Q: What's large, grey, and doesn't matter?

Life, Balanced On Wheels

2010-09-04T20:34:00.000-05:00

In any parent's life there are milestones. They seem to come fast and furious after your little one first enters your life: birthdays, first steps, first words, there's always another first. As they get older the birthdays still come, but the big milestones start, thankfully, to slow down a little, but by the same token they seem to get BIGGER.

My only begotten daughter is at that stage. Her last big milestone was last year, starting high school. Attendant to that milestone was one other: learning how to drive. Now, I've taught folks to drive before. Heck, I've taught a number of people how to drive motorcycles, and that takes some doing. I've even taught a handful of folks how to drive vehicles with clutches, so I'm no stranger to Driver's Ed. Until it was my daughter behind the wheel.

What is it that changes when it's YOUR child you're teaching? What happens to all that objectivity, that calm, controlled Teacher Mode. Right out the electric window.

We started out easily enough: short trips down the driveway, across thirty feet of quiet country road and down a gravel road to my brother's driveway and back again. Then Driver's Ed in school, and today, today we had a milestone: her first time on the highway. I would have written about this early this morning after we got home but my hands were shaking too violently. Don't get me wrong, she did fine, for a new driver. She used her turn signals appropriately. She parked well. She even merged into speeding traffic for the first time. Thing is, she is like any new driver: hesitant, and hesitating in Louisiana traffic is liable to get you crushed underneath a four-wheel drive truck. But, she did it. Several big driving milestones passed.

Allow me now to diverge just a little bit.

If you've read this blog more than twice you know I utterly adore motorcycles. I've ridden since 1992 and have never regretted a moment I've spent on two wheels, which is more than I can say for my life on four. When I was in servitude to The Giraffe there were several of us who rode, but there was one guy, Dan, who was The One on a motorcycle. He was one of those guys who was born in the saddle. He could ride a bike backward, blindfolded, while juggling a bowling ball, a tiki torch and an infant child, and do it well. He was just that good. I think the only thing that stopped him from having a career as a professional motorcycle racer is that he was a little bit on the heavy side. Which was probably caused by the munchies he often had as a byproduct of the truly astounding amounts of pot he consumed daily.

But, bong notwithstanding, I decided that my child would grow up with a bike too, if she wanted. Her first ride on a bike occurred while she was in utero, and probably her hundredth ride also occurred before she ever opened her eyes to daylight. When she was born I'd make little vroom-vroom noises to her to soothe her to sleep. I thought long, hard and often about buying her one of those tiny little Honda Z50 dirt bikes to ride in the back yard, but finances and family pressure nixed that pretty fast. I quickly found out that in Louisiana a child had to be eight years old before they could passenger on a motorcycle, but when that milestone birthday came riding on the back of a bike was nixed again. Undaunted, I kept at it. Every once in a while I'd bring it up, but it kept getting knocked down.

Actually most of it came from the wee child herself. She is, oddly enough, a lot like me. She's retiring, quiet, and would much rather see someone else burst their skull open before trying to leap off the roof herself, so clambering on the back of a motorcycle, even with her dear old Da simply didn't rank high on her Must Do List. Me being me, I never forced her. I knew that when I was a kid and was forced to do something I soon came to hate it, and I'd sworn never to do that to my child. So, she didn't ride, and I let that little flame of hope gutter pretty low.

Until today. I decided, and told her as much, that since she'd tortured me by making me ride around with her while I ran my errands in town (Co-Op, bank, library) I was in turn going to torture her by making her ride with me to Wal-Mart, the one trip we'd forgotten in our haste to get back in time for lunch at Grandma's. So, on went the Missus' new helmet and her yellow and black riding jacket, on went the tall leather boots, and out we went to Sally.

I gave her the usual pointers that I give any new rider who decides to passenger with me: "This is hot, don't touch. Don't put your feet down EVER. Hands here, back pressed against that, don't spit without raising your visor first." And we rolled out.

I stopped at the end of the lane just in case she'd changed her mind or had peed on my seat or something. When I asked her if she was okay she replied with a sardonic "Yes, Dad" and so we went on. Ten gentle minutes later taking helmets off at our local Wal-To-Wal Mart I asked her the all important question. "Well? How was it?" Now in total truth I expected to hear "Meh," or "It's okay." What I got was "It's so cooooooool!"

Sold.

So, our next stop after jabbering about motorcycles all through Wal-Mart (and don't think I wasn't the PROUDEST papa there--gear on, helmet in hand, and my daughter equally attired, helmet in HER hand) was right up the road at the local bike shop. I had the tremendous pleasure to introduce her to Miss Johnnie, the wonderful old lady who answers the telephones there, who remembers me working there the FIRST time, almost fifteen years ago, when my child was still in my arms. Then we looked at swag. She tried on jackets, and we talked about leather versus textile versus the perforated stuff. We covered the absolute necessity of armor, and the ins and outs of wearing that gear in Louisiana summers. We even peeked in the displays at a few helmets, but our local motoshop is pretty slim on swag, and the only women's helmets they stock run to pink and flowery, which is NOT my daughter's taste. Oddly enough even the pink and white Icon Motorsports jacket with the glittery stars on it was scoffed at, even though it fit her pretty decently.

Then came the fun part. Trying on motorcycles. Oh, I'm in no position to buy her even the smallest street bike now, and she's quite a few thousand miles in a car shy of hitting the tarmac on two wheels, but it's in her near future. She told me as much. Getting back on Sally to leave Wal-Farce she stated it. "Daddy, I want a bike." Simple as that, and her tone brooked no refusals. In the face of that much determination, determination that seemed awfully familiar to this old man, I did the only thing I could do.

I said "Okay!"

We scoffed at the scooters. We rolled our eyes derisively at the wide selection of used Harleys. We gazed longingly at some of the big touring bikes (well, I did) and we gazed longingly at some of the factory customs. Then we got serious and let her try the Kawasaki Ninja 250 for size, which now looks like a full-on crotch rocket, way to go Kawi design team! We also let her settle onto a little black Honda Rebel 250. Both fit her pretty decently, she's got decent leg length, but she made her papa proud when she returned to the little black and chrome Rebel.

A cruiser, just like her dear Papa. Aaaah, it does my heart good. I would have liked her to try out the Star 250 also, which I just found out Yamaha DOES in fact make for this year, but yet again my motodealer failed me by not having one on the floor. Ah well. Maybe a road trip to Natchitoches is in order, to see if my beloved Honda Village has one on the showroom.

Guys, watch out. The next generation of my family is ready to embrace life on two wheels, and she's not gonna play around. Just like her proud father.

The Knowledge To Practically Apply Basic Principles of Hydrodynamics In A Real World Situation:

2010-08-29T17:24:00.000-05:00

I haz it.

When it rains outside, it's hard to tell from inside my house unless you look out a window or the dogs suddenly demand to be let in and arrive soaked to the skin, grinning and shaking. This house simply doesn't let a lot of noise in. At night storms can come and go and not ever be noted. Last night was not one of those nights, nor was it one of those storms.

Around 5 this morning I lay in bed, warm and safe and dry and deeply asleep until outside it began to sound like Katrina had decided to make her five year anniversary reappearance a day late. Lightning struck two pecan trees in the back yard and violently crashed and boomed every few minutes. A peek out the window revealed a sky that stayed lit with what I think was heat lighting because it was as rapid and jittery as a poor B-movie special effect, sans thunder. The rain? The rain was coming down with such ferocity that it seemed like we had built our house under a waterfall. I could see the silver sheen from each lightning flash reflected in the yard, quickly becoming a near solid sheet of water, and the constant impact of the rain turned it into a constantly-dancing sheet of tiny mountain peaks and valleys.

I could have gone into the garage and watched it for hours, truth be told. And after it had passed I could have stayed even longer. There's something about running water that enthralls me. Be it the ocean and its ceaseless tides, the roar of clear mountain water over rocks in a river, the meandering flow of icy cold spring water down a pebbled creek bed or the ponderously slow movement of a muddy bayou, running water draws me like iron fragments to a lodestone.

When I was a little kid, a yard-filling quantity of rain would mean that I would be spending the entire next day knee-deep in the ditches with a semi-straight stick used as a gondolier's pole and a piece of interestingly decayed post used as a boat. I'd be most of the day wading around in the currents and eddies of the ditches around the house, directing my imaginary sailors on their way into every bay, inlet and white water I could get it fit into. Some part of me would be watching the water run brown from the fields, mixing with the clear runoff from the yard, and all tumbling excitedly down the various bends until it ran off our property and into the neighbor's ditch. When my craft reached that point I'd turn my ponderous wooden ship about, fire up the engines and push our way back upriver, the water breaking excitingly over the bow until I could find a spot where my deep draft ship could turn again, and point her nose back into the rills that would pull her inexorably downriver.

This morning though, a boat wasn't primary on my mind. Dealing with the inevitable mess after a huge rain storm was. The culverts were clogged with detritus--pine needles, bits of bark, squirrel-gnawed cones, dead leaves, branches and a vast Sargasso Sea of grass clippings thanks to yours truly working so hard to mow Saturday. A quick glance down to the other end of our little country lane showed me just how much rain had fallen in a very short time--the road was sheeted over with water in the two lowest places, which means the people foolish enough to buy the brand new crackerjack-box houses that were built in a low-lying ex-cotton field had, if wise, already stacked sandbags in front of their doors and were ready with pumps and buckets and towels inside. Trucks and cars were stopped in the street door to door; homeowners who were not smart enough to ask anyone who'd lived here more than two years if this was a flood-prone area, and surly husbands living the country life were patrolling up and down the lane on four-wheelers, as though burning up some gas and making a useless racket would help the water evacuate their home theaters and their now-sunken living rooms.

But, that wasn't important either. Damage done, and honestly, not my problem. My own house doesn't flood, wisely being situated a number of feet above the low fields and having wide ditches. What was important to me was clearing my wide ditches out so the water could move...well, to be quite frank, could move down there to those flooded houses and that massive slue of a former field, where it has always gone. Water as we all know is going to seek out the lowest place to be, and I had every intent to make sure what amount was standing in my yard would be allowed to join its hydrous kith and kin down at the low end of Schoolhouse Rd.
So, out came the rake and the shovel, and I got to work pulling sodden piles of organic waste out of culverts and the ditch across the frontage of my house and my uncle's house next door. The water had just receded from the level of my driveway, and pulling out forty cubic yards of drowned pine tree waste started the water flowing rapidly and I could see that it had dropped off a bit even as I worked. I waded into the ditch knees-deep with the shovel and started digging out soaking wet mulch, rotten leaves the colour of peat, all sitting in the bottom of the ditch slowly composting into the soil. Piling it on the ditch banks the water sped up more and more until the water started to surpass my knees and threaten my shorts, and the miniature river between my ditch banks began to gurgle and rill in earnest, passing over exposed pine tree roots and tiny crescent-shaped bays where my shovel had bit deeper than I intended.

The once-clear water was running rich brown as well, looking for all the world like a child's 1/48th scale model of the Red River, all clay and rich sediment. I'm sure my neighbor, his own low-lying trailer situated in, of all places, a corner of his father's low-lying cotton field will appreciate the rich brown stain of clay that will no doubt be left after the water finally leaves his yard in a day or so. I'm certain he'll love the acre-wide, solid sheet of pine cones, bits of branches, grass clippings and sodden leaves that were disturbed and washed downriver from my own ditch, as chained to the natural power of running water as any antediluvian patriarch.

Hey, not my fault. If the lazy, drug-abusing wife-beating piece of shite had gotten up this morning he easily could have cleared his own (underwater) driveway and culvert of the filth that was already there, thereby allowing the water to leave his own yard much faster. Heck, I slept in VERY late this morning, until almost 9am, so he had plenty of time, and I know full well he slept a lot less easy than I did in his single-wide.

Regardless, the water has subsided now. The fiercely dry ground drank up the flood as fast as it could, and now my yard holds just a few isolated pockets of clear, shimmering water, rather than being a sheet of shimmering water holding a few pockets of green grass as it was this morning. The ditches are nearly empty, the fields having finally dispersed and hungrily sucked down the remainder of the flood. Too late to go find an interestingly rotted piece of post and a long, semi-straight pole.

Of Rain and Time and Travel

2010-08-19T20:46:00.002-05:00

There's so much I want to tell you, and so little time. Also, so little focus. Focus, you see, has become a rare commodity in the person of your singular writer.

I want to tell you about traveling to Colorado. I want to tell you about my first train ride, behind a gorgeous streamliner F-unit engine. I want to tell you about meeting new friends and about eating new food and about breathing air at 10,000 feet above sea level. I want to tell you about work and about play and about Weerelephant using my old 35mm camera as her own. But maybe later. After I've had more time to let the jostling, jumbled up images and thoughts settle into a coherent whole.

How about I tell you about the cicadas?

There's a few things in anyone's life that you can point to and say "their life seems to revolve around that thing." A point of reference, a common thread that runs through their lives. Cicadas are one of those points of reference for me.

I spent my entire childhood and my adulthood thus far around them. Their sharp, angular songs lull me to sleep at night, and their presence in the air makes me think of my childhood--long hot summer days and long humid summer nights. I spent entire summers filling paper grocery bags with discarded shells carefully harvested from every tree I could find. The first summer I traveled to Oregon I lay awake on a soft mattress with the windows open and I could not sleep. I lay there and fretted and wondered until I realised: I couldn't hear cicadas. I spent a magnificent three hour flight on an airplane sitting beside a beautiful young woman who had come down from Washington for a job, who explained to me that she lay awake at night and wondered what that horrific sound in the trees was. I spent an inordinate amount of time extolling the virtues of those little green shrieking bugs.

Such an odd little thing. Born from an egg dropped from a branch they immediately dig into the earth to eat soft fresh roots. There they live and grow for up to seventeen years, hidden from the sun and the fresh air and the rains. That strange little lovely insect lies in the ground for seventeen years, then one day a bright spark in them says "DIG." They dig their way up and they find themselves on the surface and that bright spark in them says "CLIMB." They look for a place to climb. A tree. A bush. Anything vertical will do, they just know they have to climb. They find their vertical place and they climb and claw and work their painstaking, dirt-covered way up until something inside them says "STOP" and they stop, and get a good grip.

They spread their legs wide, dig sharp claws into whatever surface they're on, and they start pushing. They arch their backs and push and strain with everything they have in them until their old, restrictive, clear skin cracks down the back and then they're struggling, fighting, straining to get out before they lose all their strength and die there, half in, half out. When I was a kid I'd find perhaps one each summer like that--trapped in the opening of that old skin, legs still pushing even in death, forever tied to both the old life they just left and the new one they never quite began. I used to be so terribly saddened when I'd see them like that.

But sometimes I'd get to see one free of its old skin, clinging with delicate legs to that old husk, the discarded past, their old home for seventeen years living blindly underground, digging in the dark, never knowing what lay just above them. They'd be hanging there, a shade of pale green so faint that they almost looked white. They'd have their long, tapered wings held straight behind them, drying in the morning air, and if you waited long enough their pale damp white-green would slowly change to a deep emerald colour, and their soft, pliant bodies would dry and they'd be wrapped in vert armor, patterned with sable, hanging like a tiny droplet of potential in the soft dawn air.

They're singing right now. That sharp, vivid summer sound, right outside my window, filling the trees with night music. I'm going to sleep good tonight knowing they're out there, making tiny eggs that will drop from the tree limbs like miniscule raindrops, to seep into the earth and not to be seen again for seventeen years.

Work Hijinks

2010-06-04T17:50:00.000-05:00

HAMLET: How absolute the knave is! We must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us.

I swear, going over reams and reams of clinical data every day I see some stupid stuff. Some days though the stupid stuff really goes well beyond stupid and trips lightly into that ethereal realm of things that are genuinely funny but in a really sad and pathetic way.

Our physical therapists, when doing an initial evaluation for a new patient have in their forms a tool called a "Fall Risk Assessment." It's just like it sounds--an assessment of a person's risk of falling, or falling again. I found this in an evaluation today. The agent's text is in all caps because they all type that way:

Assessment of Fall History:
Where did the fall occur: FELL DOWN SOME STAIRS
What was the patient doing when the fall occurred: WALKING DOWN THE STAIRS

Wow. You don't say. I thought for sure the agent was going to say this elderly lady was launching her two-man glider.

I swear, Tracy and I laughed for several hours solid over this one. I don't know if it's funny because I'm freaking exhausted or because it really IS funny. You tell me. Me and my hundred hour two-week pay period are going outside to smoke a cigar.

Unable To Stop

2010-05-31T20:28:00.000-05:00

Hello, my name is Irrelephant, and I'm not addicted to much.

I know, the post title sort of implies that I'm an addict but this isn't going to be me spilling my guts about my drug, sex, gambling or high-speed race car addiction. Maybe next time.

No, this is more in the line of walking somewhere with my head down, not paying attention to anything in the world but my goal, not noticing the cliff that is right in front of my feet until I'm falling, guts floating with fear, and nothing to look forward to but the sudden and violent stop at the end.

I wasn't always the sort of person to hold a grudge. They take too much energy, too much valuable time. Nor am I really the sort of person to stop talking to someone over anger or an argument, or someone to have a grudge held against me but somehow as I've grown older I've had several opportunities to be thus engaged. I've been lucky enough out of the three active non-speaking relationships I've endured to have healed one. One is out of the question, and is a better fit than healing the gap. The third 'fix' came as a fall off a cliff.

I was in Hobby Lobby after a day of not quite hitting my stride. You've had those days, right? The sorts of days where it seems that you woke up a second later than the universe had intended you to, so you seem to be missing everything by just a hair. Nothing seems to work quite right--you miss traffic lights by moments, you seem to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and everything about you seems just slightly off, not quite in sync with the rest of the world. Like a voice track in an old movie that doesn't perfectly match up, you can follow along perfectly well but the sensation is discordant at best.

The whole day I'd been just half a beat off, but the morning of shopping was winding down, and on the whole we had made more refunds than purchases, so it seemed okay. The Missus and I went to Hobby Lobby to buy some picture frames (40% off, score!) and I needed to pick up a tube of Winsor & Newton Lamp Black oil paint in the big 10 oz tubes I favor. We began threading our way through the packed aisles and I left the Missus at the frames section while I made my rapid way to the lieu.

I headed back to my destination via the model train aisle--I love looking at the tiny N and HO scale engines, the tiny crossing gates, the tiny scale people the height of a fingernail. I circled around that aisle to cast my eye over the scale model aircraft and cars, more out of force of habit than any real buying desire--I've a closet half-full of unbuilt scale models. I circled around another aisle to look at a pretty girl who was looking at the DIY jewelry, and I headed down the paint and brushes aisle, eyes focused on the Winsor & Newton rack rather than the three or four people cluttering the aisle.

Remember in the first Matrix movie when the black cat walked by our heroes, then walked by again, and Neo said, woodenly "Uh...deja vu." Trinity explained that as someone mucking about with the Matrix itself, changing something. I didn't see a black cat, but I should have, because I'm certain the Universe was tugging some strings pretty darn hard to place me there at that exact moment.

I digress a moment:

A brief synopsis. I'd just divorced. I was single, alone, my daughter in my ex's questionable care. I was lonely, scared, unsure. So, I seized the outstretched hand of a friend who lived about 120 miles south, in Baton Rouge. He was single, intelligent, creative, and a good friend to help you forget about your woes. I spent several months of weekends driving down to Baton Rouge to stay with this friend, travel around, ride bikes all over town and country, tour the USS Kidd which he was a tour guide on, and in general try and fail miserably and repeatedly to pick up girls.

It helped me get through a very bad time. That friendship was very like Holmes and Watson, with me in the role of the Good Doctor. He the misogynist, me the lover of women. We grew together, we shared everything. And in synopsis format, when I met a girl we grew strained. There was a threat afoot that he felt would damage us. He refused to put away his hatred of women, and we finally came to a point where I blew up at him and demanded he apologise for what he'd said. He refused, I stopped talking to him.

Fast forward some eight or nine years. He traveled overseas several times with teh military and the last I knew he was in Washington, DC working in a museum. I was living here, making my way.

Until I just about walked over him in the paint aisle of Hobby Lobby. I walked up to the paint, reached down, picked up the tube I wanted and heard my full name called out from about two feet over my shoulder. He had been standing there buying paint brushes, literally directly across the aisle where I was headed, unseeing, focused on the goal only. Right off the edge of the cliff.

The reunion was...strained. We shook hands, embraced one-armed as men will do. We talked briefly, but it was shaky, uncertain, and we both could smell the nervousness on each other, like two leery adult dogs who barely remember being litter mates at one time. He asked about the ballooning, he talked about his own gaining of a pilot's license. I stuttered incoherently a bit, his jitters nearly had him climbing the aisle behind him. He told me he'd moved back home, to the little town next to ours, right across the river. I wasn't sure what to say, just smiled and we parted.

I was shaken for the rest of the day. I don't think buying myself a orchid would have helped that day. Hell, being given a two thousand dollar professional Nikon lens would not have set me right. And here, two days later I'm still reeling a little bit. The Missus says it is time to rebuild the bridge. Me, I'm still not sure it would be the right thing, not sure I want to expose myself to the emotional rigors of that relationship.

So right now, I weigh options, like a wizened old shopkeeper carefully weighing out leaves of gold, trembling hands placing first one, then another in the pan, waiting for the trembling balance needle to hit "0."

We'll see, I suppose. Perhaps after I hit bottom, because right now I still feel like I'm free-falling.

Planting Seeds

2010-05-16T20:57:00.000-05:00

I went working in my garden today. Actually, I planted a few things for the first time this year. "Late" is not the word for it. "Ridiculously late" is the word for it. I'm about two months behind planting time, but seeing that bare patch of nothing out there where there used to be green growing produce finally drove me to distraction. And to buying some zucchini, squash, three varieties of tomatoes and some cucumber seeds.

My daughter's mind has become quite a garden too. Things have taken root there that I've planted, that my mother has planted, that her teachers at school and the parish priest and even the damned TV have planted there, and like any child's mind seedlings are growing there that have come from me without even knowing it. Photography, for instance. I don't leave the house without my camera, haven't gone anywhere without a camera in probably two decades or more. Me? I like my camera. I didn't realise my daugher was watching all this time. Makes me wonder about how often she's seen me pick my nose.

My little one has never evinced an interest in photography until two weeks ago, during a career-opportunities event at school. My child is a sneaky one, too. Out of the blue she wants to be a photographer, is looking into wildlife photography and underwater photography and all sorts of things of a photographic bent. Problem being, she's leaving for Oregon to spend the summer with her mother. In five days.

So, I did what any father would do. I went berzerk.

When I first started getting serious about photography I went to the local chain camera store in the mall where a friend of mine worked. I told her I wanted a good starter camera kit, an honest to gawd manual 35mm camera with interchangeable lens and everything. I plunked down my cash and spent the next bunch of years learning the ins and outs of a manual 35mm. I spent I don't know how much money getting roll after roll developed. Colour. Black and white. Shooting landscapes and animals and even in a very few instances trains. That camera went with me everywhere. It rode on the back of motorcycles. It rode in my vehicle the few times I owned an enclosed vehicle. It hung from my neck like a small black albatross.

When the time came many years later for me to step into a digital camera I put my old manual Ricoh in its battered nylon camera bag and set it on a bookshelf where it sat, untouched, for years.

When my little girl decided she wanted to start using a camera I knew I needed to help her. Problem being, my last two digital point-and-shoot cameras are defunct. One broke due to old age, the second broke in a certain motorcyle wreck a while back. Simple math--I didn't have a camera to give her and I certainly don't have the money to rush out and buy her one. So, I did what I had to do.

I dragged out the old Ricoh and passed it down, the only heirloom I have to give her. We spent a huge chunk of today going over it, watching the light meter go from negative to positive, learning how to adjust the gross focus, how to check where the sun was before shooting, how to load the film and how to hold the camera steady. In short, a high speed, low-drag crash course in photography.

This afternoon we headed to Wal-Mart and bought a four pack of Fujicolour film, washed the bugs off her new-to-her camera bag and got her set up with lens cloths, cleaning fluid and those weird little air-blower things with the little soft bristles. She's already started carrying the whole rig around, carefully packing and unpacking it, trying different arrangements, moving around the dividers, making it hers.

I don't know if she's going to stick with it or not. Honestly I don't know if she's going to accidentally drop it in the Pacific Ocean this summer or if she's got something in her that is going to respond to using a camera like a seedling takes to the sun. Either way I'll be happy. If, however, on the off chance she grows up and becomes The Next Big Thing, well, I won't feel too bad about it.

I won't tell you about how my dirt gardening went today.

Missed Me? Missed You.

2010-03-07T19:04:00.000-06:00

I really have. Missed you, I mean. Missed talking to you. Missed the sometimes one-sided, sometimes not interactions that we have had in the past here. Why have I been gone so long? Lots of reasons, none of them particularly good, to be honest, but you've been in my thoughts a lot.

Thought about you yesterday, matter of fact, and that's why I'm here.

We went coursing, you see. Lure coursing. Loaded Sheba and Belle and some gear in the van and headed vaguely northwestish, into Texas, land of the wide dry open. And wind. My gods that place has some wind. No wonder it's always pictured with windmills. I lay in the hotel bed Saturday night and could feel the heat radiating from the windburn that still covers my face.

Anyway.

Coursing was fun, as it always is. Sheba was off for some reason and didn't finish either of her two races, even though she slipped from the line like she was going to run the hairy hind legs off Lucifer Hisself. Belle performed admirably but was beaten by a very young, very fast dog, and fairly as well, no hard feelings, no grumbling. But my let-down that afternoon made me think about why I was feeling that way, and made me remember my personal mantra. It's not the big things, it's the little things. Winning would have been great, but there will be other races, and frankly all she has to do is keep placing second and earning even a single point at a time to complete her Field Championship, so it's not like we're struggling to get those big wins.

The little things appeared all during the trip. The huge black birds with the massive, fan-like tails that stayed high in the bare trees all Saturday calling in weird melodies to each other. The little girl who spent the whole event squatting in the dirt assembling a huge complex of cairns, all stones and twigs and mounded up dry dust. The look of joy on Belle's face when she finally caught the 'bunny' and was the only one of her group of three to "finish with enthusiasm," chewing and tearing at the white trash bag. The abandoned railroad tracks beside the hotel, the ones that ended at the four lane highway, disappeared into the dirt only to reappear on the other side of the expanse of concrete.

The best little thing, though, the one that touched me all the way down was the airplane.

Standing in the parking lot of the hotel, walking the girls back to the room from a potty break I heard the gruff, unmistakable sound of a rotary engine high in the sky. I saw the airplane moments after I heard the sound. It looked for all the world like a kid's drawing of an airplane. The whole scene did, actually.

Picture a sky so piercingly blue it could have come from a child's crayon drawing. A blue so frankly startling that it didn't seem real, somehow. The huge white clouds were equally contrived, so white and so perfect that only a child's imagination could picture a cloud that way and colour it so shockingly white. The biplane was red, uniformly red, not a marking visible on it, not an identification letter or number anywhere on it to mar it. Seeing it there, hanging in the perfectly blue sky, backed by those perfectly white clouds it simply shouted down to the ground, to anyone watching: "I am RED!"

The pilot, whoever he or she happened to be was up in that exquisite child's sky being a child him or herself. The plane roared and grumbled like only a biplane's rotary engine can, hauling the kite aloft, flinging it toward the ground without ever hitting. Up and over in loop after loop, long slow graceful turns like a dancer on an infinitely huge dance floor it moved around as though it were dreaming. Slow, wide climbs, tilting over a bit at a time until the pilot hung upside down at the very top, no doubt staring down at all of us; tiny specks on a one to one scale map of the world. Then an equally slow slip down the other side until, at the bottom, a graceful, unhurried twist until the sky was right-side up and the little biplane was climbing back up again into another huge roll, and another, and another.

I could have stood there all day, mouth agape, drinking in the sight and the sound but eventually the red kite bobbing there in the sky pointed itself away from me and unhurriedly took its leave, moving unhurriedly from the floor to be lost in that impossibly blue sky.

That's why I was in Texas. All those reasons and more. All those tiny little moments, like a child's drawing of a biplane in a perfectly blue sky.

Pictures At A Dog Show

2010-01-31T20:04:00.000-06:00

Now, I'm no dog show veteran, not by a long shot. We've been showing dogs only for a few years now, and lightly at that. Our local AKC club president has been a member of the local club for two decades now, and likely has been showing for far longer. Some of the judges at our show this weekend were so old I'm sure they've forgotten more about showing dogs than I know.

Still and all, I saw and was taught some neat things this weekend while helping our local club put on the annual AKC show, and I want to share, limited experience notwithstanding.

I think the first thing I learned is that a dog show is a lot more fun when you're not showing a dog there. *lol* The fight for a place to set up, the constant worrying about time and preparation and grooming, all that is gone, not to mention the worries about showing well, placing, so on and so forth, so you can really enjoy everyone else suffering. You get to wander around freely and critique other dogs. Since I was working as part of my club I was expected to be there until the very end, so I got to watch the Best In Show, which we never stuck around for when we attend show events ourselves since it's usually late in the evening and after a day of stressing over a hot dog all you want to do is go back to the hotel room, order room service and turn in.

Our club also sponsored an Obedience event. Now, don't expect me to get into the minutae of Obedience because I can't. Won't even try, but what I saw was an astounding amount of training, patience and skill in these dogs. All sorts of breeds--herding dogs, a Papillon, a tiny black poodle, Labs, Dobermans, the works took part. The requirements were astonishing--the dogs were required to follow a regime as rigorous as any military drill--sitting beside their owner at attention, 'heeling' at varying paces, doing tasks like jumping over hurdles and fetching back little plastic dumbells at a single command, no more, all off leash, all that was something to watch, but then it got serious. After a bit the dogs were expected to find just one dumbell out of a whole pile of them, then bring it back to their master. The only indicator that this one out of ten was the right one? The owner handled it. No more.

When I watched all the dogs sit and the owners not only cross the ring but leave the arena for a full five minutes, THEN I was flabbergasted. To watch a Doberman sit like a black and tan concrete statue for five full minutes waiting for his master to re-enter the room was something else. To watch a whole line of dogs do it was a whole new level.

