Random Rumination: On Ice

There is a sweet and rare wintry sound you don't hear very often. It's the soothing, gentle rattle – much like large, dried grasses waved slowly – that you get when a light wind moves through the ice-coated twigs of small trees. This natural serenade has been my soundtrack today.

Overnight, though, that same ice had worked a far-less-appreciated miracle on the five or so inches of snow we'd already picked up: given us a nice half-foot of frozen slush. A persistent three minutes or so of kicking the storm door got it open this morning, allowing me, a pair of shovels, and a jug of rock salt to tackle the steps and sidewalk.

About a year ago, a thin and treacherously invisible coating of frictionless ice had me landing hard enough on those concrete steps to leave a large and spectacular gluteal bruise that I couldn't show anybody. This year, though, the snow and ice were so compacted I could stand on the snow, without slipping, and with little sinking. Trouble is, the shovels could only make it an inch or two into the hard stuff; a trudge out to the shed yielded the garden hoe, and the solution.

Maybe it's not a hoe; I have a brown thumb, and so know little of gardening. An actual hoe is bent ninety degrees at the business end, so you can pull it through the soil. What I'm talking about has a vertical blade, so that you can use the thing to chop straight through tough soil… or frozen slush.

This tool quickly made the rounds with three neighbor-women, while I continued chopping at the ice with the metal edge of Mother's ergonomic (i.e., twisted) shovel. With my walk cleared and salted most of an hour later, I went back inside… and got a call from Daughter One on the other end of town: she couldn't get out of her parking lot. So I retrieved the hoe, a shovel, and a bag of rock-salt, and headed out.

Our parking lot – which as of this evening had yet to be plowed – has a bit of a slope to it, so once you get your car moving through the slippery stuff, and there's an upward incline in front of you… don't stop! Thus I had fun doing some very impressive slaloming through the lot and up the quarter-mile of likewise-unplowed community-road. Let's hear it for front-wheel drive and a solid standard transmission!

On the highway, I found my car had a brand-new, shakin' shimmy at speeds over forty miles per hour. A lookover, when I could pull off the road, showed no flat tires, nothing hanging loose… so who knows?

Patient chopping, shoveling, and a hard push from her dad got Daughter's car out; then we shoveled out her spot, salted it, and she backed in again. The problem had been that her heftier car, with automatic transmission and six strong cylinders, had too little weight for its power… and had been parked front-in – so its front-wheel drive simply wasn't up to the challenge. Clearing the space and turning the car around should make tomorrow easier for her.

Have I mentioned that this dear – and spoiled – daughter of mine lives walking-distance from work?

I got to help a couple other cars get out of their spots, and one of those I'd helped came over and gave my daughter and me a great favor in wielding his own shovel to get Daughter's space clear. We both thanked him, and Daughter thanked me, too. I pointed out to her that delicate sound of rattling, frozen twigs (there was a tall, slender tree right behind where I'd parked)… but I think her mind was already in the hot bathtub she'd shortly be thawing out in. So I wished her well for the morning, and drove off, watching her head back upstairs (our kids always leave us, don't they?)

I swung by the dealership on the way home, and let them know about the whole-lotta shakin' my car had goin' on. They earned a Kudos bar – because the mechanic pointed out that the problem was no more than snow packed up into the wheels, throwing off the balance. He power-hosed the wheels (no charge, either!), and my car was good to go again.

Back home, I resumed helping the neighbors shovel out their cars. The wind had picked up, the temperature was dropping, and it started snowing again. It looks like we'll have a nice freeze overnight… and if Barney Gumbel's plow makes it through and treats our street and court, we'll have nice new mounds of frozen slush in front of our cars tomorrow. 

Not to worry; I now have a man's best friend: his ho'.

 

Random Rumination: A Backward Step

Today's been one of those lower-key days. Nothing blogworthy as such… and I'm not going to fill these pages with thirty-plus years of the best and the verse of my writing – actually, I’m mulling over breaking out several of these themes into their own pages/blogs: Totus Tuus (no entries there yet, though it's increasingly my most essential facet), Steal My Stuff, and What Lies Behind. We'll see.

 

Every so often, though I'm too young for the tall-pants and blue-hair set, I wander through an antique shop or three (lots of them within an hour or so of my metropolis of choice). There are quite a few reasons why, besides just "squandering another useless hour", to shamelessly borrow from Tom and Ray; thus was an hour wasted this afternoon.

 

Since some of my fiction involves the concept of time travel, I enjoy being able to go in to such places and make like Jack Finney: peer at old-old photos, handle nearly-forgotten everyday objects of several generations ago, and so on. Finney's two big time-travel novels work extremely well because the narrator is simply an ordinary guy (with a rather rare talent), one who gets fascinated by little things (essential in a good story!) like the color and texture of clothing, the taste of foods, the songs being sung, and so on.

