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In the field

Suave, elegant, cultured; that’s never been me, but thanks for implying it. No, by the time I’d developed the proper social camouflage, I was out of grad school and working as a practicing anthropologist. So it had become a professional disguise.
I was not in academia but almost continuously on projects for various long-term and short-term clients.

In the field, anthropologists put forward aspects of our personality to enhance our role as participants and observers in a community. This field persona is eager to learn and interested in what people tell you.
You can’t fake this for too long. Most people who wind up in anthropology will tell you that being in the field can be a drug. It juices you, and after my first year in “practice,” I was thrilled that my only academic involvement was an occasional adjunct position.

For academic anthropologists, it’s not the same – catch them in their native setting roaming the departmental offices, the lecture halls, or browsing in the faculty lounge, and you’ll see personalities vastly different than you saw when in your community. Those rivalries over tenure look more like ritualized combat sequences from bad ethnographic documentaries.
Most spend a year or two at most with you. Then talk and write about it for decades. A sabbatical year will allow them to return and do the long-desired follow-up study; if they are fortunate.
Their long arc from adjunct professor to tenure begins with some pithy dissertation and terminates with a sappy rewrite of old data. With any luck, they’ll wind up an emeritus professor with a horde of former grad students hurridly writing a book in honor of their contribution to the field.

Of course, things are changing. For decades academic programs took on more students than there would ever be full-time positions for. The interim solution was to hire on short-term contracts, dangle the possibility of tenure track positions, and then pull out the carpet and send them on their way to the next alluring college or university.
Ph.D.’s have gotten wise to this tactic. Some have decided to leave academia and go into marketing, cosmetics, urban planning, and other areas. I’m prejudiced enough to think that wherever they go, they’ll contribute positively to that enterprise.

But every once in a while, just before bed. We’ll get visited by an apparition of the bold tenured professor we once thought of as being our future. Some dreams don’t die quickly.

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Cruise

What my wife does know won’t hurt her.
What she does know is that as my father before me, all a pretty vessel needs to do is whistle, and I’ll pack a cruise bag. I doubt she’d worry too much. I barely looked at another woman for these past forty years. So she does not need to grill me about those affections; they are all for her. I think she feels that boats and ships are a safe diversion for a husband.

Since restarting the nautical carving business in the ’90s, I’ve spent lots of time on boats, near the water, and talking to sailors. What I have not had is an opportunity to ease the fervent desire to get back to sea, if only for a short cruise. My last opportunity was a half-day spent on a sea-going tug doing video.
I’ve tried to suggest to my wife that a cruise on a cargo liner might be pleasant or an overnight ferry to Halifax. I’ve thought about forging prize award papers -“look, honey, we’ll have to go. We’ll lose out on the prize otherwise!” No luck.

I’ve learned from hard experience that what you put off too long doing you may never do. So here it is, all ready for publication:
professional carver, videographer, and folksinger available for cruises. Good liberty ports are a must. Out of practice but probably still capable of partying all night. Works cheap for food and berthing.

When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

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Spoons need a bit of tenderness too

Every shop project has at least one process you hate. When I’m making spoons, it’s the finishing. About ninety percent of the utensils I make are from cherry, and overwhelmingly I use USP mineral oil to finish them. It’s food-safe, inexpensive, leaves a lovely glow on the wood, and is messy as hell. But, most importantly, it gets absorbed into the wood and helps keep the spoon from picking up odors and tastes from your cooking.
It’s a “yuck” sort of thing that is repeated several times until the wood has absorbed about as much as it can. The spoons then sit and cure for about a week, after which they get thoroughly wiped down, and a final top-coat of mineral oil mixed with beeswax is applied. Then they get buffed and are ready for use.

The coating and curing I put on in the shop is not a forever varnish-style coating. There is a bit of upkeep required by the owner. So every once in a while, oil them again to keep them at their best.

I do not recommend using cooking oil. Many of those eventually become rancid. Instead, use mineral oil, as I do. You’ll only be using a few drops at a time, so there won’t be the sort of “yuck” factor that I get when I do a dozen or so all at once.

Properly maintained, a wooden utensil should last for years.

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Faces

I had a friend who, whenever something struck him as both profound and annoying, would tug on his sizeable red beard and state that, “I’ll have to cogitate my veritabilities.” So I’ve always interpreted the saying as needing to think about the truth of a situation. Why would you need to think about a situation’s truth? Maybe because much of what we see, especially in media, aims to spin things, veil actuality in mist, or make gripping what is mundane.
I’m not speaking full-on conspiracy theory here—just spin. You know the meat and potatoes of advertising and publicity. In the past several years, it’s gone from being the domain of pros to something everyone practices on fakebook and other social media platforms. We call it curation. We curate our social media presentations as exhibits at an art gallery or museum rather than the cluttered, messy lives that we know we live.
Zoom has allowed us to conceal the dirty laundry, unwashed dishes, and bad taste in art by giving us virtual backgrounds. Our colleagues do not have to ogle the uncurated realities of our lives.

