Glam

Aunt Alice was my maternal grandmother's exotic glamorous sister. She was tall and thin and had long wavy hair. She wore pants. In the 60's. She had modern eyeglasses and separate prescription sunglasses. Her smallish efficient house in town was furnished in snappy new modern curving sweeping chrome and glass assemblages. It was not a particularly warm place, nor was she personally, at least not compared to my grandmother and her big house with wooden and upholstered furniture and wood floors and wide arching doorways and cooking smells that constantly radiated from Grandpa's kitchen. Aunt Alice and Uncle Melvin took exotic vacations, probably on airplanes. They talked of their children who lived far away because of exotic jobs. Uncle Melvin had slicked back hair and I remember his clothes as being rather glossy somehow. He had some of those cool shirts that you didn't have to tuck in from some exotic foreign country. Ah, yes, they were the most glamorous couple I knew. And Aunt Alice herself was the keystone of that glamor, I was certain. And one of the most glamorous things about my glamorous great aunt was that she smoked. She had crystal and chrome ash trays everywhere. Enormous wonders that were more a shrine to the glamor of smoking than functional, for she would never ever let any but the tiniest bit of ash accumulate in their massive bowls. Some had lighters build into them. Best of all, next to her sleek accent chairs, even in her kitchen next to the dining table, she had smoking stands. A little shelf or perhaps a small drawer held cigarettes and the top was solely dedicated to the holding of the resting cigarette and the collection of the ashes. I remember a chrome and black smoking stand and another that had a chrome base and chrome bowl separate by a sculptural exotic wood stand. I remember the crystal and silver bowl of another. I remember her gesturing, sometimes broadly, sometimes in little quick movements, with a cigarette in her hand, smoke curling and twisting and rising. I remember her telling some story and the measure of how upset or excited she was about the goings-on could be had by how much her hand shook when she went to flick the ashes into the ash tray. I have vague memories of my sister and I sitting cross legged on the floor, our elbows on our knees and our chins in our hands, doing nothing but watching this exotic creature do her glamorous exotic things with rapt attention, but I am sure we were never quite that blatant in our astonishment and admiration. Ah, it is a wonder I am not a smoker just to emulate Aunt Alice. What accumulation of effects in my childhood made the desire to be good and healthy, to refrain from smoking, overcome the lure of the glamor of Aunt Alice?

An Olive, A Pickle Spear, and a Half Slice of Lemon

Odd things on my photo storage drive:

No Parking

I love old signs. It is fun to wonder how the place was being used when the sign went up; what situation caused someone to letter and paint a sign. Often, the use of the area has changed and the sign's wording has not been applicable for many years, but the sign stays, rusting and fading a bit each year.

Beauty in Strange Places

Wisconsin Screws

While shopping for screws to mount hooks on the deck rail for wet bathing suits at the Wisconsin lake house, I came across these drawers in the hardware aisle. Could there really be, in the land of dairy where locals are affectionately referred to as 'cheeseheads', such a thing as cheese head screws?

Turns out, information courtesy of several online encyclopedias and hardware description sites, that screws can be classified by their screw portion and by their head portion. A "wood" screw had a portion of the shaft near the head that is free from threads. The idea is that when attaching a piece of wood to another, the threaded portion will bite into the wood below and but not into the thing being attached. The thing being attached to the wood will merely be pulled into it tighter, rather than the screw being pulled deeper into that thing being attached. A "machine" or a "sheet metal" screw has threads all the way along it, because it holding stiffer parts to each other that can be held in position more accurately prior to beginning screwing.

The heads are named for their profile shape. A head that tapers down into the object is called 'flat' because it ends up flush with the surface when screwed in. There are a number of names for screws that stay above the surface, such as dome, round, pan, and button, that describe the profile of the shape that stays above the surface. An 'oval' screw is not quite accurately named, but has a part of the head that is sunk below the surface and a bit that domes up above the surface to catch the screw driver. A cheese head screw is a special form of the raised head. The head is cylindrical and deep, like a teeny tiny wheel of cheese there on the surface, according to definitions I found, though the pictures on these drawers, taken with my phone, seem to show them with rounded edges and not all that deep. At any rate, cheese head screws is a name that makes me chuckle.

