Posts

Posted on

Cartoons

When the kids were little, the Simpsons were big in our house. The occasional use of the term embiggen was tolerated with a bit of judicious commonsense, ” Well, dear, there are worse things they could pick up from the TV.” Recognizing that the television would not do a fast fade from the house, we restricted watching to things we didn’t disapprove of. There were many public television shows, tapes, and later DVDs of series we found less objectionable than others. But we controlled the channel selection and refused to get a cable subscription.
No cable subscription; think about it. We were on tight budgets in those days and had other things to spend the money on with four kids. We did not save the receipts on what we spent for the alternate media but felt that it was a better deal than 365 channels of trash.

Then there was me. I worked in video. After a day of watching the screen, analyzing cuts, transitions, and writing scripts and storyboards, I couldn’t turn off at home. I’d find myself critiquing every shot held too long, every poor choice of a transition or dropped storyline. Needless to say, the kids picked it up from me. My wife could “drain the brain” in front of the tube, but not my kids. They were terrible critics.
Maybe it’s unsurprising that we like animation so much; scripting, budgets, and storylines are better supervised. There are fewer inane superstar personalities to follow along with, and they are made for entertaining in briefer bursts. Unfortunately, so much of what’s on cable is made as mere content filler for channels but has little value.

Well, that’s my piece for today. Or as Pinky, from Pinky and the Brain would say, “Naaarf!”

Posted on

By Thumb

You’re going on a cross-country trip. Airplane, train, bus, car, or bike?

From the Road-Trippers Guide, Vol2, no3, 1965- Thumbing It!

So you’ve made the big decision to see the opposite coast. Congratulations. Now comes the big choice. How? Air travel is expensive, and we’ve heard bad things about baggage handlers destroying guitars. This is a major bummer if you plan on making some bread while playing in coffeehouses, busking in bars, or on the streets.
Conversely, travel by train is not what it used to be as little as ten years ago. As a result, railroads are cutting back on passenger service to less well-traveled locations and sleeping in a coach car with old smelly upholstery stinks. So we advise it only in emergencies.
The bus remains a perennial favorite, with Trailways and Grayhound providing excellent service across the continent. Watch out, though, for connections that turn out to be locals. While picturesque, a tour of small-town America can get old over several days. Also, remember that while traveling on the bus, you are always at the mercy of the bus company for where and when you eat or go to the bathroom (if the onboard facilities are not working).
You guessed it. We won’t even suggest a transcontinental trip using your fat-tired Schwinn or three-speed Raleigh. Leave the bike at home for the kiddies. Someday they’ll have better bikes for this, but for now, let’s be serious; unless you want to take a year to cross the opposite coast, the bicycle is not a prime choice.
We are left, of course, with the easy preference of the professional road tripper, fraternal brother of the road, Pius itinerant, and kings of the road – the thumb. By thumb, you’ll discover that local diners are among the best places to eat, sunsets are more intense, and a bottle of cola at a service station more quenching of thirst. In short, you’ll get up close and personal with America. You look out at the scenery in all the other methods and wonder what’s happening. By thumb, you experience it all up close. You’ll meet people and exchange experiences.

Cautions:
1.) leave the stash at home. Toking up at night by the campfire is not worth a trip to the poke with officer Opie.
2.) Keep a sufficient supply of cash on hand to pay for bus rides out of unfriendly towns. Memorize this phrase: “Hi, officer! Just waiting for my bus. What a lovely town you have! I wish I could stay, but Mom expects me in LA by the fifth.”
3.) when asked about your political leanings, say that you don’t have any, but you’ll be glad to listen to theirs while driving to the next town. Nod and say Uhuhuh to make it seem like you are listening rather than counting the telephone poles.
4.) always remember to pack a towel.

Have a great adventure!

Posted on

Kale!

A few weeks ago, I started the kale, lettuce, and some tomatoes on a window sill in a burst of pre-spring enthusiasm. OK, it was desperation; I couldn’t take winter anymore. So now I have some young kale plants that will need to be clipped for mini-greens because there ain’t no way that the darn plants are going into a cold frame yet.
The problem is, of course, that now is when lots of other things need to be planted, and I am running out of room. There are windows downstairs, but they are already crammed with plants that overwinter indoors. Also, the greenhouse/carving shop has all the over-wintering plants in the way of carving projects, so that’s out.
I’ve cast covetous glances at the windows in my wife’s newly renovated office, but she has already nixed that. It’s hers! All that golden sunshine and no seedlings.
In desperation, I waded into what remained of last week’s snow to see how soon I might resurrect the cold frames. Unfortunately, one is a wreck, the other needs work, and the last one I can save with parts salvaged from the ruined one. On the other hand, these frames are about ten years old, and I am amazed that they’ve lasted this long, so having two still functional is fantastic. Looking back on the last six years, I estimate I should be able to get the frost-hardy kale into them by April one; if I add a remay blanket on top of the frame. For the non-gardener, remay is a lightly spun fabric that acts as an insulation layer on top of the plants. Here in New England, the combination of cold frames, remay, and low hoop tunnels of wire and greenhouse plastic can extend my spring and fall gardening seasons by as much as a month ( with a bit of care and luck).