 

My own historical periods of interest are the Roman and Byzantine empires, and the early Christian church – although just about any era, any place, has something fascinating. Yet in reading Finney, and watching the movies influenced by or based on his work, I do lately take an unavoidable interest in the late Victorian and early Edwardian era. (Ditto some other eras, thanks to translating our family-history book.) In antique shops I can imagine buying a pocketful of old American money (or Roman coins, as one shop in town has), and then going back to its milieu and spending it.

 

The same shop that has the Roman coins also has a leather German World-War-One -era… I want to call it a "shako cap"; this odd-looking, pitched-at-rear cap is a style that goes back at least a further century. A number of my German ancestors would have worn something like that in battle in WWI, back at least to the Franco-Prussian War some thirty-five years earlier, as well as during regular tours of duty with the Imperial Saxon army/cavalry before that.

 

For instance, our family genealogist mentions of my great-great grandfather Heinrich Albert Schildt that "in 1849 he entered the 13th Royal Saxon Infantry Battalion as a cadet" (my translation), later rising to First Lieutenant… although the reason why (less than ten years later) he left the infantry, which he loved, might become the subject of some other blog; it has the potential to be a rich part of one of those many-generation historical novels. That shop also sells military medals of various nations, including a number of variations on the Imperial German Iron Cross, first through third class, which the genealogist mentions being awarded to a number of our ancestors.

 

So, in sum, a leisurely stroll through a large antique shop is an educational experience, and lets me get an actual look at some of these things mentioned in our history. I can also fantasize about stepping back in time – although in greater seriousness, I'm trying to anticipate some of the ordinary but long-since-forgotten things such a visitor might see.

 

I've also been mildly interested, for years, in picking up some antique (1920s or earlier) John-Lennon style reading or "working-class" glasses. A friend of mine who is a Civil War reenactor bought an ~1850s pair years ago, and had his prescription ground to fit them. Cool!! 

 

And speaking of our still-mourned Johnny Moondog: today I got my hands on my first set of the new Beatles stamps issued earlier last month by the UK Royal Post. Yes, it too was at that antique shop. I want to put a set in my album, but another must go to my older daughter who, a dozen years ago, discovered the Beatles and promptly confiscated every Beatles-type thing I owned.

 

A lovely new British coworker has persuaded her brother in the U.K. to send a set of these stamps over for me, so that will make two. Bizarrely, she looks a lot like that daughter's mom did most of twenty years ago, though they're about the same age now. No, I don't have impulses to serve legal papers on her… instead, we sometimes engage in dueling British accents (mine fake – but quite good, she says); I gave her a hard time for saying "mom" instead of "mum" yesterday. It's just not cricket!

Random Rumination: Chilblame

I changed themes just now to recognize the baby-it's-coooooooooold-outside weather; changed fonts as well. This blogservice is even more tweakable than it lets on — I'm not given a choice of fonts and colors thereof (though at least bold, italic, and underline settings are available)… so for now I pre-write my entry in Word, and tweak the paragraph spacing, font size and color, and other goodies while tapping it all out, and then cut 'n paste to here… 

… and I get my paragraphs chopped up. And then, viola (much like the one my daughter used to play): with that change in themes, the paragraph-spacing in my earlier postings has also been killed. Aaargh!  Well, I'll keep tweaking it. And, yes, I'm perhaps a bit too esthetically demanding about how my words are presented here. Too bad; I'm going for a particular look (which will also be fluid), and would like to be able to make it work the way it ought to. I don't give up, either. 

Stressed: I am not faulting WordPress on this; there are some absolutely awesome-looking blogs on WordPress, so I know that all this and more can be done very nicely; I'm just beginning to find my way. I'll take credit for the words, lousy or good, and the stupid formatting bobbles; WordPress gets the credit for allowing me to put it all out there. Over time I'll embed more pictures (not videos or music; those I'll just hyperlink — gotta conserve the MB allotment); if it gets futzed in the process of the regular rearrangements… well, content first, spiff second. 

Later: Nope; juggling the paragraphs doesn't space 'em the way I want them; let's try another theme. The snowy pines were nice, yes; but... sorry. Buenos nachos!

And again: Change of theme ("presentation"), then. This one looks classic, and will do for a while. Ta!

 

Random Rumination: The Superb Owl

I DON'T CARE.

 

Got that, Booboo? I don't care!

 

Here I am: the American man, leaving my mid-forties later this year. I am a US citizen (heh-heh, with German citizenship in my back pocket), I vote in every election I can get to (missed the big one in 1996 because I was overseas... but fortunately the election turned out all right), I once owned a car with fins on it, I prefer to buy American-made, I eat hot dogs in the summer and apple pie perhaps a little too often (though in the autumn, pumpkin's my downfall).

