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Sometimes a lifetime just ain't enough

2012-01-29T22:59:00.008-05:00

(photo by Patti Goyette)

Samuel Johnson said something about imminent death having the effect of focussing the mind. It can have the same effect on those only peripherally affected by death.

To get right to the point, I write very regularly in a songwriting notebook.

If you were to page through the book you'd see bits of phrase, brief thoughts - usually on a given day nothing more than a couple of lines.

This week, on Monday, I got the news of the death of a friend by his own hand. So - this week there are six pages of scribbles and revisions on the subject of his passing . . .

I didn't ask what method he chose
It wasn't important for me to know
I only know that gone is gone
I only know that gone is gone
He's the one staying here
We're the ones moving on

Everywhere I looked this week I saw trucks pulled up side by side
They were talking through the open windows
Talking about the one who died
They found out on Sunday
The carpenter's day of rest
Found him lying on a bed
With a pistol on his chest

I didn't know what method he chose
It wasn't important for me to know
I only know that gone is gone
I only know that gone is gone
He's the one staying here
We're the ones moving on

This Thursday won't be a workday
You'll leave the Carhartt's on the floor
You'll put on a jacket and tie
And head on out the door
Stand around down at Spilker's
Til you just can't stand any more

Trying to get it right, well that can take a lifetime
And sometimes a lifetime just ain't enough
It's not the bad weather, the short money or the sore muscles
It's the being alone that can be so . . . tough.

I didn't know what method he chose
If it left a hole, well it didn't show
I only know that gone is gone
I only know that gone is gone
He's the one in the box
We're the ones looking on
I only know that gone is gone
I only know that gone is gone
He's the one staying here
We're the ones moving on

.

So, how's that 'songwriting' thing going?

2012-01-15T12:43:00.003-05:00

Well - got some notes here from an evening more than a year ago, and some news . . . first, the old notes:

11/04/10
Hooted last night at The Merion with Deb, Mike Kearns, Glenn, Barry T, Barry and Elaine, George and Vickie. Seriously enjoyed myself despite throwing numerous clams. I sang "Killing the Blues" earnestly and artlessly. That's my net assessment as of early this morning. I'm finding out more about what it takes to perform music. Whether or not I ultimately think of myself as a performer, it is still important for me to learn this.
I've hung with Gordon a little and talked to Geo M about recording - told both Gordon and George that my current goal is to be able to produce a demo of three or four songs this year in time to submit it for application to SSCM '11.
My current assessment of my strengths/weaknesses is as follows: I have a nice, if not particularly interesting, voice. My guitar playing skills are fair within a rather narrow comfort range. My knowledge of music is scant, but I'm working on that (in a slacker manner).
I think that my most exploitable skill lies in lyric writing. There seems to be a part of my brain that runs all day long on a kind of side rail, simultaneously with the 'getting-work-done' part of the brain. I've been writing more things down in the past year with the explicit intention that they might be song lyrics. In other words, some degree of rhyming, a few themes, an effort to make these little things arc over a few minutes and make some kind of point - a profound point would be great, any old kind of point is acceptable and of course preferable to pointlessness. Okay?

Soooo . . . I've kept at it, actually finished a few songs last year. I decided not to apply for SSCM in 2011 - a couple of songwriters that I knew were applying and I felt (rightly) that I was nowhere near ready. They had plenty of material, and they had been working at the craft for years. I felt that somehow it would be disrespectful to elbow my way into that scene. That, and the fact that I need a deadline to make me get things done. I guess I never really resolved to get the material together in time.

A year isn't all that long these days - it flew by and I did resolve to apply this year - which meant having some kind of recorded versions of some tunes. In the last month or so I joined the Songwriter's Guild of America and registered with BMI. I applied to SSCM 2012 last week and was accepted - which means that I'm going to have to finish about 8 of my unfinished tunes if I'm going to have enough material to do a 30 minute set. Yikes!

9/11/11

2011-09-11T12:29:00.003-04:00

Ten years ago today I was working less than a mile from home. That bright September morning I was nailing shingles on the roof of a little barn that I’d just built for a customer. I guess I must have gotten a phone call from my wife, telling me what was happening.

There’s coverage of the memorial services on the radio and television this morning. I listened to a little of it - the clock radio was on when I woke up.

Just now I was out in my front yard mowing the lawn. A fire truck from the next town drove by - the firemen were wearing their dress uniforms, not their helmets and coats. A minute later another truck drove by and I thought, “Oh, of course - a memorial service.”

I went back to mowing and something across the road caught my eye. I thought it was a trash bag blown along by traffic - then I saw a uniformed fireman walking along the road and I realized that the object had fallen off the truck. When he picked it up I saw that it was a fireman’s helmet. I stood by the lawn mower and watched as the fireman walked back to the truck that had pulled over just a little way down the road. I didn’t know him, but I realized he looked familiar. I’d probably seen him in the supermarket or the convenience store.
I watched him walk by, waiting for him to look across the road. I knew what I wanted to do - he was past the house and a little ways further down the road when he looked behind him and across the road. When he looked at me I saluted him - he nodded in response. I went back to cutting the lawn and thinking about those hundreds of people who ran into those buildings ten years ago to do their jobs.

Max, the neighbor's dog

2010-10-17T10:41:00.004-04:00

10/17

Neighbor's dog was killed in the road this morning. I've been doing the calculations of poetry in my head for the last hour - trying to find the voice of the dog.

A beautiful dog - aren't they all? A big brindle boxer-pit mix with blue eyes. Lying there in the road, an indictment of us all. I can see him right now - hours later - it would have been too cruel to take his picture lying there, but I'd like you to see him . . .

"Who made you the boss of me? All you had to do was keep me out of the road . . .

"I can't get up, there's no running from this -

so I'm lying here in the shit and the piss . . . who's licking tears off my face?

Now that lady driver is sad, and you're sad, and I've got this serious pain in my side . . . "

Working on Songs

2010-05-24T22:38:00.013-04:00

(MQMurphy photo)

Yes, that's right - since I have no plan for how to support myself when I can no longer carry heavy ladders, tools and lumber - I've decided that my salvation will be songwriting. You can help by sending your money in NOW to MQMurphy at P.O. Box 484 Cape May, NJ 08204.

Here's some raw (very raw) material from which I'll be trying to fashion a hummable ditty that'll become a radio favorite. There are other tunes, actually - some of them a bit farther along in the fashioning and polishing process - but I thought it might pique your interest to look at a bit of the raw material, so to speak.

So, you throw your bag in the back and you get in the car with your sister. She'll drive, because she likes to. It's four hundred miles, give or take, to that town above Boston where your Dad grew up. His brother, the last boy from that family of eleven kids, has finally moved on to the next phase.

We listen to music and we talk - talk about George's hundredth birthday that we celebrated with him last year. We'll see the cousins - now we're THAT generation, since there's no more of the other one left.

"Did you like the character that guy played on that other show?" What has that go to do with anything? "I don't know I was just wondering . . . passing the time with some idle chat . . .

he played a bad cop - but maybe not a bad guy, just a conflicted guy - stuck in a bad situation - anyway, he died. In the show, he died"

Can I make something out of that? You'd better believe it.

I have to believe it - because there's no Plan B.

Marriage = ? + ?