Telling Time

Some people wear a watch. I did for many years. One year, I forgot my watch on vacation and the first place we went on landing at our destination was to buy a replacement. Oh, I loved those Timex ones that had a button to light up their dials! But then, one year, also on vacation, my watchband irritated my wrist, making me unable to wear a watch for many days. And we were able to make it to destinations, see the sights, find meals, and even make the airplane home without a watch. I have not worn one since. Today, the great Stephen Colbert said "Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Get 720 broken clocks!" That lead me to wonder: How accurate do you need to be? If you knew the time to say, 10 minutes, would that be acceptable? There are 6 10 minute periods in an hour and 24 hours in a day and that is 144 time slots and you only need half that because each clock is right twice a day. So get 72 clocks and set them 10 minutes apart and that is all you ever need.
If you are a slave to your watch, if you find yourself checking it more than a few times a day, take it off. Leave it lie somewhere for a week. See how life is different. And no cheating by carrying your cell phone and checking it as often as you would a watch. Pocket the cell phone so it is hard to check the time. Wing it. Look at a wall clock when you need to. Eat when you are hungry. Sleep when you are sleepy. Get up when you feel rested. Give up all things that need careful timing like television shows. Do check the time for social appointments and work appointments. But let everything else happen when it happens. See if life doesn't get just a little more laid back and see if your lifestyle can handle that change. I bet it can.

Flowers Make Me Happy

You can have them any time of year. You can buy a bouquet or a single stem. It is a luxury that does not cost much. A yellow rose in a tall vase. Daisy mums in a bunch in a quart jar. Alstomeria is one of the least costly cut flowers and it lasts longer than most. These were on their seventh day. Look closely at their leaf. It grows attached to the stem upside down, with the smooth protective surface down and the surface where transpiration takes place through pores facing up. So the plant twists each leaf to right it. To me, yellow flowers are the ones that make me happiest, though alstromeria are rarely available in pure yellow like this. They are nearly as lovely in rosey pink, burgundy pink, and rosy purple.

Brighten a day and bring home flowers for yourself.

Head of a Dead Fish

Found: Head of a Dead Fish
Where: On the Railing of the Stairs to the Lake
Why: Unknown
Message: Be Careful Where You Put Your Hand

Jawbone of an Ass

I love wandering about other peoples' gardens and I especially love wandering about the gardens of artists. You never know what you might find there, arranged artistically, of course.

Shoes and Thanks

Ever see a lone shoe at the side of the road and wonder how it got there? Passenger riding with a foot out the window and the shoe blew off? Kids playing tricks on each other. Flushed out of airline toilets? Fallen off feet of riders of passing horses? Grown from a piece of lost shoelace? Well, I tried to abandon a pair once on Highway 1 just south of where it joins up with Highway 11 at the southern edge of North Dakota.
In high school advanced biology class, we dissected baby sharks. In between class sessions, we kept them suspended by a string in a drum of smelly liquid. Some of it would splash on the floor where you could not help but walk in it as you retrieved or stashed your eviscerated shark carcass. During this process, the gooey rubber of my trendy mid-70's wedge platform shoes absorbed the horrible dead sea life smell. It was gross, disgusting to carry that smell around with me all day every day.
One morning, leaving for school wearing snow boots, I set those shoes on top of the car to load other things, maybe my books or a gym bag, and it occurred to me that if I 'forgot' them up there . . . so I did.
I spent the day in glee that I had 'ditched' the nasty things . . . only to arrive home that afternoon to find that my dear uncle had seen them on the side of the road and rescued not one but both of them for me and taken them to the farm.
There was a nasty gouge in one of the trendy fashionable wedge heels and of course they still stank to high heaven, but my mother made me keep wearing them anyway. I hated those shoes. I bet they are still there in some dark corner of some closet in her house. They will never go away.

The Secret Meaning of "Enter" and "Exit"

Today, in honor of Earth Day, I am going to let you in on a little secret.
Certain words that you see on a regular basis have a secret hidden meaning. I am going to reveal it to you here.

You know how supermarket and drugstore and convenience store and department store and specialty store doors have the word "Exit" on the out door and the word "Enter" on the door you are supposed to go in? Also, you know how some doors to smaller shops say "Push" or "Pull"? You know what I mean, don't you? Close your eyes and I bet you can envision a specific door of a specific store right now. Go ahead, try it.

Well, this is what those words secretly mean: They mean "Go Back To Your Car For Your Reusable Bags!" So you should have a half dozen or so reusable bags in every one of your cars. Before you enter a store, just as routinely as you turn off your ignition and unbuckle your seat belt and make sure you have your wallet, you should grab the number of bags you think you will need plus one and take them with you. If you fail to do so, when you get to the first door you see and find one of those four code words, "Exit", "Enter", "Push", or "Pull", you should smugly remember that YOU know the secret meaning of those code words and go back to your car and get the bags.

