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Brad's Blog
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March 3
In home renovation, one often finds that by replacing
the floor, suddenly the walls look dingy. In fact, that's happening
with our fixup home as the floor progresses. So my wife's been doing
a lot of painting. She's using a cool modern paint gadget with tubes
and things so that the roller never has to be dipped, and seldom drips.
Ahh, this modern age...
But the reason I began talking about this is still the topic of the new grocery store in town. For me, it comes down to, the new store makes you feel like you need a new town to go with it. Actually, with the growth in our county, the new town has been growing around the kernel of the old, which one can ignore until the new store makes it obvious. There have been plenty of other signposts pointing to this. Spirit Lake closed its high school and consolidated years before we moved here. But in the last 10 years, a new high school was built here and filled, and in the last couple years a separate junior high school of similar size was built and filled as well.
As with all growth, the pensioners and old-timers are put at a disadvantage as property tax valuations increase, but they also gain some in available services (such as variety of foods available). We bemoan the empty fields where we walked, now slated for development, but it's fruitless to moan too much over the old days. They were good old days, but they're gone, so look for some good times ahead in new places... Too often we circumscribe ourselves in our routines...
Speaking of routines, unless I need lots of things like sacks of potatoes and flour, I ride my bicycle to the store, and get my groceries in my backpack. At the old store, all the checkout clerks expected me to use my pack, and if I didn't, would inquire about it. At the new store, the number of employees has doubled, and it may be a while before my chosen system becomes familiar to them...
March 4
At one of the music sites I visit, I saw a childhood
rhyme today that took me back, and it seems to be pretty common in
the English speaking world. Although it has the cadence of a skipping
rhyme, it was used to make fun of any romantic notions elementary schoolers
might have. It begins, "--------- and ----------- sitting in the
tree, K- I- S- S -I- N -G. First comes love, then comes marriage,
then comes...."
Actually there's some dispute as to what comes next (as
there is in the real world). Some remembered one of the names being
pushed IN a baby carriage, others WITH a baby carriage.
The discussion I was following says that this ditty appears
in print as early as the 1930's, so it had some staying power on the playground.
It makes one wonder what traditions might survive in
that early childhood continuum, which could harbor rituals mostly unnoticed
by the world.
Some things, like playing marbles, which was the hot
thing for 1-3rd graders when I was a kid, are probably gone. Possibly
some skipping rhymes survive, at least where rope skipping is still encouraged.
The folk music culture was largely swallowed in the 1920's
by the two brave new technologies of phonographs and radio. By the
1930's collectors went to the prison farms, where the convicts were more
out of the mainstream and more likely to rely on the oral tradition
rather than the popular culture.
Technology has rapidly overtaken all aspects of modern
life in the affluent countries. On the other hand, the Internet has
proved a boon to researchers and those interested in sharing traditions...
March 5
I posted a new guitar video and several others at youtube.com,
which got an article in Newsweek this week (Youtube, not me), as the new
hot item (and also on some of their copyright issues). I've
stuck to my original material to avoid those issues... Since the
time limit for the videos using my software is about two minutes, I'd like
to do some fun little Pythonesque skits, but so far I'm sticking mostly
to music. Assuming you have broadband internet, you can see them
all at: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=bsondahl
March 6
This was another good half day of skiing for me, with
3 inches of fresh snow on the slopes, and roads only wet (not icy) from
the ski resort downwards... The only glitch was that my season pass
disappeared during the day. It may be turned in, or I'll have to
pay $25.00 to replace it. I'm not sure if I've skied enough
enough to pay for the pass, so it's sort of like raising the rail to have
to pay another $25.00 to continue... On the other hand, my son is
approaching 100 days of skiing this season, so he makes up for any lapses
I might have in diligence.
March 7
Meanwhile my counterweight securing the opposite side
of the world, Linda from Australia, related this trip to the the seacoast:
"I have just come back to the real world and am back
at work after Pete and I ran away to the south coast for a few days break.
