I was in the Superfonics. That’s the greatest. We stunk, but man could we name things.
[Updated–look what I found in my junk drawer:]
We had snow yesterday at daybreak. The light was so faint, and tinged with blue, that the whole scene outside the door seems under water. I took a picture to try to catch the light:
Pine, Oak, Maple, Holly, and a few others mixed in. There are geese and ducks in the water just past the first row of trees. This is the kind of snow we get here in the southcoast; not enough to plow, generally, but enough to soften the barren look of winter a bit.
It’s funny to consider that, according to statistics, what you’re looking at is farmland “lost” to development. This was all a pasture meadow, for ruminant animals 75 years ago, when sturdier folks still tried to cadge a living farming in New England. The old surveying documents use what few trees were here previously as markers, and they were chosen because they were conspicuous for their lonesomeness. The soil is acid and there isn’t much topsoil over the sandy subsoil. You could mow it flat and plant cranberries, but there’s such a glut of cranberries that the government pays farmers not to grow them now, after attracting them to the industry by guaranteeing their prices previously.
My deed actually still allows me to drive my livestock across the road onto my neighbor’s property to water my herds if I need to; but the cats just drink out of the little dishes under the potted plants, so there is no need to take them up on it.
The land we own covers five acres. About three quarters of one acre is lawn, house, driveway, and plantings. The rest is wild, and will remain so. It’s surrounded by thousands of acres of river, fen, swamp, bog, forest, more swamp, brambles, poison ivy, nettles, ticks, and mosquitoes big enough to make you put lead diving shoes on your toddlers outside, lest they be carried off.
Farmland “lost” to development; I think not. Looks like “reforestation” to me. And last time I checked at the supermarket also built on “farmland lost to development,” the shelves are filled with the flesh of the creatures that formerly grazed in what rapidly turned into our little pine jungle. They must have found some of that lost land somewhere else, I expect. Or used less land to generate more food is more likely.
Are the cows any sadder, unable to drink my swampwater? I don’t know. But the ospreys like it here now. So do we.
I make furniture but the making of it is only half of it. Running a business is like being a shark. Swim forward or die. Many people long for sinecures so they can do the same thing over and over and still get their money, but the creative destruction of the economy generally precludes that. Even the Post Office uses state-of-the-art machinery to fold, spindle and mutilate your mail now. Time marches on. Me, I just would like a Sunday off.
The swimming forward can be as simple as presenting the same old thing in a fresh way. Or maybe you’re always at the cutting edge of consumer fashion and your ideas are obsolete while you’re still thinking them. Perhaps you make it exactly the same but you change the font on your website instead of keeping a storefront to display your wares. Whatever, things change. You can sell Mid-century Modern furniture hand over fist right now to twenty-somethings who watched The Incredibles and soaked in the design vibe, but that wasn’t a wise ware to hawk twenty years ago. But if you have hand skills, someone will always want you to do it. The buggy whip conglomerate might fold, but a few hardy souls can make bespoke buggy whips for the connoisseur if they got mad skills. The drones will get laid off and work at IKEA.
I ordered a lathe six months ago, to swim forward and make turned leg furniture too. It was delayed so long I sort of forgot about it. (It was ordered the same time as my replacement for my 350 pound doorstop) It arrived last week unexpectedly and broken. I don’t have time to pay attention to it right now, but I was compelled to because I had to tell the manufacturer what’s wrong with it so they could send me replacements for the busted stuff. Now it stands there in the corner winking at me. It reminds me of the boat I built four years ago and never launched. Its very existence is an accusation. Hurry up.
I went looking for video for lathe turning. Everybody is turning bowls I don’t care about and nobody has any skills worth mentioning on YouTube. My only rule for claiming to be an expert in any walk of life is you have to at least be able to do it better than me. That’s a lot rarer than it should be although I’m no great shakes at anything. At least that’s what the nuns told all of us about everything every day, you Mr. Big Britches, you. Anyway, at least I found this guy.
Here’s to you, crazy Greek dude with the sewing machine lathe and mad skew chisel skills. You rock.
Umm….I think it’s a dude.
The United Nations is a terrible fraud. There’s a dozen or two decent countries represented there, and the rest chairs reserved for dictators and jackleg statist functionaries, the kind of person that is actually the polar opposite of a representative of their putative population. The US is the reality of the imaginary UN ideal: Every kind of person lives together and gets along with his brother as best they can. And everyone is brethren. There are no untouchables born here.
I’m immensely proud, and feel damn lucky to be born in this place.
When I was younger I had to learn Oldie but Goodie songs for bands I was in. No Intertunnel. I found a hole-in-the wall store that loaded 45s into jukeboxes. They’d sell to the public, but in the most desultory fashion. If you found them out behind the Chinese Restaurant and the SCUBA place and were willing to look through all the boxes and brought a little money, you could buy the stuff. I still have some of them, and several hundred lps, too. This is so much cooler than that, which was pretty damn cool already.
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