If you have the bags and forget them in your car AND you fail to decode the secret hidden meaning of "Exit", "Enter", "Push", and "Pull", you should face the humility of your mistake and ask the clerk to allow you to put your stuff right back into the cart bagless and you should drive that cart to the car and stand in the parking lot and bag it into your neglected and forgotten reusable bags.

And after you unpack your reusable bags, you should remember to put them by the back door to grab on your way out to put into the car for reuse next time. Because this is also the secret meaning of the handle of your back door's door knob: "Remember to take your reusable bags to the car!"

I know, I am brilliant for decoding these secret meanings, and thank me if you must, but I would rather you just heed these secret codes and make the future earth a less plastic-litter-filled place. We need to get into the HABIT, people!

Okay?

The Last Great Museum

Milwaukee is home to a Harley-Davidson engine plant and to the Harley-Davidson Museum. Admit it: You want a motorcycle. They are pretty. They are powerful. They represent all things free and wild and adventuresome. You want a motorcycle. So do I. Niether of us will probably ever have one, but there is no harm is looking and being a little awed and spending a little time on 'What if . . . "

http://www.harley-davidson.com/wcm/Content/Pages/HD_Museum/Museum.jsp?locale=en_US

Hot Air or Things Similar

My dad the corn farmer and his brother who was also his business partner were constantly engaged in a battle against the evil of the blackbird. They spent great amounts of time thinking about plots to destroy or avert the creatures. They read all the current farm magazines and followed every lead when the topic was mentioned. They invested in numerous advertised methods and rejected more than a few for concerns of compassion and environment. Poisons were ruled out as hazards to farm cats and things that also harmed other forms of wildlife were not considered. But the men were creative and inventive, often welding this or that to a tractor or digger or planter to enhance its performance, and so they did a great deal of thinking and tinkering in their spare time to discover ways to exclude or divert or chase the flocks of blackbirds from their fields. The dominant working method for most of my later childhood and teen years was 'poppers'. These were devices resembling cannons that ran off propane gas. The supply tank, the size used by a modern day barbecue grill, was attached to the popper by a hose. The gas feeding into a chamber advanced a timing mechanism and when the chamber was full, a spark was triggered using a flint common to cigarette lighters, and a great boom was emitted from the business end of the device. A summer ritual when the corn was mature enough to be damaged by the black flocks was to get the poppers out of storage and fill the tanks and adjust the timing. When that task was the order of the day in the farm shop, it was more than annoying to be home for that afternoon of frequent yet random booming . When the terrible flocks began to arrive and assemble, the poppers were distributed around the fields. The lazy farmer set them out there and left them, and the birds eventually acclimated to the regular repetition of the sound and rendered them useless. But the smart farmer turned them off at dusk and turned them on again in the morning, a chore that was often delegated to the teen who could drive. The acquisition of vehicles that could reach the parts of the field without access roads became a side hobby and ATVs and small motorcycles were common accessories in this war.

But still, having a workable functioning adequate method such as the poppers was not enough. No. They kept reading, kept sending away for brochures and articles and reports of scientific studies, kept asking around, and of course, kept tinkering and inventing. One summer, the great "big idea" that was going to solve this all was weather balloons. The brothers were going to fill them once and tether them at the edges of the fields and suspend various moving and reflective and noisy devices from them until the right effect was achieved. I am sure that they relished the opportunity for continued tinkering and adjusting and trials that this method presented. Maybe they secretly envisioned this leading to their fifteen minutes of fame as their invention caught on and saved countless farmers time and money. I remember the excitement and anticipation of the big day that we were going to Aberdeen to go to the airport to go to the weather department to talk to the weather people to attempt to secure a number of said weather balloons. And I remember the somber and sad end to that day, the quiet ride home, the disappointment that descended on the formerly lively group when it was learned that . . . it wasn't going to work. The very malleability that allows the weather balloon to be filled and rise and be resilient to bumping and bouncing in the wind also renders it soft enough that it continues to expand due to the pressure of the air inside, until it gets larger and thinner and eventually pops. Meteorologists take advantage of this expansion to allow it to rise as it displaces greater amounts of the air around it to sample and transmit data on various characteristics of the atmosphere at various altitudes and they take advantage of the popping in hope that at least some of the falling mechanisms will be found and returned to them for the gathering of more detailed data and for reuse. So even if the men invested the great sums in the balloons and tethered them to their fields, within a few days time, they would expand to the point that they would become thinner and thinner and eventually, pop, and drop that investment into an inelegant pile of useless thin rubber. Bad investment, messy disposal problem. Another dead end in the neverending always challenging world of cornfield blackbird control.

