diem" becomes painful regret with a Dionysian garnish on the side. The dancing silhouettes on the ridge ala the "Seventh Seal".

Romula was a pickpocket and Hannibal noticed

Romula was in a doorway, the baby cradled in her wooden arm, her other hand extended to the crowds, her free arm ready beneath her loose clothing to lift another wallet to add to the more than two hundred she had taken in her lifetime. . .
In the crowd, Romula had a friend she could depend on. .
If the intended victim seized Romula and held her, Gnocco could trip, fall all over the victim and remain entangled with him, apologizing profusely until she was well away. . .
Hannibal, p. 172

An interesting historical note concerning petty crime and Firenze. I found this on a site which maintained a set of rules for English students studying in Firenze. It's lovely how close to out and out rascist an educated Brit can be.

Coin Leak

I worked with a fellow once who had a talent for naming people. I can no longer remember his name, but I can still recall some of the monickers he made up for our fellow workers. He took word association to new heights. One guy was called the Admiral. My first take was that the guy was ex-navy, but it was never that simple. The Admiral owned a larger motor boat which no one had seen lately. The cleverness odf the name was its aptness, the guy did come across as a bit of a know-it-all. Another guy was called Spaceman because of the motel cheese incident. Again it was right on. This guy was legend for doing odd things. Odd things in the sense of things almost unthinkably odd. He was the support clerk for the team. He stayed back at headquarters and took care of the miscellaneous duties. He bought and sent out small pocketknifes for everybody in one instance. He had no authority and had done it just because he felt it would be a nice gesture. The federal government doesn't much approve of such ad hoc gestures and he almost lost his job. Another for instance was if he was the driver while we were going out to the job site he would slowly speed up until we would be ripping down some Pacific NW highway at 100 mph. As soon as you noticed and said something he would backoff and then start slowly speeding up again. One day everyone went to the control room for breaktime and someone noticed The Spaceman was missing. Someone looked out the window and there he was dancing on top of the transformer we had been checking earlier. A 500 mw transformer itself provides enough power for small city and it was energized! Most folks don't notice, the live wires in substations are not covered, if you get within a certain distance thousands of volt will arc over and you will drop like the strings were cut on a puppet. A 6 foot man on top a transformer stands awfully close to the overhead wires and eternity. So the guy was a true flake. Oh yeah, the cheese incident. We spent 30 days a month on the road and consequently we stayed in hotels and motels all the time. And guys would bring some of the creature comforts with them and settle down in these various (usually remote) places. The Spaceman had an electric skilet and a large bag of cheese curds. A pound or two of curds in the cooler so that he could fry a big panful up each night. The rancid oil and burnt cheese bothered the other guys so much that one evening someone stapled his power cord. This shorts the circuit and if done right it is hard to detect why the pan no longer works. As luck would have it the antiquated wiring of the motel shorted and all the power was lost for the day and everyone had to retire early. I wonder how many places have that oddball that seems to give everyone else a patina of the normal. A patina that isn't usually deserved.

When I ordered my coffee and "mango mongo" bar a few minutes ago at Starbucks, I took the change in my right hand and then remembered to put it in my left pocket, the one without the coin sized hole. I caught the baristas curious look and added "coin leak". Not brilliant, but it beats mumbling something about a coin sized rip in my pocket. So heres to a more colorful personal dialect.

Post script: Mr. Spaceman was in his forties and lived with his mother and put his entire salary in the stock market. This was back in the last year of the unlamented Jimmy Carter's term.