No witnesses, at least none willing to come forward. No surveillance footage. I recall hearing a ‘thwump!’ but not knowing what to make of it. The tragic injuries were discovered the next day. Forensics found no fingerprints, no shell casings. No known enemies, no motive.
Talk about blown away. He’d stood since April. This was late December. I can’t guess if he saw it coming. We are fortunate here, however, having really first class emergency services. Brick man down!
Not for long.
For a long time there has been rich Corinthian leather. What about oft repainted shutters?
The combination of human and material struggle against decay. There’s so much aspiration in it.
They say it was Aeschylus who said “In war, truth is the first casualty”. We really don’t know if he heard it from someone else. Some say all is fair in love and war – but to equate them suggests that they play on the same field. And further, when we look at our modern world, it might be said that capitalism boils down to a war for attention, a war for mind share. I’m making these conflations to point at a common denominator, that being that truth is what lies bleeding on the pavement as we click on to this or that. Oh, I believe this, or that, or some other thing, and all the contraries are subordinate to the scheme by which I ascribe value. Salty is good. Fried too. Fried and salty? Umhmm.
Therefore, to borrow a little from Calvino, to proceed without fear of wind or vertigo, to tickle dead Fred (when in doubt tickle dead Fred) who asked in grand style “1. The Will to Truth, which is to tempt us to many a hazardous enterprise, the famous Truthfulness of which all philosophers have hitherto spoken with respect, what questions has this Will to Truth not laid before us! What strange, perplexing, questionable questions! It is already a long story; yet it seems as if it were hardly commenced. Is it any wonder if we at last grow distrustful, lose patience, and turn impatiently away? That this Sphinx teaches us at last to ask questions ourselves? WHO is it really that puts questions to us here? WHAT really is this “Will to Truth” in us? In fact we made a long halt at the question as to the origin of this Will—until at last we came to an absolute standstill before a yet more fundamental question. We inquired about the VALUE of this Will. Granted that we want the truth: WHY NOT RATHER untruth? And uncertainty? Even ignorance? The problem of the value of truth presented itself before us—or was it we who presented ourselves before the problem? Which of us is the Oedipus here? Which the Sphinx? It would seem to be a rendezvous of questions and question marks. And could it be believed that it at last seems to us as if the problem had never been propounded before, as if we were the first to discern it, get a sight of it, and RISK RAISING it? For there is risk in raising it, perhaps there is no greater risk.”. Ever chucking caution to the wind, that Fred, but still, the injection of uncertainty and ignorance into the discussion, I think that’s a very fair offering. We’d like to think of truth as some cosmic boolean, is or isn’t, voila but we discover that it’s not that the truth doesn’t exist but that we don’t have the capacity to grab it. It’s immense, after all, and tremendously interconnected. Small reductive observations stand only briefly in the existential storm. Not really atoms, you say? Nor quarks? An n-dimensional manifold of relations between strings? Surely nay, and quantum entanglement, why, if we accept this we are accepting, as probably we should, that the limits of our knowledge are very strict. Heisenberg. Godel. Can we be saved from ourselves? The stock market rose or fell yesterday, I’m pretty sure. They say the movement was driven by investor sentiment.
Alright, so whether all is war and indeed there Truth lies dead or mutilated before us, or Truth was never accessible in the first place and it’s just that we have to constantly revise our system of approximations in order to feel that we have a sufficient adjacency to the possibility of it, we’re told on considerable authority that Nobody blinded Polyphemus. But what happened then? The tale is told for the hero. The legacy of Arges, Steropes, and Brontes however, (these were the original Cyclopes) assuredly lived on. In scattered caves on Mediterranean edges, edging up Mt. Etna here or Olympus there, or in the Atlas range. They’re there. Still. It is at this point that I feel compelled to further risk truth, compelled by evidence, if the collective unconscious can be considered evidence, or at least the perspective of a given self upon that mighty miasma. Let’s go with the first picture now – and you’re right, it will take some explaining
I’m sure the first thing you notice is “That’s not a Cyclops!”. We hold this truth to be se1f-evident. But from whence then? The original explanation, still much debated, runs like this – that where the Cyclopes once dwelt, also dwell, seldom seen, a certain very special sort of giant snail. Almost the size of a cow there lingers in them a magic that science is only beginning to fathom. Perhaps radioactive materials gassified by volcanic activity was the cause, that much is uncertain, but something they want to call rapidly assimilative genetics seems to operate within them. Let’s say a poor shepherd boy was unfortunate enough to die in an avalanche. Giant snail (it’s noteworthy that they were omnivorous) consumes him. Or is it that the slug coccoons him? There are seen occasionally, it is rumored, snailtaurs – half man, half giant snail. Poor blinded Polyphemus, it is even said, dying in his cave, well, a cyclopean snailtaur is not too far a reach. The theory holds that the snail assimilates the genes of another creature and incorporates them into itself. The horns are difficult to explain. It’s not known if the snails can assimilate more than one creature in a lifetime. Indeed so much is not known, for example, if they are sterile. Also little is known of their culture though pottery shards are beginning to provoke some interesting conjectures.