The trip was great, you start out from here going through undulating farmland
which becomes increasingly hilly until you reach the dry forests of the
western side of the great dividing ranges. The great dividing range
goes all the way along the eastern coast of Australia and you have to cross
it to get to the east coast from anywhere inland. Then up past the snowy
ranges to the top of Australia and the flat, sparsely treed highland alpine
plains.There are always lots of wildflowers up there through the summer,
fields of yellow & white everlasting daisys, under story trees in flower
etc.Then down the steep eastern side of the escarpment where there are
pockets of rain forest with beautiful cycads and tree ferns amongst the
forest which grows thick , lush and tall. The south coast forests are beautiful
and thick with spotted gums and ferns and the trees grow very tall and
straight and there are still many areas where they are largely untouched
by human habitation.Then come the coastal heath which is full of bird life.
Lastly I get to put my feet on the sand and feel the thrill of the ocean
rushing against my legs. Lovely stuff. When I first moved away from the
coast to the inland I used to have cravings for the smell and the feel
and the colors of the ocean. I love to walk for miles along the beaches
and where we stayed the resort was the only thing at that beach so we mostly
had it all to ourselves being not school holiday time. There are a few
little villages down there that are aimed at tourists like us who visit.
They are full of little craft shops and interesting shops and cafes. Beautiful
woodwork and some good pottery, antiques, plant nurseries etc. "
We in Idaho can also travel to the sea with about a 7 hour drive, and it sounds like seaside tourist villages share similarities worldwide. But the descriptions of the natural world in Australia sound different from the Pacific Northwest, as I'm sure they are, with the divergent evolution abounding on that continent...
March 8
It's one of those cheery March snowstorms this evening,
where we've gotten 3 inches of fresh snow, but you know it will be gone
in a couple days, being that it's March...
Meanwhile, I forgot to tell yesterday of lightning striking
twice. In this case it was Grandma. The most diligent of blog
readers (most likely my mother) will recall the middle of the night sometime
in the last year when my senile mother-in-law got up in the middle of the
night and pulled loose a water supply for the toilet by stepping on it.
Yes, it happened again. This time I was pondering being awake around
4 in the morning when I heard a slight "thunk" coming from Grandma's area,
which to my trained ears meant she was out and about. When I came
into the bathroom, I found she had wedged herself in between the toilet
and the water heater, and after extricating her I noticed a drip on the
floor where the supply for the waterheater had gotten knocked loose by
her ministrations. Fortunately it only required a bit of tightening
with a wrench this time, instead of locating the main shutoff as the water
shot outwards, as happened last time.
March 9
Today was my son's 100th day of skiing this season.
I made a pile of 100 snowballs to commemorate it.
Since we're talking round numbers, I also got an order
for 250 mugs today, stamped with the camp's name on it. I made about
50 to get started.
March 10
It takes about twice as long to add handles and stamp
on the decoration on a mug as it does to throw the mug on the wheel. So
I spent a good part of the morning doing that to the 50 mugs, then glazing
a kilnload. In the afternoon I threw 70 more mugs, so I know what
I'm doing tomorrow...
For supper I took leftover stir-fry chicken and carrots,
added some onion, frozen peas, and homemade noodles, and made chicken noodle
soup. Homemade noodles are as easy to make as piecrust--just add
white flour to a beaten egg until it makes a dough you can roll out on
a pastry cloth. My latest improvement is to cut the noodles with
a pizza cutter--one of those circular blades that rolls across, as opposed
to knives that drag across and tend to bring the noodles with it.
Like store pasta, they expand in cooking, so you want to roll them as thinly,
and slice them as narrowly, as possible. Since they aren't dried
to begin with, they cook quicker than dried pasta.
March 12
I've been sick today and part of yesterday with sore
throat etc. This causes me to reflect more on mortality than the
sunny side of life, so enough said... I am glad I'm not sick more
often...