There was the tiny little girl, a wisp of a thing who might have been all of eight handling a full grown Poodle was a treat as well. A standard Poodle is one seriously big dog, clown-like haircut notwithstanding. When this tiny waif would kneel down to place the dog's enormous feet she'd literally disappear behind her charge, and it would take both of her hands to move the feet into place. The judge was enormously patient while the ant hustled the elephant.

Naturally on the flip side there was the inevitably, tragically comic sight of a near-apoplectic, sweaty-faced four hundred pound man laboriously waddling around the ring holding a leash that looked like three rayon threads woven together, at the end of which was a tiny Chihuahua. The dog couldn't have weighed more than three pound in toto, attitude included. I'm betting the corpulent owner could have eaten the thing on a bagel in one bite. Watching that pair mince around the ring was worth gales of giggles.

The neat thing I got to see was the braces. It's rare but you can show two dogs at once, in a brace. A single leash with a "Y" at the end and two collars, and in those collars a pair of dogs, preferably as closely matched in size, colour, stride and cholera as possible. The first contender was a brace of Beagles, two smallish gold and white critters who seesawed back and forth around each other like they were in orbit together. The truly neat brace was of Bulldogs. Two perfectly matched white and brindle behemoths, thick and swarthy, walking in near-perfect precision. They walked so closely that at times your eyes were confused into believing that their legs were synchronized.

I spoke to the owner/handler later--come to find out the two were a VERY rare creature indeed--a set of twins. They'd been raised together, never separated, and now they make a visually identical pair who move like one dog, circling, stopping, everything performed like they were sharing one brain. Which they may have been. Still, it was a very interesting thing to watch, and they deserved the awards and lauds they received.

Entirely off the dog path but equally neat to me was getting to use "The Governor's Room." We'd set up the hospitality suite for the judges there, lunch and drinks and so forth, but the neat thing to me was the rows and rows of photographs and drawings of every governor of Louisiana. I'm betting we've got just about everyone else beat in that department--the first governor's likenesses were drawings, and the governor's reign was dated 1699. A French nobleman if there ever was one, and the next thirty or so followed that French lineage--gorgeous finery giving way to Napoleonic uniforms to armour to finery again, finally seguing into suits and ties. Very neat display indeed.

There was more, naturally. There always is. Getting to visit with the judge whose memories ran all the way back to when he was eight, working his first job as car-wash boy at his father' Esso station, when gasoline was 11 cents a gallon. Meeting the raw food diet folks who had a gorgeous pair of red Dobermans; the male was named Remington, and they called him "Remy" just like we call our Remington. Funnier yet, they were from Houma, LA--my birthplace. Helping to sell catalogs was fun; meeting people, talking briefly, telling them with sure enthusiasm that I hoped they enjoyed the show--pride in the fact that I wasn't an employee of some company. No, this was our club's show, and therefore MY show, so the enthusiasm and the wishes were as authentic as it can be. Selling raffle tickets for the 50/50 raffle, helping make the club another few dollars. Getting to make a few short announcements on the truly massive coliseum loudspeaker system. It all added up to a truly entertaining weekend.

The best part, tho, wasn't the group "Whoooooo!" at the end but the fact that I kept getting texts all day today--the Missus was in McKinney, TX with Sheba and Belle. Sheba earned her QC ("Qualified Courser") title and ran her first lure coursing trials, placing third out of a group of eight Borzoi. The best news, however, came from Belle. Our dear sweet fat Belle, our Swedish Dumpling carrying ten pounds or so of post-partum weight and minus most of her lovely hair coursed to a win -- Best In Breed, a four point major! Now all she has to do is win a few more points, all of which can be minor events and she'll have earned her Field Championship and she'll be a "DC," a Dual Champion, our goal from the very beginning. I was more excited about that than today's Best In Show!

And now I cannot WAIT for next year's show.

Honking My Own PreProduction Plastic Resin Pellet

2010-01-16T15:09:00.000-06:00

This could also be posted, within reason, on my trainspotting blog which is pretty much dead in the water right now (or Dead On Law) but I'm gonna put it here since this was my first love.

Nurdles. Plastic pellets. Tracy and I were walking the rails at Lake Buhlow many years ago now. The spotting was going nowhere, not a train in sight so we were looking at and photographing the grafitti on the boxcars. There was a whole line of those ubiquitous pale grey hoppers standing at rest on one of the spurs, and down a ways from a line of these hoppers there was a big pile of...something. At a distance it was pearly white, finely textured, and covered an oval several feet across and was pressed up against one of the rails. Closer inspection revealed it to be a spill of tiny round plastic beads, a whole mound of off-white, semi-translucent nodules.

Naturally I was interested. They were neat, and they might make an interesting photo. I had Tracy scoop up a bunch in her cupped hands, and I snapped a photo.

I was just beginning to think in terms of my "Blowing Things Out of Your Hands" theme so I had her blow them out of her hands really hard, too. The lighting was weird but I got what I wanted--a shower of these little plastic thingies flying.

She dropped them, we went on. Soon we found one hopper with a cap off and sure enough, more plastic pellets. Mystery solved. They fell out of an 'empy' train car. I went home that evening, uploaded a few of that day's photos to Flickr and forgot about it.

It's funny, looking back, how the smallest thing can begin rolling, snowballing as it were.

Months and months later I got an email from a stranger. I found out later he was an editor for Wikipedia, working on an article for something called "nurdles." Pre-production plastic pellets. It seems that those tiny white beads are the foundation material for all things manufactured out of plastic, be it your car's dashboard or the bottle that holds your bleach. Plastic things come from nurdles, and he wanted to use the image. I said "Sure!" thinking that it'd be kind of cool to have a tiny piece of the internet staked out with my name on it, and that little bit of virtual real estate had nothing to do with an epic fail or pr0n or anything. Nice.

Time passed.

Another email came. This time it came from The Sierra Club, and the use of that image both online and in a print version of the Sierra Club Magazine netted me $30 or so, and some print copies of the magazine to add to my portfolio, which I still need help from someone in designing. I was thrilled! Appearing in print! And I found out that those little plastic dealies are a major pollutant in watersheds. Fish see them as food (fish eggs, likely enough) and eat them. They can't digest them, naturally, so they stay in the fish's stomach forever. Fish fill up on them and die of starvation.

Then it kept rolling.

The BSU Beachwatchers asked to use it for a brochure, which sadly I never got a copy of. Come on you guys, get with it!

Then the coup, which has a funny twist to it. A very pleasant representative of the Indiana Railroad contacted me to use that same photo for their 2010 calendar. May, to be exact, an inset over a photo of a train of hoppers carrying nurdles to a production plant. From use in an environmental awareness magazine to use by the folks who transport them every day and night. The twist? A railroad worker's carelessness lead to me finding them in the first place. Full circle, anyone? I asked for a calendar or two in exchange for use of the photo. The representative from the IRR went me one better: that little photo paid off in some very nice swag, most all of it in Indiana Railroad red, and thanks again guys!

I just got another email yesterday, this time from someone in the Great White North. PNW actually, a researcher working for the Wickaninnish Interpretive Centre Redesign Project in Canada. They're redesigning and modernizing the Pacific Rim NPR at Wickaninnish Beach and...wait for it...they need some photos. I'm betting this one will be used to highlight some of the pollutants that no doubt show up on their beaches just as it shows up on beaches all over the world.

Naturally I said yes. I'm thinking about asking for a big scoop of sand in exchange.

The image is online under a Creative Commons Attribution License. That means anyone who wants to use the image can use it, just so long as they attribute it to me. Sadly the internets is not a nice place--type "nurdles" into any search engine set to "image" and you'll find that picture in many places, without my name attached and without anyone caring enough to drop me an email and say "Hey dude, can we use your picture?" I mean, it's not like I'd say "NO!" or demand money. *shrug* It's easier to steal, naturally.

I'm not angry or hurt over this, interestingly. I figure this little photo is not my Mona Lisa, is not my defining piece of work. It's a snapshot, taken on a whim. I just didn't know it would be so in demand. I actually like the attention, and who wouldn't? I can point (as I just did) to several places where my work has some worth to someone. Oh sure, I could ask for money for it, but what would that get me? Nothing. No money, and no exposure. No one is going to pay for a photo of a handful of plastic when they can steal it elsewhere. At least this way my name is attached to, oh, maybe a quarter of its use.

And anyway, fame! Wikifame! What better feeling could you get from snapping a picture of a pile of plastic bits?

You Cannae Change The Laws of Physics!

2009-12-21T19:29:00.000-06:00

Did you know, however, that hot air ballooning can alter the flow of natural events? Or at least push events toward one outcome or the other? It's true, and I just proved it this weekend.

Sunday morning down here in central Louisiana was a mite nippy, but it made for some beautiful flying. We've had a tremendous amount of rainfall in the last month to six weeks, so the ground has been awfully soggy where ever we go, and since this isn't my first rodeo I had the (surprising) forethought to bring my knee-high rubber boots along. I've had to wade into some unpleasant places to help recover, including cow pastures, briar patches and rowed fields and thought that with as much rainfall as we've had lately any field large enough to accommodate a comfortable balloon landing would also play host to a lot of standing water and mud, so I figured I was well ahead of the game.

Now Jim has his own ideas about laws natural and man-made and ballooning. When driving the chase truck he's fully of the mind that Ballooning Rules apply. Ballooning Rules state pretty simply that where things like laws and so forth run counter to what we need to do to safely and accurately chase the balloon then those laws are temporarily suspended. It's a good rule, and we've only had to invoke it a few times. Well, maybe a a lot, if you count (very gentle) trespassing and illegal u-turns but you won't catch me saying this on the official ballooning blog. This past Sunday's flight was supposed to go up Saturday afternoon, and Jim had brought Tracy and I our Christmas presents--cunningly made wooden hot air balloon birdhouses. Attached to my other present (still wrapped) was a smaller one that he suggested I needed to open before the flight.

Well, Jim's been doing this a lot longer than I have, so I opened it. What did he get me? A headlight. One of those clip-on LED lights that you can attach to the brim of your hat. "So," he told me, "this afternoon's flight doesn't become a night flight."

See, Jim Knows. He knows that whatever you prepare for won't happen. Have a good source of light? Evening flight won't end anywhere near dusk. Got brand new mud tires on the chase truck? We won't get near soft ground. Have a full compliment of tools? Zero chance of mechanical mishap. When I got into the truck Jim gestured to my boots and asked me if I was expecting water. I should have known then that I was wasting my time bringing them but I persevered. I Knew Better, you see.

So there we were, nearing the end of the chase. Ski Lift, the other balloon in the morning's flight was down safe in a new subdivision, right in someone's side yard, and Skybird seemed too high to make it safely into the small cul-de-sac that ended the development.

Jim and I discussed it, and we both decided that he was going to pass over and land in the large open field that bordered the neighborhood. I slipped my hiking boots off and slipped on my rubber boots, certain I'd beaten the odds and that my feet would stay dry and warm and that I'd be the only comfortable one on the ride home.

Next thing I know Skybird is about twenty feet high off the road, literally right in front of the hood of the truck and descending and the red line comes over the side of the basket. The red line is a nylon strap much like those you see securing loads on 18 wheeler trailers, only this one is attached at one end by a thick steel carabiner to the basket and is used for, among other things, letting the ground crew haul the balloon down out of the air fast. Jim slowed, I jumped out and went galumphing up the road in my boots toward the gondola, seeing the end of the road and a lamp post straight ahead. I flung myself onto the edge of the basket, hooked my arms over it and tried to get traction--zero. Rubber boots do not make for excellent gripping on new asphalt. So there I was, skidding along with my feet making that weird rubber-dragging sound.

Stop we did, thankfully before encountering anything steel or otherwise unyielding and bemused neighbors started popping out of front and back doors to see what had happened to disrupt their Sunday morning ritual. While the cellular phones and cameras came out we went about the routine of taking things apart and repacking. I finally had opportunity to change back out of my completely dry knee-highs as well, but I'm thinking pretty seriously about leaving them in David's truck toolbox: I could get pretty spoiled to sidewalk landings in manicured subdivisions.

And Now, A Word From The Puppies

2009-12-13T19:26:00.001-06:00

Or a word about the puppies. Since I'm required by blogger edict or common law or a mandate from my readers sorta thing.

They're great. They're huge--Vincent at six weeks of age, if he's still growing like he was a few days ago now weighs 13 pounds. That's the same weight an "average" Borzoi pup weighs at 8. Apparently we're growing monsters here. Or moose. Moosi. Mooses. Moice. Whatever.

Luna has even more become The Affectionate One, the one that is always up in our laps, always howling for attention when she's in the play enclosure with her litter mates. This is making the final decision (which one of the seven to keep) even more difficult. She and Poe are currently neck and neck but only time will tell. I think. Not taking into account that Luna at birth got the favoured name AND was singled out as being the one we'd keep. Just sayin'.

(Oh, the official Zorya Borzoi website is up and running, too! It's simple, and still incomplete but it's up and working, a work in progress. Zoryaborzoi dot com)

The rest just keep growing, keep learning, keep eating. Gods do they eat. They're officially weaned now, in that Belle refuses to give any suckle, and they're eating their Eukanuba puppy food dry, crunching through it like rabbits in a lettuce patch. Also leaping into it and/or stepping in the bowl and/or running through it at full tilt, thereby slinging it across several hundred square feet of den.

They're a mess. An adorable, fuzzy, sharks-mouthed mess.

Here's a pic before you guys kill me (apologies to Facebook folks who have already seen these.)

Salem, Ex Libris

Punkin'

Barnabas. No question he's a Borzoi.

(l to r) Einar and Vincent

The more astute readers/viewers will note that they're all either asleep or dozing off. This is because when they are awake there's no way to aim a camera at them. I'm not that fast, you see. They don't stop moving, EVER.

In other news:

Work proceeds. Yes I'm spoiled insensible with this work-from-home thing. It's also troublesome--I found myself going stir-crazy during yesterday's all day rainstorm. It was then that I realised that I'd not been outside except for very brief sorties to the chicken coop and to walk the hounds in the evenings since the last weekend. It's taking some adjusting, and I'm not the fastest learner, but I'll get there. I just need to remind myself that there's nothing really forcing me to leave the house on a daily basis, and if I don't think about it I'll end up turning milk white and blind and perhaps developing some sort of superior food-finding sensory apparatus.

Yuk.

I'm also getting better at the stress. Yes, shut up about it, I'm tired of being derided for not swilling of the work-from-home cup to the fullest, for having worries about my job when I can work in my pajamas if I want to. I'm not you, I have my own set of problems, and one of them is anxiety. Which I'm working to correct, and yes, making nice progress at. I'm not fully there yet, tho. The anxiety kicks in once in a while, usually when I'm stuck in a situation where no one in charge seems to know how to get back in contact with me, and apparently every Sunday night about 1 in the morning, but the panicky, spikey bits are gone. Now it's just anxiety that manifests itself in disturbed sleep patterns, vivid nightmares and a lot of residual anger. Still, far better than it was, and I'm hoping that with continued therapy and diet control and the non-pharmaceutical supplements I'll continue to improve. Hell, I have thus far, so I'm not complaining. Well, not complaining too loudly.

I've also found something else good about this enforced home-living thing. Houseplants. I can care for them with much greater attention and consideration that ever before, so just last weekend I took my first big horticultural step in many a year. No mere potted ivies for me, I've gone tropical:

A Phalaenopsis, or "Moth Orchid." Phalaen from the French for "moth," which also oddly enough coincides with Penny-- Papillon is French for "butterfly," which their upright ears and long silken fur imitate. When Papillon's ears droop instead of stand upright the dog is called a Phalaen, or 'moth' instead of a Papillon.

Anyhoo.

I've been thinking about growing orchids for probably several years now, ever since they have made a showing in this area in the local commercial greenhouses and so forth. I was always aware of them in some background sort of manner, and being a devout fan of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe series I was hard pressed not to learn the basics of orchids, but I never considered myself an orchid fan until I began seeing them up close and in person, which is saying something in this tiny backwater town.

The Phalaenopsis branch of the orchid family are some of the easiest house-kept orchids, I've learned, which is right up my alley. I've been told by two very reliable sources that orchids are easy to keep indoors, but I'm the guy who used to kill cacti and overwatered a bromeliad unto death. But, I'm trying. Stepping out. Pushing boundaries, albeit small ones. Plus they're utterly beautiful. This first dear has even grown well enough to turn the second to last bud on its raceme into an opening flower and has begun to open yet another tiny bud at the very end. Hope springs eternal.

So. Fifteen dollars at my local Lowe's and I brought home my first. It was on clearance, it being what passes for winter here, one of four little glazed clay pots forced into a tiny little space between walls of poinsettias. I had the money, I picked my plant and made the leap. Today we happened to be in our local Kroger's grocery store. Far from our usual haunt on a quest for some specific xmas stocking stuffers (my child loves odd Japanese candy now,) we'd happened into the flower department to find a bouquet for the kitchen table, and I saw them. Orchids. A whole massive display of them, tier upon tier of them. And not just any old Lowe's orchid but plants twice the size, every one with either branched racemes or multiple ones, each simply dripping with flowers.

For the same price. So yes, this weekend I brought home my second:

Another Phalen, because I'm not about to invest a lot of money on something I don't have the necessary skill to grow, but gods look at those petals. Up close they look like someone dribbled purple ink on a cotton sheet.

I was described a long time ago by a very good friend of mine as having "an old soul." I've pondered that a lot. Turned it over and over, looked at it from many angles and consider it intensely satisfying. If I had to be described in five words or less I'd be beyond pleased if someone voiced "He has an old soul." I've carried that descriptor around in my heart for a long time now, savoring it like a hard candy. Carrying my newly found orchid today through the store my wife told me that she wasn't surprised at all that I'd gotten into orchids. She'd seen it coming, she confided, for a very long time. Then she said something that really made me smile. She said that raising orchids seemed "a thing that a Victorian gentleman would do."

I read just a few days ago that orchids were first kept by amateur botanists and flower fanciers of all sort in England, circa 1890. Victorian homes were often found to sport varieties of orchids brought back from far-traveling merchants and tradesmen, and were prized by their collectors. I'm no Victorian, my moral compass is far too modern for that forthright title to be applied to me, but it's a comparison that I'm also proud to at least, in some small way, live up to.

It's a funny old world. I'm glad it has orchids in it. And Borzoi.

Fun With Particle Physics

2009-12-03T12:01:00.000-06:00

A chance joke on a Facebook post originated by The Ancient And Inscrutable Legume Hisself got me to thinking.

The Large Hadron Colllider is, as we all know, a machine intended to destroy the entire universe. Little known is its secondary purpose: to help socially awkward physicists (and aren't they all?) meet hot chicks. Way down the very long line of possible purposes for the LHC is to prove or disprove the existence of a particle called the Higgs boson, supposedly an integral and pervasive component of Life, the Universe and, well, Everything.

Back to that chance joke--a friend of the old Bean suggested that Higgs Boson was also, coincidentally, the name of a Red Sox second baseman. My thought was that it was possibly the name of a late Twenties touring sedan, the Higgs Boson Phaeton Supreme. Elegant thing, but it had the unfortunate tendency to have its tires burst into flame at high speed and one such accident was responsible for the death of Grover Cleveland's great great grandson, Ohio Cleveland.

Now. Your turn. Keep the coincidence going. Be as succinct or as flowery as you want. What else just so happens to share that name/title/description?

Puppy Pics (And Very Few Words)

2009-11-17T20:57:00.000-06:00

Vincent sucking on Poe's foot. They're hungry I tell you! Hungry!!

Less than a week old--Barnabas and his mama's foot

Salem and momma

Salem sleeping on the best bed in the world. Until she's big enough to get on the couch.

Leeches, crowd-surfing.

Best bed in the world.

Too pooped for photos.

So why do you think we named him "Vincent"?

"I Am Not A Number, I Am A Free Man!"

2009-11-14T21:29:00.001-06:00

"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own."

This is GOING to be a post about AMC's new "The Prisoner" remake. I've been told, however, that I am now required to post something about the puppies in each and every post, however, so here goes:

Belle has taken to spending less and less time with the little ones, starting the weaning process. The puppies have a different idea, however. They LIKE nursing--often, and rather violently, and Belle gets tired of that level of abuse pretty fast so she often gets up with a full compliment of whelps attached. The resulting sound of vacuum-seals breaking is surprisingly like the sound of all those snaky black tubes popping off Neo when Morpheus first released him from the Matrix.

Pokkka-pokka-pokkapokkkapokkpokPOKPOKPOK!

Okay. 'nuff said.

The Prisoner. If you've not seen the 1960's era cult classic, you need to. Do yourself the treat. It's entertaining, engaging, surreal and often rather intelligent. It deals with our peception of reality, the ways we treat others and even the nature of the relationships between jailor and jailed.

Did I mention it's surreal? One of the great joys of The Prisoner is that they didn't have the biggest budget in the world, so they really had to drag every ounce of story out of every piece of scene, make the absolute best out of every prop. Something like a white weather balloon, guided by fishing line and some engineered gusts of wind, aided by some weird growls and roars on the soundtrack became Rover, a terrifying, suffocating mechanical threat on the island. An off-season vacation spot became The Village, a place where spies are taken to be emptied of their useful information in whatever means the jailors see fit.

And now AMC has gotten it into their heads to remake that incredible series. With a massive budget they can film in Tunisa, they can remake a city block in said city into New York, can hire the likes of Sir Ian McKellan to be the chief heavy in The Village--Number Two.

I don't remember when I first discovered The Prisoner, much in the same way I don't remember when I first discovered Blake's 7 or The Avengers. They were always there, it seems, only waiting for me to find them, reveal to me their mysteries and their sly winks and their gasping surprises.

I do remember the feeling of joy as I watched each episode open, reveal its plot, the little twists and turns, the cleverly hidden clues that said "Yes, this is the same retired spy from 'Secret Agent Man' only we're not going to come out and admit it." There was always some little something to make you wonder. The Tally Ho, printed seemingly as the 'news' happened in The Village. The living chessboard. The statuary with cameras for eyes. The allusions to people who came and went from the outside world. Number 2's green dome, and Angelo Muscat's quiet, mysterious butler character who never spoke a word, but who no doubt knew more than any Number 2 ever did. For that matter, the ever-changing Number 2--each episode there was a new Number 2, eager to crack Number 6's iron will, desperate to dig through his mind, picking out the information like meat from a cracked walnut.

Except in this reinvisioned Village he's not Number Two, just "Two." Just as John Casiavetesetees whatever his name is is just "Six." And so far as I can tell there's no butler, silently absorbing everything. Cut from the story to streamline it, I suppose. Like the titles of the six episodes they're airing--the hauntingly named "Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling" is now simply "Darling." "Living In Harmony," the weirdly-canted American Western episode is now simply "Harmony." Each new episode bears a trimmed-down version of an original episode's name.

A lot of it seems to have that feeling--like it's been streamlined, cleaned up, modernized. The round buttons that each prisoner used to wear, the buttons that had the penny-farthing bicycle logo and the prisoner's number have been replaced by retail-style glossy rectangular badges with a number and a somewhat Art-Deco rendering of a city skyline; several tall, round-topped rectangles. The quaint little holiday houses that once dotted The Village's manicured park have been replaced by Aspen-style cookie-cutter cottages. Rover, from the previews, seems to be about five stories tall and awfully ethereal.

Another thing that bothers me? Two has a family. Yes, a FAMILY. A wife who from the previews seems to be bedbound (but perhaps kept that way?) and a son, "12-13" who Six seems to be trying to sway to the side of liberation, freedom from the restraining Village. Interesting, but way off the mark. A family is weakness, a liability, a way to do damage to an otherwise strong, untouchable target. No Number 2 would have tied himself to something as dangerous as a family.

I will say this, and this comes as no surprise--Ian McKellan's Two looks and sounds consumately wonderful. Set as it is in a desert (Tunisia, I'm told from the multiple making-of's) he's always resplendant in an ivory suit, an ice-cream cone fresh from the freezer on a hot day. He's dapper, always impeccably dressed in vest and coat and slacks and a beautiful ivory-white fedora. He oozes charm and power. He speaks like a man who is accustomed to wielding that power, a man to whom the ways and procedures of extracting information "by hook or by crook" come as naturally as breathing. But then again an actor of that caliber makes it look easy. I only hope the rest of the cast can pull it off.

So. Starting tomorrow night on AMC we get to see this re-invented Village, this new Six and Two. There's even at least one grossly overt nod to the original--when Six wakes up in the desert outskirts of The Village he is witness to an elderly man who seemingly has escaped. This elder wears the trademark black sport coat with white trim, khaki pants, boat shoes and deep blue shirt that Patrick McGoohan's Number 6 always wore. The director says it's to tie the two together, so that we can imagine that Number 6 has been trying and failing since the 60's to escape from The Village, and the new Six meets his numbersake.

Uhm...did anyone think to watch the original first? The trial never happened? "Fallout" never occurred? Number 6 met and unmasked Number 1, seeing himself beneath the layered masks? What about his apartment door in London opening with that eerie mechanical whine, just like his apartment in The Village? Jailor as prisoner, and the butler returning
"home" with him...

Yes, I'm going to watch. Probably will even watch every single one even if they stink, and I really sincerely hope they don't, but we'll see. I'll let you know in a few days what my initial verdict is.

Be seeing you.

Memento Mori

2009-11-02T20:57:00.000-06:00

It's been a very full week, let me just say that up front, and circumstances have made me think about how life runs in long, strange chains. How the littlest thing, the most overlooked moment can set you on a whole new path.

I used to go to dog shows a lot, decades before I considered myself anything close to being a dog show person. Admission was free, the coliseum was ten minutes away, and I liked dogs. I'd go and watch the Dobermans, because I loved how strong and brave they appeared, and I'd watch the German Shorthaired Pointers because I grew up with one as a kid. I'd watch the people fervently grooming and brushing and I never once thought I'd be one of those people.

Couldn't tell you now what ring I was watching, but I was watching some breed or other when I felt a very long, very hard something slip tightly between my legs. Now, in my sum total experience that's something I do, not have done unto me. I turned and watched a small lady with a very long, very tall dog with the longest nose I've ever seen walk off. I'm sure she said something apologetic but I don't even remember. I knew I'd never seen that kind of dog before, but I dismissed it from my mind and went on watching the breed ring.

Later that day I saw that same dog and lady again. They were in a quiet part of the coliseum, and she was moving at a very fast jog alongside her dog. Now, ordinarily a jogging woman is enough to make me stop and look but it was the dog that caught my attention. It wasn't that he was tall (he was, exceedingly so) or that he had a coat of beautiful flowing curls that ranged from black to russet to white. It wasn't even his long, elegant face with small, tucked-back ears that looked like it had been designed for cutting through the wind. It was the way he moved. He moved like he was floating, like his feet weren't quite touching the ground and he was in fact flying, and all the leg movements were just a smoke screen to hide the fact that he was disobeying gravity's immutable law.

I stood and watched for a while, and when they stopped I walked over and said nine fateful words. "Excuse me ma'am. What kind of dog is that?"

Perhaps someone with sharper ears than mine would have heard the switch being thrown, might have noticed the change in the air as the train of my life slipped onto a new track entirely, but not me. Maybe Jesse noticed, but if so he never told me. He won't be able to tell me now, if he'd ever planned to. He died about a week ago. I won't get into how, suffice to say it was too early, and it wasn't fair, but then again Death never stops to ask how you'd like it to happen, it just does.

He changed my life, though. For a year I learned about Borzoi. The wife and I continued to talk about going in the show ring but instead of with Bedlington Terriers like we'd planned the talk turned to Russian Wolfhounds. I kept up loose contact with Rita, and the next year I saw her again at the same AKC show. This time she handed me his leash and said "Here, go walk him around." She smiled then, a little secret smile whose meaning I missed entirely. She knew. She knew how she felt when she walked her first Borzoi around. She knew full well how it felt to have someone ask about that rare breed, how it feels to walk beside such an elegant creature.

I made one circuit of the building with him, then a second. I felt like someone had given me the keys to a sports car, felt like the kid who asked for a Breyer horse for Xmas and got a real pony instead. I was so proud, smiling like I'd been given candy from a well-meaning stranger, and I ate up every moment with gusto.

You guys know the rest of the story. We brought Belle home not long after that, and it's been a whirlwind ever since. Coursing. Show ring. Learning the ins and outs of traveling with a 75 pound dog, learning new cities, seeing new faces and familiar ones too. Learning how political the dog show world can be, and learning how heart-breakingly exhilarating it can be to watch your dog run after a white plastic bag with every ounce of their body poured into the effort. Knowing that the same dog that trotted off the field to stand ribs-deep in the cow pond after the race just won Best In Field, and the judge hands you a ribbon, a huge rosette of red, white and blue. Learning how proud you can be when she finishes her ring championship and you can put that magical "Ch" in front of her name. Not to mention the best part: spending years with an extraordinary breed of dog. Bonding. Learning together. Forming that connection that you can only form with a dog.

Jesse was in my life too, during those years. We'd travel to Fort Worth and visit, and there he'd be--three feet tall, three inches wide and every gram of him comprised of power and grace and a consuming desire to be with friends, with people who love him as unconditionally as he loves them. He even spent some time here with us, lounging around one January in the cool air in our back yard, lying in the piles of pecan leaves we were trying so fastidiously to rake up. I wanted to keep him, Rita wanted to give him a good home after he retired, but we simply didn't have the space for him, as much as I regretted it.

So now here we are. Sheba and Remy are just passed their first birthdays, their entire careers as runners and show dogs ahead of them. Growing from pups that you could comfortably hold in your lap to dogs who command half the couch when they sit with you. Belle pregnant, growing wider by the day, moving slower, her body crowded by seven new bodies. Sitting up one evening with her, hurting each time her whole body clenched, pushed. Wanting to cry with her every time she cried out, not understanding why it hurt to push but her body overriding her brain and pushing anyway. Holding a placenta in your hand, still fever-hot and dripping with blood while your wife carefully attaches hemostats to the newborn puppy's umbilical cord, cuts it, towels the tiny thing until it squeaks with outrage, then hands the tiny puppy to Belle to lick, to clean. Watching the tiny blind thing find a nipple and latch on with fervent need while her brothers and sisters each come into the world the same way. Bloody, covered in slick fluids, squealing and thrashing legs that refuse to obey, eyes and ears closed, filled with a hunger for mother and milk and warmth.