Here’s another – this one pointing to the fact that it may not only be cyclopes that these snails can assimilate.
And another two, these especially interesting because of the eye stalks.
It’s fairly clear, based on the presented diversity, that a variety of assimilative possibilities exist, yet no one has ever witnessed an assimilation!
There we are. Further evidence that Truth may be a casualty far outside the ravages of war. Indeed though, it may be that what we are seeing here and in the larger culture is the stepping forward of uncertainty and ignorance, that outright truth and outright falsity are juvenile props for true believers, and true doubters (and are not belief and doubt truly of the same nature? I invest a certain amount of credence (N) in a proposition. It may be a negative number. Just recently at a convenience store in Sardina, it was reported that a seemingly drunken cyclopean snailtaur became enraged when the proprietor would not accept bitcoin. All hell was said to have broken loose. The snailtaur escaped into a nearby tunnel before local authorities could respond.
More to come on this
Forgive me. I cannot bear not to share some experience. It’s for the record, so to speak, so that when the world repeats mistakes there’ll be evidence that it was in part due to not paying attention. I jest about that, but still for some reason I feel strong compulsion to share. And do note these are not copyright protected, you may download them with a right click (Windows) or equivalent functionality on your degenerate device.
I’ve created a new tab on this site – ‘Songs‘. There’s a compendium there. Sample below.
Leroy Brown – you know the south side of Chicago is the baddest part of town. And if you go down there you better just beware of a man name of Leroy Brown.
Glimpse of passing milieu below
Yes, handled again. Each in orange osage, maclura pomifera if you like, bodark if you like, the spade noteworthily in that the wood I grew from seed.
The metal of this spade seems fine enough. John Deere though, let this post record the fact that their selection of handle wood needs a little work. The original handle snapped under what seemed to me entirely ordinary pressure. To de-handle it I used an angle grinder on the rivets and a half inch dowel to punch out the broken shaft. To re-handle I used a draw knife to taper the piece of osage that I’d grown. Four one inch brass wood screws instead of two rivets to lock it in place.
I don’t know where this aluminum scooper from but it had been lying about unhandled in barn for a few years. Industry can meet vision, even in trivial circumstance. Unable am I to calculate the utility quotient, not because it is infinitesimal, but because I cannot predict the future. It seems that honest shovel work may not be part of the future of America. I judge that to be a great error.
Thank you dear reader.
Perhaps like El Nino, a recurring but irregular phenomena, there may be, for possessors of some genetic marker, a time when it is time to put handles on unused hammer heads. We’re told that to everything there is a time and a season. Ten years ago I made two wooden mallets from scratch and made handles for another two orphaned heads. In the last few weeks I’ve created nice handles for two sledge heads, the first documented here, the second below. Turn, turn, turn – we’ll see how long this weather lasts.
Again a white oak shaft, this one sheathed in quarter inch curly flame maple. Disaster prevention at the top provided by a mulberry crossbar twice pinned with black walnut. The inscription ‘Whomper’ entirely functional.
Ten pounds of whomp for those cases where the gentle application of strong suggestion is warranted.
I’ve taken a clockwise spin, that is if you are looking down on the earth and not up from the center, around the house to capture something of each of the gardens. It’s five years that I’ve been here in Maine and each year the gardens have grown. Forgive, therefore, the length and detail of this post, or skip it entirely if you’re short on interest or patience – I’ll be getting into the weeds. For each garden I’ll try to list what’s growing there.