March 13
Although I'm still sick, I reported to my pottery group
meeting today. I took a vase destined for woodfiring next week, which
I'll be expected to spend some time stoking it. There's a whole side
of pottery I put behind when I went with electric firing. With fuel
fired kilns, the pyromaniac in us gets a bit of excitement, with fire and
smoke belching out of the kiln's orifices. I expect to see this with
the wood firing. I also expect to see ridiculously high fuel consumption
for the results. Most of the anagama (wood firred chamber kilns)
of Japan were closed when they had exhausted the local forests of wood.
That seems hard to imagine here, where we're surrounded by woods, but I've
noticed firewood is harder to come by than it used to be, especially with
the population of the area growing so quickly.
The area is also requiring more electricity, but that
all remains a lot less visible, except for the natural gas-fired plant
they built nearby a few years ago. Nationally electricity burns most
of the coal mined, and creates a lot of pollution from sulphuric acid rain
and mercury contamination. Regionally water power has been the primary
source of electricity, but finally some wind plants are going up in the
natural wind funnel areas. Unfortunately every source of power has
its drawbacks--wind farms kill a lot of migrating birds as they hit the
rotors or towers, and do have that problem of still days... On an
up note, though, nanotechnologists are building circuits from the molecular
size up, including the possibility of solar electric generators that could
be sprayed on to be applied, as on the side or roof of buildings.
The final question is always, can techology solve the
problems caused by technology... It's not a totally fair question,
since a lot of the problems we face relate to overpopulation as well as
technology (pollution, food supply, etc.). I'm rooting for technology,
but I don't expect a panacea, even for my cold...
March 14
I'm still sick, but well enough to glaze a kiln load
today, and probably resume making mugs tomorrow. My wife has been
working over my former pottery workshop, reorganizing it to a pottery warehouse
and shipping room. So I'll need to build a few shelves to complete
that tomorrow as well.
There are several good things to being sick when self
employed. I don't have to call in sick, of course. And I can
go back to work as soon as I want without spreading any sickness (since
I have no employees). Since being sick gets old fast, it's nice to
start resuming normal life...
March 15
I've returned to being functional, and did exactly what
I mentioned yesterday, today. But you can never know what the day
ahead really holds...
Dementia type senility is sort of a reverse of baby development--you
slowly unlearn whatever you learned. When you have a two year old, you
rapidly learn what you need to do to protect your possessions and safeguard
your child from itself...
The reason I mention this is that Grandma started the
day (at 5 am) by tangling with the toilet again (no leaks this time,
but she got a wet slipper from stepping into the toilet)... So we're
learning what we need to do to safeguard Grandma. She no longer understands
toilets without help, so we decided it is best to keep her away from the
bathroom at night. As long as she's mobile, we can't prevent her
from getting up in the night, but we can limit her movements, so that's
what we're trying for... We've even tried using a baby monitor to
listen for her, but since she often talks to herself awake or dozing, and
contrarily might be totally silent when getting up and wandering, it's
of limited use... Fortunately, most of the time she's fairly easy
to care for...
March 16
Our young cat Candide has a certain type of demented
logic in its outlook. A while ago, in the loft where we sleep, I
opened a window to let him out onto the roof (from whence he can go anywhere).
He'd never seen that before, and was quite amazed. He'd go out--I'd
shut the window, and he'd beat on it with his paws (his way of expressing
his desire to go in or out). When I'd open the window, he wouldn't
want to come in--just liked having it open, apparently. Since then
he occasionally wants to go out that window, but is fairly consistent about
not wanting to come in there, which can be frustrating in the middle of
the night when it's cold, and he beats on the window with his tom-tomcat
paws. Since he absorbed his window lesson, he's also started
beating on the view window in the kitchen, which doesn't open. I
figure he assumes that if we, his appointed caretakers, can open
one window, we can open them all for him.
When he does this I have to go out the front door, and
around to the side, and call him, which he mostly ignores. Probably
his thinking is if he'd wanted to come in the front door, he'd have gone
there...
It reminded me of a developmentally impaired person I
knew once, who came to me with a power lawn mower he'd fetched out of a
dumpster. It was just the wheels, housing, and handle, with no motor.
He wanted to know if I could fix it for him--put a motor on it.
