Non Sequitur's Soap Box

'Green Tunnel' = Hiker Porn! The Appalachian Trail in Five Minutes!

2011-03-12T11:15:00.006-05:00

Spotted this very zen video on a friend's facebook posting. No, it's not actually adult-themed aside from simply having some random adults who are doing nothing but hiking. As an avid hiker, I dream of doing the Appalachian Trail some day but if I ever do I figure I will have to train rigorously for at least 6 months prior and I think I'd like to go with a friend or two.

Green Tunnel from Kevin Gallagher on Vimeo.

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2011-02-21T11:07:00.004-05:00

Metal cutout sign with a silhouette of a dancing deer, advertising a place which sells deerskins, located up over the ridgeline from where I live. I've always been a bit puzzled by advertisements for animal products which portray that animal as being happy or downright joyful, as if it is glad that you are purchasing something harvested from their carcass. I don't happen to be a vegetarian or PETA activist or anything like that; it's just that this sort of thing seems a bit inappropriate. Still, that doesn't detract from how cool the sign is, was mostly impressed with how clean the lines are and wonder how the maker managed to do this through a quarter inch of plate steel as if cutting paper with an exacto knife; must have been a very fine metal routing bit, a steady hand and a lot of attention to detail with various metal files.

Pepper and one of his bunny toys. "Baybeh, I think I love you. I know we are different species and all, but this feels so right!"

Vanessa Mae - Happy Valley (aka Reunification Overture)

2011-02-09T10:53:00.005-05:00

I am somewhat ambivalent about modern classical arrangements but happen to have discovered the work of Vanessa Mae as of recently. I love her exceptional skill on the violin. Following is one of my favorite pieces.

Foxfire: A Surreal Experience!

2011-02-04T09:39:00.006-05:00

I CAN'T BELIEVE I FORGOT TO POST ABOUT THIS!

I was on a night-time run with my dog on the backroads near my house in early August of 2010 and saw an eerie, greyish-bluish-green glow coming from a spot about 50 yards into the woods. Knowing that area to be too densely wooded and too sloped for camping I was a little weirded out but figured that someone had drunkenly wandered into the woods and maybe passed out with a flashlight or cellphone turned on and I was concerned (people stop on that road frequently to drink or dump trash unfortunately). My dog usually reacts to the presence of another creature or person and he did not even register any sort of acknowledgement of whatever was causing the light. I called toward the light to see if anyone was there, the woods remained stone-silent. At this point the every hair on my body began to stand on end and my pulse started racing. This scared me a lot, having never encountered it before, but my curiousity was just a little bit stronger than my fear. I turned on my flashlight and with a death-grip on my dog's collar started slowly walking into the woods. When I got to the area where I figured the light had been coming from I saw nothing at all, not even a hint of a glow. With my brain and heart both amped up from the fear I did not know what to think. I really didn't want to but figured the best way to get another glimpse of the glow was to douse the flashlight. Upon covering the flashlight with my hand I was both stunned and amazed by what sat directly six feet in front of me: my first ever bioluminescent fungus discovery. I had no idea that this sort of thing occurred in environments other than tropical & temperate zones. Having studied and marveled at it for a few minutes I then ran home as fast as my legs could carry me to grab my camera.

Upon further study I determined that the species of the fungus is probably the immature form of Panellus Stipticus just barely starting to culture in the moist, freshly exposed wood of this fallen birch tree, having not formed true caps yet. It is also one of the species often referred to colloquially as 'Foxfire' but I have yet to confirm this.

Following is a progression of pictures alternating normal flash exposures with the same shots taken in the dark. The only thing different from the pictures was that the glow was more of a pale bluish green and it saturated the wood more thoroughly than in the pictures, the camera apparently only picked up the green spectrum. These are all 15-second exposures with a 2.4 aperture setting, 1600 ISO.

The other amazing thing about this is the very narrow margin of conditions which it requires to actually glow. Temperatures need to be about in the high-30s - high 40s with the humidity, type of wood, level of degradation of the wood as well as the time of year being just right. I feel very fortunate to have seen this.

Better Health

2011-02-02T17:35:00.005-05:00

Several years ago one of my former landlords who had recently turned 30 was ruminating about how when one approaches that age in life they start noticing all sorts of aches & pains which weren't there before and weight gain starts creeping in. Having passed that age milestone myself more recently I have to say that he wasn't lying. My pants have been getting tighter again, my digestion has been getting a little problematic and I am a bit more achey. Whether this was due to age or simply the fact that I've been more sedentary than usual this winter is a moot point. It was still enough to make me reevaluate my lifestyle and amp up my activity level.

Having started taking probiotics and probiotic foods such as kefir and upping my intake of yogurt, it is a small lifestyle change which has netted good results. One interesting thing I've read about probiotics such as the cultures in these foods is that they are microscopic competitive excluders and they help to keep the beneficial flora/bacterial cultures balanced in the intestinal tract to enhance digestion as well as keeping yeast-overgrowth in check. Somewhat random side fact: when I worked as a LNA, one of the facilities I was working at used to give patients generous portions of yogurt while they were on strong antibiotics which tended to kill off their digestive flora and cause nasty, yeasty rashes all over as well as diarrhea and in many cases an accompanying clostridium difficile infection. Without getting into further blunt descriptives I'll tell you that the yogurt worked for most folks 90% of the time.

Another habit I've adopted is reducing my intake of coffee and drinking LOTS of tea. I use a 5-gallon soup pot to brew large batches of home-made iced tea, usually consisting of around a 50:50 - 70:30 mix of green tea:black/herbal/oolong tea, sometimes with bergamot & fresh mint thrown in because I have an insane amount of it growing along the stream running by my home. I usually cut it with about a third fruit juice to improve the flavor.

Winters often take a lot out of me and I tend to get really low & depressed during this season. Many folks have told me that I likely suffer from 'Seasonal Affective Disorder' and they may be right. On the good advice of a friend I started taking a vitamin D3 supplement during the winter months and what an incredible difference that has made! I still get a bit low once in a while but it is far less dramatic than in past winters and I am usually able to snap out of it pretty quickly with a short hike or excursion in the woods.

Speaking of which, lately I've also been forcing myself to get out and do more things outdoors. My friend Mark G. and I have been going out on lots of snowshoeing & cross-country skiing excursions in the hills and mountains in my area. Both activities are a great full-body workout and the natural world around here has been stunningly picturesque with fresh-fallen snow covering the trees, which sort of gives the sense that mother nature is napping until springtime, occasionally opening one eye to see what is going on but promptly falling asleep again. When Mark isn't around to go out on one of our crazy hikes I fall back into my usual habit of going out with Pepper & looking for sets of snowshoe or X-C ski tracks to see if the maker of them knows any good trails or sights which we've not yet been made aware of. This is how I have found some of my best hiking trails.

Another trick I've used to stay in better shape this year: when harvesting firewood last Spring I intentionally left half of the log chunks unsplit to ensure that I would stay physically active via the lugging & chopping in wintertime. Have you ever heard that old colloquialism stating that ,"Wood heats you twice, keeps you warm when you are chopping it and again when you feed it to the stove."? It's not bullshit.

With these lifestyle changes I feel considerably better than I did months ago, am in better shape than I was all of last year and the digestion issues went away. Despite numerous friends and coworkers being taken out for days at a time with various contagious illnesses over the last few months I've only gotten the sniffles a couple times. It would also seem that my lactose-intolerance has almost completely disappeared, ostensibly due to the cultures in the kefir and yogurt staying resident in my system. I'm more alert, energetic, less caffeine-dependent and my pants fit normally again. Big blessings are lovely but the small ones are what currently puts spice in my life and keeps me in good spirits.

Photobomb!

2011-01-31T08:06:00.003-05:00

At work, bet you'll never guess which one I am! ;-b

The Highest Tide

2011-01-06T11:37:00.005-05:00

My sister gave me this novel by Jim Lynch a few months ago and I hadn't gotten around to cracking the cover until yesterday. After staying up until the wee hours of the morning reading it, as of today I am 9/10ths of the way through; was glued to it from the first chapter. The way that Miles' (main character) head works and how he views life and interacts with his surroundings... it felt like I was reading an erstwhile account of myself placed in a different living situation. I won't claim to be as brilliant as the main character is portrayed but I was doing pretty much all the same stuff he was into in the book at that age: running around in woods/nature alone most of the time, observing everything, reading about everything I observed in books (later in life on the internet) & accidentally memorizing volumes of information which is not of general interest to most people. I won't give away any further details but (as my sister pointed out) I will also tell you that this tale could also be read as something of a modern-day allegory.

Amazon.com Review

"Miles O'Malley, 13-year-old insomniac, naturalist, worshipper of Rachel Carson, and dweller on the mud flats of Skookumchuck Bay, at the South end of Puget Sound near Olympia, Washington, is the irresistible center of The Highest Tide. He says, "I learned early on that if you tell people what you see at low tide they'll think you're exaggerating or lying when you're actually just explaining strange and wonderful things as clearly as you can" and "People usually take decades to sort out their view of the universe, if they bother to sort at all. I did my sorting during one freakish summer in which I was ambushed by science, fame and suggestions of the divine."

And what a summer he has! Miles, who is licensed to collect marine specimens for money, slips into his kayak late one night when he can't sleep and begins his exploratory rounds. What he sees is not the usual collectibles. He hears a deep exhale, a sound of release, and comes eye to eye with a giant squid. But, there are no giant squid in Puget Sound or anywhere around it--and when they are seen by humans, they are always dead. His discovery is confirmed by Professor Kramer, a local biologist and Miles's friend. Television cameras arrive, everyone wants to interview this small-for-his-age but very smart boy and the events of the summer begin to unfold.

Jim Lynch has an ability to tell a tale that glows on every page. He knows everything that lives in or near the water by name and habit. This knowledge and his sense of wonder at the natural world brings the reader very close to his story, both in its setting and its characters. One early morning Miles says, "...the water was so clear I could see coon-stripe shrimp ... and the bottomless bed of white clam shells ... Those shells, as unique and timeless as bones, helped me realize that we all die young, that in the life of the earth, we are houseflies, here for one flash of light." Such insights are perfectly natural coming from Miles, whose interests are not garden-variety. He has a mad crush on the mixed-up 18-year-old girl next door, a randy age-mate named Phelps, and a deep friendship with Florence, the elderly woman his mother refers to as "a crazy witch." Florence is a psychic of sorts and her powers come into play when she predicts an extremely high tide on a certain day.

All of these relationships and what is happening between Miles's parents are part of this event-filled, life-changing summer. Early on, Miles says off the top of his head, when asked by a TV reporter why a deep-sea creature has found its way to his front yard, "Maybe the earth is trying to tell us something." What the earth and the sea and the people in Miles's life are all trying to tell him is what he susses out in the days that follow--before that high tide.

This absolutely luminous first novel has all the earmarks of a classic. The Highest Tide is destined to be read, re-read, and to remain on bookshelves for the enjoyment of generations to come. --Valerie Ryan"

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2010-12-01T08:28:00.004-05:00

In early November, my buddy Mark G. proposed that we head up to Ogunquit, Maine for the weekend. I hadn't seen the ocean for about a half decade so I figured it would be cool. We had an awesome weekend, having visited the Philbrick-Cricenti Bog in New London, NH on the way up and The Fells (aka John Hay Estate) in Sunapee on the way back, neither of which I had been to for a while and both of which Mark had never been to before. We both enjoyed the entire trip. This is a picture of Pepper and I at the bog, courtesy of Mark.

Update on Life

2010-10-31T20:23:00.007-04:00

There isn't much of anything terribly interesting happening in my life right now. I recently turned 31, having noticed that the adages about time passing more quickly as you get older and how birthdays just don't hold a lot of significance anymore when you get a lot of them under your belt, woohoo I guess. Not that I mind getting older. It has it's gifts as well as it's down-side. The three decades I've spent on this earth have helped me grow, mellowed me out and given me a deeper sense of what really matters. I just hope that I can maintain the grace to keep on growing throughout my life and not be some crusty old bastard who thinks he knows everything and is immune to new ideas in his old age.

I love the Forester but am still acclimating to the way it drives. Handles well like the Impreza but the transmission is geared differently and there isn't as much play in the gears. The Impreza's gearing was spaced a pretty evenly. Every upshift ensured that it would bring the tachometer down 500 rpm. The Forester seems to have random/odd spacing. 1st to 2nd brings it down 500, 2nd to 3rd brings it down 700, 3rd to 4th brings it down 800, 4th to 5th brings it down 1,000.

Life has tossed me another lesson about learning when it is appropriate to keep trying and when one's effort is wasted and it would be better to pack it in and move on to more fruitful pursuits. In short, I've given up on the idea of fixing my house up and reconditioning it. It just needs way too much major work to be worth it and I am sick of living in a hovel which is badly designed and highly inefficient, always having something breaking down. My intention at this point is to live in it and keep it functioning as a home for a couple years or so while I amass money and resources, then I will completely rebuild it from the ground up, including the pouring of a proper floating slab for it to rest on. I am thankful for what I have currently but I don't perceive that this place will meet my needs indefinitely in it's current state. I have a rough draft for a new home design in my head but have yet to put it down on paper. Maybe I'll post it when I get it worked out.

Regardless of having given up on the house refurbishing I don't intend to sell or give up my location as one really can't ask for a better place: on a dead-end road yet close to the main road, babbling brooks on the property, babbling creek nearby, facing south, lots of space, huge conservation easement surrounding my property, central to 3 major towns without being close enough for urban life to disrupt the rural microcosm, clean ground water, decent neighbors, abundant wildlife and mature fruit trees. One really can't complain about having such treasures.

Pneu Karr

2010-10-26T00:00:00.006-04:00

Well, I said I was going to do it and I did it. I loved 'Matilda' dearly, we certainly had some good times together and went through a lot in our short engagement but I changed and she was no longer able to meet my needs. I was desiring a vehicle with more cargo space and one which was capable of towing. Almost every expert and non-expert told me that Imprezas are NOT meant to tow anything and that I'd be best off getting a beater truck on the side. Two vehicles would have been impractical for me, so I traded Matilda in for this '07 Forester, henceforth to be called "The Smurfmobile" as a sibling to my sister's "Frogmobile" (also a Forester, green in case you didn't guess). We are in the process of attempting to convert the rest of our family over to the religion of Subarism. I'll be taking her in to get the tow hitch and wiring harness for trailer lights put on next week.

As one of my friends pointed out, this vehicle will do nothing to counter the running joke that I'm a butch dyke trapped in a gay guy's body.

Religious Proselytizer

2010-10-10T08:34:00.009-04:00

This post is a little raw, it is not happy or fun. Hell of a way to kick-start the blog again after a long hiatus.

I was working my usual shift yesterday and a customer who was a representative of a local church came in. This particular church buys a hundred goldfish every year to use in some sort of object lesson which relates to the Bible & Christianity from what I gathered, I didn't ask for details. The man was quite friendly and pleasant as we made small-talk while I bagged up his fish. Then, obviously with purpose, he railroaded the conversation onto things he has done in the way of missionary work with children and my blood started to cool rapidly. I listened quietly, maintaining a friendly but somewhat deferential composure yet still felt that old, familiar pang of discomfort which comes with dealing with folks who are always attempting to inject their religious sensibilities into conversations and I knew what question was coming and knew that I had to be truthful.

As predicted, he suddenly asked ,"Are you a Christian?" Without pause I answered him ,"Used to be." A slightly confused look came over his face and after a brief delay he asked me why I don't consider myself to be so any longer and I told him that a majority of the people I've known over the years who called themselves followers of Christ were some of the biggest hypocrites I've ever known and that Christianity was responsible for me having to leave my home upon coming out of the closet, as well as being alienated from most of my family for many years, this in addition to a lot of religion-based strife in my family and life. He did not address this point but went on to ask me what church I went to when I was younger. I told him that my family had attended a mix of Baptist & Evangelical churches. Then he launched into what seemed to be a well-rehearsed diatribe about how if I accepted Jesus Christ into my heart that none of that mattered, that I was still saved, blah blah blah... My blood went from freezing cold to boiling in a split second, I began to shake a little and realized that I needed to end this interaction before I said something which could get me in trouble so I cut across him a bit tersely and told him that I did not wish to continue this conversation and asked if he needed anything else today. He stopped, looking a little surprised, thanked me for my service and the extras I always throw in for customers and left my department.

Could I have been more polite? Probably, and I felt badly that I did not handle this interaction better. Could I have engaged him in a deeper conversation about all of the hows & whys of my story? Maybe, but he really didn't seem to notice (or was just choosing to ignore) the elephant in the room: Christian hypocrisy and the destruction it brings into people's lives as well as the religion as a whole. The modern, Evangelical Christian collective, no matter how bright and progressive some of them attempt to portray themselves as, have a dark side and lots of skeletons in it's closet. It bothers me deeply because I have personally suffered a lot because of people like this, who choose to abandon critical thinking and instead follow a set script without regard for the inconveniences & contradictions which exist within that script as well as the fact that if they want to understand weighty matters pertinent to our times, they need to first listen and fully understand these matters and adapt their message to modern times. This is why I choose not to wear the label of 'Christian' any more. I have no desire to be identified with this group.

Do I hate Christians? No, I don't. While I don't have an abundance of faith and I do not take the Bible literally, could probably be considered more of an agnostic; I love the example and story of Jesus put forth in the Bible and I agree with a fair amount of what the modern incarnation of Christianity claims to stand for. I just have issues with those who claim to follow him and his example but much of the time act nothing like him; those who are in love with the violence and vindictive anger in the Old Testament as well as the image of angry Jesus kicking the money-changers out of the temple and waging war on everyone whom he disagrees with while completely ignoring that most accounts of his life put him forth as primarily a man of peace and deep wisdom who fought off his opponents gently with words, truth and logic. Are there self-titled 'Christians' out there who really do act like this? Of course, but sadly they are an increasingly silent minority from what I've seen.

As collected and calm as I may pretend to be at times, this run-in with an outspoken evangelical shook my foundations and caused me to realize that I am still very angry. Angry with what has happened to me, angry that I will probably never be fully accepted as I am by my parents, angry that if I again find someone to share my life with that my parents will always regard him as an unwelcome interloper and outsider, angry that my Mom and Dad are sweet, loving, incredibly giving individuals who, in their need for significance and fulfillment, are being blinded and used by a political religious movement which is not held accountable and has very little regard for the damage it is doing to some of the families influenced by them. Most of all I am angry and sad that I had so much innocence and happiness before dogma corrupted my life. Did I make my own share of mistakes in the process? Damn straight, I take responsibility for that. Still, part of moving on from this means that I just need to stop wondering how it might have been had I not been brought up in a conservative, religious household. It had it's upsides too and the 'what ifs' and 'might have beens' are not pertinent except when using the image of them to direct one's self where to go and how to improve things so that others may benefit.

All of that said, I am one of the fortunate ones. My upbringing could have been worse. At least my siblings and I were loved and my parents truly cared about what happened in our lives. Despite mistakes (all parents make them), they at least cared and tried. My family has become closer again over the years and I can say in truth that none of us are the people whom we once were. We've learned where each others' boundaries are and for the most part we do not push them. At least in my case I was allowed to finish trade school before I had to leave my home. There are a lot of folks out there, many of them young or underage who are kicked out of their homes and their entire families' lives completely after it is discovered that they are homosexual. Even worse, some of them are packed up and sent off to 'Ex-gay' programs where they are subjected to all manner of confusion and pseudoscientific 'treatment' which ultimately causes more harm than good.

This experience simply brought to mind that as skilled as I've become at dancing around these issues, I can't any more. I have to roll up my sleeves and dive in. The only way I can progress further in this struggle is to engage myself in theological/religious matters again. I needed the vacation I was on, no doubt, but vacations need to end sooner or later. My head has been restless and needs to get back to doing The Work it was intended to do.

The Divine Quest For A Better Walrus-Flavored Panopticon...

2010-02-09T00:44:00.003-05:00

...is apropos of nothing but I thought it amusing and had a compulsive need to use it as the title of this post. There is nothing terribly deep to share right now, just a general life update.

Winter has been wearing on my nerves but it won't be around for much longer. I noticed that my metabolism is slowing down a bit and my 32-waist jeans were getting tight. So I resurrected my exercise regimen: lifting weights and a lot of late-night hikes with Pepper. My jeans fit again, might even go down an inch or two within a month, already feeling better, more positive and more energetic but whenever I am pushing myself hard and gaining muscle/strength, I start coming down with random insomnia. Have lost count of the amount of times I find myself bumbling around the house at 3 a.m. busy but not accomplishing much. Maybe it is the blood-flow to the brain? My head is flooded with ideas for my home/property in the coming warm-weather months.

I'll be using part of my tax return to purchase a sawmill conversion kit for my chainsaw so that I can put some of the large yellow pines on my property to use as lumber for fixing up my home. This will be the year when I wade right into the thick of hardcore demolition on the interior and remodeling. The most tedious part will be in jacking up the back half of it, slowly, carefully so as not to damage the building or have it come apart at the joints where the additions are attached, I'll be needing to purchase several more large bottle jacks to serve in this effort. Maybe easier said than done. While tearing crumbling, old drywall off the back wall of the living room a few months ago I found out that this place actually used to be two separate cabins which had the living room built as a connecting part between the two, having found remnants of exterior tar shingles underneath the drywall. Good Lord, this place was built by crazy people (no, really... there is back-story told by locals to support this). Aside from that I am harvesting as much firewood as possible right now so that I don't have to mess around with it during summer, when I plan on being busy with gardening and home-building concerns.

After several years of self-imposed isolation I'm gradually slipping back into the dating pool. As rough as the last relationship was, it made me stronger, more secure in who I am and I feel like I learned definitively what is and is not right for my life. The last few years have helped me to clear my head and develop a better direction for my life. I've done a lot of self-examination and cut out a lot of what was not good for me or those around me. For those of you not in the know about such things, it's a bit difficult for a gay guy like me to meet others of the same ilk in an area like this but regardless, there seem to be a few seemingly nice, available gents and mutual interest from some of them. We'll see where this leads. Whichever way I go, I'm taking it slow and not diving into anything too quick.

Mowr Pheauxteaxs

2010-01-15T11:15:00.006-05:00

"Lucy" was an African Grey parrot who was left with me by my late, former partner. She was an awesome bird but I am just not a bird person, never wanted one. So I held on to her until I found a really good home to send her to. I miss her quirky 'animalality' that was close to the personality of a loud, jolly, attention-seeking three-year old but I don't miss the constant noise and high-maintenance attention that intelligent critters like these require.

Cocoa was a "tweener" (sized half-way between mini & standard) dachshund. I miss him.

I touched up a photo for a friend a while back. If I recall correctly, it is the only surviving photo she owns of her parents together in the same picture. I don't own photoshop or any other high-end graphics-editing tools but am well pleased with the result after extensive cutting, pasting & blending. It isn't perfect but dang good considering what I had to work with:Before: full scan

After

This was taken at my workplace. I'm not sure how I feel about doing this to a dog, ok if it doesn't bother or harm the dog I suppose. The guy who owned it said that the animal slept through the entire process. I'll admit the guy has talent and a steady hand with clippers. If this were attempted on Pepper, he'd likely freak out.

Two New Inductions...

2010-01-06T09:00:00.005-05:00

into the Sacred Sisterhood of Sacrosanct Cisterns. Don't ask me why I am apparently obsessed with them, I don't even know but have been neglecting to mention new memberships, found these two on another hike in the foothills a few months ago. I spoke to the farmer who maintains the land for the land-owner (also the person who built the enclosure for this one as I found out) and he is hoping to convince the land-owner to have enclosures built for all of the cisterns on the land. I'm not sure how I feel about enclosing all of them. I guess I understand if the intention is to use them all again some day or prevent falling/drowning hazards. Still, they are kind of pretty and almost naturalized to their surroundings when in a state of disrepair.

This one is about 3' X 6'. A few scant remains of it's former enclosure lie around it. It lays hidden in the woods about a hundred yards up the hill from a couple of the others mentioned previously.

This is the biggest one I've ever seen, roughly 5' X 9' and at least eight feet deep. I noticed that several unfortunate critters had fallen into it and drowned so, being careful not to touch them. I fished them out with a tree branch and buried them. Stuck a couple branches in at odd angles so that future clumsy critters would be able to climb back out. I also brought a few of my pond goldfish up on a subsequent hike and put them in there to help control mosquitos.

While I was busy mucking around with the big cistern, my dog disappeared for a few minutes and came back soaked from head to toe. I was curious where he found water deep enough to swim so I followed his tracks backwards to this beautiful woodland bog-pond just up the hill from the cistern. The place is very serene and unspoiled, I think it will be one of my favorite new places to take friends when we are out hiking or on a picnic.

"Maidenhair" Fern grows abundantly in biotopes like this: filtered sunlight, lots of sphagnum moss & still, acidic water with a very thick layer of settled organic matter just below the surface. This is one of those places where if you tread on the mossy areas, the entire ground ripples and one must be careful not to damage the plant life or fall through the moss layer.

Blog Update

2010-01-03T05:48:00.016-05:00

Woke up at 4:05 am, brain started churning & chattering with ideas for the coming year, wouldn't let me settle down enough to get back to sleep. So here I am editing my blog format in the wee hours of the morning, organizing the links in the column to the right, with Pepper sighing and huffing occasionally behind me because he doesn't like it when I pay more attention to the computer than to him. In the interest of keeping this post from becoming another rambling, self-indulgent & introspective jumble, it is time to toss up more pictures.

This is what has taken up a large amount of my time between rain storms and other projects. Down-side: lots of hard work felling, chunking, splitting, hauling & stacking. Up-side: boy did it ever keep me in shape, it was free and saves me a load of money without needing to switch to Geico!

I finally got around to reconditioning, painting & putting new seals in the old Scandia 100 wood stove. I am very proud of how it turned out. Interesting story (at least to me): I found this stove for free on the side of the road almost a decade ago while riding with my parents in their van. It appeared to be a rusty, pitted old chunk of scrap-metal, with the reliefs barely visible under all the corrosion and my folks thought I was being ridiculous because I lived in an apartment with oil heat at the time and would never foreseeably need a wood stove. Regardless, they humored me and my Dad helped me to load it into the van. It moved everywhere with me and went into storage for a while. When I bought the cottage it seemed like it would be far more efficient than the cheaply-made "smoke-dragon" that came with the place. Upon further research, this model of stove is a bit hard to come by because it helped with the demise of a Taiwanese subsidiary of the Franklin Stove Company. Apparently this subsidiary was shut down due to a large lawsuit brought by Jøtul because of trademark/design infringements. This model is a direct knock-off of a Jø tul "Black Bear" 118. Hey, if you are going to copy something, may as well copy the best, right? It is relatively efficient, burning up to six hours with a full load of hardwood and a healthy bed of coals still there after 10 hours if the damper is set correctly. By coincidence, it was also manufactured in the year of my birth.

Lovely reliefs of pastoral/woodland scenes & critters.

I am very proud of how it turned out, being my first stove-overhaul project ever.

Now it heats my whole house quite comfortably and I do 90% of my cooking on it during the colder months. It saves me several thousand dollars a year on propane.

But OH! and OW! Wood stoves are not all wine, roses and romantic firelight. They bite hard when you aren't careful with them! This is what happens when one is attempting to adjust some of the internal buffer plates before checking to see if it is cooled enough to work on with bare hands & arms.

Thanks to my friend Murph for snapping this pic. Because I burn a fair amount of pine, I have to do this 2-3 times a year. *This tempts me to put on a top hat and black coat tails & sing in a Cockney accent: "Prevent a house fire, schtep in toim, prevent a house fire, schtep in toim! Never need a reason, never need a roim, prevent a house fire schtep in toim!" I dare not dance on this particular roof though. (5 bonus points if you get the reference)

While we are on the subject of singing... on the TENTH day of Christmas (or Thanksgiving?) my true love gave to me, in addition to a bunch of livestock & indentured servants performing various acts like milking, leaping, swimming and perching in fruit trees, TEN TURKEYS PECKING, among the blueberry bushes out in my side yard. They have become so commonplace around here, sometimes as little as a couple or as many as five dozen. They are attracted to the bags of shavings I've been spreading around under the trees as mulch. The shavings come from the animal cages at work so they are loaded with various seeds and food pellets.

A fuzzy, uninvited guest who ended up in my bathroom. It was a little surprising to get out of the shower, glancing once and thinking it was just a large moth, then again and realizing what it really was. He made a hell of a high-pitched racket when I trapped him in a coffee can and turned him loose in a tree outside.

Another uninvited house-guest who somehow got inside over the summer. My cats had him (or her?) trapped behind the wood rack so I caught him and hustled him outdoors too. My sister, and now I, have started calling them "Dreaded Angii" ("Dreaded Angus" as the singular form). She says because they remind her of angry little Scottish men when they are scolding you from up in the trees.

And while we're on the subject, this was yet ANOTHER guest who almost became lunch for my cats. I'm not sure if it's a mole, vole or shrew.

Cornographic picture, avert your eyes! Naked kernels like this must be censored and re-husked to prevent the young ones from getting warped minds and becoming mass murderers! (Disambiguated reference to Ren & Stimpy, can anybody pinpoint the joke reference?) Tweaked humor aside, I don't know if it's a really common thing, but most of the dogs I've met seem to love corn. This corn popped up on it's own from the shavings I mulched a burm with in my side yard. It's cow-corn and not really desirable for human consumption so I gave it to him. He has a ball stripping the husks and tossing the ears up in the air, after he's had his fun he settles down and eats it.

Asian Praying Mantis hanging out on the windowsill on the front of the bird-room at work.

In my neighbor's tree: made me do a double-take, thinking it was real at first.

An incredibly effective home-brew directional wifi antenna which I made out of a coaxial connector, a length of coaxial cable, a tuna can, a small copper wire antenna, a discarded metal primestar dish I found behind the wood shed when I bought the place, and picture-hanging wire. I am very proud of this project too. Connected to the router, it gives a very strong signal no matter where I am in my yard, connected to my wireless card via a home-made pig-tail adapter, it can pick up networks from a quarter mile down the road.

This is the trailer which came with the property (I didn't live in this one, it was used primarily for storage).

The town had a bug up their arse about it and ordered me to have it removed, so some good friends of mine threw a "Trailer-Tear-Down Party". Here is one pic of the high-jinks which ensued. I'll post a video of the actual act of tipping it over at some point.

So classy! After a long day of demolition, a couple of beers around the camp-fire are in order. The toilet came from the trailer.

Unpacking & Examining MMIX

2010-01-02T22:29:00.006-05:00

Hmm... it went by more quickly than I expected. It was a year of changes and a year of extremes. It found me in the deepest anger I've felt in a long time, yet also the most reassurance and support that I've had in a long time. My method of dealing with said anger wasn't as graceful as it could have been but far more graceful than the person who I was five years ago would've handled it. This was the year that my faith in humanity truly began to gain momentum. There were many acts of Grace and friendship that I had the privilege of witnessing, not least of which was found in a number of friends who came through for me and helped me when I needed it the most. Matt, Murph, Brian, Sean, Meghan... I feel indebted to you for helping me as much as you did. I hope I can return the favor some day.

This year also took a couple of friends away from me due to drugs. Sad? Yes, but I've learned that it is pointless to beat my head against the wall with people who, so absorbed in their own pain, can't see what it is doing to them or those who care about them and are unwilling to get the professional help they need. Part of me feels a pang of regret for having walked away when they were at their worst, but it is also the part of me which wants to fix everyone and ultimately cripples me. I can't be doing that, it will only burn me out and leave me with little resources for repairing my own mind, body and Spirit when necessary. I've watched many past friends descend into squalor and ruin due to drugs and I just don't have it in me anymore to sit around and watch people commit slow suicide. It hurts too much. "But for the Grace of God", that could have been me at one time. Optimistically, I can say that some of those friends who fell into this dangerous cycle found a measure of strength and Grace, having crawled back out of the pit. Guys/Girls, you know who you are and you have no idea how proud I am of you. It takes a lot of personal strength and painful reduction of ego to seek help and bring yourself back to those who care. If the aforementioned two wake up and get help, I'll be there for them as always.

Though two are gone, I've also made friends with someone whom I'd never have envisioned being friends with and as such, have been reminded to humble myself and stop judging a book by it's cover. This was a person whom I thought lived by a code of survival and preemptive or reactionary punitive action, yet possesses tremendous depth, wisdom and peace. I've learned a lot from him, bettered myself because of him and hope that we can remain friends.

I once read a quote in a book of Quaker Faith & Practice which appropriately describes human history like a mural, when standing up close examining one particular, small section, one may appreciate and learn from it, but it is very difficult to tell what it's purpose is and how it relates to the rest of the picture. We gain much more insight when we back up and examine the whole picture, the farther away it gets from us, the more we see how it all fits together; so it is in human history and so it is in one's own life experience.

How do these things relate to my own life? The various hardships and tragedies which took me out for a few years are now further away. I see how they fit together and what good things they lead to and I am at peace with the outcome. I feel whole, calm again. Confused? This previous post explains it. I've forgiven Tim (called Tom in the previous post for the sake of respect because he was still alive then), still love and fondly remember the good side of him. I am at the point where I don't think about him most of the day, every day; maybe just once a week or less, and it is usually the good memories. Maybe I've mentioned it before and it sounds crazy, but he pops up now and then. I actually see him with my own eyes, always when I least expect it and am not thinking about him. He never says anything but he's always looking at me and smiling, sometimes laughing joyfully. The last time I saw him grinning at me, then disappearing into the trees on an off-trail hike... another time in a fish tank (of all the odd places, he did have a good sense of humor). Will he ever pop up again? Will he say something to me? It is neither here nor there. If it happens it will be interesting, but I am now beyond any need for closure. Yeah, I know for a fact that he's dead and I don't know if these fleeting images are the product of some self-preservationist, subconscious process meant to soothe me or if it's an actual spiritual encounter, whatever it is I can say I am at peace with him. He has rejoined with The Source and has moved on to a better existence, whatever that may be.

While I've lost the need for New Year's Resolutions as a crutch or a way of putting off what I should be doing right now... I still state my intentions for the sake of tradition:

1. Keep trying to be nicer and more understanding with people, having come a long way in this respect since last year there is still a long way to go.

2. Become more involved: with family, with Meeting,with my friends, with life in general. It feels like it is my time to do so after having a decade-long phase of being aloof and rambling around. I've been walking around inside my head far too much. While it leads to a lot of creative and ingenious ideas/projects, it also causes me to be asocial, neurotic and shifts my focus onto distractions instead of essentials for personal growth.

A man I know and respect once stated that "We begin life on a long arc... as a bundle of Spirit with potential and a path in front of us and our existence fades in the same way, with us as a vital bundle of Spirit, with more to give than when we arrived." It feels like my life is approaching the apex of this arc in the next few years. I no longer fear the rest of the journey or the act of dying, these things all happen as part of the big picture. There will be hardships & heartbreak, yet also joy, renewal and love. None of us knows for certain when our time will be up, so do what we can with what we have and live in a State of Grace, eh?

Words

2009-12-08T11:37:00.004-05:00

"Once words lose anchor in the sensual world, they drift inevitably toward the world of lies. It's not the fault of words; it's how they come between us and things. The word abstract means "to draw away"; our abstractions draw us away from the world. Then we forget their sensual origins. For every word once grew out of the five senses and everyday life. If you brush off the ignorant dirt that covers it, a word is a potato -- with deep roots in the soil, and even eyes that grow underground."
-Rodger Kamenetz , A History of Last Night's Dream

???

2009-07-22T10:23:00.003-04:00

Followed via Reddit.com: I really can't explain this and am not responsible for psychological damage incurred by viewing it.

Kareem Salama - A Land Called Paradise

2009-07-18T09:34:00.002-04:00

Touching mood-lifter of the day. (followed via a friend's Facebook posting)

Patriotic Explosions (of Asian heritage)!

2009-07-05T09:45:00.009-04:00

Claremont, NH put on a decent display of fireworks for Independence Day. These pictures are my first foray into time-lapse/time-exposure photography. I'd say it was a success, eh?
Camera settings: ISO 80, aperture 2.4 with varying 11-15 second exposure times. Matt was kind enough to put on a nice little BBQ, then friends, friends of friends and all their young ones sat around watching the display.

Grand Finale

Flower Garden & Fruited Pampas Grass

Dandelions! :-)

Pondiferousness

2009-07-02T06:13:00.005-04:00

Ever since I was a preteen one of my dreams has been to have my own natural, earth-bottom pond. It does not help that I've worked in a profession which involves instructing people on how to properly build garden ponds. Ergo, after all these years of living vicariously through other folks' pond projects, one of the selling points of my property was the fact that it had a stream which flows almost year-round through a deep ditch. Stream + ditch = potential pond! All work & no play makes me a dull boy. Like many others I need artistic projects to balance out the drudgery of the practical work which I do to the house & yard, so a pond was a perfect outlet.

Getting right into the project (with thanks to Matt for taking the picture). This is probably the least flattering pic I will ever dare to post here.

The current view from my front kitchen window.

Fresh dam that would do any beaver proud. There was already a small pond about 1/4 the size of this one. I expanded it dramatically by backfilling in the ditch with tightly shovel-compressed layers of rock & brick rubble, heavy clay mud and logs/branches. I created the spillway out of old slate roofing shingles I had laying around and will presently be planting the top and front of it with gracefully arching swamp grasses, irises, wild blueberries and other water-loving marginal plants. Once established, the root systems will penetrate deeply into the structure and help to hold it together after the branches & logs have rotted away within.

It is approximately 700-900 gallons.

There is a saying regarding frogs in professions involving the pond industry. "If you build it, they will come." (I think that phrase was originally used in the movie Field of Dreams.) This fellow is one of a dozen who are frequently found relaxing and watching for bugs from the edge of the water.

The frogs are extremely tame, often allowing people to approach to within two feet of them. While building their pond, I laid down a chimney brick I was using as a line guide for the spillway and when I turned around thirty seconds later this little guy was perched on it.

Random Wildflowers

2009-07-01T10:56:00.002-04:00

Northeast side of Mt. Ascutney

Wild Columbine blossom

Wild Geranium

Wild Dianthus (Sweet William)

And For My 200th Blog Post:

2009-06-29T08:55:00.008-04:00

More pictures, what else would I be posting?

I recently took my parents canoeing on Long Pond in Lempster, NH. I bought the canoe last year almost brand new, very cheap. It is quite stable and tracks nicely.

The Lempster Wind Farm as seen from on the water (click the picture for more detail on the turbines). This is something of a pilot project which many other areas in the state are watching to gauge the success. I hope it catches on!

Wild blueberry blossom

Mountain Laurel Bloom

A rather odd-looking fungus growing on a tree on one of the islands in the middle of Long Pond

Out on a hike on the country roads in my neighborhood: my friend Matt on the right, his youngest son in the red jacket, my youngest child in the black fur coat

A lovely cow-meadow right above my house

The road above my house (where I had the night-time moose encounter in the previous post).

One of the ecological treasures in my area is the presence of some old-growth trees which are well beyond a century old, probably saplings when the area was first cleared for farm land. This sugar maple is one of them. We have dubbed it the "Whomping Willow" because of the resemblance to the tree in the Harry Potter movie.

A porcupine den in an old-growth poplar tree down in a ravine in the middle of the woods.

Eastern Phoebe (probably female) sitting on a clutch of eggs

Possibly a timely picture considering recent events, I took this a week before he died. It was in a free book pile that someone brought in at my workplace. I thought it made for an unusual children's book.

Sacred Sisterhood of Sacrosanct Cisterns

2009-06-24T23:54:00.006-04:00

...dare ya to say that ten times fast.

The area where I live was primarily farmland a century ago and most of the open fields have since been reclaimed by the trees again. Vestiges of the farms still remain, such as these four cisterns I found hidden away in the woods.

This one has obviously seen better days. I imagine the crack was from years of freeze/thaw cycles, now there is a constant flow of water coming out of the crack, thus a convenient watering hole for the dog.

The fresh-cut boards on this almost-finished cistern enclosure would indicate it to be a new construction, I'm guessing that it gravity-feeds the farm house and barn located about a tenth of a mile down the hill from it. For those who are unfamiliar with cisterns, if they are for human use and drinking water, they need to have enclosures like this to keep bugs, animals, leaves and other potential contaminants out of them.

"Doofer Dawg"

2009-06-07T11:56:00.002-04:00

Clowning around with my canine son.

Rant on Stereotyping

2009-06-05T10:51:00.010-04:00

While perusing Digg today, I happened to follow a link to this video.

While it was campy and I found it mildly amusing, it was also offensive in it's stereotyping. I realize that in a broader social context, things like this may ultimately help the LGBTQ community in much the same way that inroads in the entertainment industry (despite some of the shameful exploitation and stereotyping) gave the black community more public exposure and helped to start a long-running dialogue with the rest of what was (and in some ways still is) a very privilege-based, racist society.

What bothered me most about this video I think is that I and many others are the target of this sort of stereotyping and misunderstanding. It brought back an incident which happened last year where I was introduced to a woman via a friend and the first thing which came out of her mouth was "Oh, so **** mentioned that you are gay, this is awesome, I love gay friends!" I shrugged this off at first because I have encountered it many times before and despite the fact that I know it is based on a stereotype, it is at least well-intentioned. Soon after that awkward introduction she proposed the idea of going out shopping, with me as her fashion critique and then hitting the clubs. This was a bit too much to take and I explained to her in an indelicate manner that I was not a walking stereotype.... I generally dislike the world of fashion, am not interested in pop-culture, don't like clubs and I am not terribly good at dancing. Further, I explained to her that, "I am nobody's TOKEN GAY FRIEND!"

Just because someone wants a guy in their life who has the potential to give them support & social interaction without the possibility for sexual entreaties complicating things, does not mean that anybody who happens to be gay will be a good fit. I for one am a direct, plain-spoken, grumpy bastard much of the time and I generally have no taste for partaking in most of the things which gay stereotypes represent. Stereotypes of most forms do exist, but they are only a small, prominent social bookmark within a much wider community which is far more reserved and eclectic. Further, I wholly support their right to be as they are and live as they see fit but for Heaven's sake, don't assume that just because I have an innate attraction to the same gender that I enjoy shopping for $900 clothing ensembles, have an inborn talent for applying makeup, and spend my free time drinking cocktails and popping pills to remove myself from reality while bringing my body to a state of near-collapse in a large, dark, people-filled room pulsing with laser lights and pounding house music. Does this sound like I am stereotyping my own sisters & brothers within the LBGTQ community? Hey, I've observed that the typification exists. I tried the clubbing/partying scene for a short time, seen what people turned into when they got caught in it for a long time and discovered that it wasn't conducive to a fulfilling, meaningful life.

If people like me, I want it to be because I am good with my hands and can build cool stuff out of discarded junk. I want it to be because I am filled with good advice and maintain a belief in the power of being truthful, because I can coax landscapes, broken lives and broken objects back into productivity; this coupled with an encyclopedic knowledge of nature and how things work. If people dislike me, I want it to be because I am eccentric, socially awkward and have a short fuse sometimes, because I am unfriendly and vicious when life gets to be too much to handle. I just want to be regarded as a person who has all the same strengths and flaws as anybody else in my particular situation. I detest the idea of somebody liking or disliking me just because I am gay.

Yeah, I feel badly for not being more sensitive and patient with that woman who assumed a connection/relationship where there wasn't one, but at least now she probably dislikes me for the right reasons.

Crazy Wildlife Experience

2009-05-26T23:59:00.006-04:00

(Image courtesy of Wikipedia)

So it's midnight and I've just returned from one of the most surreal experiences I've had yet this year and feel compelled to write this down while the experience is still fresh.

Pepper and I went on one of our night-time bike-walks on the back roads. Being on a bike is the only way I can wear him out without overexertion on my part. It's great fun. I ride, he follows off-leash.

We were passing an old dirt road that runs by on the hill just above my property and I saw the glow from a pair of headlights up the road. Usually a stopped car on that road indicates somebody up to no good (we've had a lot of deer poaching and garbage dumping around here) or conceivably a person in distress. We went up to investigate what was going on and as I rounded the bend I saw what appeared to be a horse loping around in the headlights. Oh, right... someone recapturing a horse that jumped it's fence, happens all the time around here. The dog slipped away from me and I went after him. As we got closer I noticed that the horse was extremely tall and it's legs were far too long to be a horse's.

Despite me yelling for him to come back, Pepper went to greet the VERY LARGE female moose directly ahead of us. She did not appreciate his company and began pursuing him back toward me. I got off my bike, attempting to nestle myself up into the trees out of her way. Pepper plowed right into my bike, knocking off the headlight. The moose brushed past me and kept up the pursuit, they rounded the bend to the right and were gone. The driver eased her vehicle up beside me to inquire if I was OK while I was picking up my bike and attempting to reattach the headlight. It was a rather awkward introduction,"Yes, I'm fine thank-you. Hello I'm ****, your neighbor down on.... That was my dog and it would appear that he is currently learning a valuable lesson if he doesn't get himself killed..... pardon me, nice meeting you but I have to go see if I can find him." Just as I said that they came into view at the intersection again, this time going the other way... she was still chasing him, her nose only a couple feet from his hind-end.

I caught up with Pepper a half mile down the road, thoroughly winded and with no moose in sight. We are home now and I am thankful that he didn't get injured and equally thankful that I don't have a heart condition. Currently kicking myself for not having the camera on me. In the brief conversation I had with the driver, she indicated that the moose didn't seem bothered by cars so she had followed her a fair distance in the car from her place a couple miles down the road. This would be the first close-encounter I've ever had with one. For those of you unfamiliar with moose, they are very large. I stand almost six feet tall and her shoulders were about even with the top of my head.

Now I am wondering what it would be like if there was a version of the show "Jackass" for pets. My dog would be a shoe-in given the amount of stupid-crazy situations he gets himself into.

Pepper = Smiley Doggie! :)

2009-05-22T07:39:00.007-04:00

Just more shamelessly cute pictures of my four-legged son.

"Pardon me sir, could I trouble you for a belly-rub?"

Putting Down Roots

2009-04-30T12:20:00.009-04:00

It has been a little while since I last posted here. My world has been busy. Springtime has brought mud season... many days of standing outside in knee-high "sh*t-kicker" boots .... rooting around with a shovel, trying to muck out ditches which have long since been filled in with silt; working a large chainsaw to fell more trees and make next year's firewood while clearing land for gardening (and hopefully making it less likely that said trees will fall on my house). Did I mention that the power lines to my house no longer consist of separate leads with some sections of bare copper threating to start a fire if the 3" gap between them were ever bridged? Many thanks to one of my roommates (a former lineman) who helped to make this possible.

Some of my friends haven't heard from me for months. I hope they don't think I've forgotten about them. May they understand that I am busy building something for myself and others. It is where I find the most peace.

Some days I stumble around the yard, dragging brush and thinking about the past as I pile it up, piling up the past and putting it away again in the back of my mind. I go for long walks in the woods with my dog, trying to draw a line from there to here. Heh, it's been a wild ride. I didn't even realize it, but I'm standing taller and putting down roots. In the middle of rough times, a long-time dream happened simply by yielding to the gentler path and learning how to put the Ego back in His cage (Ok, so he still reaches out from between the bars and takes swipes at others, I'm not perfect).

My late ex doesn't pop into my head much anymore. He is still there, sometimes smiling and laughing (those are my favorite memories of him), sometimes I see him being angry, hurtful and vindictive. Sometimes I see myself being angry, hurtful and vindictive. Sometimes when I am wandering off the trail and my mind is blank, I look up and see him and/or other people from my past, standing there and looking happy, sometimes showing me where to go. I feel like I could reach out and touch them, but they disappear as fast as they came. The human mind is a strange thing. I wish I understood mine more.

These experiences all came from somewhere, went somewhere, are currently going somewhere. Worrying excessively about the future and replaying the dark parts of the past is counterproductive though it seems like human nature to do so. Still trying to keep the past in perspective, examine it, learn from it, put it away and let it build a solid foundation for what is to come. Easier said than done sometimes.

Have I become calmer and wiser over the years? One likes to think so but is not yet fully convinced. I am now almost 30 and feel like it has been only a week since I was a teenager. Should I start planning to affect a mid-life crisis in a few more years so people don't think I am abnormal? No, I think it is sufficient to keep them convinced that I sit on a bit of controlled madness.

Gun Attack!!!???

2009-04-13T10:59:00.002-04:00

On Easter Sunday Pepper and I were driving back home after visiting my parents for Easter dinner. I was slowing down & coming to a stop at a light on a four-lane section of the road in downtown Claremont. The tan-colored pickup truck ahead of me was pitching to the left next to the other stopped vehicle at the light. It had a bunch of veteran-themed bumper stickers on it. The driver put his hand out the window, seeming to brandish something that he was pointing at the folks in the front seat of the darkly-colored jeep next to him. He was holding it and pointing it like a gun... I felt my face flush and get tingly... my heart felt like it jumped up behind my larynx. A rapid-fire series of thoughts went screaming through my head:

"HOLY CRAP!!! This is rural New England, this type of stuff does not happen here, especially not in broad daylight!!!!"

"I am about to witness a murder, memorize the make & model of the vehicle along with the plate number!!!"

"I should ram him, it might throw off his shot!" *heart pounding out of my chest*...

As I revved up the engine and got ready to let off the clutch, his hand turned slightly and I saw that it was not, in fact, a gun, but an eight-inch-long package of rolled candy which he was passing to the person on the passenger side of the vehicle next to him. He was holding it pinched between his thumb-joint and the knuckle of his index finger with the candy sitting parallel with his wrist and his hand clenched, thus looking like the barrel of a handgun.

When the light turned green, the truck pulled away and I realized that I was still staring at the back of it as it got to the next set of lights, with white-knuckled hands on the shifter and the wheel, my left foot quivering on the clutch. The person in the car in back of me began to honk his horn angrily because I was holding up traffic. I let off the clutch slowly and pulled ahead as my heart-rate began to slow down again.

It is extremely rare that I ever do something impulsive let alone an action with the potential to be life-altering. That driver will never know that he came within a split second of a damaged truck bed along with a probable case of whiplash and/or a broken arm that day. Even though I was erring with the welfare of others in mind, it would have been a very awkward apology as well as an unbelievable explanation to the police. It was one of those moments which felt like an hour compressed into a few seconds.

Moral of the story: it is generally a bad idea to pass things from vehicle to vehicle while in traffic, especially objects which can be mistaken for weapons. Oh yeah, and look before you leap.

Three cheers for the path not taken!

Chinese Bluegrass

2009-04-05T07:21:00.004-04:00

Picked up off BoingBoing: Crazy-awesome fusion tune integrating traditional asian instruments into the bluegrass genre!

House Of Escher

2009-04-02T10:56:00.013-04:00

Yay! I'm FINALLY posting pictures of my country shack... only a year after promising to do so. It has been dubbed "The House Of Escher" because the varying angles of walls, floors & skewed frames/casings inside might loosely resemble a M.C. Escher painting. Keep in mind that the original structure (built in 1939) is the small section that you see the mudroom/entrance tacked onto on the front (on the left in the picture below), it is also the only part on a proper foundation. All the other rooms sit on a combination of piers, posts, blocks and a slab. Every single room is an add-on and every room is a different age. The house has settled at strange angles and the back half of it sits about a half-foot lower than the front half. Some of the additions were put on after it settled. You all think I'm nuts for taking this place on yet? If not, you will need no further convincing after I post pictures of the interior... I just need to edit out all the dust, grime, vermin, bat-skyte-crazy repairs/"upgrades" and general threats to public health... which I expect will leave a perfect void in place of the original photographs.

East side, the small pine tree has since been removed, and the weird collapsing wood-shelter/whatever-it-is attached on the far right is in the process of being torn off. Note the 3 separate chimneys: I was told that every room used to be heated by a separate woodstove. These will eventually be torn out and replaced with triple-wall metal stovepipe.

South side: again, this section on the front was the original structure, a tiny cabin, now it serves as the kitchen area.

West side.

North Side

Creative engineering/architectural marvel of the 21st century. A toolshed... with a long roof addition to serve as a woodshed... and the sun-porch which was apparently cut off from a mobile home... sitting on the side of it. I've since torn most of the tattered plastic off and enclosed the front of wood-storage area.

Late 70s/early 80s(?) model of mobile home which came with the property. This will be deconstructed at some point within the next year or two and many of the materials will be re-used to upgrade the main cottage as well as the tool shed.

Northwest side

Front yard facing south, dirt road in the background

Main yard facing southeast from the house. The planter is an old hot-water tank which was cut open and welded to angle-iron legs. Some of my friends think it is either hilarious or ugly. I am keeping it because I love to see low-brow junk recycled into something useful.

Main yard facing east from the house. The brick fireplace on the left has since been torn out and replaced with a stone fire pit.

Back part of the main yard facing north. The picnic table and everything you see in these photos came with the place. The random well-tile-turned-flower planter has since been emptied and put on the well: an engineering conquest I am proud of because I did all of it myself using a rope, breaker-bar lever and a come-along winch to move it fifty yards onto the well (and it weighs at least as much as three of me).

"Not so bad" you might be thinking? It is way shabbier and mind-bending up close. These photos were taken in the first week of moving in last year. Much has changed since then: Many trees cut down, a lot of equipment moved around... piles of pallets everywhere... but a lot of the junk has also been consolidated or eliminated. A work in progress for AT LEAST the next half decade I think.

I always have plumbing problems...

2009-03-01T10:52:00.006-05:00

...on Sunday mornings when I am getting ready to head to Meeting; currently waiting for one of my roommates to wake up so he can help me troubleshoot an inexplicably dead well pump. So much for my plans for the rest of the morning :( *Sigh* This too shall pass.

In other news, due to the fact that I now have broadband internet access at home. A video of "Boscoe," previously mentioned in this post has been YouTubified. See below for something big & hairy.

2 More Blessings To Count!

2009-02-12T10:20:00.005-05:00

Despite the fact that I live way out in the sticks, high-speed internet is now available thanks to one of my roommates calling up and schmoozing the local cable-company folks. (Have I stated how envious I am of people who have the ability to politely finagle things out of others in such a way that all parties are satisfied with the arrangement!?) This was the same cable company who gave me a pretty firm "no" several times (due to the fact that my house is so far from the main tap). After Matt spoke to them, they came and strung almost a thousand feet of RJ11 cable from the trunk line out on the main road and regardless of the distance, there is excellent signal strength. I don't know how he convinced them, but I am extremely grateful for it.

So that huge ice storm we had back in early January caused ice to build up on the electrical lines and rip them right out of the house. The linemen came by and fixed them but the electric company sent a letter a couple weeks later telling me that they fixed it this time so that I would not be inconvenienced, but they would not fix it again because the lines were unsafe and I needed to update the entrance. This is due to the fact that it is the extremely outdated separate-lead arrangement: 2 separate wires, bare in some spots, no ground wire, strung over numerous poles and weaving through 400 feet of large white pines (another random disconnect waiting to happen once of of those trees decides to fall or drop a large branch, as large white pines are known to do frequently). In the process of having the cable strung, my roommate also looked into getting the electrical lines re-strung to my house and as it turns out, the electric company has been wanting to do this for years and will be covering the cost of the entire arrangement all the way from the road to the meter base! I thought I was going to have to pay over a thousand bucks to buy a pole and have it set in my yard! Now I don't have to kiss my tax return goodbye!

Quotey quote quote...

2009-02-10T01:14:00.006-05:00

I remember this quote vaguely from a junior high literature class, today I spotted it on a coffee mug of all places.

"Greatness is not in where we stand,
but in what direction we are moving.
We must set sail sometimes with the wind
and sometimes against it-but set sail we must,
and not drift, nor lie at anchor."

-Oliver Wendell Holmes

Incidentally (and totally coincidentally), I've had pets named Oliver and Wendell... it appears I have a name in place for the next one.

Leisure Time

2009-02-01T22:57:00.003-05:00

After Meeting today the 'Marmadoofus' and I took a long, exploratory cross-country ski trip on the ridgeline above my house. I really wish my camera was in working order right now because the scenery was incredible and I would like to have shared it. It was the first day of leisure that I have taken for a long time.

It was my guess that the main trail would at least be packed down by snowmobile traffic, but no. It was unbroken since the last eighteen inches of snow had fallen, except for a lone set of snowshoe tracks zigzagging around and disappearing into the woods. The snow was packed down enough under the tracks to let the skis slide easily but one had to stay alert enough to keep the skis in their place because the packed trail was so narrow (try doing back country skiing some time in deep, ungroomed powder and you will know exactly why it is better to have a packed trail). It looked like the person who made my trip easier and more interesting knew the woods well and had a preference for the older-style snowshoes, which were a little over three feet long and made of stretched rawhide on a wood frame. They also apparently used ski poles and stopped frequently to admire the scenery. It is amazing what you can learn about someone when you observe their footprints.

I am glad I decided to follow the snowshoe prints because they led me onto some beautiful woodland side trails which I never knew existed before due to their entrances being obscured by trees. This will come in handy when I am hiking in warm weather again!

The wood stove kept the shack cozy & warm and it nicely warmed the bowl of soup I left on it for my arrival back home. After heating up my insides we visited the roomies over in the trailer, watched a bit of the Super Bowl (only to discover that I still have no taste for competitive sports viewing), I only stayed for the first minute of the halftime show because Bruce Springstein seemed to be drunk or on something and I don't really like his music anyway. After soaking in the tub for an hour I find myself sleepily writing this post out of a slight pang of guilt because I don't write much any more and some of my friends in distant places only keep up with my doings on this blog. This slice of New England winter was for you guys. Jen and Jeanette, you are evil for moving to Hawaii and I am insanely jealous :-P.

I gotta go grab a few armloads of wood from the shed and then catch up on some sleep debt. I love the skiing but here's hoping March and mud season will be here soon.

Bartholomew Prewitt

2009-01-08T22:37:00.014-05:00

That name has nothing to do with anything, besides the fact that it popped into my head the other day while I was taking a shower and it won't leave. I like it because it is a good, strong name with a New England flavor to it. If I were a writer it would be used as the name of a main character in a story, probably a protagonist. Do other people think this way or is it just me? Is it the result of damage or creativity? Maybe both? One compensating for the other perhaps? (insert raucous laughter here) Adaptability IS one of the coolest aspects of our species I think.

Continuing with random thoughts:

I spent part of my day splitting 2' - 2.5' diameter log chunks. I got well over half a cord out of two hours of work. My body is reminding me that it was hard work, but I feel satisfied that it was worth it.

Ice dams are a royal b*tch when they won't let go of the edge of a metal roof.

I can't wait until gardening season.

"I think I may have C.D.O. It's like O.C.D. except the letters are in alphabetical order, which is precisely the way they should be!" - spotted in Reader's Digest

Septic systems are evil sometimes.

Wild turkeys are hilarious when a group of 2 dozen of them attempts to roost in a tree which can't support their collective weight.

Pepper has moved past the spoiled, strong-willed two-year-old phase of his puppyhood and is now in the mischievous four-year-old stage. He also gave me a black eye and almost broke my nose the other day. Hey now, don't go thinking that it's a violently dysfunctional parent/child relationship. While playing with him and bending down to pick up one of his toys he bounced upward and the top of his head hit me hard right on the bridge of my nose.

What kind of insane twit would put the support beams for a wood-shed directly on the ground instead of on cement blocks? Maybe the same insane twit who would plumb the vent from a propane-fired hot water heater into the same chimney as a wood stove. The amazing part is that it passed inspection before sale. Was the inspector blind or bribed?

Where have all the flowers gone? Long time passing. Oh yeah, it's winter (but I still believe it possible that there may have been a secret plot funded by the folk music movement. They convinced young girls to pick them, every one. When will they ever learn? This also begs the question "Where have all the young men gone?") Sorry for the painfully sigh-inducing pun. At least the days are slowly getting longer again.

Speaking of flowers, I will be seeing them again in a few months, having planted scads of crocii in my lawn and in the woods surrounding my property. For the non-plant savvy, they are among the first perennials of spring to poke up and bloom, often braving still- frozen ground and bursting through thinning areas of snow to bloom in defiance of the harsh conditions which keep most other plants dormant until at least a month later. I like them because they are plants of civil disobedience, thumbing their nose at the cold and having a peacefully riotous party to let Old Man Winter know that he is losing his grip on yet another seasonal cycle. They do it year after year, multiplying every season and never losing their spunk or their will to persevere through unfriendly conditions. In essence, they are the first revolutionaries to pave the way for the more stately and sensitive plants who will dominate the landscape shortly thereafter.

Knotty pine is dang hard to split, even when frozen.

Yo-yo Ma, Edgar Meyer and Mark O'Connor had incredible synergy producing the fusion bluegrass/classical album entitled Appalachia Waltz. Even if you like one genre and not the other, you will probably still like this album. At least give it a listen and buy it if it inspires you as much as it inspires me. I can't stop listening to it.

If my neighbors doubted my sanity before, all doubt was removed a few weeks ago when I scaled a 45-foot spruce tree in my yard to cut the top off as a free Christmas tree for friends (it is a tree which would have had the top pruned anyway to keep it from shading the front of my house, I really like my sunlight.) At least a couple of them were observing me from their windows, seemingly with looks of bewilderment. I think they might view me as a harmless crazy. I can live with that. If any of you ever doubted my sanity before, I think I have removed all doubt in the above paragraphs. Country life is turning me into a nutter while winter has me holed up in a ramshackle cottage ;-). No complaints, I wouldn't have it any other way!

P.S. Yes, I know that "crocii" is not the correct vernacular for the plural form of crocus, I just like the word.

Insane Lumberjack & His Faithful Sidekick

2008-12-27T00:23:00.006-05:00

One of the great gifts my parents gave me for Christmas was a special type of log-splitting axe called a Chopper One. I gotta say, it works magnificently... splitting log chunks in one stroke which would typically take a half dozen strokes with a sledgehammer & wedge. I also happened to have brought my chainsaw with me to cut up some tree limbs which had fallen in my parents' yard due to the recent ice storm. My parents are always getting gag gifts to go with the practical ones so they bought me a plaid flannel shirt and faux-fur-lined woodsman's hat to complete the ensemble.

Both pictures courtesy of my father.

I bet he could tow at least a small sleigh.

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas...

2008-12-02T09:07:00.004-05:00

...and feel a heck of a lot like winter. There have been several dustings of snow here, amounting to only a couple inches. There is nothing quite like waking up on a Sunday morning, having your day planned in a relaxed fashion... only to go take a shower and receive no water... finding that the intake pipe from the well has frozen because of defective heat tape. My friend Matt P. was incredibly helpful, he threw on his rubber boots and waded around in 8 inches of mud, water & ice... helping me to strip the old insulation off the pipe and put new heat tape & insulation onto it. We had the water working again by the time it was dark. Oh yeah, in latest news... I've taken on a couple of sublets (friends of mine, including Matt P. who is seemingly handy in all things home-repair related), it was another unexpected occurence that happened on short notice and due to dire circumstances in their lives, but it has been a blessing for all of us; Pepper included because he now gets more socialization and play time when I am not home. Speaking of which, he sends Season's Greetings to all of you!

Pic credit: My Dad

What A Difference A Door Makes....

2008-10-23T09:24:00.003-04:00

....when you insulate it... that is... an unused & ill-fitting steel outside door within a crooked frame in one's bedroom. After stapling a couple layers of cardboard & plastic over the entire outer frame I no longer feel a 15-degree difference when walking from the center room into the bedroom and the ever-present chilly breeze blowing across my face when trying to sleep at night... is not there to wake me up anymore. Interestingly enough I slept better last night. Coincidence? :-p

I still feel a bit overwhelmed by the length of the to-do list of things to fix on this old cottage/cabin, but it is slowly becoming more manageable as I triage it in my head and plug away at the most urgent tasks. It also helps that I have an old friend who is extremely handy with all things home-repair-related moving in as my sublet.

Critterpalooza!

2008-10-16T14:59:00.011-04:00

For lack of thoughtful or insightful things to post right now, I will try to pacify you with a roundup of various animal pictures, some of which have been on my camera since late winter.

"Fat Cat" has an appropriately descriptive name. He belongs to some of my friends who pitch a tent in my yard occasionally and they often bring him with them when visiting.

I told my friend Jen the other day that I promised myself I wouldn't be one of those people who talks about my dog way too much... and that promise has been shattered. I feel like the stereotypical proud father who bores everyone to tears with endless pictures and conversations about his new-born child.

Pepper hiked all the way up Mount Mansfield with me in Northern VT recently.

The endearing, maudlin "beggar boy" look refined to an art

This is what happens when we get too curious about porcupines!

Schmoozing with my friend Jeanette at work

Jen's two dogs: Kindred & Addie

"Stella", a white umbrella cockatoo

Spending time with "Kayden" (scarlet macaw) at work. He used to routinely draw blood on me but after establishing that he would not get his way by biting (and by repeatedly plying him with treats & toys) I have become one of his buddies.

A most unusual hand-raised baby sun conure who actually likes to sleep on his back. Countless times we had customers dutifully reporting to us that they thought one of our birds was dead. We eventually posted a sign to let everyone know that this behavior was normal for this particular bird. Side note: in the wild, this behavior would most likely cause this little guy to become another statistic to explain natural selection.

A jade goby who has taken on the habit of lighthouse-perching, might this be the piscine version of pole-sitting?

"Duchess" is a very beautiful and spoiled bearded dragon who visits us frequently when her family comes in to buy food for her.

My friend Josh has recently raised a breeding pair of angelfish, the two white dashes in the lower left corner are some of their babies.

Leaf Turtle: she is the most athletic turtle I've ever seen, frequently climbing in and out from among the rocks and scaling the side of her enclosure. I had to put extra weight on top of her cage because she kept escaping.

A "blue lobster" (actually just a selectively-bred species of crayfish) right after molting with his old shell visible directly above him. We leave the shells in the tank because they eat them and recycle the minerals.

I am normally not crazy about rabbits, but this little fella is admittedly cute and the most docile bunny I've ever met.

He will even fall asleep in your lap!

A young fox who hangs out behind my workplace

Chipmunk at my birdfeeder

Blogging Frustration!

2008-10-04T23:55:00.005-04:00

I love writing.

I like the connection that it gives from me to you, the reader.

I enjoy the fact that this medium is far more cohesive than the words which come out of my mouth because I can proofread it and ruminate over it several times before posting.

But life keeps me from doing it on a regular basis.... I promise to post pictures of this and that, I promise to write more in-depth about this and that.... and end up completely forgetting or procrastinating. I send thoughts and initiatives out into the open and they wander around aimlessly, waiting for me to rope them and ride them to somewhere, but then the the dog has to go out. The phone line is so polluted with static that my internet connection randomly drops and sometimes cannot reconnect for the better part of an hour (I will be overjoyed when high-speed wireless internet is available in rural areas like mine). There are countless things around the house and property which need fixing and/or cleaning. Friends visit from out of town. Loved ones call in need of my abilities. I have to work full time and keep the bills paid while keeping my highly-energetic puppy entertained & exercised so he feels loved and will not fall prey to the mental afflictions which highly social animals are subject to when they are neglected.

I NEED TO BRING ALL IT INTO BALANCE!!! I don't mind the responsibility of it all. It feels great to be using more of myself than ever before, it helps me to grow; but there has NEVER been a time in my life when there was so much to do! It is critical that I learn how to juggle all this more gracefully so that I do not burn out.

My sincere thanks goes out to all those who keep up with my life here and I apologize that I can't visit with you more often. All good things in time. I will figure it out ;-)

(Almost) Unexpected Arrival!

2008-08-21T00:38:00.010-04:00

It would seem that I waste no time... only a few months ago I was getting married to a mortgage and now...

...my two daughters...

...HAVE A BIG LITTLE BROTHER!!! Dang it, I knew I should have been using birth control!!! But seriously, meet the new addition to my household: "Pepper" is a seven-month-old, sixty pound lab/German shepherd/great dane mix who came into my life on unexpectedly short notice.

I had been wanting a large dog for a long time and now that I've bought a house my lifestyle no longer involves potentially inhospitable, transient living situations. Still, I was not even planning on looking for a dog until next year. The circumstances around his arrival are strangely coincidental: a couple months ago I saved a big indoor dog crate from the dumpster (it was being thrown away only because it was a bit rusty) and just last week I purchased a large, outdoor chain-link kennel in preparation for the dog I was planning to look for next year (planning ahead is my strong suit). I have maintained for the last few years that I really want a German shepherd or a mixed-breed with German shepherd in it. The day after purchasing the kennel (keep in mind that this purchase and the dog crate were not known to anyone in my family) I received a call from my mother telling me that a friend had a beautiful german shepherd mix puppy that needed a new home because his current family was moving into an apartment which does not allow dogs. I was apprehensive at first but decided that this was a sign and I should at least visit the dog to evaluate him and consider whether or not I am truly ready for such a commitment. He turned out to have a great personality and a good foundation of household manners/training already in place so I decided to take him.

He is a bit of an awkward adolescent puppy who has more growing to do, even considering his generous size at seven months old. Because of his youth and rapidly increasing size he comes off as being a bit dopey and clumsy and he is in need of some polishing on his training, especially in areas of spacial awareness, but he seems to have been raised in a good home with caring owners who gave him a lot of the basics he needed to be a good family pet. He is seemingly intelligent, great with children, gets along with other animals, knows a few commands, seems to have no aggression issues (even with food & treats) and is housebroken.

Again life smiles upon me! More proof that unexpected events are not all bad!

Pidgin

2008-08-01T07:49:00.006-04:00

It is not often that I write about a piece of software on my blog, but I just felt I should drop a mention of Pidgin (for Windows, there are also versions for Linux and BSD)! For those who aren't familiar with Pidgin or it's defunct predecessor, GAIM. They are instant messaging clients which are capable of connecting to most of the major instant-messaging networks at once. I have one of the latest releases of Pidgin running on my home computer and it currently connects to instant messaging services by Yahoo, AOL, MSN, MySpace and Google all at the same time, and unlike GAIM it seems to have no issue with additional functions such as file transfer. Pidgin is free, open-source, has no advertisements or spyware, and it condenses all your instant-messaging accounts into one program with a clean interface. It isn't without it's minor bugs but I have been very pleased with it so far. If you are running a Windows machine I would highly encourage you to try it as an efficient alternative to having multiple, clunky, adware/spyware-infected instant messaging clients running at the same time.

Revisiting A Bully

2008-07-15T00:33:00.008-04:00

While rereading and ruminating about this post, I recalled a wonderful, healing experience that happened a couple months ago.

I was working my usual shift and a well-kept man about my age came in and circulated around in my department... eyeballing me curiously. He approached me and asked me for assistance. After talking to him for a couple minutes and giving him the answers he was after, he asked me if my name was (real name). He then asked if I recognized him at all. I did not. As it turns out, he was one of the bullies I mentioned previously. He said, "I've been wanting to tell you how sorry I am for the way I treated you back in school. It was wrong of me...."

We had been pre-teens in a backwards country school with terrible administrators who did very little about problem behaviors at the time. Bullying complaints were not taken seriously, even those involving damage to property & physical harm. It was all chocked up to "kids being kids." Regardless of the his abusive tendencies (learned behavior from home) I still remembered him often since those years and worried about what might have happened to him as a result of the bad influences in his life. He was an intelligent kid, but also one who unknowingly wore his damage where everyone could see it; an angry little boy, sickly on many levels and it was easy to tell that some nasty things were happening to him outside of school.

I told him that I understood why he had been like that and he was forgiven. The guy has seen some horrors in his lifetime yet he still turned out OK! This whole experience blindsided me in the best possible way, leaving me glowing and teary-eyed. The kid came to terms with it all and became a better man! Moments like these are what I need to hold onto, keeping alive my faith in the future and a positive direction for our species.

Yet again I come full circle in some fashion. No matter how many times you go around before, the experience always changes; bringing something newer and better than the last time. Giving up on healing past hurts does not mean that life no longer wants you to have the cure for them. The sardonic realist side of my personality used to whisper in my ear that this stuff only happens in movies, never in every-day life. The cynicism is still there, but it gets quieter and less prominent as time passes. Forgiveness takes on new depth in my life, but there is still more to forgive, I'm working on it. Remember that sometimes when you give up seeking the answer, the answer seeks you out and dumps itself in your lap.

Clowny Clown Clown!!!

2008-07-09T11:02:00.004-04:00

Ummm, I'm not going to try to explain this video or make any excuses for it because I just can't! If you have any taste for absurdity or abstractism, it will probably hurt your mind but make you want to go back and watch it at least once more. (Or it might make you close the browser window and curl up on the floor in the fetal position.) I am not responsible for any effect this may have on your mental health.

I was told that the dapper gentleman in this video is Crispin Glover in his early days of acting, when he was making forays into the world of abstract art films and whatnot.

Nonsequitur = Idiot, Part 2 (possibly more of one than you originally thought)

2008-07-08T00:32:00.005-04:00

Here are a few pictures of one of my parents' visitors; no zoom on the lense, I was literally five feet away. No, I was not terribly concerned. Yes, I had good running shoes on in case he did not enjoy having his portrait taken.

I believe this is the one my parents call "Boscoe." He is a bit larger than a great dane (and weighs in at a good three hundred pounds I'd guess).

He also has his own food bowl. I and other family members/friends have advised my parents that it is a very bad idea to get them used to being in proximity to humans, especially by teaching them to associate our species with food. I pray that this does not become an issue.

A hopeful sign: even though he allowed me to get really close to him, he still showed apprehension and flight tendencies whenever I made any sudden movements or approached too quickly. This indicates that he is still at least somewhat scared of humans, but if he was really hungry and a human was carrying food that smelled appetizing, who can really tell what would happen?

A snapping turtle (a bit larger than a soccer ball) I saw crossing the road not far from my house. Again, I did not use the zoom on this picture either. I've photographed other snappers before but they were quite agitated and never allowed me to get this close. He seemed very relaxed and indifferent to my presence....

...even when the camera lense was only twenty inches from his face.

I grew up around lots of wildlife and while I appreciate their beauty and their role in the ecosystem, there is also a healthy respect for the damage they are capable of. I don't advise getting this close to either of these creatures unless you are quite familiar with their body language, sometimes even that is no guarantee of safety (as many self-styled nature photographers with big scars could tell you).

Nonsequitur = Idiot

2008-07-01T10:21:00.004-04:00

A couple months ago I bought a nice, big, brand-new chainsaw because there were a bunch of trees planted in bad places around my property (threatening to fall on the house, all over the leech field, too close together in haphazard rows). I jumped the chain last week due to improper tension and after an hour or so of filing & reconditioning the drive teeth I got it put back together and it seemed to be running normally; except it was not cutting very well at all. All it would do was slowly cut a groove in the wood and start smoking like mad. I tried everything I knew: lubricating all moving parts, sharpening the teeth repeatedly, repositioning the bar, adjusting the tension, etc... all to no avail. After two days of troubleshooting I got disgusted with it and tossed it in the shed with the intention of taking it to a specialist who works on them. I dug it back out the other day with the intention of taking it to the specialist but I decided attempt troubleshooting once more. It was still doing the same thing no matter what I did and as I exasperatedly shut off the engine I noticed something odd about the chain as it came to a stop... I had put it on backwards. Why don't I ever check the most obvious things first??!!

Uninvited Guest

2008-06-29T07:59:00.002-04:00

Nothing enhances the ambiance of your recently-purchased cottage in the country like waking up in the morning and finding MUDDY PAW PRINTS IN YOUR BATHTUB.... paw prints which do not belong to your own cats or any other domesticated animal. Oh yeah, and then there are the raccoons fighting underneath your bedroom in the wee hours of the morning as well as getting into your recycling bins. I do believe it is time to purchase some chicken wire to skirt the house with!

Mea Culpa

2008-06-01T18:29:00.007-04:00

"Why so long between posts?," you may ask. I have been busy from dawn 'til dusk since the last time I posted here. Every day I've been covered with sawdust, mud, grease, soot and probable toxins. The home I've purchased needs a lot of man hours to make it a pleasant living environment. Am I complaining? ABSOLUTELY NOT!!! This has been just the thing to spring me out of the rut I've been in for the last few years. Even though the place is a dump I still feel fortunate to have it. The house will not be in any condition to receive company for months. I am trying to keep my mind focused on the end product of my efforts in order to stay motivated.

The previous owners left me enough cleaning products, shampoo, conditioner, and skin lotion to last a decade. On top of that I've found no less than 20 cans of bug spray in various locations in the house. I guess they really disliked bugs. They also apparently had an OCD-type of fetish for scotch tape because they put it on EVERYTHING!!!!... wrapping container covers with it, the wallpaper seams, tying together clothes hangers with it... and that's just the tip of the iceberg... I even found a set of brass butterfly windchimes on a mobile and every component of it was taped to the wall behind the kitchen curtains. My camera is still with my sister and I will post pics as soon as I receive it.

Container gardening has been my idle pursuit between major household projects. Nothing fancy or extensive this year... just some tomatoes, peppers, basil, marigolds, and whatever I've been managing to scrape together from the native plant offerings. This year will be the time to discover and mentally catalog all the various half-wild perennials & herbs in the neglected flowerbeds, next year will be the year for intensive shoveling, dividing, replanting and generally more intensive gardening on a much larger scale. I would like to preserve most of the species that currently exist on the property, but they will need to be moved and organized better. So far I've found: peonies, rhubarb, some bizarrely-monstrous species of mint, more irises than I'll ever be able to pick, day lilies, lilacs (purples and whites), rhododendrons, azaleas, hostas, comfrey, astilbe, lysimachia (creeping jenny), daffodils, narcissus, tulips, periwinkle, and the list goes on.

AGAIN, MY APOLOGIES TO EVERYONE WHO HAS WRITTEN TO ME WITHOUT REPLY!!! My internet access is severely limited right now. I only get to check e-mail once a week lately and access from my house is currently slower than cold molasses.

WOOO-HOOOOOO!!!!!!

2008-05-11T17:01:00.005-04:00

I AM NOW MARRIED!!!.......

........to a 30-year mortgage that is!

That's right folks, I am now officially a home-owner!!!!

I've finally fulfilled my dream of purchasing a fixer-upper cottage in the country and boy do I ever have my work cut out for me! There are some who would consider the place borderline condemnable, but I've seen far worse homes brought back from the brink of disuse and demolition. The elderly couple who lived in it haven't been able to take care of it for a while and I am facing a lot of repairs.

The current challenge is in getting all of the old stuff they didn't want out of the house and distributed where it can be re-used and/or recycled. But not everything they left behind is total junk.... among some of the useful and/or saleable objects they left behind are: an old singer sewing machine table (the kind operated with a foot tredle, I'm definitely keeping it), an old wood xylophone I found behind the dresser, a large electric pottery kiln (selling it), a late 70s (or early 80s?) model trailer mobile home that was left on the property, and a bazillion different useful tools and whatnot. I will be deconstructing the trailer and using the materials to fix up the main house. People keep telling me that I should scrap the main house and fix up the trailer instead... but I like older homes that have character and history in them. Besides, the main house stands to last longer than the trailer if it is repaired properly.

Time to break out the tools, dig in my heels and put down roots where I have been planted! I am excited to say the least!

Pictures of the good and the bad are forthcoming within the next week. I am intending to keep a working photographic chronicle of the fixing-up process my new home!

My apologies to all of those who have written to me and are awaiting replies. I've been extraordinarily busy and my phone line is not turned on yet, thus the only access I have to the internet is when I occasionally have the time to come into cafes or libraries with wifi.

Oddness Abounds...

2008-04-20T13:11:00.002-04:00

I FINALLY HAVE A NEW CAR... YAAAAAY! That's not the odd part though... The middle-aged man whom my parents saw riding down the street on a bmx bicycle, with a quiver of arrows on his back, a thick & flowing beard, and a motorcycle helmet with an antenna sticking out the top... that might be part of it... or maybe the woman who waylaid my coworker with an extended diatribe about how all chronic masturbators should be locked up.... or maybe it's the man who wants to keep tropical fish in his outdoor pond in northern New England and insists that they can be kept in cold water if you feed them the right food... oh, and let's not forget the guy who thinks there is a conspiracy between the government, the religious community, and the medical community to conceal the fact that homosexuality is actually spread by pathogens (I'm pretty sure he also mentioned something about the neo-nazis being involved too)... life around here not dull very often.

Candid pic of my friend J (used by permission) demonstrating the potential of abandoned shopping carts as furniture.

2008 Subaru Impreza 2.5i Wagon
It is bad luck for a captain to pilot a ship with no name, so she is now known as "MATILDA"!

Hike To Gunnison Lake & Mt. Sunapee

2008-04-20T11:19:00.007-04:00

Thursday was my day off so I decided to go on one of my long, rambling walkabouts (gee, I hope Australians aren't the only ones allowed to use that term). It is a form of walking meditation; helping me to iron out my priorities and recenter myself spiritually.

The map below details my approximate route which spanned seven hours, two towns and almost every type of terrain common to this area of New England. The experience ranged from falling into mud-holes through frozen snow, to scratching up my legs in dense underbrush, crossing a waist-deep freezing river, climbing 50 feet up a maple tree to figure out where the heck I was, viewing a beautiful panorama of the surrounding area from the top deck of the closed-down ski lodge on top of the mountain and on bare-soled sneakers skiing down slopes which had just been in use two days previously. I killed the soles on my old shoes and thought it curious that I never fell once (I fall frequently when actually wearing skis). I met my parents at the base lodge and we went out for pizza. Along the way there were abandoned shacks, partridges flying up in my face, bridges of questionable design & stability, and a cast-0ff crutch on the side of one of the trails. What a day. All pictures are in order of appearance on the trip.

Goshen/Sunapee NH area (click for a more detailed view)

Trails ranging from mixed mud & icy snow...

...to snowy & slick.

Gunnison Lake (aka "The Goshen Ocean") with Mt. Sunapee in the background

Random trailer/hunting camp(?) in the middle of nowhere, literally 2-3 miles from the nearest road.

Should have listened to the little voice telling me that it was a stupid idea to wear low-ankle sneakers.

Some of the trails were washed-out

Falling-down shack in the middle of nowhere on the back side of Mt. Sunapee. The dimensions would indicate that it's primary use may have been for a hermit with an ascetic lifestyle or a temporary camping retreat for a single person. Just enough room for one to lie down in with a small stove and a backback. It measured about 9 ft. by 4 ft. and was just under 6 ft. high.

The stove was sitting outside the entrance, mostly rusted into the ground.

It was high enough that the trees near the top were very short, most of them looking to be 5+ decades old yet less than 15 feet tall.

Cell tower and lodge at the top.

Distant view of Gunnison Lake

Closer detail.

Ski lift

I found the severity of the language in this disclaimer enough to prevent me from taking this trail.

Lake Sunapee at the top right and Little Sunapee to the left

Awesome name for a trail!

GOD BLESS CONCORD GROUP!!!!

2008-04-11T13:36:00.003-04:00

Pertaining to my major car issue mentioned in the last post: my local insurance center has me insured through Concord Group. I decided to see if my comprehensive coverage would sufficiently offset this problem so I filed a claim. Not only did they come through for me with the full Kelley Blue Book value for my car, they even paid the bill for diagnosing the problem. I had been reticent about filing a claim because of the horror stories I've heard from friends who got into accidents or had their cars totaled in some fashion. I was envisioning having to haggle with the claims agent and possibly having to settle for a couple thousand less than what I should be entitled to in addition to having my insurance costs rise dramatically as a result. All I can say is that I am exceedingly pleased and thankful for the low-stress solution which was handed to me in the middle of a high stress situation.

What I See and Do Lately

2008-04-05T11:24:00.005-04:00

A beauteous and detailed cross-stitch that my coworker & friend D made over the winter. She chose a wonderful frame and matting color to showcase it as well.

Detailed view of said cross-stitch.

My friend P and I went out and visited the old covered railroad bridges again (previously mentioned in this post). This gives a good perspective on the size of the entrance to the bridge, large enough for an old steam-engine train with a stack to pass through. (P, I blurred your face because I forgot to ask your permission to post your image).

Close-up of the texture of a favia (aka: pineapple or moon) brain coral at work.

Close-up of a sun polyp coral at work.

So I could proceed to whine about my car having broken down... as in TOTALED because the wiring harness decided to have a complete meltdown, fusing to the frame and melting through the floorboard in some spots. It all happened while I was driving and caused a scene that will make an amusing story in a few months (or years), but I am too annoyed to find it humorous right now. It was only a 2001 Ford Focus and it had just 71,000 miles on it. I was good to that car; keeping up on repairs & maintenance. My plan was to run it another couple of years to further enjoy the "cinderella period" (when a car is paid off but not yielding major troubles yet) before needing to trade up to another vehicle, but I guess this was not meant to be. I feel torn because I really want to get another Focus and support Ford (it's one of the few American car companies with fairly progressive, inclusive initiatives in place in it's facilities), but I am also very soured by this experience as well as the Focus' general track record on the Consumer Reports website.

On the GOOD NEWS front it looks like I will be a home owner soon! Nothing further to say yet because the deal is not cinched and the current owners are still waiting to get into another residence, but it is looking more hopeful than it was a few weeks ago!

Alive and Busy

2008-03-27T11:50:00.004-04:00

Yeah, I'm still alive and still very busy! I'm in the process of purchasing a home in Cornish, NH... The last place I was looking at in Acworth was in need of too much work and asking price was not worth it after the counter-offers from other interested parties, yet it must have been worth it to someone because of their high counter-offer. C'est la vie! The place I am looking at now has a bit less acreage than I originally wanted and the house is a bit shabby, in need of extensive work, but it is still in fair condition and the selling price is extremely low. The folks currently occupying it are a nice elderly couple who can not live alone for much longer and need to unload the property quickly. I have finally been approved for a mortgage loan and I am still waiting to hear back from the property appraisers. Keeping my fingers crossed (again).

Ping-Pong!

2008-02-23T12:21:00.005-05:00

OFFER!
COUNTER-OFFER!
COUNTER-COUNTER-OFFER!
VOLLEYED SHOT FALLING OFF THE SIDE OF THE TABLE!

Piffle! I don't like playing realtors' games, but it's a necessary evil I suppose. Still hanging in there, submitting a final, non-negotiable offer soon, we will see... knock on wood and hope for the best outcome... whatever is meant to be. I think I will know where it all stands by the end of next week.

Random quote I read the other day and liked:
"Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow." -Lawrence Clark Powell

Wonderment

2008-02-21T13:42:00.006-05:00

The last half decade has been a time of questioning, probing, growing, loss, grief, and further growth built upon these things; much as it is for many others. The complexity of it all continues to amaze me; the flow of life, the pattern of thought, how one thing leads on to another, epiphanies giving rise to further insights which are paradoxically simplistic yet complex and refined, often leading to further questions and even deeper understandings. It is much like the visual representation of pi above. It loops in upon itself infinitely, refining itself to a seemingly invisible end, at least invisible to the naked eye, after that one can close their eyes and imagine refinement to the molecular and subatomic scales. (Pi, the movie also makes reference to this concept.)

This fascination may also explain why I enjoy allegory, symbolism, analogy, and metaphor so much. They use a simplistic representation to make a seemingly complex set of parameters more accessible, and human curiosity leads us to explore them deeper. If we are brave enough to indulge this tendency in a wise fashion, it is one of the qualities which refines our person and keeps us active and living, leading to purer, higher forms of thought and a greater closeness with The Divine. The term "work in progress" may seem over-used but are we truly allowing ourselves the curiosity and fortitude to be precisely that?

Hmmm... speaking of which, I just finished reading Till We Have Faces, another work by C.S. Lewis. If you have read any of his work in the spirit that it was written, maybe you understand why my thought processes dwell in their current form. Lewis' work is a breath of fresh air in the middle of a seemingly dark political and religious landscape. At the very least it gives a lot of food for thought on what it means to be human and exist with all the troubles and hard questions which are thrown our way. My thanks goes out yet again to my sister and several friends who turned me on to his writings.

YAY!

2008-02-20T11:39:00.005-05:00

I FINALLY got pre-approved for a mortgage; currently in the process of negotiating on a seemingly nice property in a VERY rural town near by! It is a small fixer-upper cottage on 5.5 acres on the side of a mountain ridge line. I will not talk any more about it for now because the deal is not in the bag yet. We will see what happens. It looks good, but I'm praying for the door to close if it isn't meant to be. This is a major life decision and it is stressing me out a bit. If everything goes well and my final offer is accepted I can expect to spend the next month repeatedly jumping through hoops like a trained circus poodle: orchestrating contractors for inspection, dewinterizing, plumbing, ad infinitum... oh yeah, and let's not forget MOUNTAINS OF PAPERWORK! But oh will it ever be worth it in the end! (?)

Random Stories With A Common Thread

2008-02-10T13:24:00.000-05:00

Recent quiet times and meditations have yielded a lot of retrospective comparison and learning from some strange and unpleasant memories. Lately, whenever I sit down and quiet my mind... in meeting, outdoors while I am hiking/cross-country skiing, commuting to work... I keep casting the line out and when I reel it back in, there is my past, prior modes of thinking and how things have changed over the years and I examine the evolution that has taken place, the cause and effect. I am dissecting and further understanding the discoveries which have given rise to different ways of thinking, new understandings and further questions on top of those. It is a lot to juggle but this all has it's purpose.

A month ago I started going to the gym again. The human body is fascinating and it amazes me how quickly it can change and adapt to it's current use. I miss physical activity and striving for better health. I also suspect I will not need this supplement to my daily routine when I eventually have my own land to work, wood to harvest for winter heat, a garden to tend, and vast hiking trail networks around the wide open spaces surrounding the place I can call home. For now it seems to be my lot to look inward and keep building up the inside while honing the outside. It feels like a preparation for what is to come.

Back in my late teens, I started a rigid fitness regimen which might have been comparable to the training routine of a special ops marine. Throughout most of my later school years I was one of the awkward fat kids who got picked on for my weight and social ineptness. On top of being closeted back then, these were two attributes which amplified each other.

When I committed to becoming lean and mean, I became TOO lean and VERY mean. I began to stare through people instead of looking at them. Everyone was regarded on the basis of how threatening they were or weren't. While attending kick boxing classes, the bullies' voices were still ringing loudly and painfully in my head, so I would visualize their faces on the punching bag. One time I kicked it hard enough to take it off the chain, breaking the attachment ring and sending it halfway across the room. I am not bragging. I am ashamed and I am telling you that I was wrong. I always thought that I understood the trite bumper sticker quote that I see so often,"You are what you hate,"...suddenly it doesn't seem trite at all.

Since then I have run into some of the bullies who used to pick on me. Some could not look me in the eye. Most of them are not doing well; either in poor health or an unfavorable living situation. The ones who are truly happy are the ones who have changed their ways. The grapevine has lent the back story to some of their lives. Most of the stories were sad and littered with family problems and abuse. Bigger people hurt them, they hurt me, I hurt back and the war keeps going until someone walks away from it and forgives past trespasses. I forgive them. I now understand why some soldiers who come home from a war keep on experiencing it and fighting phantom opponents long after the battles are over. The fighting leaves them hollowed out, lacking hope and the will to reach for something better, desperately trying to reconnect with who they used to be. There are some who would tell me that I can't possibly know what it is like to be in the thick of battle, dealing with landmines, bullets, and all manner of threats. Regardless, I feel there are some apt comparisons and likenesses, especially on an emotional and spiritual level. How many of us have built our persona on a fighting mentality, only to find that it poisons our minds and leaves us more vulnerable? I never understood Maslow's Hierarchy of Human Needs until I saw how it played my own life and the lives of others. You can't move on to the next level until the basics are fulfilled. Struggling in survival mode is not conducive to higher human functioning.

One time, while I was out walking, there was a group of three men whom one could call stereotypical rednecks, along with the virulent homophobia. They had been drinking. I was cornered and threatened with bodily harm. In the scuffle, I sent two of them to the hospital with broken bones. No police showed up and no lawsuits were filed, I suspect they were not eager to bring more attention to the fact that a "*expletive* queer" who also happened to be smaller than them was able to get the upper hand and repel them with such prejudice. Conventional wisdom says that I was right to defend myself, but I know that I was wrong because I did not even attempt to talk them down or take them on a peaceable, intellectual level. Knowing what I do now, I think this would have been possible if not probable. I took away emotional injuries from that experience which I think were worse than the physical ones they sustained. If I met any of these men again today, I would ask for forgiveness. This is what happens to a person when they begin to base their identity on a characteristic which breeds violence, fear, and an aversion to open communication. It still hurts and it still reminds me of what I never want to happen again.

The gym routine continued at a suicide pace and in my early twenties I became so thin that my health began to deteriorate and this spawned rumors of AIDS. It was time for a change. I ended up breaking down on many levels, but I rebuilt myself. Now I have come full circle. In my late twenties I am enjoying feeling strong and able again. I like to stretch, relax, and focus on a physical goal in the knowledge that I am lessening my chances of ill health, decreasing the chance that I will some day need major forms of life-saving intervention from the health care industry. At the same time I hope never to be thin enough that people think I am less than healthy. Again I am able to see those around me, with my past reminding me of what was, an intimidating yet enriching future ahead and I walk now with my eyes open, seeing the people around me again for the first time.

More Great Quotes

2008-01-25T11:37:00.000-05:00

Gleaned from a recent magazine article, I can not remember who these words were attributed to:

"The richest person in the world... isn't the person who has the most, but the one who needs the least."

"...the real trick in life is to turn hindsight into foresight that reveals insight."

Booxez

2008-01-23T12:06:00.000-05:00

I finally finished reading The Five People You Meet In Heaven , it was beautiful and very nourishing for the mind and spirit. I just finished watching the movie based on this book too. Well-directed and it did not leave out anything pertinent from the book.

Currently slogging through the rest of The Saint, Surfer, and CEO, it feels dry and I am experiencing a bit of guilt for not liking it as much as the other people I've known who thought it was profound.

In the spirit of wanting to revisit some of the classics, I just started slogging through Sense and Sensibility and there are now recurring memories of why I did not enjoy even the condensed version of it in high school. Maybe I am just not intellectual enough to connect with it or perhaps it is the fact that I need to crack a dictionary several times on each page to research disused English vocabulary words. Regardless, I doubt I will be finishing it.

C'mon, you can't tell me they aren't intelligent...

2008-01-21T11:14:00.000-05:00

As featured on Cute Overload.

Nothing much going on right now. Did my taxes, waiting to get in contact with the mortgage broker again... watching movies and TV series on DVD to pass the time between the gym and the days when the weather allows me to hike or cross-country ski. I am especially enjoying the first two seasons of Upright Citizens Brigade. It is a pity that the show was cut down in it's prime. I don't believe a lot of people really understood it and appreciated it for what it was. Yes, it was a bit twisted, off-color, and obscure but it was definitely ahead of it's time and marketed to the wrong audience.

Bouncing Off The Walls

2007-12-21T13:59:00.000-05:00

I love my parents and all, but keep in mind that I've been living in my own home for over a decade now, and staying with them (it seems for the duration of winter) is driving me stir-crazy. This is not due to any transgression or shortcoming on their part. I'm simply ridiculously independent and feeling some major withdrawal from not having my own home environment to micromanage and a lack of an easily-available internet connection. The up-side: cheap rent and living expenses for now, which is enabling me to save up for a down payment on a home even faster than before, and I get plenty of exercise hiking all my familiar childhood trails.

There is a popular book that I am in the middle of reading (on the advice of a coworker) - The Saint, The Surfer, and The CEO; a decent read so far, but parts of it feel like a pre-scripted interaction within an Amway presentation, with people planted in the audience. Regardless, there are some interesting theories put into the book and I shouldn't discount it on the basis of it's mechanically contrived feeling. One of the concepts put forth in the book is that within the complexity of life, circumstances and teachers are sent our way repeatedly until we learn what they were sent to teach. I can not truthfully disagree in this case. It has felt for some time like the people and circumstances in my life are there to teach me to stop being so headstrong and independent, learning to be more socially passive and take help and acts of kindness instead of being the one who always gives them. My other lesson seems to be in the areas of patience and tolerance... Being a bit of a social introvert, I have a strong aversion to people who talk a lot while not expressing anything useful or meaningful, suddenly it seems like I am being surrounded with them everywhere I go, babbling non-stop and sometimes trying to engage me in conversation. I have to keep reminding myself that they do it because they want approval and camaraderie, seeking a connection just like any other human being. I just need to step back and patiently allow them to come into their own and hopefully outgrow the tendency toward verbal incontinence.

I was playing around with google maps a few weeks ago and stumbled across a woodland lake I had never seen before...

...and only a stone's throw away from one of my favorite hiking trails. It was in a section of the woods which I thought I had known like the back of my hand while growing up. Obviously I didn't know the woods as well as I thought, so I decided to go out and find it. After traversing the trail to where I figured was the nearest point, I guessed which direction the lake would be in and I bushwhacked through about a half mile of underbrush and ended up right on the shore...

...on further exploration around the entire perimeter of what turned out to be more of a large pond, I found a well-marked ATV trail leading from the other side of the lake onto a neighbor's property about a quarter mile away, but I also found something else interesting...

...on the shore of the pond was an old, decrepit sugaring house that looked like it was on the verge of falling down...

...note the large collecting tank for the sap...

...there were faint traces of an old (and long since grown-in) road leading to the structure and miscellaneous bottles & rusted out equipment lying around. I wish I knew the history of this structure: the conversations that may have taken place, the people who worked in it. If it was a family business... I am hoping to talk with the neighbor who presumably owns this property and ask about it.

More Miscellaneous Pictures:

Weird anthropomorphic stump aquarium ornament at work

My feline children resting comfortably

My former roommate brought 'Spud' for a visit at my workplace and she dressed him up in one of the small dog costumes.

I'll wrap this up with a cutesy-amusing video of 'Ozzy', a Brussels Griffon owned by one of my coworkers, reacting strangely to having winter paw-wear put on him.

'Monty the Magically Malevolent Mantis Shrimp'

2007-11-26T11:04:00.000-05:00

So we're a bit distracted and disturbed at my workplace... obviously so when we give some of our charges names like the title of this post. Check out the YouTube video below for a video I took of 'Monty' at mealtime. We have him trained to recognize the noise of the long tweezers tapping on glass as a signal that it is time to come get his food.

Video Caption on Youtube:
Young green mantis shrimp (Geonodactylaceus sp.) takes a piece of krill from long tweezers. Note the loud clicking noises as he violently whacks the tweezers with his claw in an attempt to take the food. This is why I do not feed him by hand. They are commonly known in the aquarium trade as "Thumb-splitters!" We named this one 'Monty'. He is currently about 2 inches long, was about three quarters of an inch when we originally acquired him by accident with a load of aquacultured live rock at my workplace. They are normally a pest organism in reef tanks but we didn't have the heart to euthanize him so we set up a mini-reef just for him. They are some of the most intelligent invertebrates in the ocean and they have the most complex eyes of all creatures, with the ability to see colors far outside the range of most mammals. Oh yeah, that's my coworker you hear calling me a dork in the beginning (she thinks it's abnormal that I am actually taking a video of this).

Essay

2007-11-13T11:20:00.000-05:00

The essay I mentioned in this previous post has finally gone online at http://www.beyondexgay.com, and can be viewed by following this link. For those of you who may not know what this is about, it is a narrative detailing the hardships and struggles I have been through as a result of the "Ex-Gay" movement as well as addressing the misinformation that this religious/political initiative has fed to some of my loved ones. I won't lie, it is a long read and some of it is depressing, much of it may also be edifying if you are seeking to learn more about the "Ex-gay" school of thought. I will return and post more afterthoughts concerning this at a later time.

I am currently between permanent living spaces and relying on local coffee shops with wireless internet access. The dial-up at my parents' home is so painfully slow that it takes me ten minutes just to access my e-mail, so long delays in response time and blog postings are to be expected until I am settled again.

Move Almost Complete

2007-11-08T10:56:00.000-05:00

The moving is almost finished with. I am happy that it is almost over with but feeling ambivalent in other areas. Part of me feels defeated and shaken from having my life gutted and reduced like this. The other part of me feels relieved because it is another chapter of my life over with and it signals a new beginning.

One of the things that keeps me grounded right now is the remembrance of other people who have been forcibly uprooted in other parts of the world: families, towns, entire ethnic groups who are/were coerced into leaving their homes without any prior notice and no means of taking their possessions with them. There is no reason for me to whine about what I am going through. At least I had a couple weeks to haphazardly prepare for this and I still own most of what I have worked hard for. I am lucky by comparison.

This life has been long overdue for a serious shakeup. Traditionally, times of insecurity and fluctuation have been unpleasant and stressful, but they've also forced me to reevaluate my situation and turn the time of change into a turning point leading to deeper meaning and better things in life. "A door closing frequently signals the opening of another." I mourn for my old life, the quiet predictability and security of being the king of my own domain, but I am relieved that I have less to maintain and worry about for the time being. I feel like it is time to focus on strengthening my existing talents as well as the connection with my family & friends. It also feels like the time for seeking out new skills and perspectives. I do not know what the future is bringing but I will accept it and take it as it comes, looking for the opportunity to create something good from it.

Possible Hiatus???

2007-10-31T07:59:00.001-04:00

Due to the impending temporary living situation mentioned in the previous post. I may not be able to blog or check my e-mail on any sort of predictable schedule, it will most likely be infrequent. If this blog seems to go dead for a while, I've simply put it into suspended animation until I am in a living situation that is at least semi-permanent. Bless you all and wish me luck with moving ;-).

KABLAM!!!

2007-10-28T22:12:00.000-04:00

I'm sorry that my blogging is so sporadic lately (yeah yeah, I have made this apology several times over the past year for various reasons). Life has blown up in my face and I am frantically rushing around trying to pack it all in again... literally. My (former) landlord has lost the building my apartment is in to foreclosure, and my status as a flawless tenant means squat to the default loan company who now possesses my residence. This has been my home for four years and I will need to be out by this Saturday. One of my best friends also tried to commit suicide the other day and he was almost successful. Thankfully he was rescued in time and is now getting the help and counseling he needs. I've been handling some of his affairs and visiting him as frequently as possible in the midst of all this frantic packing. I'm praying for him and wishing the best for him and his family. There is also a certain level of detachment at this point which is helping me to deal with what is on my plate right now. A few months ago I started having a foreboding feeling that my strength and focus would be put to the test at some point soon; time to dig in my heels and take the bull by the horns again.

A positive side to what I am going through: My parents and I had a family sit-down while on vacation in August. Having felt strongly that our family was on a collision course with permanent division and strife; as gently and considerately as possible, I called my parents on the carpet for some of their past and current mistakes, pleading for more cohesion in the family and a change in the way that we deal with each other. I am not meaning to vilify them in my blog, they are only human and all of us make mistakes. One of my loved ones who was present thinks that I "let into" my Dad, but I actually choked back the vicious side of me that wanted to spew venom about some of the shortcomings which have caused me a lot of pain over the years. I have learned that allowing my hurtful, raging ego out of it's cage can never result in anything positive in the long term.

As a result of all this, the whole family is now making a sincere effort to be more tactful and kind to each other, which is bringing us all closer. Also, this has enabled me to see my parents in a more forgiving light. I would initially have had reservations about staying with them for a short while due to my sudden change in living situation (this point will become more clear when my essay is posted), but now I feel much more comfortable about being in their household. The peacemaker role is new to me and even if it puts me in difficult positions, it has so far made me a stronger, better person and I welcome the opportunity to act as a balancing force where there is discord.

Undone

2007-10-17T04:13:00.000-04:00

"The whole point of getting things done is knowing what to leave undone." -Oswald Chambers . . .file under the category of 'Sage Advice Which Has Come In Handy Lately'.

Latest Mewziq

2007-10-12T22:28:00.000-04:00

A couple of great musical delights I've been into lately:

Pink Floyd - The Division Bell: A friend of mine burned me a copy and I was so impressed with it that I actually went out and purchased a used album from Amazon. I can't believe that it has taken me this long to experience this CD; it is probably one of their most under-rated albums. Yeah, everyone has listened to Dark Side of The Moon and while it IS brilliant as well as being one of their most popular, solid albums, Division Bell has great lyrics and a distinct emotional ambiance which I feel sets it apart from their other work. It has a slightly melancholy feel with some uplifting moments and an heir of departure & finality to it. Below is a Youtube video of a live performance of my favorite song off this album, Coming Back To Life. I connected very intimately with this particular song because it describes the realizations and struggles I have been through on multiple levels in the past year.

The Rankin Family - North Country: I've heard them off and on doing bluegrassy folk tunes, often with an Irish flavor in VPR's lineup. I enjoyed what I've heard so far and after seeing this CD for sale at a local thrift store for $2.75 , figured it would be more than worth the price. A few of the tracks are a tad hokey, with a sappy-fake folk ballad feel to them, but I still liked most of the other songs. Click here to listen to the signature song from this album (my favorite). Here is a (non-embeddable) youtube video of another good song from this CD, Rise Again.

Recent Happenings

2007-10-05T11:39:00.000-04:00

I've been feeling a bit bedraggled lately, but continue to press on. There is a lot of drama going on all around me and several of my friends are in the middle of a time of crisis. I do what I can to help and it does feel good to be able to see them through the tough times, but sometimes I wonder if I allow myself to get too close. One of my long-running shortcomings has been in carrying others through bad times instead of stepping back a bit and walking beside them while letting them learn how to carry themselves. It brings to mind the saying "Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish, you feed him for life." I have a hard time striking a balance between giving too much, giving too little, and finding precisely what to give. I need to keep remembering that I am only human and our lives are an art which we are continually perfecting.

I just finished reading a copy of Running With Scissors lent to me by a coworker. All I will say is that it is both hilarious and horrifying, mostly due to the fact that it is based on true events in someone's life. At my sister's urging, I've finally dug into the boxed set of The Chronicles of Narnia which I purchased back in early August. I am already on The Silver Chair (fourth book). I read parts of The Chronicles back in third or fourth grade as an assignment and due to the nature of the assignment, I hated the books at the time. Now I love them and find them to be a great mental vacation as well as spiritual/emotional soul food. As I've likely said many times before, I am thankful for my sister. She is very well-versed in literature and always seems to know what readings to recommend to me when I am feeling depressed or worn out.

A while back, my friends P and R hooked me up with copies of Wonder Falls and I watched the final episode last night. It had many common themes and the same general feel as Dead Like Me (not coincidental due to the two shows having a producer in common). Speaking of TV, I just read an article in a local paper where the folks in a housing development are up in arms about their cable TV rates being raised because of the recent Comcast takeover in my community. I can understand people being annoyed because of large rate increases on any utility, but what surprised me is the sense of entitlement with which they expressed their anger. Some seem to think that cable is a Divinely bestowed right and a necessity. OK, so maybe I am a little biased... I've not had any sort of paid TV programming package for over three years now because I couldn't justify paying $50 a month for a stripped package that did not come with any of the channels I wanted to see, and I DEFINITELY couldn't justify paying over $90 just to watch nature shows and historical documentaries. Not to mention the fact that my TV watching averages less than a half hour a day. I occasionally go weeks without watching any at all. TV programming has it's place, but real life is far more interesting and fulfilling than a passive, vicarious existence in front of a screen.

Too Early for Alzheimer's

2007-10-01T23:29:00.000-04:00

Yet again, somebody I have no recollection of walked up to me in the grocery store today and greeted me as if we have been acquainted for a long time. This has been happening, on average, 3-6 times a month for the past few years. Someone crosses my path and they seem to know me very well, offering personal details that a casual stranger would not know, yet I've not the slightest inkling who the heck they are. Most times they don't even look remotely familiar and often they talk about discussions we apparently had where the subject matter, wording, and focus sounds just like something I would say. Sometimes I am able to place them. The rest of the time it is a bit unnerving but at least I've gotten really good at politely faking familiarity because I don't want them to feel bad or unmemorable. I know I partied hard in my late teens but DANG!! I don't think I partied THAT hard!!!

Dreams Pt. 1

2007-09-16T08:00:00.001-04:00

I was discussing the significance of dreams with my good friend Pasha a while back... also the flawed logic in some of those formulaic dream interpretation books which give somewhat archetypal definitions to various objects and characters in dreams, the limitations of this thinking being human individuality and the fact that not all objects and characters have the same significance or implied meaning for all people. Id Est, a wheelbarrow appearing in a dream might be a symbol of oppression and distress because one has to use it every day for back-breaking labor, while another person might be a recreational gardener and regard it as a useful tool for a pleasant, relaxing hobby. This also relates to an e-mail exchange I've been having with my sister lately, discussing the progression of themes within my own dreams over the years, what these experiences have taught me and how they relate to my current life struggles. I've not been one to assign much meaning to dreams until lately. There is a weird dichotomy of mysticism and literalism coming forth in my life. Surprisingly, they seem to get along well.

A few years ago my dreams frequently involved fearfully running away from something that terrified me, always with that hobbled feeling like you are trying to run through deep mud or have an anchor tied to your waist. I don't recall precisely what kind of creature my pursuer was, but in one of the dreams I turned around and faced it, telling it that I was sick of running, that I accepted whatever it was that it was going to do to me and I reached out to embrace it. Then it disappeared, I woke up, and haven't had any more dreams like that. Then the general theme changed to searching, always searching for something, usually an unknown but sometimes a well-defined goal, person, or object. I don't recall what the ultimate goal was throughout this series of dreams, but I remember finding it and the general theme changed again. Now I find myself having unusual abilities and/or perspectives in these dreams. It usually involves flying, breathing underwater, reading minds, or something completely unhuman. Sometimes I'm scared and apprehensive, other times it thrills me.

Ever since I can remember, I've had unusually random dreams interspersed among the ones that I can make sense of. There is a difference in these now too. Instead of being a bit disturbed by these dreams and resisting them, now I just enjoy the silliness and flow with it. I think that having worked with Alzheimer's patients as well as folks who are developmentally handicapped or mentally ill has helped to change this perspective over the years. The dreams and real life are the same in this case. I learned a while ago that instead of resisting the madness around you, trying to change it all at once, walk through the middle of it: changing, helping, and tweaking things wherever you can.... if possible helping to prop up those who have been knocked down by it, remembering to keep a firm footing so that it does not lash out and pull you down again.

I had a particularly vivid dream lately which gave me a lot to think about, as well as bringing a further measure of peace in my life. I have already described it to my sister because it bears a lesson that has meaning for both of us and I may or may not share it here at some point in the future. I am not certain of how my dreams relate to real life, but they have drawn a lot of very close parallels in recent years. I question if the underlying significance of these dreams is mirroring my reality, or if I am subconsciously patterning my life after what I take away from these dreams. Do one's life and dreams feed off of each other in equal measure? Is it fair to even make such an evaluation because the parameters within these two worlds are so different? I am no psychologist and definitely not an expert in dream interpretation. Maybe this is just another example of me getting distracted and over-analyzing something that should just be put away for now.

Canine Humiliation

2007-09-10T23:55:00.000-04:00

Alternative title for this post: "Methods For Promoting Homicidal/Suicidal Tendencies In Your Dog"

Today I snapped a pic of my friend J's adorable Kelpie/Australian Cattle Dog 'Piglet' modeling one of the Halloween doggie costumes that were dug out of storage to put up for sale again at the store. Yes, people actually buy these things. I kid you not, she actually had a human-like look of disgust and embarrassment when this outfit was being put on her. But dang isn't she cute!

Torrid Writing Confessions

2007-09-04T23:12:00.000-04:00

1. I; often; use; too; many; semicolons; and; often; in; the; wrong; places!

2. I am having a long-running love affair (with narrative, parenthetical commentary [but don't tell anyone {it's a bit of an embarassment.}])

3. There is a tendency to use long run-on sentences which often lose their point in obscurity just by the finite sheer unnecessary details and adjectives that they contain as well as the lack of proper punctuation which causes the sentence to read like it was written by a fourth grader with ADHD who is exceedingly high on energy drinks and hasn't taken his ADHD meds for several days and is very excited about a new discovery or point that he has to make and he is rattling on and on and on and on looking for attention that is not forthcoming from his audience who is presently disinterested and making small-talk above the din of his blatherings but he doesn't realize this so he just won't shut up!!!

4. I like lists and the colons preceding them:
a. categories
a1. and organizing them*
*so that they can be broken down.

b. descriptives

c. clarifications*
*with excessive footnotes

d. general absract nitpicking and clarification of minor details*
*which don't have any real bearing on the main points within the writing, often detracting from it.

5. Sesquipedalian: "given to or characterized by the use of long words." Anyone using this word in their writing or everyday speech may also be accurately portraying it's definition.
id est: I have a definitively herculean predilection toward the utilization of prodigious proliferations of a plethora of thesaurically exhaustive, erudite (and occasionally alliterative) written discourse.

6. I like to take liberties (I sometimes am arrogant enough to call it poetic license) by making up words which sound like they should be in the English dictionary, but aren't (notice the word "thesaurically" in the above sentence.)

7. My English teacher in high school was wonderful and I aced two years of college-level English. So I hate to admit that I've forgotten a good portion of what she has taught me. I wouldn't be able to diagram a simple sentence these days.

8. Even though they're considered improper English in many circles, I can't bring myself to stop using contractions in writin' n' every day speech.

9. I often ~~edit~~ proofread my ~~compositions~~ writings ~~many~~ multiple times before ~~publishing~~ posting or sending them in the form of a letter, e-mail ~~transmission~~ or essay. I went back and ~~modified~~ edited this post 2 ~~three~~ ~~four~~ five times before I was satisfied with it.

Vacation Pictures 2007

2007-08-28T09:34:00.000-04:00

In yet another posting which sadistically taxes the blogger servers and casual readers with dial-up connections, here are some pictures from my recent family vacation in Elmore, VT. Well, most of them are actually from the Camel's Hump Mountain hiking trip that my parents planned with a group of my cousins. Unfortunately my parents weren't able to make it the whole way on account of bad shoes that my mother was wearing. The other seven of us made it to the top. Here's another lovely source of information on Camel's Hump.

Many of these pictures have a larger, more detailed view if you click them.

My young cousin K and I were the sole members of the 'advance group' on the way up... which basically means that we were the only ones insane enough to keep a suicide pace.

K and I made it to this site, just a few hundred feet below the summit, about an hour before everyone else. This is the wing of a World War Two era plane that crashed on the mountain while on a late-night, mid-winter run during WW2. Here is a clip from an internet message board summarizing the crash: "On October, 1944, a B-24J Liberator flying a training mission out of Westover Air Force Base crashed into the eastern side of Camel’s Hump just 100' below the summit. Of the ten crewmembers, there was only one survivor. The survivor, still a teenager I believe, spent two nights on the mountain and lost his hands and feet to frostbite. It snowed while he was up there. It's a bit of a mystery why the plane hit the mountain -- it was traveling at 4000 feet, half its standard cruising altitude. One theory holds that they were cold and were trying to stay low for warmth." The interesting (and exhaustive) full story of the plane crash can be found here.

A few interior shots of the plane wing.

My cousin R

Some beautiful and very tasty wild blueberries that were growing in the sparse cliff-top soils on top of Camel's Hump, I ate several handfuls. You can't get much more fresh or organic than wild-picked.

A picture of my brother and four of the cousins sitting on the edge of the cliff. The picture was taken from a ledge I climbed down to about twenty five feet below the cliff.

A view of the western face of Mt. Elmore, taken from a long distance away on top of Camel's Hump.

A view from the northeastern face of the mountain... Burlington, VT in the foreground against Lake Champlain in the background.

A cliff side, westward view of one of the many green valleys.

My little brother with two of the young cousins.

Group shot on top of the mountain.

At the base of the trail, just a stone's throw from a ranger's cabin is a unique little cemetary. Unique because it is the resting place of Will S. Monroe, "Teacher, Author, Trailbuilder, Companion and Lover of Dogs," according to the epitaph on his gravestone, it is also unique because he had gravestones made for each of his most beloved dogs. This picture shows his own gravestone and his sister's with one of their dogs in between. Take note of each of the inscriptions on the stone.

"Basque of Basquaerie" had the distinction of being the "first great pyrenees born in America". Interesting. I found Mr. Monroe's name also listed as one of the past presidents of the Great Pyrenees Club of America.

Mt. Elmore with a small, blown-up inset of the fire tower in the bottom right corner.

A white leghorn chicken who followed my sister and I for a short distance while we were hiking around the backside of Lake Elmore. He was very curious and very photogenic.

Completely unrelated to my vacation: I snapped this pic of a Monarch Caterpillar on my thumb while out on a wild blackberry picking hike yesterday morning with my buddy D.

At work: a red serpent starfish. Their legs are prehensile, much like the tails of some types of monkeys.

Anger and The Peace Testimony: Posting Dichotomy

2007-08-16T09:35:00.000-04:00

Warning: snarky bitchfest coming on..... So, I just got off the phone with another mortgage broker who told me the same thing as the other 3 I applied through. I can not get approved for any size mortgage on any property because I ,"have no credit history." You would think that having paid off three cars and a couple of educational loans as well as never being late on paying for insurance and utilities would count for something!!?? My parents and teachers at school brought me up on the belief that whenever you keep making payments on utilities or a loan on time and eventually pay it off, this reflects very favorably on your credit record and you are much more eligible for a mortgage. These beliefs were correct back in my school days. It seems that the rules have changed and I am now attempting to hit a moving target. Many of the folks I have talked to about this have now told me that you need to have at least a couple of credit cards in active use for over a year as well as some sort of loan being paid off for it to reflect positively on my credit report. Basically you have to be in debt in order to put yourself further into debt! How the heck does this make sense??!! It angers me because it reflects how corrupt our financial systems have become. Those of us who have been responsible with their debts have nothing to show for it because financial companies don't make as much money off of them as they do off of interest, late fees and balloon payments from people who use the system poorly. I am gaining a better understanding of why usury was either discouraged or viewed as a sin in some cultures.

So now I have to feed this corrupt system and play the game their way to buy a home. Time to get another secured loan and a couple of unreasonably high APR credit cards and use them conservatively from month to month. I have been advised that if I use them wisely over the next year, it will supposedly make my credit look far more favorable to mortgage companies. It may be for naught because many common projections theorize that mortgages will be much harder to obtain by then. Oh joy! >:-( OK, I am done with my complaining.

One of the things that I have been wrestling with lately is the Peace Testimony which is so prevalent in the Quaker circles where I circulate. The environment I was brought up in had elements of that which is reactionary and occasionally vindictive, so it is hard for me to wrap my mind around this new (to me) way of thinking. Yet choosing to follow the way of peace has been of great benefit to me and others in my life over the past year. It is by no small coincidence that I have begun to let go of struggles with adversarial people in my life; choosing instead to understand them and do what I can to receive them as a human being and treat them kindly while not acknowledging or supporting what I view to be their troublesome personality traits. As a result I have way less enemies and more friendly people surrounding me. My view of life and society is slowly evolving into one which is less negative. I have come to know that the Peace Testimony has to be applied and known intimately on a much smaller, personal level before it can be more broadly applied within society and the human race. It all starts with intent and conscious choice on the part of the individual. This may sound like very basic thinking to some, but for me it is all new.

Head Spinning

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

I apologize to the few people who actually follow this compendium of personal randomness known as my blog. I've been much busier than usual lately. Between household stuff, real estate shopping, hiking, occasional insomnia, blackberry picking, reading, writing, etc... I've been very lax in putting down any of my thoughts here. My head is spinning from all the activities and opportunities on my plate right now.

Good books I've been reading:
To Try The Bloody Law by Robert S. Burgess - The story of the life and martyrdom of the Quaker woman Mary Dyer.

The Renewable Energy Handbook by William H. Kemp - A Guide To Rural Energy Independence, Off-Grid and Sustainable Living - An excellent technical guide for people like me who are researching forms of living which have a much lower environmental impact. The author really puts everything into language which is easy to understand and includes lots of simple, helpful, technical diagrams for do-it-yourselfers like me.

Dark Night Journey: Inward Re-patterning Toward A Life Centered In God by Sandra Cronk - "The dark night aptly describes the situation of those who have had a growing sense of God's presence, direction, and consolation and are suddenly bereft of that experience. Aridity, meaninglessness, loss, and pain are hardly the milestones expected on a journey toward God. The author brings a unique perspective to her interpretation of this powerful pathway, and offers sensitive guidance to dark night travelers and those who seek to understand and nurture them.

Random things I have been doing:
It looks like it is going to be another banner year for harvesting wild blackberries. Tomorrow I am hoping to go out and pick at least a couple gallons' worth with the intention of making jam with them.

At the end of next week I am headed up to Elmore, VT again for vacation with my family. I've purchased a used boxed set of The Chronicles of Narnia which I intend to start reading again during my down-time.

I am working on a narrative essay detailing how the 'Ex-Gay Movement' has affected my life and my relationship with my parents & family. It describes by struggle due to the fact that my parents espouse ex-gay philosophies and I am a gay man with no desire to submit myself to the 'reparative therapy' which is promoted by the organizations in this movement. I am running into a lot of snags in writing the essay and trying to really examine myself and my life deeply so that the essay can be truthful and concise while touching on the subject of my family and parents with a sympathetic, understanding view of them. I don't believe I have ever put as much of myself into a piece of writing and it is emotionally exhausting. It is currently under review by several close loved ones and friends and I've just submitted it for consideration (and hopefully refinement) by some of the Friends who I attend meeting with. It will eventually be posted when I feel that it is ready.

Speaking

2007-07-15T12:19:00.000-04:00

I am terrified of public speaking. Small groups or individuals are totally OK, but when it is a room full of people, it gives me panic attacks and anxiety. In meeting today, I spoke for the first time; from the Spirit and from the Heart. I was completely taken by surprise... hashing over a thought in my mind relating to what someone else had said a few weeks ago in meeting and how it related to what someone had said today. My mind was still sitting down and thinking while my body stood up and spoke, seemingly involuntarily. Despite my heart pounding out of my chest and most of my brain racing around trying to figure out what the heck was happening, my words were clear and concise. A couple of people thanked me after the rise of meeting and told me that I spoke directly to their condition. It was a slightly unnerving, yet it felt right. For those who are unfamiliar with various religious phenomena, it is a sensation not unlike speaking in tongues, except maybe it just comes out in one's native language. I am probably over-analyzing. I have a way of attempting to dissect and understand everything that happens in my life and I need to learn to just put certain things away and wait for new perspective. Regardless, I think I am gaining a more intimate understanding of how this works.

Falling Madly In Love

2007-07-11T23:27:00.000-04:00

And I've decided that the object of my affection happens to be a she in this case. Don't be too surprised by this fact, but do check out her amenities (which can be viewed here and here.)

She is totally my style: petite, into all the same things that I'm into... existing deep in the woods, living off the land, off the grid lifestyle, probably likes dogs & cats, and wouldn't mind having a large garden some day.

I'm checking out financing/mortgage options tomorrow ;-). Wish me luck!

Long Pond

2007-07-01T08:08:00.000-04:00

Oh my word, I am very sore, my legs and arms still feel like they are on fire. On Friday a couple of my coworker friends and I went up to Long Pond in Lempster, NH for an afternoon picnic. The town beach there is posted for use by town residents only and they enforce this rule rigidly. However the boat landing uses state tax dollars so they can't legally eject out-of-towners if they are hanging around or entering the water at the boat landing. Additionally, the island in the middle of the pond is state property and available for use by anyone who wants to make the swim/boat trip over. Well, I don't have a boat yet. So I towed the cooler and the rest of our picnic supplies over on an inflatable lounger raft. It's about a 1/4 mile swim. We had a great time hanging around and being lazy in the sun, but we waited a bit too long to make the trip back. By the time we went back in the water the sun was setting and it had become a bit chilly out. I ended up towing J on a boogie board in addition to the raft because he has a bit less 'insulation' than I do and was too cold to let his top half into the water. I definitely got my exercise that day. I intend to go up there again to hike around and take pictures during foliage season.

G and J

Feeding The Addiction

2007-06-28T21:57:00.002-04:00

My tastes have always leaned toward a fondness for things which are a bit dark, humorous, and abstract or absurd. I recently purchased a used copy of Amphigorey Again by the late, great author Edward Gorey. This is the most recent (ostensibly last?) compilation of his short stories and drawings including projects completed shortly before his death. I was first introduced to his work just over half a decade ago when my good friend Pasha allowed me to peruse his copy of Amphigorey, the first major anthology of Mr. Gorey's best work. I was later furnished with a copy of my own when Pasha saw how much I loved it.

Over the next few years I obtained Amphigorey Too and Amphigorey Also as well as a few pamphlet-size stories that friends had found for me at flea markets. With all of these in my collection, I have almost all of his works, save for a few rare stories which were not widely circulated and are most likely sitting in the possession of ultra hardcore collectors. This is significant because of all authors, musicians and artists out there, very few human beings actually fascinate me enough to have me authoritatively delving into their works. For those who are not familiar with the stories of Edward Gorey, this comic that I found via google: [ (first page) and (second page) ] accurately mirrors my fascination while neatly summing up many common Goreyan themes. He could aptly be described as a fusion of Dr. Seuss, William Shakespeare, Monty Python, Jane Austen, and The Addams Family.

I think I enjoy his style because he never ceases to play mind games... inserting obsessive and seemingly pertinent details into his stories; the details will appear to be driving you in a specific direction, toward some sort of conclusion or a connection with part of the story... in fact your brain is working overtime to make that connection, then nothing happens. The details open the door of the car you are in, kick you out into an empty space, then drive away madly laughing and shouting "You'll never catch meeeee....!!!" It is as if the author is thumbing his nose at you and laughing like a good-natured trickster. He is also fond of deep, flowery literary prose, yet he injects it with random nonsense words which sound like they should be real, or he uses really fancy words and foreign languages to describe something completely ridiculous or mundane. His illustrations are often dark, yet finely detailed, heavily laden with a bleak Dickensian/Edwardian style and they share many seemingly related objects, in what is yet another example of the author's abstract sense of humor... tricking you yet again into assigning significance where there is none. Despite all this, his work does occasionally carry a very well-articulated point, but he really makes you work for it.

He also seems to delight in making fun of lofty, pretentious literary themes, brutally flouting conventional story structure and ruffling the feathers of anyone who takes themselves or the world of literature too seriously. There is also the appearance of occasional, thinly veiled crass undertones, phallic references, and perverse subject matter passed off as being innocently unintended.

If you are some sort of neo-dadaist, a fan of madcap British comedy, or just plain have an appreciation for excessive nonsense then I would heavily encourage you to read any or all of the works of Edward Gorey.

Edward Gorey

...and speaking of Edward Gorey, Nicholas Gurewitch, creator of one of my favorite web comics: Perry Bible Fellowship (don't let the name fool you, it is not a religious comic), penned a strip that could be an Edward Gorey tribute. He hit the drawing style spot-on... when I first saw it, I thought that it was something he had scanned out of one Gorey's published books.

Weasely War Dance

2007-06-26T21:56:00.000-04:00

A new friend recently e-mailed me and when I replied, I forgot that I still have my sender I.D. filled in as 'Dances With Ferrets'. She sent a reply asking what the name meant. It is a cute story, so I'm reposting my response to her query here:

It is a humorous modification of the title of the movie 'Dances With Wolves' ...an early-90s movie starring Kevin Costner... there is information about it here if you are curious: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dances_with_Wolves . Costner's character receives the name after some of the local indians whom he befriended observed him playing a sort of tagging and wrestling game with some
wolves whom he had tamed.

I used to have a couple of pet ferrets and when one is teasing them with a toy (much as you would with a cat), it gets them all wound up and they do a sort of signature energetic sideways 'waltz' that some refer to as the 'weasely war dance'. Anyhow, to make a long story short, it was a name that I got dubbed with back in the early 90s because I had pet ferrets and I would frequently play with them, getting them all wound up and bouncing around... we would take turns chasing each other. One of my siblings (my older sister I think) jokingly called me 'Dances With Ferrets' and the nick-name stuck for a little while.

So I just found a video on YouTube for any of you who are keen to see what the classic 'weasely war dance' looks like. Just plain cute!

Oh, and here's another video that I think captures the typical ferret personality to a T.

Just A Thought

2007-06-24T12:43:00.001-04:00

At meeting today, a man spoke of intentions... how they relate to the outcome of many of our decisions. It brought me into contemplation about the base reasoning of our intentions and how the course my own life has snaked back and forth between two well-defined and diametrically opposite types of intention. In retrospect I have been made to realize that most every decision I have made which resulted in ultimately negative consequences... was based in an intention rooted in the pursuit of self and ego, and on the other end of the spectrum almost every decision which resulted in an improvement of self, a building of maturity and character, and a general richness of existence... all of these were based in an intention to pursue That which is Truth and the purest form of Love. I won't expound on this any further, it speaks for itself and reminds me of where my energy needs to be focused.

I am still wrangling the raging ego but getting better at cutting off it's supply of energy and causing it to retreat back into the darkness where it belongs.

Thoughts on Creativity & Random Hike Pics

2007-06-06T21:46:00.001-04:00

(A couple of excerpts from Quaker Faith & Practice which I've found pertinent to the theme of some of my recent contemplations):

21.37: 'What's that on the shelf?' my artistic friend asked. 'A turbine blade. I designed it', I replied proudly. 'Oh', she said. Visiting three weeks later she asked, 'Why is that still there?' 'Because I think it's beautiful.' 'Oh', she said. My friend enthused over the beauty of a cathedral, a Rembrandt, a Turner, a sonnet. I find none in a cathedral, little in Rembrandt or poetry, a lot in a Turner. I find great beauty in Concorde, a Norton, a modern suspension bridge, in calculus and a good computer program - especially if I have written it! She little or none. I thrill to the sound of a racing car, the sight and smell of a machine shop, the noise and balletic movement of men and machine shaping white hot steel in a forge - and in my turbine blade. She does not. We could both be moved to tears by mountains, Beethoven, Britten, clouds ... and by friendship.

Graham Clarke, 1994

21.27: A sudden concentration of attention on a rainy August morning. Clusters of bright red berries, some wrinkled, some blemished, others perfect, hanging among green leaves. The experience could not have lasted more than a few seconds, but that was a moment out of time. I was caught up in what I saw: I became a part of it: the berries, the leaves, the raindrops and I, we were all of a piece. A moment of beauty and harmony and meaning. A moment of understanding.

Ralph Hetherington, 1975

I've been thinking a lot about creativity and what classifies as art lately... feeling slightly off because I haven't really done anything intensely creative for a few years. I used to constantly crank out cool woodworking projects, sewing projects, well-manicured flowerbeds, and the list goes on... and my life blew up, leaving me feeling empty and utterly uninspired. I am trying to get back into being creative/productive, but my artistic muse has been moving at a snail's pace. Still, photography fulfills me to some degree, even if it isn't all that professionally rendered. I've also been feeling a deeper level of appreciation for the joy and meaning in other people's art instead of only attaining a measure of fulfillment through creating my own... it seems emotionally and mentally onanistic if one derives pleasure only from their own creations.

And speaking of art, I always find it fascinating when one creates something cute or functional or both... and leaves it out in the middle of nowhere, ostensibly for the enjoyment and curiosity of anybody who walks by. On a hike recently I was surprised to see this ingenious little model mill set up on the edge of a hiking trail way outside of town. The wheel actually turns and whoever set it up has a lovely mind: creating it out of odd scraps of lumber and a wire spool... sluicing the stream so that it actually turns the wheel.

Within a stone's throw of the mill, somebody planted a non-native variety of Columbine ('Purple Magpie' I think, somewhat common in partial shade gardens).

Several pics of an unidentified species of flower that I've only seen twice in my entire life, both times growing in obscure places in the woods. It appears to be a member of the Dicentra (Bleeding Heart) family.
Update: OK, I was close, according to a gentleman from the NH Bureau of Natural Heritage, it is in the same general family of plants which includes dicentras and goes by the name pink corydalis (Corydalis sempervirens).

Moose tracks: judging by the size, probably female and judging by the much smaller, identical tracks accompanying these ones, she probably had a calf with her.

Old stone cabin foundation on the side of the trail

Finally, a picture of the real cat-hole warming hut on Green Mountain

Well-appointed accommodations for the weary hiker/snowmobiler/nomadic hermit

Eh, I think I'm gonna stick to using a tent. I'd be paranoid of catching some sort of parasite from the mattresses, hehe.

A view of my town from on top of Green Mountain, click for a better view

View of Mt. Ascutney (see last post) from the top of Green Mountain

A cathedral of young beech trees over the trail. This would be one of the purest forms of art in my mind.