2010-01-04T11:45:00.004-05:00

(Image found at Irregularnews.com)

Here's something from my journal from a few years ago:

3/27/05 5:46 PM
Just saw a sticker on the back of a pickup truck.
It said “Marriage = (here it had little pictograms of a man + a woman).
You know, they were the kind of little silhouettes that are used to designate rest rooms. I really wanted to be able to change the silhouettes – maybe put a little Pirate hat on the man and an Indian headdress on the woman. Something like that.
Maybe a monkey and a toaster. A Buick and a golf ball.
What’s wrong with people? If we’re really lucky, we’ll learn one wonderful truth before we die. When you keep saying NO NO NO, you really cut your chances.

I like it here.

2009-12-27T23:19:00.001-05:00

(MQMurphy photo)

Heaven and Hell

There’s a town in the news that gets
Bombed every day.
Heaven is when you don’t get hit.

There’s a town up the road
Where people sometimes shop.
Hell is a long checkout line at WalMart.

I like it when I don’t get blown up,
And I hate a long checkout line
Especially when I just came in to get these batteries and boxer shorts.

Decline

2009-10-20T08:27:00.004-04:00

(MQMurphy Image)

10/20/09
Ahhh – I just can’t throw myself at the barricades with
the same vigor anymore.
If I ever did.
These days it seems like a huge accomplishment when I manage to get the trashcans out to the street on Tuesday evening for
the Wednesday pickup.
Makes me feel like a solid citizen.
See what I mean?

My simple plan for getting rich.

2009-10-01T21:01:00.008-04:00

Have you noticed that whenever there's a piece on the radio or on television about anything of a financial nature they play the Pink Floyd tune "Money" as an intro?
Of course you have. That damned jangling cash register! Totally annoying!
I've resisted using that tune in any of the radio shows I've done with a 'money' theme.
By the way, the photo above is a line of trucks delivering
royalty checks to Roger Waters.

So - to get to the point about my simple plan®:
I intend to write a very catchy tune with the title "Naked + Murder".
Hell - it'll write itself. You already know why I'm doing this. You're probably kicking yourself in the butt right now because you didn't do it first.
They'll be playing my tune every time there's a TV or radio piece about one of those wonderful bloody naked murders.
Which is . . . all the time.

I don't mean to sound like - oh, a fogey? - but is there a prime-time cop/lawyer/cooking show that doesn't at some point have an image of a bloody naked corpse?
Well, now I've found the silver lining in that cloud. The neighbors will probably complain about the trucks, but I'll just throw a helluva block party a couple of times a year.

"MURDER! It's a gas, let's see a pic-ture
of a naaaaked ass . . . "

Slim

2009-06-21T22:10:00.001-04:00

I have applied for the job of Trim Carpenter, a job for which my qualifications are obvious. I understand, of course, that should I gain too much weight I will be demoted to Fat Carpenter until such time that I shall demonstrate once again my fitness for the prior position.
Sincerely,
Michael Q. Murphy

Sweet Jesus in a jukebox!

2009-03-25T22:38:00.008-04:00

(Image shamelessly lifted from Google Images)

February 27, 2009
Working on tomorrow’s radio show and I’m thinking that one of the best things that ITunes has got going for it (you’ve got to check this for me!) is people who’ve had a couple of glasses of wine with dinner and are now overcome with nostalgia for a tune they heard somewhere once – or a hundred times. And they tap ITunes for their nostalgia fix. Perfect. $$. (sound effect = "Ka-ching")

I think "Don't Stop Believin'" hits it in that category for me. I'm always reminded of an afternoon when I sat at the bar in Kahn's Ugly Mug and heard that tune on the jukebox. It became manifestly clear to me that it was a completely perfect rock and roll tune. Please - don't take my word for it - listen to that tune for yourself.
Years later, I downloaded it from ITunes and now listen to it whenever the mood strikes me.
Ka-ching.

Banging some dents out of that Fender.

2009-03-01T11:59:00.010-05:00

Article in the Times this morning about U2. I feel as though they are the timbers that keep the ceiling of this coal mine we call Rock and Roll from collapsing.
I'm on the far side of 50, closing in on 60 - and my inner-13-year-old-guitar-geeky-self gets indescribable joy from making noises with a Stratocaster that sound like what The Edge gets in the song "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For".
It is a ringing, echo-ey, sometimes brittle sound that washes over the whole song. A distillation of all the best guitar sounds that guitarists have managed to squeeze out of that guitar since the first Strats rolled off the assembly line in Fullerton, CA over 50 years ago.
Thank you, Mr. Edge. Thank you, Mr. Hendrix. Thank you, Ms. Raitt.
Thank you, Mr. Dale. Thank you, Mr. Vaughan.
Thank you, Mr. Clapton.

Reading about you? Reading about me?: Contact with Other Worlds

2009-02-22T12:52:00.006-05:00

Wondering now about what is average America. I read the New York Times online every day – I see pictures of New Yorkers in the Times – upscale young couples with jobs that pay well – clean cut and smiling.
They probably take vacations – kids will go to good schools – I tire of looking at them.
I told Ellen that I was looking for another newspaper to read because I was tired of looking at rich white people smiling and holding their babies up for a picture.
Who do they represent? I Googled ‘average American newspaper’ to see if I could take a look at another America – it’s an academic question – I could look at the Philadelphia Daily News or a paper from Idaho, I guess.
So I did that. I Googled "American newspapers" and got a list. I went to Idaho and looked at the papers there – I chose the Idaho Mountain Express, which reports news from Sun Valley, Ketchum, Hailey, Bellview and Carey. I don’t want to make it a novelty kind of thing, but the first item I read was about how the Planning and Zoning Board in Hailey had changed the code to permit five chickens on a property instead of just three.
Certainly I could look at my own local papers, the Cape May County Herald or the Cape May Star and Wave, but the issues they report are too close to my daily reality for me to get anything like a long view of American culture from them. Hence my Idaho sojourn. I'll check there from time to time to get some perspective.

Plan A, Plan B

2008-10-07T10:20:00.008-04:00

(MQMurphy photo)

On another topic – have I mentioned here about how I went out on a Friday or Saturday morning in August of 1969 to the Ben Franklin Bridge in Philadelphia?

I had a piece of cardboard with “Woodstock” written on it. Don’t remember if I had a bag with me, or just what was in my pockets. I went down to the bridge – why? No plan in particular, except to head north to hear some music.

Plan A had been that a friend and I were going to get a ride with a friend of his. We waited up late the night before, but the ride never appeared (materialized?).

So – no Plan B. Well, actually I guess that no Plan B would’ve meant that I stayed home.

Plan B was “Figure-it-out-as-you-go”.
It took more than a few rides and quite a bit of walking, but it turned out to be worth it.

Some damn thing . . .

2008-10-07T09:58:00.005-04:00

(MQMurphy photo)

From the "Lunchbox" journal - something about the book that I've been telling myself that I will write:

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Ideas for chapters and metaphorical devices.

For example: plumbing.

I’m remembering the time that I soldered together the pipes for a new sink in the upstairs bathroom. The floor was out – I was running pipes through the joists. There were elbows and angles and couplings and valves. I remember counting the number of separate joints that were soldered – perhaps more than forty. When I connected the water and turned it on, there were no leaks. It was like I’d taken and passed a major exam.

Returning

2008-08-24T11:37:00.006-04:00

(MQMurphy cameraphone image)

Today – this beautiful August the twenty-fourth – has the feeling of a tipping point.

It’s almost as if there is a current, or a stream of biology deep inside of me that feels or knows this.

