Tag: word prompt

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Not All Teachers Are Human

Daily writing prompt
Who was your most influential teacher? Why?
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First published on March 25, 2023.


My most influential non-human teacher was my gray cat Clancy J Bumps ( don’t ask what the J was for, he didn’t like to be called by it and would attack madly). Among the nicknames he earned was – The Grey Menace. The Menace loved to fight. But he almost always won through strategy and intimidation. Few cats or dogs dared actually to engage him in full combat.

The Hound

An enormous German Shepherd learned this lesson the hard way. He thought the kitty was a handy snack. The Menace was tied on a leash in the yard. The dog did not know that the leash had a breakaway section for times just like that. Clancy mewed piteously and lured the dog into our yard. He then snapped the lead, assaulted the dog, and sent it into a hurried attempt to clamber over an eight-foot palisade fence. Afterward, the Menace sat there licking the blood of his claws. The dog’s owner was furious. I pointed out that the dog was collar and leashless, outside his yard and in mine. The dog also had attacked my poor, innocent cat. I refused to pay the dog’s vet bills.
Although the Menace tried to lure the dog back into the yard again, it whimpered every time it saw Clancy in the yard.

On Da Nip!

An excellent example of a teacher you’re thinking? Well, he tended to make friends with his foes after fights. Seeing four or so cats basking in the sun was amusing. With catnip growing as a weed in the garden, the afternoons often turned into catnip nap sessions.
The Menace was fiercely loyal to his friends and would threaten to tear you up if you threatened them. He also knew when to make a face-saving retreat and take credit for a victory.
He was a gourmet who loved chile, roast beef subs ( with hots, please), and relished a good dance party.

What did I learn from him? First, you should attack fiercely when attacked, make peace afterward, and enjoy life to its fullest.

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A Repeat?

Daily writing prompt
Describe your most ideal day from beginning to end.
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Back in the rear offices, back beyond the unused old vending machines, and the stacks of cut-up boxes for recycling, the folks at prompt central have quietly gone on strike. That’s right, today is February fifth, and the prompt for the day is exactly the same as it was last year at the same time.

Maybe they are getting the annual St. Valentine’s Day party going early. Or perhaps they are holding a job action, and producing no new prompts until they get an upgrade on the coffeemaker. I do not know, but somebody is lying down on the job. How about picking the prompt from 2023 or 2022? Most of us would not have looked at it with suspicion, ” Say, that looks awfully familiar?”

Perhaps their old punch card-fed computer glitched, and the master program began to flash the bright red ERROR sign. I can see it now, their ideal day…airing the old offices of the smoke, getting the retired computer techs out of retirement to attempt to fit “Ole Bessy” up again. Then, of course, the hurried search for Post-it notes to begin to scrawl next week’s prompts.

Lucille to the Rescue!

Luckily, Lucille is still part of the team. Lucille was the one who came up with the “spicy prompts a few years ago. You know, “What’s your favorite illicit activity?” ” Which celebrity would you most like to spend a lost weekend with?” Lucille almost got you guys shut down with the prompt about…well I blush to think about that one, and it takes a lot to make me blush. Go, Lucille!!!!

Me? Well, I’m a bit upset. My answer from last year still stands as my answer for the prompt. Even I can’t endlessly come up with twisted variations on a theme. I mean, Holy Moley, WordPress, this is an emergency!

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breaking up is hard to do

I had horrible taste in women, and the older she got, the less sure she was about anything to do with men. It was an explosive mixture that was certain to result in a hot chemistry for about two weeks and an explosive rupture soon after. I was accused of toying with her emotions. I blamed her for the positive test for a nasty infection on her wandering ways.

The explosion happened at Paul’s party, and it spiced up a ho-hum evening with people taking bets, sides, and comparing it to other spicy breakups. Our host made the mistake of getting in the middle. I don’t remember who shoved who first, but we both lashed out at the interference.

We made a hasty exit, wound up at her place, and what can I say? It’s true, make up sex is incredible.

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Mastery

I’ve gotten good at many skills. But not many have been mastered in an orthodox manner. Let me explain. What you become good at might be an intersection between opportunity, interest, and aid. All kinds of things are possible, but not all are realized.

