Orgrease Crankbait

Christmas Music

2011-12-03T06:36:00.001-08:00

Naked Son - Memoir of a Six Mile Creek Native

2011-12-02T09:15:00.000-08:00

I wrote this for my friend Hilary who is watershed steward at the Cayuga Lake Watershed Network. At the time that I wrote she was at work on a project to walk folks from the headwaters of Six Mile Creek to the outsource into the southern end of Cayuga Lake in Ithaca, NY.

When we start out in life our maps are small. My earliest memory of 6-mile creek is from 55 years ago.

We lived in an apartment in the old mill building next-door to the store in Brooktondale, across from the post office. At that time the store was an IGA (Independent Grocery Store) with an actual part-time butcher on the premises. The present roadway bridge was not there then and I remember when they moved the large house down toward the former trestle location at the curve where there was the ditch with quicksand for many years. It is also at this curve where I suspect a UFO abducted me one night. Then with the large house out of the way they built the present bridge. But where the bridge is now before the bridge was a place where we would play at the creek. What I remember are kids that would throw rocks down, glacial boulders of gneiss, limestone and sandstone from the upper bank onto us as we played down below.

Further upstream from the lower bridge is the mill falls below the upper bridge and at that time the mill stood tall on the west bank. I remember we went in there in winter with my stepfather and the panted legs of men that would stand in close around the pot belly coal stove where they talked and smoked cigars. They were all into electricity and radio and tinkering with wires and tubes. Across the creek from there in a yellow house lived my first girl friend, Mary. It was a brief relationship.

Though as kids we would wade and dip in the sedimentary flats below the falls we had always been warned sternly not to swim in the pool directly below the falls. We had leaches, black snakes and red water mites to contend with.

Where the community center is now was the two room schoolhouse where I went to first grade before Caroline Elementary was built. Those were transition years when public buildings were built with concrete blocks instead of wood framing. My grandfather was a lay Congregational Methodist preacher and my mother a Fundamental Baptist, so one week I would go to the Methodist Church and the next week to the Baptist. Both churches were on the same street with a few houses between them. Once a year the Methodist church would have this certifiably insane man preach and it was the best poetry ever. Years later he found where someone had written a nasty word in the dust on the window of my Ford Falcon and he lectured me all about sin. My friends did not understand what the hell that was about out in the parking lot but I thought it was real neat to get the special sacred attention. Water and all that Baptism stuff of heavy words that flow from the heart.

When I was in Boy Scouts that was held at the community center there was a kid name of Watson, as I recall, whose family lived up a ways from the mill falls in a house near to the creek. They were a hunt and trap sort of family, beaver and muskrat pelts out on the back porch. Watson was a star in the troop, very athletic, sharpshooter type, what we thought of then as a future leader of men. He drowned in the pool below the mill falls when he attempted to rescue two young girls from their drowning. He got some sort of posthumous presidential medal presented to his father.

I went back there below the falls alone last year and the minute I smelled the water it brought a whole host of memories back to me. If I could make an incense that smelled like that I would burn it on the low days.

Closer in toward the lower bridge lived an elderly couple in a house that seemed to perch out over the creek. They owned a purple Studebaker. One time the old man showed me a walking stick on a tree in his yard. It was the first time I had seen one and years later in the desert in Oregon where there was not very much water on a reservation I made a walking stick out of twist ties for the kids and they called me coyote with the socks falling down. I don’t know what happened to the elderly couple. One day they were just not there. I looked in their windows and the table was set for dinner. Blue table cloth with red flower prints, white china plates, knives and forks and glasses at the ready. Never saw them again. I see the house fixed up now, it feels different. I no longer want to look into their windows.

We moved up onto Besemer Road just below Route 79. At the small creek there, a seasonal one that feeds into 6-mile, was a water stop for the steam train at Besemer Station. The same train line that went down south to the trestle with the quicksand ditch and the OOBE. Ruin of the concrete base of the tank tower is still there. You can go see it and you can stand there in the middle of Besemer Hill Road and imagine to see what I once saw. Just below the culvert there was a good outcrop of horsetail. That whole length of creek from the water tank down past the old cemetery on the hill up from Brooktondale Road, past the artesian well down to 6-mile was my playground. My first place mapped. I can draw you a map today if you would like one.

One time I was thirsty and drank water below the Route 79 culvert. I was upset in bed with dysentery for about a week. This is the first time I have ever told anybody about how I got that. Afterward I stopped drinking fresh open water.

Most of my time though was spent on either side of the culvert on Besemer Road. I built stone dams, packed them with sticks and clay, and made pools for the minnows and water skeeters. There is good blue clay in along there, particularly on the bank below the culvert. We would make ash trays and turtles and sun bake them on the rocks. In the bank below the culvert there were small springs from groundwater and we would fashion canals in the clay to carry the water down the side of the bank. At the time I was into hydraulic engineering.

Further down the creek is a stand of Hemlock and there were many a day I hid there and read a book. I had most all of my exposure to Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw there under the Hemlocks. Nowadays I live on Hemlock Drive near to Pattersquash Creek in wetlands on the south shore of Long Island near the Atlantic where the world, the coastal muck and the water smell in their own unique signature.

When the world hits me real hard this Besemer Creek is the place on the planet I need to go back to and remember myself and center. If you see some long-bearded bogey man out there one day then don’t get too worked up.

The steep bank with all the trees was our favorite sled area. Winters we spent a whole lot of time stomping around on and to break the ice in the crick (that is how I sometimes call it, a crick and a crickbed). I will never forget the time I had to drag my wet soaked frozen younger brother back home on the sled. He was not quite into winter water sports the way I was.

Further upstream from the culvert the flow splits and one branch goes off into a field and marshy area and runs along the elevated railroad bed. There was a very nice frog pond, masses of eggs in spring, and wild irises. The creek along in here was not rocky, all sandy with roots to overhang the deeper slow pools. There was a catfish lived in there I used to watch and play around with.

That was my small tributary crick. The best American English is either from Besemer or Ohio, take your pick.

And not to forget the crick and lazy lay of the landscape up behind the Nazarene Camp. That was up where the well driller lived. That is out past the lost trestle.

Rachel Carson published Silent Spring along in those years and I read it and because of popularity of the book I took my Scout patrol, Fox, out and hauled trash up out of 6-mile in the stretch up above the mill falls. To tend the watershed goes way back. Some time out there clearing Adirondack trail.

The land all round in there between Middaugh and Banks Rd. at the time was owned by a farmer the name of Locken or somesuch with a house down on the flat area on Brooktondale Road. The barn still stands there as an apartment house. I worked with my stepfather and grandfather to do the electric on that barn for the conversion. A lawyer had bought the property. Real quiet guy that worked alongside us had been locked up in Danbury Federal because he wrote a letter to a friend about what he wanted to do to Nixon. He told me about Tolstoy.

For several years I had the Ithaca Journal route that went along that section of Brooktondale Road along 6-mile creek, a circular route of five miles that wound up along Route 79 back up to Besemer Road.

An offshoot of the route was Middaugh Road with a bridge across the creek that in summer provided a good place to rest in shade. This section was mostly glacial till. Up the road a ways was the last stop on my leg where a family ran an ice-cream parlor. It was a sort of odd place for one. I liked the chocolate sundae. It is where I heard the Beatles, Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane. It was the first record I ever bought. The best part of owning that record was all the kids, friends and family thought I had gone nuts to listen to that stuff. It was my introduction to the allure of cultural contraband. Some years later I fell in love with Captain Beefheart and beyond.

Where Besemer Creek came down under Brooktondale Road there was a small house where a single mother with kids lived. I delivered their paper for years for free, paid for it out of my own five dollars a week. Further up in back was an artesian well with a pipe near on eight inches in diameter. Water just kept to spurge up out of there like a city fountain for no good reason. I should have meant last year to go back up and look and see if it is still doing that. I never drank out of that one.

Further toward north along Brooktondale Road past Banks Road lived an old guy alone in a very small house smaller than a 10-yard dumpster with a shed roof along the road. He had a large open field between the house and the creek. For whatever reason he spent his time to haul planks of wood up out of 6-mile and he laid them up against the trees to dry. It was like he had a field of teepee plank houses. Along the road he had hawthorn trees and when I would deliver the paper he would come out to see me with a handful of birdseed. I would watch the nuthatches land on his head and shoulder then jump down to his palm to peck at the seed. I wrote a poem about the bird man and my friend Dave Finn made a silk screen poster of it. I still got it here someplace. Yep, there it is.

And out in Slaterville next to the first store you come across there used to be an artesian well. I don’t think it is there any more. Too close to the road it probably got noticed and capped off. Since we had a car, the Ford Falcon, we would go out there to get drinking water and bring it into our commune apartment of townies in Ithaca where we would tell our stoner friends that it had magic head powers. We would drink the water and everyone would pretend to get a contact buzz. It was cheaper than beer.

Further out toward the far end of Slaterville was a woman that had a business to amber glass by soaking it in the water. I know she got writ up in the newspaper because I read about it, and I have seen the glassware. It was not much different to me than stuff I had won at the penny pitch at the Brooktondale carnival. I practiced a year to pitch pennies and got me a whole box of cheap glassware, ash trays and lacy edge candy cups. Then further out there was the dirt road we took every early winter with my mother and grandmother that went across the ford and then off we would go into the woods where we would collect ground pine to make Christmas wreaths. And when I go further out along Route 79 I remember another artesian well along the road where there was a small pull off and they kept a caged brown bear there. It is the place where I always imagined the gypsy pot-holder lady, the one that would show up mysteriously walking along the roads in the spring and knocking on doors to sell pot holders... I always imagined she came from where the caged bear lived.

At Banks Road was another bridge. The farmer here kept Holstein cows. I always thought the cows were neat and I never messed with them but I remember people talked upset about cows that stood around all day and pissed and defecated in the Ithaca drinking water supply. Those particular cows that could be seen black and white from the road they talked about but I never heard anyone complain about the cows stood in the water up further along Central Chapel near Bailor Rd. I don’t suppose any of all of those cows are allowed to stand there now. It was organic.

There was a back wash of an old loop here that would flood and hold water that did not flow steady and get replenished. It was mucky mud stagnant and arrowroot grew there. I delivered the paper to a farm worker out behind the barn who lived in an old silver trailer. On a Saturday morning I would have to bang on his door to get him to pay his weekly fee. He would always open the door, particularly in winter, in his underwear and there would be this intense waft of kerosene heater fumes and dead laundry hit me in the face. That was seconded only by the old lady up near Besemer Station opened her door stark naked. I think she expected different company. People that live near water can be a bit odd sometimes.

My mother was raised on East Main Street in Ithaca between Bridge and Giles Street where her father, my grandfather the master finish carpenter, built the family house. The deal was that my grandmother from Dryden was not allowed to marry until he had them a house and so he wagered a model-T garage he built along the west side of the lake to buy what was then out-of-town land and he took a picture out of the Sears Roebuck catalog and built a house. Regardless, they lived up above that section of 6-mile. So from the large dam in the area with the reservoirs up to German Cross Road was a whole different territory of creek and for me a wider map bled into the family history. My mother with her young family had moved up-creek and as I grew older I explored down creek. I don’t know how many times I walked that distance along Route 79 into downtown Ithaca and back. Sometimes I would just not even bother to walk the road.

My first business had to do with the fellow along the creek at German Cross Roads who worked at the artificial insemination lab at Cornell. His job was to handle all the bull manure and he had piled it up in his back yard for years into this giant fermented mound. Sort of like an Indian mound but mushy. My preacher grandfather lived near there and he worked a deal for me. I could haul out as many yards of manure as I could load in my truck. I sold them around the area at $1.00 per load. It was enough of a business to encourage me to do something else.

In High School it was popular to swim in the lower reservoir above the dam. My mother told me it was where they went to swim as kids. That is a long time of swimming. When we did it we were naked, everyone was naked. I’ve never thought to ask my mother how they did it. For us it was fairly regular sport to jump off the upper levels of the cliffs into the water. Then to lay out on the rocks and soak up the sun. We were not exactly hippies, we were post-hip but messed up just the same. Everything exciting and living through history and all that happens on some other water body than the one we may particularly be going natural and pretending communal at the time. So keep in mind all water bodies are sacred.

The upper reservoir though was harder to get to; you had to walk in from Burns Road. So if a group really wanted to be left alone they would go swim in the upper reservoir. Quite a few days I went in there by myself and fished for trout. A lazy day along the bank with the pole crocked up in a willow vee stuck in the shore muck and a book. I won’t say what else there was but the woods can throw off some really heavy vibes if you have a mind to spook for them.

From the dam to the inlet the creek got for me more industrial and confined and claustrophobic with concrete walls to form a sluice channel and I never found it all that interesting to want to get into it. The police department along there we had one evening an odd adventure that I won’t go into here other than to say that I have a fondness for stealing cigarette machines and them being dumped in the lake in the middle of the night. There was always in town a whole lot of crossing back and forth on the streets over the creek -- as if it were conveniently not there. The city itself as a first city to map was way more interesting at that place for me than the creek, unless there was a flood. I like to see big trees float down and ram bridges.

The inlet was a whole other world and best met with a borrowed canoe. It was years that I heard about the squatter community on the west side but it was only about fifteen years ago that I got to read Tess of the Storm Country (1909). For anyone that loves this place and likes to read early 20th century pulp fiction I do recommend the novels of Grace Miller White.

I can’t end up, this end of the creek, without mention of the story that a young fellow who worked along with me when I did stone work and built fireplaces in the area that he and his father were down to fish in the inlet and they found the floater of a young college girl that had jumped into one of the stone gorges. I don’t mean to end on a macabre note, but one always needs to keep in mind that the water that brings life also tempts death.

Keep it between the banks and keep it clean.

###

Revive the Draft

2011-11-03T09:53:00.000-07:00

This was sent to me by my brother... it is too good of a farce not to steal and re-post.

I am over 60 and the Armed Forces thinks I'm too old to track down terrorists. You can't be older than 42 to join the military. They've got the whole thing ass-backwards. Instead of sending 18-year-olds off to fight, they ought to take us old guys. You shouldn't be able to join a military unit until you're at least 35.

For starters, researchers say 18-year-olds think about sex every 10 seconds. Old guys only think about sex a couple of times a day, leaving us more than 28,000 additional seconds per day to concentrate on the enemy.

Young guys haven't lived long enough to be cranky, and a cranky soldier is a dangerous soldier. 'My back hurts! I can't sleep, I'm tired and hungry.' We are impatient and maybe letting us kill some asshole that desperately deserves it will make us feel better and shut us up for awhile.

An 18-year-old doesn't even like to get up before 10am. Old guys always get up early to pee, so what the hell. Besides, like I said, I'm tired and can't sleep and since I'm already up, I may as well be up killing some fanatical son-of-a-bitch. If captured we couldn't spill the beans because we'd forget where we put them. In fact, name, rank, and serial number would be a real brainteaser.

Boot camp would be easier for old guys.. We're used to getting screamed and yelled at and we're used to soft food. We've also developed an appreciation for guns. We've been using them for years as an excuse to get out of the house, away from the screaming and yelling.

They could lighten up on the obstacle course however... I've been in combat and never saw a single 20-foot wall with rope hanging over the side, nor did I ever do any pushups after completing basic training. Actually, the running part is kind of a waste of energy, too... I've never seen anyone outrun a bullet.

An 18-year-old has the whole world ahead of him. He's still learning to shave, to start a conversation with a pretty girl. He still hasn't figured out that a baseball cap has a brim to shade his eyes, not the back of his head (or that the top of his underwear should not be worn below his knees).

These are all great reasons to keep our kids at home to learn a little more about life before sending them off into harm's way.

Let us old guys track down those dirty rotten coward terrorists. The last thing an enemy would want to see is a couple million pissed off old farts with attitudes and automatic weapons, who know that their best years are already behind them.

Send this to all of your senior friends...

Tea Party News: Improved UFO Disabling

2011-09-15T07:22:00.001-07:00

Soon real Americans will be able to shoot down UFOs without causing them to disintegrate and dump their alien occupants out all over our local county parks. This is good science what with the propagandistic left-wing unpatriotic lies about climate change, evolution, cancer prevention, death panels and all. Who needs a fence when we have photon beam weapons?

National Synchrotron Light Source II

Meeting critical trans-galactic challenges with an increased light source at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

This reminds me of a male squirrel

2011-09-07T04:53:00.001-07:00

The Battle of Chernobyl

2011-08-26T12:02:00.001-07:00

Help to Keep Water Potable

2011-08-26T08:09:00.000-07:00

Change.org|Start an Online Petition »

Foot Prints

2011-08-22T11:38:00.000-07:00

Outside the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

Mudslide Working

2011-08-21T06:52:00.001-07:00

Whale Sound: Tree Reader

2011-07-29T06:38:00.000-07:00

Whale Sound is an online project where poems of various contemporary writers are read aloud by Nic Sebastian.

A few months ago I submitted my piece Tree Reader and this morning it came online. You can hear it read here:

‘Tree Reader’ by Gabriel Orgrease « Whale Sound http://ow.ly/5QkqI

A writer can write a whole lot of junk and every once in a while they will find a gem. This is a gem. When I hear the piece read it makes me shiver. Nic has captured nuances that I was not even conscious that I had writ. This for me is a most wonderful gift.

The story behind the story.

I had a new smart phone and I was riding on the Long Island Railroad when the scene occurred. One of the stops for the line is Pinelawn Memorial Park cemetery.

I like the concept that at one time people were more sparing in their written words because they had to be set in type (or carved in rock or pressed in clay). In my case with this piece it was composed slowly on the smart phone, thumbs and all.

It never touched pen or pencil to paper.

Uncharacteristic for me I submitted it to an online publication. It was accepted with one minor change. That felt good.

Subsequently I was contacted by a textbook publisher who asked if they could include the story in an anthology of American short stories. Like from Washington Irving forward to Gabriel Orgrease.

I like the idea that HS students somewhere on the planet will get to read my story. Also I can imagine they would immediately go to the shortest story in the whole book then wonder who in blazes is this Gabriel Orgrease.

When I first was contacted by the publisher I thought it was a joke. I got paid $200 for it. The fee paid for the smart phone.

It all goes along with my life plot to publish good writing in unexpected places.
.

One Remedy for When All Else Fails

2011-07-27T03:09:00.001-07:00

Men Walk on Moon

2011-07-19T12:41:00.001-07:00

David w/ the NY Times 07/18/2011

SOS Gab & Eti 1.53

2011-07-16T03:56:00.000-07:00

“Her head was tilted back and with closed eyes she faced the sky, her mouth gentle with the half smile that can only be shown by those whose joy is so private that they have forgotten that other people exist.” -- Howard North

Dear Mr. Falswater,

As per our phone conversation last Wednesday we write you in regard of our business plan that since you have that fifty million venture capital that you got from those Nigerians ready to invest my brother and I have an idea how you can use it very quickly to good effect to help us start our chain of franchise stores. My brother wanted to start a sperm bank for endangered French hamsters but he has run into a snag as to how to transport them via trebuchet from the continent to Bullamanka. Everything is about logistics these days. Logistics, logistics, logistics, you would think it the start of a massive movement. So last night after we polished off seven bottles of Judge Yuro Peese Uckerknobb’s homemade red wine I shut him down and now he has agreed that this is a better approach to satisfaction of a market need that we present to you for your esteemed consideration and philanthropic titillation. We sincerely look forward to your support of our sales funnel. Oh, and before we forget, we have interested Booger King in an action figure set to support the ribbon cutting of our first thirty-seven retail outlets. They will also supply us with an electric brass band. And there is the young lady that used to work for Martha Stewart in laundry to assist us in the shop décor.

Sincerely yours in connubial admiration,
Etidorpha Orgrease

As Swipes, LLC

Toilet paper offers an opportunity to document an underlying trend in human history. With this intrinsic propensity for the value of mythic story in mind our focus in business development would be on the location of retail outlets in upscale historic districts near to the most prominent institutions of knowledge distribution.

Harvard, Cornell, Berkeley, Columbia, Stamford, Liberty, NYU, University of Chicago, Yale and Princeton and such other high-minded repositories come easily to the fore. Places that are certainly in need of unencumbered escape and quick relief from mental strain with the ultimate convenience of novelty. Most likely we would seek a disposable target in off-campus ‘college town’ venues where there is also a high incidence of heritage tourism, independent surplus family wealth, a demonstrated need for the product in volume, and an appreciation for the simpler vagaries of the arts and crafts movement.

In some respects the promotion of a specialized toilet paper store can be approached as a Rorschach test of various popular trends in retail consumption. We perceive models for the business along the lines of candle, incense and greeting card stores. Toilet paper represents an unexploited opportunity for marketing and sales along the lines of the ‘cult of candle’, for which there is a representative shop in every suburban mall in America. We also perceive a symbiotic relationship between the widespread marketing of smelly candles and the need to suppress the downside negatives that the contemporary public may unfortunately notice as associated in their use of toilet paper.

Though toilet paper in the mass market has been highly commoditized and comes conveniently packaged off the supermarket shelf, and it may appear on first approach that there is not an opportunity for retail specialization, there is a great deal of nuance in the available solutions to the human situation.

Toilet paper can be considered in a parallel to the sales pipeline of beer, for which up until the opening up of a deluge of micro-breweries the common assumption was that beer was a fairly mundane and watered down product of modest interest to the drinking public. Whereas now we understand that the pyramids would not exist without it.

Toilet paper serves the need of a slightly different public interest, but serves an essential need just the same. It is unlikely that our modern civilization would have developed to the extent that it has without toilet paper being close at hand. Unfortunately the earliest Neolithic practices cannot be established as toilet paper has always been of a fairly biodegradable and ‘green’ nature. Though we are free to imagine what the first use must have felt like.

As many historians make out that fire was an essential invention toward human progress we need to contend that once it was possible for early primates not to have to scoot themselves through the jungle abrading their posterior apportionments on bushes and tree leaves that it was noticeably the dawn of a new day.

Though the invention of paper had to have come much later in the timeline of the universe, most likely from the Chinese who would have known right off what to do with it, in our study of the subject we tend to equate ‘toilet leaves’ as the equivalent predecessor of toilet paper. Therefore our retail stock would include a variety of heritage leaf selections. A common favorite of our immediate ancestors was catalpa leaves for their broadness of form and ability to hold steady until properly disposed.

One variety of leaf, that of nettles, though not recommended for common application would be made available in our quaint shop as a little known historic curiosity of toilet leaves as a weapon of socio-political resistance for it being offered in the 17th c for free use to the Dutch by the Lenapes in their early exchange of the castorium trade. This also brings along the need for us to stock a variety of small-animal fur pelts to include those traditional of rats, skunks and rabbits. Neither should we not forget feathers, or hemp, or linen or cotton rags.

A brief review of the international toilet paper scene awakens one to the fact that toilet paper is inanely wrapped in cultural aspiration. Whereas the American consumer anticipates a certain width, color, texture, rate of absorption and delicacy of texture in many countries the toilet paper is smaller in width, of a different color, and often rougher in texture. We should look to Brazil for their outpouring of success. These subtleties of national variety, particularly when offered to the market in blind tests through workshops and other promotional venues such as clubs and swap-meets, can make available an intriguing panoply of sensation for the erudite connoisseur similar to the refined sample of our very fine local homemade wines [Hobo's Last Choice].

Toilet paper though it tends to be flat and is most often encountered in the American venue in rolls is not one dimensional in characteristics. It can be made available in designer colors, such as a humorous shade of tasteless brown, made suitable for display or disguise in the most upscale of interiors.