As though the year is a ball tossed into the air and today is the day when the momentum slows, slows to a halt – there is a pause that is

eternal and only a millisecond – and we fall

back towards the contracting and condensing of the year from which we’ll need to be hurled up again to air and warmth and light.

I Am Vivi Nevo

2008-07-28T11:25:00.006-04:00

(Image found at NYTimes.com)

Okay, it’s true . . . I am Vivi Nevo.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain the firewall between my high-flying international media-investment-schmoozaroo and my private life here in quiet Cape May County.

After lunch at San Pietro today I pushed my chair back from the table – too tired to fight with Spielberg for the check – and tried to remember if I’d ordered that sheet of birch plywood for the Pinto’s bookshelf.

Mystery Schmystery!
It was that damned Times article that killed the ride for me.
All that stuff about being a ‘Zelig-like’ character. And he’s not even a real guy.
Hey – I’m just me, trying to be me . . . and a normal guy, too. Is that too much to ask?
Can’t a guy have a little privacy when he’s not zooming around the world moving the shakers and schmoozing the movers?

I just like to be able to kick back in the workshop with my router and throw a little sawdust around – makes me feel like I’m accomplishing something.
Not to mention – don’t even mention it – that I get some of my best ideas while pushing the old Bosch 1 3/4 hp around the edges of a door. Pretty sure that’s what I was doing when I came up with the MS/Yahoo/Google thing.

Lenny Kravitz commented the other day “ . . . is that cat hair on your suit? Man, I didn’t know you had a cat!” Nine of them, Lenny. And four dogs, too.
(So now the nine cats and four dogs are out of the bag, bro.)

And no, for all you clever types out there, this is not one of those “I am Spartacus!” things. I considered that briefly, but concluded that instead of being able to escape in the cloud of confusion I was just as likely to be caught up in it. Can you imagine the mess that 50 or 60 bloggers could make out of that plan?

Weinstein and his girlfriend were staying in the loft over the workshop last week and he gave me this look – like “. . . you can’t keep this up, Viv. It’s gonna blow up in your face like a glued-up slab of birdseye maple in a planer!”

Yeah, Harv – maybe you’re right. Let’s let a little of the air out of this thing before it gets really crazy.
See you down at the Wawa.

Aw, please - just go away.

2008-05-25T10:07:00.006-04:00

(Image found at NYPost.com)

More than ever, I am checking the NY Times online (and then all the other news outlets) hoping I'll see the announcement that Hillary Clinton has quit.
The only purpose she is serving now is to show us a pure example of naked, unheeding ambition.
If we needed it, her latest is sufficient proof that she is a single-celled organism and she makes Schwarzenegger's "Terminator" look like a pansy.

Lawnmower Years.

2008-05-04T13:50:00.013-04:00

(Image found in a box of old stuff)

I bought this house thirty years ago this month. How long is that in lawnmower years?
There’s a Polaroid photo of one of my early lawnmowers somewhere around here. A cast off, a hand-me-down. Big-ass stamped red body with a white motor. I might’ve even repainted it in the process of its revitalization. New plug, new paint, fresh gas. So proud of it that I took a picture of it.
A. Photo. Of. A. Lawnmower.
An icon. A symbol of normality. If I recall correctly, I wanted to send the photo to my aunts in Peabody, Massachusetts. Owning a lawnmower was my ticket to respectability. You wouldn’t have a lawnmower if you were just some slacker guy. It was an emblem of my property-owning, upstanding citizen self.

I actually like mowing the lawn. It satisfies an 'Ozzie and Harriet' yearning in me. We had no lawns at the houses I grew up in. Not that I remember wanting a grassy yard, but when I bought this house it came with grass. At some point I realized that it had to be dealt with.
I think mowing has a calming effect on me, not unlike the feeling I used to get from ironing shirts. You pass the tool over the work and the result is so visible – so tangible. Smoothed cloth, a tamed wilderness. Man’s handiwork – evidence of civilization.

The simplest of machines, the lawnmower is. The inevitability of the sickle harnessed to the vast potential of internal combustion.
How many of these wonders had I dragged home from trash heaps and yard sales? How many Frankensteinian creations did I put together with each others’ hearts, handles and wheels?

Back in the early days, the machines were often no match for the yard if I didn’t establish a routine early in the season. When the grass got knee high the only way to attack it was to rear the mower up on its hind wheels, surge it forward by its own length and let it drop on the thicket from above. Progress was slow, of course – measured in blade shadows. Impatience on my part inevitably led to biting off more than the machine could chew. This resulted in the stalling of the machine.
The process of rear-surge-drop and rear-surge-stall would finally defeat me. Soon enough the grass would grow sufficiently tall to hide the mower and ease my shame somewhat.

Prosperity enabled me at some point to buy a brand new lawnmower. Maybe from Sears – maybe from our local hardware store. Some assembly required, of course, but I was an old hand by then. I’ve never been proud enough of the store-boughts to take a picture of one.

Phrases pop into your head.

2008-04-13T08:34:00.012-04:00

(image found at the Official Website of Mark Twain)

Just this morning, for no reason that I can discern, the phrase
" . . . turtle on a fence post" popped into my head. I'd sort of heard it before - I'd read a reference to someone having used it. So I Googled it and came up with a couple of hits - 9,800, actually. Here's a great explanation and example of the phrase, which is formally credited to Mark Twain.

Ed. note: I couldn't seem to make that link work. You might still want to check out variousmiseries.blogspot.com and in the meanwhile here's the text that I was trying to link to:

While suturing a cut on the hand of a 75 year old Texas rancher, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man. Eventually the topic got around to former Texas Governor George W. Bush and his going to the White House.

The old man said, "Well , ya know, Bush is a "post turtle".

Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a "post turtle" was.

The old rancher said, "When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a post turtle."

The old man saw a puzzled look on the doctor's face, so he continued to explain, "You know he didn't get there by himself, he doesn't belong there, he doesn't know what to do while he's up there, and you just want to help the dumb shit get down and move on"

Cleaning the back of the Saint's head.

2008-03-25T18:47:00.012-04:00

In March I worked for a few days for a company that restores stained glass windows. They needed a carpenter at a job over in Lewes, Delaware. The real restoration craftsmanship was done back at their studio in north Jersey. In Lewes they were installing a clear plexiglas protection layer against the window jamb. To prepare for the plexiglas we had to remove the old exterior protective layers. Some of these were weathered plastic; some were glass. After they were removed - which involved dealing with old, hardened caulk and glazing compound - the old pieces were used as patterns for the new plexi protection.

The weather was absolutely gorgeous for the three days that I worked there. The building was a slate-roofed brick church in the oldest part of Lewes, which bills itself as the first city in the first state. The church was in a property that covered an entire block and included a churchyard with the graves of the early congregants.

We worked on the building from small aluminum scaffolds that were moved from window to window.
Church volunteers paused to thank us - the work crew - for the transformation of their windows.

After the old glass and glazing compound were removed, the jamb was caulked and given a coat of paint. The last step to be performed before installing the new plexiglas was to sweep off any dust and spray a glass cleaning solution on the outside of the stained glass.

I didn't ask which Saint's head I was cleaning from the top of the scaffold. When I went inside on the last day to see what I'd been working on, he was just beaming.

When I'm ninety-four.