There is just one issue; our hands and faces. Studies vary, but it seems that we pluck boogers, rub rheumy eyes, probe ears or pluck errant food from our lips- lots. Some studies suggest that we do these activities from 15.7 to 23 times an hour. And I’ll lay you odds that the count goes up if you are agitated, angry, or frightened. Just think all those carefully posed selfies in scenic locations, all those Instagram shots, just wasted because you unconsciously did a gross-out on Zoom!

I have cogitated on the veritabilities of this intently.
I am pulling together a software team to develop a new video app. We’ll call it FaceOut. FaceOut will subtly edit all those embarrassing tiny hand movements to your nose, ear, and mouth. FaceOut will allow you to present a perfect Zoom presence without the annoying and truly gross distractions.
Operators are standing by. Invest in FaceOUt. FaceOut is fated to be one of the most impactful new products of 2022.
FaceOut!

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Jobs


I remember in the ’90s when my government job was disappeared as part of Clinton and Gore’s “Reinvention of Government.” Job counselors solemnly sat in front of groups of “displaced” workers and told us, ” you can’t expect to go on doing one thing for the rest of your work careers.” Of course, I had to sit and listen to the rest of the lecture to qualify for job retraining, so I sat.

At the time, the plastics industry in my state was rapidly being offshored to China, and half of the people were displaced factory workers. The other half were people from a large computer company that essentially committed suicide through poor strategic decisions. I was off in a corner by myself not fitting in either group. In the single room, were people from very different ends of the economic and educational spectrum. We were about to be offered the same one size fits palliative job retraining by the state. I think the guidebook they gave us got written by some government department cooperating with a chamber of commerce. Someone had forecast that food services, healthcare, and retail were where the jobs would be, and that’s what we all should retrain for. I wasn’t the only one in the room that felt as though I had stepped into a Soviet-era planned economy with a five-year plan. I’d love to quash the oversimplifications I heard that day, and seal them away with other myths. Many of us opted out to start our own five-year plans.

We are currently enduring a different fracas concerning jobs. Retail, restaurants, education, childcare, and healthcare are in flux due to the Covid pandemic. I’m not sure that our plans for the displaced are any better now than thirty years ago.
Other than pronouncements of surprise at what’s happening, I’ve seen little discussion of emerging policy. What I do hear seems to be amazement that people flee the underpaid, overstressed, and underappreciated sectors of an economy. Are you surprised that people don’t want poor compensation for hard work?
An economy is like a spider web; strands are supporting others and interdependent. Right now, a giant has just plowed through the web, and the tears are evident. I hope they don’t let the same government department and chamber of commerce prepare the next guidebook. But, if they do, I advise that you design a plan in a hurry.

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Prime

I’m no stranger to chilling episodes. When I was younger, it was adventures on the road, stops not entirely on the maps, or friends who led me astray. In short, it was interesting, but I came to feel the need for the less adventurous.

I looked forward to a splendorous retirement of relating my doings without getting involved again. Besides, every year the remaining witnesses seemed to become fewer as mortality and terrible life choices took old companions. One by one they shuffled, or dramatically dropped off the mortal coil.
It’s that mortal coil routine that’s been the rub in recent years. My friends were getting bored with celestial choirs ( if they were genuinely repentant). Or maybe, they decided to visit my peaceful life, if not finding any peace in the other place. In any case, periodically, but especially around this time of the year, they come visiting.
I’ll notice the cat following a dust mote around the room. Then a palpable chill in the air. Then an almost transparent image forms.
The conversations are limited. Lot’s happened over the years, and from one visit to the next, they don’t seem to remember much of what I told them.
A bunch came to visit the other day while I was watching Amazon Prime on my computer. It was a documentary on the sixties, and they got hung up on looking for themselves and their friends in the documentary. Eventually, they forgot all about me.
Being I had a ton of work to do, I just programmed a batch of movies and documentaries for them to watch.
It worked great until they got hold of whatever passes for beer wherever they are. So now my friends are installed in my office as a sort of ongoing ghostly party.
I can’t figure out how to get rid of them.
The Verizon tech couldn’t fix it, and Amazon has no humans you can speak with.
My wife is threatening to move out.
The cat is having a great time standing in front of the screen and “Zoom bombing” the party.
And the local churches say they’ve never done an exorcism on a computer.
Got any ideas?

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Mr. Wakey Wakey

Ah, October, readers and writers spend time separating the cryptid from the cryptic and the insuperable from the insufferable. Vampires, mummies, witches, and ghouls cavort. Bah humbug!
Not to be splitting hairs, but there are much more frightening things than the undead – my apologies, Vlad, but bear with me on this. We have some scary shit at sea that beats your banshee, raises your zombie, and calls your Cthulu.
One October evening, the Capn’ and I had some hard cider with Willis. We sat around the woodstove, sipping quietly; the only sounds were the quiet drawing on their pipes. Outside, the wind rattled around a pile of lobster pots and leaves. Willis made lobster pots, and the yard looked like a hurricane had done for a small boat and left the remains in his yard.