Inside Garden – a joy. Contains a palm tree whose seed I found in Santa Barbara in 2004, an Encephalartos Horridus (you don’t find many of them, a south African blue cycad), a supposed Psychotria viridus (you never really know with purchased plants, a cousin could fool you for a long time), a supposed San Pedro cactus, a bunch of baby dragon fruit cacti, a sprawling Tradescantia Zebrina (that’s the one with the purple leaves), a jade plant, a young (eight leaf) swamp ok, two brown oaks from Estonian acorns, scion of the Tamme-Lauri oak as whose base the acorns were gathered, an aloe plant, two Brazilian Pata da vaca aka Bauhinia, two castor bean plants (still young), one toad lily, and three turmeric plants that decided to sprout from supermarket roots. Quite a mouthful, all that, but immense fun to water and watch the various reachings for fuller life.
Front of Barn Garden – starts with tiger lilies, then wild strawberries, echinacea, sedum, garden phlox, and clematis on the trellis. Garden also hosts seat of government for Semi-autonomous Republic of Rocks, whose claim to fame is an unrivaled density of diversity (they’d call it representation), considered at most a self-important non-entity by larger communal geological councils.
Shady side Garden – not much but ferns and weeds here. A sleeping dog let to lie.
Right Side Front Garden – featuring creeping phlox, platycodon, a wormwood, the ever invasive creeping bellflower, ferns, lupines, weeds, weeds
Front Center Gardens – are at their finest in Spring. Daffodils, hyacinth, iris, lupines, ineradicable euphorbia spurge, some great peonies, goldenrod, weeds. The path there weeded regularly by flamethrower, a fun little exercise.
Front Left Garden – newly attended this year, no plan yet. Wormwood, castor bean, cosmos, fragrant peas, tulips, ferns, beach rose.
Blue Globe Thistle Encampment – in its second year, the first year it will bloom. I’ve seen amazing stands of this, hoping that with time this too shall become one.
Yellow Iris Encampment – as with previous, an encampment not really a planned garden but a border put around a place where something noteworthy was planted. This one mostly weeds but for a few weeks very nice. Needs thought and management, like much.
Hosta Enclave – two huge blue leaf leaning hosta and one variegated take up most of the space beneath an ancient lilac. They’ll want division in the fall. On the left of this enclave (unpictured) there are tulips and daffodils in spring, Solomon’s Seal (also ineradicable), sweet woodruff, a stray blue globe thistle, and peonies.
Asparagus/Phlox Area – is only partially managed. There’s a rock-bordered front section with asparagus that’s struggling (year 3) to become established. Behind that a tangle of wild blackberries. To the right a very thick area of tall garden phlox, pink and white, with a few evening primrose hiding in the mix.
Outside Greenhouse Garden – certainly the best managed of all. Mostly an herb garden with various hangers on. From the left – borage, solanum retroflexum, fennel, oregano (one sort), rosemary, tarragon, oregano (another sort), rue, lovage, more solanum retroflexum, lemon balm, marigolds (from seed), two lulo, an assortment of not so thriving exotic peppers, some henbane, more rue, castor bean, and a solanum nigrum.
Seeded Wilds – a very lightly managed area where I sow seeds as if I had a plan. This year I’m happy to report that peas, lima beans, tomatillo, long naturalized datura, mint, and some amaranth are all competing heartily. Lupines, lilacs, and hosta border on the left.
Main West Side Garden – the entire west side garden runs a least a hundred feet. The front part is shaded by ancient hemlocks. It’s part shade by the asparagus and in the seeded wilds but then starts to get sunny moving towards the backyard. Gracing the foreground is a very large castor bean – they’re so exotic, unpictured to the left being Russian sage, brugmansia, to the right being solanum linnaeanum (one of the delightfully angry solanaceae, thorny, poisonous and ornery, a decorative plant), marigolds, wild and cultivated strawberries,
Rose Garden – not really a formal portrait here, just a by location reference, it’s about 25 x 8 mostly to the right of the line between the foreground standing log and the the whirligig.
Side Veggie Garden – is behind the rose garden, has two towering Mongolian sunflowers, beets (8) tomatoes (16), cosmos, two very vigorous volunteer summer squash, Georgia candy roaster squash(6), mint, marigolds, oregano, horseradish, various volunteers.
Beyond the Whirligig Garden – has 3 stalks of corn, 13 potato plants, castor bean, datura, purple sunflowers, mint. This area is mostly new this year, a takeover of the sunniest parts of ‘the grapevine plateau’ (ok, not a takeover but rather a righteous reclamation of historical lands, uh huh, uh huh). It is (infested/populated) by native tansy, Boston ivy, grapevine, strangler vine, woody nightshade, bittersweet as yet it is unclear if the native populations can be brought to order. Re-education seemingly ineffective.
Lilac pocket – there’s a partial shade spot beneath the ancient lilac where currently celery, sage, peas and marigolds are growing
First Garden – in my tenure here, anyway. Had been nought but a sunny spot for day lilies and Solomon Seal. Put a border on it and added 5 yards of nice soil. The back of it is a sloppy stone wall about 4 feet tall. Right now it has string beans, tomatoes, celery, peppers (including one ghost pepper), blue globe thistle, marigolds, lovage, false collard (at the nursery sold as collard greens but having developed white/purple bulbs that look awfully like turnips), onions, peony, weeds
Charlie Brown – named after the ‘Charlie Brown’ Christmas tree, was a two foot sprout growing by the barn door. He was getting too big for the place of his birth. A successful transplant was undertake. Those are potatoes, tomatoes, and comfrey beside him, and an aging Thunderbird.
Behind the Barn Garden – First year in service. Quite the ragged set of rocks ringing it. Contains Southern wormwood, lovage, fennel, eggplant, tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, rhubarb, and kale.
The Nursery – also new this year, a place to start seeds away from competition by savage natives. Currently featuring lulo and eucalyptus.
And there you have it, one guided and fairly comprehensive tour of the gardens this year. May all your gardens grow heartily.
Sometimes, without any thought or planning, circumstances are ripe for a very favorable outcome. That’s what happened here. It began at a yard sale a week ago where I exchanged one American dollar for a steel mallet head (no handle). Propitious enough. Surely I could fashion a handle.
Briefly I went in the wrong direction, using a draw knife to try to shape a foot long mahogany scrap into the oval eye of mallet head. A lot of material to remove, small benefit for the effort, handle already rounded and too skinny to wield satisfactorily. 10 minutes lost. Instead I took a foot long oak scrap and dimensioned width and height to be the largest rectangle that would fit through the eye. To give the handle sufficient thickness I applied 2 quarter inch strips of scrap leopardwood to each side. Fortunate that these were lying around.
Flying off the handle is poor form, especially for sledge heads. Therefore I notched the part of the handle that had come through the eye, cut a stout little crossbar of Australian beefwood, and black walnut pinned it in place.
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Once the glue had dried I tapered the handle to the eye and sanded 60/80/180. Tung oil and limonene
The final inspiration came in a flash while sanding. While hardly Thor’s hammer, the tool seemed to call for some inscription.
There you have it. A certain brand of dinosaur will get why it had to be this way.
As ever all the best to you dear reader.
in this case an acronym, “L(ive) O(ak) S(ide) T(able)”. More obscure would be to combine the non-leading letters … iveAkIdeAble. All that would be missing is that which is lost.. 🙂
I had a nice piece of live oak, roughly 4 feet by a foot and a half. In the living room there was a piece of cumaru atop four milk crates that served as a side table. I love milk crates for their utility, configurability, etc, but don’t think it proper to live in a milk crate constructed world, first class for a third world though it may be. The fullness of time gradually plays out and so I came to this creation. The first idea, knee-jerk, was to give it four legs, much as tables are wont to have, pictured below with the pieces held in arrangement by gravity, a very temporary arrangement.
I shared the idea. Generally the feedback received was the legs weren’t right. Ever attentive to nuanced appreciators, let me say that again, a-sketching I went, looking to appease the collective muse. We know that sometimes rationalists don sombreros. I think that’s what the muse was getting at, that the standard four square didn’t really go with the free flow top.