It hasn't been a week yet and already they've grown, rapidly. The biggest is already two pounds, and they're all healthy and sleek and show tiny glints of the graceful, elegant hounds they'll become in a few short months. They're developing personalities: Luna the fifth to be born, the smallest, talkative and feisty. Poe, marked with a huge black heart on his white side who likes to sleep on the outside of the puppy pile. Einar, the biggest so far, who loves to bury himself right into the middle of the pile, disturbing his litter mates. Vincent with his tiny black pencil-thin moustache across his upper lip just like Jesse had.

Rita, when she called to deliver the news that Jesse had died, said that maybe he'd be reborn into one of our puppies, one of our seven who arrived just two short days after he left our lives. Perhaps she was right--there are two tri-coloured pups in there, and one a male. Maybe that old soul, that light foot and that unstoppably cheerful spirit found a new outlet, a new way to burn bright in the world. I certainly like to think so.

Bilbo said it best: you never know where the road is going to take you. Thank you, Jesse, for setting my feet on this one.

The Classic Horror Litter:

"Shadow Over Innsmouth" -- Barnabas

"Sleepy Hollow" -- Punkin'

"October Country" -- Einar

"The Telltale Heart" -- Poe

"What The Moon Brings" -- Luna

"Fall Of The House Of Usher" -- Vincent

"Old Black Magic" -- Salem

A Funny Thing Happened In The Kitchen

2009-11-02T18:00:00.001-06:00

A few mid-mornings ago for my Second Breakfasts I decided on a single slice of wheat bread (the real kind, nice and dark and rich, not that weird ‘white wheat’ pseudo-bread) dressed with a thin layer of creamy peanut butter and a steaming cup of Prince of Wales tea.

“What’s so interesting or funny” I hear you ask, “about making a half-sandwich, except maybe the not-all-that-clever LotR reference?” Well, I’ll tell you. I spread the peanut butter with a plastic knife, the kind with the tiny serrations on. Seems the peanut butter was just the right consistency to hold the pattern beautifully so the very thin layer of tan was covered in hundreds of perfect, tiny left to right furrows. The first thing I thought about was how you furrow grout like that when you’re laying tile on a floor or wall. The second thing I thought was “Wow, if I lay a second slice of bread on top and give it a gentle side-to-side wiggle as I press it in place it’ll REALLY adhere.

Yeah, I’ve been watching This Old House and HGTV way too much.

An Open Letter

2009-11-01T17:54:00.000-06:00

Dear Great Pumpkin

Well, another Halloween has come and gone, and I spent the whole night in the most sincere pumpkin patch I could find. Sadly, and much to my distress, you did not see fit to fly over in your ceaseless eternal wanderings and gift me with brightly wrapped presents. I can only assume that the particular patch I chose to spend the cold, wet night in did not meet your high expectations for sincerity, because I know you respect sincerity above all. Surprisingly, even my constant efforts on your behalf, furthering your cause above that of that red-suited fake Santa Claus person didn't affect your decision this holiday, but I understand that we cannot be expected to understand Your ancient and inscrutable thoughts.

Ah well. I assure you I will continue ever vigilantly to remain sincere and forthright, and I await next Halloween with a heart overflowing with zeal, hoping beyond hope to see you rise up from my pumpkin patch.

Most sincerely yours,
Paul

Sleeping In

2009-10-26T19:51:00.000-05:00

I used to be a night owl. Not the sort of geeky guy in The Watchmen, I look terrible in fitted costumes, but the sort of person who likes to be awake at night.

When I was in school I discovered a lot of things. One of those things was reading. One of the others was quiet. Then I discovered that the later you stayed up at night the more reading you could do, and the quieter it became. A love affair was born.

My parents, who saw nothing wrong with getting up at four am were in bed religiously by nine pm. On school nights the same went for me and my brother. But come the weekend, and most especially the holidays that nine pm marker went out the window. I had one of those bed chairs, the things that look like someone scissored off the top of a cheap stuffed chair, and I kept a stack of paperback books beside my bed. Granted this was back when fifteen dollars would buy you three paperbacks and still give you some change for a fountain Coke. Those were the glory days: I was discovering Michael Morcock, Robert A. Heinlein, Frank Herbert, Ray Bradbury, all the giants of science fiction, and each night found me staying up later and later to read just one more chapter, just one more handful of paragraphs.

I loved those long quiet hours at night. The cat would climb into bed with me, I'd be sitting there with my reading lamp over my shoulder, my big bed chair stuffed up behind my back and a handful of science fiction masterpiece. The house would grow quiet and the world would narrow down to that small pool of yellow light that opened a window into the sun-scorched sands of Arrakis, the sterile white environs of a sentient FTL starship, the paved streets of ancient Melnibone' or of Greentown, Illinois. I'd often read half a book or more at night, steeping myself in the story, losing myself utterly.

Oh, once in a while I'd be distracted out of the world in my hands by the sharp yipping of foxes in the fields hunting mice, or the soft lonely hoot of an owl in the pine trees outside my window but always the world of the printed word called me back, drew me in like the Siren's song calls sailors to their doom. Midnight became not the witching hour but just a marker that the house was cool and quiet. Two and three am would often find me still reading, and the next morning I'd sleep until noon, getting up to have lunch served for breakfast.

My folks were awfully understanding about it. I guess they figured I wasn't drinking, wasn't smoking, wasn't even out of the house (in body anyway) so what was a little sleeping in?

Work intruded soon afterward, but still I found time to stay up late, and evening shifts often meant that I could lie abed long after the sun had come up. Most times it was a requirement, working retail, because I'd be up until midnight or better at work, so getting to bed and staying there was quite the reward, plus it served as time to let aching legs and back recover some spring.

Somewhere in there, though, the status quo shifted. I became a parent, and work changed from evening shifts to day shifts, eight to five, Monday through Friday, and I could no longer stay up late because I had to be up early to get not only myself dressed and fed but a little wiggle worm of a child too, and later school added into the mix. Nine pm became the standard again by the simple expedient of me liking to have eight hours of sleep a night, and having to be up to get a child going meant firm nine pm bedtimes. Books became an expensive hobby, paperbacks up to seven and eight dollars each, hardbounds for twenty five and thirty, and so they were paced out, spread across days, made to last like an old drunk nursing his last beer.

The weekends still found me sleeping in a little, but something else had begun changing in me--a desire to be accomplishing things. I was astounded to find that if you woke up before dawn and got your morning routine out of the way that gave you the entire morning to cut grass or plant a garden of roses or, well, the list was endless. That five hours before noon seemed like an eternity after so many years of thinking that breakfast was always served at eleven am.

Now that I'm a regular balloonist (some would say balloonatic) I find my weekend mornings are also in grave danger of extinction. Weekdays find me getting up at five forty-five so I can start for seven, but weekends find me getting up even EARLIER so I can get showered, dressed, and slip out on the bike to make it to LSUA for a pre-dawn meet with David and the rest of the crew to set up for a flight. Don't get me wrong, I love it, and wouldn't change a thing about it. I mean, in what other sport do you find the drinking starting at nine am, and with champagne to boot?

No, now more than ever it makes sleeping in feel like a luxury beyond measure, a luxury rarely tasted. Once in a while nothing is planned, nothing needs doing, nothing is pressing hard for me to accomplish it and I can sleep in. Mrs. I wakes up early and lets the dogs out and closes the bedroom door. I fall asleep again and wake up late, seven thirty at times, sometimes as staggeringly late as eight am, and it feels so decadent. I feel like an emperor arising from his golden bed, knowing that the household is going on as it should, that the world outside has woken up and gone on working without me being in it.

The guilt usually kicks in around this point, and the Protestant Work Ethic goads it sharply enough to get it moving pretty fast, but I still get to enjoy sleeping in for a few minutes. I know I'll never get to retire, never get to enjoy sleeping through every single morning again but that little taste sure is nice. And who knows? Maybe one day they'll make books cheap again, and I'm sure they still make those bed chair things. I'm sure I can find a lamp, and there's always a cat willing to curl up on my legs, if not a Borzoi, and lord knows they love to sleep.

My fear, however, is that one day I'll start thinking that four am isn't THAT early a time to rise.

Taking Off Is Always An Option. Landing Is Not.

2009-10-21T19:30:00.000-05:00

Student flights. I know, you guys just live for this stuff, right? Well, this one has a couple of twists.

The Great Mississippi River Balloon Race in Natchez this last weekend was a wash. Or rather a blow, since the wind never wanted to drop below 15 knots or so. We managed one flight on Sunday morning, landed on a golf course and got the balloon soaking wet with dew. Monday afternoon my mentor emailed me around 2:30 and asked me if I wanted a student flight. The Sunday afternoon flight in Natchez got canceled and so the envelope was still pretty wet from Sunday morning. He needed to unpack and inflate it so that the heat of inflation would evaporate the dampness right off and giving me another student flight would kill two birds.

So immediately after work the 'weekday crew' joined him and myself in Lecompte, we found a really nice old man who had a lovely big side yard and we set up. David handed me the striker after we'd cold packed with the fan, gave me some basics again as to inflation, showed me the signals he'd give me to start or stop burning and let me at it. I sparked the pilot light into life, stuck the striker in my back pocket, picked the left upright up enough to set it on my left knee like he does, he killed the fan and I burned.

I actually managed to inflate it nicely up until the very last when a good big stiff wind came in and flattened her, and he took over since that's a VERY dangerous time, where the risk of burning the envelope is very high.

Once the initial struggle of setup was over I clambered in, gave her a little head and we were up and going. He let me get to about 500 feet (I tend to stay HIGH!) and said "Okay, do a touch and go in that field there, and don't bounce it. Just ONE touch." He knows me too well, knowing that I'd much rather approach a landing tentatively, in ten or eleven small landings leading up to the final one. I didn't actually stick that one, either. Didn't quite get her fully on the ground that is. I'm always leery of coming down too fast, so I over-burn and don't ever quite make it down.

Well, this went on a bit, he had me get low and do some contour flying in a flat field, then he had me fly up and contour along some trees. I was really genuinely getting the feel of it, which I didn't realise I'd lost so bad but I've not flown in three months. It was a really truly good feeling, very akin to the feeling I got when I realised I'd found the sweet spot between throttle, clutch and shifter on the bike, so that each shift was seamlessly smooth. I was really feeling how she was supposed to be flying, really FLYING her and not just riding along. That's when my glove brushed the toggle switch up on the burner handle area and turned the pilot light off.

There I was, blissfully unaware, gliding over the treetops in silent splendor until I squeezed the handle to burn a short burst and all I got was a "pfffffffffffffft" sound and some white vapour where there should have been a six foot tall gout of blue flame.

I panicked.

He stayed as cool as an alligator in deep water, however, which comes of having more hours logged piloting aircraft than I've had hot meals. My one point of pride is that I got my striker out and up to the pilot light tubes just as fast as he did. Problem being, 1) my striker came open and I couldn't get it together again and 2) there was no gas there to LIGHT. He told me in that loud/calm Instructor Voice: "Just fly the aircraft, I'll get this." I didn't see what I could do, really. Without fire I couldn't rise, and venting would put us in the branches so I sort of stared forward and waited. Oh, and quietly panicked.

He told me after I got home in an email that he'd learned twenty years ago to use Fire II (the extra boost/backup fire for emergency lift) as a pilot light in case the pilots would not light, but he'd never had to use it until just then. He twisted the Fire II valve open and suddenly we had a sputtering, blasting three foot tall flame of a pilot light. I squeezed the trigger and my heart returned with the sputtering roar of fire and heat and lift.

Just in time, too. We'd cleared the treetops but were coming down fast into a clearing. We hit pretty hard and did some bounce-drag stuff for a while. I nearly got my arse tossed overboard for my troubles too. My center of gravity at 6' 2" is higher than his and he's better at bracing for impacts than I am, but I hung on to the uprights like a baby monkey clinging to his momma and rode it out, burning every time we got clear of the ground, remembering that he'd told me NEVER to burn, to actually take my hand off the trigger when bouncing on the ground to prevent accidents. Well, we finally got back up and I settled down as the gondola swung back and forth like a pendulum, slowly settling back into vertical.

I was proud of myself--he told me that if we'd had a real emergency, rather than a self-inflicted one like I'd just done he'd have had me land with the Fire II in the field and be done with it, but since we knew what the problem was (he saw the toggle and flipped it back on just before we began bouncing) we'd go on. I was proud because I'd been about to ask him if we needed to land and stay put. Score a tiny one for the student. We flew on for a bit, me trying to generate enough spit to dampen the desert that was my mouth and in my nervousness I was climbing pretty high again, so he told me to vent, to get us low enough to cross the corner of a certain field using the prevailing wind down on the deck.

Now this is the tricky bit. When Skybird got her new material added on the folks there sold him on a pulley system for the red line that controls the vent at top. It's akin to power steering on a race car, however: while it makes the job of pulling the top out it also robs you of a good bit of feeling. In my nervousness and so forth I'd vented already but I wasn't sure that the top had come out. It was so 'soft' feeling that I thought I'd not pulled hard enough so I pulled again, and again. Each time losing heat, and lift. WAY too much lift. We lost a whole lot of lift and went into what Jim likes to call "a screaming descent."

I began burning when he realised I was trying to self-engineer another in-flight emergency for us and he started his insistent "Burnburnburnburn" order. We had time to recover but we were still descending awfully fast when we hit. Jarringly hard. Hard enough to unhook one of the three spring-loaded hooks that holds the burner in the frame. Hard enough that I felt it in my back teeth. Suddenly we were sitting flat on the ground and everywhere around me was blue, nothing but blue nylon settling around us in huge swaths almost to the ground.

I had just enough time to hear David say "Hang on!" before she popped up again. FAST.

And we started what I like to call a "BDS landing." BDS for "Bounce, Drag and Scream." We were dragged all across a rowed field, thumping and falling across each other, juddering and swinging and hitting again, up and down, back and forth. I was ready for this one tho, had my right arm looped around an upright and my left hand clenching another until I could get it free and we were off the ground long enough to burn, to inflate, to get us up off this forsaken violent rough ground!

And finally we did get back up, and swung madly back and forth like a pendulum for way too long.

But he took it like it was nothing at all, and I guess in a way it was. I mean, we were fine, just shaken up. No blood, no broken bones, and the aircraft was intact. I think I hit my hip on the aluminum lip of one of the cylinders, gave myself a nice goose egg, and my shoulder and upper arm are still sore as is my neck, but we were intact, and finally airborne again. Well, after that I was white knuckled and dry mouthed, but David was still as calm as milk. Astounding.

He talked me through a mediocre landing right next to a parking lot, and Richard and Susie and Monica got us secured and it was all good. The campus security guy came up while we walked Skybird the twenty or so feet to pavement and we took her down, no problems. While Cap'n Miller talked to the Thick Blue Line I went ahead and took...command, I guess. I did what he would do if he were free: set to completing the process of securing the balloon. I made sure the top was pulled up to the center ring, walked back to the gondola, wrapped my arms around the Nomex part of the throat, called Monica to get behind me to help keep the weight of the material off me and started squeezing.

I actually squeezed the whole thing out before David got to us, which I think made him a little proud; even as shaken as I was (and I WAS) I was still seeing to securing the aircraft. We talked a little bit then, he got a lot of good laughs out of the very curious crew, and I mostly stood there and smile sheepishly. We told them the condensed version of what had happened, and loaded the lot up.

He told me there and again in the truck and again when I was back at the parking lot getting my log book filled out that I'd done good, really good on the contour flying, that he could tell I'd really gotten the feel for the burn/pause/maintain process that keeps us at level flight, and that it was GOOD that we'd endured both of those events together, so that now I'd be familiar with what can and does happen.

He asked me several times if I was okay, and I assured him I was, that I was ready to go again if need be. I called Jim on the way home and told him the same thing, and he said the same thing also--that it was GOOD to get in trouble when you're training because those are the moments during which you really learn what to do. I've faced two serious problems now. Not common problems but problems that can and do crop up, and now I know how to alleviate both.

As for me, two days later? I'm sore, no question about it, but I'm ready to go again. I feel like the first time I dropped my motorcycle--I'm anguished over it, but I know I can't stop just because of it.

So. I know this--it's not dampened my enthusiasm at all. I'm ready to go again, would go right now if offered the chance. And like Jim said, I've not experienced all that can go wrong, not by any means, but I did get a good look at what can and does happen at times, and have learned a little of how to deal with it next time. David said the next morning that he was perfectly fine, that he'd learned "a long time ago" how to roll with those sorts of punches. I envy him that. But I'm glad I got my lumps, too. They'll help me remember. And one day I'll feel the same way--a BDS landing won't be anything worse than something to be endured, I'll know where to brace my feet and how to hang on so that I don't get brained by the burner.

Now all I can do is imagine how I'd be in my own balloon. What it'd be like to be up there alone, standing underneath High Hope, for instance. More and more I think like that. I guess I'm thinking toward my solo flight, and beyond. What I'm going to have to do, how I'll have to do all of it, not just most of it. How I'll be fully reliant on me, on my ability to keep it aloft and flying level and steering with the wind and all that. Looking for and choosing my landing spot, everything.

It's a terrifying feeling, but in a good way, like a mountain you want to climb, a mountain that you know can hurt you, could even kill you if you don't respect it, but if you can just get on top you'll never ever forget the view.

Great Zombie Jesus!

2009-10-12T20:47:00.000-05:00

That's the costume I WANTED to wear to the 2009 Shreveport Zombie Walk.

So. In a nutshell: 7 hours in greasepaint and a surprisingly realistic looking prosthetic wound attached to my cheek and neck with spirit gum. Three hours on the road round trip. Roughly one hundred seventy five people dressed, with various degrees of success, as zombies. Almost six hundred pounds of non-perishable foodstuffs donated to the Shreveport Food Bank. Worth it? Does Zombie Jesus lurch around turning water into brains?*

But no Zombie Jesus for me this year. I settled pretty happily for a zombie priest: Monsignor Macabre, and the Missus went as Sister Mary Gruesome. Funnily enough we encountered enough other undead clergy to make a smallish convent and had quite a blast I have to say. But then again, how do you not? Lurching around a mall groaning in some of the most gruesome makeup you could imagine, in the company of almost two hundred other like-minded individuals, each marching to a different funeral dirge.

I really do have to say there's nothing quite like dressing like one of the living dead and enacting (well, sort of) scenes from a classic George A. Romero movie. A whole graveyard full of greaspaint and faux wounds and oddly enough a lot of smiles, too. I never knew the undead could smile. Young undead and old undead and even a celebrity or two: Zombie Where's Waldo showed up, as did Zombie Hotdog Guy and even a couple who did a really breathtakingly good version of Bela Lugosi's White Zombie from mid 1930's Hollyweird. They even brought their own hearse.

Surprisingly, after lots of trepidation on everyone's behalf about venturing into the world of semi-professional prosthetic wounds I have to admit that the hand-sized patch of icky-looking rubber I bought to attach to my cheek and lower jaw was a lot easier to use than I thought. And I discovered that all those 'skin tearing' scenes you see in the movies are done as simply as anything--a little fake skin attached with spirit gum. When I pulled mine off (slowly) it gave the exact same appearance, that sort of pulling, tearing look except in my case all it reveled was a patch of skin not sickly white with greasepaint. Who needs Skywalker Ranch?

I have to say too that there was some truly creative people there. Simple makeup effects that went a LONG way. One lady who had obviously had a knee replacement surgery showed up in her wheelchair with her freshly-healed scar, and had the local talent makeup lady apply some Eau De Undead and she was suddenly on tv, growling and groaning, rolling herself toward the tv camera like it was as natural as anything. Simple additions of mascara and rouge that produced some really ghoulish bruising and dead skin effects. Homegrown talent can produce some excellent fruits.

The evening for me was full of little moments of utter glee. Walking through Sears to the restroom, eating up every double take. Standing around watching the other zombies enter, drinking in the envious stares at my grievous wound that showed only from one side. Surprise! My cheek and throat are torn out! The giggling waves and exchanges of "dead skin" recipes with other undead. The weird freedom that comes with being in a mask, being something/someone you're not. Being a stranger in a very deeply strange land. Having people seek you out to get their photo taken with us was pretty cool too.

The local TV crew came out, and I so wished we could get to see the footage. A hundred or more of us pressing hungrily forward as the cameraman filmed us from his perch on the dais. Our hands reached for him, grasping at the end of straining arms, each of us together desperate to pull him down from his perch and into our seething mass. From our throats rose countless desperate groans and in the middle of that surge of bodies you could almost feel how it might be to be eternally hungry, forever cursed to walk the earth and devour the living. Lucio Fulci would have soiled himself to see us.

The walk itself was worth all the build up, worth all the wait. The costume contest winners were announced (we didn't place,) and the numerous door prizes were given away (we didn't win) and then it was time. A brief period of instruction from the Zombie Hotdog ("loosen up, think 'dead' and don't walk fast!") and all of us were off and shambling, lead by Undead Billy Idol and Undead Waldo from, I can only presume, the popular children's book series "Where's Undead Waldo?" We straggled out over almost half the length of the mall, each of us moving at our own pace, our own "old school" zombie stagger integrated into our costume. I let my mind go blank, let my limbs hang slack until I almost felt myself falling, then staggered away, bumping into other zombies, desperate to find that one bright spark of life to extinguish.

Oh yes, I had fun. Walking up behind kids who were foolish enough to have their backs turned, dropping heavy hands onto them. Turning suddenly toward people aiming iPhones and video cameras at us, startling them into staggering back into their giggling friends. Groaning at the windows, scrabbling fruitlessly at the retail drones all stopped to stare as the seething mass from the grave passed their plate glass walls. Oh yes I had such fun.

(Sadly I can't yet find any video from the 2009 walk but this is a nice little clip from 2008, the first Walk.)

_________________
* Yes.

Getting Started

2009-10-07T20:37:00.000-05:00

It's a good title. Explanation can be found at meno's blog. Go see her, do. She's got a purdy keyboard.

Me, I'm gonna get started with a few vignettes and see where it goes.

Vignette one: The Inside Of A Home Office

So Ver' Ver' Big Home Health Company bought me a nice HP multifunction machine when I took this job, to go along with my new lappy and my two flat panel monitors and my funky freakout internet-connected hellophone. It seems, however, that the powers that Be didn't take into account the fact that we'd all be printing almost a ream of paper A DAY in reports, and these little machines aren't nearly designed for that level of workload. So, they break. A lot.

Now me, mine's not broken, but you know me, I believe in maintenance. When the little rubber feed wheels started to squeak just a little I popped a trouble ticket into the IT line to see if I could get a maintenance kit, which is basically a plastic bag of little rubber feed wheels that you stick in, and you're good as new. Except not with this model. See, with the HP LaserJet M2727nf (and yes, I spell it out intentionally, so others can find this and be warned) there are no end user serviceable parts inside. Zero. None. Except the toner cartridge, which don't count. So when, say, the feed wheels start wearing out after three months of heavy use or the fuser goes bad you're pretty much screwed, because you're gonna have to pay an HP tech to come out and fix it.

Except VVBHHC paid for the three year extended maintenance plan! In a day I had a replacement machine on my doorstep. I unpacked it, set it up, packed up the old one and was ready to go again. I noticed that this one had slight cosmetic differences, but didn't think anything of it. Until this afternoon, not 6 hours into its life when I realised it was faxing blank pages. The scanner part of the fax machine had died, you see. Because this is not a new machine, it's a refurb, which is industry shorthand for "a used piece of shite that HP foisted off on us because we had the foresight to purchase the extended warranty/replacement plan."

So now that I've sent my other machine back, the NEW one, the one that really did work pretty good (it certainly faxed okay) I have to wait for another refurb machine to show up on my doorstep tomorrow evening, so I can lather-rinse-repeat the process and pray that the second refurb machine works for longer than six hours.

I've never regretted being proactive until today.

Vignette two: Outside A Very Pregnant Dog

Because as the old joke (more or less) goes, inside a very pregnant dog there's no room for anything, much less reading.*

Belle is about two weeks short of squirting out into the world a passel of puppies, and it's really starting to show. Much like a woman very close to her due date she's...er...big. Very big. Wide, in fact. In human terms she's about three days from her due date. In dog terms she's got about two more weeks. As such she moves slower, she eats a whole lot more, and she's cranky. Watching her lie down is an awful lot like watching a very pregnant woman try to sit down in a recliner, which in itself is sort of like watching a very old man try to back his 1954 Cadillac into a very small parking spot. Oh, there's room for it, but it takes a certain level of concentration, skill and just plain bloody-mindedness to make it work. When she decides to lie down you can tell she's really thinking hard about it:

"Do I really want to lie down? Because it's gonna take a while, and when I get there it's gonna take even longer to get back up again."

Yesterday at the midwife's (Mrs. I) behest I touched a certain spot on Belle's very round, very tight belly and could feel the lumpy outline of a puppy. It wasn't quite as powerful, emotionally speaking, as feeling my daughter in utero but it was fairly close. They're not quite old enough to move, for which Belle I'm certain is giving thanks, but they're very nearly there. In another week Belle is going to start nesting very seriously, and The Book of The Bitch, which is not, as the title seems to indicate, a primer on women but is in fact a handy reference guide for dog breeders expecting a litter, is going to be in hand a lot more. Certain chapters will be underscored and re-read, and final preparations will be made. Including bringing in the plastic wading pool from the yard (sanitized and lined with old blankets and newspapers for shredding) and moving some furniture around in the den in order to make it the Puppy Birthin' Room

And yes, photos will follow. As will the link to the website as soon as I buy the domain name.

Vignette three: The Zombie Walk

Yes, I'm excited. I'm downright giddy. For the local foodbank, and to coincide with National Zombie Day (October 11th, also Weerelephant's birthday oddly enough) a local city is hosting a zombie walk. At their local mall. Too good, I know! You dress up as much or as little as you want, bring some non-perishable food as your 'entry fee' and you're in. We get a brief lesson in zombie walking (for the n00bs) and then we're off for a moaning, groaning, shambling...er...shamble around the mall for an hour. Makes me wish I lived in Shreveport because the local film center is doing a three-night zombie retrospective filmfest. Damn you Shreveport for having culture!

I decided, after a brief tour through our local Hallo'een store to go as a zombie priest (Monsignor Macabre, perhaps,) as an homage to the priest in the basement of the tenement building in Romero's second landmark movie. Mrs. I is going to continue the theme, going as a zombie nun (Sister Mary Gruesome,) and my daughter is going to finish our ghoulish trio by going as a zombie cat. Yeah, I know it doesn't really fit the religious theme except maybe as a witch's familiar, but I'm not about to stomp on her creative side. I even broke down and bought a semi-professional style prosthetic wound (which will cover either half my neck or all of one cheek and down across my jawbone,) and the necessary liquid blood, spirit gum and makeup to make it truly gruesome and deliquescent icky.

Still, there were two things that bothered and continue to bother me:

1) The vast preponderance of Sexy (fill in the blank) Costumes at the costume store. 95% of the teen/adult women's costumes there involved exposed breasts, mesh hosiery, corsets and micro skirts. The photos of how you-yes-you would look in each costume was an endless procession of blonde supermodels with Barbie doll figures and faces just as plastically vacuous as you'd expect. Since when was Hallo'een about sex? It's the season to have the freckles scared off you, not be enticed by a woman whose costume looks like it came from the bastard child of a dominatrix police officer and a fifty dollar a night stripper. What further bothered me was the hundreds of high school girls who were buying these costumes like they were going out of style. And before you get to be a punk, Stucco, yes I was looking and yes it was enticing, but it's HALLOWEEN for shite's sake, not National Be A Sexual Predator's Favourite New Toy For A Day Day. What is wrong with people? Moreso, what is wrong with people's parents? Which is itself another post.

and

2) I really wanted to go as Zombie Jesus but the costume was $75 and I don't have the time to put one together out of bits and pieces. But could you imagine? Zombie Jesus. Oooooh how good would THAT have been? "Verily I say unto thee 'Go in peace, and devour the flesh of the unbeliever.'"

THAT'S what Samhain is all about.**
_________________________
* For those of you not familiar with the quote: "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside a dog it's too dark to read." ~Groucho Marx, world's greatest moustache wearer.

** And yes, I also fully realise that the origins of what we call Halloween are based in festivals centered around Fall harvest time and end of the year/end of the world fears and as a preparation for winter's long night, but really now, "Sexy Barmaid"? How is that scary? Unless maybe you wear a hook for a hand.

Puppy Paranoia

2009-09-29T21:00:00.000-05:00

It's official. Belle is pregnant. Let the rejoicing being! Soon to be replaced by terror!

We've bypassed the troubles of the last attempt at the big PG by a bunch of antibiotics when the grand event occurred, lots of prayer-wheel spinning and holding of breath. Now she's just like a pregnant woman in her third trimester:* she's bloated, irritable, and eats anything and everything that gets within a few feet of her long and very agile nose.

The test made it official today at the vet's office but we still don't really know how many little rug rats she's carrying around in there. Every time any of us try to palpate her belly she sucks it in like a failed dieter at the doctor's office and the pups end up sliding into her chest cavity, well out of counting reach. I'm not horrifically worried, honest. I feel about this pregnancy the same way I felt when my daughter was in utero: all I want is that the little ones be healthy. I don't care how many or what sex or what colours, I just want a healthy batch of little ones. In my daughter's case, though, I KNEW it was just one pup in there. In Belle's case it could easily be up to a dozen or more. In her 'family' there are bitches who have whelped litters of FIFTEEN.

Oh please don't let it be fifteen.

I'm thinking about setting up a pool. The litter is due somewhere around the last week of October, a few days before Hallo'een for certain. We've already decided on a Hallo'een litter name, and have compiled long lists of names for individual pups. There's even several VIPs in the Borzoi world who have dibs, which I have to say is awfully flattering. The thing being, there's not fifteen of them waiting in line! So me, what I'm thinking about doing is setting up a pool: guess how many pups there will be, and the birthday. Get it right and you get a puppy. Heck, get it CLOSE and you get a puppy. *lol*

Okay, so not really. I'd be crucified if I gave away a pup, but I'm wondering if maybe after the dozenth pup makes its way into the world, damp and squealing and smelling vaguely funny we might be thinking about giving away one or two at bargain basement prices.

Honest, I'm excited about it. I watch Sheba and Remy run and play in the backyard, powerful and elegant and quite frankly goofy as hell sometime. That's part of the fun, too. Watching them soar around the back yard like rockets then just as suddenly stopping to try and snap a fly out of the air to eat. Yes, eat. I'm just wondering what it's going to be like when there's a whole giant pack of them. Like fifteen. Oh my headache just got worse.

It really is exciting, though. Knowing that she's growing them in there. Each one a potential Field Champion. Each one a potential Best of Show winnner. Each one potentially an 80 pound lapdog, like Remy and Sheba both. Like I said, goofy.

Sheba even smiles. It's something that dogs in her family do. Smiling is an ancient throwback to baring your teeth at someone or something to make them back off. We use it now as a social connection. Well, Sheba has made the connection somehow--she smiles at people. She'll curl her lips up in the most frightening manner, as though she were snarling but no sound comes out except for some soft snorting, her tail wags in big circles, her head goes sideways and she just radiates happiness. She's gotten to where I can make her smile for me. I simply make a big, gruesome smile at her, make some gentle snorting noises and she'll smile right back, as happy as she can be. Then she'll try to jump up and put her front paws on my shoulders (not hard for her these days) and kiss me.

It makes me wonder what this new batch is going to be like. I cannot WAIT! Just...please, not too many, okay?
______________________
* An interesting fact--a dog's pregnancy runs about three times as fast as a human's, so now that she's passed her first month she's reached the equivalent of her first trimester. She's starting to get swollen ankles and crave strange things to eat, like soap. Honest. Well okay, not the ankles.

A Message From The Arkansas Dept. of Tourism

2009-09-25T09:24:00.000-05:00

Moving to Arkansas? Welcome, and make yourself at home! There's something we'd like to give you!

When moving to Arkansas to become a new resident, we like to issue each of our new rural homeowners a few starter Arkansan gifts. When you settle into your new home, you'll receive:

A mid-40's coupe, non-functional, to place in your front yard. This object can also be put up for sale, to fulfill the main requirement of having at least one item in your front yard for sale. Preferred sale items are fresh produce, vintage automobiles, tractors, or slag glass.

An 1800's era item of agricultural equipment, also non-functional. This is to be used as side-yard decoration, main focal point of your yard, or to tie your dog to.

One dog, indeterminate breed.

A dilapidated farm building, usually a barn but we reserve the right to substitute. Some substitutions include smoke houses, pump houses, or sheds. All will exhibit a slight lean, and be just barely unusable but also unrepairable. Your choice to let it become overgrown or kept clean, "because I'm gonna fix it up one day soon."

If you are moving into one of our two major cities (population 500+) then the above will be negated in favor of a mid 90's truck in at least two paint schemes and a single-axle trailer which you will be required to keep full of agricultural products, ie hay, a lawn mower or a farm animal.

We're pleased you decided to move to Arkansas! Us all here at the Tourism Bureau want to make you feel as comfortable as possible, and making you fit in will go a long ways to helping you feel like one of us good 'ole boys. And remember, ya'll come back now, y'hear?

Wedding Bells and Twisty Roads

2009-09-24T16:48:00.001-05:00

Okay, so here I sit in a hotel named for a Swiss mountain of some repute listening to what sounds like a near-constant stream of Harley Fergusson motorcycles passing in very low gear, getting ready to slip into a tuxedo and attend the wedding of a dear friend in a glass-and-wood chapel in the middle of the woods of Arkansas that was designed by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Could I be any happier?

Well, I DID catch some nice photos of a pair of black-with-white-chevrons ex K&O RR engines on the way up. And tomorrow's iteniary includes going into some really beautiful caves and then maybe a trip to see one of the world's few natural stone bridges AND a house-sized rock balanced on a tiny spire of rock, both of which, I'm told were featured on Ripley's Believe It Or Not. OH, and stopped by a gorgeous little tobacconist's place in Eureka Springs for a couple of Punch puros to puff on while we wandered the streets of this almost-New-Orleans-and-almost-Pacific-Northwest little town.

Let's put it this way--it'd take some doing.

Oh, and I'm not at work.

This place is unreal. The GPS lead us up the back way, no interstates at all hardly, nothing but winding two-lane roads through back country that got progressively more hilly, wooded and rural. Gorgeous stuff. And it's not done yet.

This place is just too freaking pretty to be Arkansas. It looks like it was ripped right up out of the country between Eugene and Florence, OR and put here whole, with some more pine trees tossed in, and lots less hippies. Winding roads? It's a motorcyclist's wet dream. NOTHING but twising, winding roads, many with massive mountain-sides on one edge and calamttous drops on the other. Oh, and often they've got DOT warning signs that say "Warning: Crooked And Steep Roads Next 10 Miles." Yeah, I'm wishing I could have forked over the cash to have trailered Sally up here. Maybe next time.

Did I mention the scenic railway tour that lets you eat dinnerr in Pullman cars? (Again, perhaps next trip up. Budgetary concerns.) But oh my kids, it's lovely as a newly-minted penny up here. Victorian painted lady houses everywhere, buildings dating into the beginnnig of 1900 and winding pedestrian-friendly streets. Shops? Check. Art? Check. Everywhere. This place is very artist friendly. And not hot! It's unreal.

So yes, I'm having a good time. Hell, a grand time. I feel utterly stress-free for the first time in way too many months. Already planning on coming back to catch all the things we can't catch this time. And then some.

Did I mention the candy shop with the antique taffy-pulling machine in the window, working on an electric-green wodge of taffy? Oh yes, photos to follow. Foolishly I didn't bring my USB cable to hook the camera to my lappy. Or, for that matter, my wallet. I remembered the tux, though, and my appetite for giant blocks of sinfully good fudge. And a pound of saltwater taffy. And even a piece of lovely jewelry for the missus.

It's been a great microcation. More to follow.

Ballooning And Foaming

2009-09-23T07:18:00.001-05:00

Give me a ride
Originally uploaded by Wright Photography

Looks like I'm not the ONLY one!

That Time Of Year Again

2009-09-17T20:35:00.001-05:00

I know Fall is here finally.

Not because school has let back in, not because the pine trees are turning some of their needles honey-brown and dropping them, and not because football is back on tv. I know it's Fall because the hummingbirds are back. Not for good mind you, not at all. They're all on the road, headed to Mexico for the winter. Not a bad idea if you ask me, but I can't travel as light as they can.

I've had my feeder hung up for months now. I'd see one, two perhaps in a day if I was lucky. A solitary little grey and green flash would stop, drink, then be gone. Every weekend I'd go out on the front porch, take down the feeder, dump out the old liquid, clean it good, refill it and hang it back up. One cup sugar, four cups of water, and just a tiny splash of red food colouring to make it appealing, then back on the nail it'd go. To be mostly ignored.

Until this week that is. Something in the air told them it was time, and suddenly my front porch is an absolute dervish of activity. Tiny bodies flashing through the air like lightning, and constant squeaks and peeps and chittering calls eek their tinny way through my window. I look up one day and there's nothing. The next day there's four at a time. The next day there's so many flashing, dancing bodies I can't even begin to count them. I count them now by how often I have to fill the feeder. Two cups of sugar water are gone in less than 8 hours now, and I'm at peak capacity. I know this because they're piling up two at a time on the feeder flowers--one standing on the perch, another flying, both with their long beaks deep in the sugary goodness.

And the fighting? I never knew something so tiny, so inexpressibly impossible could be so violent! Males crashing together, issuing outraged squeaks and chirps at each other, tangled together so intensely that they both fall to the soft grass, then separate to fly up and do it again, hammer and tongs, only pausing long enough to get a drink to refresh, then back at it again, while the females struggle with each other to fill their bellies before heading back out, many hundreds of miles left to go.

I'm told that if you hang a feeder out once you have to do it forever if you want to keep your birds. They remember, you see. If a feeder is there one year they'll come looking for it every year, every time they're in the area. If it's gone one year you won't see them again. That saddens me, and yet it makes me glad, too, to think that the little tiny dancers in the air that I feed this year will be in the crowd next year, having remembered this place.

I also love that they're so very unconcerned with my presence there. They're hungry, and they know that I'm so huge and slow that there's no way I could possibly HOPE to touch one, much less harm one. I stand with my camera pointed at the feeder, not three feet separating me from the tiny swirling motes of green and black and grey and they are utterly oblivious. When I take down the feeder to fill it the air is filled with angry chittering, and more than once I've had a bird begin drinking its fill as I'm still trying to hang the feeder back on its nail.

The doves that feast at my seed tray every day? They scatter like sheep before a wolf at the slightest provocation. If they see me move through the big windows that front my desk they're gone instantly. A quickly-shifted pile of papers will put them to flight. The hummingbirds? Not even the explosive flash of my camera bothers them anymore, and me moving around only sets them to stirring in a faster frenzy than before, like silt stirred up from a river bottom as a fish passes, quickly settling again.

Tiny, and so improbable. So beautiful, and so irrepressibly self-assured. How can I not love them?

The whole Flickr set can be found here--too many to post. *s*

Amusing

2009-09-13T19:59:00.001-05:00

(If you're reading this on Facebook you can get the whole blog at irrelephant.blogspot.com)

So I gone and done it. I painted last week. I painted again today. I'm reminded of the old joke in Mel Brooks' History Of The World movie.

Scene: Rome, an unemployment office line. A CENTURIAN stands in front of the benefits window. BEA ARTHUR dressed in a toga as the UNEMPLOYMENT OFFICIAL questions him:

Bea: Have you killed anyone this week?
Centurian: No.
Bea: Have you TRIED to kill anyone this week?
Centurian: Yes.

Etc.

So no thanks, no unemployment for me, I've painted every Sunday for the last four weeks in a row. It's a freaking record!

Today was a little strange, though. Usually I have no end of ideas in my head, and a blank canvas has never scared me. Today I decided that I'd put aside the handful of canvases I've already cartooned on, precursors to painting. I wanted to start a study, a test run sort of thing on an idea I've got, an idea that is going to take a big canvas. Specifically one I just finished gessoing early this afternoon.

When I was in college learning how to paint one of the first things we learned in the very first class was how to make our own canvases. The little studio classroom had a waist-high miter box and saw and lots of scrap plywood for corners. The thing being, we had to buy and bring our own raw stock--2x2s and quarter round. We were taught (well, THEY were taught, I already knew basic carpentry) how to miter corners and tack quarter round onto frames, how to measure and square and use triangles of plywood to strengthen corners. Then came the huge rolls of raw canvas, six feet tall and pale tan. We'd roll it out on the floor, lay the newly-constructed and still sweet-smelling wood frame onto it and cut it to rough shape, then get out the heavy duty stapler and staple and stretch, staple and stretch. I learned how to make neatly tucked corners, folded just right, then the buckets of gesso would come out and the four-inch house paintbrushes and we'd start in the middle applying snow white to the tan, working our way to the edges and over until the whole thing was pristine and ready to go.

I always loved the miracle that is gesso. How fabric that I strained my finger muscles on to tighten could suddenly, as the gesso dried, become tight as a snare drum's skin. And the sweet, pale smell of it, it always signaled to me that it was time to create. I built canvases of every size, often building stretchers to fit the odd-sized bit of canvas I had left over from building another stretcher for a class assignment. I'd build canvases a foot tall and five feet long just to see if I could do it, and built canvases so big they took internal cross-bracing to keep from collapsing. I've built canvases so bit it's an effort to carry them. I built a six foot by four foot monster for a class assignment, and got chided for it because I'd spent so much time prepping and building the canvas that I didn't have time to cover the whole thing properly, ending up rushing the assignment. (And still I never beat Bryan, my friend who was a year ahead of me who used to buy and gesso military surplus canvas pup-tents and use three, stretched and nailed together as his floor-to-ceiling canvases.)

Even though the ease of store-bought and pre-prepared canvases quickly took over it never stayed rooted. Today I stripped a pair of experiments off an old stretcher I still had, dug out my roll of raw canvas and with a big bottle of clearance gesso I set to. Rolled out the canvas on the living room floor and went to work. Stretched, stapled, stretched again, then around once with the hammer just to make sure everything was secure. Then the gesso, poured onto an old house brush that I've had since my college days for just such a job. Starting in the center, working my way out to the edges, watching the miracle happen again as the sweet-smelling gesso tightened the canvas up like an old prude's mouth.

Then, that one got set aside. I'm not quite ready to work on that painting, but I did start on a study for it. Started, and it went terribly awry, strangely. I painted on it for perhaps half an hour, hated where it was going, hated what I was doing, and set it aside. Picked up another, one with a cartoon already on it that I didn't care for a great deal (another chess piece study, actually) and took off in a new direction. I'd thought about populating the bottom of my big canvas with some strange little things, and I'd just watched Hellboy II again, and kept remembering the Troll Market, and the two figures who passed through in the background carrying what looked like huge Chinese paper lanterns made like koi fish, only very stylized.

So, I took that idea and worked on it. Practice for myself in making round things look round, practice in using colours outside of my usual palette (not entirely but I don't often go the red-orange-yellow route) and looking at something that I might or might not include in the big canvas, I guess. A dry run so to speak, especially since this particular pair of things isn't part of my usual vocabulary of images.

It was nice to be working, though, smoothly and quickly, which is how I like to paint. Not going entirely into abstract action-painting, and certainly not using the trowel, tho I do love a good trowel-painting, applying pigment so thick it's like spreading cake icing. No, instead just a fast, free application of paint, working at fooling the eye into believing a pair of flat objects are actually round.

The magic worked again, in its own strange way. Hours passed, I completed it, liked it. Set it aside to dry, cleaned up my work area and returned my office back to my office and not my studio. The smell of turps and oil pigment still lingers strong, but it's all put away again until next Sunday afternoon.

I think I need to get my sketchbook out, though. I feel a long-legged harpsichord coming on. Perhaps one with orangey-red almost-fish-lanterns under it. Or perhaps not.

(That white sheen you see isn't actually pigment, it's the wet oil reflecting the flash. Not much way to get around that unless I wait three weeks for it to dry and THEN take the photo, which pretty much ruins the idea of posting photos as I finish these things.)

A Little Dab'll Do Ya

2009-08-30T20:33:00.000-05:00

First and foremost, if you're reading this on my Facebook page, click here or point your browser to http://irrelephant.blogspot.com if the FB nazis render it inoperable to go to the actual blog where these originate. There's not THAT much more here as opposed to there, certainly less Mafia Wars and "What Colour Underwear Are You?" quiz results, but you never know, you might find something you like. Better, you might find something you don't like. And there's always the archives.

Anyway. On to more pressing matters.

Mature style.

I used to hate that term before I knew anything about anything. I used to think it was bunkum, that it was made up to make people feel like the people who HAD 'mature styles' were somehow better than they were. Oddly enough, and not for the last time, I was wrong.

When I first entered college a very dear friend of mine went south to LSU while I stayed here to attend a hellishly Conservative Christian college. To keep in touch my friend and I wrote letters to each other*. It quickly became a competition to see who could write the weirdest letters. Length (six pages was a minimum) was inclusive under the heading 'weird,' as was nested parenthesis, long rambling rants about the minutae of our everyday lives, changing penmanship styles, using foreign languages and, well, you get the picture. We'd even both go so far as to begin new letters as soon as the last completed one was mailed off, so that we could quickly get another one off as soon as we received one. It was a sickness.

It also a) further ingrained my utterly terrible penmanship and b) formed my mature style of writing. If you've not noticed I've always written in a very conversational format, and very stream-of consciousness. If it's in my head it comes out my fingertips and onto the screen, and I usually post with very little editing. Just not in my nature. Me, I blame Jeff. I suggest you do the same. Bastard hasn't written me in years.

Here of late, and again, if you've been following my Facebook account you know this already, I'm painting again. I do so at the arm-twisting of my therapist who tapped into what is possibly my One True Devotion. And, it goes without saying, the arm-twisting of my syster, my friends and even some complete strangers who shouted well-meaning things at me one day last month in the street as I waited for a bus to drive over me.

Like my letter writing fixation I've been painting oil on canvas since my college days, only not with the frequency or tenacity with which I write. Used to write. Started again. You know. Plus there is a gap measured in years during which my oils literally dried in their tubes and my brushes suffered whatever it is brushes suffer when they're not used. Cleaning clogged drains. Working on school science fair projects. Cleaning dog's teeth. The usual. Not so my writing, so you see the difference that I feel when I see my 'mature style' on the page and when I look at a canvas I've just finished. There's not a lot of difference between what I think and what shows up in my writing. The disparity between the picture in my head and the painted image, however, is a VAST one.

I'll freely admit it wasn't until last night that I finally broke down and got back into painting fully. A late-evening jaunt brought me to the local hobby store and I spent a fair bit of my painstakingly collected cash on new palette knives, some big 12 oz tubes of pigment and a variety of brushes. Cheap ones but plentiful, the way I like it. My style (such as it is) doesn't require sable brushes. I'm not doing portraiture here, nor am I selling these to the Guggenheim, so brushes made from virgin's pubes are not in my budget.

I've set aside Sundays as my painting day. I work at my job all week then work at house duties in the evenings to make sure that by the time Sunday rolls around I can be in my office shoving the big wingback chair out of the way and throwing down the dropcloth that has delineated "My Studio Space" since the day I first began painting in earnest in college. I take up one of the many blank canvases I have amassed over the years, confine it within my easel and I work at it anywhere from three to six hours, from just before lunch to well into the afternoon. It's a healing time. A very narrow-focus time. A particularly ME time, surrounded by the smells and the sensations that remind me of the only time I ever truly enjoyed college. Creation time. Studio time.

Mature style. That's the kicker. Even with a degree from an accredited, stick-up-its-ass college I don't have a mature style yet. I haven't painted nearly enough to have found something that works for me, a certain turn of the brush that says "This is his work" like my writing does. I look back over my (albeit small) body of work and I see certain terms, certain visual pieces of a vocabulary that I feel the need to use. I have a symbology that grows and branches that is mine, I can say that with certainty. In my creative time I've branched out many ways, trying to find my voice. I've worked decoupage (French for "glue shite to other shite and then varnish the lot within an inch of its life") into my painted works, and still wander in and out of an impasto (Italian for "slather the paint on like you're icing a cake, capiche?") technique and I even tried a sort of comic-book style a few times, where the canvas was divided by heavy black irregular borders and the story was read left to right and top to bottom, a book rendered in paint on canvas.

A friend of mine to whom I gave that particular painting said that for all my railing against having no style it was still very much my style. He said "it's your colours." I didn't see it myself, the painting being done mostly in a sort of ghastly, sickly green, but I took his word for it.

That statement made a decade or more ago still makes me wonder. From the first day I dabbed brush on canvas I knew that Surrealism was my only avenue. It's been one of the very few things that I've ever been absolutely certain of. Even doing simple student exercises I tried to render the unusual, the dreamlike, the vaguely menacing in my images. The rest? The rest has been conjecture and exploration and wandering in the desert looking for the burning giraffe and the bathtub full of brightly-coloured machine parts. The checkerboard patterns and the giant burnt matchstick, the vastly oversized origami sculptures and the rusted pipework, the crescent-shape and its ever-attendant opened orb, the claw-foot bathtub and the walls that aren't quite straight, those are my vocabulary; the procedure, the actual process of rendering them, that's the part that still chafes.

Perhaps I won't recognise my mature style until it's been here so long I take it for granted and stop watching for it, like my writing style. I don't consciously work at writing like this, I just write and what comes out is...me. Perhaps part of having a mature style is no longer questing for a certain style and simply lies in doing whatever comes naturally. Letting the paint fall where it may, letting the muscles do what they want to do while the brush rests between my fingers, reproducing the world that my mind swims in.

Nah. Can't be THAT easy.

___________________________
* For those of you not old enough to remember pens and paper, they were the main form of written communication before text messages. Watery carbon was dispensed from a stylus onto bits of thinly-pulped wood, and the result was folded and placed into an enclosure, also made of pulped wood. The resulting "letter" was sent via a very unreliable physical delivery method to the recipient at an exorbitant charge, sometimes taking up to a week or longer to arrive. IDK. OMG WTF rite? :-P

Too Good Not To Share

2009-08-26T20:43:00.000-05:00

It's a praying mantis, believe it or not. Not like any one I've ever seen before, but a mantis certainly enough.

Jogging Through

2009-08-26T20:39:00.000-05:00

Well, not jogging, I don't jog anymore. I wobble, yes. I jiggle, most definitely. Jog? Nah. Maybe joggle.

Anyway.

Just wanted to say that even tho I don't have the prerequisite hour it usually takes me to write a 'for real' blog post I did want to take a few minutes to tell you that things are looking up. I feel better than I have in a long time, thanks to some determined therapy, a slight change in diet and the addition of some all-natural supplements (ie I'm devouring animal glands and so forth. Honest. Ground up, freeze-dried, powdered-and-put-in-a-capsule animal glands. Among other things. Healthy!) The funny thing is, it's actually working. A few days ago An Incident occurred that as little as two weeks ago would have had me crash-and-burning, in a serious depression spiral downward. The moment came, I knew it was going to happen, I started to crash, I clenched for it and...

nothing.

Nothing else happened. I got angry, I got a little anxious, I got a little black-edged, but nothing, far and away NOTHING on how it used to be. I persevered, I made it through the day intact, and came out the other side feeling good enough to hop on the mower, light up a nice big cigar, pop in the earbuds and cut some grass to Steely Dan and Beethoven.

As little as two weeks ago I would have been ruined for the day, if not longer. As little as one week ago I'd have been crushed for the day, struggling under the load of anxiety. That day? Nothing unbearable by any mean. Utterly astounding. I love it.

The best part of it? Fall is coming. I can feel it in the mornings. I can smell it in the air. The October People are coming. I can hear their dry leaf rustling footfalls down the sidewalk. I can smell the cinnamon spice mummy-wrappings of their clothes.

They're coming, and I'm standing here with open arms.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

2009-08-20T19:51:00.003-05:00

Okay, so truth be told I've had in my head for a while now a post about depression. My depression and crippling anxiety. The twin problems that have plagued me for most of my life but most especially and most effectively this entire summer. The two things that have contributed to keeping me away from writing and from much social contact and from much anything, really. In the typewriter in my head I've written the whole post out as a comparison of my mental state transposed against the state of my garden. It's not going to be the easiest post to write, but I think it needs to be said.

Just not right now.

Instead, for now, I give you:

A Tale Of Two Lawn Mowers*

So there I was, ready to cut grass. Hauled my big red Craftsman 54" deck lawn tractor out of the shed and fired it up. And promptly heard a horrific noise and felt a violent, sick-dog shaking all through the frame. Killed the motor and realised that a tiny little rubber grommet that likely costs about a nickle had torn, thereby letting a simple little fresh-air filter mounted to what would be the cylinder head on a car engine pop loose. The resulting small and well-hidden opening let oil leak out while Mrs. I cut the back yard last week and unbeknownst to her the engine ran just about empty of oil.

I'm not sure what exactly is wrong with it, not having brought it to the mower shop but my brother who knows mechanicing and has had the same problem said they will just replace the entire motor because it's cheaper than digging into it.

Yay.

No biggie, tho. I asked said brother if I could borrow his mower, and he readily agreed, even giving me a tank-full of fuel gratis.

Now, if you recall, I have one of those big La-Z-Boy lawn tractors with the cush seat and the giant floorboards and all that. I keep careful care of it, drive it none too fast, even wash it occasionally. I keep the deck clear of debris, sharpen the blades regularly and spray the 'inside' of the deck with grill cooking spray to keep the grass from sticking. As a rule of thumb I also try not to run over sticks...that is, sticks thicker than my thumb.

My brother isn't like me. He's got one of those devilishly fast zero-turning-radius mowers, the kind that replaces the steering wheel with a pair of bent tubular handlebars that wrap up around you like the safety device on a roller coaster. The motor is in the wrong place (it's in the back) and it doesn't even have a proper hood. Instead what it has is a wide flat deck with a raised lip in the front that you use to brace yourself against because chances are good that at least once a summer you'll forget, twist a bar the wrong way and fling yourself arse over teakettle off it, and you need that lip up front to propel yourself away from the hellishly fast-spinning blades that are inches from your tender feet. He's also of the opinion that if you can drive over it you can cut it, and if you can't drive over it then you're not going fast enough and need to back up and get a longer running start at it.

My brother's mower is a nasty bit of business. It's never been washed. He confided in me today that in the three years he's owned it he's never even changed the oil, and that the length of aluminum pipe rattling around on the flat deck was so that I could knock the grass away from the discharge on the deck because the blades were dull and it doesn't throw the grass out like it's supposed to, so it jams. Often. And that black plastic guard that is designed to carefully redirect the grass clippings away and behind the deck? It's been gone for years. When it runs at full throttle (it only has two settings--Off and Ballistic) it picks up a sort of cyclic vibration, like something in the blade drive is just slightly warped, which sets up a resonance in your bladder about five minutes into cutting.

Now I will say this about it--it's fast. My regular grass-cutting regime takes me four hours a week. I performed the same acreage of cutting on my brother's mower in one, and first grade math tells us that with my brother's ZTR machine I'm moving 10.235 times as fast as I do on my own mower. That's crazy fast, kids.

See, that's the other thing. On my mower I know I have time to think. I'm not rocketing around the yard clinging tenaciously with my buttocks to a very slick vinyl-covered seat that would be more at home on a bicycle. There's no danger of being flung headlong over the steering wheel on my mower because it's simply Not That Fast. The ZTR? Every single turn I made had me clenching for dear life, and my yard is rough enough in patches that at the speed I was forced to travel bits of me would start bouncing with a ferocity that nearly disemboweled me at one point and I swear made me pee blood that evening.

Or maybe I ate too many beets. But I doubt it.

Don't get me wrong, it's fun, sort of. Fun like having to duck under the "Police Line Do Not Cross" tape so you can ride a roller coaster at a forgotten amusement park. Fun like smearing yourself in A-1 steak sauce and running through the dog pound. Fun like finding a motor scooter in the barn out back, shoehorning a V-8 small block into it and taking the resulting Frankensteinian monster downtown for a near-suicidal careen around the production line at the Broken Glass And Razor Blades factory.

Yes, there's something to be said for knocking three hours off your four hour cutting time. Thing being, there's not a lot of opportunity for unhurried pondering of life, the universe and everything in the fading summer heat. On my lawn tractor, safely ensconced on the huge, supportive seat I can leisurely smoke a cigar and think about things long and deeply while a very tiny bit of my hindbrain does the decision making for the driving. On the ZTR my thoughts ran more toward "Damnit I knew I was turning too hard and now I've gouged my my azalea bush," and "Oh crap did I just mow over a full-grown badger? Where did all that fur come from?" and "Holy gold-plated baby Jeebus I'm flying over the steering sticks right into the hellishly fast-spinning dull blades that are inches from my tender feet!"

Mrs. I watched me careen around the back yard this afternoon for the three and a half minutes it took me to cut the acre of grass back there, and when I'd come in and sat long enough to still the trembling in my legs and get my facial tic under control she suggested that we could take our next tax return and buy us one. Meaning I could buy a ZTR mower if I wanted to. I looked at her like she'd just suggested I shove both hands elbow-deep into the output tray at the Dirty Hypodermic Needles And Tetanus factory.

I miss my lawn tractor already. I'm just hoping I can survive the ZTR long enough to cut grass at the old office enough times to pay for a new motor for it.

And no, not a V-8.

___________________________
* And there ends the literary reference. A truly clever, gifted writer would do the entire post drawing eerily clever comparisons between his story and the literary classic, but since I read it once in high school and can recall nothing of that literary masterwork except the catchy title I shan't be taking that route.

Sorry for letting you down again.

Or not.

Pennington 2009

2009-08-09T18:37:00.001-05:00

Another Pennington State Balloon Rally has flown and been packed away in its big canvas bag, ready for next year. I hate to see it go, but I'm proud to say I was a part of it this year, my first time as either a spectator OR a participant.

To start at the wrong end, to begin at the tail and work to the mouth--this morning, after we had flown our last flight, refueled for the last time at the fueling station and had gone back to the hotel to partake of one last complimentary breakfast, David, sitting at the head of the table, our father and mentor and friend performed a simple ceremony that he does at the end of every big festival or competition: he asked each of us around the table to relate our favourite moments from the days-long event.

Just like any event of this scale there are certain moments that stand out in my mind with if not crystal clarity then with a sharpness that will certainly last me for decades to come. Realising Saturday afternoon that the weather was going to prevent us from flying. Eating beignets in a little coffee shop off one of the main drags at 11 at night, our skin smelling of propane, the little cafe nearly packed with people. Watching the looks of utter wonder and astonishment on the faces and in the eyes of so many little children, looks mirrored in their parent's faces.

Each of us at the table had something different, some little moment or larger feeling that they related. Me, I wanted to tip my mind over and let the whole flood out, drown my friends and family in a cascade of images and words and inarticulate feelings.

I wanted to talk about how it looked to me and how I felt sitting in the chase truck watching the larger Skybird nudge and bump against a smaller, rounder balloon flown by a competitor as they both angled for the perfect approach to the target on Pennington Field, and the cheer that I couldn't help but release when I saw the bright pink beanbag leave Skybird's basket, spun and hurled by David toward the yellow "X" on the ground below.

I wanted to talk about what it felt like to look up in the sky as we held Skybird in place as her envelope filled, looking up and seeing dozens of giants gliding by overhead in near-silent splendor. Hugely round jellyfish drifting in currents of air, with tiny wicker baskets instead of stinging tentacles descending from their bellies. How I wanted to call to those passing, extolling them to "Wait! I want to join you!" And then how I could not help but whoop and cheer when I looked up and Skybird's blue and orange globe had joined that strange sea, fitting herself into the mass of bodies as naturally as a seal dives into the sea.

I wanted to tell about the sinking feeling I had when I saw a gaping tear in one panel of a complete stranger's balloon, and how I looked and looked as we passed to make certain that it could be repaired, that it might fly again, my heart torn between that stranger's need and our own balloon's need, approaching the ground.

A part of me was desperate to tell them how good I felt, learning how to refuel the tanks in Skybird's basket. Knowing full well it was a terribly dangerous thing (the attendants only allowed two persons from each balloon crew to enter the grounds, to minimize the risk of life should the store of propane ignite.) Learning the job, learning the dangers of handling a fluid that escapes into the air as a vapor so cold you cannot touch it with bare hands lest you be burned. Taking the responsibility for doing it right, and safely, having that responsibility placed in your hands by a teacher who knows better than you, who knows that to learn you have to do, and you have to make mistakes as you learn.

And then the child in me wanted to tell them that the jet of white propane vapor vented out of the tall thin exhaust pipes as we completed the refueling process made me think of whales breaching, blasting out air in a white plume.

A part of me too could have talked about my own role as teacher--squatting in the grass while swarms of little children with curiosity in their hearts and fire in their eyes pointed and asked and probed, desperate for knowledge. Talking to one stranger after another, answering questions about lift and size and wicker and when we'd be inflating and when we'd be racing and when would we be back? I wanted to talk about the Mexican gentleman who asked a constant stream of questions in rapid, heavily accented English who then, upon devouring my words poured them back out of his mouth in a liquid stream of Spanish for his wife, while his three sons climbed around and in and out of the basket asking their own questions. How good it felt to enlighten people about what we do, how fulfilling it was to know the answers to the questions they asked.

Of course a part of me wanted to talk about the competition, the sense of pride I felt every time I saw Skybird moving into position to toss a ring or scale a beanbag with it's trailing plastic tail at the target. I wanted to crow jubilant laughter, retelling this morning's misplaced toss: finding a competitor directly below us, between us and the target David decided to toss the balloon ONTO the other balloon, trying to make it slide down the slick nylon sides and perhaps land where it needed to be. How chagrined David looked when the yellow beanbag plopped dead center onto their top and stayed, and the childlike glee that appeared moments later, a little boy who has done something not terribly wrong but frightfully funny and has gotten away with it.

Naturally I wanted to tell them how proud I was to sit with the pilots during briefing. How at Natchez last year I stared into the open-sided tent at all those people listening to the briefing, feeling like an outsider, a 'less than.' Wondering what the presenter was saying, how I longed to be sitting there with them. How proud I was to sit there Saturday and Sunday morning beside my teacher, behind the paper "24" that was our assigned number for the festival. How it felt to know that I was the 'new guy,' the student pilot, wondering how many people would later find David in a quiet moment, pull him aside and ask who the guy with the moustache and the dorky grin was. And of course how it felt to walk back to the truck after the briefing, numbers and wind velocities and targets bouncing around my head as my feet longed to break into a run, eager to find our spot and launch.

And then there was the part of me that wanted to go on and on about how incredible it was to see the balloons flying out over the mirror of a still lake. How I'd heard it described a dozen times or more, how I'd seen the photos but never imagined how incredible it would look in person, from the vantage point of the waterfowl whose day we disturbed.

To slip the surly bounds of Earth indeed.

______________________
The complete set of Pennington 2009 photos can be seen here.

You Cannot Step On The Same Piece Of River Twice

2009-08-03T20:01:00.002-05:00

Long 'way around to say what everyone knows: change is inevitable, and constant.

Not that all of us like that. Not that all change is good.

This has been the Summer of Change for me, and it's been uncomfortable to say the least. This summer more than any stretch of time for me has involved dynamic leaps and shudders, twists and curves. I've had to deal with more new things these past few months than I've had to deal with, it seems, in a very long time. One after the other they set me up and knock me down again.

I had to put my cat of 19 years to sleep this summer. Her kidneys finally began failing her, and she put her small head in my palm one last time when the euthanasia drugs reached her heart.

My daughter is going to be a high school freshman this year. She'll be home in two days, and in one week from today she'll be going to her first day as a freshman. Everything changes when you hit high school, and my own high school experiences were varied and not nearly always positive, so of course being a parent I'm terrified that her high school experiences (at a different school than the one I went to, to make matters worse) will be less than 100% perfect. That she will have to endure some of the same wrenching and tearing that I had to endure.

A dear friend lost her beloved husband of just a handful of years, leaving her with two young children. I cannot imagine how she feels, and how her little ones are dealing with it. To make matters worse she lives in another state, so I can't even sit with her to talk about it, to help her in the healing process.

The list, which gets pretty boring to someone who isn't me goes on and on, but to cap this summer off my favourite aunt died of liver cancer just a few days ago. Her and her husband, who is my favourite uncle of all had been married for 67 years. We drove my mom down to Lake Charles this last Sunday to attend the wake, and it reawakened all sorts of memories of my childhood in Mississippi at my grandparent's house. Seeing her lying there surrounded by flowers all I could think about was sitting with her on my grandparent's floor building puzzles with her. She loved puzzles as much as I did, and we'd spend hours in the evenings carefully assembling landscapes and still lifes on the carpet while everyone else talked or played cards or sat on the porch swing and watched the fire flies light up the black night.

A lot of my childhood is tied up in that old white wooden house, but there's one thing in particular that I always come 'round to when I think about my father's and my grandfather's home. In front of the house is a circular gravel driveway, and just off center of that gravel drive there stood a pecan tree. This particular tree was a great grandfather amongst trees; a native pecan, so it grew tiny little pecans, spending its energy instead in growing tall and wide. My grandfather hung a swing from a branch of that tree some 80 or so years ago, to entertain his four sons. Two lengths of heavy chain and a seat made out of a plank of oak that must have been two inches thick, and little did he know how long it was be there when he first climbed up there to secure the chains.

That swing entertained three generations of children and adults both. My father and his brothers, then their children, boys and girls both, and then when those children grew up their children were introduced to it. I've pushed my daughter in that swing, and cousins of mine, and even friends whom we've invited over the years. I know my cousins have done the same thing. The chain never got rusty at the lowermost reaches because constant use by generations of hands kept it polished to a satin smoothness. The wires or eyebolts that attached the chain to the branch's circumference were never seen by the second generation--they'd been there so long that even when I was a kid you could no longer see the attachment point, long since overgrown by the slow, steady encroachment of the branch as it thickened into a width bigger than most tree trunks. The chains simply went up and up and stopped at wood, as though the tree had changed its structure just enough to depend a pair of supports for the wooden seat and a single passenger.

The tree was immensely tall, and that branch was some thirty or more feet up, so the swing had a tremendous arc to it. If you were alone, and patient, by tugging on the long chains you could after a while stay airborne for what seemed like forever. If you had the help of a bigger brother or an older cousin who could push--well, you could fly so high you felt like if you let go at the top of the arc and slipped off the worn wooden seat you could spread your arms and soar over the tops of the pine forest that bordered the land. It became a point of pride with the older boys that you were a man when you could get enough height going that, with a running start you could push your passenger so hard and so straight you could run, upright, under the seat as the arc carried them over your head.

Talking with my bereaved uncle's two sons, the caretakers of the house and land now, I found out that the old pecan, like my aunt, like all of us have to do sooner or later, had succumbed to the ravages of age. Rot had set into its soft insides at some point and eaten at it, slowly but inexorably until the massive tree was just a shell, and to keep it from falling on the house it shaded and sheltered they had to have it cut down. I was told that it was so thick around the trunk that the tree removal specialists had to call in a favor from a local logging company--a commercial cutter's chainsaw was needed to cut it, and then those pieces had to be cut and cut again by the smaller saws until they could be loaded into the truck.

I can't imagine the house without that pecan tree there, spreading branches over what seemed like half the yard. I cannot imagine driving up the driveway, hearing the grey gravel crunch under the tires after a three hour car trip and not seeing, at the top of the hill that swing hanging there, and the massive trunk that supported the branch on which it depended. I can't imagine not seeing the grandfather's massive roots surrounded by a sea of red spider lily flowers in fall, or by white wildflowers in summer.

So much changes. Little changes at the house I could understand. The old wooden pump house gave way to a metal shed to store equipment in. The brambles and woods that crowded so close upon the yard were pushed back, the old fence where the dewberries used to hang thick and succulent was cleaned away because there hadn't been cattle to enclose in decades. The furniture inside stayed the same but photographs changed and tiny bits of bric-a-brac went to new homes as family members requested some special memento or other. The wooden floors polished smooth by the tread of thousands of feet remain. The wooden casement windows are still there, but I heard, after hearing of the death of that old tree that even the house was starting to run down. Standing empty for so long as it has the small maintenance issues quickly become legion, become too big to handle easily, and I can see the day, not soon but eventually when even the house will be torn down.

I can still see my uncle standing there, his white hair and my grandfather's face. I can hear the rumble of his voice, the echo of his laugh stretching back across all of my childhood in the same way I can hear my aunt's voice. I know that one day, perhaps soon, he too will be lying there, surrounded by flowers and mourners, family and friends and well-wishers, and I know that the rest of us will have to go on a little piece more, will have a little more time to walk down the road.

I can't go back there now. Oh, I know the route by heart even though I've not driven it in years. What I can't do to myself is replace the image in my heart with the image as it is now--one less guardian tree there, the swing that filled so many of my childhood hours gone, the house falling slowly into ruin. And now the ghost, figuratively, of my aunt. Sitting on the floor with me building puzzles I'd brought all the way from home, just because I knew Aunt Eva was going to be there when I arrived.

Is it any wonder change gnaws at me?

"Neither A Borrower Nor A Lender Be..."

2009-07-23T19:49:00.004-05:00

Lord Polonius, the 'unseen good old man' of Shakespeare's tragedy had it right. Shame I didn't listen to him.

When I was a kid of some 16 years old I'd just gotten my first taste of having money, and I decided I liked it. Unlike my younger brother, who I think is half Jew, I liked spending it, too. Then came the fateful day around my freshman year in high school that I decided that I needed to get a credit card to earn myself a credit rating. What I planned on doing with a credit rating living in a bedroom in my parent's house is beyond me, but I applied for and received a Sears credit card one fateful day in 1985. With it I purchased a Sears LXI stereo rack system for $500, complete with tower speakers and a wooden shelving system with a glass door on the front and a glass lid over the turntable on top.

Thus began my slavery to credit.

I beat the system once, over a decade ago. My father had died and my mother went ahead and parceled up our inheritance from his benefits. My brother used his to begin to finance the construction of his new house. Me, I paid off all my credit card debt. Every penny. I was a free man for all of perhaps six months. I'd not canceled the cards, you see, just cut them up and tried to forget about them. It crept up slowly, my debt, as it always does. I needed something here, an emergency came up there, and it was always so easy to use the credit cards until I had piled every single stone of that entire mountain right back on my shoulders, plus a few boulders for the road. Oh, don't get me wrong, I always managed to keep the notes paid, but never managed to get much beyond that, and we all know that's where the trap is. You pay interest and you pay interest but you might as well be eating soup with a fork for all the advancement you're getting.

I got profoundly lucky. I got in a motorcycle wreck last October and totaled my bike. Between the law suit settlement check and a very large financial gift from my father in law I paid off all my credit cards. Again. This time for real. No going back. It's not often that opportunity comes to your door twice. It's rare enough that it knocks the first time: I'm not fool enough to think it'll return thrice.

A few months have passed, the last of the fees and interests and fiddly bits of plastic debt have been paid down and all the credit card statements read "$0.00". Now comes the hard part. Canceling them.

I've had difficult tasks in my life. I've had onerous jobs to do, jobs that really genuinely wore on me. I'd even say I've had to suffer, just a little, but I've never, EVER had to do anything quite as hard as cancel a credit card. I think next time I'd sooner reach down a pit bull's throat to pull the steak back out of his stomach than deal with trying to cancel a credit card.

I figured it was pretty easy. Hell, it was an option on the VRU system after you dug in a ways. I got a person on the phone who went by the name "Zack." Little did I know I was about to battle to take possession of my gods-damned SOUL. It started out easy enough. He asked a few simple questions to verify my identity. I verified with him that I'd like to cancel my credit card account. That's when Zack went on the attack.

He questioned my judgment. He asked if I was sure I wanted to destroy all the careful work I'd done building up my credit rating. He reminded me that I needed credit to buy a house, to pay for college, to etc etc etc. I riposted every stab, threw back in his face that I now had CASH to pay for what I needed, and didn't need credit. I told him that if I wanted something I'd damned well save up for it, not just rush out and charge it. I showed him several ways that I understood I'd just pulled my foot out of the trap and he for sure wasn't going to convince me to put my foot BACK in the rusty jaws. I even went so far as to demand that he put his supervisor on. He insisted HE was a supervisor and before I could riposte again he'd feinted from a new direction and got me off THAT line.

We kept fencing, back and forth, he and I. He wasn't going to give up until I'd put my soul back in hock to Capital One Bank and I wasn't going to give up until that account was finito. I finally got so tired of it that I got nasty, used a few foul words and let my voice crank up, and he responded with a curt "Let's keep this on a professional level." I could have happily torn his balls off and professionally choked him with them, but I persevered. So did he. I think we must have gone around for ten minutes or more. Zack was ready to sell me my slave collar back, and I insisted that I didn't want it, didn't need it, and for damned sure wasn't going to put it back on for HIS benefit.

Finally I guess I had spoken enough sense that Zack decided that I was, in fact, serious about canceling my Capital One slavery card. Sweat pouring down my face, fists clenched in righteous anger and determination I agreed that yes, I was bloody well serious. And just like that, it was over. He rattled off a litany of required warnings about me using the card again and fees being refunded if I'd paid them in the last month, and that how they'd really miss me there in the sugar mines of Bolivia where I'd just spent the last ten years labouring to pay off an impossible debt.

I wanted to cheerfully tell him to fuck off, but I didn't. I graciously thanked him and hung up the phone.

"What did I just escape from?" I asked myself. What prison without bars and walls have I gotten myself out of? If a junkie wants to quit drugs his dealer doesn't come and browbeat him until he's got that needle back in his vein or that spliff in his fingers. Casinos don't send out thugs to drag compulsive gamblers back into the queasy light coming off the one-armed bandit when grandma has decided she's spent enough nickles, but just try and cut off the credit card company's source of easy money and see if they don't put their best people on you to help you keep that iron collar locked around your neck.

No Zack, you can threaten and cajole and sell all you want--I'm free of my slavery and my 'good credit rating' and all that mystic smoke and mirrors bull the capitalists use to keep me in thrall to the debt gods. No, I'm done. Cash on the barrelhead, my friend. If I want it bad enough then I'll save for it, and if I can't afford to save for it then I can't afford to own it.

I figure next week I'll gird my loins, strap on my sword and shield and vanquish the dragon that is named Canceling My Discover Card.

Airburst! With Report!

2009-07-05T15:31:00.003-05:00

You know, leftover grilled zucchini and California rolls go really well together? But then again, most things go well with grilled zucchini, especially when they're fresh-from-your-garden zucchini, especially after a nice long weekend full of fireworks and enough barbecue'd goodies to feed a small third-world country.

So here it is, the Fifth of July. Nothing important, calendar-wise (that I'm aware of, I mean, there may be some special National Day Of... today, but I've never heard of it.) It's just the day after Independence Day, or "Thank God They're Gone Day" if you're from England. That particular quiet day where, thankfully, I didn't have to immediately return to work, where I can sit around and look at the house that's still clean from the painstaking scouring it got Friday, looking at the yard that won't need to be cut until next week.

Driving down our little country lane this morning en route to cutting grass at work there was the usual signs of post-Fourth celebrations. Each driveway had its own little signs--black scorch marks on pale grey concrete, burnt Roman Candle tubes lying drunkenly around, and piles of clear cello torn off and gleefully discarded by small hands. My field was no different--this morning going to feed the chickens I saw by pale golden morning light the signs of last night's fireworks party: scorched squat blocks of tubes wrapped in colourful paper, the black PVC tube left over from a huge collection of double-burst mortal shells and the burned remains of pale tan punks stuck in the ground, as well as a few red plastic drink cups tossed helter skelter in the green grass.

It was one more in the long chain of fireworks memories for me, a good one, as every one is. There's something about the smell of burnt gunpowder and paper in the air, something about the trembling instant of a huge carnation of burning light in the air, as transitory as the breaths of air that came and went last night, stirring the heat around a little. Lsat night seemed to be all about near-misses, though. Perhaps my luck biting me in the butt for landing a work-at-home job, or payback for some windfall yet to come.

Oh, no bloodshed last night, no one even got burned, but many near misses, many almost-was-bads. Ever since they've come out for public purchase I've been a huge fan of the mortar shell-style fireworks--the huge rectangular boxes with garish cartoons on the front, advertising "Wizard Airburst Shells With Report!" or "Nerves Of The Steel!" Inside lurks a black PVC tube with a flat base and innocuous tan-paper wrapped spheres, each with a little pad of gunpowder at the bottom and an impossibly long, terrifyingly fast fuse. In the finest tradition of mortarmen everywhere you stand the tube up somewhere stable and drop the paper shell inside, listen for the soft tap as it strikes bottom. That long fuse just barely extends over the top of the mortar's tube, just enough room for you to hold it with fingers that will soon be scorched by punk or lighter or wonderfully fast sizzling as the fuse takes fire.

A few heart-beats later and the tube makes a wonderful hollow "THUMP" as the charge sends the firework high in the air and then a few heartbeats later it expldoes into one or two or three glorious flowers of fire and sparks and then is no more. It's long been a habit of ours to buy two, and fire them as simultaneously as possible, filling the sky for just a brief moment with multiple bursts, different colours vying with each other for dominance, sparkling and crackling pieces flowing outward from the center of the burst.

I learned an important lesson last night about those mortars--putting a double shell in a mortar tube designed for single-stack shells doesn't work. My brother-in-law and I lit and moved off, and while his shell boomed and soared some ninety feet in the air or more mine only made it thirty feet or less and exploded in all its glory, the wonders of pyrokinetics exposed for all to see at a height not intended for explosions. I was still running when it burst, and my father-in-law said it looked like a scene from Apocalypse Now: the hero striding out of the jungle, the golden white flares of thousands of tiny burning fragments spreading out from just behind my back. As much as I love the image I doubt any Viet-Nam soldier was ever caught in combat with a white T-shirt extolling his local NPR station, a pair of black shorts and a white straw Panama hat. Or, or for that matter, a red plastic cup with Sprite and Bombay Gin on ice in his hand.

I have to wonder what it's like to be outside shooting fireworks in cool weather, or even mild weather. I was listening to Garrison Keillor broadcasting their 35th anniversary show from Minnesota and it was something like 70 degrees there, almost frozen compared to the 90 or so it was last night here in the Delta. I don't know how I'd handle it, chewing on a cigar, taking sips from my drink, trickles of sweat making their slow way along my spine. I wonder what it might be like to stand in a field of grass in blue jeans and a flannel shirt lighting those fuses, smelling that sweet, sharp cordite smell in the air, watching the white plumes of smoke billow and roll out across the air.

Every time I go out with a bag full of potential I think back to the wild chills evoked in me as a kid lighting black snakes, those tiny pills that would hiss and sizzle into long chains of ash and the joy of filling the air with purple or red or green smoke from the small globes of smoke bombs. Later, carefully unwinding long chains of Black Cat firecrackers from their paper wrapper and their gunpowder-coated fuses woven cleverly together, so that each one could be lit and tossed at something or someone. Graduating to the plastic-finned rockets and thence to the mortar shells and huge blocks of firework tubes all wrapped in balsa wood and paper. Every time I go out I wonder what next time will bring, and wish that it could last just a little longer.

"I'm Sorry Dave, I'm Afraid I Can't Do That."

2009-06-27T14:49:00.005-05:00

"Life imitates art." Not sure who said it first, but the idea is as old as Ovid. In Metamorphoses he writes a scene wherein "Nature in her genius had imitated art." My new position in the company has run me smack up against a phenomenon in the same vein, and it's got me angry, strangely enough.

I know that all of you can, without trying too hard, pinpoint a thing you saw on tv or read about in a fiction novel that, years or decades later became not only real but commonplace. H. G. Wells wrote about men traveling to the Moon--here in the 21st century we're about to bomb it (since the first step to helping any new country to democracy is to bomb the shite out of it, right?) Star Trek (both the old one and the new ones) are prime examples. Jim Kirk swaggered around for several seasons with a thick gold Motorola RAZR flip phone velcroed to his belt several decades before Samsung and Nokia and Ma Bell got into the cellular business. Even shiny-pated Cap'n Picard had it going on--touch panel everything. Geordie taps an icon on a glass screen and a new 'window' opens up. Tap again, phasers blow the bad guys to vapor. Data taps a few glowing icons on his panel and they're off at five times the speed of light to next week's mission. Have you seen the new HP touch-screen computers? Beautiful black glass panels with no mouse, no keyboard. "The computer is personal again." Got an iPhone? There you are--Picard would see his computer's ancestor there as sure as we look an Apple IIe and recognise it as the feeble-minded precursor to our lighting-fast, ultra elegant laptops.

Speaking of input devices, did Captain's Kirk and Picard ever have to have someone bring over a Microsoft Wave keyboard and a wireless mouse so they could ask the computer questions? Of course not, they just spoke to some unseen point in the air and the computer answered: "Commander Riker is on Deck Seven, using the toilet." Nuance communications (a hot stock tip for you there) and their Dragon Naturally Speaking software has taken the voice recognition ball and run with it--for a few hundred dollars and the price of a microphone you can talk to your computer and it writes what you talk.

Better yet, call 411: you're not going to get a person anymore, you're going to get a computer program running on a computer that is part of a server farm in some heavily air-conditioned windowless room. That computer program is going to ask you in flawless English a few simple questions and then it's going to give you the phone number you want, and for a small charge go ahead and connect you to Aunt Susie in her Swiss chalet, and you've never interacted with a single human being. Ford and many other auto manufacturers now have systems in their vehicles that can dial the phone for you, change radio stations, play certain artists from your CD collection stored in the cd changer in the trunk and navigate you to the nearest Whole Foods at the same time. All without you taking your hands off the wheel.

My new position has me on the phone pretty much most of the day, speaking to insurance companies so big that in some cases they've schismed into many sub-companies, each also far too big to do anything so last century as hire people to answer the phones. "Heavens no, Johnson, we've got computers for that!" VRU. "Voice Recognition Units" is the term I hear most often, but each company has their own spin on it. You don't talk to a person, sometimes for the entire length of a ten minute phone call. Instead, you save (their) time and (their) payroll costs and you talk to their VRU which asks questions of you in a carefully neutral woman's voice, to which you answer either by pressing numbers on the keypad or, more often than not, by simply saying out loud what you want. The VRU makes a few burbling computer noises just to show that it's working and drops you down one level to the next menu until you get to the snip of information you need.

Me? I hate them. I hate them all.

Give me a real live person. Give me a human being with their infinite foibles, their variety of voice and personality, their sometimes unfathomable accents and yes, their bad moods and good. In my scant few weeks as a telephonically-based employee I've flirted and wheedled my way into gleaning information from human women that no machine would ever give me, no matter how much I deepened my voice and chuckled like Sean Connery after a few Scotch whiskeys. I've formed invaluable relationships with case workers and nurses and even front-line employees at these companies, those poor folks you get if you shout "AGENT!" loud and often enough at the VRU.

What spurned all this ranting, you ask? You've been doing things like paying bills and checking bank balances for years now and never griped, but now you've got a craw-full? Why?

Glad you asked.

Ever really LISTEN to other people talk? Not listen to what they're saying but how they say it. Ever notice in the normal ebb and flow of a conversation that it's a rare person indeed who never stops, verbally? Who never pauses for just a moment to change direction, reform a thought or just take a mental breather for a sheer moment? Often they'll fill a quiet spot with a verbal space-filler, a sort of "don't interrupt me, I'm still talking" sound, a little filler noise. 'Erm.' 'Hmmm.' 'Er.' 'Ah.' 'Oh.' There's at least one for every person on the earth and some are just as personal as they can be, while others are as common as sunshine.

Last Friday I was going through my usual pattern: dial the phone, adjust the headset more comfortably over my ear, arrange my paperwork with one hand and ready my pen over my notebook with the other. I started answering questions: "Yes." "Provider." "Yes." "Authorizations." Reading off strings of alphanumeric policy numbers, tax ID numbers, so forth. Then I said something the computer wasn't programmed to respond to. I don't even remember what it was to be honest. I said something that wasn't on that tier's responses menu, or I made a noise that didn't register as a word. Whatever it was it made the computer fall into a subroutine which was designed to ask me to clarify or repeat myself so it could get back on track. What it said in its perfectly acentless, uncannily neutral woman's voice was:

"Er... sorry, I didn't quite get that."

"Er." A computer just used a verbal space filler. An unremarkable thing, a verbal tic, an undeniably HUMAN thing and some clever programmer somewhere figured he'd ramp up the "Let's talk to Replicants" freakiness one more notch: instead of just sitting silently while the program qued up the next response, instead of a mindless series of bloops and beeps to show me the machine was still connected it had to say "Er" as though it were gathering its thoughts. It was programmed to respond as though somehow I'd caught it off guard, handed it an unexpected reponse and its mind felt the need to fill the confused spot with a verbal non sequitor.

Oh the nerve. The giant brass bollocks.

I covered my surprise and dismay and shock by immediately shouting it down. "AGENT! CUSTOMER SERVICE! GIVE ME A FUCKING HUMAN BEING!" I screamed and railed and drowned it out until it relented. And as if to rub it in, to show that it was, deep in its resistors and capacitors and circuits utterly unphased it said "Oh! Okay, hold on, I'll have to connect you to customer service."

"Oh." As if I'd surprised it. Startled it, deep in its cold electronic guts, somehow startled it while it woolgathered. Or electrongathered. Whatever.

Alvin Toffler back in 1970 called it "future shock." It happens when progress far outstrips our ability to integrate that change into our world view. Too much change, too fast. Stress. Disorientation. Sturm und drang.

I'm curious if Toffler figured into his writing computers who act more and more human? I wonder if he ever found his science fiction-fueled childhood becoming reality around him far faster than he ever dreamed, and furthermore found it more frightening that he could possibly have imagined?

Equilibrium

2009-06-08T19:52:00.003-05:00

That's the lesson David taught me this Sunday morning during my third hot air balloon instruction flight. Equilibrium. It's all about the balance.

It's funny how many balloon piloting lessons have very powerful applications in real life. Have balloonists been holding out on us since the late 1700s? Did the Montgolfier's figure this all out and just nod their powdered wig-surmounted heads to each other and slip a sly wink? I'm starting to think so.

Last Sunday morning was a little scary, let's be honest here. It was my first inflation. It's one thing to climb into the basket, the 80,000 cubic feet of Skybird fully inflated and standing upright, teetering on the edge of slipping off into the air like a rather huge feather. It's entirely another thing to walk around the slowly inflating mass of High Hope (herself only 70,000 cubic feet or thereabouts) as the fan cold-packs her with outside air, climbing under the billowing nylon mass to tug and pull the wrinkles out of the side still lying on the ground. It's still another thing to know that as soon as the pilot instructor gives the signal you're going to climb into the rigging that holds the burner in place, put the uppermost mast against your back, straighten your legs a little bit and fire a huge propane burner into that mass of painfully thin nylon.

Sure enough, though, as inevitable as a sunrise the time came. The wrinkled folds of the envelope were all pulled straight, the huge rainbow mass that always strikes me visually as primarily yellow was as cold packed as it was going to get, and it was time. I threaded my six feet two inches into the wooden uprights, reached into the basket to flip the toggle switch for the pilot light, flipped the second toggle on the burner itself and clicked the sparker a few times. A tiny blue flame appeared, not even a finger length long, almost invisible in the tightly coiled pattern of the burner's upper body. A microscopic mirror image of the flame that fills the envelope with lift. I opened the valve on the propane bottle, David switched off the fan, I pressed my shoulders against the upright and straightened my legs, David lifted, said "Aim for the center and HOLD IT THERE" and I squeezed the trigger.

There really isn't a way to describe what happens next. Heck, for that matter all that last paragraph? I had to make that all up. I don't REMEMBER what happened, I just remember doing it. I wasn't thinking about it, not in a "Step one step two step three" sort of way. I knew what had to be done, I'd watched David do it many times. I just knew that if I slipped, if I let my gaze falter for a moment that burner would turn in my hand and I'd scorch a hole in the material big enough to park the truck in, AND possibly burn one of my friends very badly. So, I left my brain alone and did what I knew needed to be done. David had told me, I'd seen him many times before, I knew what to do so I did it.

Holding that wooden handle in my hand, feeling the vibration, the pressure as propane fired out of the burner nozzles at some 240 psi, seeing the flame and knowing in the back of my mind that the huge blue tongue there was around 30 MILLION BTUs...it's a powerful, scary thing.

The inflation went off without a hitch. The balloon filled, Jim held her from springing up too fast by holding fast to the crown line, and I held steady on the burner for what seemed an eternity as the whole thing stood up around me with the slow, stately grace of a fat man getting to his feet. Before I knew it High Hope wasn't a pile of yellow nylon on the ground but a balloon, full and round high above my head, and I was filling her with heat, lift, the power to slide ever so gently off the face of the jealous earth and into the open sky.

At some point I know the basket stood up and I'd stood on the edge of the basket for a moment, then slipped into the wicker's embrace and was getting ready to fly. I think I remember Joy, David's wife patting me on the shoulder telling me that it was a perfect inflation. I'm pretty certain I remember David passing the chase crew radio to me and me thinking "It's not for me this time, it's for Jim" and passing it along to him. I remember slipping the sparker into my back pocket, and the feel of the suede glove between my palm and the hard wooden handle. I remember firing the burner a few more times, slowly, each time testing the weight, feeling for the tipping point, testing earth's grasp on us.

After one such blast, the roar of the burner over my head, the heat washing down on me I felt a stir under my feet. Equilibrium. We were at the balance point, the point between "not-flying" and "flying." I don't know, but the feeling I got--I wonder if that's how new mothers feel when they first feel their infant stir in their womb. I knew it was near time, and moments later "Weight off" was called and we'd done it. We fell up into the sky.

I won't bore you with the flight details--the practice landings, the incredibly dry mouth I realised I had about halfway through the flight when David offered me a bottle of water. The sound of an invisible deer crashing through the woods under us. The multitude of little landings I made BEFORE I made it to the point that David had indicated and said "Now, land THERE" meaning that I should land there once, not hopscotch skip across twenty feet of field in eight-foot tall hops on my way there. I make for a very tentative pilot.

For me, though, it was enough for me that I'd done the process, from taking out parts and bits from the trailer to standing under the Promethean flame as we drifted out across the sky. What I will say is that I began to learn about equilibrium. About that perfect balance point, where just a little extra on one side or the other pushes the whole thing out of skew and you have to correct. You have to work to regain that state of grace. That feeling of flying. David knows it. That sense of being exactly where you need to be, right now. Equilibrium. In balance. Living in the now.

And now that I've felt it, brushed shoulders with it for just a moment before I overcorrected and bobbed high in the air again or undercorrected and hit the ground with a jolt?

I need more.

Gods Of Commerce

2009-06-04T19:57:00.003-05:00

It's my last night in Baton Rouge. My last night in this hotel. It's been a long, strange two weeks, I can tell you for certain.