 

I am straight, reasonably intelligent, open-minded, college undergrad; I go to Mass every Sunday (and sometimes in between), I love my kids and my mother, miss my dad, try hard to listen to my boss; and if I weren't so heaven-bent on entering a monastery or seminary, I'd be on the market for one more open-minded ( = desperate) woman to finish my life with.

 

I SIMPLY DON'T CARE about bloody football!

 

I don't care that today is (let's all bow – no; you bow; I'll tap my toes impatiently) Super Bowl Sunday. I don't care about any sport – professional, academic, amateur, olympic, whatever. I grumble when the latest "Simpsons" episode is preempted by yet another screenful of overweight, overpaid men in tight pants chasing each other and a weird-shaped "ball" up and down a striped field.

 

Do please understand that I'm not anti-football; rather, I simply don't care for it, and care little about it. This has called for much patience from my mother, a brother-in-law, and my older daughter, all of whom are very sports-focused and seem happiest yelling at a fumble or dropped pitch.

 

Nor have I any desire to see this sport wiped out of our universe, or relegated to pick-me-up games in the park on fall weekends. A lot of time, money, and economy are tied up in sports of all levels and – aside from where it fills too much of many children's schedules – their loss to the powerhouse of western civilization would be of near-catastrophic impact.

 

In school, I did play some football in gym class... and fortunately the other players never looked to me for anything pivotal during our games. This was not a bad experience, folks; I didn't know how to play, didn't want to learn, and fortunately was not pressed to be a great part of it.

 

In 1996, I actually enjoyed watching a high-school game in north New Jersey with a girlfriend, whose niece (IIRC) was a cheerleader. But I couldn't follow the action, was baffled by a yellow flag thrown onto the field more than once, and totally confused when suddenly each team began defending the other end of the field.

 

Bless my daughter's heart; during one game a few weeks ago, which was being shown on one of the large-screen TVs at my brother-in-law's house, she explained some of the basics, and objectives, translated the yellow line and the blue one, and so on, with great patience and no condescension. She enjoyed being my tutor for this impromptu class, and I do have to admit that – while noncaring about the sport – I am mildly curious about it... just not curious enough to tune into a game under ordinary circumstances. So Dear Daughter Shelly's information has since evaporated again from my cranial grooves; this is not her fault, of course, and I do appreciate her effort.

 

At about this same time of year in 1991, I suggested to a girlfriend (not the one I attended the high-school game with) something for the tiny minority of straight American men like me: on this particular hallowed Sunday evening each year, throw a "Superb Owl Party", complete with stuffed, wizened bird in the corner. My girlfriend suggested the slogan: "For those who don't care a hoot about football!" We could have the usual football fare – beer, beans, bucket o' wings – and put on an action film or "chick-flick".

 

Heh; we guys would be in a delicious minority there, too, because (I suspect) most of the attendees would be the football-widow type, and nonmarried gals who've been shoved aside for the day by their obsessed men.

 

Anyway, I never held one of those parties, but every year I give it some thought, and likely will continue do so. But the point would not be to make a point; it would simply be to provide an alternative get-together with friends, and friends of friends, who care as little about football as I do.

 

But when it comes to a good football game, I'll pass.

Random Rumination: Le' Go My Ego!

During a rare slow period at work this afternoon, I tried a few googles to see if I could pull up content from this blog yet. I did, in fact – and also achieved that rarest of googlings, where you get a single result. There's a casual game – and conveniently I forget the name for it – where folks try to find two words that, googled together, yield just one page.

I did my search with "MT2mb" and "agingchild" together… neither one of which are recognized words, technically, so I might have to forfeit my crown only hours after slipping it down over my eyes and smirking foolishly. It still works, too; here's a screenshot:

Why, yes; my Google settings are in Klingon for the moment… or didn't you know that Google has some "gag" languages hidden in their settings? Haxor, Latin – both Pig and Classical – , Elmer Fudd, something silly called "Bork bork bork!" that must be part of a hilarious inside joke I'm outside of, and a couple others.

In any case, Google's link leads to a pre-search with a group called "Technorati", who at press time have found 278 blogs using the word "rumination"… which includes my entry from several days ago (second one down in their list), and presumably – later – this one too. Thanks, guys!

I leaned back in my chair, there at work, and enjoyed the feeling of power for a moment… although I'm never comfortable in the spotlight (little different from crosshairs), nor holding a great amount of power and control: as John Miles sings on the Alan Parsons Project's 1985 disk "Stereotomy": "Limelight, don't let me slip right through your fingers; there's a long way to fall!"

Still, it was quite awing to find my existence acknowledged by a third party. Occasionally (under my own name) my few posts to genealogy sites will show up if you search certain terms – this is from regular forays, last couple years, to find further corroboration on the hundreds of names and dates given in our family-history book.