I am primarily self-taught as a carver, but some crucial books offered hints and tips. Then, there were also mentors. No, not teachers. In those days, when I started, I was too undisciplined to settle down in someone’s studio to learn the basics. And I was much too poor to afford to go to a school or classes. So I’d occasionally visit a mentor’s studio or shop and pick up what was on offer.

If you are self-taught, you may tend to skip things that don’t interest you. Boring basics that perhaps require patience. You just want to get ahead to the “good stuff.” Later on, you “discern” that things are missing because you skipped a basic technique to plow on to something that interested you. I didn’t learn chip carving until I had been carving for about twenty years. It was boring to me. When I learned it, though, it opened up new realizations about knife control and the sharpening of tools. When I began teaching, I made chip carving the introduction to the craft. The basic that I had skipped was a valuable foundation.

I am not advocating for everyone to follow a buttoned-down route to art or craft. Breaking the rules is an invigorating thing that can lead to valuable creative moments. Too rigid adherence to the rules can lead to boring work. No, you need to find an in-between, a balancing point.

The Samurai master Miyamoto Musashi, in his Book of Five Rings, offers a bit of trustworthy advice: from one thing you can learn a thousand things. The aphorisms that Musashi offered were much more than funny sayings. He was a Swordsman, poet, and artist. In the Book of Five Rings, he tried to reduce his methods to key concepts.

The principles of learning are transferable. Learning carving was a gateway to learning many other skills. And the habit of learning is perhaps the most important underlying skill of all.

The habit of learning is perhaps the most important underlying skill of all.

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Hell Ride

Daily writing prompt
Beach or mountains? Which do you prefer? Why?
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I had never seen mountains. All my camping experience prior to this had been in the “wilderness” of suburban Boy Scout camps in New York and New Jersey. Sure, I’d seen photos and movies, but experienced real mountains. No. So my first time through Smuggler’s Notch in Vermont was a unique experience. I was a coastal boy, brought up within the sight and odors of river, bay, and ocean.

Maybe that’s why the air was so different. The nearest large body of water I imagined was Lake Champlain, a puddle by comparison to the Atlantic. But the steep twists and turns were a new experience.

I was on a “Hell Ride” with my old buddy Clint. Up to a week ago, the rides had been local around New York City. Clint had owned a Vespa motor scooter. And we were the nighttime terrors of parts of Riverdale, Yonkers, and nearby Westchester County. Clint was unsafe, but exciting, at any speed.

But Clint’s mom sprang for some real wheels, an old Ford. It called for an upgrade of the Hell Ride from the local city environs to new areas.

Ride!

We’d left New York for Burlington, Vermont, on some large roads and highways. But after Essex Junction, it was all small stuff. We climbed and twisted our way higher into the green forests of Vermont. Passing through variegated hardwoods, spruce, and pine. Our destination? Some place Clint described as Girl Heaven near North Gorham, New Hampshire, almost hard against the border with Maine. His girlfriend, Suzy, worked there as a camp counselor. She had a tent mate who would be my date when we arrived.

Clint had determined that our best course of action was to leave Thursday morning for a Friday afternoon or early evening arrival. There would be plenty of time to Hell Ride through some awesome territory.

The History

Since I had moved out of the family home and taken up folksinging in Greenwich Village, Clint and I had seen little of each other. The friendship had ruptured over lifestyles. Family friends had ensured that young Clint got a job at Xerox, and young Lou was hanging with low-life poets, Beats, and guitarists in the Village. One had clearly taken the high road, and the other, well, you know.

The Hell Ride

But there was going to be a Hootenanny Night at the camp, and I was going to be useful. Reflecting on how much fun we’d had over the years, I decided to let the animosity slip for the weekend and have some fun with an old buddy.

The plan was to Hell Ride to Montpelier, then to Saint Johnsbury. From there, we’d dip south and skirt the White Mountains before turning North again to North Gorham. The challenge in all of this was to stay off main roads as much as possible. This led to many stops asking for directions from farmers. Also, there were many indifferent coffee breaks at small town diners, and getting stuck on a stretch of unpaved road. We got stuck thanks to bad directions, but a kindly dairy farmer pulled us out with his truck. I played and sang work songs while he and Clint tackled the extraction.

Lou Carson! Live!

At several locations, I was asked to haul out the guitar and play some songs. Clint would get up and introduce me as the Great Lou Carson. I had recently been engaged to perform at the well-known Cafe Why Not in the heart of New York City’s famed Greenwich Village. Remember, this was in 1964, local TV only, lots of small towns, no cable, no streaming, and no internet. I was some of the hottest stuff to come through in a year, and I was live! A limited-time engagement!

