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Chapters

Daily writing prompt
What’s your favorite time of day?
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Once upon a time, I’d hit the sack around when most people left home for work. I wasn’t a night shifter the way ordinary people were. I was a performer and rarely got home before sunrise. Sets would end, and I might head to an after-hours party to listen to jazz or another folksinger play. It was part of a daily sojourn through a lifestyle most people will never understand. Come to think of it, I’m somewhat fuzzy on the details, too; that was a long, weary time ago.

Eventually, I decided that accepting trinkets exchangeable for more food and housing was a better life plan than spending all my time in coffeehouses and clubs. So an adjusted AM time, around seven, is my favorite time to arise, have coffee, cogitate my verititabilities, plan the day, and scribble a post.


My nineteen-year-old self would view me as some grey-haired ancestor, a fate to be avoided, a terminally dull creature, not hip, while I look back on a life full of chapters and see him: a rough but promising beginning.

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Recipe for Woodenware

Daily writing prompt
What’s your favorite recipe?
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Your safari online for a new miracle coating for kitchen woodenware has led you down a rabbit hole into creams and liquids, promising to preserve your precious “treen” for posterity. Some are inexpensive, and some with mysteriously unnamed unique ingredients are expensive. What do you choose?


My advice is that you do not choose any of them. Creating a good woodenware coating at home in your kitchen is simple and inexpensive. Go to the drugstore, get a bottle of Mineral Oil (USP), and get a small hunk of pure beeswax. Heat the beeswax in a double boiler until it is liquid, and stir slowly into the mineral oil. The main caution here is to remember that you are dealing with hot wax and should be cautious not to burn yourself. I do not advise heating the mineral oil.
Recipes for this vary, but the proportions of oil to wax depend on how liquid or creamy you want your coating. Mine is harder after it cools, and I’ll sometimes reheat it a bit for better penetration into newly-made cherry spoons. Frankly, during the winter, when my hand’s chap, I’ll grab a glob and work it into my skin. It’s the cheapest, most effective hand lotion I’ve found.


I am certainly not the originator of this very simple concoction. It’s been around for ages in one form or the other. Some people add twists to it with other ingredients, hum magical incantations over the mixing vessel, or indistinctly make mystical passes with wands. That’s all marketing woo-woo and doesn’t alter the basic product. Look at the ingredients label on most dressings for wooden ware, and there will only be slight variations on the theme.


Why not use walnut, olive, or other fruit or vegetable oils? Mainly because they can go rancid, but also because, unless they are refined, they’ll add their taste to the wood. We usually don’t want our woodenware to become part of our recipe.


Why the beeswax? Beeswax is generally accepted as food-safe, as is the mineral oil. When applied warm to woodenware, the mixture will sink into the grain and provide a protective finish longer than the oil alone.
A small jar of the oil and wax preparation goes a long way. You do not have to use it too often; you can touch up the wood with a bit of plain mineral oil between applications.
Just remember that uncared-for woodenware in the kitchen is not only unattractive, but as it deteriorates, it becomes unsafe. The best way to avoid that is by careful cleaning ( Please!!!! no dishwashers or overnight soakings!) and occasional treatment with a food-safe oil.

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Jumper

Father accused me of being churlish. The $95 charge to poison control was the issue.


I can’t help that they left those wonderful nuts out where I could reach them. I was still licking out the container when Dad got home. Yum. They were almost as good as the chocolate fudge coffee brownies I ate last month. Mom was mad at me then. Now, that was fantastic! Yes, I was up all night and had to pee a lot, but now I watch Mom closely when she bakes.

Maybe she’ll leave something out and forget how high I can reach. As Father likes to say, “Hope springs eternal.” But it is just my great legs for jumping high and clearing the kitchen counter.

I have to go to practice now, see you later!

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The Shelburne Museum

Daily writing prompt
Tell us about the last thing you got excited about.
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Sometimes, it’s just the little things that get you the most excited. It’s like a surprisingly wonderful French Toast at the Gray Jay restaurant in Burlington, Vermont ( OK, a shameless commercial for a place I like!). Or a wonderful morning at a museum.

It was the museum that made the day. Just outside of Burlington is the Shelburne Museum, and visiting there was a decade-long goal. But routes, jobs, and travels just never matched up. Finally, my sons arranged a “guys’ weekend out” for my birthday, and Shelburne was on the agenda. At the top of my agenda was the Ticonderoga, a completely landlocked Lake Champlain steamship restored to impeccable glory. I looked into the staterooms, the officer’s quarters, and an incredibly familiar Fo’casle ( forecastle to you lubbers). The pipe racks ( beds to you flatlanders) were almost identical to those I slept on in the Navy. At the beginning of a deployment, you might wet down the canvas bottom to conform to your body. Under the mattress, you could carefully press a uniform into regulation creases, including underwear. More memories came into play at the next stop as we inspected the boiler. At age ten, my dad, a marine engineer, had me assist in re-tubing the old steam plant that heated our apartment building. It was close enough in design that my dad’s advice on shoveling coal onto an established coal fire returned, and I could almost see the scintilla of hot coals in the old firebox. 