That would, of course, fix it, but it's also the part-and-parcel
expensive core of the mower.
So our cat has lots of faith in my ability to do whatever
he wants...
Meanwhile, what got me up at 5:30 this morning was my
cell phone, quietly beeping that it's ready to be recharged. I don't
care if it is recharged or not at 5:30, but it's sort of retarded
that way, and wants what it wants when it wants it...
Well, I suppose we all do.
March 18--not for the queasy stomached...
I went on a wild deer chase today. My wife had
noticed a dead deer lying along the shore of the lake, and didn't want
to encounter it again so was avoiding walking that stretch of shoreline.
So I offered to locate it and drag it up into the bushes, where the detritivores
could devour it more unobtrusively. But I couldn't find the deer.
I was walking on the ice, watching the beach as I walked. I did finally
notice a few patches of fur stuck in the ice in one area, and decided it
was either gone or in the lake... My wife walked there later and
thought it was probably in the lakc, as the level of the lake had risen...
It will remind us to avoid that bit of beach this summer...
It also reminded me of the time we saw a deer die of
clumsiness.
Lots of people see deer die from lack of traffic smarts.
But in this case we were eating a picnic supper at a park overlooking the
Mississippi River in Dubuque Iowa, when a deer came trotting through the
area, was a bit startled, and slipped on a rocky area. It fell down
and broke its neck, and died immediately, about 20 feet from where we were
sitting...
We reported it to the entry gate, and I think the worker
there called some friends to pick it up as pristine roadkill...
March 19
I went to the local bluegrass showcase last night (that
I played at last month, and will play again at next month). I took
a few photos and pasted them up at the link at the top of this page...
March 20
March 21
I pruned our fruit orchard this morning, and prepared
a bed for planting early greens in our greenhouse. My wife Althea
planted spinach, peas, and some other early vegetable there this afternoon.
There's still snow in the shady places, but there were rain showers today,
and since it's officially spring, it's about time to start the other bedding
plants as well. Althea also started a spring cleaning of our display
pottery in the outside kiosk. These are our slowest months, and when
the weather is below freezing, it's very hard to clean the pots.
We're also approaching having the most pottery on hand of any time in the
year, so that makes for hundreds of pots that have collected dust and snow.
So add dishwashing to the requisite skills needed to be a potter...
March 22
The big accomplishment today was moving a large upright
freezer from an outside porch into the former pottery workshop. The
freezer was too large to go through the two doors without removing a lot
of door stuff, and even taking the door off the freezer. But
I'd just cobbled together a window in the room from a couple old wood framed
windows, and that space was wide enough to take the freezer on its side.
So my wife and I (she with a bad shoulder, no less),
wiggled the freezer over to the window and tipped it onto its side, supporting
it on a bench. Then we lifted the top of it into the window, and
slid it into the room. We never had to lift all the weight of the
freezer, as the other end was always supported.
So now that room is the pottery shipping and storage
room, combined with food pantry.
March 23
It was in the 50's today, the warmest day since October,
so I moved some raspberry plants to thin a stand that was too thick.
The first bulb in our yard bloomed this week. I also finished throwing
the 250 mug order I started a couple weeks ago.
March 24
We accepted the gift of a car from a friend. It's a 1995
Plymouth van (3 years newer than our old Plymouth van, which has over 200,000
miles on it). The only catch was that the transmission had gone out,
so we're paying to have that fixed. We don't know what it looks like,
or how many miles it has on it. But we figured we'd need another
car sooner or later, so here we go. It's easier than shoppng for
one.
March 26
Yesterday was a nadir day.