2008-01-05T18:00:00.002-05:00

I'm the little guy in this picture. The big guy behind me is my Dad. I was about nine months old when this was taken, and that would make him just shy of 39 years old. He lived for about 15 more years. He died just a little over 40 years ago, on New Year's Eve 1967.

But - I've only given you a photograph and some basic math. I'm told that I am the little guy in the picture. The big guy is defintely my Dad. He looks happy. I'm guessing that my Mom is taking the picture, so there I am - sandwiched between two people who loved me.

I wasn't even nearly a human being when he died - I was still a blob of some sort. Didn't know who or what I might turn out to be, and didn't really have much to talk to him about.
I can see him clearly in my mind, on that wicker chaise in the background. He'd have a terrycloth jacket and a Phillies cap and a transistor radio and maybe a beer, and he'd sit back on that chaise and listen to the baseball games in the summer.
He gave me that wonderful right hand of his to grip. When I got older he told me about the importance of having clean hands - clean, well manicured fingernails. He told me a secret about how he'd punched a man once. He was ashamed and proud of it and he wanted me to understand. I think I did.
Another thing I understand now is how quickly fifteen years can go by.

I put this post up and took it down more than once. On one hand, I felt that I was charmed by the photo and sort of wrote something just to justify posting it. On the other hand, children and families and the crazy passage of time are still relevant. Maybe more than ever.
To quote Jackson Browne " . . . they say in the end, it's the blink of an eye."

Caught off guard!

2007-12-23T11:13:00.001-05:00

I wasn’t paying attention to the news – completely missed the announcement that the Fed was moving Christmas up 13 days this year.
That is the biggest single move since the nine day move of 1958, and the first substantial move in more than a decade. Most of them (like the 14 hour, 51 minute move of 1981) slip by almost unnoticed – and if you did take notice, well – it’s in the rearview mirror even before you have time to think about it.

Well - the joke’s on you, Mr. Federal Holiday Administration! Mr. Big Brother Government! My Christmas cards will -as usual- arrive late, if at all – and the Mall (Maw?) will still see no more or less of me than it usually does. I will not get all caught up in all your irrational Holiday Cheerxuberance®.
Chri$tmas will have to careen down the “Pine-Scented®”, “snow-covered" path without my meager assistance this year.

Sour grapes, you say? Sure – like I said, I got caught off guard.
Sucker-punched, if you will.
I’ll be back on the game next year, though. Just you wait.

Not Dropping Heavy Things.

2007-12-19T07:49:00.000-05:00

I don’t feel as though I’ve got to justify my sailing hobby – or more accurately, my ‘learning-to-sail hobby’ – but if I did, this might suffice.
One of the additional benefits of learning how to control a boat is learning how to use rope. I’ve flailed at ropes for years, hoping that if I put enough loops and "knots" in them they would do a job of holding whatever needed to be held. So now, when circumstances might require you to park your horse, or you’ve got a captive, or some big pieces of scaffolding need to go from down here to way up there – it is a relief to know that no matter what else may go wrong, your knot will still hold. This knot is the bowline (pronounced “bo-lin”) and it is sometimes referred to as ‘the king of knots’.
Such was my desire to begin the mastery of rope that I taught myself to tie this knot one handed, with either hand and with my eyes closed.

It better be loud . . .

2007-12-16T14:32:00.000-05:00

Distortion? In music? Here’s my take on it:
It’s about an impulse that can’t be restrained – or contained.
An impulse that doesn’t give a shit about the inadequacy of your tiny speakers – it must be heard. The reproduction of distortion in a record is all about that. As loud as possible . . . isn’t loud enough – that’s what we’re saying. I’m listening to “Rosalita” right now – two speakers, one about eighteen inches away from each ear – left and right. Didn’t necessarily plan that – the laptop is on the workbench below the stereo. And the stereo is turned up.
And if you are telling the father of your girlfriend that this is his last chance
to get his daughter in a fine romance
because the record company
just GAVE YOU A BIG ADVANCE,
you know that you’re going to be needing that to be loud.

Why I blog.*

2007-12-05T11:52:00.001-05:00

If you are lucky enough to own your home (check) and it is an ooold home (check) with old systems (check) and you are not rich (double check), you’ve probably had an occasion to be treated to a scene like the one above.

This is our water pump. Well, maybe it is our third or fourth water pump - not sure.
I was down in the cellar this morning to try to determine the cause of the loud noise that recently began accompanying the pumping of water.
My guess was that the vibration of the pump had caused it to shift on its platform and come into contact with related items that transmitted the vibrations to other related items until there was a whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on.
Please excuse the techno-jargon.

As I looked at the shiny new fittings that connected the pump to the copper waterlines of the house, I realized that I’d been here at least twice in the last twelve months.
I’d come down to the cellar for something last winter (Christmas decorations?) and heard that familiar sssssss-ing sound before I saw the water running on the floor. I turned on the light in the back section of the cellar and saw the jet of water coming from the side of the PVC coupling that threads into the body of the pump. (see Fig. 12-J) – just kidding.
The ‘pump repair’ guys (summoned in a previous emergency, no doubt) had managed to force a 1 1/4” fitting into a 1” outlet. Only a pro would attempt to do this. Or a maniac. Granted, it was probably a Sunday evening or a Global Holiday – thereby making the proper fitting totally unavailable. It worked – for a while.
Skip past this next part if you are a poor old house owner – you already know it.
I drained the pressure tank and cut the fittings apart. There’s an hour. I took the coupling out to the hardware store to be sure I was getting the right part. There’s an hour. I cut new PVC pipe to replace what I’d cut out and I dry-fitted the new parts together a couple of times to make sure they’d line up with everything that hadn’t been cut out. There’s an hour. Is it too late for me to make a long story short? Basically, you’re looking at half a day for a non-professional plumber to replace the fittings that connect a pump to the rest of your water system. Oh – I’m a non-professional plumber with about 29 years of experience here at the classroom.

About six months before this I had gone through pretty much the same process because something about our water doesn’t get along with copper. Yeah - go figure. Our water eats little holes in the copper pipes, and then water gets out in places where you really don’t want it to.
To correct this problem, repeat the process outlined above, but this time you'll substitute copper pipe, flux, solder and a torch for the relative pleasures of PVC pipe and vision-inducing solvent glue.

Next week on "This Poor Old House": Let's re-wire!

* So that I've got someplace to share stuff like this - that's why. Thank you for letting me tell you that.

Ahhh, Novembrrrr . . .

2007-11-26T07:50:00.000-05:00

Here's a wonderful piece by Verlyn Klinkenborg on November weather.

The Future of Money

2007-11-24T17:18:00.000-05:00

There was a piece on NPR this morning about the state of world currencies. It seems that the dollar is showing a few stress fractures. Its demise is not imminent, but the person interviewed speculated on a couple of scenarios that could tip things the wrong way for the greenback. I'm not the one to comment on that - but that doesn't mean that I can't make some things up.

If we need people to have more confidence in the dollar, how about a real redesign? Forget the threads and watermarks and the embedded chips. I think we should put pictures of cats and dogs on the bills. Our Lab Leo has a wonderful, noble face.(Go ahead and click on that photo - you won't be sorry) I could see it on the Five - and our frenetic new adoptee Georgia would make a good one dollar bill. I could go for that. We'd even forgo the royalties on the images.
(Ellen said Leo should be on the Hundred - I say no, I wouldn't get to see him often enough.)