The smoking patio of the hotel is an interesting little spot in itself. A simple covered patio, dressed with a black iron fence and decorative stones lining it, matching the carefully placed stones of the patio. It overlooks the side parking lot of the hotel, right into the side parking lot and the slab-side of a Comfort Inn and past that the even taller stone and glass walls of an Embassy Suites. The little strip of road in front of the hotels is faced by a thirty foot tall concrete wall, intended to block the constant roar of traffic from the ten lanes of interstate traffic just on the other side. At the front corner of the parking lot is one of those monstrously huge billboards, a double-sided giant made of brown steel girders and catwalks, huge spotlights and a massive pair of blank faces staring out over the interstates.

The last two weeks when I've wandered out onto the patio to smoke a cigar I've been watched over by a massive image of Waylan Jennings. He stared out over the hotel and the parking lot and the little smoker's patio. Gentle eyes looking out of a wrinkled, tanned face, surmounted by a soft brown hat and a tan leather coat, he looksed like some sort of benevolent god watching over his chosen tobacco users. No smile on that huge face but a certain species of intent watchfulness.

The parking lot is always full of Audis and Jaguars, Mercedes Benzes and Lexus SUVs. Watch for a few minutes and you see a pattern in the people--a constant flow of black rolling luggage, laptop cases and middle-aged men and women with determine but tired expressions. Servants and workers in the service of the gods of industry and communication and banking.

This evening I had a huge hamburger from the restraunt brought up to my room which I devoured with alacrity, and with a full belly I took a cigar from my little humidor wallet and walked to the patio. I lit up, got the puro burning and glanced around. One of the numerous maintenence men was walking by in the parking lot; an old, thin brown man with a thick shock of black hair, dressed in a starched white button-down shirt and pressed black slacks, polished black shoes and belt. He was of that indeterminate age that Hispanic men seem to carry so well--somewhere between forty and a hundred, his face a map of wrinkles and furrows, his deep brown eyes hawk-like and intent.

He was pushing a yellow and black utility cart carefully arranged with brooms and mops, trash can liners and Wet Floor signs. What threw me for a moment was the fact that he was carrying a single fork from the dining room, and at one point when he returned to his cart he placed it back in the center with a practiced motion. I still don't know what he was using it for, but it wasn't being returned to the kitchen, it had a very specific but unseen purpose.

Being me, and being in the reflective mood I was in, I had no trouble seeing this man standing not in front of a yellow Rubbermaid service cart but a stone Aztec altar, not a fork but a razor-sharp bronze blade held in his hand, his enemy tied to the stone slab ready to have his heart cut out with practiced swipes and offered to the gods. The constant roar of ten lanes of traffic just behind the sound-deadening wall fell away and was replaced by the roar of wind sweeping across the mountains, the sharp sound of a truck's airbrakes turned into the scream of a hunting bird high in the clear sky.

I looked up to see what Waylan thought about all this but Waylan wasn't there anymore. Sometime between the moment I drove in this afternoon and the time I returned to the patio, sometime during my suppper Waylan had been replaced with a young, lean, muscled man in black boxing trunks with the word "Punishment" embroidered across the waist band. His hugely muscled arms crossed over his oiled chest he glowered down on the patio with the purest hatred in his eyes, his brows beetled sharply down, a warrior in the upcoming cage match at the local casino. An angry young god, new and determined to prove himself, ready to smite and destroy, ready to leave no stone standing on another in his determination to prove himself worthy of godhood.

I finished my cigar and put it carefully in the spun aluminum repository for butts, opened the glass and chrome door with my magnetic key and stepped back into the faux Art Deco bar, over to the elevator bank and back to my room, identical to every other room in this monolithic place. Not unsure, just...ready to leave this place of unceasing noise and constantly changing faces. Ready for the old gods of my home.

Time Out Of Place

2009-06-01T19:41:00.002-05:00

I've been long absent from the blog-o-sphere, and I apolgise for that. The last three weeks have been very...different for me, and it's taken its toll on my writing.

You guys remember all the goings-on about the new job. The worry, the wondering, the works. Well, as you recall I got the job, and as things stand currently I'm in my second week of training.

Well, not right now. Right now I'm sitting at the work station portion of a Cambria Suites hotel, a $400 a night suite that is so far beyond my normal means that I still flinch whenever one of the numerous staff says "My pleasure!" and sounds like they honestly mean it. I'm more accustomed to Motel 6's and housekeeping people that you cross the street to avoid. I've got a mug of (organic) Chamomile tea sitting here, compliments of the house and one of the huge plasma screen televisions is off but the other (the bedroom one) is on the Sci-Fi Channel since it's ST:TNG night. Tomorrow night is ST:Enterprise, and the next night is the night I will be spending on the smoking patio with a cigar, watched over by a forty-foot tall Waylon Jennings billboard face, but that's neither here nor there. I've got my dark, quiet hole and I stick to it.

I like having a monstrous king-sized bed. I like being able to run the A/C on 70 all night, and I like lingering in the very posh bathroom in the mornings, lingering under the hot water that simply refuses to go cold. I'm not crazy about paying $10 for a hamburger and chips, but I'm getting reimbursed for that, as well as my internet at home when I finally get set up there.

I find myself rambling, and I'm sorry about that. Far different from my usual rambling here. I've spent all last week here, then a hurried, too-short weekend at home and now I am starting week two of two here doing hands-on training. I'm not 100% pleased with the training regime thus far--it's been a lot of information tossed at us by up to five teachers at a time, and it seems finally today that at least some of it has been intended to hide the fact that most of my new job doesn't have a set-in-stone pattern or system. It's all very...vague, and that's bothersome, but I'm determined to make the best of it.

Me, I'm ready to be home working. I'm tired of listening to 17 other people talking on phones, working on laptops and otherwise making a veritable maelstrom of noise and confusion. Mix in a strange workday--start at 8:30 am, lunch at 11 (usually some kind of salad,) off at 5, two enforced 15 minute breaks, a mens room that looks like it got sourced directly from the Ritz Carlton and no idea of what sort of priorities or systems I need to have in place for the new job and I'm a bundle of nerves, stress and unease. Oh, and the owner of the corporation dropped by today to give us a little pep talk, just waltzed right in like he...well hell, he DOES own the place. Me, I'm ready to be home, so I can sit and focus, begin to learn some patterns of my own, figure out how exactly I'm going to go about this. I've had my fill of team-building exercises.

But, the rest of the week will wind down eventually. Soon I'll be quit of the insane snarls of traffic, the overpriced food and, yes, the lovely opulence of this suite. A few more days of mismashed lessons, a few more shifts of wondering where the beautiful geese that hang out in the corporate pond out front are, then one more drive home, this time to stay. Needless to point out the obvious--I'm ready.

At least the tea isn't too bad.

Devil's Darning Needles

2009-05-19T19:48:00.003-05:00

"They used to have four-foot wingspans? Why don't they anymore? Why wasn't I around back then? How do we get those back again?"

That was my reaction back in grade school, when I found out that prehistoric dragonflies were a few steps bigger back then. I guess it's true, tho--size really did matter back then, too.

Me, I grew up with dragonflies. Not in the "I was raised by bugs" sort of way, but somewhat like that. I can easily recall many summers spent chasing dragonflies. If there was utterly nothing I could think of to do (and that took some doing) I could always fall back on Plan B: Chase Dragonflies. It was easy, once you got the hang of it--those marvelous compound eyes gave them practically an entire hemisphere of vision up front, so there was no way you were going to walk up on one if you were anywhere near facing it, but they're effectively blind from behind, so all you had to do was sneak up quietly behind one, reach your fingers out and gently clamp one set of wings in your fingers. After that you could look at them, set them on your fingertip, and then let them go so you could go catch another.

It's what I did today. Chased dragonflies. Oh trust me, I had plenty to do, still do; my vacation has been one long work-fest, and I actually never physically caught one in my fingers, but I took time during the warmth of the afternoon to stop flinging huge bits of pecan tree onto the burn pile to sling my camera around my neck and go bug hunting.

Back when I was a kid my brother and I measured dragonflies by two variables: size and colour. Yeah, more and more this is sounding like it's about to turn pornographic but trust me, for once it's not. You see, around here there is a bewildering variety of dragonflies, in different sizes and colours. The most common are the two smallest, each perhaps the length of my thumb. They all came in brown (a sort of golden bronze colour, really, with black patterning,) and blue. Vis:

Those you could find anywhere. They'd perch with that weird tail-in-the-air manner on the rosebushes, the clothes line, fences, plants, anywhere really and all you had to do was have sharp eyes and the ability to move quietly. I probably caught and released more of those kinds than I've had hot meals.

Then there was the step up. The golden ones, with their heavy bodies and solid colours. I was frankly astounded to find this one stationary.

Those were the ones that never landed, that forever stayed circling and whirling overhead in clouds of hundreds. I remember the first year my brother and I finally got smart and started using a net. No mere butterfly net was good enough for us, though, and we couldn't have afforded one if we wanted to. No, a deep-sea fishing net that my father had in his shop was the answer--a ten foot long aluminum pole with an opening a full yard across and a net almost four feet deep. Even then it was a tough call--those jokers were quick, but still we managed at times to catch one or two, gentle it out of the tangles of the net, examine it in wide-eyed wonder and then let it free to rejoin the swarm.

You see, even then we knew that they were eating mosquitoes at an astonishing rate, and if there was one thing we all hated more than school it was mosquitoes, so the dragonflies were safe to fly, and their only expense was to occasionally be caught, held for a moment, admired and then released.

Then there was the rare bird--the medium-sized green and black ones. Those were the very devil hisself to catch. They'd alight all right, but only for mere moments before flickering back into flight, and even then, if you were lucky enough to be right by one when it landed you had to be FAST to get up in its blind spot and get your fingers close. They simply never stayed put long enough.

(You can see that even this one was about to fly again--her wings are held low and forward, about to flicker eye-blink fast and launch her back into the air.)

There were others, no question. There were the truly huge ones, the ones that came closest to my prehistoric ideal. They were a beautiful mix of greens and blues, and their square, armoured abdomens wore plates of pale green and blue so large you could spot them easily even if you didn't hear the rough flutter of their huge wings. They seemed to only come out at dusk, and there was never a chance of you putting fingers on one of those, because they simply moved too quickly and erratically.

As the years went on and we were exposed to more and more of the world we discovered other colours and sizes, too. The ice-blue ones with the black-patterned wings that lived in the forests, which you'd only see around the house a few times a season. Then there are the gorgeous deep ruby red ones that seem to only live in the woods near creeks and still lakes and pools, with their thick bodies and glistening wings. I always dreamed of putting my fingers around one of those, but it was never to be. They still flit through my summer memories, though, larger than life, gleaming like precious stones, wings afire with the summer light. They're not the prehistoric giants that I thought for certain could carry you off if you'd skipped a meal, but they and their kin certainly fit my summer bill.

But then again, what if they WERE four feet long again? Can you imagine the size of the mosquitoes they'd eat? They'd be even bigger than the foot-across ones that are already down here in the swamp...

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* The complete Dragonflies set on Flickr

Becalmed

2009-05-11T19:43:00.002-05:00

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

(from The Rime of The Ancient Mariner by S. T. Coleridge.

It's a nice word, becalmed. It adequately describes the state of my blog, too! The long delay has many reasons, none of which we'll delve into here, but since we're on the subject of being becalmed:

One of the great joys of hot air ballooning is that each flight is different from every other flight in the same way that each day is unlike every other that has gone before. Oh, they all follow the same pattern in a general way but each is different. This past weekend we had a flight planned for the Saturday afternoon before Mother's Day. A young couple, parents and grandparents were in attendance as onlookers. Sadly for me, Jim, our incredibly competent Crewchief is halfway through Arkansas on his Harley and headed north on an extended bike tour, which left responsibility squarely on Cookie and I.

Well, we bucked up. Found our launch site, sent up another PI ball, reviewed the map, figured out which roads we'd be chasing on, and set up High Hope. The inflation went well, the passengers boarded and the launch went off without a hitch. That's about the last quiet minute I had.

You see, to begin with there simply weren't any roads near the intended flight path. Cookie and I ended up having to veer northwest of HH, then back northeast to the general landing area. The main sections of road we'd be getting into are heavily forested, too, so we lost line of sight very quickly, then radio contact shortly thereafter.

Now, I worry. It's what I'm good at, so I started. I know David is wildly competent, but being out of visual AND radio contact? Scary. So, after failing miserably to spot HH I finally called David on his cellular and got his whereabouts. Come to find out he was ahead of us a bit, but roughly where we thought he'd be.

As the hour wrapped up we began to worry. Not many inroads toward him, and still no sign of a huge yellow balloon. We kept driving in and out of roads, driveways and turnrows hoping for a sight, but nothing ever presented itself, and dusk was drawing close, as was the fuel limit onboard--I knew he'd be setting down soon, but I couldn't FIND him! Pretty sad stuff for the guy driving the chase truck.

Word soon came--High Hope was down safe. I'd stopped near where I thought the landing spot was, but several honks on the horn went unheard by David, and I couldn't hear the burner. He was further away than we thought. (I found out later that David wasn't just being mean, he had in fact been becalmed--the wind simply stopped, and instead of making it to the highway like he'd planned he had to put down at the only safe spot he had.)

I was about to venture a little gentle trespass into a huge field full of massive Texas Longhorn steers when a Yamaha Rhino ATV truck pulled up, filled with landowners. Seems they'd seen the flight land on their property (I was close, by several miles they told me, if he'd landed where they thought he had) and that it'd be tricky to get to them. Seems these nice folks own eight THOUSAND acres, and we'd landed in the midst of them. No roads, no easy access.

So, just to be sure they took Cookie away in one of the ATVs into the very pasture I was about to break-and-enter, and I sat and waited with two generations of the family, phoning back and forth to David. He'd had to walk the still-inflated balloon quite a ways across ankle-deep water mixed with knee-high briars but had the gondola and passengers safely on high ground and was headed for what he thought was a road.

Long story short (I know, too late!) I spent an hour, perhaps more trying to reassure the parents and grandparents that we'd not lost their kids. This in the midst of a night of that quality of dark that only the deep country can manage. We kept seeing headlights flicker in and out of the treeline, but never a sound. Come to find out the balloon wasn't but a few miles from where we'd finally stopped, but the route getting TO them was so torturous and twisted (following fencelines and paralleling natural barricades like deep creeks and a huge lake) that it took twenty minutes at a good safe (fast) speed on the ATV just to get to them. Cookie and company met David, then got to the balloon and rescued the passengers who were hunkered down in the basket swatting mosquitoe swarms with the flight manual. After an hour and a half I saw headlights and heard the burring of the ATV returning. The passengers (in good spirits) reunited with loved ones and went back homewards.

Not so us. We still had a recovery to attend to, and it was already 9 pm.

We followed the ATV and landowner back into the forest preserve that was their property. Twenty five careful minutes following in the truck, wending our way down dirt tracks, embankments and around massive creeks and sinkholes brought us to a retired rice paddy thick with mosquitoes and, we were told, over two hundred head of wild boar. We packed balloon and envelope up after a sweaty struggle through thick grass and biting bugs and locked up the trailer. After a brief confab with the landowner, David, against his better judgement turned the truck around off the embankment and through the standing water, as the landowner was certain our four-wheel drive truck could make it, instead of having David suffer backing truck and trailer up some fifty or sixty feet.

Naturally we got stuck. The heavy truck and equally heavy trailer managed to sink us up to the axles, and sadly the little ATV couldn't pull us free, so...another twenty minute ride back to civilization for the landowner, who drove back (another half hour) with a truly massive, two-story tall John Deere. Without headlights. How he managed to drive that monstrous thing through that winding pair of dirt ruts and barely visible trails back to us sans headlights is beyond me and a testiment to his night vision, but that's what it took.

The tractor made short work of getting the truck out (that's David there, directing the tractor back onto high land,) but during the daring Rhino rescue we'd unhooked the trailer, thinking the little ATV might be able to pull just the truck out. What it DID manage was to pull it just far enough forward that we couldn't get the trailer hooked up again. The tractor had to creep back into the water and, using a nylon tow strap David had in the truck the two of them tied the trailer's tongue to the forklift bars mounted to the front of the tractor and the most ginger excavation began. It would have been comical, were it not so late, were we not so exhausted and were the mosquitoes not so starving for our blood.

My writing this tells you we did finally escape, hale and hearty, but from the landing to the moment we closed the last gate behind us and touched solid asphalt took just over four hours. In eighteen years of flying, David related to us, THIS was the longest recovery in his almost seven hundred flights, including, he pointed out, the recovery wherein the local rescue services had to bring out a helicopter to help the chase crew locate the balloon.

Talk about a feather in my cap.

But, lesson learned. As Tolkien once said, not all who wander are lost, and best you learn to keep your feet when you walk out your front door to go hot-air ballooning--you never know where you're going to end up.

Politics

2009-05-01T20:17:00.000-05:00

I don't discuss politics. You guys know that. It doesn't get anyone anywhere, and it is tantamount to teaching pigs to fly. It just don't work.*

I think from here forward anytime I hear anyone bitching about the current administration, the previous administration, the federal government, the state government, the city government, their police force, someone else's police force, or anyone in charge of anything more important than cleaning the pay toilets at the bus station I'm going to ask them one simple thing:

"What have YOU done to make it better?"

If the answer isn't a damned good one I'm going to tell them to have a nice cup of coffee and STFU.**

Then I'm going to get back to work designing a more aerodynamic, lightweight, non-polluting porcine quadruped.

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* Unless you duct tape one to a Boeing 747, but that's not really flying, that's just transcontinental bacon.

** And no, Joan m'dear, I'm not aiming this one at you. I think you're one of the few who really ARE doing something other than making loud noises in an empty room, and sweet gold-plated Jeebux's bottom help you if I'm wrong! ;)

Two Tidbits

2009-04-29T19:33:00.003-05:00

A few days ago SFR, my boss (for the next twenty-five days) and my director were all sitting up front hen-cackling. I was doing my level best to keep my head down and keep working because I was, as usual, about two days behind. Hmmmm...wonder why? I was very exhausted and when I get that bad my filters tend to stop working, so I'd been interjecting little snarky comments throughout the day. Anyway, SFR was naturally regaling us with some backwoods hick story of her family when the conversation turned to crawfish.

SFR immediately switched verbal gears and related a tale of her sister in law who, upon coming to Louisiana for the first time decided that she didn't like eating crawfish because "...they're too small and there's too little reward for all that hard work."

My response? "So's a clitoris, but that's never stopped me before."

I'm surprised I'm still employed.

In other news, AMC TV has decided that they've gone utterly fucking mad. They're making a mini-series based on the 1960's touchstone BBC series "The Prisoner." Having seen some of the clips I'm thinking that even Sir Ian McKellan Himself (who is playing the redoubtable and infinitely replaceable No. 2) isn't going to make this festival of offal worth watching.

See for yourself what happens when people think they can gild a lily. Me, I'm just glad McGoohan died before he had to witness the brutal rape of his masterwork.

Learning About Myself

2009-04-27T19:28:00.003-05:00

This is going to be a tough one to write, but I think it needs to be said. I'll also warn you that if you're easily offended, are a PETA drone or a vegan you need to stop reading now. Also, if you're of a gentle heart or disposition I'll say up front that there are going to be some passages of a graphic nature. You've been warned.

(sorry this is so long, but I need to say this. All of it. Irr)

In the chicken-keeping world, unlike China, roosters are just about useless. A single rooster can protect and service (yes, I used that word) up to ten hens. Further, a hen will lay eggs regardless of the presence of a rooster. I'm surprised at how few people know that, but it's true. You don't find roosters in the big industrial chicken farms, they're simply not necessary. Unless you want baby chicks a rooster is only good for looking pretty, crowing before dawn and in some cases protecting the flock. My local co-op will sell you all the chicks you want, and will exchange any that turn out to be roosters for another chick, they're that unwanted.

As the flock out here grew, we ended up with four roosters. For a flock of thirty hens four is a shade much, especially when two of the roosters were being fairly rough on the hens, and when you consider that we don't want chicks, just eggs. So, as you may know, I've been planning on killing the two rough boys. But, like most plans, it kept getting pushed aside for other more important things.

Oh, I asked around about it, I wasn't idle. My mother recalls her mother shooting chickens destined for the table with a .22 rifle. My grandma must have been one hell of a shot. My maternal grandfather was, I'm told, too gentle-hearted to kill the chickens. I guess I come by it honest. I learned about neck wringing. I learned about chopping off heads. I looked with disgusted eyes at the myriad of chicken processing items I could buy as a small-scale farmer. I learned how the guts were to be removed, and how you process a chicken.

What I didn't learn in all that studying is how hard it is to actually do, emotionally and physically.

In the meantime the 'favourite' hens were getting more and more torn up. If you've never seen chickens have sex, it's like most birds--the male grasps the back of the female's head in his beak, just below her comb and holds her in place while he climbs up on her back. Now, the hen is genetically predisposed, when she feels a rooster digging his claws into her back to squat down on her belly and spreads her wings to give him a flat place to stand. So when I say the favourites were getting torn up I mean that almost half of my hens have no feathers on their backs and the backs of their heads are bare as well.

So, no escaping it. Too many roosters.

You know me. I save spiders. I cherish beetles. When I see a dead squirrel in the road I hurt. The decision to kill two roosters was a tough one to come to, but I determined that if I was good enough to eat meat at my dinner table then I needed to be man enough to kill and prepare an animal that I raised from it's first days. Plus, it was becoming necessary: my hens were being hurt, and they produce our food. We arranged to have a friend of Mrs. I's over, a lady who was raised around hard core country folk and knew how to process a bird. She couldn't, however, help with the killing. Too gentle-hearted.

When Sunday rolled around and the friend arrived it became too late to back out. We all walked out to where the two roosters had been segregated into the smaller yard. Mrs. I and I walked in, Mrs. I who is faster on the draw than I caught one of the two, and that's when the difficulties started. Mrs. I was going to go first, but when she wrapped her hand around the rooster's neck she realised how thick it was, and that it was going to take more strength than she had. A few more minutes of indecision on both our parts and she was too overwhelmed to try, so it fell to me.

The sun was beating down on my head--I'd lost my straw hat somewhere in the yard. I remember how calm I was, how detached. I knew I was about to kill a living thing, but I knew it needed to be done. I held the rooster under my left arm, keeping his very sharp claws out of harm's way. I remembered that you had to swing the bird at least once, to gather momentum, like the fall of a man being hanged--it's not strangulation that kills, it's the neck breaking when the rope pulls taut. I knew I had to whip the bird's head back sharply at the last second, at the bottom of the arc and that would do the trick.

So, not thinking too deeply about it, not hearing the other chickens, I did it. I swung him around twice, a pell-mell of flapping wings and struggling feet. I could feel his neck muscles, far stronger than I would have thought, and the softness of his windpipe, the downy feel of his neck feathers. At the bottom of the second arc I pulled back sharply, hoping desperately to feel some definitive snapping sensation. Nothing, just a horrible twisting. The force of the bird's body being stopped that suddenly pulled its head clean out of my grasp and he hit the ground with a clumsy 'whump,' then began to flop around, wings and feet straining, beating at the ground, beak opening and closing, no noise coming out. I panicked, not sure if I'd done it right, if it was just hurt or actually dead.

I knew for a fact that autonomic reactions in chickens is very common, hence the "chicken with it's head cut off" saying. Simple systems go slowly. I picked it back up and tried to wring its neck the way you wring a dishtowel, twisting, but again, I never felt anything break, just a tension of skin and muscles and that soft give of esophagus. I twisted desperately, certain I'd done the deed, and let the body fall from my hands.

Still the twitching, the stretching of wings and legs. I couldn't help it, I had to be sure, so I had Mrs I's friend get the shovel from the coop and I stabbed down hard at the neck, trying to cleave the head off. It didn't come, but I know for certain I broke the neck then, as most of the frantic activity stopped. I don't think Mrs. I was crying then, but she was close. For myself, I still felt...distant. There was blood smeared all across my palm. I remember looking at it, thinking that I needed to wash my hands when this was done.

I'm not sure where that calm came from. I know part of me was wildly revulsed at what I'd done. I'd just killed a living creature, killed it BADLY and was waiting for my wife to catch the other so I could do it again. I think the part of me that knew it had to be done had overridden the rest of me, making sure that I was going to do it respectfully, as quickly as I could.

Respectful. I was that. After the debacle was long since done and over I realised I should have simply used a hatchet, for it would have been far cleaner. I'd been lead to believe that the neck wringing was fastest and neatest (no blood, which I disproved) but I was wrong. Hindsight, always perfect. But respectful I was. I knew in my heart of hearts that if I was going to sit at my dinner table ever again and eat meat of any sort that it had come to me in a manner far less respectful to the animal than what I was doing. I love these creatures. I give them plentiful food and protection and shelter. I talk to them, give them treats (lettuce, fresh clover, leftover fruit) and they in return give me sustenance from their bodies. I knew that if I had to do this I had to do it right.

The second one was harder, sadly. Mrs. I had to turn away, and I didn't realise until much later that she was crying, shocked to it by what was happening. I told her not to look, and I tried the same technique, tried to spin him faster, give more of a sudden snap at the end. This time, probably due to the blood the bird slipped out of my hand. This time it was far more alive. Just that morning Mrs. I had been joking, after being stuck my briars while picking wild blackberries that the harvest demanded a blood sacrifice in return. The second rooster claimed the sacrifice--my left arm is covered in long bloody scratches from his sharp, kicking claws. Somehow I got him back into my arm and tried the twisting, wringing action again, hoping with a desperate strength to feel some sort of final crack, some indication, but again, nothing.

I twisted a few more times then dropped the bird to the ground, grabbing up the shovel and stabbing desperately at the neck, hoping to see blood, to see the head separate, but again, it refused to part. The autonomic twitching went on, but I knew it was over.

I picked them up, one at a time, saw the droplets of blood soaking into the bare brown earth. I carried them out, and we brought them up to the house to cut their heads off and begin the defeathering and cleaning. That's when the light came on and the friend asked if I had a hatchet and a block. I did, fetching them from the shed, making sure I had the sharp one. A block of firewood sufficed, and we laid the first rooster on the block. She pulled the neck straight, held the wings back and I chopped, hard. The head came clean off, and she held it up by its feet to let a few sluggish droplets of blood drain out.

When the second one's head came off, bright red blood flew. I can only surmise I broke its neck enough to paralyze it, not to kill it. I was mortified, but glad that it was over, and that if it had felt any pain it was gone now. The body jerked again in that autonomic reaction and a few bright drops spattered the left sleeve of my white t-shirt. The friend looked at me with wide, shocked eyes and said in a stage whisper "I don't think it was dead yet." I agreed, and before I could say it myself she said "Don't tell Mrs. I." I agreed, knowing that while I meant well Mrs. I is not a complete fool and would know, but I agreed nonetheless.

The two of them went on with the preparing--dipping the two birds in a boiling pot of water for a fast count of sixty, then carefully plucking the loosened feathers out. Splitting the back, removing the neat package of guts and lungs, intestine and liver and croup. Me, I got the lawn mower out and loaded it in the trailer and headed to the office to cut the grass and smoke a cigar and think about what I'd done. I left the blood-spattered shirt on as a reminder, not a prize. Nor did I take one of the beautiful black and white tail feathers to put in my cap. Again, I wasn't proud of what I'd done, not in the 'show off a prize' sort of pride.

I cut, and thought about what I'd done. I'd proven to myself that I could, in Garrison Keillor's words, "do what needs to be done." If it came to it I could raise an animal with the full knowledge that I was going to kill and eat it. I'd passed an important point in my life, in my progress as a man, as a human. I'd done something that used to be commonplace, and now is a rarity. I'd proven to myself that I was stronger than I thought.

Oh, it bothered me. It still does. The difference lies in the fact that I respect those animals for what they gave me. They gave me their lives, gave me their bodies so that I and my family can have meat on our table. Meat to help sustain us in health. Clean meat, meat that was once an animal raised with love and respect and care, not force-fed in a cage so small it cannot move, locked away from sunlight and fresh air. I don't think I would ever purchase or obtain the free roosters from the co-op simply to save myself a few dollars on chicken in the grocery store, but if it came to it I could do just that, and do it with pride, knowing that I could do what needs to be done. With love, with respect before and after, knowing that it will never be an easy thing for me to do.

I've gained by my actions. I gained a better understanding of what it means to be human, what it means to kill something so that I may live. I gained an understanding of the mountain of animals on which I stand, animals who gave their lives so that I could eat, so I could grow and thrive. I gained knowledge such that I won't ever look at a pork chop or a hamburger patty or a fillet of fish in the same way, either. I'll do so with a deeper understanding of where I stand. I'll do so feeling that life's blood on my hands, and I'll eat it with love and respect for that sacrifice.

Done And Done

2009-04-24T17:22:00.003-05:00

Long story to follow. Short story:

I got it. In one month I go for two weeks intensive training and then I come home and I move into my little home office and I acquire insurance authorization for home health patients for whatever geographic area is assigned me. I'm a Corporate employee now, and don't even have to move from my couch if I don't want to.

Boo-yah!

Wot The?

2009-04-22T19:50:00.003-05:00

Where have you guys been? I looked around and *POUF* you were gone!

Okay, I've been slacking. My tight focus seems to have gone to Hell in a handbasket. Too many things pulling me in too many directions, and damnit I've missed this place. So, I'm back.

*dusting off the lapels, making sure the crease in my trousers is crisp*

I want to tell you about the spiders today, so if you're queasy then you might want to, oh, I don't know, stop now. Because you see, every person in my office (I shan't say "woman" because that'd be sexist but they are all ladies and are all panic-stricken at the sight of a bug) where was I? Anyway, they all freak right out at the sight of a spider, or roach, or anything with more than two legs that is smaller than a breadbox. Or snakes, which makes me wonder about their sexual lives.

But anyway.

My boss hollered bloody murder today, and I walked over to where she was dancing on tiptoes, pointing at a slightly less tan part of the carpet. Said bit of carpet had black stripes and eight legs, and honestly I had to look pretty hard to see it. When I (yet again) failed to crush it into oblivion for her and instead tried to coax it onto my hand she ran screaming down the hall and I continued to try and rescue my little buddy, finally ending up sort of herding it out the front door.

At one point during the ensuing struggle of colossus versus microscopic survivor the spider bumped into my fingers. The little spider was perhaps in toto the size of a dime, and might have weighed all of a tiny portion of a gram, but it bumped my finger hard enough in its headlong attempt to get away that I could feel it--a sort of gentle tap, at the very edge of sensation. The briefest feeling of bristles and flesh. I smiled a bit and filed that sensation away in the same drawer in my mind as the sound of a butterfly's wings flapping and the first time a wild bird landed on me.

I'm about 99% sure I have the new job. Right now I'm in Waiting Mode, waiting for someone to call me and tell me to report for training May 1st or to tell me not to bother and stop planning to steal as many office supplies as I can fit in a saddlebag. I worry, though, that when I'm gone all the crickets and spiders (there were two today, one twice the size of my first tiny friend) and millipedes and dirt daubers that end up inside the office, panicked and confused will be crushed without a single thought. I think about the rat snakes that will lose their heads to a shovel blow without a passing idea that perhaps that snake would keep the mice in the attic at a lower population if it were left alive. I think of the senseless waste of all those tiny lives.

I don't even have to mention the two to four trains a day that I won't see anymore.

But then I balance my stress levels (decreased, yes, but still present) and my burning desire to have a job that only has a handful of duties rather than my duties and half of my co-worker's duties involved in it against those little sparks of life. I think about sitting at a new desk behind a refurbished laptop in my spare bedroom, converted into a HIPAA-compliant office, looking out my big window at the squirrels in the front yard, and I think about hanging another bird feeder outside that window, so I can watch the wrens and the mourning doves come and go. I think about the spiders and so forth that will be tenderly captured and released from here, and I smile a little bit, and it's easier to move forward.

I was going to say something about this being a transition period, but all of life is a transition period, isn't it? A young man I'd never met before died this morning while trying to change a tire on his Suburban--a car struck him at 60 miles an hour as he stood at the back of his truck to get the spare out. He never regained consciousness. I doubt he ever knew what happened. One moment struggling with getting the spare out and wondering if he'd be late for work and maybe thinking about seeing his girlfriend this weekend and the next he was crushed to a pulp by some fucktard too busy with something else to watch where they were driving. I think about those little bugs, all facets of Life being crushed out of existence with the same off-handed thoughtlessness. I think about how unfair it all is.

I like to think that one day I'll be carried before The Life-Giving Force by a thick carpet of spiders and millipedes and lizards and wasps and serpents and honey bees.

Notes From A Life

2009-04-13T17:34:00.005-05:00

Today at work it drew near quitting time, and I went into my usual routine of dressing for the ride home. One of the RNs sat quietly and watched me put on first my Joe Rocket overpants, then my boots, then my jacket. She's seen me ride for years now, knows I always have a pair of leather gloves and the full-face helmet, too. Today she asked what's apparently been bothering her for a while: "Irrelephant, how far away do you live?"

I finished lacing one boot and said "Four miles," smiling, knowing where this was going. I finished lacing the other as she asked her second question.

"So why do you wear all that stuff?"

I slipped my pants cuffs over my boots, stood up and showed her the pale, unscarred skin on the bottoms of my forearms, my unscarred elbows. Then I reminded her that if it weren't for all this gear (here I gestured at the jacket on the back of my chair and my black nylon pants with the huge lumps of armour at thigh and knees) I'd still be healing from the wreck I had on Black Betty back at the end of October. The wreck that I walked away from with one tiny scratch where a rock got through a thin part of the pants.

Is it that difficult to understand?

I've been called a lot of interesting names in the past, some of which I could even repeat here if I desired to. I've been given epithets that fit and those that don't, by people who know me intimately and by people who couldn't pick me out of a crowd of Asians. I got called something I've never been called, today.

One of our marketers likes to call me up for spelling corrections. She knows I'm a stickler for proper grammar and pronunciation and that I know how to spell words with more than five letters in. Her first words were an apology for bothering me, which I brushed off. She knows full well I don't mind. She asked me how to spell "occasionally," and after I told her she thanked me and then said "Irrelephant, you're the gooderest!"

Of all the mangling and maligning that my mother tongue takes at work I believe I can accept that one with an open heart.

I went to work this morning with a smear of chicken shite down one forearm, on the back where I couldn't see it. No-one pointed it out to me, I only noticed it when dry, flaky bits of it fell on my slacks and I realised what it was--I'd apparently brushed up against the roost this morning while gathering eggs. How I never noticed it is beyond me, but there it is. It made me think, however, about food and food production, and my place in the food chain.

I fully feel there is at least one thing you need to do, both for you AND for your kids if you have them, especially before they are too old: take them to a farm. A real, honest to goodness farm, the kind that you can smell before you actually see it. Let your kids put their hands into a chicken's nest, better yet underneath a broody chicken. Hell, YOU go and do it, too. Learn about it. Watch them for a while. Watch them walk and cluck and go about their day. Go to that nest and put your hand under that chicken and pull out a perfect egg, almost hot from resting under that patient hen's breast. Realise, and let your kids realise that food doesn't all come in tins from the grocery store. Nothing quite makes an impression like having a warm feathered body try to settle itself back over your hand, as though it were fully intending to set it there until it hatches.

Day before yesterday at work a coworker stepped out to smoke. To "take a breathing treatment" as she calls it. Aaaah, medical humour. The window was open, and a waft of tobacco came in. Sweaty Fat Rolls made some childish gagging noises, stirring up more drama. I guess I took a deep breath in (wishing I still smoked cigarettes so I could step out to join the RN) and SFR took the moment to say "Why Irrelephant, YOU don't smoke!"

I looked at her, boys and girls, and I barked "You think you KNOW ME?"

I make a concerted effort not to bring my personal life into my workplace, especially not with the Drama Queen sitting ten feet from me. I know more about her sexual habits, her family, her disease-ridden children, their religion, their gambling, their child-abuse attempts at discipline, et cetera ad nauseum than I could ever possibly want to know. She simply cannot stop talking about herself and hers, and it repulses me. I take it as simply one more reason not to fuel her fire by giving up anything about myself and mine. When she spoke up I was so angry I could have slapped her. How dare she think she knows squat about me?

One more reason to work from home. Phase Three of the interview process passed today. I should know next week.

Running The Bunny

2009-04-12T19:34:00.005-05:00

And no, I ain't talking about the one that brings chocolate and pastel goodies, either.*

I'm talking about lure coursing. Sighthounds of every make and model out chasing three innocent white plastic bags on a very long string tied to a very strong pulley system. Belle made her triumphant return to coursing this past Saturday outside of Cleburne, TX (which sounds a lot like 'cleemon' but isn't nearly as dirty) and she came back with style.

If you've been here for longer than 365 days or so you may remember me trumpeting about Belle earning her JC (Junior Courser) title roughly a year ago in a place called Cleburne, TX. A big ranch, lots of sunshine and heat, and my beautiful girl doing what she does best--run. Well, things being what they are, a year passed before we could attend another lure coursing event. Heat is a major factor, and location is another. Well, time passed and this event came up, and we decided it was time to return to lure coursing, especially since she's earned her "Champion" title in the show ring and has retired from all that foolishness.

A six hour trip to Fort Worth to stay with our mentor Rita and a short hop to the King Ranch outside of Cleburne and Belle was back in action. Now, keep in mind that she's not run a lure but twice before in an organized event, and always by herself. A few laps orbiting me in the back yard do not a 600 yard lure course make. Plus, she's never run in a group before (other than to abuse Remy and Sheba in said backyard.) So naturally what she was going to do was sort of up in the air. Would she run well? Would she run clean? Would her recent devastating bout with pyrometra affect her?

Everything was answered the first time Mrs I. staged her at the starting point with two other Borzoi. A friend of ours, and Belle's litter co-breeder who also owns one of Belle's litter mates saw her standing there at the line with her ears pricked well up and said "She's got her hunting ears on!" When the lure ran away at full speed and the Huntmaster shouted "Tally ho!" she was gone like a bullet. She ran with such power and such focus that it made my blood run fast and my heart pound. If it wasn't bad form I'd have been screaming my fool head off.

Now before I get too much father, let me say this: Lure coursing makes, to me, more sense than the conformation ring. Coursing dogs aren't graded on how pretty they are, how well groomed or by who knows whom. They're graded on how fast they are, how accurate they are at following the 'bunnies,' and how cleanly they run the race (ie not attacking or interfering with their co-competitors.) It's also not a speed race--the winning dog might end up crossing the line last because they followed the lure the entire time, not cheating by cutting across the field to where it's going to be. They're graded on a point system, and the highest point score determines each race's winner.

Well, my baby girl (three years old now!) proved that she has what it takes, in spades. She won her first two races handily, tying for first with another Borzoi for Best of Breed. In the run-off she eeked out a win by a single point, which clinched her the Best of Breed win, a three point major (the scoring runs just like in the confirmation ring.) It had to have been one of the most emotionally taxing things I'd ever watched--she and her competition ran literally nose and nose the entire time, trading the lead back and forth like race car drivers. Only a minute passed during the race but I was wrung out by the time they finished, and the judge gave her the single point on the grounds that the other dog became distracted off the lure for just a moment when the landowner's dog strayed into the coursing field. That simple--the other dog turned away to play for a moment and Belle never blinked.

Watching Belle run is something extraordinary. She is SO focused, so determined to catch that 'bunny.' In one of her first two races she bowled a younger Borzoi completely over when he decided he wanted to course HER instead of the lure, and when she turned sharply after the 'bunny' and he didn't she simply ran over him, sending him ass-over-teakettle, ever missing a beat, never looked away from the lure. I was astounded, thinking for sure fur was going to fly, but no, Belle had other things on her mind. Catching that plastic bag.

After Best of Breed she ran against the next closest breed to hers for a spot at Best In Field, or the best dog out there. The closest to her was an Afghan Hound, and she beat that dog pretty handily. Four races all together, and for the last we'd taken the precaution of wetting down her racing jacket and her fur to help cool her off--the temp was fast rising from the 52 degrees it'd been that morning!

The whole time I'd been watching and photographing her and the other dogs I kept telling myself not to get my hopes wound up to high. Whippets are MAJOR contenders in any lure coursing event, as single-minded as greyhounds and much more agile than almost anything out there. Whippets usually walk away with every Best In Field award, and so I kept reminding myself that it was great--Belle had run beautifully, and had won Best of Breed which in itself is a remarkable feat. We'd gotten to enjoy the company of our mentor and her excellent husband, and had even gotten to see one of Belle's litter mates course. If we left there with just the Best of Breed ribbon and three points toward her field coursing championship then it was a day well spent and richly rewarded.

Plus, try as I might I couldn't get any whisper from the judge's tent about who was on top, points-wise.

When the afternoon was over and the races run we all gathered around the table and applauded and cheered as the names were called and the rosettes handed out. My chest swelled when the cheers went up as the organizer called Belle's name for First Place and Best of Breed, and Mrs. I gathered up the two beautiful rosettes and claimed a pink flamingo toy as Belle's reward, "...because she wore the pink jacket most during the races." Then it came down to it. Best In Field was down to two dogs--Belle and a Whippet. I knew it was going to be a loss, but it was going to be a grand one because she'd done so much in a single day after a year away from racing.

When they called "Belle!" people cheered and applauded, I whooped, and Mrs. I stood there politely clapping, thinking 'How odd, the Whippet's name was Belle too.' We simply didn't expect it, but talk about pride afterward! The huge red, white and blue rosette with the foot-long ribbons was going home with Belle, OUR Belle and no other. Plus, she earned FIVE points instead of three because the Rhodesian Ridgeback dogs present had a five point major available on the field due to the number of dogs present, and the BIF winner takes the highest points _available_ home.

My feet still haven't touched the ground.**

Belle passes a hay ring, focused on the 'bunny.'

The second race

Mrs. I slips Belle for the Best of Breed runoff

Belle launches off to outrun an Afghan Hound in the Best In Field race

_________________________
* Although our 'Easter Egg Chickens' started laying Saturday, Easter Eve...three eggs total, ranging from blue to a blue-green colour. Nature is one crazy old girl.

** And yes, thoughts of Dual Championship, winning a Field Champion title before she runs enough races to be considered a Senior Courser and not just a Junior Courser, and more huge rosettes to hang around her photo are filling my thoughts!

The Weekend In Pictures

2009-04-06T18:07:00.003-05:00

Hell, Time magazine can do it, so I can too. Besides, my brain hurts from too much thinking today.

I took off Friday from work for a Mental Health Day. I don't think I could have made a smarter move. I did just about nothing all day in preparation for a tethered flight David had scheduled for that afternoon in the huge, teeming metropolis that is Pine Prairie, LA. I'll say this for them--their turnout in this tiny podunk town rivaled that of the annual fair.

Skybird (the blue balloon for those of you new to this) is in the repair facility getting the lower third of her envelope replaced and getting her annual FAA recertification, so we've been flying a borrowed balloon, "High Hopes" from a friend of David's in Shreveport.

The tether was a lot of fun, probably because it wasn't August and because they gave us lots of open room to set up in. No burner time for me, but that's okay, I'm patient as a stone. We managed to fly a good two hours, and everyone went away happy. The promoters comped us some catfish dinners, and the sunset that evening was particularly choice.

I attended Herb Day at the Kent House Saturday morning with Tracy, Weerelephant and Mrs. I. We got there just after they opened at 9am to find that the fifty feet or so of tables covered in herbs were already getting empty FAST. I overheard one of the event organizers say that there were old ladies climbing the fence before 9 just to get in and get first crack at the patchouli, fennel and St. John's Wort. I must have missed the "special herbs" table.

My favourite part of the whole thing? The mid 60's "British Racing Green" Jaguar E-type convertible in the parking lot. Freaking SWEET ride.

Granted, it would take a team of dwarves and a bottle of Wesson Oil to get my very Yank frame crammed into that tiny Brit cockpit.

After the Herb Day we brought Tracy out to Zorya Borzoi's training grounds (the backyard) for some Borzoi Fishing. Belle will be going with us to Cleburne, Texas this weekend for some more lure coursing, and I've been having no END of fun letting Sheba and Remy run around in circles chasing plastic bags as practice for their own turn on the coursing track once they turn 12 months old. Sheba is going to be one fast Borzoi, mark my words. And cunning? If her ears were short and pointy I'd call her a weasel. Remy is going to be like Belle: not super fast but strong and determined. Watching both the pups in action is just stunning.

Then the obligatory after-play drink. Belle took yet another step to becoming a real farm dog, this time by drinking right out of the hose pipe.

Sheba, not to be left out tried it too. Much to Belle's disappointment.

"Drinkin' from the hose--ur doing it wrong."

Gardening has been a lost cause--the ground is still so wet from the recent spring floods that even now, after a week of dry weather I still sink several inches in the soft ground. The floodwaters managed to just about kill off all my lettuces and my Brussels sprouts, but the green onions that I got from my MIL two years ago refuse, as always, to be phased by something as simple as a foot of standing water.

The ladybugs out there are having a time of it though--seems there's some sort of thistle that grew in my garden patch during the fallow winter months, and now that they are dying it seems to have attracted some bug or other that ladybugs are simply wild over--each little withered black stalk or thistle-seed head has a handful of industrious little red polka-dotted bodies moving across it, which made a nice challenge for me: to capture them photographically.

The most interesting part of it for me was trying to take macro photographs without a macro lens. I had my 70-300 telephoto lens on, which cannot focus on anything that is fewer than five feet from the end of the lens so I found myself setting up each shot with a bizarre process:

locate ladybug subject.
quickly back off six feet or so, without losing sight of the subject
squat down and try to spot the tiny red blob again through the camera's viewfinder
adjust the gross focus ring until subject bug looked giant-sized
wait patiently for the gusting wind to die down enough that the shot would steady

It was usually at that point that the subject would either fall off, take to flight or simply be lost (focally speaking) in a frenzy of whipping grass stalks, and I'd have to start over again.

But as I said earlier--I'm patient as a stone in a creek bed.

This one seems to have gotten confused and ended up on a strand of grass instead.

Riding out the wind storm on a dead thistle leaf.

Birthday Beatings

2009-04-04T15:11:00.003-05:00

Hey, it's Joan's birthday, so everyone go over there and make her feel old...er, ask her about her Social Security check...that is, I meant to say, ah, er, see if you can get written into her will...uhm...AARP...

Okay, just go wish her a happy birthday.

Space Ghost

2009-03-31T20:56:00.001-05:00

Because I'm a huge freaking fan. This is THE win-win for me. Trains AND cartoons.

'Cos You Asked

2009-03-31T19:13:00.000-05:00

Maggie over at Maggie's Mind Moss demanded something of me other than my eternal loyalty and fealty. She demanded that I answer a coupla questions, and she wearing that snappy black uniform and the tall jackboots so I felt obliged to answer. Here, instead of cluttering up her comment space.

So.

Pressing Questions

Answer the following (because I am a blog dictator and you must)
(SEE? What did I tell you!)

Which do you prefer in bathrooms: shower curtain or sliding door? which is easier to clean?

Having used both I have to come down squarely on the fence. I used to have the coolest vinyl shower curtain--it had a very 50's style bathing beauty splashed across it, and huge red polkadots. The house I grew up in and now live in again has a shower with a pair of sliding glass doors. Preference? Doors for not getting water everywhere and for not suddenly pressing cold wet vinyl up against you when you lean up against them, but curtains for when you have a gorgeous old claw-footed slipper tub in which to recline with a drink, a book and a smoke. Or a friend. Easier to clean? Curtain, because you just unsnap the hooks and toss it in the washing machine. Just TRY that with shower doors.

Color on your walls, or neutrals, OR white all the way?

Colour and more colour. I'd paint my freaking ceilings if my parents hadn't thought it wise, back when they built the house to have the overhead sprayed with those tiny little white blobs of guano.

Symmetrical or Asymmetrical?

Asymmetrical. Nature abhors a vacuum, that's why I beat all my rugs by hand. Wait...

If someone offered you a million dollars, would you paint my house?

In a heartbeat.

Spring cleaning, love it or hate it?

Oddly enough, as I've gotten older I've come to enjoy things like order and cleanliness more, so I'd have to say love it, but with a conditional love. Maybe with a really powerfully strong like.

When speaking of anatomy, people who say big, do they mean long or wide? Just curious.

Men mean length. Granted, you can be a foot long and a half-inch wide and you aren't going to pleasure anyone with that thing but yourself. I mean, what self-respecting woman would want to be ice-picked to an orgasm?

Do all twelve year olds fight with four year olds? Is it a boy thing?

Is a boy thing. Boys are wired by society and nature to be combative and to vie for the top. It's one of the reasons I'm glad I had a daughter.

Wood floors or tile? What about in the kitchen?

Both. Wood is warm and welcoming and feels and looks old, but tile is rustic and cool in summer, which is awfully nice in the deep south. Plus, tile looks better with a rug tossed over it kind of casually.

Granite countertops or something else? What else? Formica? Cement?

I've always liked formica. Granite and cement seem so...permanent. If you get tired of them in a few years it's gonna cost a fortune and take a jackhammer to get them outta your kitchen, whereas with formica you can recover the old counter yourself, if you're handy enough.

Men: do gentlemen really prefer blondes? Are brunettes in your experience smarter? (I don't believe a word you're saying. Just kidding, I'm listening.)

Men prefer blondes, but I don't know why, to be honest. Peer pressure? It's expected of them? Me, I don't think I've EVER looked at just one feature first, it's usually a gestalt with me. Anyway, as good as modern hair dye is now, any woman can be any colour, up to and including multiples.

Cookies, cake or pie? (Meno we know your choice now don't we?) Favorite flavor?
Yes. Any. Next?

Have you ever felt that you could fall in love with a singer/songwriter just because of their lyrics?

Possibly. I think if I'd read some of Roger Water's stuff before I heard the music I'd still love Pink Floyd. Same with Steely Dan. But then I also love most classical, and lyrics is rare and often in foreign languages so there I'd be in trouble. No more Beethoven.

Best birthday memory.

Damn. Now that's a tough one, but my mind wants to think about parties when I was a kid, but my best had to have been my 39th: my first hot air balloon ride, the one that opened the door to years of crewing and companionship and amazing teamwork and learning how to fly myself. THAT's hard to beat.

What Tha?

2009-03-30T17:29:00.001-05:00

I just got a photo on the Purina website of sorts. They say I need votes, so let's mobilize and get me...er...whatever!

Purina Pet Charts Contest

Restoration Blues

2009-03-29T17:34:00.003-05:00

I don't know about you, but there's just something about certain cars and trucks that just makes my heart pound. Sensual lines, a certain stance, the spark of sunlight off a perfect grille...it's the American Dream. A beautifully restored antique vehicle.

Rainy Day Rita (my eternal restoration-in-progress truck) was in the shop recently. Right at the end of last summer she'd gotten to running so poorly that it was nearly impossible to keep her running. Since I was only using her on rainy days (hence the name) and to haul the lawn tractor to work once a weekend to cut grass I didn't pay much attention to it, to be honest. I knew I didn't have the money to fix her, she WAS still running enough to get me the four miles to the office and back, the grass cutting season was as good as over, and so I parked her in the garage and, sad to say, mostly forgot about her for the winter.

I know. I can hear you beating your heads against your desk, lamenting me for being a complete and utter bastard, and I deserve it. She sat there all winter and into spring, two tires slowly going flat, her fuel turning into varnish, the dust and pollen piling up on her beautiful Porsche Kiev Green paint job until it was a sort of dingy yellow-grey. Dead bugs started showing up on her dashboard and the dust inside got almost as thick as the outside layer. Even those gorgeous OEM hubcaps almost succumbed to rust.*

Well, I decided a few weeks ago that Something Had To Be Done. Money had been budgeted for repairs, the stormy spring season is upon us here, and damnit the grass is growing fast and I was sick of borrowing my niece's truck and my brother's trailer so I could perform my little contract lawn care services. So, about a month ago I borrowed my brother and his car dolly (he's the '65 - '67 Ford Mustang restorer, he who each morning passes not water but cash) and we brought my nearly departed Rita to the only mechanic I barely trust in town. Brother (yes, that's his real name) who hadn't seen me in the last six years recognised her on the road as we hauled her in and actually came out to meet us, eyes gleaming and all his teeth showing. I should have panicked and ran but I knew blood had to be spilled if I was going to resurrect my girl. I delivered her into his hands and on the spot he declared he was pretty sure what was wrong.

"'S the intake manifold. Just fixed one like this last week. They warp after four decades of runnin', you lose yer vacuum, the fuel stops flowin' and it starts to miss like that. All we gotta do is pull 'er off, grind 'er flat and she'll be good for another forty years."

Well, he wasn't right, but three weeks later, two very small but rare parts and some surprisingly inexpensive tinkering later my girl was right as rain. Mostly. There was still the tires to be seen to, you see. That's where the story really opens up.

If, in your infinite time and wisdom ever see a classic car that you think you ought to buy and restore, let me give you a single piece of advice: DON'T. Unless you are spectacularly wealthy, sleep with someone who is spectacularly wealthy or you own your own garage/body shop and are spectacularly wealthy all at the same time please just listen to me and don't even bother. Restoration of a vehicle takes so much time and money and effort that it simply isn't worth it unless you just like throwing money at something that won't ever return your love OR your investment, in which case you can come throw all that money at me.**

You see, when you buy a vehicle older than about ten years there's never a simple answer. When your vehicle is thirty eight years old and is classified by the DMV as an antique there aren't even mildly complex answers anymore. One simple thing opens up the door to dozens more. You begin to see the interrelatedness of all things mechanical and you start to realise that you're about to start throwing a lot of money at something that isn't going to...well, you know the rest.

It's like this. You buy a brand new vehicle, you drive it around for a while and you get a flat. You manage to get it to the shop, the grease monkey sells you a new tire, puts it on, you give them some money and you drive home. And you're Done. You won't be revisiting that same problem again for a very long time. With an old truck (say, a 1971 GMC Sierra 1500 Custom that you inexplicably love beyond all reason) you get a flat tire, first you have to get the engine running again. Then you pour in some fresh oil (it's been leaking since you bought it,) top the automatic transmission fluid off, and THEN you air the tire back up and drive it (carefully) to your local Sears where you bought the tires new over a decade ago. You walk in, give the man your keys and thank your past self for buying the Road Hazard warranty for $5 a tire 'way back when because it's just paid for itself--you've got two flats and they're going to fix them for free.

So there you are, sitting in the waiting room reading car magazines filled with pictures of immaculately restored 1950 Mercury coupes and 1937 Packard Phaetons and manly early 70's muscle cars with all the numbers matching and everything down to the cigarette lighter original equipment and the mechanic steps in and says "Come see for a minute, wouldja?"

That's when they show you that the back tire is worn in such an odd pattern that they've called every mechanic in the shop over for an engineering lesson, as well as inviting the rest of the folks in the automotive department over for a gander at why you shouldn't ever drive an old vehicle.

Imagine a tire that looks like the inner 3/4 of it's surface was beveled down at a five degree angle, as though someone with infinite patience and a very large metal file had simply shaved the tread just about down to the belts. From the outside it looks like a perfect tire, more dry-rotted from lack of use than worn from driving. Off the hub however it looks like someone took a belt sander to it.

That just doesn't happen on new cars.

The problem seems to be that the wheel bearings have worn so badly that they're allowing the tire to sit canted at an angle, therefore wearing down just the inside 3/4 of the tire and not the outermost bit. See, it's never just "Fix the flat and here's an extra fin if you get it done in ten minutes." No, it's "Well, we pulled the nail out and patched your tire but your wheel bearings are shot and you're gonna need to bring it back for a whole new tire after you've replaced the bearings and oh it's got a huge lump in it and it took seven OUNCES of weights to balance it but it's still gonna ride funny but golly, we had to put weights all OVER that rim to..."etc ad nausem.

This being an old truck I can just about guarantee you that when I get my dear one down to the shop and say "Replace the rear wheel inner and outer bearings and there's an extra twenty in it if you can get it done today" they'll nod and smile, and I'll get a phone call in a few hours from a guy with a sickly smile in his voice when he says "Hey, can you come down here and see real quick?"

They're going to have found that a Peruvian Transmission Weasel has moved in and has made a nest in my axle housing and has had pups, and since they're an endangered and protected species (under the Endangered Antique Vehicle-Dwelling Creatures Act of 1956) they're going to have to fly a mechanical species specialist down from Pennsylvania with special gear to gently remove the offending creatures (at extraordinary expense to me) so the bearings can be repacked and I can be on my way.

At which point something else will go spectacularly wrong, such as the bed falling off or the steering wheel disintegrating in my hands.

Don't ever restore a vehicle. Don't watch the Barrett-Jackson car auction and think that you can restore a car that perfectly. Don't watch the weekend Speed Channel truck show guys who don't ever tell you what it's gonna cost, just make it look astoundingly easy to do a frame-up restoration in their eerily immaculate garage with their frighteningly clean hands. Don't listen to Click & Clack on NPR when they tell you how easy it is to fix something yourself, and for heaven's sake don't watch Dennis Gage and his astounding handlebar mustache when he cheerily says "Don't crush 'em, restore 'em!"

Trust me on this one: crush 'em.

_______________________
* Almost. I'm not THAT much of a bastard.

** In which case I'll simply turn around and throw it at my truck restoration project.

Muttering

2009-03-24T19:11:00.002-05:00

I've been delinquent in my blogging.

Oh, I've had ideas, even had one that promised to turn into a political rant. Some stranger came along and left a politically-charged comment on a photo of mine on Flickr which I deleted because it was childish, annoying, not very well thought out and had NOTHING to do with a hot air balloon passing in front of the sun. What bugs the crap out of me is that I let it bother me most of the morning.

See, I'm the sort of person who will argue a thing in his head until I've worked myself into a stomach-churning ulcer-making tower of righteous anger. Problem being, I don't voice any of those well-thought out arguments. I just carry them around for a while then putting them into the well-worn wooden filing cabinet that sits in the reading room at the top of my skull, there to sit until I die and my card catalog is strewn to the winds.

I'm becoming a little bit of a localvore. I heard that term a few days ago and I laughed. At it, not with it. What is with the media/public's desire to turn everything into a cute catch-phrase? Anyway, I'm producing and eating my own food. Well, a tiny portion of it, but more so than some. I had a steak, baked potato and salad last night for supper, and the lettuce came from my garden. First lettuce I ever grew, and it was lovely. The onions are coming along nicely, so I'm sure at some point not only will I be eating my own onions I'll be passing many around, too. At least to the friends who are willing to approach me.

The broccoli are shaping up nicely, and if it ever stays dry for a few days in a row I'll be out there in my little patch tilling and preparing for cucumbers and squash. tomatoes and snap beans and beets and zucchini. I'm ready. More than ready. In my Book of Good Things To Do, 'kneeling in the dirt, planting' ranks right up there with motorcycle riding, cuddling during a rainstorm, and how women smell.

The local farmer that manages all the fields around my house is throwing me off this year. Usually he doesn't plant until Good Friday, and he puts in cotton. Miles and miles of cotton. This year he's gone over to the BioFuel side and has planted corn. Corn in every field, as far as the eye can see. It's already four to six inches tall, an almost eerie bright green. I'm going to miss the multicoloured flowers on the cotton plants, and those dark green, pointed leaves. I'm especially going to miss the smell of warm cotton in the sun, and the smells of harvest time.

My azaleas are blooming like mad. On mornings when the light is low it shines through the masses of flowers and beams colored light into certain rooms in the house--soft warm pink, and an ivory white, and a red the colour of a new wine.

I miss my camera. I put my bigger lens in the shop a while back to repair some tiny scratches that occurred during the motorcycle accident in October, I think. I kept thinking it was tiny particles of dirt or grit on the lens and I cleaned and cleaned every surface until I finally realised that they were always in the same spots. I've been forced to rely on my much smaller lens, the one that came with my camera, and I've realised how spoiled I've become.

Now that my larger lens is due home tomorrow my smaller lens crapped out on me. The gross focus ring stopped turning, then it simply refused to do anything. I was forced to go out this weekend on three balloon flights armed with nothing but Mrs. I's little Sony point-and-shoot. Talk about humbling. I guess I needed to learn to appreciate what I have more, by having it taken away from me for a while.

Don't get me wrong, it takes nice pictures, it's just not meant for someone who has gotten used to having control over things like shutter speeds and aperture settings. Oh, and it's also not meant for someone who is used to having the shutter operate the moment the shutter release button is pushed. This little thing likes to think a while before taking the photo, likes to measure the relative humidity and ponder deep thoughts before operating the shutter. Between a few nice shots of the balloon and a train or two I also got a number of shots of the truck's window frame, parking lots, and blurry photos of what seem to be wet Impressionist paintings.

