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Jargon

In 1977 I was on one of my summertime retreats from study. It was my routine to come home to the Boston area and split my time between working on orthopedic floors at one of the large downtown hospitals and sailing. At that point, I was close to finishing a Phud, and it was a joke among friends in the medical and nursing professions that I’d soon be Dr. Carreras – although not in medicine.
OK, I lied; I worked, sailed, and partied. I partied a lot. One night I wound up in my usual bar on Cambridge Street arguing with some people I had known from undergraduate work in anthropology. At some point, some of the staff from the orthopedics floor where I was working joined us. In less than ten minutes, language became an issue. One of the nurses accused one of my anthropologist friends of speaking in jargon, “please just speak in English.” Another friend made a counterargument that the nurses and the surgeon talked in jargon.

We’d been having a good time, so I began translating for the two groups being that I could speak both “languages,” so to speak. Within an hour, both groups, intelligent folks, began picking up parts of the other jargon. The babble at our tables now sounded very little like American English, and to use a linguist’s term seemed to be a lingua franca, a creole, or a Pidgen.
As the evening proceeded, the talk at our table grew more animated, a bit loud, and seemed to waft throughout the barroom. At last, one very drunk gentleman approached us and stated, ” I don’t give a flyin’ f**k what you speak at home. But you’re in America now! So quit your damned gobbledegook, and speak English!” After this, he lurched away.

There was only the briefest of pauses before our conversations picked up where they had paused.

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Road Trip

I’ve been off the side of the road for a long time now. No more hell rides through mysterious countrysides, no more insinuation into the improbable, and certainly no more sleeping in damp woods till daybreak.

OK, I admit to missing some of the disepitomable bistros that figured large in my days on the road. Breakfast was almost always good, but lunch and dinner could be strange meatloaf or Salisbury Steak.

The conversation could be interesting. Who was president, funny money for change, and interesting linguistic variations always showed up. But, no, I’m not talking about Mexico or Canada. Frolicking detours off the map could occur deep in the heart of New York or Massachusetts. Indeed, I left my heart in several unforgettable and unrelocatable parts unknown. So, yeah, I know what you’re thinking, but no, I wasn’t on anything. I was just road tripping.

If I was to make a travel bucket list: road trip, it might include some of those locales – to see what’s been happening.

But only at breakfast time.

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Masked

Who is that masked man? That was a question that got asked towards the end of every Lone Ranger television show. It’s no news that it has new relevance these days.
People come up to me and expect instant recognition, and I ponder for five minutes trying to place the eyes and hair with someone I know. Voice is, of course, no aid; it’s muffled. It’s uncomfortable having an intimate conversation with someone you should know but don’t recognize. How does this stranger know such details of my life? Equally embarrassing is faking the knowledge of details of their life that you should know. You think you have it figured out, but don’t dare ask, “How is the divorce going?” for fear of being wrong.
Perhaps we all should spring for masks with our photos printed on them. You peer closely and see that it’s Carl, ” so sorry about the divorce Carl, did you get alimony?” It would be a bargain at any price to cut out the moments of piecing together clues – Carl, John, Mike, Claire? It might even be considered medicine. The medicinal value of friends not being alienated and feeling that your cognitive abilities have slipped into the senile would be huge.

This could be a great business opportunity. Is anyone interested in a sure-fire investment?

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Clean

In the light of a January first morning, the shop looks particularly grody. Just two weeks ago, I put the wrap on end-of-season production. I emptied the trash barrel and walked away for two weeks of non-shop activities. If it wasn’t done, it was going to wait. I do this because I found through hard experience that taking orders much past Thanksgiving resulted in profits but too much stress at home during the holidays. Trying to get that last item finished and shipped in time for Christmas delivery is not worth the sour looks from the family because I was in a bad mood. So I lose a bit of money but enjoy the holidays more.
I should have known that it would be a harbinger of a lousy cleanup at the beginning of the year. All that dust, wood shavings, wood chips, old paint, and old varnish was waiting for me to walk in on January one. Traditionally I’ve spent time on the first day of the year straightening the shop. But, being this had been a busy fall, and I was hurried, the shops needed more than routine cleaning.