One of my brothers shows up very easily, all over the internet, since he's an astrophysicist (that must be a really humbling profession, and so very worth it), and many of his papers are out there (in more ways than two!) electronically.

My other brother shows up with more modest frequency from the many road-races he's run; I show up on at least two or three of those same pages… and quite a few spots further down on the final tally. But… I did still run!

And one of my sisters, too, pops up (under her husband's last name) with any of a number of product reviews she's done over the years. Gal knows her stuff!

I do hope to be present in more places on the Web over time – but for writings e-published, this blog, and so on. It's not a delusion of grandeur… although, by definition, how would I know it isn't?

But I do know I have things to say. Some of these are – pardon my momentary ego – profound; some carry a bit of good esthetic weight, and others are worth at least a snort and/or crooked half-grin. And some things, I hope, may even help bridge the needless gap between spirit/God, and the lost, shivering human. I'll work in some spiritual themes here, too.

Right now, in the back of my mind I'm beginning something for Sunday's post… might get me my man-card revoked, since I don't care a flying fig for football, or the "Super" Bowl. But moron – excuse me; more on – that in a couple days.

Now let's see if I can actually embed a JPG without reformatting my blog. And… just a few years ago, that would have made no sense to me. Woo-hoo; I made it into the twenty-first century!

Random Rumination: I Wouldn't Send a Knight Out on a Blog Like This!

As I start this, it's a bit after 1:30 PM US/EDT, Sunday, January 28, 2007 — first blog for me, first entry, etc. I think I need to set my own expectations here before I even try to set yours. Strike that; you can set your own. Or rather, please suspend yours; let me just set out a bit of an introduction here. [Much later: Caveat lector and NB: the timesetamp on this first entry is off by several hours. Ah, well.] Yes, of course this is an online journal — but not a tell-all; there'll be no embarrassing undergarments hanging from this clothesline. But I also will not be sweeping much under the rug, either; that makes for unreliable footing. 

I feel as I guess many long-distracted artists likely feel when finally faced with a large, blank canvas, a bare palette, and a heavy box of fresh oils and varied-size brushes… chisels and marble; metal scrap, bronze solder, and a full tank of acetylene; a warm oven, a wide table of cut-up fruits, vegetables, meats, dried spices; like a writer with a fresh, unspotted sheet… of foolscap. No ego here, no chest-thumping, no desperate capering in the corner while everyone's attention is engaged elsewhere. Hence my first category-title: random rumination; “rumination” derives from a word meaning “cud-chewing” — less than palatable an image, but think at least, please, of the thoughtful look on the ungulate's face (think “bull”) as he chews on ideas and possibility. Disregard the resultant effluvium, though. 

So here we'll have my thoughts, reflections, prayers, recollections, lectures, and occasional rants. Though recent years have greatly narrowed my focus into increasingly traditional religious avenues (think Roman Catholic, which I am, but garb me occasionally in jeans and loose, peasant-cloth shirt), my attention and interests wander great distances, generally with little regard to finding my way back. Besides a great fascination in the sciences and history, one of my favorite toys is language — for me, language is a great bucket of Lego ® blocks of many shapes and colors, and a huge table to put things together on.

As is quite obvious, I do like to write, and ordinarily prefer to follow the institutionalized conventions of spelling, grammar, and punctuation, US edition. (And I really do dislike sentence-fragments, but you'll note there are quite a few here. Oh, well. Yes, I'm also a low-grade hypocrite… but I'm really working at lowering my grade further.) Thus you will find no colour here, no metres, nothing organised, no hiccoughing. Exception: I prefer “grey” to “gray”. 

And in me everything is darned frenzied at times — there's so much to do, and so little time in which to do it (and I can tell clichés till the cows come home)! From organizing and cataloging my stamp collection, to translating and greatly expanding notes on our ancestry for my family, to general work (translating, sorting, etc.) my late father's papers — to tons of mundane things, such as my eternal struggle for a tidy room. And I'd like to publish! …more than just in a blog. Much attention is still required for most of my work to be in publishable shape… with the bleak acceptance that there is darned little market for it: e.g., verse, some short stories, drafted-out novels, wide-ranging essays, and so on. 

Beyond and behind all this is an ache, an urgency, to jettison everything I have (ah, but methodically) so I can be free to join the monastery/seminary — really! But if you know me, you know that already. If you're just getting to know me, you'll see.  All for now, friends. At the moment it's almost 2:18 PM, lovely outside: sunlight, some private planes out of the nearby regional airport buzzing by overhead. (I live in the rural outliers of that northeast-U.S. metropolis sprawling between Richmond VA and Boston MA, subsuming Washington DC, Philadelphia, NYC, et al.; two of the lesser cities about 40 minutes away by car, if traffic allows and you're willing not to go greatly over the legal speed limit.) So take the word of a professional, though flawed, child: go out and play! Me, I have some sheets to fold.