So, around the stove, we sat, and soon the stories started. Willis sighed and related in ’33; he’d been on board a trawler that snagged its nets on a wreck. The winches pulled and pulled, and eventually, up came the wreck. It was the Lucy W. Lost a year previously and crewed by brothers and neighbors in his small coastal town. The axes couldn’t cut the gear fast enough as they all stood there wondering if their loved ones were still onboard.
The Capn’ looked into the flames and said, “Well, they all talk about the Mary Celeste or the Flying Dutchman; Bridge officers on the midwatch see things all the time. After the last war, my ship spotted flares to port and picked up a weak radio signal that sounded like a distress call. So we altered course, but we only found an abandoned life raft. That was 1946. A liberty ship with that name was torpedoed at those coordinates in ’43. Lost with all hands.

The silence and the looks told me that it was my turn to share something. “Mister Wakey-Wakey.” they looked at me skeptically. ” Onboard my ship, a particularly sadistic bosun’s mate got Jonah’s Lift one night ( tossed overboard). His ghost came back looking for revenge. He walks the ship just before the mid-watch, waking people from sleep. He lays his corpse cold hands on you and says, “Wakey Wakey, beautiful dreamer, you have the mid-watch!” The Capn’ looked at me, “what’s so bloody scary about that?” I replied, “Some of those he lays his hand on don’t wake, ever. There they are, in their bunks, with horrible looks on their faces. The watchstanders going around waking for the mid-watch find them that way.”

We sat around watching the flames and sipping for a few hours. Then, finally, the Capn’ drifted off to sleep while Willis and I continued to talk. Just before midnight, I decided that we better head up the hill to the house.
Perhaps it was the storytelling or just a bit of a desire to tease the Capn’, but I put a cold hand on the back of his neck, leaned close to his ear, and in a hoarse voice whispered, ” Wakey Wakey skipper- you have the mid-watch!”

He shivered, jumped up like he’d been shot, and was out of Willis’ in a shot. He stumbled and fell into a puddle. Willis and I stood in the doorway laughing. He glared at us.
“Tomorrow, I want that chain locker cleaned up, Mister Wakey Wakey. Is that clear?” “Aye, Aye, sir,” I responded while I laughed. It’s hard to give orders smeared in mud, lying in a puddle.

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Scuttlebutt Syndrome

What follows is a discussion of the newly named scuttlebutt syndrome found primarily among sailors:

Scuttlebutt is a favored term among sailors for how information can get relayed. As in,” scuttlebutt has it that mooring fees are going up next year.” Or, ” the scuttlebutt is that our next port of call in Naples got canceled.”

 For those not initiated into the watery ways of Poseidon or Neptunas Rex, the scuttlebutt was the large centrally located barrel of water on a sailing vessel that sailors could dip water from to quench thirst. Sailors would congregate and pass on news and events. The barrel is long since gone but, the term is still alive and well. Even those of us who have long since “swallowed the anchor” use the phrase with a certain reverence. Sailors are traditionalists and don’t appreciate unexpected change – unless it’s an extra tot of rum in their toddy; they love to pass on the scuttlebutt.

Scuttlebutt is not necessarily a source you should take when you visit the stockbroker, accuse your spouse of infidelity, or buy a boat. Especially buy a boat.

Perhaps something magical in seawater encourages an intrinsic change in a sailor’s sense of reality. The woman or man seems incapable of actually describing the last evening ashore in objective terms. It becomes the most raucous, magical experience of the cruise, and these days the phone provides photographic proof with blurry evidence. 

As a purely scientific experiment, ask a standardized series of questions the following day and two days after leaving port. The next day grunts and groans followed by a rush to the head are all you’ll get. But two days later, that evening transforms into a wondrous experience.

This seems to be a widespread phenomenon among Navy, Merchant Mariners, and civilian sailors and being that it is a worldwide phenomenon, we really can’t blame it on the sailor. No. They are poor victims of some toxic miasma of the sea that causes these figments to become a reality in their minds.

The only way this can spread is by waves. Waves can travel across an entire ocean in days. We do not know at this point how much exposure is needed to result in a full-blown case. We are applying for funds to study further this debilitating syndrome for which no known cure is known. We do know that taking the sailor away from the sea can make it worse.

 Our best advice currently is that parents not let their children become sailors. 

There is no known treatment. Neither Ivermcectin nor Hydrogen peroxide is beneficial. However, clinical trials of dark Caribbean rum show some promise as palliative care. Give the patient several drams, and they lose the ability to tell sea stories. This may not help the afflicted, but it offers relief for those who listen to the endless lies.

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Ishmael

October. It marks the beginning of a significant declivity in seasons. From here on, it’s downhill for the year. I don’t suffer from extreme depression like some. Nor do I become ghoulish as the days decline in length. But, still, certain feelings of loss overtake me, and I find myself longing for a nice cruise in Caribbean waters. I dream of leaving a fog-shrouded New England coast late in the evening and waking up sailing in the Gulf Stream. 

 I find then find myself thinking about these words from Dana’s Moby Dick:

“Call me Ishmael. Some years ago – never mind how long precisely – having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation …- then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.