It started with going at 6 in the morning to participate
in a wood kiln firing. When I got there, the kiln was easily spotted,
belching yellow flame out of the chimney. I also saw that the pot
I sent for the firing didn't make it in, which instantly changed me from
participant to observer. There were 3 other people there, and little
to do except throw enough logs to heat our house for a day into the kiln
every 10 minutes. I went there expecting woodfire to be an extravagant
waste of wood, and it was. Part of the reason they stopped using
large Anagama kilns in Japan was that the hillsides were denuded to fire
the beasts... I'm guessing they'd use at least one cord (4 X 4 X
8 feet) of wood to fire it, or roughly $125 to fire the kiln, which probably
held as much pots as 3 of my electric kiln firings (and would have cost
about $20 for those firings). Most of the huge inefficiency of wood
firing, and fuel firing in general, is that the heat pours out of the chimney,
even as visible flames. Electric kilns are only minimally vented,
and thus heat much more efficiently. Well, I guess there's room in
the world for more ways of doing things than my own, so I'll let that rest...
After returning home I was at loose ends, so I went up
to our sleeping loft to make the bed. Coming down the ladder
I slipped on the ladder and fell onto a garbage can which was about 5 feet
below me. All of my weight connected with a small portion of my ribs
in back, and I broke 3 of them. The first thing that happened was
my lung on that side temporarily collapsed. For a couple seconds,
I couldn't breathe. Then I found my breath and voice, and like a
slapped newborn, I began to bellow. As I breathed I could feel the
crunchy crepitus of bone sliding on bone, so although I'd never broken
a bone before, I was sure that I had now. Fortunately my wife was
close by. As a former EMT, I knew the possible ramifications of my
fall, but also I'm cheap by nature and not inclined to pay for an ambulance
if I can avoid it... I felt my breathing stabilize, and there was
no gurgling to indicate blood or puncture of the lung, so we drove in the
20 miles to an emergency care place. Aside from pain medication
and an elastic bandage, there's little they do for broken ribs, so I'm
left to heal on my own, over the next 3 to 6 weeks.
I think about getting injured frequently as a professional
concern, like last week when I was straight line skiing down the groomed
slopes at the ski area. Although my goal in skiing is always not
to get hurt, the smooth groomed runs make going fast easy... And
even though I've heard the statistics that most accidents happen at home
(and I even fell out of this same loft a couple years ago) it's impossible
to totally ward them off, or I would have been more careful on the ladder.
So now I have an enforced vacation, as claywork is out
of the question, since I can't put my back into it. I'm still moving
very gingerly, but beginning to contemplate what I will be able to do until
the ribs have reknitted. I do think I can make figurines, which is
something I do only when I'm totally bored with making wheelthrown pottery.
I can still sell pottery from our showroom... And I can still produce
copies of my pottery videos, which is time consuming. I'm hoping
I'll be able to play my guitar within a week or so, just so I don't go
crazy... And obviously I can type, but my blog will not be very adventurous,
only introspective... Also I can walk, slowly, so I will check out
the spring wildflowers as they appear, if my body can take the rough trails
it takes to get there...
The larger issue for potters and all those who are self
employed is sustaining your self and family through such an injury.
We've made a point to keep savings set aside for this type of thing.
With a storefront pottery, well stocked as it currently is, the only thing
on hold is a couple orders... I've considered hospitalization insurance,
but it wouldn't have provided any help in this situation, only if you are
hospitalized.
Although I was unlucky to take the fall, I was lucky
not to land on my spine, or head...
March 30
I know I'm recovering. I've started doing a bit
of cooking and dishes, and walked to the Post Office (2 blocks).
I can get up and down from my easy chair without grimacing. But my
easychair is still my hospital bed, since I can't sleep on my side yet,
and the place I mostly have to call home. It's really quite good
as a hospital bed--sliding easily to full recline or pulling up easily
to get up. Yet parts of my body are getting too familiar with it,
and I get tired of sitting as well as standing.
All this over my broken ribs is happening in a nexus
of other family and friend turmoil. My wife may have to join her
sister in California, as her brotherinlaw faces heart surgery...
One of the musicians I play with regularly is starting chemo and radiation
treatments for cancer. Still, with all, while there's life there's
hope. And otherwise, hope for an acceptable afterlife.
March 31
No trip currently planned for my wife, since surgery
for various reasons is likely a couple weeks away. And I was able
to work on starting seeds in our greenhouse for over an hour today, so
my progress is good. I'm thankful for the many web friends who have
sent encouraging emails.
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