Self-Portrait in Van

It was September and I was in a park in the middle of somewhere camping out of my car. In a place that is really something special on that second weekend. LaMoure County Memorial Park, Grand Rapids, North Dakota.
This is the view of the side door of my 1996 Dodge Caravan. At time of driving, it had a transmission leak, a brake fluid leak, and didn't always start. It shimmied at certain speeds, but hey, I had to get to WomanSong, so I left a couple days early just in case. Didn't need it, the thing drove fine, so I had time to hang out, relax, chill, livin' the good life outta the side of my van!
I will decode for you some of the items in the photo:
The RV out the other side window: I found out my 'alarm clock' for the day I taught a workshop first session in the morning wasn't going to be in camp after all and had gone back to town, so I knocked on these peoples' window and asked, never having met them, "What time are you getting up in the morning?" After some explaining and some if-then-well-thening, we decided I would borrow their alarm clock, get up and shower, and that would be about the time they needed to get up, so I would return their alarm clock at that point, thereby being their 'alarm clock'. WomanSong is like that. We take care of each other!
Inside the van, there are damp beach towels across the seat from prior showers, and bags of clothing for various parts of this trip. Traveling clothes, cool funky special WomanSong clothes, extra stuff for if it gets cold, visiting my mom and sister later clothes. Yeah, it is full over there on that other side of the seat.
The back of the van is just as full, with all the stuff for the three classes I am teaching and stuff for if I visit my friend Ken and we need to make photo notecards for the gallery and other art supplies for if I get the hankering to do a sketch or make some earrings for someone.
This side here is the pantry, and you can see the cooler were the magical Mountain Dews keep cold and the brown paper bag of food I bought in town and a red box of crackers and a green reusable market bag of food I brought from home and that loaf of good crusty bread from Whole Foods.
The backpack basket is what goes with me down the road to the park where WomanSong is held. It carries the WomanSong schedule of events, a water bottle, my spare Dews, maybe a snack, my camera, my notebook for writing down ideas and phone numbers and email addresses of people I meet, and my wallet and oh, maybe some lip balm and bug spray and a handkerchief or two. It brings back the CDs I buy from the musicians and any art I buy from the artists.
The hat is part of my 'uniform'. It shades me from the sun and covers up my bad hair on the days I don't feel like fighting the shower line and well, you just gotta wear a hat to WomanSong!
Don't you think YOU should come to WomanSong in 2009?

The Bridge Building Contest in Chicago

My son and his friend needed a ride to Chicago for the bridge building contest. Four entries from each high school in the surrounding area went.

The kids build bridges from kits of balsa wood supplied by the contest organizers. There were specifications regarding length of span and size and such. The bridges were then stressed by loading on weights until they failed at a contest at the high school. The four kids whose bridge load to bridge weight was highest went on to this regional event. Obviously, they had to rebuild the bridge for the regional event, as their original was destroyed, so they could apply what they learned from other bridges and from how theirs failed to make a better one. Usually that means beefing up the places your bridge failed and paring away weight from areas that held strong to make your bridge both stronger and lighter. The variety of entries was amazing, but the geometry gave them all an inherent beauty. It was fun to watch them be loaded and startling to hear them fail and just a great time to hear all those kids excited about a physics project. Smart kids can be so much fun and I had a great time talking to my son and his interesting and smart friend and to some of the other kids there. The camera is a great way to get to talk to someone about what interests them. I'd ask if I could take their picture because they were the first one to break their bridge in the contest, or because their bridge was especially pretty or some other little unique thing and they always said sure and always told me more and answered my questions. I had more fun than I thought I would and it reinforced my views that this generation of kids is pretty darn amazing.

Here is information about the contest.
http://www.iit.edu/~hsbridge/database/search.cgi/:/public/chicago/2009/announce_regional

Here is the page where you can click on links for the data on the bridges such as their weights and the load at which they failed.
http://www.iit.edu/~hsbridge/database/search.cgi/:/public/index