The only dissent to this was from H.I.M Xenia ( empress of all she surveys). My running the shop vacs disturbed her New Year’s nap. She was up late, having a good nip toot, and stated that she needed rest, and would I please go away…far away.

Undeterred, I laid into the job. I got the new dust collector attached to the bandsaw, swept up, and began organizing supplies.

That’s when I came across the full Stop Loss Bag and the unused one. If you run a woodshop, you may have partial cans of finish hanging around. They gradually go bad, skim over, thicken up, and become unusable. It’s a waste of good finish, expensive, and a disposal problem. Contact with air is the most common culprit. No matter how tightly you seal the can, enough air remains to react with the contents. The stop loss bag eliminates most of the air. As a result, the finish stays usable for much longer. In the case of one pint of varnish, as long as a year.

Using the bags has reduced the spoilage of cans of finish and saved me money, despite the cost of the bag. And getting this post back to cleaning – it means less hazardous materials that I have to dispose of in my early January cleaning.

And now that I’ve had a break, I should get back to scraping off the bench. This year I’ll work on reminding myself to cover the benchtop with some plywood while finishing.

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Resolved

There was a time when I would ring in the New Year with drinks, hugs, toasts, and of course, Resolutions. Would it be Auld Lang Syne without the midnight resolutions? Promises that we’d drink less, exercise more, be more observant, or go to church more often? After a while, I resolved not to resolve. Instead, I decided that I’d think about things a bit more.
I’ve had better luck with this sidewise approach. Comes the end of February, there was less of a grand finale of guilt when I failed to match the brilliant and bright promises of an early New Year’s Day.

So in January, I think about new products for the shop, I don’t create a rigid schedule. I start thinking about the garden while looking through the catalogs. And I think about increased physical activity.

I’ve found that I have a better achievement level with this sidling up alongside goals and objectives. Getting pally with resolutions generates a guilt trip when your overly ambitious plans don’t work out.

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January

New England weather coheres to only one guide: inconsistency. Mind you, we used to consistently depend upon pretty much only one rule about January around here, and that was at some point we’d get a day, maybe two, of January Thaw. January Thaw was an almost sacred event. We’d go from temperatures in the single digits or worse and find ourselves tossed into a near-tropical weather pattern. OK, I do exaggerate. But the temps would generally soar into the 50’s or even the 60’s. The temptation was to shed layers of clothing, take off the LL Bean boots, and sunbathe. Then, of course, for repentance, we’d plunge back into the freezer.

Not so anymore. The temperatures in December have fluctuated between the teens and the forties much of the month. As a result, I fear that my maples suspect that tapping season is here early and expect me to sneak up on them with drill, hammer, taps, and tubing.

Typically, it’s a month in which I read seed catalogs, fill my shop time with new designs and prototypes, and look longingly out the window at my dreary garden. Oh, yes, I start a countdown to when I start the tomatoes, lettuce, and kale seedlings inside. I fill my time with sundry things designed to take my mind off the realities of winter. Yes, it’s bad enough that I begin to yearn for February. Now you know how desperately I dislike January.
At least in February, I can observe the days lengthening, tap the trees, and boil maple syrup. Admittedly, it sounds rather desperate, too. But for all that I hear from New England expatriates who ask after how deep the snow was around the maples when I tapped, how much syrup I got, and when the buds finally broke open in.

Yes, it’s true. There are days that I’d grab a reticule string bag, stuff it full of summer clothes, and head of for the Caribean. But being my friends already left for nicer weather, who’d I email for what day the sugaring started in the sugarbush. How’d I learn when the first sugar snap peas went into the garden? And on what date in April did the last snow in the mall parking lot disappear?

Yes, I know that my colleagues in Canada are sneering at these complaints. But come on, admit it. You hate January too!

Maybe this is the year I’ll do some of those early in the water boat shows in Florida. Then, I’ll return in time to tap the maples and just snowbird January away. Reading the catalogs can wait.