A toilet paper shop would not be complete without an element of humor and we should keep in mind to stock Appalachian hillbilly toilet paper that includes a favored moonshiner slogan printed on every sheet.

Designer toilet paper can also be adapted to floral decorations and highly-refined origami and when printed with a border of holly leaves or bunny rabbits can serve for seasonal celebration. The designer connection does bring in the potential for late night infomercials to be broadcast on cable television. One may even envision airing of a docudrama, “The Quicker Swiper” as a sort of George Simenon mystery take-off. Note that our utopian shop would also sport a back corner shelf selection of religious themed paraphernalia. The Tibetan Book of the Dead has on occasion been referenced as a substitute for the age-old standby, along with the Sears catalog. A free library of relevant literature along with comfortable places to be seated would suit the retail ambience and encourage browsers to linger and contemplate the merits of the proffered quality of merchandise.

Any shop specialized in toilet paper would want to include assortments of corn cobs, for which there is a profusion of literature and opinion as to the appropriate selection of varietals of corn that provide both livestock feed and when thoroughly shucked the very best bum use. And no self respecting shop would be complete without an automatic electric corn cob cleaner with an auto-feed mechanism.

As with an upscale coffee shop that also sells coffee makers and bean grinders a specialized toilet paper shop would also provide an assortment of accessories. For every bathroom in America there is a toilet paper holder and the extent of the variety of these utensils is staggering to behold. They can be made of a whole host of materials, natural and synthetic, double-decker and speedy unrolling, uplifting muzak chimes, pipes and gongs, to environmentally friendly dispensers connected to digital consumption meters with usb connection to your home computer. Design can range from the most utilitarian stewed-tomato can with a spindle to the heights of titanium Frank Gehry knock-offs.

- end -

SOS Gab & Eti 1.52

2011-06-24T05:43:00.000-07:00

Illustrations by Michael L. Johnson.

“Who says we cannot know the future? We can, but it [is] always a matter of interpretation, that is, of imagination. If that seems obvious, I should point out something not so obvious: that knowing the present is also always an act of imagination.” Lebbeus Woods

Bullfrog GO is not bearded GO, is not the shaven GO. There are now three GO's, a triumvirate of commotion forward, on screen, behind the screen and off. There is three of them like birch trees in a wind storm, the grove a paladin of merges, the real gazookus.

And I tell you to beware of the after taste of recycled cookies. The burp burned 'round the world.

May there be more? Are they all one? Are they all me? Are they all you? Are they this other imposing guy that parades around his city apartment and appears in his summer windows naked with a self-reflexive camera? We do not know. Ask their mother Momma Orgrease, who sends a monthly check to their brother Viédaze at the ecology retreat in the Yucatan jungle in order for his honorable and upright excellence who in perpetual meditation communes there with Mother Nature for him to please, pretty please, pretty please with a cherry on top... continue to admit that he is related to the many virile GOs of the world.

BF-GO: The sky room on rails was enclosed and overly stuffy, smelled of raw kerosene heat and moldy garments. The stage lights did not get any cooler as the climax lines of Tomorrow eased up and ended. The audience frittered in their undersized wooden seats. It was close in on the Radio Girl Squirrel to come onto the make-shift stage-in-the-round with her flaming baton and a yi yi yi ya ya ya! Then she would play a kazoo with her do.

Red silk hankie in hand – printed with a white skull and crossbones so that it would just perfectly fit over his face to make him out a pirate thief when he rode his hog -- a trace of a farmed pearl welled up just beneath his left eye with impending readiness to roll down the slant of his amphibious face where it would bisect the groove of his cleft chin. How many bullfrogs do you know with a cleft chin? Does a dancing frog sweat? He was desperate for the revitalization of a cold shower with the nerve soothing of Etidorpha's duck weed concentrated body lotion with honey, grapefruit-rind pomegranate and lanolin, sloppy, slimy aroma therapeutics. But for now as his act approached an end on this evening, no lotion was availed for him just yet, no relief as it came up in the auditorium a musk of bullfrog overlaid the otherwise dank space of sheetrock walls (black mold for now hidden) and knotty-pine board floor. Does a frog fret? GO the bullfrog threw a sloppy kiss to the digital vids and croaked out a final, "Tomorrow in the morning light, don't let the sun catch you cryin'."

In thrust of a genie's ass this small time performance was leapt and ascended in a tinkle to being cast in Meet the Depressed; only a pee-a-lot on a swing and an MP3 player as they always say repeatedly. Repeatedly as they always say.

But then as his arc took off from the port of hopes and dreams and credit default swaps and dreams and free credit reports and dreams and rapidly gained subliminal attitude on the sky train, the yellow vest with ketchup and crushed Japanese beetle-grub guts and pepper stains morphed into a red power tie and just as he (GO the BF) junted outward into the anus of oblivion (in one episode it is written that the massive hemorrhoid that quickly approaches on a trajectory toward Staten Island would be met by a reconditioned weapon of mass destruction but the otherwise undaunted crew of the space ship Further-Again would be imperiled by a gustatory expulsion) then in a swept up motion spiraled downward to the loving estimation of the now massive audience of three-dozen trilobites.

Shards of paper carnations of the very cheapest sort miraculously appeared humped up in a soggy pile at the stage door, little notes attached; and mutterings about "the next project" appeared in Rolling Stone all with the subtitle, "without really having a clue". No one could get enough of this odd little critter. "I'll thank you not to refer to me as a critter!"

In his heart he knew that his sister Etidorpha's BFF, the Radio Girl Squirrel would make his heart go pitter patter thump thump . What hope is there to imagine in the future romance of this celebrity frog with the Radio Girl Squirrel? Somehow the trans-species amplexus simply releases when converted into an on-screen 3-D animation and none of the children seem to notice the disparity.

But we live in a rapid world of industrialized artifice. Sex with robots supplants online experimentation with cats, dogs, Tolstoy, chickens and Thanksgiving turkeys in the suburbs of Middle America. Male robots barrage us with sextexts of their brass balls though nowadays replaced by titanium implants the size of trans-oceanic buoys. Female robots tweet us photos of creatures that plump their way into deep caves filled to the brim with lonely heart kisses. It is decades since BF-GO had first read in "The Fear of Frogging," ...this aerial switch is equipped with a moveable frog.” At the close of the act his legs twitch twitch in an electrified tap tap dance. Once again the suction cup balanced on his crown in a flash bang.

Stage direction from 1474: “Hell must be represented in the form of huge jaws which open and shut when needed.” anon

In an effort to make such and things not necessarily less crystalline clear, free of lees and dead dandelion wine yeast, we will elicit a spiritual dowser to drop a water melon seed pendulum hung from the web silk of a trap door spider. The diviner will say, "This is where we want the line to split between reality and play." to wit, shaven GO (S-GO) will respond, "And this here cut," as he slams down the sledge upon the basalt boulder, "...is where there is grain, true and right." To wit Bearded GO (B-GO) will say, "That seems less than fuzzy to me." To wit BF-GO will mutter, as he descends the back ladder (not to be confused with the ascending black adder) to his dressing room, how things that happen at one end of the universe happen instantly at the other end of the universe.

“Howdy do it?”

It behooves us educated ungulate to say straight out that the GO the bullfrog had accumulated too many fingers on his hands. Though he was somewhat consoled in the cosmic paranoia of his performance anxiety with reports of discovery of a star that shoots out water at 124,000 miles per hour.

Meet the Depressed: A retro 1970's historical reproduction all shot in a tiny back room studio situated up the stairs and down the dark hallway, shot in super 8 (or maybe even seven) with a daily budget of what amounted to $8.43 mostly for an assortment of flies and sow bugs to keep BF-GO fueled up and forever hoping. One midnight clear the director Suddy Warthole called out, "That's a Wrap! Put it in the can," as the day’s work concluded.

Critics complained periodically about the extensive editing involved in the production. Twit this, tweak that, adjust the volume, alter the hue, rejiggle the jaggle, shun the reader, by-pass the screenwriter, cut, cut, cut. All those cameo asides and the corny-copia of mop bucket be bop and altered off-tone slighting and clover-field crop circles not to mention the abundant gas track. Still, number one is number one; and that's in fact what it was. Number one. It was by no means not negative one. In fact, there was very little math involved at all. It was purely an overdone production.

Moon eclipsed evenings in the masonry room on the sky train were altered without question. Eti's day hadn't changed dramatically. Lots of great cookie and tart eating to be done there. BF-GO asked almost daily about bringing her on, in hopes that it would get him an opportunity to spend more quality time with the Radio Girl Squirrel. A new cast member and all that. She could wear a purple wig and the Radio Girl Squirrel a fake mustache. Great duet potential! But it was not hard to read Eti's thoughts on the matter. Three simple words, "NOT MY THING," were spelled out clearly (here finally is the clear part) as she lay about recuperation from their reality withdrawal, nestled deeply in the softness of her shiny near black fur coat. She dreamed of the embrace of endangered French hamsters.

To be continued: Shaven GO (S-GO) petitions the French government to establish a transnational sperm bank for endangered hamsters.

Text co-authored by Gabriel Orgrease with guidance from Michael L. Johnson.

SOS Gab & Eti 1.51

2011-06-03T04:24:00.000-07:00

"I found white elephant, flying pig and unicorn all at once." George Maltezos

It was a stone menagerie of Robber Barons. I saw their leader in a movie fly off from the Hudson pier like he was a wetware helicopter to points north and east and wealthy on the early edge of a Friday afternoon. A fleshy little porker with ear flaps. It was balmy in a golden light which only seemed the more appropriate. We still watch those movies... I mean, of the Great Depression with song and dance, a banjo and minstrel black face though it is now the blue man group.

In our personal theater the lights are shut off and in a display of the cult of candle we forget what we forgot. Smells of apple-cinnamon, bayberry or the artifice of paper lilacs.

Yet, we continue to dream the lotus blossom delivery dream but it is one locked into a closet in a railroad flat in an Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn. Aluminum sides the street walls, all sorts of faded pastel colors. Cookies and the super saturated sugar filler of cannolis, the smell of hot sausage juice and peppers and onions euthanize the street festival. Ferris wheel, the portable ferries a wheel of fortune to be a rotation of baby buns or skeleton cakes.

The old folks Grace and Doria on the floors below control the steam heat so hot that the Never windows in their aluminum frames not to close all winter the street grinds in our ears twenty-four hours. There are no bird noises. Barking unicorns inflate our sleep.

An uncloaked Gabriel in the desert, alone, naked in the sun on the orange and umber mesa he heard this urban... this urban scream, sirens, in search of silence it is not Odysseus strapped to his bully pulpit that yearns female forms or that gregarious earthworm sizzle on a Sunday morning but fire trucks, those highly expensive utilitarian well polished noisy blaring loud outlander outrageous and cared for trucks that pull us to come to the carnival. A very hard sadness in that when the firefighter at the medical center counter mentioned his herniated disc.

Such bad things as tornados, unseasonal and displaced on our terrain, it was as if a plug had been pulled in the Gulf and the oil slick screwed us with the weather all really really badly. Nobody to admit to nothing.

I walked the dog in the rain. A few days past, nights too. The nights were tricky sometimes. Then one morning when the room as still dark. Dark is anything but a white elephant that squeaks when squeezed.

When the rotating rapture hits I would rather be where there is beer and music. Give me oompah!

Dawn was still three minutes away; Rufus Sandbank, Mink Zero and the bearded GO were gathered around a small twin bed in a little amber colored guest room aboard the Ryugyong Express -- up the stairs and off to the side of things down a dusty narrow hallway. There was a sideboard and plain old china pitcher made in China filled with water made in the cycle of heaven to earth. GO held a cool damp gray-green recycled cotton facecloth lightly to Eti's furrowed brow. There was a window sill next to the small bed, pungent with black mold beneath the green-gray paint. The old wood frame window sash, the lower sash was open eleven and thirteen-sixteenths inches to let in any cool air that would do so. The three men heard a slight groan and what might have been a sigh as Eti's eye lids began to stir and then very slowly open...... "Whah? Where am I?" whispered Eti. She began to breathe a little more fully, to take the molecules of cool air into her lungs."Easy now Eti. Take your time. Everything's okay now." said GO; then to the other two, "Here she comes boys. She's back with us now," feeling a warm tingle in his gut.

Now there was a sepia glow about the room. If one were to put on their reading glasses and look closely then they would notice that the walls were of a roughly cut yellow-white brick and oddly resemble the interior of a masonry bake oven.

'Time seems to pass and nothing happens or seems to be happening. I'd see one helicopter here, another there, but nothing else, and always far from me.' Francisco Piedrahita

[There needs to be an organizational chart, a graphic narrative placed here at this location in the book in order to separate out in the imagination of the reader the puppet characters from the real characters and from those characters who are in name only and those who are in fact dancing cookies.]

A little tearful smile crept over Etidorpha's face as she peered up at the three men standing there. "Ah learned a little somethin' 'bout life after that screw up." She said in her closest approximation to "heartfelt". Yes, indeed. No lie. That there was somethin' else."

Eti began to look a little further round the room and got a little choked up with her furrowed brow as she remembered the bullfrog. She also remembered acres and acres of bean sprouts poking themselves up out of the night soil. Where was he, clean shaved Gabe with his spiffy dress shirt and red power-tie? Was he still back there?

"What is it, Eti? Is something wrong?" asked the bearded Gabe, all the while gently dusting the odd short chestnut brown hairs off from the Amish quilted coverlet.

He half expected Eti's next words to be, "You were there, and you and you. And maybe Mink would be thinking he'd a tin peter, or maybe one of straw so ginormous it required a bamboo scaffold...”

"Eti. Will you watch this -- I just nailed my thirty-second fly this morning. Come have some breakfast". Eti shook her little squirrel sized head. Now she knew. Squirrels dream just like people and dogs and white elephants. That might come in handy where they were headed. Who knew?

The train trucks of the car – the one that hailed this small room aloft into the milky melt of stars -- sounded a curragh like a wert unicorn unable to navigate to his navel, but as one moved forward along the yellow trails the steel to steel grind of bearings and shocks banged and popped the sound of white fireworks burst in the dark black night chitty chitty.

Her lips murmured as her mouth held in place a small pool of liquid adhesives. The breath hummed a breen crenelation of her rodented teeth. She shook her furry little head and suddenly there were streams of laser glitter light splayed across the ceilings and walls of the room.

It was fairly no linger what it may have been. Either it was June or November. With an ice age on the horizon little critters throughout the northern latitudes were frozen within a few hoots of morning with undigested buttermilk waffles and strawberries in their bellies. As things which stimulate and enflame the senses are not among the things that really are.

There lingered in balance on the cold air a scent of fresh cookie dough in the oven.

To be continued... everything gets baked out very neatly and made perfectly clear in the next installment.

SOS Gab & Eti 1.50

2011-05-13T16:33:00.000-07:00

"In fanciful stories people can talk to the birds freely , and I wish for the moment I could pretend that this was such a story, and say that Peter replied intelligently to the Never bird; but truth is best, and I want to tell only what really happened." James M. Barrie

I have been talking with Gabriel about how to give away things that bring him back.

As we sat on our upturned buckets, well, actually, I sat on an upturned chamber pot and GO sat on an upturned red-clay flower pot; we watched the progress of the traditional Norwegian-style outhouse that he is building out of bedrock basalt. It came to him as a build-by-number kit.

He had tried the diamond chainsaw – in a great noise dirty water was sprayed all over the place and Altuna, affrighted hid in their root cellar amid Eti’s jars of pickled mushrooms and the poor dog crouched down amid the antique Phelpsian sauerkraut crocks – he sluiced down on a portion of it, an attempt to cut moons and stars and sunflower memes, but the rarity of the saw soon grew dull and he only produced bright sparks that reminded me of Robert Johnson in the evening light. What with his devil at the crossroads deal, so we sat there non-pulsed upon it.

Listen.

His attempts at levity always come out to resemble wayward turkey tracks in the surface of wet concrete.

Gab had resolved to use a sledge hammer. Set there on our pots I suggested plug and feathers, holes drilled maybe with percussive rock driller bits imagined in the machination recesses of the Society of Mammon’s Deep Rock Drillers with their many devices to plumb the depths and core of our alimentary systems for the purposes of god extraction. Our breakfast cereal with blue berries but no almonds and whole milk solid on the tongue an albuminous expansive mortar to break our inner cleavages as if we are in a perpetual movie where Yule Brenner chews, and then chews again, and again on his vodka glass.

For vitamins. Before all of our potable water is stolen and encased, or spoiled. Katherine Hepburn drank water while everyone else got drunk.

When I come to their front gate I say, “What is this smell?”

Gabriel has become enamored of the restoration of historic intangibles and thus for the outhouse museum he sets about bags of garden manure in a pile near the entry. If it is chicken or goat or alpaca curds nobody knows for sure but it sets open to the rain and heat and bacteria and ferments gaily and at a reasonable expenditure of effort for the gain of an agrarian affectation. Altuna sniffs approvingly as Altuna sniffs of all packages brought upon their premises.

Gab resolved to use a sledge hammer and to bash upon the stone with a twenty pound weight of steel.

It was not the most elegant of glanced blows as on strike of the stone the iron flew off in a random quantum of educational theory -- Heideggerian parapets -- and the stone, if anything, crinkled only slightly and let out the upturned nose of a sharp crack of stubborn defiance. It would have been so much easier if it was piles of dirt or sound-salty sand a house or three high, a multi-complex habitat of loam, in various shades of gray to yellow to black and the Scot Gab was let loose with an Irish banjo.

There is nothing as elegant to sing as the craft of a shovel in motion. Unless it be pipes in the iron hold of a ferry. We can chase chickens or a broad goose with that.

But there was another plot beyond this one where we likewise ourselves play-fellows sat upon our smoldered pots, an alternate one of which we dared only hut dream in sleep as it once again escaped our grasp when the kindly daft reader went berserker with their pads and pens, collage and erudite colors, their very soul poured out in a collaborative pantomime of raucous carnival. A caviar feast of hooligans of hooligan.

It was as if artists had been roamed around in shadows of the garden when Eve was all rapt to talk shop with the embrace of muscular serpents. And I do emphatically intend the plural, serpents, muscular. It was not one apple she bit, nibbled, nudged,, there were many to be bobbed and bobbled and Eve bobbed and bobbled them each with a thimble of a ply and kiss like a tagua nut button impressed by Eli Whitney.

But somehow to build of rock a brick house this was not even half the problem, nor a third. To look for counter charms and reverse spells in a thicket can be almost impossible to sniff out (consideration to plastic bags of wet dung set out like votive candles), to handle, identify or expect to work miracles (however infinitesimal). “I was discouraged. I'm not sure I'm up for this at all, I thought." (from the imagined annals of GO, the one now that's a frog and not a nanny dog if one can imagine that).

They, being Gab and Eti, were seemingly stuck. Their surroundings were familiar in a sense, leafy and fecundate but then totally foreign in another. A partial amnesia felt jointly in their little heads, little hands, black eyes and webbed feet was also not helpful.

Such as it is in Bullamanka in general when one is suddenly turned into a small animistic totem in the natural pantheon of small totems, if only our childhoods had started out in warp speed just think where we would be today!

“Ah, If only we had an ally to assist us in getting back." I said to no one and everyone present. Those who were not listening did not hear me.

A hook, of some sort, they need a hook, or a book. A sky book, hook the helium balloon suspended hookah... the bucket of fog, frog lottery, the Cheshire that eventually meets common sense and finds it utterly deplorable, despicable, contrastive piddle on the inlaid marble floor of temple follies.

"Where's Rufus Sandbank when you need him?" said Eti, a puzzled look on her fuzzy brown face, only made to look more foggy with half an acorn crunched to wheat flakes, loaded into her left cheek. "He would set things right; get us back on the wagon train."

360.org

I had no idea what she was talking about. Rufus Sandbank? Wagon train? That couldn't be right, I ruminated while at the same I snatched a deliciously large housefly out of the air with my tongue. I spotted another helplessly nearby, I whispered, "Eti...Watch this......"

But that was them and not us nor they others that was not them or us but altogether different nimnuts.

“You must have your Cups fit and not too wide for the place you would set them on, or else they will not take any hold. Large and wide Cupps are fittest on the thighs, lesser on the armes, and the least for the hands or feete." John Woodall

On top of the Gabriel frog’s head he thought it was a crown but what it turned out to be was a vacuum cup that slowly sucked up his brain matter. And this technique worked well when the first Gabriel looked into the mirror and noticed the double-reflection of an amphibious persona tucked away in the abscess of his brain matter.

The decal on the back window of second Gabriel’s truck is a daddy bird, momma bird, two little birds the twins a boy and a girl, the baby bird with diapers, the dog bird, the kitty cat bird, another kitty cat bird, the parakeet bird, the fish bird with bubbles that rise from the finger, the cockroach bird and the flea bird. All of them signify the same thing, “Hey a**h*le, don’t honk at me!”

Rufus Sandbank told me that after he crashed his helicopter that the cost of his flight insurance went down because the insurance company has determined that 30% of those who crash a helicopter once will never do it again.

To be comminuted... Gab wears a spiffy dress shirt and the red power-tie (THE red power tie) with a belt and no suspenders for his cameo on Meet the Depressed...

SOS Gab & Eti 1.49

2011-05-07T06:31:00.000-07:00

"Nothing is profane that serveth to holy things." Sir W. Raleigh.

It is good that this Gabriel transmogrified into a bullfrog is not the one of them with a beard as otherwise we would have here the wholly impossible conclusion of a green frog on its backside with chin hair.

As with any abnormal growth, and Etidorpha, playful as she is would be tempted to tie upon her brother thin pink ribbons with patinated bronze bells. The sort of bells one would find on sale in the lawn and garden section along with smelly candles and wind chimes.

A frog, thus adorned that jumped at the slightest wind would ring out chingy ching chingy.

This, we agree with our social anthropologist would provide a brief reintarnation among the gathered dragon and damsel flies.

On his amphibious hit to the brackish surface of the water pond Gabriel would find himself much belabored in a cacophonous sink that would drift him to the very bottom of the muck. Bells, bells, bells, a chingy ling bang bang Gamelon clatter.

Along in there our local hero would likely meet a hungry snapping turtle and after a chomp and a dingly ding chomp chomp would be a decimated bobbit of a bloody and dead frog to be slowly digested in the belly and intestines of a large and generally unsociable turtle. Can't quite express if this would be a heavy Jonah myth or just bad timing.

Bunker is the sort of thing that happens to very famous people buried at sea.

Fish sticks.

Stop. No, wait, stop. Cease and desist!

We regret to inform you that contumelious portions of this story line have been co-opted by a fellow with a johnson, or a Johnson that is a fellow artisan and that as we enter into this new normal we can no longer distinguish between the two Gabriel’s as now there is a puppet Gabriel masquerading as a frog and a puppet Etidorpha masquerading as a brown squirrel.

Through the craft of digital animation and illustrious illustration these homozygous recessive totems appear lifelike and not at all as the stuffed plastic and terry cloth phantasmal conjurations of a childish imagination let loose in the public arena of all-natural nature.

Buttons for eyes, yes.

Whereas this Gabriel, the one speaking in your head as you read this sentence, desires that the characters of the story speak for themselves in their own voice it is untoward and unconscionable that any one reader of this serial would begin to not only speak up but would act out like a trot infected ventriloquist to babble their swear words and puns and nastiness as if it were gobs of fecal paint exuded from the mouths of babes, and squirrels, and frogs.

As one cultured reader has pointed out this insurrection is nothing short of disgustingly narrative terrorism.