While not exactly the same as inspiring confidence, you might also consider selling the rights to the bigger bills to large corporations. Microsoft on the thou'? Merck on the fifty? BP on the hundred. Start a bidding war - I'll be glad to collect royalties on that idea.

Last but not least - maybe personalized bills are a possibility. Let's make money fun again. Pictures of your grandchildren on your pocketful of shopping money? You can already print your own postage, this might be right around the corner. The decline of our empire might be inevitable - why not have a little fun? Just a thought.

Ron Paul? Ron Paul!

2007-11-11T10:30:00.001-05:00

I donated money to the Democrats back in '00 and '04. Maybe I'm a person who loves the underdog - maybe that would explain why this guy appeals to me now.

Right now, all the Democratic hopefuls make me want to run away. They are like so many bad over-flavored cups of coffee.

Early in the year Ron Paul made a couple of appearances on TV - I'm not sure where. He seemed to make sense.

I want to feel inspired by someone (don't we all?) who is willing to take their principles to the big show - who is willing to go through all the thrashing and fighting to get to a place where they might be able to work at fixing this thing.

Obviously, there are a handful of people who are willing to go through the thrashing - but are we inspired by them? Or are we embarrassed by them?

This is the only candidate who I feel like sending money to, and the only one whose sign I wouldn't be embarrassed to have in front of my house.

Oh - and he isn't a lawyer.

. . . and what do we make of this?

2007-10-12T01:53:00.000-04:00

(Hmmm . . . could there be a dark side to MQMurphy? Another bit from the early 90's)

Presents

Thank you, my sweet family,
for this birthday present you've
given me. Fifty feet of crisp new
rope, and a big yard to play in - I'll
race you to the fence.
This coil of manilla; I'll show you a
turban - or a crown. Shake it loose, let it
settle down
on my shoulders - a yoke -
this reminds me of a joke
that I'm just making up
about the boy who hoisted
the family Toyota into a tree
by throwing a rope over a limb
and tying it to the bumper.
"Stand back! - and witness
the strongest man in ten counties!",
he cried.
The slipknot slipped, tightened, he died -
but not before the car was a
good ten feet off the ground.

Yet again, an old thing

2007-10-12T01:32:00.000-04:00

Here’s something from an old notebook. Actually, something on a scrap of paper that was in a notebook – and the last dated entry in this notebook is from April of 1994. Also, I'm not saying that I won't take this and try to make it into something else. It sets up a theme - there's a punch to be delivered at the end, perhaps. I haven't got the punch yet.

If I were to title it today, maybe it would be “Not Being There” or maybe "Getting Nowhere" – but it doesn’t have a title.

I struggle to keep my
anonymity a secret.
I deposit checks
after crossing out my name.

I disguise my handwriting,
Or make it completely illegible,
If necessary.

I eat my words;
I eat yours too.

I’ve modified my calculator
To display only zeros.

I stand in a corner like God’s
Forgotten Hobby.

I’ve considered moving
To a town that’s gone under.
Much the less in those empty storefronts
To tempt my consumer’s soul.

Family - two legged variety

2007-10-11T11:28:00.000-04:00

My far-flung family reassembled at Cape May Point this past week. We hosted the Eighth Scavenger Hunt and hung out together - as much as possible, given work schedules. Spent an hour or so at the beach on Wednesday picking cheery babies out of the air and pretty stones out of the sand.

You just might break . . .

2007-09-15T11:26:00.000-04:00

. . . into a smile. I do whenever I see the video of Feist's song "1234". I read about her in a New York Times article back in April and saw the original video then - I decided that it was the most organic music video that I'd ever seen. Very sweet and innocent - I mean hey, when's the last time you saw a music video for a song with banjo and trumpet? No guns, no pyrotechnics, no moody sunsets - just a really great combination of song, choreography and filming. Congratulations and thanks to all involved. Here's a link to a short film of the making of that video.

The Future

2007-09-09T11:41:00.000-04:00

I've checked in a couple of times on the blog of George Hotz, the teenager who famously hacked the IPhone. Clicking on his profile led me to another of his blogs. I'm no expert, but it apparently documents his efforts to turn a toaster oven into a pizza-cooking plasma TV. Maybe with an optional Death Ray. Neat to hear his extra geeky descriptions of test equipment and the like - he's a teenager, after all. There's hope.
BTW, his IPhone Hack blog is here. Cool inside view of the story we all saw on the news.

The pack

2007-09-08T11:28:00.001-04:00

The pack exhales and the pack inhales.
When I'm feeding the dogs I still sometimes look around for Stella.

Our new girl Georgia had a pretty dreadful time of it last month - the folks that left her when they moved away thoughtfully chained her to a fence. She was taken in by the Atlantic County Animal Cruelty Officer and transferred to the Pleasantville shelter. There were maggots in her ears, her nose was being eaten by flies and the chain had gotten totally wrapped up in her fur. She went to a foster home in Dorothy where a couple of good people - Marie and Bob - have fifteen dogs and four cats on a couple of acres. A few sad stories for some of those dogs, too.
Georgia was pretty timid when we got her home - she ran to a far corner of the yard and hid. We coaxed/dragged her to the house where she hid in a closet. She spent a good part of the next day under the back deck.

It has been a week now since she arrived. She is still really thin but clearly becoming less fearful. We're watching the pack rearrange itself. She'll be fine.

The Charlie Brown of Sailing.

2007-09-05T10:07:00.000-04:00

Beautiful breeze blowing today. Even more crisp now than it was a few hours ago when I sailed across that mooring line.

It was one of those bright pink mooring balls with three dingys tethered to it in front of me to starboard. I had just come onto a port tack and was making my way through the mooring field in the west end of Cape May harbor. I thought I would be able to get by upwind of the mooring ball, but it was going to be close. At the last minute I pushed the tiller a little and headed between the ball and the dingys.
As I scooted through there I was thinking ‘this is probably a mistake’.

I might have been better off if I’d just run down the mooring ball – at least there would have been a fifty-fifty chance that I’d have brushed by on the upwind side of it, instead of catching the mooring line and gaining myself a little train of three dingys.

The mooring held, I guess, and when I saw those three dingys following me I let the sheets go. I paused for a minute to assess the situation, then took off my shirt and shorts and went overboard to see how the line was caught.
What I had snagged is the line called the ‘pendant’. The mooring ball marks and suspends the chain that goes down to the anchor or weight that is more or less permanently set in the bottom. The pendant comes off the chain and is supported in turn by a small float so that it can be retrieved with a boat hook.
It was tight against the skeg in front of the rudder. I tried getting my feet on top of the line and pushing down but I couldn’t budge it. I thought it was jammed in a groove or something. I tried diving under to take a look at it but I couldn’t see well enough. I felt along the pendant to the bronze clip that secured the dingys. I figured that if I could unclip it I could pass the line back under my boat and then refasten it and be done. I climbed back in the boat and fastened a line to the lead dingy and tied it to a stern cleat.

I must have figured out that the mooring was what was holding me in place and that if I got loose from it, my boat and the three dingys would drift off away from the float. With this in mind I threw out my small anchor, but I failed to make sure that it was set.
As Lyle Lovett says, “ . . . I had made my second mistake.”