Woodcarving is one of my things, so we next visited the galleries with the carvings. The Shelburne had many items I was completely unfamiliar with or had only seen in photos. Downloading a photo from the internet is vastly different than seeing the original. As a carver, I’m probably as interested in the details of construction and carving as I am in the total work itself. For that, there is nothing like an actual viewing.


The Shelburne has thousands of interesting pieces in its collection; I’ve only mentioned the few I was most excited by. I admit to being a museum freak, have memberships in several museums, and will hunt out interesting places on my travels. But this was truly someplace special.

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Sandbox

Daily writing prompt
How would you design the city of the future?
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I have difficulty letting bygones be bygones.

I grew up in a city where a power-mad planner cut through vast swaths of the city with expressways and parkways that dissected multiple neighborhoods. Later, in another city, I lived on the edge of an enormous clearance area that had once been a vibrant neighborhood. It was bulldozed because some considered it a slum.

Later, I worked in a community that decided not to allow state and federal agencies to bulldoze a path through the middle of their city to enable another interstate to intersect with a meaningless cloverleaf. The stub end of this still exists – An express way to nowhere. 


By now, you are confident that I entertain very few fantasies about city planning. I agree that it may be needed, but I do not quiver in delight thinking of all the wonders it brings to the residents. I tend to cringe if a planner gets a glow in their eyes about an elaborate new highway design or a great new skyscraper amid four-story buildings.

Much gets made of community involvement in these processes. But let me introduce you to a term popular in development circles – it’s “sandbox.” A sandbox is when you promise to give voice to community concerns, provide them with funding to plan, hold hearings, and discuss with planners and developers what will happen, but then pay little heed to what they tell you. Like children, you gave them a sandbox to play in, and like children, you applaud their sand castle but ignore it at the end of the day. If the deal lacks teeth, it’s no deal.

The city development department in the community where I worked as an applied anthropologist tried something different. They gathered a task force of residents and planners to create a zoning master plan. They began by presenting mini-classes on zoning and the permitting processes to the residents. These gave the residents actual knowledge of what was possible, and with the aid of the planners, they hammered out a new zoning plan for the neighborhood that the city accepted. The city had actually committed to seriously acting on community needs.

So, I tend to be cautious of “city of the future” plans. They often deal with vehicles, concrete, steel, and brick without actually considering the soft, squishy creatures they are supposedly designed to be homes to. However, I am hesitantly aware that it can be approached mindfully if a knowledgeable community can work with respectful agencies.

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What’s in a name?

Daily writing prompt
Where did your name come from?
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My name is a family name that goes back generations. But I’ve discussed that in previous blog entries. But if you’ve read some of my posts, you may have run across my posts on cats. One cat stands out, Clancy J Bümps – AKA The Grey Menace. He came into my life one August day in 1969, and this is part of his story.

When he wished to, he bulked up. That mass of grey fur made him look bigger than the twenty pounds of heft he already had. He had the knack of intimidating other cats and terrorizing large dogs. He loved hunting vermin like mice and even rats. He was a gourmand of rare cuts of beef, and in the lap of my wife, an absolute pussy cat.  Some people called him the Grey Menace and moved well clear when they saw him. If he liked you, you were OK, but if he disliked you, better stay away. His goals in life seemed to be sleeping, eating beef, and having fights. 
He came from Lyons Street in Ottawa, Ontario. He’d been kicked out of the family early and had been terrorizing older cats in the neighborhood. One day, he walked up my leg over my back to my shoulder and claimed me as his human. What choice did I have? I took him home with me.
We named him Clancy after the old song, “Clancy Lowered the Boom,” because he loved to fight. He’d fight with the vacuum cleaner, the broom, you, or anything that offended him. And many things did offend him.

 We gradually developed his backstory. He was of Irish/Prussian descent. His Junker ancestors, the impressive Von Dinks Bümps* family, were forced to flee after disagreements with the Kaiser’s cats. They went to Ireland, where they soon intermarried with local dairy farm cats descended from the Royal cat families of Ireland. Forced to flee Ireland after stealing too much cream, they eventually immigrated to Canada, where the family thrived. So Clancy Bumps (immigration simplified the name) was from an ancient and prestigious family brought low by cruel circumstances.
When we explained his background to our friends, it boggled their minds, but they knew Clancy well enough by then to exclaim that they knew he was from nobility all the time.

Clancy sat there preening; having humans recognize his innate superiority was good. Tonight, he would defer the beatings.

  • I’ve been informed that this is German for thingamajig.
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One-Note

Daily writing prompt
What motivates you?
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There is a lot of wiggle room on the concept of motivation. That may be because different motivations hold primary sway in various spheres of life. In other words, it might be complex. That’s why the cheap personality test question, “What motivates you?” is a rather crude measure. 