The drawing seemed to satisify. Undertaken was the challenge.
One of the four legs I turned into two feet, another repurposed as a crossbar. The wood of all these not live oak but rather of fairly old (harvested originally ~1820, upcycled from a fallen barn in 2020, born from an acorn likely sometime in the life of that scourge of indigenous “Christopher Columbus”.
My preferred woodworking principle is no metal. While screws are strong their aesthetic is so weak. The ankles here got me in trouble, relative to those principles. I used half inch dowels from the bottom up into the legs. Those didn’t stop the unacceptable level of play. A better design could have solved but I’d rushed forward (or backward) too fast. From the bottom again I drilled shallow 3/8 holes and inside those drove 3 inch screws, two for each leg. High stability was achieved. I plugged the 3/8 inch holes with bits of walnut dowel. Sin hidden but not much of a fig leaf. The same sin repeated in attaching the leg assembly to the table top. Behold the shame!
Kind eyes see differently, or at least one hopes. Compromises ignored, the result appears decent to me.
and so there is the tale. My primary learning was to be a little more cautious in assumptions about the functional characteristics of a design. I like the table though, it’s just an easy show off of a nice piece of wood.
All the best to you dear readers.
Yes, that’s what they are, or at least what they’re intended to be.
I wanted a place where I could start seeds outside away from the incredible weed competition introduced by the natural soil around here. I did not want to use pots, having only had success with them for established plants. I wanted to harvest the best light available in the backyard (south and west) and I wanted to have them well raised above ground level. One back corner of the barn seemed to satisfy the location requirement. I figured I’d create light lean-to posts and notch the planter boxes into them. No doubt there were other design options but these roughly were my choices.
in the barn I used an old 8×8 to emulate the outside corner of the barn. Note that it’s only affixed to that corner right at the top. Low commitment, easy to remove for whatever reason. Cutting the notches was educative. Jigsaw didn’t have a 45 degree capacity. Angle grinder a little (!) imprecise. Ryoba.
Making the boxes was fairly rudimentary, no great artfulness required. Setting them into the notches however revealed 1) how important it is that the notches are at the same height, that the vertical face of the notch is plumb, that the horizontal face is level, and that the notches themselves provide too measly a mechanical advantage to be proud of the outcome.
Witness, therefore, the support brackets, tested for both as level unto to themselves and that a spanning piece (as a box is) also level. When I say level I mean to within one degree. I’ve recently started using a digital level and have been pleased and amused to know that my natural sense of level is within one degree. Close enough for horseshoes and hand grenades they say.
Deploying was easy. Selecting and leveling two granite feet, screwing top of assembly to corner.
And last, of course, to fill with the various rare and exotic seeds whose germination and ultimate magnificence remain undemonstrated. Planted were
The nice flowering vine Thunbergia, these particular seeds from Ukraine. The local supermarket parking lot had an array of them and I was stalking them for seeds but one October morning they’d all been removed, redirecting my quest.
Creeping false holly. Very interesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaltomata_procumbens. It’s a solanaceae so it’s in my realm of fascination. Seems like a wonderberry but supposed to taste more grape-like. I look forward there.
Wonderberry itself, a la Burbank, basically a solanum nigrum on steroids. Berries are bigger though.
Naranjilla, something I’ve only gotten to fruit once after a tenuous indoor overwintering.
Cute little cannibal tomato (uporo), best with long pork.
Porcupine tomato, I’ve had some success with these. Beloved amongst the angry solanaceae sub-tribe as rippling with ferocity. Consider as decorative, treat with respect and they won’t attack.
Another angry sub-tribe member, biker gang name ‘Malevolence’. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solanum_atropurpureum. Consider as decorative.
Tamarillo, aka tree tomato. I’m 0 for 5 with these across the years. Certainly will keep indoors once temps fall, if/assuming they germinate.
Eucalyptus Neglecta. I love these. I usually have success sprouting and they grow fast and strong. Where I’ve failed is trying to get one to overwinter outside in Zone 4/5. Seems that at roughly 10 degrees F they just can’t take it. Gearing up for more creative approaches.
And so there you have it. Will report back on the outcomes. May your summer be as excellent as I hope mine to be.