But here I am on March 20th with too much time left on the clock for getting outside, but needing to start more seeds. If you are a gardener, you know the frustration that develops when your plants are subpar because you began them too late, and they are puny rather than lush and fruitful. In discussions with friends whose plants are vastly more productive, you feel wounded and frustrated and vow to plan carefully for next spring.
Well, here it is, spring, and you’re again behind the eightball.

Posted on

BS

How would you rate your confidence level?

Confidence is a tricky thing for a lot of us. For one thing, it can be situational. I can cook and bake but in a narrow range. So I feel confident within my comfort zone. My bad dream would be finding myself on the Great British Baking show. I’d run for the exit before the hosts could assign their first challenge.
Confidence can be dependent on how practiced the skills are. I could hand reef and steer quite well at one point. Add to that some coastal piloting skills and basic knowledge of celestial navigation. I was not an expert, but no slouch either.

Then we can enter the realm of things that never seem stale. Bullshit; I mean the ability to sling it, not the real stuff. My skills may be limited only by my sense of ambition, your gullibility, and my general knowledge of the topic area.
I have trained with some of the best: con artists, creative confabulists, professors of anthropology, master mariners, folk singers, journalists, and politicians. I have found that the more diverse your foundation, the better off you are.

So it’s no mystery that BS artists with significant confidence levels must study widely. I strongly recommend in-person tuition over watching movies, TV, or reading books. So much of the gestural and verbal nuance of laying it on with just the correct level of thickness only comes from personal, up close observance.

Good luck. And remember to practice lots!

Posted on

Anxieties

What makes you most anxious?

Even if you don’t want to admit it, we all wish magical spells would make the ugly disappear – a sort of thaumaturgy for complaints. Paul offends me, make him go poof, and cease to bother me. It’s not that what Paul does injures me. His lifestyle, political beliefs, religion, gender identity, and rabid enthusiasm for Star Trek offend my sense of correctness in the universe. Therefore, he must be controlled, eradicated, or neutralized.

So we all want to live in our personal “Pleasantville” where nothing offends. OK, you say, that may be true for those awful right-wingers, Hmmmphhh. But wishing the unpleasant would disappear is not exclusive to one group, class, or persuasion. Living with actual diversity is hard.

In the sixties, Folkies, and hippies wished ” straights” ( meaning non-hip people) would go away; they were so square. Notice that I capitalized Folkie but left hippie lowercase? Yup, lots of us Folkies thought hippies were not hip. We thought they were middle-class suburban wannabes with no credibility. But, of course, many Folkies had the same roots; the hippies just came along a few years after us.

Actual diversity means living with people who you may not see eye to eye with, may not wish to interact with, and may not expect your child to have sex with. But, regardless, you can’t edit them out of the community. But we try. We’d love to put them in a ghetto, box them up, and send them “back to where you came from.” But, in the long run, no good comes from events like that. Unfortunately, recent, medieval, and ancient history is full of the cost paid for this vanity.

It’s a sort of skewed Libertarianism. We reserve the right to worship, love, consume, and live unimpeded by rules. But, of course, this does not apply to you because we find you morally objectionable. 

So for you, special regulation is needed because we can’t stomach the perversion we see in your continued existence. This sort of thought process makes me most anxious. Intact human societies have room for diversity. Fragmenting cultures demonize differences. This can become a snowballing process that isn’t easily stopped. What will you demonize next?

As cartoonist Don Marquis put it: “The chief obstacle to the progress of the human race is the human race.” 

Posted on

Favorite Food

We all have favorite things that we’d be loath to relinquish, even if threatened with death. And I’ve known patients who told their doctors and nurse exactly where to place it rather than give up their beloved kielbasa and kapusta. So this is not some capricious whim of ill people to make things worse for themselves. Food does a fine job of helping define us. I might be tempted to pull a blade on someone suggesting that my grandmother’s poppyseed bread, with all that rich poppyseed filling, was something I was no longer allowed at Christmas or Easter.

When faced with such opposition, most practitioners I’ve known back off a bit and calmly reason that limiting the serving size and frequency would be a great help. Feeling appeased, I dutifully reduce the portion and only have the goody on the actual holiday, not every day leading up to and from for a week. Ok, if I get a bit shady and cheat once, so what?

There is one exception to my enlightened attitude. Overcooked New England Boiled Dinner. Once the specialty of church dinners this time of year all over New England, but now, thankfully, relegated to backwoods corners of unorganized rural territories. Made with corned beef, cabbage, carrots, and potatoes, It can be a savory treat on a late winter evening. But left to boil endlessly like some witches’ caldron, it takes on the odor and taste of boiled clothing.

Boiled dinner was a great favorite of my father-in-law. The Cap’n would trot the entire family off to “enjoy” some. Blindfold me, and I could tell you when we were within a thousand yards of the church hall where they served it. I blanched as the entire family tucked into large portions of the stuff.

I have to stop! I’m having a flashback. Please…a large bowl of ice cream with a topping of crushed nuts, whipped cream, and maple syrup..That’s the only thing that will snap me out of this, Please! Help.