That night, one of the towns was having a talent show at their local community center/ dance hall. I was requested to perform. And afterward, several young ladies requested our attendance at a party. Clint was a bit put off that the Famous Lou Carson was the center of female attention.

The next morning, we headed out on the final leg of the Hell Ride and pulled into North Gorham around three in the afternoon. We soon found out that Suzy’s tentmate was going out with her boyfriend. I rapidly went from a necessary side man to an encumbrance. Within an hour I had caged a ride with another counselor who was interested in visiting the Village, having grown up in North Gorham and vever being farther from home than Saint Johnsbury.

My lips are sealed about that trip back to the City, but it was the end of the road for Clint and me. I enjoyed many other Hell Rides, but Clint settled into a life as a Xerox repairman. The next year, 1965, I went on the Road as a Pius Itinerant, and did not look back for many years.

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Pizza

This is a lightly edited post that I originally posted in November of 2020:

When I reentered the marine marketplace in 1992, after about 15 years of absence from things maritime, I thought my business would be eagles, quarterboards, and transom banners. To some extent, I was correct. I’ve done many transoms, quarter boards, some eagles, and a smattering of other carving projects. But fully one-third of all my sales came from small carved table items. At any boat show, there are many overwhelmed wanderers. They are following a partner, parent, or spouse who is nautically obsessed. They hope to find something that might spark their interest. Responding to this, I began offering spoons, spatulas, cutting boards, small carved boxes, and a wide range of small carved items. It was surprising how Sales improved.

As a result of the newfound sales, I sometimes had a fair bit of cash in my pocket at the shows. But having a family with you at a three or four-day event offers opportunities to get separated from the money, fast.

The Bottomless Pit


My oldest son earned the nickname “Bottomless Pit.” Yeah, I know, you had one too. But here’s how he did it.


At one particular show in Maine, an entire group of us went to dinner together. My friend, Ralph, generously offered to pay for the Carreras clan – myself, my wife, the two girls, and the two boys. Wanting to maintain the friendship, I protested. He insisted. Ralph assumed, I think, that the kids couldn’t do too much damage at the Rockport House of Pizza. He had not calculated the sheer ability of said Bottomless Pit to pack it away.

My friends have never had children. They had only heard stories of how adolescents can consume vast amounts and then fill up with more. The Bottomless Pit saw the disbelief in their eyes as he devoured pizza and decided to play to a rapt audience. He reached for an entire fresh pizza, rolled it up, and proceeded to swallow it much as a sword swallower consumed a sword. OK, you ask, what was my wife doing? Trying to get her renegade son under control.

What was I doing – watching the disbelief on my friend’s faces as the Bottomless Pit consumed the pizza in one go. He belched softly and asked for more. About that time, the check arrived, and I saw my friend blanch. I took the check and paid for the family, about $200.00, most of which had been consumed by the Pit. I saw lots of my pocket cash disappear in one meal.

Years passed, but at boat shows, the Legend of the Bottomless Pit lived on. Not wanting to let go of a good story, we staged the photo above just a few years ago to email my friend. An assurance that, yes, the legend continued.

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Reliability

Trust my instincts? With some reservations, yes.

Understand something about me, my instincts are finely trained, carefully honed, and acutely accurate. This does not mean that I let them off the leash to go baying like a pack of hounds.

You see, when I was younger, they were infamously terrible. They led me joyously, even rapturously, into many wonderful, even enjoyable boondoggles. That’s right, they were trained by trial and error, experience, a lack of good judgment, and youthful excess.

Eventually, I got to the point where I would say, “OH no! Not goin’ down that rabbit hole again!” And thus started the careful training and calibration of my instincts. You know! Bad judgments start hanging out in clumps, and a pattern forms. Even someone who is not a genius should start seeing the correlations.

So, now, on any given weekday, I can trust my “trained” instincts not to lead me astray. And if the pack smells something that I know is particularly tempting, but bad, I yell out “down! Dammit! Down.” I just don’t let them off the leash, and after a while, things calm down again.

Instincts are wonderful things, but you have to let them know who the boss is.