Lest there be any controversy in your mind as to the patrimony of this story we have appealed to Judge Yuro Peese Uckerknobb to provide arbitration to our defense of our intellectual property right. His honor has prescribed a duel of kick boxing with paisley blindfolds.

It has been said of fiction that it must in all cases be made plausible so that it can be believed and that the reader is not dropped to the bottom of reality as if bells were tied to them and they were sunk and pursued by a snapping turtle and forced to hold their breath as they swim mightily for their very lives. Nothing much escapist in that, is there? Whereas it has been said of non-fiction that as a true and fair representation of what actually happens in the world it can often appear to be very implausible and sound completely nonsensical and yet not be a batch of feverish lies. Suffice it that in the end one or another of us Gabriels will always tell you the plain and simple truth.

That all said if you are confused by any of this then do not blame the author. Blame the exuberantly errant readers. Let them eat cake, and then wash out their mouths!

Etidorpha, who paid absolutely no attention to her brother the frog who discorporated his bodily revelations as he lay there on his backside, sniffed along the ground and through the grass and beneath the browned oak leaves until she found herself a fermented acorn.

“Oh, goody,” she said in squirrel.

.

SOS Gab & Eti 1.48

2011-05-02T03:47:00.000-07:00

(hypothetically)..."Shit", she said.

"Only if we split it....right down the middle", I said.

So we split it and began again, "Shit", I said. "Shit", she said. "Shit", I said (doubting this was gonna work, but all the while hoping)..."One", I said. "Two", she said. "Three!", I screamed as we both swallowed the odd green muck as planned.

I woke up flat on my back with a distinct and very real sensation of smallness and froggyness. I strained my thick green and yellow neck to wittness Eti; now a chestnut brown squirrel, resting beside me, not on a boat of any sort, but rather in a thicket that opened up into an overgrown grassy field somewhere far away.

"Shit", I said, "It worked!"

.

Work on SOS Gab & Eti 1.49

2011-05-01T07:36:00.001-07:00

bullfrogs with brass bells on a pleasant Sunday morning on Long Island

Be Prepared

2011-04-29T04:56:00.000-07:00

Scott Clark Interview

2011-04-29T00:30:00.000-07:00

Scott's comments on a drummer's life are relevant as well for writers.

TheFreewayLife-Scott Clark from FREEWAYarts on Vimeo.

How We Don't Talk About Musicians : A Blog Supreme : NPR

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SOS Gab & Eti 1.47

2011-04-27T04:29:00.000-07:00

There is a space in the crossing of the ferry where if you shut your eyes you cannot see either shore. At another place in white fog it looks as if we ghost about on a large lake surrounded by a dark land of low hills and gentle rises. It is a pleasant trip on the poor man’s yacht where the station of birth is an insignificant impression.

“I do not know where my thoughts come from,” she says to me as we take in the wet morning air. To which I respond, “Well, possibly you do not pay close enough attention.”

“Well, yes, a well it is...” as she clears her throat of a harsh wind, “I do have this incessant buzz in my head. At first I thought it was an apoplectic disaster in Gab’s truck, a cosmic upchuck. Then one winter afternoon when I set up to bake tarts I received a thought that the buzz is mine, the core of me. It is where I connect with the celestial micro-spheres. Like this firewall in my head it is the furthest that I have been able to reach back to my primal sauce. It is where all those fucking screams come from, you know. A congenital hot flash of buzz, I can read your mind with it. It tells me all kinds of things that come up fresh and slimy like an artesian well in a natural gas field.”

Her comments made me wonder right then on the passage deck if Etidorpha should be allowed to continue to chew on her lit cigar. Or if maybe I should make an excuse to wander down within the steel shell of the ferry to the lounge below and watch the television news on the giant screen. There was another fool running and I did not want to miss the carnival. But the waves of the placid sound and the softness of the morning haze kept me steady at her side. I stood; prepared if need be to have my mind read, stood in an uneasy attempt to erase all of my thoughts, of the banter of fools or otherwise. My face wore the mask of an inquisitive grin, at the least; I hoped that is what Etidorpha saw of me even with the aptitude of her buzz, that a useless grin of me is all of what she perceived.

There is no better mirror to the world than the dewy stare of a morning idiocy, fresh like kale and carrots in the grocery newly misted.

I did one time have a friend named Mink Zero, a wanna be electric guitarist in a coke band, his fingers were faster than his brain, who told me that he could receive music from the radio in his car, the Ford Falcon his parent’s had given him, when the radio dial was turned off. He may have had an excess of mercury in his head, tooth fillings or titanium or whatever but I never did find out for sure his specific metallurgy. He was then, at that time, only susceptible to FM broadcasts and very small pills. With those candy beads he could hold the keys to a pulsating universe in one-thirty-second flatitude of the palm of his hand.

It was a noise to signal love affair for him to listen to his own head. I first met him when he was lost in Peterson's Bog behind Sapsucker where he talked to a large rock surrounded by a field of skunk cabbage, the rock irresolutely stuck in the mucky ground. His desire was to persuade it to fly.

For Mink though his reception was more than the hum of a large blast-engine, a buzz -- a social network composed of replicated story sounds, incomplete guitar riffs, discordant drum solos, chants scribbles, musical marginalia and drones, washing machines that bang off center without the touchy feely interference of real people, glinted mirages in an uncaged stockhausen of his me.

At times he picked up other signals, like sempiternal wave blurps and beeps, and on more than one occasion he told me there was a satellite of aluminum opalescence circled us overhead as dainty as his sweet angels.

Though as Mink Zero aged he fell more and more into less regard to judiciously select the channels he would receive and as he sunk the slippery slope of cellular degradation he began to receive AM talk radio more frequently than not and it was little surprise to us who continued to know of him and where and when that through a number of undergraduate steps he took up to deal in semi-automatic weapons.

But that is another story. We were nearly to shore when Etidorpha opened her carpet bag, pulled out from it a small white paper bag and from that a small plastic bread bag, recycled and held closed by a yellow plastic clip, she then disrobed from a soaked paper towel that had on it writ in black marker the word ‘experiment’ and from this confine it emerged a doughy substance that looked to me for all the world like tree fungus. “Eat this,” she said.

"Shit," I said.

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The Moving Picture Writes

2011-04-23T10:21:00.000-07:00

My writer friend Martin Heavisides in Toronto explores film... explores a whole lot of film.

The Moving Picture Writes

And I explore reading in a vid one of his stories here: Find the Wheel

His blog The Evitable

Martin Heavisides is a contributing editor to The Linnet’s Wings, a literary magazine of exemplary merit. He recently published his first novel, Undermind, and is working on a companion volume, Labyrinth, these being part of a projected work in four parts, WorldMind. The Living Theatre has given a live staged reading of one of his seven full length stage plays, Empty Bowl, whose first appearance was in Linnet’s Wings (Summer 2008). Soliloquies (Concordia University), Mad Hatter’s Review, monkeybicycle, Gambara, Jeremiad, Studies in Contemporary Satire, Cella’s Round Trip, Sein Und Werden, FRiGG and Black Cat Review are among the publications his work has appeared in. He has won a PEN Syndicated Fiction Award and a Harbourfront Discovery Prize.

His passion for film goes back to student years, and behind the work being offered by him at The Moving Picture Writes is upwards of two hundred reviews and essays, in his apprentice years, the twenties and early thirties.

SOS Gab & Eti 1.46

2011-04-20T06:04:00.000-07:00

You may have seen those bumper stickers that say, “Get Your Beads Drilled in the Poconos.”

When I was over to see Etidorpha I was curious and asked her how she came to learn to drill wampum beads.

It is not anything that I have ever heard that people do in modern days and it is not a craft that is taught at the Bullamanka Community College (BCC), not even in the remedial adult section. Though one would think that bead drilling would fit in well with traditional trade related classes on how to mount a flash drive. So I was curious about how she learned the art and the tools and I even wanted to know if there is maybe a bead driller guru that has a Masters or a PhD in wampum bead drilling. I like to learn by reading or peripheral subconscious osmosis, it is so much easier than doing.

Or maybe there is an international organization of wampum bead drillers and they have motel conventions with heavily attended workshops and long winded speeches about bead drilling case studies. As in powderpoint these beads, yeah! Beads of the Ozarks. Rise and fall of the Persian bead. Many many beads I have known.

Conflagrations of bead drillers that get kinky and intertwine their wetware networks in places like Albuquerque and a glossy magazine full of provocative advertisements with scantily clad bead drillers who pretend to drill beads while they smile at us with their tanned expressions of pure ecstatic joy while they suck their loose appendages and a bi-lingual newsletter for the hard-core aficionados, considering the number of 3rd World bead drillers, and they have an internet web forum where avid practitioners discuss the finer points of the ancient craft of bead drilling.

Maybe they complain about the degradation of wampum not being quite what it used to be in the pre-Columbian era back before the good whelk and quahog shells got scarce. I bet they can go on for a month arguing over the best recipes for spittle and bead goo.

T-shirts that say, “Bead Drillers Tap Tiny Holes.” And wampum driller’s poetry, too, they have to have doggerel about it since there are songs and poems already about embroidery, needle point, rug pulling, pot holder weaving, bird house carpentry, how to whittle a corn cob pipe, and the sewing on of buttons by hand and darning of socks and ironing on of store bought pant knee patches and other domestic avocations -- The Saga of the Bucket of One Million Beads. What an adventure story!

“And then after much arduous passage/ a sharp pain that shot up my right arm/ when I came to drill bead number 1,356/ nearly exhausted and dehydrated/ my eyes in pain I wanted a drink/ on my knees/ the phone rang/ Mildred Spanbottom/ who called about the gas flames/ that shoot out of her.../ kitchen faucet.// On bead number 345,927/ hot water kettle whistle/ woke me up.// We nearly near the nearest/ end of the end/ when near the end/the bead bowl tipped over.”

So much of life happens in the brief time it takes for a wampum bead to be drilled.

They must be very very tiny drills to do that with and I can only imagine it requires a good lighted magnifying glass and a rotatable 5-position handi-vice or some sort of miniature means to grasp the wampum beads steady while the driller is mounted.

I suppose a traditional purist in search of authenticity of craft would use their fingers.

Bloody fingers, you can always tell a wampum bead driller by the tips of their bloody red fingers stuck with tiny bead drills like fledgling insect quills. Very tight tolerances must be required, if you ask me even though I know that you didn’t. So I asked her while I picked black squirrel hair out from between my molars. Her baking is tasty but if she does not wear her glasses you never know what will end up in the oven.

Etidorpha reached down behind the wood stove where the coffee congealed. Altuna, I sense maybe sensing there was going to be a crash and thud onto the floor where he had been up to then asleep, skittered into the pantry. She reached down to her stack of dry periodicals in the galvanized wash tub and after a bit of rummage and fumble and fart she pulled out and showed me her Miracle Poospatuck Manufactured Restoration-Arts & Crafts Native-American Doo-Dads Inc. Specialty Annual Bead Catalog #103.

Here were two-hundred and seventy-eight pages of beads and bead related paraphernalia of all shapes, sizes, colors, dimensions and possible materials known to humanity, with full and highly detailed descriptions of each type of bead, and sequin, including biographies of famous historical figures in the bead world. It had never previously occurred to me that William James Sidis had a bead fetish.

And patterns, we always need good patterns, beading patterns like I have never seen ever in my life. They were cubic, they were realistic, they were fractal, three-dimensional, four and five-dimensional, and they were fantastically resplendent, ignited in molten fire and quenched in serpentine baths of absinthe and myrrh. It was here in this one catalog more information packed into such a tiny space than I ever even knew there was that much information about to be had, learned, enunciated, read or knowed about the amazing world of beads.

This overwhelming wealth of surplus cognitive junk quickly in my mind put the universal glory of the commonality of their cousin, the button to shame. I would never ever look at a button quite the same again without a first thought of how it had all started with little tiny beads until the beads got bigger, then bigger, then stuck through the cloth on a thong then eventually with the evolution of utility they got squashed into wafers and from an insignificant bead a button was born. Be aware, we do not even know this level of technological development in the invention of the wheel as we know for the transition from humble bead to the bold statement of buttons. Buttons, rule, man! But a bead, a bead is the sublime elegance of clothing. It is an element of design that can be affixed to our nose. It was a miraculous epiphany and as I begged and borrowed Etidorpha let me take the catalog and as I clutched the mighty catalog tightly to protect it from the rain and the tornado and the flying tree and those really weird goats on the walk home I took it into my life and spent several hours over several days over several weeks to peruse the captive of its highly informative pages.

Here all this time I thought wampum was made from shells and I find out it is made from plastic and comes already with the holes drilled in it, at least, the wampum that Etidorpha uses in her handicraft art work. But I did find out that her raccoon pecker bones come from real raccoons, not the domesticated ones but free range all-natural raccoons. The porcupine quills come in little bundles with a rubber band around them and can be got in natural shades or a pre-died range of colors. I happen to like the ones that glow in the dark.

SOS Gab & Eti 1.45

2011-04-13T16:14:00.000-07:00

There is a vast pool of many good names in the world to select from: Quentin, Maya, Mihai, Max, Yechazkel, Didier, Cyrus, Myron, Robert, Gur, Duncan, Bernard, Philippe, Raphael, Piotr, Andrei, Linda, Lorenzo, Bruno, Alina, Stan, Dean, Flavia, Lea, Maria, Harry, Shaiy, Zukia, Espen, Justin, Aaron, Neil, Reid, Claudia, Janet, Chidem, Ralph, Jesse, Elie, Katinka, Avital, Spiros, Stefan and Jim.

So why then we must ask have several followers of this mass migration expressed a difficulty in separation of the one Gabriel Orgrease from the other Gabriel Orgrease?

We do not get it. No more, no grok.

I spoke with Etidorpha about this during our last fortune telling session, the one with the red Face-from Mars slate cards, and she urged that I cannot let any confusion of affairs as to names of things, beasts and inanimate rocks stand upright for very much longer. Clarity is gold coin. Something she saw in the slate cleavages about 'the great mountain bumps the humble badger into the fetid sump pit'.

First off, to be absolutely clear, this confusion is by no means meant to evoke a mental bifurcation of an obfuscate threshold for a slough reader’s inverse comprehension.

It is well known that characters in real life, round or fat or square or flat and comic burlesque with white Santafied beards, as well as in fiction should have alphanumeric paroxysms that distinguish themselves and keep the commons skunk-wind clear as to their verifiable identity. Otherwise characters in the mind of the audience flow together and appear to be one amorphous mass of flashiness and sloppy amoebic body fluids sloshed around as if in an antique mop bucket, one of those pre-yellow plastic galvanized ones and then those strange sounds in the night that cause one to hold their nose in the eructation of half-sleep. The poor dog in our lives traumatized shivers and tries to hide underneath the couch. Utterly despicable, uncouth, anti-social behavior even when you keep it scat be-bop willy to yourself. Though there is a contrariety viewpoint of the Manureist School of social economics that identity cannot be thieved away if everyone has the same post-industrial cookie cutter avatar. That is, if everyone is identical in name and number and mug then how possibly can they be confused in their bank accounts and credit cards? We can always position one indecipherable culture, with the H. Bosch or their funky hippy ideogram black inky stick figures, against another and call it a neutered none-nuts from the A shelter -- peace sign waver, school voucher.

Gabriel P. Orgrease passes the checkout at the Handi Pantry solely in commemorative mint quarters carried in a small burlap-linen bag woven and then sewn for him with his initials embroidered in hand drilled wampum beads by Etidorpha. It is a habit he adhered after he read an audio biography of P.T. Barnum. It is not over until the Fiji Mermaid sings was the post-memetic gene of the day on the billboard. But, though since I am the real and original Gabriel Orgrease I need to point out that there is a distinct and obvious difference between us.

Etidorpha knows her brother well enough, we would think, a fact that she has often expressed to me with a modest tinge of perplexed regret and I cautiously ever so cautiously inform her that it is not my problem to worry about her sometimes difficult relationship with her brother... and she knows me well enough as her friend, and his friend, making me in turn their friend, or a friend of the family Orgrease and as these things go I am a brother of sorts in spirit, if one can isolate a sprite like a puff of breath in a test tube like Thomas Edison’s last breath, or, more aptly an unofficial adopted to the family even though I have my own officiated branch of an Orgrease family, with a sister Pamela and a nephew Pamela and an aunt Pamela and a cousin Pamela, and an Uncle Sirius, thank you very much. But I don’t mind, really, just saying.

Etidorpha never gets us confused and why should you?

The Orgreases of all persuasions are prolific in body but short on imagination when it comes to what awf-godful names to stick to their children. That paucity seems to go equally for both branches ever since that between-brothers issue over the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon and the argument that came up at the stone pub on that stormy bog-wet night about whose dirty face it was impressed upon the linen rag hung on the towel rack in the celestial loo.

Though we all understand from the anecdotal heresy that way before the crossing of the wide water the one branch of the family devolved into a clan of apocryphal know-nothing stonemasons and the other evolved into a breed of arrogant scribes with magical elfin pen nibs. But we really do not need to get into that heuristic episode of separation in the great tree-of-life as it brings up a whole host of bad memories across the most resplendent broadness of the rainbow of transsexual humanity.

It is very simple to distinguish the difference between us. My name is Gabriel P. Orgrease and his name, that friend of whom I often write to inform you of his misanthropic adventures and grand outhouse escapades, along with his sister Etidorpha, is Gabriel P. Orgrease. To make matters even simpler, it is to be known that Etidorpha E. Orgrease, wherein the E stands for Eel after her great-great-grandmother on her mother’s side.

Quite simply, and the distinguished characteristic is that my P does not stand for the meaning or impression or depth of the water of the river of his P. Total distinction in the patrimony of P.

That is how you can make the erudite distinction and it is much more telling, and/or foreboding than the size of our exposed foreheads and anterior appendages of bulbous psychic protrusions or the distinct shape of our respective ears, his being twisted and mine being, let us say, ridiculously anterior to the effect that he can wear a workmen’s hat and I rarely more than a blue tie-dyed cotton head scarf. We both wear titanium glasses to great affectation though GO is known to smoke a finger-wax patinated corn cob with cherry toback and a pinch of primitive boo. Though, if you feel confused by readi-made Shangri-La labels and headwear, intimidated by the guess of gear, then all you need to do is whisper and see which one of us can hear you as he, that other GO, due to his congenital malformation cannot hear a treadle traddle quite as well as I.

This should conclude and provide to the curious a succinct explanation as to why Gabriel Orgrease is always asking, “What?”

To be contained: Painting the gray areas with Victorian blue historic-palate house paint.

tUnE-yArDs

2011-04-10T10:01:00.000-07:00

SOS Gab & Eti 1.44

2011-04-07T17:07:00.001-07:00

You would have thought that there would only be one of me but then I met this other Gabriel Orgrease at the vegetable stand during the annual cantaloupe bowling tournament. It was during half-time and the crowd had settled when we both reached at the same time for the same bunch of red beets and our hands rudely collided around the stalks of the leafy greens like those little bitty one-pilot space ships about to careen off the intergalactic opera movie screen and explode in a loud almost-big bang with a bright white flash of gratified orgasmic annihilation. That was how our eyes first met. Nothing was meant perverse in our meeting ourselves like this; it was just magnetic like with the molten earth iron core a gigantic magnet attracting all of the inevitable in our small neighborhood. He had a decidedly sneaky twitch to his left eyeball, tequila bloodshot through and through.

I thought to myself, “Who the hell is this hairy faced madman and what the hell is he doing grabbing my borscht bound beets?” In a sign of intelligence that relived me entirely he quickly retreated his ruddy hand and placed it on an oriental eggplant. I felt like I was in a garden-globe mirror, golden with the passage of the mid-morning sun.

I did not mind that it was a particularly slender and firm eggplant, with a delicate hue of purple, green and white that I had also been so ardently perusing and pursuing for the last hour, as I had ever so tentatively inched my way along in the dirt and scuffed my work boots and snapped my spenders before Gabriel Orgrease so boldly bumped my beet born fist and then after the abrupt collision in the spark of a nanosecond he diverted his unlicensed thrust to grab his hand on to the other nubile vegetable, that targeted eggplant.

Obviously he held it firmly in his grip as I clutched and shackled my beets, but as with any galactic rogue I really did not give a twiddle if he may subsequently grab then as instantly, as he may then and there quickly quaff a nearby chili pepper and explode here and there like a bulbous gas station on flame without retardant or suppression. Seeing in my mind’s eye, somewhat more discerning than my heads eyes, not the least bit bloodshot or otherwise imperfected, the possibility of such an uncouth action I endeavored with haste to put an ample distance between his us and my us as I pretended a wave to swat flying Juniper bugs and quickly sloughed my arse in a sphere of influence over toward the section of wooden bins littered with oranges, pears and dented MaCoon apples.

I thought nothing further of the incident until a few minutes later at the other end of the stand we collided once again over the fresh dill. By this time I felt like I was being mimicked by one of those primordial inhuman walking animals that pops up out of one’s lizard brain during a bad-trippin’ leaftime. I thought back to what I may have inadvertently ingested in the morning prior to my shave. Though I felt that his semblance was out of character for a beast I did notice that he wore a tie with a dancing jacka-lope on it and that his satchel sprouted a toilet bowl plunger. It was as I remarked later to Etidorpha a very large toilet bowl plunger. It was large, yes, most fully to be described as large... not small by any means, a utilitarian size for a giant ceramic crapper, yes, sort of an outsize device that reminded me of trucks with broad signs on their rear that says Wide Load.

Regrettably there were no flashing lights or signal flares otherwise I would have avoided an approach to the plastic bucket with the bunches of dill stuck in it. I like the way in which the blue rubber bands wet with the tub water hold the stalks together.

And then we struck it with the dandelion greens, and then the carrots, and then the potatoes and then the Vandalia onion. Since then we have been real good friends.

SOS Gab & Eti 1.43

2011-04-01T06:39:00.000-07:00

This morning I woke up and I saw Gabriel sitting on the futon couch in the living room with a black marker pen and a roll of white paper towels with little green shamrocks along the borders. He was busy writing something and I was curious because he usually only writes union protest slogans on cardboard signs that he has been selling through eBay so I said to him, “Hey, Gab, what are you up to?”

Without any hesitation Gab tells me, “I’m bumfin’ these pieces of paper towel.” Gab mumbles sometimes and it sounds to me like he said Banff. I’m not sure what this all has to do with a single occupancy resort in Canada but my curiousness is up. “What for,” says I.

“Etidorpha needs to know what each piece is to be used for. See, this one here is for wiping up spilled coffee. This one next on the roll is for cleaning Altuna’s bmfiggereion... this one is assigned to the loo in the evening, and this here one is going to be a book mark in a Stephen Hawking book about black dwarfs.“

“OK, Ok,” I says, “What happens if you need to clean your shoes and that particular piece of paper towel is in the middle of the roll?”

“We follow the schedule, my friend, always follow the schedule, I mean, why bother making a schedule if you are not going to follow it?”

I can see well enough from now on out that Gab will need to spill his coffee right on time. “Well, I ‘spose that makes good common sense but aren’t your shoes going to be a bit smelly with that gift from Altuna, and you tracking it all around the house?”

“Not a worry, if we are not on schedule then I’ll wipe my feet on the grass.”

“Why did this come up all of a sudden?”

“We got a letter in the mail from our Congressperson that from henceforth herein on out in perpetuity and with green washing gargling and domesticated ecological spills of toxic radioactive waste and broken eggs we are to keep a detailed daily record of our use of paper towels. Etidorpha says it will be a whole lot easier to track them if we give them names and labels to identify what they are to be used for. This one here I am going to name Phred. We need to write it down in this book they sent us. Why they don’t let us e-mail our records I don’t know, probably worried about that Wikileaks thing sopping up the American right to wipe.”

“Oh,” I says as I look out the window past the bright display of spring crocuses, “What is Eti doing with the fluorescent spray paint out in the yard? It looks orange.”

“Damn that sister of mine, I told her I’ll go to hell and back before we bend over to label our leaves of grass!”

“Well, you know Gab, the whole world and everything in it do need a name.”

Altuna says, "Roof, roof."

To be continued... red roofing slate straight from the Face on Mars.

Social Media is all In My Head

2011-03-25T16:40:00.000-07:00

I read recently that before we had internet social media we all imagined or outright pretended that we agreed with each other and got along because we had no opportunity to find out otherwise. We could not pretend to socialize quite so easily and nobody could intrude on us enough for us to feel any different from them. We could call it dumb and happy.

Now we suddenly think everyone is growing f*cked in the head but what is really going on is everyone was already f*cked in the head. Only now we get to experience it first hand like all those people are trying to get inside our head to f*ck with us so it seems like this new thing happening. That is a downside to this social media. The upside is not everyone is totally f*cked in the head, even ourselves, and we sometimes need to feel that too.

So, if you can be nice to someone today and make them feel sane and happy to be alive then please do so.

Chernobyl over Japan

2011-03-16T06:30:00.000-07:00

Famous People I Have Met

2011-03-11T15:10:00.000-08:00

Whimsey

2011-03-03T13:52:00.000-08:00

Moon

2011-03-03T12:25:00.001-08:00

Fink or Palin?

2011-02-10T16:46:00.000-08:00

I read the following by chance this morning and it settled with me into thoughts I have had boiled up like nuisance boils in my attempt to understand the popular interest in Sarah Palin. How does a mindless twit-fart get to such a place of prominence in our national political discourse?

Mike Fink, “He was in fact a Mississippi river-god, one of those minor deities whom men create in their own image and magnify to magnify themselves.” Constance Rourke, American Humor, a Study of the National Character, 1931.

Sarah Palin to me looks like a celebrity fabrication very much along the lines to fulfill the sort of need that Mink Fink, and the mythical over-the-top American legend that folk culture of pulp celebrity has long cultivated if it be Davy Crocket or Paul Bunyan or Wild Bill Hickok or Howdy Doody.

Those wilderness dudes now have female attributes. Go figure.

For me Palin is a more than real person – a mama Klondike moose shooter rough talker that regurgitates the smarmy way my grandmother talked about my grandfather’s toilet errors and she can see Russia like no other bodacious babe since Russ Meyer -- that in many ways epitomizes someone that I would never want to have visit at my humble abode and, if she got past the front gate and the dog did not bite her in the rump cheeks, to stay over.

But she is something and she is noisy and she is still making a stir, if not a last gasp and it occurs to me today that she is magnified to magnify the self-image of her clambered sycophants. It is truly awesome.

Environmentalism: Liberal vs Conservative

2011-02-09T07:18:00.001-08:00

access to, and conservation of clean natural resources transends left-right politics and goes to a fundamental right of our human survival

"The hardest places to work are the liberal progressive communities because they think we have a democracy and they are intent on working within the existing structure to try to find a remedy rather than tossing it and working on something from scratch," said Linzey. "What's been fascinating to me is when you have south and north-central Pennsylvania towns passing binding local ordinances that refuse to endow corporations with constitutional rights in their communities. But in the liberal progressive bastion of Berkeley, they were passing non-binding resolutions urging Congress to do something about it. I think that difference in approach has become clear to me over the last decade. Here are rural conservatives passing things saying we won't let our rights be taken away and are using a local law as a municipal, collective civil disobedience tool to actually push up against the state to say 'fuck you.' Whereas in Berkeley people get in a huff and do some hand-wringing and pass a resolution which begs and pleads Congress to do something about corporate rights, which is never going to happen, at least in the next 20-30 years."

http://www.alternet.org/story/149725/vision%3A_how_small%2C_mostly_conservative_towns_have_found_the_trick_to_defeating_corporations

Fieldstone Method - Gerald Weinberg

2011-02-03T10:43:00.000-08:00

A writer talking about writing.

As I am a stonemason by trade, writer and collector of stuff -- Weinberg's life perspective is super kool for me.

Jerry's Blog The Secrets of Consulting

Preview then purchase his books at Smashwords.

Old Time Movies

2011-01-11T15:55:00.000-08:00

I enjoyed this short when it first came out.

The Celestial Teletransportation Conduit

2011-01-10T11:03:00.001-08:00

By the public spirit of our entertainment conglomerate a teletransportation conduit has recently been established between our neighborhood and the Celestial City. Having little time, I resolved to undertake a trip.

Accordingly, one sultry morning I thought about the corner of Avenue and North 9th, where the cadmium-graphite kiosk, a tensegrity shed, was installed. Rendering a brief howdy and exchange of lucky numbers with my bookie, who was returning from a fact-gathering pilgrimage -- I briskly motioned into the shimmering claptraption.

There was no fanfare. No bright flash, no arcing of electrical jibberations, no background musak. There was no adumbration whatsoever. It was a splendidly delivered dullness. The effect was instantaneously as adverted; nothing was there before me instantly in no time. I was not certain if I had arrived before leaving. Explaining, I suppose, the time bending attraction the conduit delivers for my prosperous bookie.

On stepping out the opposite side I continued to notice an abundance of nothing. In fact, if I had noticed anything I would advise you that the Celestial City is a more ideal destination than it is not. There was light, and there was no light. It is difficult to faithfully describe the erudition of nothing.

Possibly I expected more, but absent imagination, anticipating profoundly grandiose scenery plundered by the entertainment conglomerate, I found less. As it was, the curious shortage of street hustle and zero population, no sidewalk benches, no noisy autos or tourist buses, no nothing, made me wonder what had become of my devoutly deceased ancestors. It also caused me to wonder what would become of me were I to remain too long absent from home.

An attendant, ticket taker, token prophet or holy savior could have been provided to welcome me after my having laboriously expended so much of my precious time to arrive. The end of nothing is somewhat disconcerting. You may trust that I will take this complaint up and write a letter to the damnable conglomerate. Yet, as we think we sow.

The thought of writing a letter to hell brought vivid images to my mind by way of vociferous blasphemy. So then, wonder of wonders, as quickly as I found myself amidst nothing then as instantly I found myself not alone.

He telepathetically laughed outright, my new friend, a curious mix between a large eyed lizard, a googlemensch, and a 40-watt light bulb, gray and pallid of scaly skin, and in the midst of which cachinnation, a smoke-wreath hissed from his nostrils -- he had not a mouth or anything resembling lips -- while a twinkle of butane flame darted out of either eye, proving indubitably that the conduit was a ruse, an abomination, and that in this instantaneous reality an alien abduction was shortly to occur wherein I would be probed, prodded, and androgynously impregnated with the fetus of an alien-human hybrid.

Thinking less of this cliché development, I offered my friend a bottle of orange seltzer that he drank and peremptorily he burst.

Tin Peter

2011-01-01T03:35:00.000-08:00

“Self-contained mechanical implants are made of a series of interlocking plastic blocks with a spring-loaded cable passing through them. They are easy to operate, but mechanical failure can occur.” Dr. Nick Chopper

My buddy bro Bip Enois Boone found this here tinsmith’s… uh… objet d’art… wedged head down in a piney knothole behind a Ouija board and a pile of cookbooks and used Geographics in a dusty back corner on the bare wood floor of Schmuck Brothers Antiques second level on East 125th Street.

You can’t hardly miss the old-fashioned place, if you look for odd stuff, because Schmuck’s, founded in 1929 still expands, earflaps and all as they say, is with a big red lettered artsy fartsy sign across on the north side of the street. A four-story façade with a fire escape that needs paint and caulk bad on the front, on a spot of hot sidewalk next door to the one-story blue mini-mart, where you can purchase rolling papers, magic chant candles (which is what I had sent Bip after to begin with), a fist of musk incense or a foil of French ticklers.

So, though we are in the same latitude as the famous black Harlem, Bip and I are not exactly used to wander around at that better-known end of our “opulent” street.

The butt end of East Harlem, the heartless dead zone between roadway and river, is our place, our village, and it gets on for us different than the cultured masses. At this end, our piss-poor riverside promenade of shed condoms and crushed glass, where we walk with our sneakers and tread sandals we can kind of feel through our toenails the Haarlem River tide beneath the pavement.

We are a bit out here; with our fortune telling and cut bait business, a ways beyond the local renaissance. This is our homestead, the hot lot Bip and I last left off before we left off to leave with the white tide -- and where Bip heads off to after he made his lucky find on his humid day at Schmucks. We are well beyond the Metro North station, and beyond the newly repolstered Apollo Theater, much further in a line east than the Duke’s Sugar Hill A-Train station.

Yeah, it is sweet and always another adventure around here, but black or white, our end of this street gets burnt burritos packed for beans. We’ve got no enterprise redevelopment and no x-presidential cigar humidors. Instead, we’ve got us warehouses of second-hand foam mattresses and a lot of citizens in need of some urgent maintenance; and I don’t mean any more screw around and procreate with the neighbors.

We’ve got junk dealers that clutter up the sidewalk with crap from ruined buildings, a dead booth with colored phone wires that trail out hagglerly, a set of burgundy terra-cotta breasts that sits all by itself without even Bip’s thoughts of animal caress as he passes them by, and there is stood there for the last four months some wrecker’s discarded Corinthian wood column up for commission sale, too damned expensive if you ask me from the business perspective, a hollow wooden drum set there like a prosthetic for a one-legged giant.

Bip marches past the corner gas station with red Pegasus signs and trucks and gypsy cabs in and out all the time with their steel nozzles shoved in, quickly and efficiently they spit gas into the vehicle tanks and it is all noisy with industrious Arab talk. And there is Bip’s uncle Sam, and they wave each other on with Uncle Sam to stretch his backside to wield a tire iron, up against the noon glare, and Bip holds up the tin peter like a triumphant Bojangles with a whole other kind of baton.

Like I say to the tourists; this here place is a family 'geographology of generations', a term I got out of a book on head bumps I found in a garbage pile over near the school, and Uncle Sam’s is a place to stop by for a quickie plug when you got a low one, with his plywood signs painted “Tyres and Fats Fixed Five Bucks,” out behind the metropolitan bus depot. He’s always got a lady friend, or three, Uncle Sam does.

At the Reverend Solomon Bigwurn Gospel of Redemption Church, overlooking the community scene with their sharp eyes catered to the frayed children’s clothing stacked on the cardboard thrift table while they suck smears of grease off their chicken fingers, like totemic raccoon pecker bones, two old ladybirds this afternoon sweat their biblical gossip in the doorway. The church, one of our many fine philanthropic institutions to serve the recycled poor, is a tatter of unrelated masonry boxes stacked together, painted five colors for no obvious reason. The ladybirds knowingly look at each other, barely move their anciently seared flesh in the heat. They say nothing. They smile with remembrance of lays past when Bip trundles past their roost, his newly found ornament held out arms length in front of him like a broken flashlight filled with angry carpenter bees or the randy hood ornament off a junk billionaire’s limousine.

At the 2nd Ave. traffic light, drivers get halted for a spot of relief. In daylight a dollar buys a plastic bag of two peeled oranges from Ella Mae, our shrewd street vamp, who supports her tubercular mother and four rats. As Bip passes she eyes the tin dingus with a mother’s survival lust, she spys a good thing for business. She whistles loudly through her teeth as she runs at him. But Bip pushes on, a heroic guy with a mission. He all but ignores the jiggled mass of breast and belly that attempt to alter his path, with her hip-wave attempts to con him with her bag of oranges, with their pale-white rinds cut corrugated. She bounces into his face, as intended a distraction as she clutches for the prosthetic. Like a true Olympian, Bip smiles proudly. He holds the hot dinger aloft, out of the reach of Ella Mae’s cow cow grasp.

With the same or similar dollar you could purchase one bottle of fake Poland Spring water from the twisted man, our next-door neighbor on the East End. Ella Mae’s ex, her old man we don’t talk with because he always runs away when Bip wants to be friendly. The spastic fart walks and breathes all day, hawks murky river water between the idled vehicles on that corner -- we think the fumes is sick to his head. We suspect he eats roasted cats. Our black cat Friskie has gone.

Then the street, before it gets over to our place, turns into concrete and steel and jumps over us up in an elevated tangle that branches and accelerates the propulsion of vehicles on their way out of Manhattan on the Harlem River Drive north, on the lift bridge to Randall’s Island and the Triboro to Queens, or over to the South Bronx past the trimodal, or down the flank of Manhattan on the FDR ribbon, runs south alongside the East River. A dry ejaculation of traffic congestion that is a weather roof above our humble place.

We have a front-yard view of a large gray and white mound of emergency road salt, a city mountain as big as three stories that reminds us always of the cold seasons predicted ahead. Behind that you can feel the occasional wake of tall-stacked tugs that churn slowly at the rear of fuel oil barges pushed to their South Bronx depots. Past the wake bob of single-mast sailboats out richly larked like broad-winged white garbage gulls… or the buzz of cigarette boats that shove their brightly pointed noses -- powered balls-out against an Atlantic tide as they hump our lazy green-gray effluent on their way north.

At Schmucks, Bip had not looked for anything much; he was just being lost, like a solitary savage hunter buried in a depth of old-growth concrete jungle and curios, but when he found the tin peter as he did by luck, seemed to fit perfect the bottom of his day, which means the part of his day that was not exactly the top.

Well, Brother Bip walks out from under the shade of the overpass and grunts, it means, he means, “Richard, check out this big dick.”— and ever since people have been asked us about the object. “What made it? Where did it come from? Who was it used for? Is that yours? Does it have a motor?”

We get used to this, and the tin peter gets to be integral to our business. It isn’t a hammer, we tell right up at no cost. We make a sport to answer before you have a chance to open your mouth. Anticipation is difficult, but we want to anticipate everything and to be specific like all good dowsers of the afterbirth. We assure everyone it is no toy rocket, though it does look sort of like a space shuttle that wants to get off the pad on the booster. Not a thing ever saw like the swashbuckling roids of Buck Rogers to suck down Nirvano gas with WIlma.

To be exact, we got us here a tinsmith’s folly, a mockup dick, we mean a handcrafted prick made of soldered tin about 17” long with a very well fashioned head on it (quite realistic, from Bip’s anatomical comparison to an Alabama black snake), the slightly rusted hollow tube about 1-3/8” in diameter, with two perfectly spherical twin balls about 4-7/8” in diameter, but no scrotum sack. “We can’t have everything,” I explain to Bip, “but you can use that there white plastic grocer’s bag with the red letters that say, ‘I luv NY,’ if you really want.”

You see, I’m one of the few people who know Bip wanted to be a structural engineer and design the tallest building in the free universe with an electro-generational windmill on top, but with the juvenile diabetes and the dyslexia and the acid and the electro-ejaculation and the other deficits, mental and monetary for a poor kid from the Red Hook projects, and particularly after the Bellevue detox, he never had no chops for the complex math. His designs, drawn in carpenter pencil on paper bags, don’t float majestic above the city skyline as much as zoom like an errant cloud of bad gas sucked from below the sidewalk into a hornet nest. I don’t want to say nuthin’ unpleasant, you mind, no need to hurt any best friend’s emotional intelligence like that and all. So this here palatial estate of ours we with affectation call Piddlewood U, beneath the road, is like the closest Bip’s ever got to higher education. I let him play with my used books, you know, but he prefers to make things with his hands and teeth.

I suppose that is why he spends three rainy days messin’ around. He hacks out and hammers together pieces of avocado crate wood to look like hearts. He stuffs the box with rusty steel wool pads and what looks like dried catnip and strips of cut-up six-pack plastic and his dentures. On three sides he tacks fur from a stiff fox pelt that he’d wanted to convert into a hairpiece. Nice red fur it is, even if it is stiff. I’m curious why the change in plans and keep my eye on the bald spot that slowly gets sunburnt. Bip may be smart and all but don’t have sense to wear a panama like me. He writes on the exposed wood with a broken piece of red lumber crayon, “SNATCH.” I stay real curious until I see him play intromission with the peter and the box. All questions are answered in time.

Like for our answer business. During the day we set the tin peter, and now with it the lovely heart box made of avocado crate wood, out in the front yard on the wire spool table with our magic candles, and when you all pass by, the questions begin. Bip and I sit there and drink our cold green tea and look deep into your watery eyes, at least if you stop and sit. Or we trace our fingernails across your upturned palm. Most of you, lost in your desire to get out of here, drive by in your gussied rigs and don’t even know we are patient here to provide answers, bait, and tackle. If you do stop, Bip flips the flaccid poker cards and I answer questions.

We try real hard to run an attractive establishment. We burn sandalwood and sage beneath the blue canvas while the radio chatters in the background. Bip keeps his pants on these days and don’t put them on the stray black dog’s head no more like he used to. A few seaworthy props, a bloomin' sacofricosis here and there for decoration, and always the chance of a sweaty Corona salvaged from the outdoor bait fridge hooked up to the street light for power. The world is obviously full of a bunch of questions that fly around like fat junebugs, and Bip and I like to keep ahead of the cosmic clamor.

If you squint it looks, in reverse sort of, like an oversize bug spray pump. An antique flit gun. Or with a bit of inexpensive imagination it looks like a mutated two-headed opium pipe for people with very large lung capacity.

Just last week there was Mary Ortega asked about her baby. At first we were both puzzled by this. I look at Bip’s flat nose. He looks at my whiskers. Mary Ortega sits on the schist boulder with the wild grape vines and her long checkered skirt, her dark-haired little angel sucks her tittie. Asks about her baby. I say, “But Mary, you have your baby there with you, and little Jose´ looks busy.” Bip points at the wiggling legs of the fat baby. Bip does not talk much since the throat accident when we was at Madison Square Garden. Nowadays he does a lot of point and ogle with his blue eyes, though he does gurgle a little. So Mary says in a whisper, we can barely hear her and we have to move closer the second time to the spool table. We lean over with our elbows on the rough-cut wood. She says very lowly with a streak of black hair that hangs over her thin lip, “I mean the other one.”

“The other one?” we says as we sit up. We get caught out in our own anticipation business. Suddenly worried she is be on talk about some sort of alien abduction breeder program. Too close to home we feels. So Bip in a flash of genius, in a flurry of pure inspiration grabs the two twin spheres of the tin peter up off the spool table, the oversize balls, one grasped in each hand. He holds the rusty cock up to his forehead. It sticks up from his head and his bald spot -- a ruddy brown unicorn antler. Eyes roll. Mary watches. Jose´ pauses a wiggle in mid bespew. Bip begins to jerk his loins like he’s tangled with an electric eel. Flexes his arms in muscular spasms. Jumps around in the dirt yard with zydeco music on the radio. Clutches onto the game, I lean over again, only further this time around the spool table. I squeeze my forehead with concentration. Tip over the edge. Bang my knee. In a serious tone I flutter my eyelids softly and whisper back to Mary Ortega, “I see your little one basks in a field of lambs up in Heaven with the sweet baby Jesus as a little playmate.” Bip jumps a few more jerky steps in the dust. Tangos a-clicket with chickens. Nearly collides with our bait fridge. He teeters then stops his jigg. Mary laughs. I laugh. The baby sneezes.

For this we get two bucks.

We get about the same for a half pint of clam snouts.

Wholesale, answers are cheaper. We don’t pay for them like with fish bait, and since Bip brought home the tin peter, business has picked up. Life is grand here on the East Side.

So we got to use the tin peter, not only as a sexual curiosity or prose thesis but also as a magic tool for the difficult-answer business. We wait for the customers to get a lukewarm beer out of the fridge, or to settle on purchase of chicken necks for crab, and then we show them the cards lain out on the spool table and tell them about the enchanted prick. Bip has stitched a cover out of denim he cut from a pant leg the stray black dog didn’t piss on, and it looks kind of regal with a wire ribbon bow. We tell the prospects how the magic tin peter can tell their future if they rub it just right. For twenty bucks, of course, a good rub is worth the money.

Once they sit down at the spool table, pull up a bucket or a used chair and sit down and ask their special question, then Bip jumps up, pulls off the cover to reveal the majesty of the rusty pride, sticks out his tongue like he is to have a seizure. Grabs our tin peter and pushes it against different parts of his body and jumps around like he wants to dork an elephant, but not really… I don’t think he ever done it for real, you know, and while they are distracted, with Bip's grunts, jumps around and act like a wild beast tamer, I answer their questions.

And Mr. Gasgnu Farpwale, the mortician from Valhalla, come to us after he see our website that Jack Haley put us up to, and he complains, “I feel like a man who has been asleep somewhat and under someone else’s control.” And we nods our heads in unison. “I feel that what I’m thinking and saying is not for myself.” And we nods again and I speaks for Bip because he feels better when I do it. So then Bip whips out the metal pecker from its wrapper and slaps a wad of banana-yucca milt cream on Mr. Farpwale’s fist an’.… We can’t go any further to relate these events lest there be little children in the bushes.

The black dog watches the organic process with much curiosity.

Mr. Farpwale before he gets finished with his session has paid us out a full forty dollars. He manages two limp wee twenties, one at a time. He sets himself off that afternoon, puts his cool reflector polarized aviator shades back on his mug, a slit smile, set out beneath the shade of the highway, the steady rumble of overhead trucks and buses, dons his derby, with the idea to found his own hermetic celibate coitus interrupt us religious community in Montana and change his name to El-Hashish Mudkick El-Bazoom. You may have heard him preach on the Midwestern CB late at night.

It could be a large-gauge hypodermic needle for zoological hypos.

J. Lipps is our local stamp collector, and when he ain’t over at the post office dumpster diving, he hangs out about our establishment playing with his tweezers. He knows a lot ’bout exotic stuff. I hands him the tin peter to see if he can figure it out.

“Look, see here,” I reaches him the magnification glass, “it says very clearly indented on the bottom of this ball, ‘MADE IN TAIWAN.’”

“Yes, I see, Richard. But I thought they were into miniaturization?”

“It could be little.”

“What? How could that be? A miniature of this size?”

“Who says this is people pecker?”

“You don’t suppose it’s the Jolly Green Giant?”

“I think that dude’s hung like a bean pod.”

Lipps smacks his lips as he eyes down the barrel, “Yes, well, this is kind of straight.”

“Bip and I look it up in our Kama Sutra.”

“The paperback?

“Yeah, you know, with pictures.”

“And?”

“We don’t see nothin’.”

“Well, my, if it is inhuman, as you suggest,…”

“We suggest.”

“…and it is miniaturized, well… goose liver, a Cyclops?”

“We agree, Lipps, it has to be one of those… those one-eyed giants.”

“Can you imagine the size of the jock strap?”

“It don’t have hair for a Sequoia.”

“A what?”

“You know, one of those hairy guys hides in the woods.”

“Oh, you mean Susquash.”

“Yeah, one of them.”

“And not large enough, either.”

“Even if it is tiny.”

“Godzilla?”

“Gulliver?”

“Gargantua?”

“Bambi?”

“I will say, with a cannon like that you could piss across a thousand rivers.”

So me and Bip and Lipps at sunset look out across the lazy flow of the Harlem River as a pair of F-16s fly over.

It could be a duplex chilihedron, androgynous knockers with pert stamina of a blooming Amaryllis.

And the psychic interviews get crazy and weird and Bip groans weary limps to the left more than to the right when he dances around in the yard and hoists the tin peter up in the air like it is one of those photon proton artillery projectile devices the government uses to shoot down spaceships. So’s we tell buxom Lucy Breedlove, our local builder babe, that she has a titanium implant in her nose the size of a chickpea an that she should get vacuum therapy to take it away, and she freaks when Bip puckers his face. She screams out, “You bastard, Bip. I’ll give you a fuckin’ implant up your slimy corpora cavernosa!” Bip don’t like spelunker or foul language, so surprised at this frankly too erudite speech, he retreats into the murky shadows behind a steel bridge column. “I’ll have your bloody eattocks on a paper plate before you suck on my nose!” Not everybody is just ducky when they get news from the beyond. “You chicken-pecked baboon merkin-biting womb-envied goat milker! I’ll amuse myself in my own way!” Which is about what anyone would be expected out of the mouth of Lucy Breedlove as she shoves her lump hammer back into her toolbox.

And the word is getting around pretty good. You would think we had the Virgin Mary’s mysterious picture flickered on a glitter billboard, there are so many people that show up for answers. Those that desire miracles. Cripples and lepers and bassonists that want to play with our candles. All those good-looking hookers from Andrew Jin’s Pool Hall, anxious to do us lap dances on the couch, some pretty racy broads. I tell Bip, “You got to watch where they put their hands, Bro.”

Though I got one complaint. Bip’s interview in the NY Observer we could have done without. Sometimes too much is a bitch-ana-half. There is nothing like respectability by the strong arm of gossip. Suddenly we had everbody and their mother come round to witness Bip sparkin’ and they ask questions. Is this the end of the world? Is Elvis alive in the Everglades? Why ain’t they gonna make no more Camaros? Can you rewind? Do you gotta feel-good bong? What is that burnt smell? It gets to be a long span from when I could smoke my pipe and peacefully down a jar of Thunderbird.

And to park is a problem. Fewer lovers on our lane. Tourists gawk, bump, grind, rubber-band on the FDR. Atchee Moses, the local stud cop, and his buddy Ronnie Yinjing are hot. Too many accident reports. OUr gig cuts in on their loan shark action. We help out, you know. Our overhead is a real stank bear.

But, why complain? We is havin’ repeat business and new business. A busload of Japanese arrive. They buy out a two-year stock of reels and rods, which isn’t much more than a dozen. We don’t think business can be any better. We are thankful to have us the tin peter.

Despite his stagger incidence Bip and I agree it is a mighty powerful draw. Then we start to talk about we save up to buy us a rowboat for to go on the Haarlem River. Go after shad and stripers or maybe start a ferry service. Or get a houseboat for south in winter. But we do not know what exactly is to come at us. The next day is not always the same as the last day. Even when it is, we don’t want it. The next ten minutes of any time can suck.

It could be a trombone morphed into the staff of life.

One day a short guy with a flattop head in a black suit with a black limo with black-tinted windows, a big-eared money guy, a proctologist we think at first because of the way he eats his cigar, comes down from Westchester, up near the Tappan Zee. Buys thirty-eight bags of strawberry-scented dough ball bait (asked for forty, but we ran short.)

Then when he sees Bip finger the tin peter he offers us three hundred bucks. We says to him, “Why you so interested in our business?” Says he is the pooh-bah from some secret men’s club. “Yeah, well, so?” We don’t get many politicians at our end of the street and we don’t quite know how to talk to them without being kind of insultin’ I guess. Crisp, newly minted bills he shows us. Right there out in the sunlight with the cicada buzz in the locust tree. Salty perspiration clots up my hat brim

But we say, “No. The tin peter ain’t for sale, Mr. Pooh-Bah.”

He laughs, “The name is Bambino, Monorchid Bambino. Bambino is the name. Me and my boys, well, we’ll assign a voodoo onto you if you don’t unhand MY prick.”

And we ain’t got us here just one more hot day with the rumble of cars and trucks overhead to shake the bejeebers out of our gray steel beams, but a damned situation in a brew. His prick, he thinks. His prick. And I says, with Bip now I see him gets himself all excited, and the red veins in his nose kind of throb like humping centipedes, Bip charges around in the dirt yard with his wave of the the tin peter, a regular scabbard rattler, in the background behind Mr. Pooh-Bah Bambino who curiously munches on a strawberry dough ball. “You can’t voodoo the voodoo, mister,” I says.

“These are not bad,” says he, “have you any dental picks?”

“What you want a toothpick for?”

“I think I caught a berry seed,” says him as he winces and twists his mouth up sideways.

“I ain’t got none of those, but you can have a fish hook.”

“Let me observe the phallus while you fetch.”

“No way, buddy. You keep up this shit, Bip is gonna bop you in the noggin.”

Then, right in front of us, in front of our home, at Piddlewood U of all decent places, right in the middle of our business, the short guy, Mr. Pooh-Bah Bambino, starts to fuss up; there he is, acts like a colic Napoleonic bastard with a tantrum. Ears flap.

He bitches and moans and jumps around and shakes his little fists at us. There for a bit Bip and I think maybe he is an epileptic proctologist and not just a normal tickly sort of one. We start to feel bad for anybody stuck on the end of his scope.

Then we blink, and for a split second he resembles a used truck salesman we know in Brooklyn. We were sorry we bought that piece of shit vehicle. Next thing we think maybe he is under cover from Immigration. That’s when Bip runs and ducks down behind the upturned car that lays on its backside, the Mustang the marine salvage guys hauled out of the river the week before.

I look over, and the tin peter is sort shivers there in the air like a radio antenna twisted around to the exhaust pipe where it don’t belong. The car is still clogged up with rotted fish and brown glop and smells real lousy. Then Mr. Pooh-Bah Bambino calms down a little bit and stands there and looks at us not move any more than usual people. Leer. Bip peers over the car chassis so you can see his eyebrows and just make out pupils. None of any of us blink at this point. I huff my ass back down on the chair. Pooh-Bah pulls out a leather bag.

He offers five hundred dollars, like we is to dicker. But neither Bip nor I take it well when this asshole steps forward with the bills and, not looking, he kicks the black dog asleep in the shade of the spool table. “Not so good luck you kick the black dog,” we say.

And Mr. Pooh-Bah Bambino, he say his grandfather, a tinsmith upstate, somewhere around Simian Valley, built the tin peter for the secret men’s club and that he has been looking for it himself to put it back where it belonged for forty-eight years.
“Your grandfather must have been a wonderful man!” we exclaim.

“He was, indeed,” admits Mr. Pooh-Bah Bambino. “He was a tinsmith by trade and could make anything out of tin.”

But we don’t believe this patter and we tell him, “Piss off, Mr. Pooh-Bah Bambino!”

He say the whole men's club can’t get it up without their tin peter, and all their mistresses are want to sue them for loss of services.

“Yeah, right.” We don’t take to these sad stories, and the tin peter does not tell us otherwise. I grin, I give him the finger, a big one I throw out there after I suck on it, but we don’t give him dick.

Too much of this hand signals back and forth and him spits in my face. Bip throws the contents of the night pail. Mr. Bambino wipes his suit off with an embroidered hanky, little purple and yellow petunias in the corner I see, and then he gets back into his automobile.

Mr. Pooh-Bah Bambino and his chauffeur in dirt-haste cut away north up the Hudson River Drive. Mr. Pooh-Bah Bambino looks particularly pissed right after Bip sticks the tin peter in his own mouth and makes gurgle noises with his throat. Actually, Bip ain’t made any noise but a gurgle for a few weeks now.

When you blow in the end of the tin peter it whistles, so Bip does a little of that, too.

And that was the afternoon I’m sat on the retaining wall beneath the lift bridge and look out towards the corrections department dock to contemplate my belly button and pick out a skeeter trapped in the hairs. I say to it, like, “This is where it all began, Little Buddy.”

I tell Bip that the tin peter had to belong to the Tin Woodman, you know, from that wizard movie. I’m the intellectual between us, you can realize, I read the tip sheet and the Old Farmer’s Almanac when we can find it used and all. I try to keep Bip up on his toes with new speculations, our lives being all of a minor peotomy to coincidental events. Bip looks at me with his big eyes and grins. I can see his crooked teeth around the edges. And he makes wanger-wax motions with his closed fist in the open air.

I know by this Bip means the Tin Woodman must have hammered a lot of metal on his best day.

So we sit there for a while and feel small and jealous, but it does not last longer than it takes for us to cut a mess of squid. Then I say, “You know, if the Tin Woodman was to look for his heart all that time in the movie, I wonder how long he’s been lookin' for his privates?”

But then I get confused and I can’t remember whether the Tin Woodman looked for his heart or his brains or a squirt from an oil can, and I wonder if the wizard movie ain’t really all about some sort of confusion between body parts. But I start to get the headache and tell Bip this thinking part of the business relationship is hard work. So we clean up the mess from the squid and pack the flesh in baggies and set them in the freezer and throw a few scraps to the hens, and we tuck the tin peter in its warmer and then wrap it all up tight in a garbage bag, and we set it on the top shelf of the fridge with the heart-shaped snatch box next to the night crawlers and red wigglers—we do have some freshwater customers—and Bip goes into his cardboard box with the stray dog and I get in the hammock and night happens.

Next morning we figure the Tin Woodman must have had his heartless revenge, because the door of the bait fridge is ripped right off its hinges. It lays upside naked in the street along the curb. Along with a brand new fire-axe we never seen before but figure it will come in handy. There is no sign of the garbage bag bundle or the tin peter and we seem to miss most of our bunker and squid.

Bip finds the snatch box in the gravel behind the refrigerator. The way it got mussed up in the fracas, it seems to be eating a cantaloupe. Bip looks depressed all slouched over, with his chin bumped to his chest and his Adam’s apple squeezed up like a gypsy accordion.

We don’t got no other answer than the Tin Woodman, and without the tin peter we got no clues. And we were asleep there right with the stray dog and heard and seen nothing. Not even a bark, not even a whimper. What use is a dog that don’t bark? A bit pissed, we are sad the rest of the morning. Bip acts sullen and tries to jump a few times in the yard with the snatch box. The stuff falls out and the dog eats it. Bip gets morose. He doesn’t dance around for any customers, even after I show him a broomstick he could play with. Just not the same. Blow on a broomstick ain’t the same even when Bip tries hard.

We tell Herman Siss that the black queen upside on the spool table means his mother Tara is going to die next week and that he got a bad case of syphilis come in the mail, ’cause the whole mysterious fiasco of the missing tin peter kind of squats on our dreams of business expansion with the rowboat on the Harlem River. The whole thing puts a terrible mood on our answer business.

We are consoled to imagine, like I tell Bip at lunch, right after he hands me the Geographic with the picture of a tusked walrus on the cover, that I imagine the Tin Woodman can go back to reproduce tin babies now.

“I think we should go find that shithead with the one ball up in Westchester,” says Bip. “Can you drive the fucked up truck or do we take a bus?”

Cooking kangaroo steak over everything nice stove

2010-12-31T05:21:00.000-08:00

As an experienced builder of masonry fireplaces I enjoy burning machines.

followed by red wine

http://worldstove.com

http://www.bioenergylists.org/

Fall Creek in Snow and Ice, December 25, 2010

2010-12-28T13:21:00.000-08:00


photo courtesy Hilary Ann Barbara Lambert

Home Land is a place where we once lived.

It is not a place where we live now. We carry it with us like a snow globe in our heart. If we lived there now it would not be Home Land or, at the least, we would not think of it as our Home Land as much as we would not think very much at all about the place where we are the most alive as being in our now home.

Why imagine the obvious of our here-and-now place on the planet?

When not in Home Land we are elsewhere. It hardly matters where the not Home Land is as one place is as good as another. We are forever mutable creatures, and if our now place is not as good as we may want in time, if we sit still enough, it wears on us until we live nothing different about it.

At times we rarely desire to be where we are at home quite as much as we desire to be where we are no longer.

We cannot exactly go back there to Home Land, actually, everyone that we remember has upped themselves by the roots and moved away, or died but the cold creek, the trees barren of leaves, the breadloaf hills, the ice and snow remain.

Remain as if waiting our return, but no, not waiting. Nature does not wait for us, the universe does not wait, or care, and it is just us in our not being there in Home Land that we miss.

It is at these times when messages that we receive from Home Land are nice gifts that we turn over and want to shake the shit out of them until the glass breaks and once more we are there.

Seasoned Greetings

2010-12-22T07:55:00.001-08:00

Anders Follett

2010-12-10T08:35:00.000-08:00

Born: December 3, 2010
Photo by: Anders' mother Pamela Follett @ Pamela Follett Photography http://pamelafollett.com/

Anders wears Mama Titan http://mamatitan.com/

Sheila Chandra - 'Wings Of Dawn"

2010-11-21T05:54:00.001-08:00

Inscrutible Design

2010-11-20T09:47:00.000-08:00

There was a design and Jicklo had a purpose, a calling.

The proton beam from the alien vessel had struck him during the lightning storm that had struck him.

It takes things like that, like a bolt of electric hurled out of some unearthly closet to hit a drunken profligate man as if he were a dumb brute and carnal beast and turn him to a god’s grace. All in the technique and a flip of the wrist. Simply electrifying!

It was a revelation, a breach of faith in a lost time that he had been personally touched by the almighty highest being of all - a flash of white light and he was there with it forever. An ornithologist would have called it something else from a proctologist if evidence had been rigorously and scientifically collected.

From that incident toward there would be no change from the strength then endowed in Jicklo’s faith. Adam-ant as a multi-colored rock he would babble at the frop of a hat. He can sell fish water. A faith derived through a Baptism of Protoplasmic Electricity. And with it Jicklo in his squat twist and dance had a purpose that he was now in charge to shape up to a respectable prosperity -- to charge up, bring up to his god’s Standard of Voltage, as he talked at the morning crew on his first day while they stood around the floor of the shop dumb but expectant… a Standard of Voltage as he explained it to turn this hero shop around in his perfected inconsistency.

Nothing was the same ever once everything was not ever even the same again. It was just like this with the man. In image of his god, confused but perfectly delightful.

He yammered at them like a driven avenger. That particular mid-morning his normal small nutlike eyes alit with fire and glitter, with sparks and his tongue was like a whiplash of mayo on the mountain of their flesh nubile minds, these minimum-wage know-nothing kids.

During which Jicklo unconsciously displayed oddly natured compulsive techniques with a soiled mop handle to which he had duct taped a broken metal kitchen utensil as if to form a devil's fork - as if he were on the brink of a seizure, and he then ran and ran the day crew, the post-pubescent part-timers and townies who endured through the stations of his stiff display.

As if waltzing on black walnuts.

He said, “We will have a winning team or bust,” as he instructed them to hold out their hands in prayer. And so they were there stood in a circle of fervent beneath-the-breath mumbling with their hands extended out over the egg salad.

***

With a desire to win over by a grand gesture all of a heathen generation, and as Preacher Jicklo of the Agape Church of All Dominance who felt and perhaps or considered unwisely his being in need of a few additional points of divine intervention -- to go the halfway that oddly short little guy that he now knew and confessed as his personal god required in order for HIM to take over and handle the other half to achieve ultimate victory in a world of blasphemous sin, indecent bodily noises and fornication destined to burn in the very Hell that Preacher Jicklo had visited, vicariously or otherwise while sprawled out naked in the corn field on the tall North hill on that memorable night on the outskirts of Sumner Hill Nudist Colony in the pounded rain and world-record-setting hail.

They were as big as small melons.

But honestly, it all had very little to do with his shoving the broken fork into the electric outlet.

John Stahl Growth Coach

2010-11-03T15:00:00.000-07:00

I have been friends with John Stahl for a few decades through his previous business incarnations and having attended his recent presentation session at the IPTW 2010 in Frankfort, KY I was quite impressed with the manner in which he interfaced directly with the needs of his audience. I believe that everyone who attended the session left with really good ideas as to how to improve their business situations.

Theory of the Conservation of Bright Ideas

2010-11-01T07:16:00.000-07:00

I have been working on a Theory of the Conservation of Bright Ideas for several years now.

I know of people who have too many bright ideas, they have bright ideas like a horse pie has mushrooms. What I have learned, having had my own bright ideas, is that the idea in and of itself is not of value, but the sweat and commitment to realize the idea is the most important element. This said, what I find is that if bright ideas are too freely traded around and have no bone to them that they tend to lose their luster. At issue with a bright idea is that simply having it, or having the most remarkable bright idea is not a guarantee that other people will pick it up and move forward with it. In other words, if a bright idea does not have LEGS then it won't walk.

One bright idea I had was the Traditional Trades Education Resource Directory and I was really into it and had structured a 'team' of partners and advisers and written a nice grant proposal until it was pointed out to me that the acronym is T-TERD.

But as to the Theory of the Conservation of Bright Ideas what I find is that folks who have a bright idea and then commit to doing the hard grunt work of realizing the one idea into the world, that they stick to it tenaciously through thick and thin, that they never take defeat for an answer, that they are not dissuaded or drawn off track by other competing bright ideas, that they tend to have fewer bright ideas than the person who freely willy nilly invents bright ideas in the gross -- the bright idea fountain that spews forth without ever having any hope or intention of realizing the ideas (they are already very bright and shiny), for the most part expecting other folks to catch on to the magnificence of the bright idea and be inspired to do the work.

There is only so much energy and attention that an individual, or a group of people, can put into the world in the realization of bright ideas.

One aspect of the Theory of the Conservation of Bright Ideas is that in a culture and economy where it is not possible to do anything to realize a bright idea that there seems to be a direct correlation to the production of bright ideas. It is as if when one cannot work to realize bright ideas then it is just as well to have an abundance of them. But in an environment where people can actually work to realize bright ideas they tend to get caught up in following them to the exclusion of coming up with all freshly minted new ones.

Joseph Follett, @ 2 frm the left, fireman on camelback

2010-10-11T14:45:00.000-07:00

Salamanca, NY

2010-10-11T13:07:00.000-07:00

Hotdogs on the Rocket Stove

2010-10-11T04:30:00.001-07:00

GO's Rocket Stove

2010-10-01T14:55:00.001-07:00

I am playing w/ Bambuser. Vid made w/ my cell phone.

Air Show Disaster - aircraft crashes into four buildings

2010-09-28T11:04:00.000-07:00

Book Review: This Is Not About What You Think

2010-09-12T06:30:00.000-07:00

Lately we have been dealing with two very small projects in Manhattan; neither of them will take more than a day to do, but the problems of getting permits through bureaucracy, deposits from clients, negotiating of contracts, insurance with correct spelling of the company name and an as-yet undetermined permission from an alien god, is driving us a bit nuts. It is eating up a whole lot of time better spent and for very small prizes that seem to get smaller and smaller the longer we work at it. When we go through rashes like these I characterize that we are being nibbled to death by duck shit (a friend says they have a horn worm problem where the wasps have laid eggs in the body and the worm is now paralyzed).

So it was with pleasure when I got home the other day to find an envelope from Scotland. In it was a book of poems and a note, in incredibly cool hand written print, “Thought you might appreciate a copy of my poetry book.” From Jim... with a signature in blue ink that reminds me that Kilroy was here. I smile.

This Is Not About What You Think, by Jim Murdoch. What I like best about this collection of poetry, in fact what I like best about Jim’s two previous novels, Living with the Truth and Stranger than Fiction is that I understand them very clearly, they are accessible to me, and yet, they come from another world than my own.

After I read Jim's novel Stranger than Fiction I felt this closeness to the spirit of the author, whom I have never met but with whom I have often corresponded about nonesuch, and I got so wrapped up in trying to understand why the writing seemed so comfortable for me, as if written by a semi-adopted brother, a friend so close to the family that we own each other, that I never finished writing a review. Sometimes I sit, some times I sit and think.

As Jim says, “No poem is ever about what you think it is. You’re always required to read in between the lines and so it’s up to each reader to provide his or her context and meaning generally from dipping into their own experience.” To me that statement seems fairly straightforward edging toward blasé, I mean, “Who would think otherwise than to read into a text what they bring of their own understanding?” That said, there is, at least for me, something much more subtle at work here in a local to global context.

When I go to our nearby fast-food eatery on Long Island, a good ways East of Manhattan, I often find myself unable to understand the talk, in my own home territory, not because of multi-national service workers, or my suspected loss of hearing, but that the native population -- I swear – is almost enunciating in some archaic form of Dutch-English held over from a pre-Revolution era of disjointed grammar and bastardized by a contemporary addiction to television sitcom blurps.

I often misunderstand my Scottish friends when I talk with them. I can be dense of hearing. It is one of my creative talents that I often hear the wrong thing said. One friend got upset when he thought I was making fun of him when I told him I had bought an English-Scot Dictionary. [My ancestry in part is either Northern English or Scot, we can't quite get it straight but I do like the music of bagpipes, and banjos.] Fact is I delight in variation of words, meaning and the music of spoken sound. Let alone exotic meanings never intended. I suspect if I had to listen to Jim Murdoch speak I would be totally flummoxed.

But there is also this thing going on in the world of literary writing brought on in great part by the internet, and the revolution of a communication media that provides ready access to a whole host of people who in the not-so-distant past would not have either written and published, or readers that would have read odd stuff, or writers that would never have got to know each other, even if only virtually.

That is where I bring in the need for a sense of context. As Jim says, “...to provide his or her own context...” (Meaning is too complicated to deal with out of context and we sincerely hope to be devoid of any reference to meaning here in this context.)

Where the literary writing world is at is that at one time a reader would come to an author’s work, and an author would come to be a writer-in-public, through a bit of a structure that would in essence channel the context, such that everyone approaching the text would have some affinity of understanding. If we were looking for a mystery story then we would go to the mystery section of the bookstore. If we wanted poetry then some of us would go to the academy, and some would go to the streets.

We would think that this renowned poetry journal or that esteemed book press, or the Archie Randolph Ammons’ school, or the disembodied Naropa, or the famous block-buster agent, or a thousand-and-one self-flagellating prizes all too quickly forgot, plus tenure and creative writing programs and 50,000 or so certified vsf writers produced per year, would provide all that we would need of context.

But context has all been blown up, exploded, nucleated, irradiated, BLASTED and all sorts of people from all sorts of lives (this is an incredible Jasperian world-view existential moment that were are living through even though Existentialism is so old-fashioned) are jumping up and writing from their local understanding pouring heart and soul and other yukky stuff into a global media that is not particularly well structured and each and every individual, though they do over time tend to band together in clusters of near familiarity, is writing from the context of their individual lives. It is really super kool!

If your context as an author does not match anywhere near to my context as a reader then where the hell are we? Not Kansas, sadly.

So it is with great pleasure that I receive a book from a friend in Scotland, a fellow writer, and reader, and that I find I can not only enjoy the poetry, but understand it very well.

More Advice to Children:
Imaginary Friends

People leave; it’s what they do.

They don’t have to go away
but somehow they still do.

And the worst of it is,
they leave a bit at a time

till you don’t even notice
they’re not there anymore.

They never really were.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Get more, order your copy at Fandango Virtual

Boosterisimo & Muralista

2010-08-18T02:48:00.000-07:00

Boosterisimo

Community of Kracton last year fell prey to boosterism. It was widely said what was needed is a bit more obvious of a historic perspective than Mr. Yeardley’s antique domicile. Victorian as it is a colonial homestead converted in the late 20th century and much decorated with vinyl gingerbread it would hardly do for a representation of the community history as worse than anything it resided on a remote side-street behind the landfill and was rarely visited. Even despite so many books within and that it housed the largest collection of kerosene lanterns and stuffed squirrels within a hundred miles it was not enough of an attraction and the undesignated site was irretreivably not considered worthy of mention on Kracton's paper placemat maps.

It was a prime modern example of inaccessible history

So up the merchants with prominence of mind built a twenty-foot high brick lighthouse, despite the lack of any direct maritime history of any significance other than the burn and sink of the steam ferry Frontenac on Dead Lake… the fathers and mothers built the Kracton Lighthouse on the road west of town in from Wetwater Falls, in a small triangle formerly of chicory and Queen Anne’s lace and a few scattered rocks, right across from the Revolution era cannon that nobody really noticed before then. From where the cannon arrived they know not as there has never been recorded any Battle of Kracton, not even a skirmish or whiskey or tax or free love rebellion. The Bannerman decor afterward, after the build of the faux lighthouse, became subject of a planting of brilliant orange and yellow marigolds.

As to the sort-of tall but not too tall beacon the incandescent once it was ignited proceeded to flicker with a spastic rhythm on all nights save Halloween ‘cause the psychic-for-hire selected by the fathers and mothers of Kracton never pulled out his crystal pendulum to check the conflict of ley lines before the John Anderson & Son’s Albino Electricians hooked the past up to the nearby present of the streetlamp. It was a small detail.

There was he hoped much hope of a rise for Jefferson to be divined yet in Kracton in his position of responsibility for operation at this shop on High Street, the place on High Street where everything is at, perfect or otherwise the original place of our creation and the pivot point of the Kracton Commons. A place much better thought of than actually witnessed, a pit of dry masonry interfaced with weeds.

There was a design and Jefferson had a purpose, a calling. The proton beam from the alien vessel had struck him during the lightning storm that had struck him. It takes things like that, like a bolt of electric hurled out of heaven to hit a drunken profligate man as if he were a dumb brute beast and turn him to god’s grace. It was a revelation, a breach of faith in a lost time that he had been personally touched by the almighty highest being of all - a flash of white light and he was there with it... like he was there forever. A philologist would have called it something else from a proctologist if evidence had been scientifically collected.

From that incident forward there would be no change from the strength then endowed in Jefferson’s faith. A faith derived through a Baptism of Electricity. And with it he had a purpose that he was now in charge to shape up to a respectable prosperity -- to charge up, bring up to his god’s Standard of Voltage, as he talked at the morning crew on his first day… a Standard of Voltage as he explained it to turn this sandwich shop around in his perfected consistency.

Talked at them like a driven avenger. His normal small nutlike eyes alit with fire and glitter, with sparks and his tongue was like a whiplash of thunder on the mountainous crests of their docile minds. It was as if he had followers in this assortment of the minimally employed.

During which Jefferson unconsciously displayed oddly natured compulsive techniques with a soiled mop handle - as if he were possessed, and he then ran the day crew, the post-pubescent part-timers and townies who endured through the stations of their shit. He said, "We will have a winning team or bust,” as he instructed them to hold out their hands in prayer. And so they were there stood in a circle of fervent prayer with their hands extended out over the three-day old egg salad.

***

With a desire to win over by a grand gesture all of a heathen generation, and as he perhaps considered wisely, Preacher Jefferson being in need of a few additional points of divine intervention -- to go the halfway that oddly short little guy that he now knew and confessed as his personal god required in order for HIM to take over and handle the other half to achieve ultimate victory in a world of blasphemous sin, flatulence and fornication destined to burn in the very Hell that Preacher Jefferson had visited, vicariously or otherwise while sprawled out naked in the corn field that memorable night on the outskirts of Sumner Hill Nudist Colony in the pounded rain and hail.

***

Muralista

Preacher Jefferson hired a local artist, a world-untraveled townie, to paint a mural on the lengthy expanse of knee scuffed sheetrock just inside the door -- this meant that a few things had to be shifted around to make room for the project. The blasphemous cig machine, the dispenser of cancer was moved outdoors to the back alley.

Slow progress and for starters Garph Bell who was commissioned with a soft handshake went at it like a wailing banshee, a perverse precursor, with a wallpaper brush and painted the entire expanse of the wall in sight and an arm’s reach a sickly lemon green. It was an organic eco-friendly color.

Between Garph’s cuss and swear at the wall, at the brushes that lost their hair like wet shag onto the inexpensive floor tile at his bare feet, at glops of paint, he growled at customer’s children, he said, he had said that he had done this new wave impressionism style one time before in Newport at a used car lot. In fact, he had shown Preacher Jefferson newspaper clippings to support that at the Bhaghagotti Goomba Dent & Trade where the used Fords & Chevrolet’s had similarly been painted up with bold swirls and dashed attempts at spastic paisleys.

Heavy brush strokes, lumps of paint, horrendous streaks and bulbous drips as pendulous as honeydew melons protruded from the breasts of Garph’s sacred "Uma”, as he had informed us of the title of his inspiration later past midnight on the day of the night in which he received his morning glorious commission.

On Tuesday afternoon his frantic arm motions swung heavy in their arc across the white bareness of the wall and left traces of lemony green that resembled plant-fluid spurts gushed from a fleshy prophylactic geyser. Though it may have been the wet dream of an overhormoned cucumber it was later proclaimed an homage to men in black, for which Garph and Preacher Jefferson had reached a thematic though somewhat shadowy understanding between them.

For those of us in the know there was the hint of the Cadillac in the smear if one squinted eyes up and turned the head just slightly angled down to the left and made sure to catch the just-right angle of reflection off the storefront glass.

Preacher Jefferson was very pleased with himself though not exactly sure why, and Samson, the owner of the shop, though perplexed, thought it best at this development to not interfere lest he lose one more manager for the dying business.

When it seemed that no more creative effort could possibly be expended to turn away good customers Garph with the intuition of a true genius broke out his gallon of day-glo orange.

It was like Peter Max, Chagall and Long John on a bad trip on a picnic along the Interstate Defense System in a mock battle to out freak and maim each other. Screeched and crashed their tin imported-tiny-cars, Crescendo and Blitzer and Yugo all alike bashed and blazed purple and chrome Kenilworth semis loaded with pig shit run over pickle park and slammed on the brakes and blew their horses before they collided into the local brick bank at the intersection and set the small stream behind of the town of Lodi on fire. An event conceived by grand design to burn away most of the sheltered habitations of the citizenry of the small village. The run away. The residents of the Sumner Hill Nudist colony on the nearby rise were portrayed as silhouettes of little humanoid bodies against the distant light as they fled in flight across the sparsely wooded landscape, trees aflame and large gouged holes in the earth spewed forth Mercurial potions in brightly decoded methane clouds in a sort of Hieronymus Bosch melee and it was called FRACK.

All of this amazement of narrative with only the use of two colors confined to a limited gustatory palate. It was truly a color-field tour de force. It was a thing to go to visit just to see if Jesus was actually present. The Savior as lurker in the background. May those who say nothing inherit the ether? An extra brought in on a donkey or towed behind a bobcat that would stand up and make a scene like a cosmic lighten’ rod. It was, in the best analysis of the day, a disjunctive angst ridden explosive avant-garde art work and Preacher Jefferson actually did seem to wholly embrace that splash even as if he had been converted to a top-flight soap salesman.

On one early evening, possibly a result of a general sense of positive thinking and divinely inspired euphoria, when Martin was just starting on his shift, it was when Preacher Jefferson brought into the shop his younger second wife, Patricia.

Ken's Mystery Mortar

2010-08-15T16:34:00.000-07:00

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Backyard Chickens, July 2010

2010-07-11T06:37:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine on their way on the LIE to the Midtown Tunnel called me the other morning and asked if I had on the NPR program, All Things Considered. He told me they were talking about the resurgence of backyard chicken farms in NY.

A few months back when I first got my current batch of chicks he had warned me that the raccoons would get them. We shared a few stories. A coop can be so well designed to keep out foraging critters that when it rains real heavy the chickens drown.

This morning he exclaimed how sometimes he forgets that I am avant-garde. I told my wife and she laughed that 15 years ago when we had chickens and guinea hens, and prairie dogs and an iguana and pygmy hedge hogs (some of you may remember the pygmy hedge hog all-natural yogurt business plan) that we may have been avant-garde then.

Today, with the economic recession that may be receding, maybe not -- we are forward looking revivalists. We look forward to eggs, which the chickens should start to lay in about another month.

My friend said that he considers taking it up. Chickens are related to pheasants and the two of us have shared some good times on pheasant hunts. Regardless, I told him that to keep chickens is not all that much work and to care for a small flock of birds helps us to be grounded in a keep sane sort of way when all else in the world may seem interminably out of control.

I also told him about our cage.

Our yard is fenced and I would like to let the chickens roam but my wife tells me that as the work area of the yard is a ‘green industrial zone’ that she would prefer I not risk the chickens run into the lead coated copper scraps or fiberglass resin or the spill of hydrated mason’s lime in the driveway. I have no problem there. I don’t want them to invade the garden and eat all the leaves off the pepper plants. So I built a cage that the chickens are happy in and not so closed up that they have any reason to feel oppressed.

I modeled the construction of our coop on the ones that we saw at Agway (our farm store where we went to meet the mushroom guy from the Cornell Cooperative Extension who talked one Saturday morning about his chickens that he raises in his back yard out near Riverhead). Their coops are all painted pretty and sell for $1,000 and up.

We were not ourselves looking for a Martha Stewart chicken experience.

Our coop cost less than $100 in materials and gives us a whole lot more capacity and enhancement to the chickens, at least in their response to life quality issues, than we would have got with the pre-built models. We even have solar electric, and if pressed I bet we could do a LEEDS on it though I am not so sure about the geo-thermal. We do have in mind some improvements and I noticed that the few shovels of dirt I threw in the other day that the chickens knew exactly what to do with it.

So, as a main life-support unit there is the roost box that also houses the water and the basic feed. I got tired of filling the feed every day and adapted the off-the-shelf feeder with a plastic pretzel bottle (sparrows ate the pretzels... sorry if our localized sparrows now have high bird pressure, it will pass) all held together with hot glue. Hot glue is so neat to play with. The roosting box needs ventilation and with the painter’s cloth over the roof I can regulate the exposure for the sleeping birds. Eventually I may figure out something more permanent, but I like to think slow sometimes. One thing to keep in mind is that chickens to remain healthy need to acclimate to their hot or cold environment. You have to give them tough love and let them weather it out. Lately with the heat wave they wander around with their beaks open.

The roost box is attached to the nest box that has two nests. I read that the chickens will take turns using the nests. We will see. The nest box has a tilt up lid so that us humans can reach in and steal the eggs. The nest box is exactly 20 steps from the kitchen frig. It is 30 steps to the outdoor rocket stove and the giant frying pan. Fresh fried eggs on a Sunday morning!

Toward the yard side of the nest box the door is a pull up. I pull it up in the morning and the chickens jump off their roost pole, clucking at me and then they run outside to their yard on the ladder ramp. At night, unless I fall sleep and forget, the door is dropped as an extra protection against raccoons.

But there is one factor that is important -- in the past we lost chickens to raccoons (who rip the chicken’s heads off and leave the carcasses behind and not even eat them... nasty animals) that the yard on this cage is totally fenced top, all sides, top and bottom. The bottom wire is heavy duty fence and not the lighter duty chicken wire.

Another friend, who also wants to raise chickens, asked me how often we have to clean out the coop. He thought maybe twice a week. I told him twice a year, though we have not had to do that on ours so far. The roost box has slats in the bottom. A reason for the ventilation when you accommodate chickens is that their manure produces nitrogen. Nitrogen is incredibly good for garden fertilizer, and I have used chicken manure based fertilizers for many years.

I was also asked about feeding the chickens and I had fun describing how they like watermelon butts, dandelion greens, worms (they don’t seem to know what to do with slugs), all sorts of left over greens and rice and corn flakes and corn cobs and radish tops. I keep finding new things to feed them, but it is a supplement to the regular chicken feed that I keep them supplied with. During their laying they need calcium and I will then feed them with a supplemented feed.

Of all the food scraps and yard weeds (we use no chemicals on our lawn except to kill the poison ivy and I don’t plan on feeding the chickens poison ivy) I figure that whatever the chickens do not eat that combined with their manure we have a compost situation... and whatever bugs are created in the open air the chickens will be entertained to chase after and eat.

You can see my observation camp chair (red) in the photo. One thing that amazes me is that if I sit and hold a leaf up to their cage that the chickens go nuts to climb all over each other to get a nibble of it. The minute I let go of the leaf they lose interest. When I go around that area of the yard they always talk to me.

So, I heard this joke... If I cut a foot off my rooster and feed it to your donkey what do we call that? [I reserve the right to not tell the punch line.]

Salty Words... the day before liberty

2010-07-03T19:08:00.001-07:00

The first word that I learned to read was SALT. It was on the side of a small white ceramic salt shaker printed in blue below a rendition of a Dutch windmill. I do not know what the Dutch have to do with salt. There was a great-grandmother that lived across the street from us in a house trailer and she collected salt shakers. I am fond of chicken motif salt shakers. When I graduated high school I worked at a salt mine. At the age of fifty I learned what is an egg cup. Alison Watt got me straight on that one. There was little grammar involved. I like chicken egg cups. I also like faux chicken eggs. The glass ones in particular, I like them many times better than the raccoon pecker-bone collection. If a chicken see a fake egg in their nest the anthropomorphic impression is that it will induce them to lay... eggs. I read the word anthropomorphic in a book one day on my paper route while I relaxed below a bridge abutment. I like to use that word anthropomorphic as much as possible. It makes me look smarter than me. It means close-minded human person, a sort of psychotic condition whereby we imagine to control our environment through non-disclosure, I mean, full ahead ignorance and denial. Some of the smartest people in the world have been anthropomorphic.

Mudslide's Desire Path

2010-06-19T16:03:00.000-07:00

Mudslide is our beloved short-hair Border Collie that we acquired from the town animal shelter. Previous to us he had a rough life and it took us a while to adjust our behaviour. What we have learned is that a Border Collie needs a job, actually, needs a whole lot of jobs. They are dogs with a strong sense of working responsibility.

In Mudslide's case he feels a need to protect us from the invasion of children, buses, and bicyclists, Fed Ex and UPS and anyone that dares to touch our fence that runs on two street sides of our corner property. The long side is 100 feet and there is a local bicyclist who tries to outrace Mudslide from one corner to the other. The human never wins. I read once that there are only two beings with endless energy, children and dogs.

During the summer when we keep the doors open whenever Mudslide has valiantly protected us he comes in panting and triumphant, and of course we duly praise him for his good honest work. The local children, by the way, seem to enjoy his attention.

Our friend Mary Tegel in Oregon posted online a comment about desire paths and as a result I was inspired to photo document Mudslide's desire path.

At the Northwest corner beneath/behind the butterfly bush.

From the corner over the exposed crab apple root.

That exposed crab apple root, the Spitfire, and the heirloom irises (on the left) and the trunk of the crab apple tree. We call this our Side Yard.

Moving on past the picnic table.

On past Dixie. Mudslide was her companion in her later years.

We place obstacles along the path of desire.

The hose is here temporary in slight retaliation for Mudslide having finally killed off the rose bush that was protected by the round terra cotta flue section. Then again, Mudslide likes to jump over and run under obstacles. This is the North East corner.

The North East corner is the most active corner. We had blueberry bushes that after many years were actually doing pretty well here until Mudslide came along. It does not really matter so much because usually the birds ate all the blueberries.

This is D Dog's plant. I don't really know what it is, but I need to make sure Mudslide's desire does not trample it.

This is where D Dog does his eternal rest. He got buried on the corner because he was a fence jumper, we could never keep him within the yard. He would often stand in the intersection and watch the neighborhood in four directions. Our neighbors, who often took him in for meals and overnights, nicknamed him The Mayor. He and Dixie were companions and when he passed we got Mudslide because Dixie was obviously terribly lonely.

Now we head South past the white cedar pole, the Theocratic Anarchist Shrine. A Jean-Luc Picard action figure until recently hung from the pole. But now we grow Morning Glories from a coffee can hung in a macrame net holder. Theocratic Anarchists are into seasonal decor just like with all ancient religious persuasions. Our favorite gathering is the annual Farting Man celebration.

It may be hard to see in this picture but there is red volcanic rock pebbles here. You can see the sand, this is inside the gate where I pile bags of sand for various uses -- PU truck ballast mainly, brickwork when desperate. I made a hearth slab for the wood stove and used the red volcanic stone as an exposed aggregate. What was left over got dumped here.

Intersection of contemporary, historic, and Mudslide's desire path. He often desires to go outside the gate as it is a special treat. People tend to enter the property through the gate. That horizontal section in the photo is cold asphalt... the concrete sidewalk bulged there from an oak tree root and I had to make accommodation for the desire path of the tree. I have never known a dog to have such a strong sense of boundary. Mudslide tends to kick the volcanic stone pebbles into this path. They are ankle benders. I step on them then kick them out of the way. I figure eventually we will all have our desire paths cleared, including that of the volcanic stone that in our environment is an invasive alien presence.

Note the under-bush hiding zone. This is where Mudslide hides when I go to batting baby raccoons around in the kitchen at late night w/ a broom handle. This space reminds me of a backwater lagoon.

Exit to the South.

I always know where the chew toys go to hide.

Here we come, past the dead tree wood pile (thanks to LIPA), to a point of intervention. Mudslide's desire path ran through the Jerusalem Artichoke. I could not abide that and installed a deterrent barrier system. The bucket of water is NOT for skeeter breeding -- despite various rumors I am not into skeeters as pets. It is to water the upside down zucchini plants without need to go drag the hose around each time.

This is the old path. Now an ecologic reclamation zone. The Jerusalem Artichoke has not yet got the message, but this year I threw in a lot of earthworm laden compost. About once a year I remember to dig up some of the tubers for a fine dinner. Mostly I like the small sunflowers and the lush greenery. Note: Works well to hide otherwise taboo landscape plantings.

The restructured desire path heads south toward the driveway. Cuts through the vegetable/herb garden with sufficient traffic barriers to reduce paw prints in the dill and/or okra bed etc.

One of my desire paths. Mudslide so far appears intimidated by the canyon effect. On our property there is obviously maintained an intersection of desire paths -- mixed use yardage.

Entering the drive way. When I come home with the truck to put it in the drive this is where Mudslide stands as he waits for me to back in the truck.

The south gate. South East corner, terminus of Mudslide's desire path, the drive way... unless we want to get into where he chases semi-feral cats.

Mudslide.

He likes me, but if you don't know him then best advice is don't put your hands on the fence.

Railroad Tortilla

2010-06-13T19:25:00.000-07:00

thnx to cp in be frm ellis hollow

Raised Bed as a Garden to Take Back Our Genesis and Herbals

2010-06-11T16:55:00.000-07:00

I learned to garden from my mother. She learned to garden from her father. He likely learned form his mother in Iowa. I learned a bit of gardening from my grandfather as well.

I was brought up as an organic gardener. As a kid we always had manure and compost and mulch. If I had my dithers I would say to hell with fixing old buildings and would forever garden. The house and the little plot of land that we have as our residence on the south shore of Long Island halfway to Montauk we bought twenty years ago mostly because of the rich diversity of plantings and vegetation in such a small area. It made us.

This raised garden plot next to the driveway I have cultivated for twenty years.

That is a bit of a long time to be screwing around with enriching the soil. When I started we had Japanese Beetles, now we have earthworms. A few years of Guinea Hens did wonders. My son, recently, dug into it and I felt really good when he said, "Hey, this is really good dirt." There are only so many things that we can truly pass on in life and as with all stalwart gardeners we know that the next property owner after us will not quite GET IT and dig it up for more lawn.

There were years in which I could not bring myself to do a damned thing about the garden. When one oak tree got cut down it took me years to get the gumption to roll the 10' long 2' thick logs out of the beds. The stump now makes a good seat, one that I have earned. Then there was the year I grew a Beefsteak tomato plant 15' tall and had to get a ladder to trim it. I was known for a brief stint by the kids in the neighborhood as the man with the green ass... at least that is what our 90+ year old neighbor down the street thought was what the kids had told him.

Then again for twelve years I commuted to Brooklyn in a vehicle alone by myself 5 hours a day and when I landed back home the first thing that I did, before even going in to see the family, kiss kiss, hug hug, was go see what had grown that day. Flowers blooming turn me on.

This garden has kept me alive, and nowadays with the economy as screwed up as it is this garden keeps me alive today. If I can hold on to figuring out how to get the friggen Salvadorian Cucumber to actually produce a pickle-candidate then I just might make another year in my life is how I say it. One cuke at a time. Size is not the problem here.

Oh, I almost forgot. I want to point out that I mulch with masonry and contractor grade plastic garbage bags. We got some terra cotta, some white marble and some floor slate here along w/ a field of tree mulch from the local landfill recycle facility. These are mostly cherry tomatoes, closely spaced, yes, and a few yellow low-acid tomatoes.

This masonry mulch around delicate seeded sage is fragments of John Early exposed aggregate precast panels from the Edison Memorial Tower at Menlo Park, NJ, the exact specific location where the incandescent lightbulb was invented by Thomas Edison. Don't you just love the fact that there is a small quantity of such heritage fabric laying in an otherwise anonymous garden patch on Long Island? Who would have thunk it? In our case it was stuff on the plaza that we had to clean up before we left the site... tidiness is next to godliness, or whatever. I am not quite sure where the white marble came from. It could have been from a bathroom.

This masonry mulch around the tarragon (hopefully the wilting tarragon will pick up as I love to get that really strong Polish vodka and imbibe it with tarragon) is a combination of slate and mural tiles that were made by Augustine D'Andino in Puerto Rico... left over from a tile mural that we installed for him too many years ago on a public school in Brooklyn.

Augustin: we are sorry that this tile got broke. FYI we have a few that we have manged to not break. We continue to this day to use that incredible fabric bag that you gave us. If you read this please connect and say hello.

This was the 1st oak tree that we lost. It makes a good seat. I was really unhappy when we lost the Hemlock to woolly algid. I was unhappy when we lost the Catalpa, but as you will see later it showed up again. I love the Virginia Creeper. I hate the poison ivy (not in this picture because wherever it shows up I kill it... but not

as my grandfather taught me by burning it... no, no, no) [does a period go here?].

This is the section of the raised be that is David's. There was some confusion over how it would be managed so I planted a variety of cooking (not hot) peppers. Some plants thrive in our garden, some don't. I love marigolds and companioin planting but we have a ghost that wilts them.

Notice the Catalpa in the background.

Long Island is not exactly known as the Okra Capital like Phelps, NY is know for sauerkraut, but hey, I like Texas hot pickled okra. Why not? Even if I got to buy it in a jar.

We have a problem growing squash so I figured might as well try growing them upside down.

The German Chamomile is doing pretty good.

The little herbal masonry zone just inside the entry gate. The chamomile, a bit of oregano, and cilantro.

Our front porch.

After the last half-naked drunk guy walked in to make liberty of the latrine - not me - yes, laugh at that one, I did a bit of fueng shuaway (besides chasing him with an axe in my underwear) and put a slight zig in the zag. Used to be a straight line into the house. No telling who would show up. On the right we have the 'forever' geranium, then some upside down squash close to where I can remember to water it, the ears of the perennial amarylis (not nearly as nice as the one the VI has), the weird South American suprise cukes that act like they want to go back home, twin rosemary -- I like herbs if only all I get is to small them when crushed between the fingers, with their extra-special yellow ambient lighting, the impatiens that seem to really like us and the birds and gray and one black squirrel at the feeder... and the nefarious endangered marine moss. Don't forget the marine moss. Endangered.

I can't quite remember but I think this is going to be a Moon Flower. We often have good moon at our house.

Thjere was a time when I was really heavy into miniature roses. I keep thinking this one is a goner but it keeps on thriving.