I went back overboard and managed to pull some slack in the line and get the dingys unclipped. With the mooring line no longer taut under the skeg my boat began to drift, pulling its un-set anchor.
I climbed back aboard and watched as the distance between me and the mooring grew to ten, twenty, thirty feet.
I had traded up in problems. Here’s where I should mention the unreliable motor.
It runs, and I’m confident that it’ll get me out of a jam, but it won’t idle or run at slow speeds. You’ve got to start it, jam it in gear and push the throttle up. No close maneuvering, no backing up.
I shackled my bigger anchor to the main anchor line and tossed it off the bow. At least I’d still be in the right neighborhood when I finally figured out how I was going to get those dingys back where they belonged.

I decided that I should get in the lead dingy and row back to the mooring, pulling the other two behind me. I would clip the little train of dingys to the pendant and swim back to my boat. Simple. I climbed down into the first dingy and put the oars in the oarlocks.
Ahh, the circus is in town. Maybe I’ve rowed a dingy sometime in my life. I don’t really remember if I have. I rode a motorcycle once – that I remember. So maybe I never have rowed a dingy before. You’d have gathered that from watching my performance.
I could barely make it the two feet that separated the dingy and the boat, let alone row upwind fifty feet back to the mooring. I was picturing myself and my little dingy village being blown across the harbor. After what seemed like endless flailing I secured the dingy to the stern cleat again and climbed back aboard.
Time for Plan C ®.

I started the motor and with the dingys in tow I made a big circle, aiming for a spot between two moored sloops upwind of the mooring ball. I planned to drop my anchor there and ease my boat back down on the mooring by paying out line. I used up the eighty-odd feet of braided anchor line and had to add a hundred feet of nylon three strand. This worked out pretty well, but when I was down to the mooring it was about twenty feet off the starboard side - out of reach. I started the motor again and powered over a little past the mooring ball and got the boat hook ready to snag it as I swung back on the wind. No success, but this looks promising. Motored back past the mooring for another try. Got a hold of the pendant this time and secured it to the pulpit on my boat.
When I took a good look at the lines on the dingys I was pleasantly surprised to find that I hadn’t lost the bronze snap hook from the lead dingy. The second dingy was clipped to it and it had just been pulled back underneath. I clipped it back into the pendant and slipped my temporary line off the bow of dingy number one. See ya later, fellas.

I pulled my boat back up the anchor line hand over hand, stowed the anchor and got on back to the slip to clean the mess up. Maybe - if I'm lucky - no one was watching.

Look at this dog.

2007-08-17T15:08:00.000-04:00

Look at this dog. If you're wondering 'what kind of dog is that?', welcome to the club. Don't let me lead you here, but maybe you're thinking 'that is one complex pooch'. Or maybe you think she looks simple-minded. Let me tell you: there may have never been a more self-aware canine on earth.
Having had the pleasure and honor of knowing Stella for at least 14 years I would like to share with you my thoughts about what is going on in that picture. She is made up for a dog show. A local 'here-is-my-great-dog' show. No fabulous prizes. She is totally in on the joke. A tutu, a tiara, a feathered boa leash in hot pink. She totally gets it.
This is a dog who - I swear - understood irony. But the look on her face says "This is the real me!" (Please click on the photo for a better look.)

Stella had to leave us today. She was 16 or 18 or 15 years old. Ellen saved her from a shelter in 1993 - she surely would have been put down in a matter of weeks. Ellen felt like they saved each other.
Rage on, Stella.

Saint Michael?

2007-08-09T09:54:00.000-04:00

Anyway, here I am – having failed to live up to the great task that I found before me. I’m not a saint.
The ones who can do that job – they’re the ones that it's worth crossing the street to shake their hands.
Why, they’re the ones for whom we melt colored glass and then cut it into shapes and make it
into a picture held together with little lead strips – then we put these glass pictures up in the big buildings that we’ve built
so we can get together
and try to
remember what it was we were supposed to be doing.

I saw sainthood and thought . . . how’s the health plan?
I saw sainthood and thought . . . is there a uniform?
I saw sainthood and thought . . . I bet I won’t be allowed to touch my dick.
I saw sainthood and thought . . . I wonder what’s playing down at TLA?

Something I believe, and a nice picture of a boat.

2007-07-17T22:00:00.000-04:00

So. How is it again that we are God?

Because we get to decide how to make sense of our universe – our experience.
It all sweeps in – we gather it and swing it back out – ju-jitsu of some sort, redirecting or deflecting the waves.
For sure, we’re already selecting and rejecting input on a level that is far, far below ordinary consciousness.

And here's that nice picture I promised -

This is a lightly Photoshopped picture of our boat Ikey Boy, sitting in the slip at Harbor Lane Marina.

two old journal entries

2007-06-04T00:09:00.000-04:00

3/28/93
Trying to throw away some stuff that was cluttering the kitchen.
I looked at a '92 wall calendar sent by the oil company - inside the front cover, under the flap where you dutifully tuck each page as the month passes, is a little grid with a dozen lines for entering the date and the amounts of your fuel deliveries.

Staring at it, I felt as though I might as well have been looking at a postcard from the Alps, or Polynesia; a picture of a life blessed with simplicity. A dream of a life so simple that you could hang this calendar in your laundry room, or near the back door, and whenever the oil truck came - maybe you'd have a pencil hanging on a string from the nail the calendar is hung on - you could write down the date, the amount, and the price.

I can do it from memory: the date is passed, the amount is never enough, and the price is always too high.

-------

4/29/93
My mood got fixed
maybe it was by the two little girls
chalking hopscotch diagrams on
that sidewalk. Maybe it was the
sunlight and the white splashes
as the ocean hit the rocks.

Kurt Vonnegut, 84 years on Earth

2007-04-12T21:33:00.000-04:00

4/12/07
Sad I am, and happy too, for Mr. Kurt Vonnegut. He was our patron saint of Irony. It might well have been called Vonnegut. I have poured a glass of whiskey.
Writers – do they give shape to things we need words for, or make shapes for us to pour ourselves into? Is that the same thing? And yet again I am brought to wonder about what awaits us when our eyes close for the last time.
Godspeed, Kurt Vonnegut.

If youd'a woke up, youd'a seen me sleepin' . . .

2007-03-04T14:34:00.000-05:00

3/4/07 1:34 PM
So, I’m here on the couch. I share it with two dogs. We're on vacation. We are so self-centered, Ellen and I, that we think this is what the Booboo Heads love most – to have us with them. Maybe they do. Like kids running to the top of a dirt pile and yelling “Look, look, Daddy!” – they are validated by being observed, we like to think. They can lie around the house all day by themselves, but when we can be with them, watching them lie around the house, then lying around the house is a noble pursuit, not just a way to pass the time ‘till we get home. So - do we really know what dogs want? We like to think this is one thing.

Ego wins . . .

2007-02-14T17:55:00.000-05:00

2/10/07
Ahhh . . . the more I think about it, that “Along the Road” entry in my blog is like B-minus high school writing. I should just stick to observing and skip the trying-to-make-a-political-point stuff. There I went, with my imitation Kurt Vonnegut irony and my faux-naïf cutesiness. Ego tempts me now to post my criticism on the blog, too.

Dog Hair

2007-02-08T11:31:00.000-05:00

2/8/07 11:17:27 AM
Windy and cold today. Haven’t been out except to walk to the mailbox.
Been sitting here at the counter emailing back and forth with Ellen upstairs and Tim in Cherry Hill. Tim started this string of emails with a link to a NY Times article about earthen floors, and he suggested using dog hair instead of horse hair or straw as a filler/binder in the floors. One thing led to another and to a string of Haiku (as these things often do) –

Mine:
Fortune awaits us -
Our Stella alone will floor
McMansions galore

Ellen’s:
Enterprise anew
Shining fur gleaming and black
With thanks to our pack

Tim’s:
Mud-matted dog hair
Dirt to dirt and dusty feet
Fits. Starts. Full circle.

