Sippican Cottage
Donate

Do Nothing For Pity. Do Nothing For Love

January 31, 2012 3 Comments

I’ve had too much. Shivering by the dumpster. A little whiskey is the only cothamore we’re likely to get, pa always said. Too much is a hole in the roof.

My pa was always waiting on something or somebody under a big hole in his roof. Tugged his forelock and averted his bleary eyes like a peasant for ward heeler or bank teller alike. I thought I’d be a man of action. Not waiting on anything, or anybody. There’d be cannonfire and blood running hot and a furnace of action at all times. But here I am hanging at a dumpster at two AM like any rain dog.

Some men have to make up their minds and screw up their courage time and time again. I don’t get it. With me it was a switch you throw and that’s that. You decide to go this way or that and the road rambles off into the distance but you’ll never see that fork again. What’s the point in trying to back up and read the signs after you’ve blown through the red light in the first place? But the nervous nellies are my bosses, still. I would have stayed at the shipyard and blasted rust forever if I wanted that.

The car will come when my tallow is good and frozen and we’ll roll on over to Mehfeh and take out the trash. No courage needed.  Pa told me, “Do nothing for pity. Do nothing for love.” The bundle in the trunk has to go into the Mystic. Why wait?

Engineering School

January 30, 2012 No Comments

I’m always on the lookout for vitality.

The rest of the world might get tired of watching us do nothing but shop for shoes online at work and make plus-sized Star Wars costumes for ourselves even though we’re forty-ish and Halloween isn’t for seven months. We should at least acknowledge that it’s unlikely we’ll be allowed to leave the table while we’re way ahead.

Being a prominent society requires a certain vitality. Endless schemes to ration, or import, or even extinguish vitality, lead to one place.  The Roman Empire is a pizza joint now. The barbarians wanted it more. I won’t weep for it. My people were dyed blue, after all.

Fellow Traveler

January 29, 2012 12 Comments

My friend Gerard had a little essay about the repair of Red Wing boots. I hate to admit it, but I’ve got a pair of Red Wing boots. The part I hate to admit is that they’re my good shoes now, not my work boots. I found a video that shows the process, which I love. I love to see people with hand skills. Doesn’t matter what sort of skills they are, either. Chef or glassblower or hod carrier or guitarist; whatever.

I remember watching slackjawed as my mother typed nearly a hundred words a minute on a
manual typewriter. Without errors. Literally awesome. She was like Cassius Clay confronted with a midget wrestler when electric typewriters showed up. I could go really fast on that.

I mixed mortar for my uncle and watched him butter a block perfectly, every time, with two deft swipes of his trowel. He never missed. I couldn’t even get the mortar to stay on the trowel, or place the blocks in a row as fast as he could use them. I worked with men that could drive finish nails all day with a hammer and never leave “elephant tracks.” I find manual dexterity, distilled by repetition to fluidity, fascinating.

I’m not alone in that. As society gets more complicated, people become farther removed from the physical production of anything. They often get the same thrill I get when they encounter someone that can do something with their head, heart, and hands really well.

Factories are important, and many things should be made in a big faceless building filled with robots and drones. I don’t really need an artisinal flatscreen TV. But I need to see artisans, and feel like one, too.No one’s holding a gun to your head and forcing you to shop for everything at WalMart and IKEA and patronize no one locally except a trash hauler. Some of your neighbors make things and do things. Do the neighborly thing and seek them out.

Are You A Q Head?

January 28, 2012 9 Comments

The New Rhythm and Blues Quartet, or quintet, depending on how old you are. You probably know them as plain old NRBQ. What’s that? You don’t know them at all?

I always think of them as Massachusetts folk, even though they’re from all over. The bass player, Joey Spampinato, still lives on Cape Cod, and his brother Johnny — a sometimes member of NRBQ — is a member of The Incredible Casuals, who played at the Beachcomber in Wellfleet every Sunday for thirty years or so.

The music business seems trivial on its face, but it’s as grim as the Cosa Nostra on the back end. You can never get really famous unless you’re as serious as a heart attack about getting famous all the time. Some people are just too good-natured about the whole thing to ever become a household word. They just become household words in other musicians’ households. Exhibit A: NRBQ

Month: January 2012

Picture of sippicancottage

sippicancottage

A Man Who Has Nothing In Particular To Recommend Him Discusses All Sorts of Subjects at Random as Though He Knew Everything.

Find Stuff:
Archives
Recent Comments
Recent Posts
Tags