Plight of the Honey Bear

2010-05-30T06:40:00.000-07:00

My son says it is one-hundred-seventy steps. I may have that wrong; it could be he said one-hundred-seventy-two steps. My doctor says that I need to exercise. When I visit with her I try to express that some days I sit, and some days I don’t sit. She says that I should at least walk every day. I think, “That sounds good. The dog will like it.” My son says she means cardio exercise, to get my heart to push.

So on this summer morning that is not too terribly hot I grab hold of the fifty pound roll of self-sticky bituthene waterproof membrane and walk up the six flights of stairs to the roof. At fifty-seven that is exercise. My biological father had at least two heart attacks before he was sixty.

Once done with that I don’t want to do it again. I don’t even want to go down to the ground to the truck to get a drink of water or eat a granola bar stashed in the cab for emergencies because I know that even if I carry nothing on my trip back up onto the roof, I will need to carry myself, and for starters that is enough. Diabetes has a lot to do with weight.

Diabetes management is a constant struggle to know what is going on with one’s body chemistry.

Exercise burns up sugar. Sitting does not burn up sugar quite as much as doing any sort of exercise, even if it is only typing at a computer keyboard. But if you are doing pretty much nothing out of the ordinary it is easier to know what is going on internal to the body on an hour-to-hour basis.

Up on the roof while waiting to catch my breath I mention to my son that I am having trouble to figure where my sugar is at. I often forget to carry a monitor with me and I am left to figure it out from the inside. Am I thinking straight? Are my legs wobbly? Do I feel like fainting? Is there something else going on? Is this hay fever? Did I put on enough sun screen? Should I not stand too close to the edge of the roof?

He tells me that our Marine buddy told him to always carry a honey bear, one of those little plastic bottles that looks like a bear that you squeeze honey out of the top. My first thought is the time the sorghum bottle broke inside my luggage during a flight back from Indiana – what trouble can I get into with a bottle of honey?

Honey equals complex sugars. He tells me about a fellow in his Jeet Kune Do class who had only eaten a cheeseburger and smoked a cigar before class and with the stress of exercise nearly fainted... until my son offered him a shot of his honey bear. My doctor told me if my sugar goes low to drink a cup of orange juice as the sugar gets to the blood real fast that way. I don’t very often drink any fruit juice just for that reason.

I bumble my way through the remainder of the day dealing with ups and downs. I am supposed to eat something every two hours, but that rule does not take into account that I am walking up and down six flights of stairs today. I manage.

That night at home my wife makes me bacon and eggs for dinner. I’m not too sure about the cholesterol but I am certain about the lack of carbohydrates. On a normal day this would not be such a bad routine. I had previously told my doctor that I often have a problem at night with the diabetes medication in my sugar level dropping too low, like around 70. Every diabetic’s low level is different. At 70 I begin to shake and feel unstable on the feet. My doctor told me two hours after I eat dinner I should test my sugar level. If it is below a certain threshold I am to eat a 100 calorie granola bar. I like that idea. I would like that idea better if I managed to stay awake for two hours after dinner. Usually I fall asleep in the middle of Rachel Maddow talking about the fate of the world.

At 12:30 pm my wife is engrossed in playing World of Warcraft with her guild. The Guild Master a paraplegic, or something like that, in Nova Scotia or wherever and her fellow teammates scattered haphazard around the northern hemisphere. I wake up on Long Island and feel real lousy. Blaringly loudly CNN tells us about Obama grabbing his Louisiana oil balls. I shake and uncharacteristically sweat. I test my sugar level and find that it is 32. This is the lowest that I have ever seen my sugar level, ever.

If it goes too low, or too high, I could be in a coma and not know it. I don’t care for this too much.

I look in the frig for the orange juice. I had seen some in there the week before but this time I see none. Sometimes we run out. Some times my wife gets bored and I think for family entertainment value she changes her recycled containers. One time I find the OJ in what had once held grated cheese. I enjoy to pour out the juice through the side of the lid with the little holes as I think of Hoover Dam. This night it can be disguised in a basmati rice container on a totally different shelf that I don't see behind the dill pickles. Pickle juice won't make it tonight.

So I grab the milk. Milk has lactose, that is a sugar, and though milk is not as good as orange juice for a quick shot, it will serve in a pinch. Problem is I can’t think very well with low sugar. I wobble and stagger around the kitchen. I feel like a passenger on a torpedoed boat not quite being able to figure out where the life vests are stored so I grab hold of a fire extinguisher and wrap the nozzle around my neck as a second best life saver. I am prepared to jump as I stagger over to the counter when I remember there are granola bars in the cabinet. As I grab a ripe banana I down two of those. Rip the foil wrappers in a mad scramble. The only time I ever need to open these things is when I am unfit to open anything and I am always frustrated with the impenetrable nature of foil wrappers. I need to save my teeth so I do not bite them.

I pour milk in the blender. I unpeel the banana (easier than a foil wrapper but still done clumsily) and then remember I have some unsweetened ice cream left over in the frig so I grad the container of Neapolitan and spoon that into the blender. Remembering that part of it is chocolate so don't let the dog get it. Mind you, I am trying to devise a life saving cocktail to bring back my sugar level to a normal non-comatose position. I am in a bit of a hazy panic. I sweat and stumble from counter to freezer to garbage can. If my unbelted pants fell down in unison it would not be unexpected. Then I see the honey bear in the collection of bottles and small boxes on top of the frig. I grab that little critter and squirt a few good doses into the blender. Whirrrr. Whirrrr.

Unexpectedly the drink tastes like crap. Sometimes I will put nutmeg in, but this is something else altogether. I am not happy. I don’t feel good. There are several jars of all-natural unsweetened peanut butter on top of the frig. I grab a nearly empty container and spoon a few gobs of peanut butter into my mouth. Now I gum a wad of dry peanut butter and my mouth is all stuck up. So I grab the milk and pour another cup of that in hopes to melt the peanut butter and prevent a case of choking to death. Then I look at the honey bear and realize that it was not honey in the bear... now I remember that I had put extra-virgin olive oil in the bottle with some herbal materials. I have no clue what the hell that crap is at the bottom of the bear. I continue to be in a delusional panic. Now I really want to find life saving honey bear. A real one!

And I do.

I go to squirt out honey into a spoon but find out that this is a brand new honey bear with the paper still inside the cap. I manage to extricate the paper, and squirt two spoons of honey and quickly suck them down. A problem with these emergency procedures is that usually the panic and the faulty thought that goes into the science of spontaneous concoctions leads to an experimental overload of sugar. So I put everything sort of back in place, well, good intentions I thought to put everything back in place, and then I stagger into the bathroom to find my meter and check my sugar level.

I prick my finger. I apply the blood to the test strip. I wait for the reading. I am conscious and not in a coma. I am happy to be me. It is really cool to be alive. I don't know what else I would want to do with myself. Now I am at 451... this is the highest that I have ever seen my sugar, ever. A normal person never ever gee willigers ever never goes over 140. I have seen myself at 260 or 321 but never 451. I am sitting there freaking, “Now what I have I done to myself.”

Then I realize that I had just tested my blood from a finger stuck with honey. I wash my hands. The retest comes in at 301. Not good, I may need to take a really long walk, but better than 32 and not nearly as bad as 451.

I go back into the living room and sit down. My wife says, “Are you having a sugar problem.”

“Yes,” I say.

She says, “I knew that I should have given you toast with your dinner.”

“Yes,” I say, “that may be a good idea next time.” Then I tell her this story.

Reading

2010-05-29T15:32:00.000-07:00

Life in a Putty Knife Factory by H. Allen Smith

My copy is the 1943 hard cover edition. A delightful miscellany of anecdotes and tales from a newspaperman. The book is a good small size that when I fall asleep while reading it is not likely to break my nose.

H. Allen Smith, Journalist/Author - WebPost http://bit.ly/cVMwHz

Mamaroneck on a Day in May 2010

2010-05-22T13:24:00.000-07:00

That House in Ellis Hollow

2010-05-22T12:02:00.000-07:00

October was already nippy in 1975 in the Finger Lakes region of New York where, over the years I learned to ignore the weather because no matter what I did it always was getting in the way.

This first morning of a new project, the architect/contractor, Pebbli Aquada, told me to watch over the excavation for the foundation. He gave me a brief lesson on how to use a builder's level and a compass. "Lay it out this way," Pebbli said, then abruptly left in his Volvo. The first time I ever saw a builder’s level and not even in a book. It looked easy the way Pebbli explained it. I had never ever overseen or dug a foundation pit.

Patrick von Arsonus, who was having the house built, was a long-haired math whiz Professor newly on tenure. He wanted the prospective second-floor picture window to face the woody ditch at a specified angle of oh-point-oh-oh-nubbie degrees.

Joseph Mallory Sr., with his yellow Cat D9, had carved a slash in the clay through the woods and rammed his machine down the hill. And here at the bottom near the fern-bound creek Joseph and his helper, Buzzy Rama and I were looking at a fresh cut with the fuzzy idea that we were now going to construct a house designed by a newly released architect. There is meant here no intentional comparison to escapees of the historic Willard Asylum for the Chronic Insane. Some undertaking, always willing, never smart. A rule of thumb when you graduate from the Cornell architecture school is to run away from the region as quick as possible and get a real job. At least it should be a rule of thumb if it is not already. I was a young townie mason, able to lift a concrete block in a single heave. I should also have come to my senses and left the area that day.

It began to snow.

Joseph and Rama were in kind of a hurry and did not appear to be particularly appreciative of my detailed angular calculations. I was born high on theory, low on practice. Once I got started I quickly realized I had to go over this a few times. After running around with the builder's level and dropping the bluelines in the mud, scraping my knees and smashing my hand with a lump hammer, getting bloody thumb prints on the blueprints, driving broken branches into the mud (Pebbli had not thought to provide wood stakes with fluorescent tape flags), Joseph chasing me around with the dozer blade and Rama menacing my behind with the backhoe, we got the thing laid out. As it would turn out I was only three degrees off, a tiddly of a fact later to cause a major upset with Mr. von Arsonus. How could we do such a thing? Conflict with the lay lines, bad karma, diversion of energy, loss of services, zombie visitations, white nosed bats, bad gas, mutant babies. In fact, the most important thing I should have perceived was that it was snowing. But instead, as any sensible mason will agree, once the damned hole was done with I lit a cigar and went afterwards to the nearest pub.

As with any well planned turn-key operation, the following Saturday we were scheduled to pour the concrete footers.

At 2:00 AM the Cornell university meteorological department came on the local FM radio, that was how we found out things back then in those old days, and advised the early morning audience to brace itself for the Blizzard of the Century.

Professors must have been using students to transcribe Antarctica's subsurface ice flows that week. I admit I was not that old or experienced, so a century type of storm seemed like an important occurrence. A big storm was coming.

By 5:00 AM I had fretted myself silly and called all of my crew -- the masonry company of three and a half -- and told them to stay home in bed. Most of them were hung over and happy to hear that they could stay home. It didn't much matter to them that later it was a beautiful day. One of those days you simply love to read about. Clear blue skies, sunny and unseasonably warm. So on Sunday Mr. von Arsonus called up Pebbli, crunched his number, and seriously questioned my capability as a mason. Pebbli was adept at bullshit (it must have been his minor at university) besides, nobody but Pebbli would have volunteered to build the foundation at that time of the season. Like me, Pebbli was hungry and would do roughly anything to feed his beast.

This headed to my promise to pour the footers the following Saturday, rain or shine.

I don't apprehend how many meteorologists it takes to predict a storm; I just hope they don't get paid too much for doing it. If you predict the future, it doesn't help to be a week off target. Upstate there are two solid maxims: Gennie Cream Ale is fun to joke about, especially if it glows in the dark when you expel it, and weather is unpredictable.

It rained, it snowed, then it rained, then it snowed some more. Good for penguins. Clay is interesting when it gets wet. I have heard experts talk about the mysterious properties of clay at conferences, so it must be interesting. If it had not been for Joseph with his big yellow Cat we would not have gotten the readi-mix truck back up the hill when it was empty. When you push a wheelbarrow in clay the tire gets bound up and the rubber boots start to suck off your feet. Nobody ever told me this. Concrete is always in a hurry; you have to get it placed before it sets. I judged that something was not working out very well when I noticed brown ribbons, sort of like veining in Vermont marble, running through the gray. We had mud, then we had mud, then we had mixed mud. We also had hot coffee and fresh donuts, so it wasn't all that bad.

Before Joseph disembarked forever from my life, I got him to agree to send down the hill a few loads of 8" concrete block, which Rama agreeably discharged in a mud hole at the base of the slash. About 30% of the block got busted that way, but at least we did not have to hump the good ones by hand, two at a time, down the bank. The next day everything melted and we were happy. Then it snowed. Then it froze. Then it melted and sank more and then it froze. When I came around to looking I think we got two feet up in snow and down in mud in one week. The temperature dropped to an unpredicted subzero range. Things got stiff, but we kept up a good spirit. The concrete masonry units in the canyon got froze into the ground. No problem, we installed a tarp over the pile and set up a propane heater. As we melted each block and scraped off as much mud as we could manage we carried it over to the foundation. Most of the time we were laying hot steaming block. Only once in a while did one get laid that was frozen. I kept after my guys to only lay a block if it was hot.

It got sort of chaotic when we held our jobsite toolbox meetings. It was too damned cold to stop moving and bring ourselves to talk about shit. But safety is important.

When our teeth had finally got to firmly chattering in a steady bucking rhythm we would all gather around the heater puffing on hand-rolled Durham and questioning the theory of cold-weather-work to death. There was always a lot of the kind of probing and concerned questions a craftsman invariably divines at telling moments.

Do you think the mortar is setting up too fast? We used to compete to see who could buck their teeth the loudest. Why don't we use some of that fiberglass stucco and forget the joints. One day Bill got bored and lit a bunch of roofing cement buckets on fire inside the enclosure. What about that article you read last week in the masonry magazine, didn't it say admixtures weaken the mud? Always a new topic. Is that white stuff on your beard ice? I like the balance on the Rose trowel better than the Marshalltown. Do you think the used motor oil in this bucket is OK to mix in with the mortar; I hate to throw it away? We agreed that one field indicator of value was whether we had to chisel the ice off a block before we set it. Even though we were using an approved admixture -- blackberry brandy every half hour, the mortar kept freezing to the trowels and the joint slickers. It took something smarter than us to survive.

Each day Mr. von Arsonus and his wife Veronica stood at the edge of the hole in silence and watched every move we made. They would never say hello, they would never say goodbye, they just stood there watching us. They were so stiff that we never thought to offer them some admixture. It was nerve wracking at first, and then it got worse, they were taking notes. Every time I said anything to one of the guys, "Hey Steve, leave a little for the rest of us," they were listening. In the evening they would sit in their campus apartment warm at the hearth with mulled cider counting their toes in hexadecimal, and then near midnight call up Pebbli and ask their own probing questions. Pebbli would then call me up after midnight and relieve his own bile. I got tired of that, shut the job down, found out which pizza parlor (power of networking, my Uncle Bob was the pizza truck guy on campus) Pebbli frequented, and told him to his face that it was me or them, but not both.

Unfortunately, I won that argument. This was supposed to be a three-week job, and we had agreed that we would not be paid until completion. It actually took four months. I didn't have any money. My wife sold her guitar so we could buy a few Christmas presents.

By this time we needed an enclosure and supplemental heat. We decided to enclose half of the foundation, build that half and then move the enclosure over and build the other half. Two-by-fours, a few pipe frames, and clear poly sheeting. No problem.

There is a geometrical difficulty in building a masonry wall when you start from one corner and just trust, or hope that the other corner will show up sometime soon. You keep looking over toward that end of space and imagine a lot of neat stuff. Put a slightly warped door buck in the middle, and you're bordering on psychosis.

The sand pile, frozen solid more than a foot in depth, was conveniently located at the top of our itty bitty Mount Fuji. The solution to frozen sand was to get a fifty-five gallon drum, cut a hole in one side, stick a chimney flue on top of it, and bust up the sand with a pick, pile it around the drum, then start a fire from selected deadwood scavenged from the site.

By this time we were getting our mixing water out of the scenic woodland ditch, which meant we had to break through the ice every morning. Whenever a guy fell in we had to dry him off fairly quickly, which tended to use up the propane, so the pressure to scavenge firewood increased proportional to the duration of the project. I made up a little graph to illustrate this to the guys one evening on a napkin.

The snow was getting serious about this time, close to three foot deep, so we built a sand sled out of two-by-sixes. The sled worked pretty well for moving the sand down the hill and bringing in unbroken block and bags of masonry cement. But it took determination to get the damn sled back up the hill. I wish we had oxen. Sometimes the sand would freeze and we would have to pound it out of the sled with sledges and the sled would fall apart. Or we would dump a load halfway down the hillside and have to start over. But we were having fun in the snow doing this winter sport thing.

When we needed another 100 lb tank of propane, we would all go to town with an empty. When we got back we would tip the full tank over, tie a rope to the valve, and pull it down the hill. One person pull, one push. We got a groove built up, like a bobsled run, and those tanks zipped along real neat; it never occurred to us that we might be risking involvement in high-level ballistic research.

When Joseph Mallory had first cut the mud slash down the mountain, the brain trust and his wife, standing in the way the whole time, had insisted that he bypass a particular defunct tree. This was not a large or monumental dead thing, hardly a landmark, and very similar to most of the surrounding wood. The trunk on this pre-stump edifice was about eight inches in diameter, a good size for cordwood, and at about four feet off the ground it split into two vertical branches. Something like a northeastern version of a deceased saguaro.

Well, one of the guys working for me was the carpenter's lead man; eventually we would be finished with this masonry circus and a carpenter would come in to frame out the habitation. Bill was sort of assigned to us as a laborer by Pebbli, because out in the boonies you do anything you can hope to get paid for. When the foundation was completed, I in turn signed on as the carpenter's laborer. Bill was a nice guy but he was more into trimming wood than mixing mortar, so he was assigned to firewood and water detail.

I don't know how the miscommunication occurred, or if it even was a miscommunication. With the cold winter weather and blizzard white-outs we were getting to be like squirrels denied hibernation for two seasons. As well, I don't think Bill had a proper attitude about getting himself soaked wet to drag wood through the snow every morning. The hardwood was at the top of the hill and convenient to the sand pile. Next thing I knew one branch was gone. This did not go over very well with Mr. von Arsonus. Pebbli made one of his rare progress visits to the site. Apology, apology, apology. One of the drawbacks of speaking English is that you can be held responsible.

A week later the other branch was gone. It's like asking the kids who broke the garage window.

The actual architect of this house, who was not Pebbli Aquada, had designed a split-level foundation. One half was five feet lower than the other half that was five feet higher and it was not gradually stepped between them. Possibly as students the two architects had been rivals for the same young woman or something, but they obviously did not have matching ideas about this house. Half of the foundation, the part sunk into the clay, ran along level, and then the whole thing dropped down five feet and ran level for the other half of the house, and pointed out toward the rustic stream at a weird angle. It had occurred to me – the uneducated mason -- that something like this should be incrementally stepped down, but Pebbli assured me that you could come right on over to the precipice, then drop the whole footer down in one brilliant perpendicular cascade of solidly reinforced concrete. Pebbli was the one with the Ivy League education, major and minor and though I had previously told him about the mud marbleizing of the concrete he took it no mind.

The architect had also specified that on the hill side the wall was to be completely filled with concrete and that #4 bars were to be set continuously in pairs from top to bottom in each block core. Pebbli assured me that this was a case of overbuild, which was a new idea to me (overbuild?), and sternly instructed us to only fill the cores on four-foot centers and to leave out the rebar. OK. I showed him a book I had found about federal specifications for constructing concrete dams, like Hoover, that clearly indicated the unsoundness of his directions. Then he really went overboard on this overbuild thing. It took me many years to recover and understand what is really meant by "good enough for government work." I was under the impression it meant a standard of quality that nobody in their right mind would try to sustain; an obvious illusion young contractors should be disabused of promptly. Good enough for government work means build it as shitty as possible and still get paid. Not very patriotic, I agree.

It was about this time that I began to have a recurring problem with my heart rate, which now and then would suddenly jump up to around 220 beats per minute. Each time this happened I thought I might be dying. I would be in intense pain. I had trouble breathing. I lost all feeling in my arms and legs. I could not talk. My heart beat so fast that the blood was not flowing. I spent a lot of time getting wet from lying on the cold ground trying to like bloody hell to tick normally.

I thought this might be something that happens to lots of people when they get stressed out, but several years later I had a job with health insurance, and when the heart thing hit I told my wife to call an ambulance. It was about time I found out what was going on. It turned out to be a rare congenital heart syndrome. As a contractor I believe in providing good service, so if you ever see me lying on a New York sidewalk with my legs up in the air against a building, you can be assured I am taking care of business.

I said we had no money, but that was not exactly true. My wife and I had a big bag of dry soybeans, and my partner Steve had been in the habit of stashing quarters in his bedroom wall since early childhood. We survived on quarters, soybean patties, cheap beer, and the generosity of family. To this day I have an aversion to pan-fried tofu.

The front brakes on my Ford pick-up failed, and I tied the calipers together with bailing wire. I did not have money for antifreeze so eventually the block froze and cracked. We lived about twenty miles from the job, and realizing that without transportation we could never complete the foundation, Pebbli lent us his white Ford van and a Sunoco card. We started making emergency material runs all over the state. We even got some side work moving furniture.

The storm of the century was nothing to what came after the storm of the century. It must have been the storm of the apocalypse, leading up to the blizzard from the ice chest of hell. We drove home that night from our rendezvous with my wife in the downtown pub where we should have stayed playing quarter rounds of pool. The snow was thick, the wind was blowing, the snow plowers were chicken hearted, and the road was virgin territory. That night the ride home I put my head out the window. Steve put his head out the other window. We opened the back door, Jeff and Tom and a German shepherd hung out the side of the van. We drove from telephone pole to telephone pole in the darkness, with flakes of snow racing into the blinding headlights and praying we would not suddenly dip into a ditch as we inched our way to Podunk.

At least getting water for the mix became easier. We poked a hole in the poly sheeting above us, and the snow melt from our heated enclosure would drain into an oil drum. We always had concrete blocks lined up on their ends, like little soldiers on bivouac waiting to get laid.

I had gone to High School with the son of the man that owned the local mason's yard. Without telling me Pebbli had gone down to the yard and arranged credit for the job, based on my name and reputation. Since the framing of the house was not yet completed, Pebbli had not paid for any of the mason materials. I did not find this out until after my part of the job was completed and I went in, friendly as could be, with cash in hand to purchase materials for another job. Not exactly fun. Pebbli was an asshole.

Eventually the foundation got four corners. There was a lot of cut and patch to tie into the center of the wall, and the whole thing looked sick. This was good, because well into February Pebbli called an old-time mason, one who had been wise enough not to start the work in October, who came out and gave his helpful opinion. It was the worse job he had ever seen in his life, said he. It looked as if it had been built by a tribe of lunatics, possibly. He would never build anything like that, unless under extreme duress. We should never be paid, “inconceivable, stop the check” stuff. Possibly we should be jailed, his brother Matt being a state trooper.

By this time my poor crew and I were owed close to $10,000.00. Right along from the first snow on the first day with the damn builder's level, I had kept telling Pebbli that we should wait until spring to build this thing. But no, he said it had to be done right along now, he was going to pay us for each man day we worked, and he would take care of any business problems that might develop. I knew our relationship was constructed on trust.

Yeah, right.