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GO in snow

Daily writing prompt
What book are you reading right now?
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Normally I am deeply buried in a sci-fi pot boiler, a book on history ( Mary Beard is a favorite) or books on gardening or woodcarving. But the prompt finds me reading a product manual. It’s the manual for a GO power snow shovel. A battery powered cordless snow shovel. The snow shovel will probably soon be joined by a similar GO snow blower, and I’ll get buried in the manual for that.

Meanwhile, in the back of the house, half covered in a tarp, lies the venerable gas-powered snow blower. Heavy, a terror to navigate around the yard, and cranky to start. Last winter, after long and hard efforts to start it, I hurt myself kicking it. Attempts to use the “electro-start resulted in an almost explosion during the last storm of the season. A change was needed.

As soon as spring started, I left it to rust. Defiant to the last, not a speck of rust has appeared. But my resolve to replace it firmed up as my sore arm twinged, thinking of another winter pulling the damn starter cord. I had a bad recollection of jerking the damned thing through the snow after it stalled out. Motivated, I began researching the alternatives to vengeful metal monstrosities fueled by petrol. After haunting big box stores and local providers of yard machinery, I decided on the snow shovel and a small blower that were battery powered.

The first snows of the winter are probably only weeks away, so we’ll find out soon if I have chosen wisely.

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The Devil

As Halloween approaches, I’ve decided to bring some of my seasonal stories back “from the grave,” so to speak. This one was from October of 2022. Although strictly fictional, it is based in part on some real events, attitudes, and behavior.

You’d be hard-pressed to find any seafarer, fisherfolk, or plain coastal types without some horror tale on the water. It just goes with the territory; salt water envelopes most of the world and is dangerous. 

Lurking beneath that calm tropical paradise you’ve vacationed in are currents, tides, rips, rocks, tidal flats, and reefs. These might all be known hazards, but that doesn’t mean that they are less deadly. Circumstances and bad luck can be the dividing line between inconvenience and tragedy. And that’s just the stuff you can make plans to avoid or correct.

There’s just a ton of stuff you can’t plan for: rogue waves, sudden squalls, or engine failures that put you at risk on lee shores. Then there are collisions with unseen objects and illness at sea. I could go on, but I think you get the idea. It’s no wonder that hidden in every sailor is a tiny little superstitious knot. It might not be as apparent as a refusal to sail on a Friday. Or no bananas on board, or not whistling while you set sail, but it’s there. But without a doubt, the most dangerous element at sea will always be the human element.

Name Changes? Oh No.

Where I lived on the coast, it was considered bad luck to change the name of a boat. But, if you did, many boatyards followed procedures that seemed more like heathen rituals. They sure didn’t come from anything Baptist, Catholic, Congregationalist, or Methodist.

Libations would be poured to Neptunas Rex and Davy Jones. Coins under the masts would be added. After repairs, they are carefully put back or eliminated in exchange for a completely new set. And of course, the boat would be thoroughly cleaned fore and aft. Sometimes this would not be enough.

Thrice Warned

One of the Allens from over to the cape purchased a very smart lobster boat third-hand. He did this against his wife, father, and brother’s wishes. He’d been thrice warned.

The boat had started life as a workhorse lobster boat built by a well-known builder out of Boothbay. She’d worked the waters of the mid-coast for years as the Hattie Carroll. Then, about 1974, she’d been sold to a New York City Banker. He had her gutted and fixed up as a fancy boat to tour clients around during the summer. She was what we call a lobster yacht these days. 

Then, without any to do, he’d had a signmaker slap some vinyl letters on her. The new name was ” The Cheek Of The Devil” in a fancy script. The boatyard had suggested that a bit of ceremony would be nice. But he wanted what he wanted, so he got it. No ceremony, but it was the talk of the harbor. Using the Devil in a boat’s name was not typical and not thought lucky.

He didn’t enjoy his boat long. A fire started offshore, and all aboard went into the bay. Unfortunately, there hadn’t been enough floatation devices aboard for all the guests, so he yielded his floatation vest and drowned. 

The boat survived with severe fire damage but was salvaged and put up for sale.

The Devil

She lay in Spinney’s yard for two years before being sold. I wouldn’t know if the reason was the fire, the owner’s death, the name, or a combination of all three. But she sat in the back of the yard, nevertheless. To locals, it was the Devil.  That should have been enough to discourage any local from buying it. 