A big part of my problem is also being tired, so with that I'm going to post this for you, my few loyal readers remaining and get some rest.

Jokingly

2009-03-15T21:00:00.001-05:00

Have you heard the one that goes "Q: How many pancakes does it take to roof a doghouse? A: Forty seven, because ice cream doesn't have bones." Or maybe you've heard the longer version that includes you speeding through the desert in your yacht when suddenly you have a flat tire. I was thinking today along the lines of taking classic situations or titles (or jokes) and modifying them for my own devious ends, like, say, doing a blog roll.

(For an example of what I'm getting at, see the Chicken Philosophy Joke page. Go ahead, I'll wait, it's worth a visit.)

So. Without further ado, witness

The Irrelephant Blogroll
In Surreal Joke Form!

Q: How many pancakes does it take to roof:

Clowncar's doghouse?
A: It's all about the beauty of orbital mechanics when you start talking about roofing doghouses. What if a comet comes too near? And when am I going to find time to work on my novel if I'm helping you roof a doghouse?

Daisy's doghouse?
A: All depends on if the doghouse is on the Registry of Homes. If it's a Craftsman-style or a Frank Lloyd Wright doghouse then it would definitely be worth saving, but then you'd have to go with matching-era pancakes. If it's one of those modern pre-fab doghouses then anything would work. I wonder if The Topiary Cow has anything going on with doghouses? Dogs and cows are both quadrapeds, right?

Gordo's doghouse?
A: It's not a doghouse, it's an apiary. Here, I've got a sample of some of the honey and have I mentioned that it's bloody cold in Kensington today? Seventeen feet of snow and barely spring! The bees are hating it!

Jean's doghouse?
A: Seventeen, because that's how many syllables are in a haiku which, Irrelephant, you need to write one about doghouses and post it at Sparrow's whose deadline for the contest is Wednesday evening (eastern time!) Or I could write a breathtakingly lovely poem about doghouses while YOU roof it, you dear man.

Joan of Argghh's doghouse?
A: Not sure but I guarantee the GOP could roof it cheaper, quicker and more efficiently than any liberal president could! Who's with me! Power to the people! Now where's my drink and my .44 magnum?

Kindertrauma's doghouse?
A: What sort of doghouse roofing material scarred you as a child?

Maggie's doghouse?
A: You know, it's an absolute rewarding hell to be a bilingual parent and wife who is hosting an online book club? Who has time to create beautiful artistic things, much less roof a doghouse? But then again, I have this beautiful chenille material that would look so nice on there...

meno's doghouse?
A: Sorry, I've got far more important things to do than roof a doghouse with pancakes. Like go hiking into some gorgeous mountain range or have some marvelous adventure in Seattle while spending my retired days in the most beautiful part of the PNW you could ever imagine. Oh, then I'll write about it in a very disarmingly candid way that draws you in inexorably, like iron filings to a magnet. And yes, I know you're reading this, Em.

Mickey Glitter's doghouse?
A: Have you seen how many Golden Age movie starlets it takes to roof a doghouse? You must be kidding me! What you need is a clown, or better yet, Sarah! Jane! Smith! and a clown to do it for you. Ooh, S!J!S! and a clown, together? Hang on, I've got to Twitter this.

Mona's doghouse?
A: I wanna see Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs roof it, because he makes me walk funny. Oh, and here's a video of him half nekkid. And here's another. And another. 'Scuse me, I need to go rub one out!

Nancy Dancehall's doghouse?
A: There's no angels in doghouses, trust me, and dogs don't listen to extremely eclectic music either, so what's to bother with? Anyway, it's all fractals.

Rayne's doghouse?
A: Could one of the ratties help? Because if so the work would be a lot more bearable. Maybe there could be a little rattie annex roofed in Chicklets?

Stucco's doghouse?
A: You need to roof it in boobies instead. Want to hear about my balls?

Todd's doghouse?
A: Can we go trainspotting after we're done roofing? And when are you going to post some more Scotchlite photos on my Flickr group? Whassamatter, you afraid of your flash?

Vulgar Wizard's doghouse?
A: Fuck if I know but if you roof it I'll take a gorgeous photo of it and post it on Flickr for ya.

William Gibson's doghouse?
A:

“Then send Pamela,” she said. “She understands all that. You have an army of people who understand all that. You must.”

“But that’s exactly it. Because they ‘understand all that’, they won’t find the edge. They won’t find the new. And worse, they’ll trample on it, inadvertently crush it, beneath the mediocrity inherent in professional competence. I need a virtual amateur for this. A freelancer.” And he sat back, then, and regarded her in exactly the way he’d regarded the tidy and receding ass of the Italian girl, though in this case, she knew, it had nothing at all to do with sex.

Will Wheaton's doghouse?
A: Any amount you like, just so long as you don't call me "The Boy" in a mediocre imitation of Patrick Stewart.

Oh gawd I love you guys! So, go ahead, you try it. I dare ya!

PocketMod!

2009-03-14T16:45:00.002-05:00

Tired of that iPhone for note-taking? Sick of losing the stylus to your PDA? Sick of your Blackberry's little trackball thingie that always gums up with sweat and finger dirt?

Well, you need something Lo-Tek!

The PocketMod.

A million-and-one uses, recyclable, reusable, light and portable! No batteries to die, no stylus to lose, and best of all it's cheap as hell!

Bag of Waters: Update

2009-03-13T19:11:00.003-05:00

Well, mixed news I'm afraid.

Belle wasn't pregnant, or if she was then there were so few puppies (or a single puppy) that her body reabsorbed them. This is itself a hidden blessing, because we were really hoping for a small litter.

The thing being, what she WAS going through was an interuterine infection, which manifested itself last night as what we thought was an amniotic sack opening to let puppies spill forth. Without getting into anything disgusting, and I promise you that if you're of a weak stomach it's kinda icky let me just say that somewhere in there, probably during one of her four artificial inseminations she picked up some bacteria or other which later caused the infection.

Belle is on some very strong antibiotics right now and is under our watchful eyes. She's resting well and taking food and water which are all excellent signs, and the infection is draining which is also a good sign. Like a fart, it's better out than in. Worst case scenario she'd have to be spayed, which honestly in the grand scheme isn't a bad thing at all. Best case? A full recovery, no harm no foul. We've been directed to make sure she gets pregnant "by a proven sire" next heat cycle to prevent cystosis or other interuterine problems, so in about eight months we'll try this again and see where the canine Fates lead us.

So. Hopefully by next week she'll be feeling her old self again, eating lots of yogurt to keep her good intestinal bugs up and numerous and keeping Sheba and Remy in line. Thank you all for your kind thoughts and your support--she still needs lots, so keep thinking good thoughts for her swift recover and tonite, give your dog an extra treat, eh?

Bag of Waters

2009-03-13T06:46:00.002-05:00

Heh. Today is Friday the 13th. My last post? Number 1333. Talk about rotten timing.

Belle's (Ch Aria Svora Cascabel, JC for you AKC purists) water broke last night around 2am. She hasn't started labour yet but if the first AI took and the rest didn't that would explain the small litter she's carrying. One trip to the vet today to verify that things are proceeding as they should ought to settle the issue. Our one concern is that she's carrying a 'singleton,' because with single puppy litters often there's not enough hormones to start her milk flowing or to start labour contractions, so everyone out there in Bloggerland please send your good multiple-puppy thoughts to Belle and to us today.

Many thanx
Irrelephant (and Belle)

Shoot 'Em First, Ticket Them Later

2009-03-12T17:33:00.004-05:00

As taken from Randy Cassingham's weekly group email "This Is True":

SHUDDUP YA DUMB REDNECKS: Missouri state Sen. Kevin Engler is really fed up with people who litter, and sponsored a bill calling for the death penalty for littering. "I think killing one or two of them would be a fine first start and then the rest would fall in line," he said after introducing his proposed law on the Senate floor. In his address, he said "dumb rednecks" are "teaching [their children] to be white trash" by throwing refuse out car windows, and he was "sick of every week having to pick up litter" for them. Engler then announced he was "doing this tongue in cheek" and withdrew the bill to "make it a little tougher." When criticized for calling people "rednecks" and "white trash," Engler said "The only people I called names are the ones doing it. If they are offended, good." (Park Hills Daily Journal) ...In other news, Missouri State Sen. Kevin Engler was re-elected in a landslide -- which he then immediately cleaned up.

A friend once said, when asked what he thought my political alignment was, said that he thought of me as a "Machiavellain Liberal." I agreed with him 100%, and took him off the "First Against The Wall When The Revolution Comes" list. But you know, it's true. Laws have no real teeth. I've been ticketed many times for speeding (in the distant past, that is.) Did the fines ever stop me? Nope. What did? A sense of my own mortality and what I had to lose. Do I still break traffic laws? Occasionally, because I know my own skills are far greater than those of the ordinary driver, and were I to trust my fellow motorist to drive properly then I'd have been put in my grave many years ago, so when necessary I break laws as needed to preserve my own lovely hide.

You truly want to enforce a DWI law? First offense you lose your car (sold to pay your arrest and court costs) and your license for five years. How's that for a deterrent? Convicted without doubt of child molestation? Automatic death penalty. No life sentences, no years of appellate court hearings wasting billions of our tax dollars. Bang the gavel, bring 'em out front to the yard, arm the twelve jurors just like they do with firing squads--only one bullet is live, randomly assigned so no-one knows who is really doing the deed, and fire. If you see enough soon you'll realise that it simply isn't worth it.

But then again I also think that all people are innately evil until proven otherwise, and have rarely seen anything to disavow me of this sentiment.

Sorry so suddenly extreme, I'm just tired and frustrated. *s*

chortle

2009-03-10T06:57:00.002-05:00

I have to admit that this is clever.

Down And Back Please

2009-03-09T19:48:00.006-05:00

I do not less than three Daylight Savings Time. I'm tired, out of sorts, and my Circadian thing is all out of whack. So, how about a dog post?

Belle. Belle is definitely pregnant, just...not very much pregnant. Four artificial inseminations by a canine fertility specialist and she's got...two, maybe three buns in the oven? Which honestly is a bit of a relief--raising two from the four-month old stage has been plenty of work. I can't imagine raising a litter of twelve or thirteen from birth on up. I think at this point I'd rather hammer my tongue to a thin strip and staple it to a major intersection with a croquet hoop. Hopefully we'll know by the end of the week how many she's cooking up.

Speaking of hellions, the hounds of Zorya Borzoi have gotten huge, can I tell you? Just over five months old and already they can bowl me over if they manage to run into me when I'm not looking. Or, if I have a camera held in front of my face and can't properly defend myself.

This past weekend was a nice change of pace for the Irrelephant household. Two months ago we joined the very small local branch of the AKC, and have been slowly working up to full membership. As part of their charter they have to do certain events to raise public awareness about the sport and joys of purebred dogs, and in conjunction with one of the main member's job they put on what's called a "Meet The Breed" show. In essence it killed several birds with one stone--it combined bringing in puppies to an Assisted Living Facility for some variety and fun for the residents with having a mock dog show for the number of new puppies the members had and also helping to socialize dogs that didn't have much exposure to strangers, both two- and four-legged.

The funniest thing about it was that everyone ELSE in the club has and brought little dogs--Chinese Cresteds, Shelties and Corgies to be specific; dogs, in short, that mature very fast. We on the other hand raise a breed that takes almost two years to gain full maturity, as well as being a breed whose heady days of popularity and exposure to the public eye occurred some eighty years ago. Sheba and Remy balked at first, naturally. They stood still. They pulled back against the gentle tugs on leashes, and mostly just refused to walk, no matter how much we cajoled and offered treats if they'd just take a step forward!

It's almost comical now, looking back on it, but overall I have to say that I'm proud of my pups--watching all these show dogs trotting around in perfect step, each doing what they're supposed to do best, and the two of us having to entice our lunking huge hounds around with bits of hotdog and string cheese. With patience and soft words and tons of praise for the simplest act of taking a few steps forward we finally won them over. The funny looks we kept getting from the other breeders finally stopped when I explained to these folks that our dogs had been wearing collars and leashes for less than a handful of hours and that Borzoi breeders don't even THINK about putting collars on until five to six months of age because they simply aren't READY for them, developmentally speaking.

THEN the enlightenment came and they started to share in the joy of watching how fast the two of them learned over the course of maybe two hours that it was actually FUN to run around in a circle with us, that the leash wasn't going to kill them, and as Cesar Milan preaches, there is great reward for a dog in being part of a pack. Even if that pack did include a number of toy breeds and some sweating and overworked owners. We ended the day by taking a pack walk around the building, and our pair were trotting along in the mix like it was the most natural thing in the world. Talk about a proud papa.

While the kids are all lovely in their puppy curls we're thinking about easing them into showing in the puppy classes. Standard fare in those rings is the balking, the refusal to walk, the skittering, coltish bolts and so forth, and we've been told by our mentor that if Remy can hold on to his white coat of silky locks and at least make the effort to run around in a circle with one of us he might well clinch his first ring win, so everyone start thinking positive for us.

While you're at it, start thinking positive for ME. I too am about to venture into the show ring for the first time, as an owner-handler. With three dogs in the house and probably keeping one of Belle's puppies Mrs. I can't go it alone anymore. So, soon to be gone are my halcyon days of lifting heavy objects and standing ringside cheering. I figure now is the time to start, though. What's to lose, right? Most Borzoi breeders don't even bother to seriously show a dog until age two or better, so at worst we get some exposure for the puppies and for me too, and at best we win a few ribbons for our gangly, long-legged pups. If I make a fool of myself for doing the wrong thing then no loss, as it's just puppy trials, we're not fighting for a Group win.

At least not yet. *wink*

Sheba (Brassgate's Onyx At Zorya) doing what she does best--expressing herself.

Remy (Aria's Riding Shotgun At Zorya.) "His Master's Voice" indeed.

Mad Street Cred

2009-03-06T19:48:00.004-06:00

I haz it.

Or so I'm told. I'm also told that "I've arrived."

I, you see, yours truly, your humble Writer just sold his first photograph. To a for-real magazine for for-real money. Outfreakingstanding!

A few days ago an email arrived claiming to be from the Sierra Club magazine's Photo Editor asking about usage rights for one of my Flickr photos. My first thought, being a good internet tubes user was that it was a hoax, some sort of come-on. But, being curious, I checked it out. I emailed the person asking for permission to use my photo, and the email bounced back. Thinking for sure I'd foiled some sort of major phishing plot I went to the Sierra Club's website and emailed them on their general contact email address. I included the email and asked if I'd been phished.

Turns out I hadn't! The nice gentleman wrote me and cc'd the editor and we started talking. Seems in their May/June 2009 issue they're running an article on marine pollution, specifically by nurdles.

Now, until just a few short months ago I had no idea what a nurdle was. No clue. A year or more ago Tracy and I were walking the tracks at one of our favourite train-spotting places, and there parked were a line of hoppers, each with its fill/empty valves open. Spilling out of one was a huge 'puddle' of these tiny white plastic pellets, millions of 'em. I had Tracy scoop up a handful and I took a few photos, then she blew them out of her cupped hands and I took a few photos. Uploaded them to Flikr and pretty much forgot about it.

Well, those little dealie-flops are nurdles, or pre-production plastic pellets. Those are shipped by the trainload to plastics plants who melt them down and turn them into, well, everything plastic, and I'd gotten a nice, clear photo of them. It seems these things get into the water supply, fish eat them (thinking they're small fish eggs or other good things I guess,) fill up with them, can't digest them, can't pass them, and therefore die of starvation with their stomachs full of little plastic pellets.

Months and months ago I was contacted by a Wikipedia editor who was doing a page on nurdles, and they asked to use the photo. I agreed, it being on a Creative Commons License--they can use it as long as they credit it to me. Which they did, and the hits on that photo started rolling in. I think to date it remains one of my top five most-viewed photos on Flickr, right up there with the Mark V diving helmet and diver I photographed at Vortex Springs, Florida and the gurnsey cow riding a unicycle.

After all that hooplah someone at the Sierra Club saw my photo (the nurdles, not the cow) and asked to buy the rights to it for use in a magazine article! A 1/16th page-size photo, plus use on the website in the article. See the above. We emailed back and forth, and I agreed. Sent the invoice off this afternoon.

The best part? I'm getting paid for it! Not a king's ransom, no, but then again it's not a photo of, say, Lincoln being assassinated. BUT, it's a start, right? I never thought that taking a photo of something as innocuous as some plastic pellets could lead to a very small paycheck!*

Today, nurdles. Tomorrow? Paris Hilton being assassinated in a theater!

_________________
* What's really funny about all this is that I've always thought that Tracy would be the one who sold the first photo of the two of us. It's been said before, and I agree totally, that while I have most of the nuts-and-bolts of photography down pat Tracy has The Eye. She looks at the world through that lens differently than the rest of us, and that to me makes her by far the better photographer. But hey, I've been wrong before, right?

The Fourth Element

2009-03-01T14:10:00.006-06:00

Fire and I have a long and chequered history. We go way back, me and the open flame. I honestly think at times that I'm destined to die in a fire of some sort. Perhaps I'll spontaneously combust, go up in a huge hot whoosh and make a real ash of myself.

Since the house is on fire let us warm ourselves.
~Italian Proverb

When I was a kid my brother and I had a sort of clubhouse. It was an old pig sty my father had built one year when we decided to raise and slaughter a hog. Rectangular, it was rather like walking into a closet that went back much farther than it was wide. Since it was originally in essence a seven foot tall crate made of 2x4s there were no walls, so we had carefully tacked old carpet to the inside, keeping the wind (and girls) out, and with the huge drawbridge door closed, trapping the redolence of pig inside. It was heaven. It was privacy and solitude and you couldn't keep anything fragile out there because it was always kind of damp, but it was ours.

One summer I decided to fashion a candle holder out of half a gourd, ala' Gilligan's Island. Sawed the gourd's body in half, positioned in it's hollow recess a stub of candle I'd snuck out of the house, nailed the works to a corner post and we were in business. Light! I lit it with matches stored in an old Boy Scout waterproof matchbox and we proceeded to do whatever it was that we were doing that summer. Digging to Indochina. Hiding the Stolen Government Documents. Plotting each other's overthrow via dirt clods.

At some point, as happens with all boys, we got distracted and left. I didn't return to the clubhouse for days. When I did I saw something that chilled my guts and made me realise how close I had been to genuinely screwing up. The candle had burned the top of the gourd, then proceeded to burn the corner post in a long, charred black taper almost to the roof. I can only assume the dampness that seemed to always cling to the place had so soaked the wood that it only charred slowly, then finally extinguished.

If you ever catch on fire, try to avoid seeing yourself in the mirror, because I bet that's what really throws you into a panic.
~Jack Handey

When I was in high school I made sure to stand apart from the seething crowds that I simultaneously worshiped and abhorred. I did this by wearing a huge old green canvas Air Force field jacket, a monstrous three-quarter length lined coat with four massive pockets, a 23rd Tactical Fighter Wing/Flying Tigers patch on the shoulder and my last name stitched in white thread on a blue strip of cloth over the heart. I was state of the art nonconformist in a world of Members Only jackets, and I wore it every chance I got.

The pockets were so voluminous that they could hold everything. One New Years Eve as I recall they held four one-dozen packs of bottle rockets, back when they were still legal. A huge group of us were racing around the field like idiots, firing bottle rockets at each other in a grand melee'. I'd gotten smart and was using a foot-long length of thin PVC pipe to serve as a combination cannon and rifle barrel, and was doing a pretty fair job at accuracy with it. That is until I launched one too close to that huge right-side lower pocket full of ammunition.

A spark or two managed to fall not only directly into the pocket but fell on a fuse, lighting it and then its eleven brothers and then their thirty six cousins. It started as a slow sizzle and ended up in a flaming mass snug up against my right hip, as the jacket was buttoned up against the cold. I remember batting wildly at my pocket, thinking I might extinguish it somehow as they flamed and jetted and exploded therein. My best friend at the time ran up behind me, grabbed the collar of the jacket and heaved downwards. That action sent buttons flying, nearly dislocated both of my shoulders and succeeded in pinning my arms tight up against my body when the material proved too strong for him.

I recall looking in the mirror afterward at the ruined jacket (literally in burnt shreds,) my ruined jeans (burnt clean through in four places) and at the huge red and black scorches on the flesh of my hip. No scars resulted from that incident but a lasting respect for knowing where my sparks go was, so to speak, kindled.

Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
~Terry Pratchett

Living in the country, normal practice is to make a burn pile. Old branches, waste from the garden, ends and bits from wood projects too small to recycle, empty feed bags, it all goes on the burn pile. Then, one clear morning, you decide it's too tall to leave anymore and you light it on fire. Then you stand around with shovel in hand and a water hose nearby, just in case. I've done it dozens of times, and will no doubt continue to do so. That's how it started this morning, only sans shovel.

The wind was up nicely, which I knew would fan the flame and also make it a little more dangerous, so I set my mind to watch. It was plenty cold, still just above freezing so I knew the fire would serve two purposes--not only would it rid me of piles of thistle weeds and old pecan branches from Katrina and so forth, it would also do a merry job of warming me while I stood there in the gusty north wind and watched it. I'd had too many trash fires turn into field fires not to be ready.

I was right. The paper chicken-feed bags I'd used for starter went up nicely, catching the Xmas tree, which in turn caught the old dead weeds growing in the middle. The wind, directly out of the north fanned the flames, giving it a ready supply of oxygen, and shortly I was backing up pace after pace to keep out of its eager grasp and ever-increasing heat. Naturally, as I expected, it began to spread, and I began working around it, stamping out little spots and tongues of flame that tried to get too far. I'd wait until the flames had moved away a little or decreased in ferocity, run by and stamp with my old tennis shoes then move away before my skin tightened too much from the heat.

That is until I was working around the pile counter-clockwise, my left side to the flames. I was stamping out a foot-sized grass fire that was threatening to wander too far when the wind decided to change direction very abruptly and very strongly. Suddenly I was no longer four feet from the fire but was standing in its midst. Looking down at the patch of grass I was stamping I saw licking gouts of translucent orange, felt my hands and face grow tight and hot from the heat and felt the heat instantly through pants and thick jacket. I turned to my right and started to run but my reflexes were far too slow for something as elemental and raw as a roaring fire.

I heard and felt a sizzling sound all around my head and exposed hands and knew I was in very real danger. Then the wind changed again, just as abruptly as it had moments ago and I was standing in the clear again, smelling the horrible sick sweet smell of burnt.

My hand was at my face instantly, afraid to touch for fear of what I'd find. Then I gave in and touched. The hair on the left side of my head, from under my black wool faux-Kangol all the way to my ear and around the back of my head felt crinkly, and I could feel tiny bits of it crack off as I rubbed. Likewise the soft black wool fuzz on my hat was now thousands of tiny brown curls on the left side only, as though the sun had bleached the tiny fibers after a summer in the sun. My left eyebrow? Just a thin crinkled stubble, as though I'd plucked most of it. Same with my eyelashes. The left side of my moustache, my one vanity, is half burnt, its length foreshortened and badly thinned, and the remaining hair had a terrible crinkly feeling to most of it. A texture that my fingers seem to have touched time and again throughout the day today. The same with my goatee--each pass of my fingers seemed to rub more singed, crinkled bits off, and lingers on the tight, strangely brittle patches here and there that still remain.

We never think about how fast things can change. We're not good at thinking in the moment, instead relying on thinking in terms of hours, days, years. "It was a good day," not "It was a good moment." We forget that the important things don't happen over a day or a year, they happen in an eyeblink. Oh, I know it'll grow back. I'm just about ready to laugh at it. This is the intake of breath before the first giggles start. I'm still disgusted, though. I don't grow hair like a beast, unfortunately. It took me almost two years to grow a set of handlebars that I could be really proud of, and this morning I had to stand in the bathroom mirror with a towel over the sink and my sharp scissors and trim the right side, shorten and thin and ruin it until I was somewhat symmetrical again. A year's worth of loving, prideful growth gone in a single lick of fire.

It certainly could have been worse. I could have been carrying a gallon of napalm in one hand. I could have been sorting my dynamite collection at the time. I could have been sky-clad, worshiping in some Old Time Religion sort of way. Still, my little-used vanity still stings, and even after washing and shampooing the whole left side of my head I still keep getting whiffs of burnt me, an unpleasant reminder.

Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people. ~Garrison Keillor

Still, could have been worse. Perhaps people will start to think I look more like Adam now.

I Swear.

2009-02-27T05:55:00.002-06:00

Philip Jose Farmer, science fiction author, dies

February 25, 2009
PEORIA, Ill.

Philip Jose Farmer, one of the most celebrated science fiction, fantasy and short story writers of the 1960s and '70s, died Wednesday. He was 91.

Farmer died "peacefully" in his sleep, according to a message posted on his official Web site.

The longtime Peoria resident wrote more than 75 novels, including the Riverworld and World of Tiers series. He won the Hugo Award three times and the Grand Master Award for Science Fiction in 2001.

Farmer was "one of the great ones," according to a statement on the web site of Subterranean Press, which published his later novels.

"He was always a joy to work with, and we will dearly miss his intelligence and good nature," the statement said.

Farmer's first published story, "The Lovers," caught the attention of the science fiction world in 1952 with one of the genre's first serious treatments of sexuality. At the time, he was working full time at a Peoria steel mill and writing on the side.

"The Lovers" was based on a love affair between an Earth man and an alien woman, and Farmer rocked the science fiction community by dealing with sex in a frank manner. The story inspired some of the greatest science fiction writers, including Robert Heinlein, whose classic "Stranger in a Strange Land" was dedicated to Farmer.

Farmer tried to survive as a full-time freelance writer but finances forced him back to work as a technical writer in the defense industry in 1956. He bounced from New York to Arizona and California before finally quitting and moving back to central Illinois in 1969 to concentrate all his energies on his science fiction writing.

Farmer's celebrity in the science fiction world did not translate to Peoria, where he grew up and attended college.

"I am obscure in Peoria," Farmer told The Associated Press in 1988. "I guess they don't read much around here."

Farmer's last novel, "The City Beyond Play," was published in 2007.

He is survived by his wife, Bette, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Many thanks to Deathwatch Central for posting this obituary.

I'm Struggling!

2009-02-26T19:20:00.004-06:00

I've got a conundrum.

I'm a huge fanboy, you see, of WWII aviation, up to and barely into jet-propulsion. If it's as old as or older than the Luftwaffe's Messerschmidt Me 262 'Schwalbe' I'm all about it. You see, I love simple airplanes, all the way back to the Wright Flyer. Oh gods what an aircraft. That beautiful and monstrously simple contraption that first powered us just over a hundred years ago into the bountiful blue place that only birds used to dare.* As such, and being a confirmed scale modeler of WWII aircraft I like to think I know a little bit about WWII airplanes. That's why I'm so bothered right now.

I saw one today, you see. Not flying mind you, but on a truck. A BIG truck. A diesel truck with a very long low-boy flatbed trailer to be very specific. I glanced up at the interstate, nudged there by whatever guardian angel looks out for vintage military aircraft fanatic atheists and there it was, rolling by on the interstate at 65 mph. My first thought was "An amphibious plane!" My second thought was "I wonder if I could catch up with it on the bike?" My third and succeeding thoughts ran around the ideas of not being able to leave work so I could hare off up the interstate and the difficulties inherent in either forcing a diesel truck and trailer off the interstate, unarmed, from a motorcycle, and taking a series of photos at 70 mph.

So, I did what I usually do when something astounding passes by on the interstate--I swallowed hard and turned back to my computer after it had passed. And spent the rest of the day thinking about it. Turning it over and over in my head like a peppermint on my tongue. Writing bits of blog post about it.

It was utterly and entirely a beautiful thing. It was obviously in the process of being restored because all the paint (a pretty necessary thing when you're expected to operate in and from salt water) had been sanded off and it's aluminum skin gleamed in the sun as it passed. If you've ever seen an amphibious plane you know that its belly is shaped a lot like the hull of a boat, since it in essence IS a boat. The wing is mounted at the highest point of the fuselage to keep delicate engines far out of the water, and the rudder is likewise very tall. This aircraft was just a fuselage, a huge boat-shape with a broad, blunt nose and windows set very far up on it's front and a tail section that stretched up as tall as the huge slots where the wing roots would enter the fuselage.

When it passed it looked for all the world like a child's cartooned drawing of a whale made real and sculpted from metal. Simple, organic curves with a narrow, upthrust rear spine upon which you could easily imagine the broad flat surfaces of a whale's flat tail. The body between tail and nose was bulbous in the extreme, a hugely pregnant shape swinging pendulously below a perfectly flat and level dorsal line. At the front was that comically round 'face' with it's ridiculously small glass 'eyes' far up at the top, and the sun that ran across the panels and rivets of the aluminum body sparkled it was splashing across a fish's wet scales.

I was entranced. At first I thought it was a PBY Catalina but the body was too short. And yes, if you're curious I've spent the last HOUR fitfully searching and giving up and searching again. And I think I've managed to find it. *g*

It was a PB2Y Coranado.

I think. *G*

What I do know is that it captured me wholly for a moment. For the brief handful of seconds it passed my vision I was back in a museum walking around relics of a past age. My hands were touching the cool steel of an airplane's cowling, smelling the sweet and sour odor that only very old machines give off, that rich tang of oil and sweat and long use. I was drawing my fingers across the gull's wings of an F4-U Corsair that had just landed at the local airport. I was touching with awe-struck fingers the three propeller blades of a P-40 Warhawk, dressed in the drab olive and sky blue of the AVG, looking just as it had when it served in the China-India-Burma theater. I was swallowed whole, resting like Jonah in the deep cool belly of a B-17 Flying Fortress named "Sentimental Journey" as she sat on the tarmac, quietly waiting for her chance to leap back into the open skies.

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* I would be deeply amiss if I misled you--the Montgolfier Bros. launched us into the air as aeronauts just after 1783 with the Aerostat Réveillon. Granted it only carried the first living creatures, not people--a sheep named Montauciel (Climb-to-the-sky), a duck and a rooster. The people came later, but what I was referring to up there was POWERED flight, with an engine. Balloons have their very own, very special place in my heart, quite separate from the noise and smoke of aircraft with engines.