I'm glad I did not have the job of backfill on the foundation, but I am sorry that somebody did. Once they backfilled that split-level footer and the un-heavily reinforced wall with a hump of yards of clay, a big crack running from zero at the footer to two inches at the top opened up. Oh, my God, how could this be?

By this time the first floor was framed out, including the walls, when I met Pebbli alone at the site. I was kind of wondering when we were going to get paid. I had long since given his van back, and was understandably anxious to have some cash. My guys were getting a little anxious with me, and the relation was too thin now to hazard another big winner of a fabulous job.

At this point Pebbli explained to me that I had to fix the crack in the foundation. I told him it was his crack and he could fix it himself. He explained how difficult the whole thing was.

The foundation had cost a lot more than anyone anticipated. It would have been OK if everything had been done to the most perfect standards, but now the owners did not want to pay him. In turn he could not pay us. He almost had a point. The framing carpenter was a specialist and worked with a tolerance of 1/8". That morning he had been riding me because the foundation was off in one corner by 1/2". You know how those masons are always screwing over the carpenters. But I had a point also. I was standing there with a crowbar in my hand. This was the closest I have ever come to wanting to kill someone. I left as quickly as possible.

I was messed up in the head for a while, until I talked with an attorney friend of the family, who suggested I inform Pebbli that I was considering a mechanic's lien. So Steve and I and a couple of other big guys went over to Pebbli's house and knocked on his door. He started out acting angry at us for coming to his house, wanted to know what our business was.

At the time my body understood concrete blocks fairly well, so despite the brief explanation from the attorney, I was not fully cognizant as to the implications of a mechanic's lien. I didn't even know that a mason contractor should have general liability insurance. Always good at repeating myself, I knew enough to convincingly repeat the counsel's words. "If you don't pay us within a week I'm gonna put a lien on the house." Big bad wolf. Next thing I knew Pebbli was outside in his driveway with us guys, crying and begging us not to lien the project. He actually got down on his knees and started grabbing at the air; it was like some sort of ecstatic conversion. I don't think he knew his wife was watching from a side window. I was getting embarrassed and wanted to leave, but held to steady ground.

A promise was made there in the driveway, some sort of covenant I suppose, and within a month we were paid in full. What I did not know was that some other people had been all over Pebbli's case for the last year. This project was supposed to be his bailout. Not much later Pebbli moved to Connecticut and got himself a six-figure gig with an architectural firm. I hope Pebbli is a well- behaved partner by now, with a compulsive desire to sit in his living room and watch the weather channel. I sometimes watch it myself; but if I hear the phrase "Blizzard of the Century," I go about my business like normal.

Regeneration

2010-05-20T14:12:00.001-07:00

This guy Mike Celona makes REALLY neat movies:

Jaipur Kawa Brass Band

2010-05-19T16:55:00.000-07:00

One of my most favorite musical groups.

Check out samples of their MP3 CD Fanfare Du Rajastan at Amazon.

2010-05-12T14:49:00.001-07:00

The Black Dog on Histo Presto Cost Estimating

2010-05-04T15:06:00.000-07:00

For quite some time I have been writing a book on the craft of cost estimating for historic restoration work. It seems like as good a thing as any to do when there is not enough work to keep me away from writing. Some of you may have unknowingly already read portions of the book. This particular chapter I had to fight with quite a bit before I got it to lay down. You can read and hear me reading it in audio while you read it here:

007 Metabolic Rates, Speed and Consumption

The material is no longer available online.

Chickens Flock to Greens

2010-05-01T06:08:00.000-07:00

They seem to really get off on dandelion greens.

Brick Chicken

2010-05-01T05:13:00.000-07:00

I am training my chickens to lay on a brick.

You never know where the future craftschickens will be coming from!

Cherry Blossom Drift & Petal Wine

2010-05-01T04:44:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week at the Ronkonkoma train station on Long Island I noticed that the cherry blossoms on the sidewalk had blown around and formed drifts. A concentration of petals like this could be a bonus for anyone wanting to experiment with making cherry blossom wine.

Dandelion wine is made with the yellow-white petals of the mature flower. One of the tasks in making dandelion wine is to pull all of the petals free of the bitter green parts. One difficulty is that though dandelions do grow like weeds the places where they most abundantly grow, and are most easily gathered are on public lawns... like at the local park. Then the question is if they are clean of herbicides, goose shit, and fertilizer or not. Dandelions gathered from near to highways, or in city environments may also contain traces of lead which is a toss up if the alcohol or lead will dumb you down first.

I use a champagne yeast when I make dandelion wine as it kicks up the alcohol content to the max for a wine. Percentage of alcohol in a natural wine is determined by when the concentration of alcohol is enough to kill the yeast that has produced the alcohol. A champagne yeast can handle alcohol better than most yeasts. I do not post-ferment in the bottles, so the bottles are not the exploding kind that you would knock the tops off with a sword. As an aside, when I proudly gave a mason jar of it to my Canadian Scot stonemason friend he immediately asked if I was handing him a jar of my best pee.

My home-brand is labeled Hobos Last Choice.

I have been collecting and drying rose petals for several years now with an idea that someday I will make rose petal wine. We only own one rose bush and so it is taking me a long time to collect enough petals to take the project to a next stage of development. We will accept contributions.

Wine making with non-grape materials is something that I have been involved with off and on since a very early age and one of my earliest memories is the excitement around my stepfather's rootbeer bottles when they exploded at night in the kitchen. Though it was not wine that he was making the mess did spray sticky syrup over everything. In my child's imagination I always wondered if that was why we eventually moved to another house. I also, as a young adult first out on my own remember accidentally dumping 5-gallons of elderberry mash in a kitchen of a group house where I was squatting in the swallow barn. The paying tenants were not very happy about that. I was not happy for losing all the elderberries that I had collected. (Note: Avoid confusing elderberries with water hemlock.)

Though wine is most often made with grapes, and vineyards and wineries are certainly an industry on Long Island (and where I come from is not far from the wine country of Hammandsport, NY), I enjoy making wine with unusual materials like elderberries, cantelope, grapefruit and plums. If I want wine made with grapes I can go buy it at the store.

Saturday Afternoon Wanderings on Long Island

2010-04-24T13:39:00.000-07:00

Today I went to the Hamptons Lawn & Garden Show (it was not held in the Hamptons but in a tent at the outlet mall in Riverhead) wearing my Plum Island t-shirt. One anxious salesman for a house-fixer-upper contractor said to me, “We have worked on Plum Island,” then he stopped himself, ”...oh, no we didn’t. We can’t go there.” I said, well, yes, you can, sort of go there if you have a reason. I got this t-shirt at the gift shop, sort of.

Another salesperson, I think they were selling life insurance, stopped me and said, “I always wanted to go to Plum Island.” I replied, well, it is not exactly a tourist destination. They asked me what it is like. I said that they may force you to strip naked and take a shower before you leave the island. He seemed to like that idea as I ran off to learn the latest in hot tub technology.

A fellow selling invisible fence asked me if I had any pets. "No, I said, "I'm sorry." I lied.

He said, "You don't need to apologize to me. I have some extras if you want one?" Then the fellow selling home mortgages asked me if I wanted one I said, "I already paid off the one I had." "He said, "Do you want another one?"

Another young fellow explained to me that for free he would stick a fan in my door and suck air out of the house then tell me how much it would cost for him to save me money. I wanted to know his secret but he got mad when I refused to sign his pledge. The last time I joined a religion it nearly killed me.

Then I went to Suffolk Community College to the Ecology Fair and the ladies at the Lyme disease tick control table across from the all-natural purple stuff table, asked me if I work at Plum Island. “No,” I said, “I was on vacation.” I was worried they may blame their fervid health-scare cause on my nocturnal indiscretions. Which reminds me that this morning I was reading about how Brookhaven Labs, just north of where we live, shot down a UFO with a quark gluon plasma beam weapon. The craft from wherever in the universe those things come from it crashed and burned in our local park and they built a horse stable there to hide the evidence. Which reminds me I need to go over there and get some manure for the garden.

I went to Port Jefferson thinking to visit the Antique & Garden show... but decided I was not into macramé and glass all that much and walked around and found a 12 person bobsled at Bayles Boat Shop where on Saturday and Wednesday mornings I can go volunteer to learn to build wooden boats. The Timber Framers Guild helped to build the Bayles Boat Shop.

Headed home, still w/ the Plum Island t-shirt on, I stopped at a bait & tackle shop and asked the proprietor if he sold earthworms. He said, “Yes.” I asked, “How big are they?” “They are trout worms,” he said, “they are small ones.” I said, “Are they like red wigglers? I don’t know what a trout worm looks like.” “You never seen a trout worm?” he said, “They are smaller than large earthworms.” “Can I see some?” “What you wanna use them for?” “I want to feed my chickens.” “Pretty expensive chicken food!” “I'm teaching them to eat out of my hand. I want them to get used to me. They really like worms.” “Do you eat them?” He almost caught me with that trick question and I almost fessed up. “No, you don’t eat circus chickens.”

Histo Presto: Aluminum Siding

2010-04-24T04:47:00.000-07:00

Flickr slideshow frm tfb17

Note: the following is an excerpt in draft from the book on estimation of histo presto that I have been working on. Inclusion here results from my friend Christopher Gray having posted an e-mail to BP [My next book: "How Aluminum Siding Saved Civilization."] re: an e-mail to him in which tfb17 shared his selection of photos that were inspired by Christopher's column on Vanderbilt Ave. in Brooklyn. "Two more gable-end houses of Gothic styling survive at 92 and 94 Vanderbilt. No. 92’s decay ventures beyond the charming into the alarming, with its falling-off siding and collapsing front stoop. Photographs from the 1940s indicate that it, too, had intricate verge-board trim, and show a delicate Gothic-style window at the top. It is a pity they are gone. At the same time, the asbestos-like shingle siding, perhaps from the 1940s, is a tour de force, vertical stripes in maroon, gray and other colors, like a weird 1950s blazer. It would be a tragedy to lose that, too." The photos take me home a bit as we lived in this very same community of aluminum siding for nearly eight years and our business offices were located in the heart of the Greenpoint community for close to 20 years.

"When I first became aware of this notion of metabolic rate connected with geographic location was on a visit from Brooklyn to a meeting in Washington DC at the National Trust offices where I was asked, as an aside and not directly relevant to the topic of the meeting, “What do you think of aluminum siding?”

At that time we lived in Greenpoint-Williamsburg, Brooklyn in an Italian neighborhood where the aluminum siding salesmen had in the 60s and 70s gone bonkers and covered over all of the gingerbread and Victorian 19th c board-work of the three and four story building stock. What I saw around me was an aging aluminum siding that presented not only aluminum, but color selected by property owners with an expression of their own cultural aesthetic, and a community that had obviously bought into the expressed merits of aluminum siding. As a built environment in itself I found the exploration and detailing of what can be done with aluminum siding to be quite interesting. So, my initial reaction to the question was that I like aluminum siding.

Though I knew that there was something wrong with my answer I had not put the aluminum siding there on the facades, so I did not feel culpable for the existence of it, and I was curious and remain curious what will be decided in future to maintain or restore it. When the aluminum siding falls off there is often an asphalt faux brick/stone sheeting, and when that falls off there is wood clapboard siding, where it has not rotted. Occasionally a house can be found where aluminum siding was never applied and the original fabric of the wood clad structure is intact (most often unpainted), and quite often the original carpentry work is elegant in simple details. To make repairs to aluminum siding when it fails can present as many conundrums as needed to restore historic brickwork, just that nobody on the larger histo presto radar particularly cares about aluminum siding. And I agree that there are a whole lot of envelope and moisture related problems with aluminum siding, as well as with vinyl and that neither material is the zero-maintenance solution that many homeowners may have bought into.

The person who asked me was the executive director of an historic trades training program for the National Park Service, an architect by profession, and it was quickly apparent to me that they did not like aluminum siding.

I note that, and based on my subsequent years of experience, that the National Park Service is not likely to initiate a program for restoration of aluminum siding, any more than they are going to be interested in restoration of historic house trailers, even if they have a few in their remote desert portfolio, but that if there is going to be a revival or development of the trade skills needed to restore and conserve aluminum siding it is likely to be driven by the local fix-it-upper folks in the urban communities of the likes of Brooklyn where aluminum siding is prevalent and concentrated. Skill sets develop and are maintained based on an employed need. We have only to look to the development of the Brownstone revival industry, where stone facades are often scraped back and replaced with a faux brownstone stucco, and colored-stucco is the trade practice that is learned, to wonder what the future preservation movement will look like around aluminum siding."

Multiculturalism: Western vs. Islamic Science

2010-04-18T10:28:00.000-07:00

I put this here as a future footnote to an as yet unwritten rant that I have been mulling over in my spare brain cells. The rant has to do with non-dualism of mind-body, craftsmanship, fine brickwork, creative writing, flash fiction on the internet, creative boundaries between fiction and non-fiction, Green sustainable human built-environments, geographically determined metabolic rates of learning in heritage conservation, the Sokal Hoax and the Cardiff Giant (of which I understand my family ancestry has a connection).

Berman's article is 28,000 words, really long, and this Sunday morning I have carefully read through all of it to the end. This following paragraph is the only one with a direct connection to my rant, all other implications of comparison are indirect though no less valid if they can at all be drawn out.

“Then again, if [Tariq] Ramadan means to suggest, by pointing to Islamic thinkers of the Middle Ages, that ancient roots are everything; or that science and rationality come in different versions depending on one’s origins, a version for Muslims and a different version for everyone else; or that universalism itself comes in different versions, and my universalism may not be the same as yours, and truth varies from culture to culture—then, of course, further questions arise. The notion that science and rationality come in different versions is an old idea: it is the notion that, taken to a logical conclusion, led the Nazis to suppose that physics came in an Aryan version and in a Jewish version, which were not identical, even if Jewish physics and Aryan physics appeared to be identical; and led the Stalinists to suppose that proletarian science was one thing and bourgeois science another, in spite of every superficial resemblance; and so on. This kind of argument is not hard to stumble across in Islamist literature: the notion that science comes in a Western version and also in an Islamic version, which are not the same. The same idea re-appears today in a sweet-tempered postmodern variation, as a kind of multiculturalism taken to the nth degree, in which every culture is pictured as equivalent and unique, and each culture’s claims to universal principles ought to be taken with a grain of salt, as an agreeable rhetoric that probably does not mean very much.”

Paul Berman, The New Republic, June 4, 2007

Little Boots 'Meddle'

2010-04-18T04:58:00.001-07:00

I enjoy following Little Boots - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://bit.ly/a6DJZg

Kool Cat w/ iPad

2010-04-17T07:18:00.001-07:00

Directions

2010-04-10T05:40:00.000-07:00

Directions by GO at Full of Crow (read a text of the full story)

This vid is a real time recording of my writing the story, while I was writing the story. It is not a replay. When I type on the keyboard in this vid I am entering the story onto my computer for the first time. What you see here is the writer's moment in the formation of an original text.

2010-04-10T05:36:00.001-07:00

Chicken House

2010-04-06T16:45:00.000-07:00

Window Washer Rig

2010-04-06T05:31:00.000-07:00

At one time I had a Special Rigger License in NYC, which meant that I was in the business of hanging 2-point suspended scaffold off the side of tall buildings. Hanging either with ropes or steel cable. It is an interesting occupation.

When a building has a built-in rigging system, usually for the purpose of window washing (and glass towers need their windows washed) then it is called a 'house rig'. We recently saw this house rig in operation and thought it quite unique for the angles of the building.

To spend a day hanging on the outside of a building in NYC, particularly in good weather, can be a pleasant activity of seclusion in the heart of urban density. On a windy day it can be like sailing the skies.

The snail is a refuge from our recent basement flood.

Chicks... or, a Poet w/ Poultry

2010-03-24T13:55:00.000-07:00

I bought chicks today. Three Ameraucana and three Barred Rock. We set them up with a box in the living room where we can tend to them until they are hardy enough for outside life.

Mudslide, our shorthair border collie is hiding under my desk. In part we bought them for him, he needs a bit of socializing, and in part we bought them for our own spirit. I had thought about getting ducks, we have not had any ducks in a real long time, not since Perry City near to Podunk, but I ended up opting for the known duties of chicken tending.

On Saturday we are going to a Long Island farm a bit east of us for a Cornell Cooperative Extension class on chicken raising as a warmer course. We hope to socialize.

Years back we had chickens, and guinea fowl. The law is that as non-farmers we can have six chickens, no roosters. We can have as many guinea hens as we want... but they fly around and make a whole lot of noise and for now we want to get along with the neighbors. We have had a rooster or such but though they are a lot of fun they make noise early in the morning and inevitable result in the chicken police showing up at the front gate.

When we had the chickens before it started with a few and then word got around our semi-suburban working-class the neighborhood that my wife kept chickens and suddenly lost chickens were being brought to us from all around. They were not always in the best of shape and my wife took to nursing them in the garage. This put the garage in limbo for anything other than bird poop.

Eventually all of the chickens and guinea fowl got taken out by the raccoons. Then the raccoons were taken out by distemper. We don’t see raccoons now but the garage was inhabited by feral cats overwintering.

While we had the chickens we did harvest the eggs. More than that there is a family that lived up the street of two women, a couple with a brood of two boys and a girl. These are not the most intelligent people on the planet, but it is for their ilk that we especially like where we live. The children used to come around and ask if they could search the yard for eggs. They were not doing this for an Easter hunt, they were hungry. We took to calling them the Egg Children.

We feel a bit blessed that I did not break down and buy a goat. I really like goats a whole lot but we do not quite have the yard for them. My wife wants a jackass.

Faux Fireplace, Wrapper 01

2010-03-17T07:07:00.000-07:00

Spirit of Aviation Restored -- NOLA Lakefront Airport

2010-03-17T06:33:00.000-07:00

frm my stonemason friend Michael Davidson

we hung the 11ft big guy last week at historic city of new orleans WPA ART DECO Lakefront Airport (historic photo of Spirit of Aviation) and the party still is going /Py

1930 original by Enrique Alfarez carver and cast stone expert
removed and feared destroyed in 1960 retro fit
recarved and poured into cast stone molds by Mississippi Stone Guild
team jaques Murphee lead carver
James Molton mold maker
Michael Davidson owner and beard

Flickr: Mississippi Stone Guild's Photostream (lots of pix of neat work projects)
Welcome to the Lakefront Airport

speakertext version: For Three Days They Were Not Able to Identify a Body That Had No Arm

2010-03-14T09:07:00.001-07:00

Silver Spring to Phoenix

2010-03-13T05:12:00.000-08:00

“If there are more than four dimensions, as many theoretical physicists now suspect, it may be interesting to speculate: a hypercraft capable of topological inversion into our spacetime continuum could indeed be larger on the inside than on the outside." Jacques Valee

Silver Spring to Phoenix

Vibrations of a cavern a mile beneath silver willows.
At two in the morning beyond the Sheraton
a lumination of pollution intercedes realism.

Cardinals and doves develop their melody
progressively caught in beat/heart echoes,
as with spelunker canaries fluting noxious gas
a small negative sign to the weary traveler,
they claw from rhododendron to palm and maple.

Stalagmometer gifts of the Emperor of Novelty
their urethane birdsuits activated by cold pinks.
Then, as if handcut from antique postcards,
three blacklight cabbages bob over suburbia.

Butterfly brains of a minute Faraday compaction
their echoes of roundness animate tomahawk rooflines.
Tri-erratic whipsaws of whispered flight --
philateletic balloons inflated by dreamy mutations.
Alien eggplants, they deign epicycloid arcs aimlessly
spaced on a fragmented landscape of trap stone and tar,
terra cotta chimney caps and aluminum antennae.

With a razed interception of alpha
the scenario splits, inordinately ghosts --
prophylatic rattle of the dead closet,
looking for a lost summer's night;
a cyclumen cantelope descends from nearby cumulus,
to engulf all anxious eyes in further repose.

The hot evening cicada call
lingering in the ear, then gone:
a turn in the dim closet
bumps the head up against the hangers,
leaving no tablet to decipher
the call, but listen, separation;
spirit from ground ruins all of us.

Beneath ionic aviary, flight home
an electric railroad pulses
screaming through concrete
it phases into doppled distant repetition --
cardinals and doves develop their melody.

~~~

The poem is an expanded reference to waking up around two o'clock in the morning in Silver Spring, Maryland, and hearing the birds singing and seeing the sky lit up bright pink and never before having had just this sort of urban experience, short of certain post adolescent chemical experiments. In the country birds usually sing when the natural sun rises. Which reminds me, I once knew a woman from a Long Island suburb who kept asking who the gardener was that had planted all the trees in our local state park.

The awakening was compounded by the fact that I was sleeping in the woods without any digital alarm watch and was hoping to start a new job the next morning. Waking up early and by any natural means was personally important. Waking late at night to the urban effects of aural, luminous, and gaseous pollution was disconcerting.

At one time I drove across the United States for several days and nights without stopping, without eating very much either and eventually, again late at night and somewhere lost on a right-angle turn in Wisconsin, I came to the realization that I had not yet gone anywhere. In fact, I surmised that all my experiences, including my fleeting conversations with my hitchhiker companions, were groundless illusions. I imagined that I was still sitting at home and had simply walked into the closet and gotten lost.

The reference to Michael Faraday relates to his belief, or at least my belief that he believed, that if all accumulated universal mass were reduced to the most compact solid without any spaces or excuses, it would be the size of a chicken bullion cube.

I believe it was Baudelaire, or another of those dismal symbolist poets that wanted to be anywhere, anywhere but here.

An interesting human experience of geography is in the negative quality of forgetfulness, in short, forgetting where you are. Away traveling and awakened in a strange bed it is often easy to feel dislocated and momentarily in the dark anxious about even such simple modes of spatial reference as up and down. A quick grab of the bedclothes reassures that you are not plummeting through a terrestrial yet unknown space or zipping through a black hole where precedence of motion is chaotic in the least.

Once sleeping on a Greyhound, stuffed in the dark towards the rear, slowly approaching Lansing, Michigan, stuffed between a mass of sweat laden and snoring black Grandmother's clutching their various bags of quilting and potatoes, I forgot where I was. For a brief moment I imagined that I was bodily flying through the air, naked and alone, on a too quick descent into the brightly lit and chilly bowels of Detroit.

Though it seems easier to forget where we are than to forget our name, as once encouraged for enlightened auto therapy by Allen Ginsberg, fretting over a lapsed location may be a more demanding illusion of the self than personal identity. Forgetting where you are is more noticeable if a greater reliance is expended on grasping the particulars of a location than upon the specific identity of the item to be located.

Further Reading: Jacques Vallee, 1990, “Confrontations, A Scientist's Search for Alien Contact”, Ballantine Books: New York.

poem and narrative 1st published by the American Geographical Society, the collage is also my work

Ellen Fullman TexasTravelTexture

2010-03-12T17:06:00.000-08:00

this knocks my rocks off
thank you to Patrick Sparks

For Three Days They Were Not Able to Identify a Body That Had No Arm

2010-03-11T05:45:00.000-08:00

text published online at Everyday Genius, thnx to Laura Ellen Scott

While we were doing probes at the Robert Moses pool at McCarren Park in Brooklyn, North Williamsburg, I heard a news report about the body of a man found there with no arm. Familiarity with the area, and the pool site led to one thing and another to result in composition of this story.

Glass House, frm roof of Brick House

2010-03-05T02:19:00.000-08:00

03-04-2010

fireplace

wild turkey scratches

Leland Torrence

Faux Fireplace, Day 9

2010-03-04T02:22:00.000-08:00

And here is what the original fireplace looked like.

and on the day when Jim Hicks visited