History and name suggested that nothing but ill luck was involved in that boat. Wash it in a bathtub of holy water from Saint Jerome’s, or do whatever hocus pocus you wish, and none of that would help. My father-in-law, the Cap’n, put it succinctly enough, ” I wouldn’t allow any of my kin to sit in its shadow, much less step aboard.”

Lobster Boat Races

The Devil sat there until Jacob Allen went looking for a cheap boat with fast lines that he could pour a high-power engine into for lobster boat racing. The Devil fit the bill. And over a long Maine winter, he worked to rebuild the boat into his dream of a fast racer. 

During the spring, his trial runs seemed to indicate that he’d be a contender in any race he entered. Unfortunately, Jacob was not the type to go full speed ahead, only at a race. He’d run circles around other lobster boats in the local harbor gang he belonged to. He took pleasure in almost swamping small craft he considered to be in his way. Jacob wasn’t well-liked.

Jacob was known to infringe on the territories of nearby lobstermen. He was closely watched until, one day, he was caught. The first time you get caught, you will likely pull your traps and find a half hitch in your line. It’s a warning that your trespass has been noted. Do it again, and the penalties will go up. 

The Devil proved as successful as Jacob believed it would, and victory was frequent. Now I do not know how plush the prizes are these days, but back then, it was peanuts. You raced for the joy and pleasure of it. Jacob also raced because he loved to rub other skippers’ noses in how fast the Devil was. In a family of quiet Mainers, he inherited all the ego.

Thief

I was helping out at Spinney’s boat yard that September. It was time to be hauling out summer people’s boats, and I overheard Spinney talking to my father-in-law, the Cap’n. They both agreed that Jacob was heading for a fall. They quieted down when I walked up. But it was common knowledge that Jacob had been robbing traps, and something was bound to happen.

Things get slower as the weather gets colder. Lobstermen spend more time repairing and making new lobster pots ( or traps), repairing their gear, and taking care of their boats. But on Halloween morning, the blast rocked the entire harbor as the Devil blew up with Jacob Allen aboard. The official report said Jacob had ignited a puddle of gasoline while starting his boat. A death by misadventure, I guess. But knowing people understood that Jacob Allen had been a scrupulous man in caring for his boat.

Murder was suspected but never proven. There wasn’t enough of the Devil or Jacob Allen left for much of an inquest. Just the mutterings of people about the enemies he’d had, and someone finally canceling a grudge hard.

At the coffee shop in the morning, there were comments about how the boat had been ill-fated from the start. Then, more quietly, someone muttered that the Devil had certainly known his own.

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Fandango’s Flashback Friday -By Rail

At one time in New England history, to be on the map as a community meant being incorporated into the region’s rail network. The iron rail coiled, twined, and netted the area from the New York border with Connecticut to Maine. We had a modern ( for 1900) and replete public transportation system.
Beyond the railroad, there were the interurban streetcar lines. Using those, you could almost span New England on the cost of a ticket and transfers. I was told of one man who worked in Waltham, Massachusetts, and came home to suburban Portland for weekends.

I’m not sure I’d like his commute. But I marvel at how you could meander about the landscape of the cities and countryside without a car.

This transportation infrastructure was largely abandoned by the end of the twentieth century. Formal abandonments allowed the remaining railroads to pull up rails and turn away from communities. Abandoned factories, grass growing over old tracks; all this formed a sort of pathological appearance to a post industrial New England. The bones of history were left in place, and never removed. So, the old transportation corridors remained, grown up in weeds, and eventually reverting to woodlands, marsh, and meadows.

Rail Trails

Eventually, groups came together to convert these abandoned lines into rail trails. Many of these exist in my area, and my wife and I have regularly hiked them. Last year, this was part of my physical therapy before and after my hip surgery. Walking them became part of my post-operative physical therapy as I reconditioned my body to move with the new replacement hip.

The old railroads measured and laid out their routes for the greatest energy economy possible. Grades were the enemy; you consumed fuel, fuel costs money, and money spent meant less profit. As a result, while they meander, most rail trails are either level, in cuts, or on elevations that keep the grade gradual. Perfect for walking and biking.

This fall, I’ll hit the trail for leaf peeping. I’ll snowshoe across meadows in winter. In spring, I’ll hunt early wildflowers along old embankments—all within seven miles of where I live. And in the trail left by the old steel rails of the railroad.