The 'fits-starts-full circle' reference was to Tim’s tongue-in-cheek name for the construction company he and friends made up while working on a camp cabin. He’d mentioned it in his first post about the earthen floors. All in all, a frigid morning well spent, I’d say.

Devoted reader

2007-01-27T10:13:00.000-05:00

Saturday, January 27, 2007

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, was speaking to the Association of Republican Governors. I’m not sure of the context of the remark, but I do remember him saying that the average number of readers of a blog is one – the person who writes it.
Nevertheless, we think of the blog as the window to whatever it is within us that we consider worth sharing with the world. Nnnnnnnnnnnnnn. Rrrrrrrrrrrr. Spppt.
My (MY!) spell checker has underlined those three things.
Some of the things that we put in our journals are not intended to be shared. For one thing, some of the entries are crude or childish or otherwise not publish-worthy.
There is still one entry that I’ve wanted to put on the blog. An edited version will surely suffer from a lack of context, but it still is a capsule – for me – of one lots-of-coffee morning sitting here at the kitchen counter. I am telling me – my devoted reader – who I am. It was July 25, 2004. I had been writing about an idea for a story, thinking that I’d send it to Josh for an opinion. Not sure if I did or not. Here is how it ended up:

This is a great day. Very relaxing. I find that I can’t do a damn thing about time slipping along under my feet here, or under my butt – here on the stool. I’ve spent a little time (a lot?) looking at and working on the “Lunchbox” here. What do I think? I think I’m an artist by temperament and training, and go fuck yourself. I make my living as a builder, but today I made Peach pancakes for my wife and myself. I made a lot of coffee and drank it. I made two cups of it for my wife, too. So, there! I made that damn barn out there. Go fuck yourself.
Quit Word.

Along the road.

2007-01-21T13:01:00.000-05:00

Sunday, January 21, 2007
Yesterday as I was driving along Route 55 in south Jersey, I heard some numbers mentioned in a radio broadcast.
As I listened, I did some math.
If the 21,500 soldiers that George Bush is planning to send to Iraq were lined up alongside a highway they would make a line 12.21 miles long. At typical highway speed it would take a little over ten minutes to drive past them all. About as much time as it takes to hear Bob Dylan’s “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” or “Low Spark of High Heeled Boys” by Traffic, just to give two examples from the Itunes library here on my laptop. Or Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major or the Violin Concerto No. 5, also in A Major.
They’d be there, the soldiers, as you sped by. You might think, "Wow, that's a lot of guys". Even if they weren’t dressed in uniforms you’d have a pretty good clue as to what they were.

If the 3,250 soldiers who have died in that conflict were lined up alongside a highway they’d make a line a little over 4.3 miles long. Some of you might point out an apparent mistake in the math that I’ve done. I’ll explain: I have given the soldiers yet-to-go 3 feet of space to stand in. The soldiers who have been killed are given 7 feet of space. I think we would all agree that the dead soldiers should not be made to stand.

I may not be a reliable narrator. I was able, through incredibly good luck, to avoid serving in the Armed Forces during the Vietnam War, the war of my youth. I was in college – an incredibly lucky thing in itself, regardless of the political situation – and I also had a high number in the lottery that was being used as a means of selecting young men to fight the war. Most of the guys I knew back then were worried about being called up. We'd talk about it around the kitchen table at my mother's house. Vietnam didn’t look like a good place to be. I was very lucky. I guess George W. Bush was lucky, too.
At times I feel what I have to guess is survivor’s guilt. I get very emotional when I see the pictures of the young and not-so-young men and women who have been killed in Iraq.
Having not served, I sit here in the comfort of my warm kitchen and type this meditation on what 21,500 and 3,250 mean.
12.21 miles, 4.3 miles. Along the road.

Letting go

2006-12-16T08:49:00.000-05:00

Another old journal entry -
November 24, 2004 6:14 PM
Interesting end to the day – a nice piece on All Things Considered by a guy who built a log cabin in Maine with two friends back in the late sixties. He told it well, about the work and the friendship, about getting the materials and tools to a site without a road. The friends grew up, changed jobs, moved apart. One friend, the owner of the cabin, sent the writer a letter about how he planned to burn the cabin down – no one used it anymore except vagrants and he was afraid of someone getting hurt. He took pictures of the fire. The other friend, on hearing of the event, sent a Japanese poem that I remember as:

I see the moon so clearly
Now that my storehouse has burned.

This brought tears to my eyes. The whole thing – hold on but don’t be attached. I love you all.

Sailing 101

2006-12-02T19:20:00.000-05:00

Saturday, December 2, 2006
Hmm . . . this running aground is getting to be a theme. Did it again today, but in my defense it was out in the harbor where you’d have thought there was plenty of water. Well, some of us would have thought so. We had this great temperature swing over the last 24 hours – a front has been coming across the country dumping snow everywhere. Yesterday the temperature here was 72 or 75 degrees – a record for the date. Today it was in the low 50’s. The front also manifested itself in a strong W and NW wind. It was blowing about 15 this morning. I thought I could just hop out onto the harbor for about an hour of fast tacking. Wrong. It was just about 45 minutes to low tide when I left the dock, and that NW wind was blowing the tide out. I was out of the channel in the area in front of the Harbor Cove development (World’s Largest Houses). I felt the bottom start to catch the boat – I was sure the centerboard was up but I checked it anyway. No damage, the bottom being mostly mud out there. Black, black mud. Chuck called me on the cell phone. Jack Sayre had seen me run aground and called him. Small town, eh? He offered to come out for me if I needed it. I thanked him but said I’d try a few things first. I had the jib up but not sheeted in, so I tried trimming it to see if the extra pull would get me off. Nope. I hoisted the main to try to heel the boat over and still possibly sail off, but that didn’t work either. I called Chuck back and told him that I thought I’d just sit tight and wait for some water to come back in. It was just after dead low at that point. I took down the jib and main, heaved the anchor to windward and set about cleaning up the lines. The flogging had ripped the ring off the release piston of the snap shackle on the main halyard. I put a different shackle on the halyard and repaired the bronze snap shackle. If I’d had my cordless drill with me I would have gone ahead and installed the mounting blocks for the navigation lights. I tried to fold the jib in the V-berth but there wasn’t enough room and it was definitely too windy to try it on deck. Giving up on that, I dug out one of the New Yorkers I’d stashed on board and started to read a short story. Up against the bulkhead in the cockpit I was out of the wind and the sun felt great. It would have been nice to just doze there for a while, but that was just too far out of the program. I read and kept checking the tide indicator on the GPS. I jotted down the coordinates of my position so that I could tell if I started to pull the anchor. I had no way of knowing whether I’d get blown into shallower water if I pulled. The anchor held (probably assisted by the broad hull resting in the mud) and after a while I could feel a little rocking that told me there was more water under the boat. I had the motor running and put it in gear – forward motion! Yay! I pulled up the anchor and made a turn back toward Devil’s Reach. Thanks – another lesson learned, only 67,481 left in the Intro To Sailing.

The learning curve.