Posted on

New Patterns and Old

A Flashback Friday Presentation

New Patterns and Old

I carved intermittently from the 1960s through the mid-seventies. Going to graduate school ended most carving activities, and I didn’t pick it up again until 1992.
I returned to carving by way of small boat shops. My mentors were all boatbuilders. Consequently, my shop looks more like a boat shop than an artist’s studio. In a traditional boat shop, the rafters are hung with patterns of all sorts. Any given model may have additional marks, curves, and notes denoting the changes needed to add, subtract, or modify the design. This way, you easily alter a boat; or a carving. As this was the setting where I came to the trade as a real professional, I followed the model.
My tradition of nautical carving is, in a sense, a broken tradition. I had no access to old carvers to teach me the trade. My mentors in carving had no interest in eagles, transom banners, and the like. So, I was never really sure what my antecedents in the trade would have made of my shop or my approach.
I “thought” I knew what a ship’s carver’s shop would have looked like in the 19th century, similar to the boat shops I was familiar with, I was certain.
This made sense because the carver and shipbuilder worked closely together and carefully coordinated efforts to achieve the desired effects on the ship. Also, they frequently worked out of the same shops. But I wasn’t certain.

Recreations of such shops left me unconvinced. Then one Sunday returning from WoodenBoat, in Maine, it all changed. I had made a fast passage from Brooklin to Bath and had time to visit the Maritime Museum in Bath before it closed. Wandering around and snapping photos of carvings, I found an exhibit room tricked out as a carver’s shop. Leaning against the wall was a life-size pattern for a figurehead. Having seen many figures carved similarly to this pattern, my mind’s eye quickly thought of possible variations with this one pattern.
I was reassured. I went home and started a series of eagles originating from the same pattern, all very different—sort of a reverse E Pluribus Unum. Here are some shots from that series:

Eagle based on the transom eagle for the first USS Pennsylvania

First published on March 29, 2021

Posted on

Directions, Not Places

The other day I let my fingertips travel to the website of a small regional newspaper that covers the community on the coast that once was a focus of my life. I observed that some small things remained the same. But that many had changed. I chuckled when I noted that two grandchildren of folks I knew were now Town Clerk and a Select Board Member, respectively. Other things were eerily the same or different.

The internet saved me the six-hour drive that would only prove what I already knew. It’s true; you can’t go home again. Or, in this case, the place that almost became home.

I don’t think there is anything pathological about regret like this, provided you don’t dwell on it. But unfortunately, romanticizing the past is an easy trap to fall into. I had bookmarked the site but then deleted it.

Driving into work later, I recalled a favorite quote: “Happiness is a direction, not a place.” (Sydney J. Harris)

Posted on

What Rita Taught Me

I was a grad student when I met Rita. She was a nurse, and one of the things that allowed us to hit it off from the beginning was that we “spoke” the same language, that specialty dialect of people in healthcare. So many things didn’t need repeating with lengthy explanations. I came by my knowledge because of the time spent in the operating room and on hospital orthopedic floors.

For several weeks it seemed that we were both winners. We communicated easily, had common interests, and in other ways, seemed compatible. So with the relationship gaining a bit in longevity, it seemed natural that we should begin introducing each other to our friends.

I invited Rita to a couple of parties my friends were having. At first, everything seemed to be going alright. Then the fights started. My friends talked in senseless jargon, couldn’t say a single sentence in plain English, and were stuck up. I didn’t even try to defend my friends from the charge of being stuck up; a few were overly impressed with themselves. But the jargon comment hurt. It was true. Put a bunch of anthropologists in a room having a conversation about our areas of research, and you’ll be lost in a few minutes. The number of common English words declines in direct proportion to the depth of the debated issues.
I tried explaining, apologizing, and then compared it to a similar type of discussion healthcare professionals might have. Maybe that last was what blew the lid off the pot. Over three days, we went from being lovers to being angry with each other to breaking off the relationship.
Much good came from the breakup, although I didn’t see it that way for a long time. As I transitioned from grad school to “civilian” life as a practicing anthropologist, I learned to listen to my trade talk or jargon and filter it out. You might know I was an anthropologist, but it wouldn’t interfere with our conversation.

As far as Rita is concerned, I never heard from her again, and that’s not bad. But from her, I did learn a valuable lesson: too much jargon complicates communication.

Posted on

Snow Day

An imprecation is a curse. Plain and simple, and today I imprecate snow. Those innocent white flakes are so lovely to watch drifting down in the garden. And then I step onto the deck, and the avalanche starts as the pile on the roof lets go because the vibrations from the door set it off. Therefore I do lustily and loudly imprecate. Gotta love New England weather.

I feel more than a bit hapless as I try to remove the five pounds or so that have gone down the back of my shirt. Of course, I should have suspected that our wonderful New England climate would pull the stops out this close to the end of winter/beginning of spring. I guess 18 inches is an excellent way to say, “gotcha!”

Despite being a New York City boy, I’ve lived in New England for over fifty years. So I should now have some insight into how tricky things can be. I guess that old saying is true: hope for the best, expect the worst…now if the damned snow blower will only work…

%d bloggers like this: