Grandpa said it would be like this

Grandpa told me about how it was. His brothers and sisters - all his family - were gone. Passed. His friends were gone. Passed. He, and Prilly, his 2nd wife, were the only ones left. Prilly was a bridesmaid at his first wedding - to Dorothea. Dorothea Bristol - my grandmother. But Grandpa was the last. It didn't take but a couple of sentences for him to say it. His friends had passed. His family had passed. The people of his generation - all passed.

So, I knew it would come to my life, someday. Of course, back then, when G-pa said it, it WAS "someday". Someday in the unknown and unknowable future. But, in the FUTURE.

I'd had a friend or two who passed away young - an auto accident - cancer - but they were very much the exception. I knew, someday, this would change.

And, today, it is changing. High school classmates are passing at an increasing rate. Famous people my age - many are passing. Which brings me to the reason for this post. I mean, life goes on - we all know that. When you get old you die, sooner or later.

But a few days ago Terry Pratchett died. He was 3 years older than me. He had a true gift for words - the like of which we only see less than a dozen in any generation. He was a genius for wisdom packed into fantasy and humor. His obit page on Yahoo linked to an animated movie of Wyrd Sisters - but I tell ya - it was pretty poor. They put all kinds of stereotypes on the words and characters Pratchett created, and asfaic, they didn't catch the characters much.

Pratchett managed to capture true wisdom in comedic characters. He had a viciously clear eye for the truth of human relations.

Note: I saved this as a draft when I wrote it, shortly after Terry Pratchett's death. I wasn't sure it would stand up to time, so I set it aside. But Pratchett was an exceptional mind for his vision of the human condition and the human spirit. We have lost a great man. I wrote this post in grief over Pratchett's passing, and never finished the thoughts here. 

To tie up the loose ends then: Terry Pratchett was a great man and a great thinker. Now, granted, he did his thinking in some novels that were typically light-hearted. But it was still some pretty deep commentary on humans and what being a member of that group called humanity meant. Some very pithy stuff buried at a rather shallow level - but buried enough that you could ignore the depth and just pay attention to the fun on the surface. 

The other loose end was the message Grandpa imparted. In short: we pass. Hang around long enough and everybody you knew will pass. And after many years of youth, when you might lose a few, a time will come when all those remaining will pass in quick step. And not a day will go by but what you are hit by what has passed. 

And my message is that, for my generation, that time has begun. 

More Spring - and reflections on hand-made

Thursday, March 12, 2015 9:24:21 PM

Addendum to the whole spring thing: We can see more of our roads and even some ground off the side of the road now. I swear, it felt for a while like we were going to be like the MacKenzie Pass in Oregon - the roads might open in late May but surely by June! So much has melted, I can see stuff I haven't seen in it feels like months! We still have giant heaps on the roadsides and at the edges of parking lots. And it is still very much in the way - blocking visibility when entering the local highways.


On home-made stuff. The past few winters have seen me using the same mittens Mom knitted for me some 45 years ago. Inside their buckskin outer mitts, they are still the warmest handwear I have in the winter - better than fancy modern insulated ski gloves. There is something special for me in hand-made stuff, especially when it was made as a gift. In the case of these mittens, tho, in spite of their age, they are still the best thing going. In addition to being beautiful. It helps that they spent most of the intervening years in storage - they weren't much needed in most of the places I've lived since leaving home so many years ago. It is really rather amazing, I think, that I even still have them. I don't think most people would have held on to these that long - and I even lost track of them more than once. Fortunately they always turned up again.

The mittens are not the only hand-made thing I've been enjoying the past couple years. There is my "Thank You" coffee travel mug. It is an obviously hand painted ceramic travel mug, with stars, flowers and a large "Thank You!, Thank You!" hand painted on the handle. It wasn't made for me - and whoever was the intended recipient never used it. I "inherited" it via the recycling table at our transfer station (recycling and garbage depot). I love the obvious effort that went into this mug - and it cheers me to use it!

And then, there is the "rescue" blanket project I recently did. For many years I have had a handmade woolen poncho/blanket I bought in Guatemala on a long-ago vacation. It is not all that beautiful or anything - and it is standard tourist purchase stuff. But the yarn is quite obviously hand spun, and the poncho was obviously hand woven, and it is wool. Which all means it is a lovely bit of fabric, if you can appreciate it for what it is. The problem, for me, is that it is poncho-sized - about 5 feet square. Meaning it wasn't much good for anything I could use it for. It is overly light in weight for a rug. It is too small to use as a blanket. It is not attractive enough to use as a wall-hanging. So it has hung around for years, only occasionally getting used as a tv blanket - or sometimes as a coverlet.

But recently, at that same transfer station recycling table, I saw a light weight woolen blanket, made of mostly a natural white, undyed wool. It had seen some use, and had some spots that were unraveling from wear. And it had pastel borders - not colors that would recommend  the thing to me. However, I thought maybe I could use the good fabric, and 'rescue' the Guatemalan poncho! I tossed the blanket in the freezer for a couple of weeks to kill any moth larvae, should it have any. Then I cut it into large sections, which I pieced on to the Guatemalan poncho, and voila! I have a regular blanket sized thing now! So it is getting used on a regular basis. Blanket rescue!

I taste the air, and it feels like spring.

Tuesday, March 10, 2015 6:45:34 AM

I taste the air, and it feels like spring.

I open the kitchen door to let a dog out. It is cold outside, but it feels - different. It is not like the feeling of impending snow, or of winter's colder temperatures. It is filled with promise, and comfort. And I leave the door open to let in fresh air for the first time in, oh, I don't know, it feels like it has been months!

I've been opening the door only far enough for the dog or cat to get outside. And if they did not move fast enough, I either closed the door, or scooted them along with my foot to hurry them up. I love fresh air, and our windows usually stay partly open, even in cold weather. Just a crack when it gets cold, but just a little for fresh air. Not this winter. We've closed them up tight this year.

But spring is the topic! I opened the door, and tasted the air, and felt the air, and looked around, and I could feel the beginnings of comfortable! It is a magical, exciting, promising feeling. I love spring. It is my favorite season. Now, spring is nice everywhere, but in most sections of the country it is nice, whilst the magic is not so strong. In New England, though, spring is especially exciting and promising. And it was experiencing spring, up here, that gave spring the special meaning it has to me. Most folks would pick summer, fall, or winter as their favorite season. My pick is spring.

I do not know exactly what it is that creates the feeling of spring. Whether it is the quality of the light, the humidity levels, the temperature, a scent on the air, the sounds of the wild critters moving about, or the sound of water, I do not know. It might be it is all of them together.

It could be longer days. Except the days have been getting longer for more than two months, and we've yet been deep in the grips of winter. I knew the promise was there - every morning the light came a little earlier - and I love that. I love waking up with the light.

It could be that there was humidity in the air, except it gets more humid when snow is coming, also, and that does not signify spring! The temperatures has gone up a bit, and that certainly contributes to the feeling of the air! I don't think it is the scent of anything yet, there is nothing I can see quickening and greening, and the sap is not yet flowing in the trees - although it should be soon.

The sounds of the wild critters definitely ups the mood ante. The birds are singing more. I heard the hoot owls getting all crazy just a couple of nights ago: "whoo-ho, hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo-hoo". I could hear at least a half dozen "whoo"-ing at each other near our house. The squirrels are back raiding the bird feeders - and looking scrawny, too. I'll be giving them a little extra discouragement soon enough.

But there is one more thing that adds to the feeling in the air - that creates the intuitive knowledge in my body that spring has begun: the sound of water. In winter there is silence. Yes, the birds sing, footsteps on the snow squeak and crunch, but otherwise, the world is muffled and silent. There is no rustling of leaves, no scurrying of creatures, not tiny, small, medium, nor large. But now the creatures are sometimes about, and I can hear water.

Water and I have developed a special relationship in my life. You could say I have an affinity with running, living waters. Being close to these waters has always done something extra for my soul. It very much like having enough daylight - too many grey days seriously depress me. And, of course, now science tells us that the sound of running water DOES do good things for us psychologically. Whatever, I learned it was an important and special thing as a youngster, when I was living with the ocean on one side, and the intracoastal waterway (a series of estuaries on the Atlantic coast of Florida, for those who've not lived there) on the other. A few years later, when I moved to New England, there was springtime, and the return of the sounds of water.

It is dripping from the eaves. The icicles are melting, and falling off the roof. Roads, paths and driveways are clearing. There are streams and rivulets on every hill. Which is everywhere around here. And you can hear them all. Spring in the Columbia River basin has this effect in spades - with waterfalls everywhere and rainbows and mist to go along with it. But the sounds of running water helps make spring in our northeast special.

There you have it. Springtime is special. Some people get flowers, some get rain. Some people get a cessation of rain (think Pacific Northwest)! Here, it starts with the melting of the snow, the singing of the birds, and a feeling of the air.

I left the door open, until it got quite chilly inside the kitchen. It felt good.

The bullshit of e-books

Comments on my recent adventures into the world of tablet computers and ebooks.

I still use a flip phone. Flip phones have become a public target of jokes. As in "you're so old . . .". But you know something? I've always been an early adopter. I have a whole lifetime of history on this to point to. But I am usually of the 2nd generation of early adopters. I don't like to geek out in zones where I'm always having to tinker. That's not early adopting - that is following fads. And then you can call yourself an early adopter if your fad actually becomes useful, popular, and used.

Seriously, a few years ago, they came up with names for the stages of early adoption for tech devices:  "innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority,  . . ."(Wikipedia). Regardless, for me, a smart phone and a tablet have, until recently, seemed more like fancy toys than serious tech. There was no essential function they filled for me - and they were way too problem-ridden. Too problem-ridden, and too brand dominated. Nobody's stuff works with anybody else's stuff, know what I mean? At least with the prior generation of tech - Palm devices - I could get synchronization between my computers and device with a little effort. But, in this new world, there is no dominant device. If I go with a Mac device, I have to figure out how to make it talk to my linux boxes. Windows, Android, whatever, ETC. Ad nauseum. So, I had no need for them, and they looked to be more like a drag on my time.

Ditto e-book readers. Everybody wants their format on the market, and nobody is standardizing. Hey, anybody remember the magnetic tape market? Reel-to-reel? Cassetes? 8-track? How about video! Betamax! VHS! Sheesh. You'd think people would learn. Nope. Can't happen. Kindle. Adobe. Microsoft must have something in there - I don't know. Whatever. Make the story short - I didn't bother. Precisely because it was a bother. No advantage to it for me.

Until this spring. When I thought I had an expat contract, and was looking at going overseas? All of a sudden an e-book reader makes sense. So, I do what everybody does now - I googled it. Turns out the Nexus (Asus), current version, not early, was getting very good reviews and comments. It used Android instead of MS. It was supposed to be able to read pretty much any e-book format. AND, it was a tablet, meaning I could use it for more than just an e-book reader. So maybe I can finally find a replacement for my last, and long dead, Palm.

Went down to the store, checked it out. Looks pretty sharp. Nice attachments available. Sales person assures me that I had read correctly - it could read any e-book. And I bought it.

And it works pretty good. Except I am QUICKLY reminded of why I HATE touch screens. They are a major pain in the ass. They are extremely inaccurate and unresponsive. Oh - the pictures you see on tv, swish here, swipe there and VOILA! Ending in some graphically wondrous enchantment? All true enough - when it works. But, unfortunately, it often does not work. Typing is more than a p.i.t.a. It is MAJOR pita. Try to get the cursor into a text box? Oh yeah, sure - I have to tap it so many times and so hard I'm afraid I'm going to break the goddam screen! Palm's stylus was a very minor pita in comparison. Make a typing error? Need to go back to the middle of the word and delete one letter and insert a new one? Good luck with that! Tip! Tap. TAP. TAP! TAP!!!!  And still no joy - but eventually I get the cursor inserted. Sheesh. My world for a set of arrow buttons.

Another trip to the store. No more of this. I get a mouse. A mouse makes life much better with the tablet. It works. And later I make ANOTHER trip to the store, to pick out a keyboard. From my Palm experience, I am pretty sure that will go much better if I can do a LIVE test and make sure the keyboard WORKS as advertised. Oh - yeah - and I can't use any sort of thumb drive or flash card - unless I get a USB dongle. So I get a dongle.

Ok, so all should be cool now, right? Wrong. Can't read the USB memory sticks. Wft I say? Turns out I have to download an app. Ok, Learning Curve! I'm not smiling, but perhaps I am becoming operational. Turns out I have to download apps for everything, including e-books. But at least I'm getting used to it.

~~~~

So. I'm busy with other stuff for a while, and the tablet sits in its drawer. Then its a couple of weeks later, and I figure I'll get something to read. I'm tired, and I'd like a nice break. A good book would do the trick. So, I look up my library's web site. And, it doesn't work with the tablet. Oh, it works - but not really. I can't get to the forms to login, can't navigate, etc. It isn't really functional. I can see it, but not much better. I manage to use mouse and keyboard to login. So I go to the search page. Whoops. This is even worse.

Ok, nvm, . I take the tablet, put it on the desk, and open my regular computer. This is when I WANT to take a hammer to the damn thing. But I exercise my patience! Login to my library account on my desktop, and run a search for some likely reading material in ebook form. Find some stuff, ok. Download? Hmmmm - manage to figure out how to get it to download onto the tablet. It only takes about 5 screens, and signing up for some new account with somebody the library works through. And I have to eventually figure out how to get to the download screen from the tablet, once I get through all the other junk. Ok. Got some downloads!

A few days go by. I try to open an ebook. Can't. No app. So, download an app. It doesn't work very well. Download another app (and I don't have the faintest idea what is any good, the rating schemes are not very helpful). Ok - this one at least I can FIND the ebooks and "import" them. Except - whoops - it wants some kind of password for some Adobe account. Which I don't have.

And it takes a few more days before I have time to figure this section out. I have to go to Adobe while online and register. Just ANOTHER online entity who wants more info about me than they need or should have. You know, Adobe systems has been a perennial disappointment for many years. Adobe - such a fine, grand name. With a name like that, you would have to expect them to be salt of the earth, good neighbors, and downright good steady people, right? I mean adobe - the word for a simple clay, natural, earth-friendly, traditional,  for building simple, down-to-earth buildings. Got to be good, right? But Adobe Flash is a security abomination that has spent as much time not working as working, and should be banned from every computer. Adobe reader, and pdf file ("Portable Document Format") should be righteous standards, right? Weyelll - partly, eh? Except they charge a monstrous big price for a full version of Acrobat - their software to write to pdf files. And Reader is always more crippled than not. But you can gripe with my griping about Reader. They do pretty well on that score, even if they haven't always done. And it is free. Although, frankly, I think they should charge less for Acrobat, and charge a little for Reader.

Anyway, now my library has Adobe E-pub books. I checked them out from the library. Should have been simple enough.  Wasn't, not quite, but got that done. Now, should be able to read them, yes? Noooooo - got to register with Adobe first! Piffle. But I get that done, too. Should be able to read the books now, right? I've had them for five days, they are due back in just over a week.

But can I open them? NOOOOOO! Can't do that! "Download has expired!" Got to re-download!

You have ephing got to be kidding me. This is ephing ridiculous. I checked the books out.  WHY SHOULD THE CHECK-OUT SYSTEM CARE WHETHER I'VE OPENED THE EPHING BOOKS OR NOT!

So guess who's going to get an earful from me. This is ridiculous, and I'm going to hand some of this shit back to somebody in the system.

Oh, and btw, remember that download? Ooops. I should have written down how I got it to work - because now I want to do it again - and I can't! Poop. Which means, more of my time, devoted to making something work, that it seems like SHOULD have worked without all this bullshit.

A mild winter - turns bitter

Well. For the most part - it has been a mild winter. As you may have noticed, a couple of weeks back it started to get real about being winter. So we had a couple of cold days - real cold. Then it got milder for a spell. Some weather in the teens, but mostly above 20 F (~ -7C). Some days above freezing - most of the snow went away. Still had some crusty stuff left. Then it decided to get back to real cold.

Once you hit 10 F (-12 C), imo, it is in the top of the real cold range. So now, for a few days, we are below 10. A couple of mornings past we hit a low of 1 F. Last night the low was -7 F (-22). Now we are REALLY getting into the cold.

So it snowed, maybe 10 or 12 inches. Easy to clear, it is so cold it was dry dry dry. I haven't worked outside clearing snow and stuff in temps like these in several decades. It was much colder in Russia, while I was working there - but the risk taking walks was fairly low. I wasn't working, building a sweat, or getting gloves or mittens wet from getting blasted with snow.

Now, for a fact, I don't work up much of a sweat pushing a snowblower. Hehehe, not at all. But, the winds blows a little bit, and I have a snow crust all over whatever I am wearing. I slip and fall - or drop a broom or a shovel or whatever, and have to pick it out of a drift - and I've got snow up my sleeves - instant chill to the hands.

So I'm out clearing snow from the driveway at -5 F. Cold, baby. The tem actually goes DOWN after daybreak - a couple more degrees - to -7. Auh-huh. Chilly. Later in the day it finally goes back up a few degrees, but we have a couple of cold days.

The good side? I get to wear winter clothes I haven't worn in a long time - like my Russian fur hat. Anytime the temp is 10 F or higher, it is too warm for this hat - I sweat.

It sure is pretty. Picture perfect white snow drifts, makes the roads look real country. But the dogs don't even like it - Klinger's paws are so cold he is acting like the snow is a bed of nails. We go out the next day - at about 15 F, and he is happy as a clam running around in the snow. But -5 is a bit too much!

It was -2 F this morning. Did I tell you about the summer table?

It was -2 F this morning. That is about -19 C. Cold. Not super duper cold, I know, but cold. Lovely white snow, still fresh. Crusting over just a bit now, because of the good sunshine yesterday, but dry powder underneath. Sara will not go in it - as it is too deep for her - I think it probably puts a strain on her bad knee. Klinger is ok with it, but he has long enough legs. After a while, he isn't so happy in it, I think his webbed toes don't like the crunchy snow, and I also think it is cold for his feet when he isn't moving.

Did I tell you about the summer table? Notice the seque to a non-winter topic? It has a nice snowy top now. But here, let me show you what it looked like this summer.

There are two stories in this photo. I got the tiles in the give-and-take at the transfer station. Free. Too few to do a house project with. Nice tiles. So, I bought a bag of concrete and mixed it up. Then I laid some plastic down and used some cardboard scraps to make a mold. Put the tiles in the mold, and poured a little sand in between them. Pour in the concrete and tamp it down, and voila, I have a table top. A bit rustic, but perfect for an outdoor table.

The "happy" cup - isn't it marvelous? Just looking at all those (hand painted!) decorations and the joy in them is enough to make me a bit happy! And, it says, on the handle: "Thank You! Thank You!". I got it, for free, at the give-and-take.  Obviously a gift to someone in lieu of a thank you note. If it had been given to me, I would not have been able to bear parting with it. But, also obviously, for whatever reason, someone did not feel the same way. Perhaps there is more of a story there, who knows? It brings me a little sunshine when I use it, so there ya go - something good from it.

That same day, while photographing the table, I had a small visitor.

The photo quality is not the best - it is a phone photo. But, he sure was a pretty fella.

Canning the Wild Concord Grape