If I create goods for sale at a crafts show, I am powerfully motivated by my desire to make money. But each spoon is an individual item of craft, and I’m inspired to create an esthetic pleasure in sight and function beyond just cash value. It can be hard to tease apart motivation like this into parts. Also, I wasn’t exactly sitting at the spa while creating a complex carving like an eagle or a ship portrait. I had to carefully plan, cogitate, and rework things that weren’t right. It’s hard to put a monetary value on all things. This may be why some art and craft items never go to market or do so with reasonably hefty prices.

I’m certainly not making money off my blog, so there goes any monetary interest in publishing. Yes, I’ve written as a journalist and worked as a newspaper editor for cash, but making money isn’t a thing with the blog. Exploration is, though.

My motivation for the blog is to explore concepts, emotions, and history. I’ve had an unordinary life – not extraordinary – just unordinary. It’s left me with lots to ponder and explore. So my motivation here is exploration and understanding. Into the mixture, I throw an appreciation for the absurd, a dash of bitterness, lots of bewilderment, love, and no small degree of questioning. It’s a bit of an astringent brew sometimes.
So, my life, loves, and interests form the feed stock of this blog. Not a simple one-word answer to “What is your motivation.”

We are not single-note singers; the world and you are complex. Do not allow yourself to be reduced to a simple formula. Resist.

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Lists

Daily writing prompt
What are your top ten favorite movies?
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Lists are so 2010s. A bucket list, a list of your favorite movies, favorite actors, or favorite actresses. Can’t think of a tenth? Well, guilt trip on it a bit; don’t collect two hundred dollars and go to jail in the game of collecting weird data points.
Of course, we all have movies we love, but it’s much more like someone will start off talking about a movie, and we’ll chime in on how much I like it. For most of us it’s compulsive.

But you joined the Significant Lists Society. Your lists of favorite things started off as means of remembering your favorites and enhancing your experience with them; innocent enough. But then oversharing crept in. They became rated for snob factor. You’ll be sneered at because an Adam Sandler movie was on your list. After a while, you “curated” your list for public consumption while keeping a “guilty pleasures” list for Saturday night binge viewing. Eventually, this infected your book list, and you trolled the New Times Booklist for impressive titles.

Look, This has to stop. You photoshop your social media posts, cheat on your Instagram, and no longer know what you actually like. I’ve contacted three of your best friends, and they will do an intervention tonight. 

Please do not yield to the temptation of making a list of the ten things you most want to achieve during an intervention.

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Cannon Fodder

Daily writing prompt
What do you enjoy most about writing?
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There’s an adage about making an enemy of an author – don’t- You’ll find yourself crafted into a fool, victim, or villain who meets a bad end. You’ll have a debilitating condition, a nasty mental disorder, or get crucified during the mystery adventure.

This adage has been around since Greek Tragedy and is currently used; it is not obsolete. In fact, people like me have a queue of people who we are just waiting to place on the cusps of insane tragedies, automobile crashes, and natural disasters. It’s part of the charge I get out of writing!

So if you should see me measuring you up, checking your details, and confirming your personality ticks, I advise you to proceed cautiously. In my next wartime epic, I need additional cannon fodder. 

Take a 42 regular, don’t you?

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Moving in?

Daily writing prompt
What do you love about where you live?
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I can take you on a tour of some really fun places I used to have great affection for. They were great places to live, hang and chill at. Except they are boring now, gentrified. 

Of course, in my day, they had some rough edges. They didn’t exactly receive ovations from the well-to-do regarding the nature of the neighborhoods or the area’s safety.

There was the genuinely nasty rooming house on Beacon Hill. I got a break on the rent because my cat, the Grey Menace, haunted the halls every night, reducing the rodent population by large numbers. The landlord asked for a reduction in the bounty the cat received per mouse because he’d soon be paying us to live there. But Oh, what a bunch of wonderful people lived there; folksingers, artists, a poet, and a weaver. The landlord had been a shipmate of my father and always asked when my dad was coming to Boston for a visit. I assume that visits to some of the more disepitomable bistros would be in order.

In any case, this establishment, like many of the other places I lived on Beacon Hill, is now owned by people with more dollars than sense. They even gentrified the dive bar at the foot of the Hill that we frequented. I am sure that new residents like to note that the neighborhood has a bohemian air, but of course, anything legitimately Bohemian has been exiled beyond the city limits.


Then there are the various lofts and studios I’ve had over the years. All condo’s now. The current residents loved the artsy nature of the area or building so much that they moved in and displaced the artists who could no longer afford the area. Or they were tired of the saws’ noise, the smell of the processes we used, or upset at the hours we worked and gradually harrassed art into leaving. The old loft building by the railroad tracks is now all tarted up, but it lacks a certain vibe, an atmosphere – damn! All the creative juice is gone! Where have those sneaky artists gotten to now?


We decided to get sneaky. Baby step, by Baby step, we moved out to the outlying towns, small cities, and countryside. We are careful not to make too great a showing or concentration. We know they are looking for us – that great crowd that can’t create but wants to take credit by proximity. Their micro-aggressions are slow displacement coupled with dazed stupidity when the vibrant neighborhood they so admired looks exactly like them.
They should get their own life, rather than just horning in on others.