I am burning incense in a special holder that was made from an old aluminum lawn chair. It has a wooden base, made from scraps left over from a carving project. It holds a lot of ash in a safe place, so it doesn’t blow all over the room. That chair also was used to make a trolley for two large trash cans. It has wheels that used to be on something else, and a nice handle for steering it down the driveway on Trash Day.
The guy who made these things was born in a sod hut in Oklahoma Territory. He only got through the third grade in school, but when he retired he was an executive at General Electric, where he had worked for many years.
He was very creative and inventive, as you can tell. He made a stereo system in our basement in the 1950s that included a Garrard turntable on a sliding shelf that retreated into a cabinet; speakers from a drive-in theater that were on a hinged door under the stairway so they could be moved at a 270 degree angle and aim the sound anywhere in the basement; and a slide projector that hid in an adjacent cabinet, with a movie screen that unrolled from behind a valence when it was time to show slides.
I know that I got my inquiring mind from him. I look at things and think about how they could be used in another way. It colors the way I look at problem solving beyond the physical world. It affects the way I use words, and ideas.
There are many things I don’t know about my father, but I do know that he was curious about how things worked, and willing to take risks and experiment. He created his own PowerPoint setup from a drafting table with a hinged glass top where he stuck three- dimensional numbers and letters that developed shadows as he changed the light source above them. He photographed them for use as captions of things that he sold for GE, and made slide presentations for demonstrations when he was on the road.
Even though he has been dead for nearly twenty years now, I find myself starting to call over my shoulder, “Oh, come and look what I found on the Internet! You’ll love this!” I know that he would be fascinated by how the computer works, and he would be willing to spend hours looking at photos of birds and articles about soil enrichment and tree pruning.
I wish I could show him the manuscripts I have written in Word, and the books that appear on Amazon.com and the journal articles that are on the Web. I wish he could hold in his hands the books and articles that have my name on them. I wish he could use a CAD program to doodle and design, making more of his inventive gadgets.
I find that the longer he has been dead, the smarter he gets. When I was little and he’d answer a question with “Well, that’s about as long as a piece of string,” it would frustrate me no end. But when I found those words coming out of my own mouth, I realized what a wise reply that was. He understood more about perspective and context than I had given him credit for. And when he talked about cost versus worth, he said, “Something is only worth what you can get for it.” I think about the huge box of my mother’s dishes in the closet in the basement and think that they are worth more to me than they are anyone else, so they escape being put up on eBay for another day. I learned “Never loan more money than you can afford to lose”, and “It’s not *what* you say, but how you say it.”
I salute you, Dad, with saltines carrying pimento cheese and tomato ketchup raised on high, and thank you for all the stuff you gave me. Maybe we can have a bowl of cottage with sugar on it for dessert.
Bright Blessings,
Spiral Crone
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I spent a day in heaven last weekend. I didn't have to do anything drastic to get there; I just drove two hours out into the country. It was a gorgeous day, and the highway was not crowded. I did see a lot of folks towing boats; since the Lake of the Ozarks was just another hour on down the road I was not surprised.
When I turned off the main highway onto the country road leading to my friends' house, I could tell an immediate difference. The air was so sweet and clean it was like being in that laundry detergent commercial where the clothes are hung out on the line to dry. The corn in the field was so green it vibrated. I wanted to pull over and just breathe in the air, but I was eager to reach my friends. I dodged several turtles crossing the road thoughtfully, and considered bringing one back home with me.
When I pulled up in their driveway, six dogs bounded out to greet me. Long wet tongues everywhere, all eager to check me out and welcome me. I could hardly get the car door open so I could get out. I stumbled into the house inside a herd of dogs and settled down on the couch. With dogs. After enough head-petting, most of them wandered away to nap, but one of them parked on me and made himself comfortable. He stayed there for about an hour, and seemed to enjoy deeply relaxing beside me.
We all went out to the heated pool in the back yard and splashed around in the sunlight. Natural perfume from nearby roses, mints, and other growth settled around us in pockets of scent activiated by the heat of the day. We floated on our backs and watched four eagles swirling around overhead. We staged Doggy Water Ballet with the garden hose and one of the black labs. She ran after the stream of water joyfully, lunged at it, tried to chew it, and charged at it until she was completely soaked. When one of us got tired and put the hose down, she sat on the edge of the pool and looked pitiful until somebody else picked up the hose and resumed the game.
I was disappointed to realize when I started to get out of the pool that Gravity had not been rescinded. The laws of physics combined with my reluctance to leave the pool made getting out an ordeal, but I was getting pruney and it was time to leave.
I had wonderful conversations with my friends and discovered that we had even more in common than we had already discovered in email. We had a nice brunch and managed to time our meal so that the hard rain of the day only lasted while we were indoors. How validating it is to find people who share beliefs, attitudes, thoughts, and ideas. I noticed many books on their shelves that I have on my shelves at home. I felt as if I had known these people all my life. I hated to leave, but I knew I had a considerable drive back home.
Now I'm back in The City, and I look at it in a new way. I'm glad that I have a back yard where I can go sit and enjoy birds, trees, bunnies, and squirrels. No turtles yet, but occasional raccoons, foxes, or possums do cross the lawn. The convenience of organic grocery stores and art galleries are a consolation for the lack of eagles overhead.
I look forward to having another retreat with my friends. I might even take a turtle-sized box with me next time.
Bright Blessings,
Spiral Crone
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posted by Spiral Crone -- 10:26 AM.
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My desk is an EcoSystem: it operates on the Compost Theory of Rotation. Stuff sinks to the bottom with the addition of new material, and only when you turn the accumulation over does it reappear, often in altered form.
I somehow thought that when I started saving data on storage media, it would condense the amount of Stuff in my office. Hah! Now I have even *more* papers, disks, and boxes of Stuff. But I love it. It's like living inside a library. (Did I mention that I have a lot of books, too?) ((Did I mention that I write for a living?))
To me surfing the Internet is like being a kid in a candy store. A really, really big candy store. And I do mean the Internet, and not just the Web. There are lots of things that are hidden from public view and never show up in graphical interfaces. I know; I've been there.
I can spent time on the Net that is much faster than the Speed of Light. I know this because I can look at the clock and think, "Oh, 2 pm; I should probably go and fix some lunch." And the next thing I know I have to turn on a lamp because it's too dark to see without it. Oops! It's now 8 pm. Where did the time go?
And I never want to quit. I remember when I was a girl and my mother would keep telling me to turn off the light and go to sleep, and I'd always mumble, "Just let me finish this chapter." Usually I'd fall asleep with the book on my face, or she'd come in an confiscate it.
As a sidebar, I had a realization not long ago: I was all comfy and cozy on the waterbed and kept hitting the Snooze Alarm. Repeatedly. The cat was most unhappy about this and kept pestering me to get up. And it dawned on me that forty years ago I was sleeping in the exact same spot, telling my mother, "Just a few more minutes and then I'll get up."
If my mother had been as pitiful looking as the cat when he's hungry, or had claws like he does, she could have gotten me up a lot faster.
Bright Blessings,
Spiral Crone, Cat Mattress
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Paradise regained