It was wild. Aha, oho, yuck yuck! Well, one thing for sure - it was purple. I had one hot spill. And, of course, I spilled it on me. It was HOT!  So, I simulated a full murder theater arterial blood splatter across the side of the kitchen. Fortunately, just my hand, thus the quick fling and spatter across the wall got it off me. But what a spatter! It stained the paint - there are now faint purple spots across the wall. I went to the sink and turned the water on cold, and stuck my hand into the streaming water. Nice thing that we get pretty cold water. One of the benefits of well water.

But it is sooo good. Or at least I think so. Someone thinks it has an "off" flavor - but I think it is either some medicine she is taking, or it is the result of "sour grapes" since I cooked it. It is tart - it is not super sweet, and it is full of the grape flavor. And, it is jam, meaning the skins are in so it has a little texture. Oh, and yeah, the occasional seed, too. Didn't get all the little buggers.

Getting the seeds out turns out to be a lot of work. The 1st recipe I found online called for slipping the skins off the grapes. I did a couple, and immediately said, "whadaffuq am I doing here? This will take FOREVER!" And so I didn't slip the skins. That batch turned out just fine - but I gave up trying to strain the mess through a colander - I would have been there until next year. No-go on doing it that way. So, I find a local hardware with canning supplies and a FOOD MILL.. That's a little hand-cranked doobee that has two wings or leaves that push the solids into a colander type straining surface. That worked. Amazingly well, actually.

Except it left a lot of the skins in the "dry" part, and it would have take "foahevah" again to get it better this way. So, the next batch? I slip the skins off the grapes as I process them. It take a couple of hours to do a few pounds, but it does find grapes that are wormy and would have passed my "eyeball" test while I was washing them. Slipping the skins means I cook the pulp, which contains the seeds, and the skins separately, at least for the first step. I puree the skins, and I put the pulp in the food processor after cooking them soft. The food processors breaks most of the pulp free from the seeds, and into the food mill it goes. A half hour or so later, I have half as much pulp, but mostly free of seeds. A few seeds snuck through.

Now I get down to the serious cooking. These grapes are tart enough I need some sugar. Not as much as most recipes call for - about half that. I test the results for pectin - to see if I need to add pectin. The 1st batch tests low. The 2nd batch test "medium". Either way I have to add some pectin. I tried adding some crabapples in the first batch - they didn't test high in pectin either! Must 'a been too ripe, idk.

So I add pectin, and can. Everything turns out real well with the jam. I take a jar to some neighbors - the lady I buy eggs from. They like it, so I think my taste buds are validated. It has the flavor of these Concord grapes. They are wild, so the flavor is not as rich as it might be - but it is still very good. And there is tartness to it. I like it.

We have a bunch of apples on our tree this year, too. Completely organic - they get NO attention from me. Which means they are pretty funky to look at. Scab, worms, black blight, you name it, it afflicts the apples. Most of these do not affect the taste, just the appearance and size. If you are willing to cut them up, they are extremely good eating apples. Kinda like a fuji - sweet, AND tart, with crisp, moist, firm white flesh. Not grainy or mealy, until they are really ripe to the point of almost over ripe. Actually, fully ripe with these apples IS over ripe for eating. Because they are tart, they also cook extremely well. They make a great applesauce, with no sugar added, and no spices added - just apples.

I can a couple of quarts - but this canning doesn't turn out as well. I have problems getting the applesauce jars to seal. I'll have to figure that out. Also, I read on one recipe that a little salt in the applesauce will make an average applesauce a superior applesauce. So I add a little salt to the 2nd batch. Ooops. A little salt was too much salt. Now it tastes, hmmm, just a little odd. Not bad, just not really as good, either. Shucks. Well - I guess I won't be sharing little jars of applesauce for Christmas!

Note - this was actually written in September - just got around to posting it here!