2006-10-06T19:16:00.000-04:00

Okay - I've been obsessing about sailing for just about a year now. The last time I owned a sailboat was more than 25 years ago. Last October a friend called with a tip about a boat being auctioned on Ebay - it was in Cape May and slated for destruction if not moved/sold. I got the boat and over the course of the year it has displaced just about everything that previously held my interest. Especially work. Learning about sailboats in general is now beginning to give way to learning about sailing, and I'm looking up the slope of a steep learning curve. I took the boat out single-handed a couple of weeks ago. It was just the second time out under sail. The first was with my friend Milt, who is my primary source for sailboat wisdom. My solo trip was under mainsail alone - not confident enough to try my hand at jib and main. It went well enough until the end. My docking technique continues to evolve, but that evening I ended up in the harbor when I found myself unable to stretch between a boat drifting backwards and the piling I was holding onto. Major Lesson 3A is about having your cell phone in your pocket when you fall into the harbor. (Hint: don't)
Ahh, the expensive lessons that pile up at the bottom of the learning curve. The fifth and most recent trip on the boat was when I took my sister, brother-in-law and nephew out for a couple of hours on the bay.

That sail was fun, though uneventful. Learned about the speed of the current that accompanies the falling tide (fast!) and also that 5 - 10 knots of wind is a bare minimum for the Westwind.
My friends Bob and Anna tell me "The wind and waves favor the skilled sailor" - I'm working on that 'skilled' part, my friends. Still got a ways to go.

Lettuce Zen

2006-09-07T22:16:00.001-04:00

If y'all can't forgive me for pulling these old bits out of my journal . . . well, too bad.

Sunday, May 29, 2005
I’m getting this ‘page-a-day’ calendar by email, a Zen stories calendar. This is today’s:

Three wandering monks, Seppo, Ganto and Kinzan, had lost their way while making a pilgrimage through the mountains. Then they spotted a green vegetable leaf floating down a stream, which meant that someone was living up the mountain. But they decided that anyone careless enough to lose one vegetable leaf was not worth meeting. Just then they saw a man with a long-handled hook racing along the stream, looking for his leaf.

“LETTUCE” ZEN

Splash!

2006-09-06T11:18:00.000-04:00

Westwind #72 hit the water on Monday. She floats! She crossed the harbor and settled in at her new home with help from my friends Milt and Chuck. She was here in our driveway for just over a month - next to old #13 who has been here for almost a year. Suddenly - because I can't see her from the kitchen window - it seems that we possess her less. I suppose that'll change once we've sailed her. There is still rigging to do, motor controls to organize, dozens of little things . . .

Spiritual GPS???

2006-08-24T23:02:00.000-04:00

Okay, my friends, another entry from the journal . . .

Thursday, November 11, 2004 7:34 AM
A little bit of the sleepless-in-the-middle-of-the-night last night, and the ensuing
‘will-I-panic’ thoughts. The time when I’m forced to consider what are the boundaries of the world. What keeps the cart on the track? Day to day, I have nothing but assurance that life is as it should be. It is just those times, usually in the middle of a semi-sleepless night, when I doubt the things that I usually accept. Kind of hard to describe, but the feeling is an irrational fear that none of the things that I know as true will be sufficient to keep me – hold me – in place. ‘Place’ meaning that you are in alignment with all of the connections, assumptions (etc.) that identify the world for you. Almost like you must hold a position in space – like a planet – for the alignment of things to have meaning. If you slip a little out of that alignment the interrelationship of everything is thrown off and then a doorknob is no different from a verb or a cousin or a Christmas morning. What is needed is a serious piece of machinery – a spiritual GPS.
I guess that is what I end up reaching for when I’m thinking of - ?
I think of Dad. I think that, in a way, I carve a little stone god of him – or at least whittle a little wooden god of him – and put it up on the windowsill as a totem or a good luck charm. In the most basic way, I am placing my trust in my idea of him. I am desperately asking him for guidance.
I’m one of those people who begins to gag when I listen to evangelical preachers (or whatever fundamentalist types) talk about that absolute faith in the words written down in the Bible. It all just seems so weak-minded. But in the middle of the night (wow, there’s a metaphor that’s hardly been used) sometimes the mind – the intellect - doesn’t seem like a strong enough - or absolute enough - post to hold onto.

I try my hand at technical writing . . .

2006-08-20T19:11:00.000-04:00

When our toaster oven died a few years ago I bought a simple sort of retro looking toaster from the supermarket. If “died” is too anthropomorphic a term, how about “ceased functioning"? Sorry. Anyway, the retro looking toaster works just fine although things like English muffins lay too far down in the slots to be easily retrieved when the toasting has been accomplished. My solution to this problem is to give the raising/lowering/toasting handle (hereinafter called the Master Toasting Lever) a rapid partial lowering immediately followed by a rapid raising against the upper handle stop. The momentum imparted to the toasted halves of the English muffin causes them to be carried up and out of the top of the toaster. A deft grab usually prevents one of the halves from falling back into the toaster. I have never managed to grab both halves on the fly at the same time. A repeat of the lowering and raising of the Master Toasting Lever is required to retrieve the remaining muffin half. A too-vigorous performance of this routine may result in the remaining muffin half becoming airborne, as was the case this morning. The second half landed on the counter and rolled – as disc-like objects are prone to do – behind a flowerpot next to the sink. It would make this little story almost worthwhile if the muffin had come to rest in a pool of water by the sink. Wow, wouldn’t that have been ironic, after all that work? When I located it behind the flowerpot this was what I feared, but no! Happy Ending – the muffin was dry and now it has been buttered, slathered with Boysenberry preserves and eaten. Thanks for letting me tell you that.

Small Pleasures

2006-08-19T09:01:00.000-04:00

A group of short consecutive entries in my journal:

12/27/05
My father was a giant of a man, well over five feet tall.

January 8, 2006
Yah – life is good. I’m sitting at the counter in the kitchen, morning light streaming in through the South-east facing windows and door.

1/20/06
I had a dream that I was being hanged. By the neck. Until dead.
In the dream I was thinking, “You’re about to find out what it is like to die”

How I spent my summer fixation

2006-08-18T23:38:00.000-04:00

Uh-oh, another Ebay boat. An Eboat. I bought a sailboat on Ebay last Fall. It's what we call a 'project' boat. I've been working on it, pulling parts off, building new parts, getting missing parts - sometimes finding them on Ebay. While searching for parts a couple of weeks ago I came across another boat for sale. Same mfgr., same model and - surprise, surprise - in better shape.
This one was 400 miles away, though, instead of just around the corner like Eboat #1. A highly qualified friend made the trip with me to fetch the boat. A solid day's labor - no food breaks - got it onto the trailer. Eight hours later (1:30 AM) we were back at the bottom end of New Jersey and called it a day (!!!).

Eboats 1 & 2 are Paceship Westwind sloops designed by Ted Hood. #1 is a 1967 model, hull #13. Eboat #2 pictured here is hull #72, year unknown at this point.

how did i get here?

2006-08-18T12:07:00.000-04:00

Got an email from an old friend - Bob Leming - a couple of weeks ago. Just got around to checking out the things he'd linked to in the email, one of which was his new blog.
Right here is where I tell you that "concatenation" is one of my favorite words.
I read the recent posts on Bob's page (The Reckon Crew) and was trying to leave a comment on one of his poems - I was prompted for a username and password - turns out I didn't have those things, which is sort of how I ended up here. I assume that I can now post my comments. And more.
See you around.