Domesticated

I want to talk about some simple things around the house. I really get it when a housekeeper says "I don't do windows". Some chores are not bad. Some are bad. I hate vacuuming. I hate cleaning a toilet. I hate dusting. But I don't mind dishes, or laundry. We have a dishwasher. Over the years, I've had lots of dishwashers. The one we have now is a state-of-the-art energy saving, green- friendly one. It saves water. It saves energy by not making the water as hot. It saves on the environment by using less cycles and less soap. All of these "new" improvements are fine. The only drawback to our new dishwasher is that it doesn't get the dishes clean. I talked to the sales rep. about the problem of the dishwasher not actually washing the dishes. I told him that I don't really need to save water too much as I have a deep well and my water is free. I have lot's of time and don't care how long cycles last. I'm willing to spend the extra electricity to get the water really hot to sterilize the dishes. I'd like to get the old kind of dishwasher that isn't efficient but gets the dishes really clean. The rep told me that they don't make dishwashers any more that get the dishes really clean. No kidding. Another thing. All my old dishwashers had the controls on the outside of the unit. So you could see them, even with the door closed. It was that way for forty years. Now the controls are hidden inside the door of the unit and you must have the door open to use the controls. This creates an extra engineering problem because you have to have a conditional type of sensor, a separate chip, for the door logic. Like setting an alarm. Of course! these new dishwashers cost much, much more. And do less. And are more prone to failure. Some folks like to be energy wise and save up the dirty dishes in the dishwasher until they have a "full" load. I hate this. I don't like storing dirty dishes, even if it's in a dishwasher. If I go to the trouble of emptying the dishwasher, and then loading it: it's gonna get run and the job is done. Even if it's half a load. And I don't put pots and pans in the dishwasher. Ever. I just clean them by hand, dry them and put them away. They take up too much space in the dishwasher. And the dishwasher doesn't get them clean anyway. We have about five times as many pots and pans as we need. So we are short cabinet space. I have about five times as many clothes as I need. So I am short closet space. I don't want to get started on my having too many clothes or too much stuff in general. I intend to write a post about too much stuff, and hoarding. It's become an interesting epidemic in the U.S. I don't mind doing laundry actually. I just hate putting laundry away, because I have no place to put it. Some people have housekeepers that come and clean once a week. We had this for a while. But we used to have to work pretty hard to get the place cleaned up enough to be presentable, to a housekeeper. Alas, now I am retired and my wife and I are the housekeepers. And we do a lousy job. I don't understand how rich people, or royals can stand having live- in servants. I'm sorry, but in my home I want privacy more than anything else. I don't want somebody in my house, messing with my stuff and dealing with me every time I want a cup of coffee. Leave me the hell alone. And I'm paying you to be hanging around in my house? Maybe I'm missing something, but I'd rather clean my own living space than have someone see what a slob I am. And I'm a slob and that's the way it is. I don't want to have to kind of always keep things neat like I would as a guest. Hey, it's my house. Is it all right with you if I relax? Now a chauffeur is a different story. I don't want a limo. But a driver now and then would be nice. He wouldn't be in my personal space and I could sleep or watch a movie, or look at scenery, or chat with wife. It would have to be a regular car though. I've ridden in limos many times and I just don't get it. But having a driver in my very own regular sedan would be nice once in a while. Just a fantasy, mind you. I don't even have a full size sedan. A driver wouldn't be any fun in my 1998 Ford pick up.

Thursday Blues, Friday Muse

I feel the need to express a few things. It's not really a rant or a vent. I'm hoping that a few sentences will fall together somehow and that may only happen because I'm doing something more than just thinking. I'm trying to tell you what I'm thinking. I'm not a real writer any more than I am a real singer. But I've learned something about being creative. My son helped me remember it. Do you ever find yourself "learning" something that you already knew very well? Here's a good example. Whenever I feel blue, or slightly ill, I always have the mindset that this is the new baseline for the way that I will feel for the rest of my life. I'm a bit extra sad because of this new life I am facing. Then, in a day or so I feel so much better and the bar of the newer baseline is back up. Then I "learn", or actually, "remember", that it's always that way. I don't have to be "extra blue" when I'm blue. The world will continue on without me and do no better or worse. Another thing I have to keep learning over and over again: being grateful. And not taking things for granted. Back to creativity. I don't claim to be an artist. That may be my point here. When you want to create something. Just create it. The way a child would play with a stick or some mud. I have ideas all the time that float around in my head. I never write them down because I don't carry a notebook and I don't really want to write them down. I remember a tiny percentage of them. That's OK. It brings me to my next point. Just because I have a great idea, it doesn't mean I have to write a song about it. Just because I see a beautiful scene on a beautiful lake in Alaska doesn't mean I have to take a picture of it. I'm talking around the edges of "writers block" here and an undefinable thing called the "muse". I can't explain why I get a favorite song from the sixties in my head and it becomes the only song that I think is cool. It becomes the only song I want to play. The "art" of it all is in my mind and my mind alone. I think that is the essence of pure art. I have absolutely no desire to create something that "sells". I think it would be fun if someone liked something I did. That's different because it would be after I did it, or made it. When you do it, you know you are doing it, and it's only for you. I'm not saying it's wrong to make a living creating stuff. Of Course! that's great. I envy people who do that and they are very talented indeed. But those very artists would probably admit that they work and produce not under the "muse" that I was describing above. When they do that, it may be in a different medium. All this is not to be confused with the validation that we all constantly seek. This personal validation goes deep to our psyche. It's all we're after, day in day out. " Look at me. Let me talk. Listen to me. My turn. Look what I did. Look what I have. Agree with me. Love me." In fact when I am in the process of my "art" whatever that may be, personal validation is not what I am looking for. The quest for validation is an endless futile treadmill..... like getting enough money. There is never enough Validation. Like money, it can never satisfy you. Fulfill you. Having said that, I am shallow, and would love to have a published book someday. Or a Youtube video with say a million plays. But the artist needs more than just an idea coupled with the muse. After he has those two things he needs to "do" the project. Yesterday I was telling my son that I just can't seem to write any blog posts. He's going to Hollywood pretty soon. He's writing a screenplay. Everyone in Hollywood has a screenplay. He said: "Well, whenever I can't seem to write, even though I want to write, what I do is just start writing." My son is exactly right about this. This is one of those things that I already knew. And I thank him for teaching/reminding me. LLITTY :::::+:::::

Celebrate the Quarter

There are four real earth holidays that belong to all of us. Two solstices and two equinoxes. Today is the day of the Autumnal Equinox. Now the days will start slowly getting shorter as we head for the holidays. The weather has been indescribably beautiful. There is a full moon. A harvest moon. Which happens rarely on the actual equinox. But it is happening now. Last night I mowed by the light of the harvest moon. Then it clouded up and we actually got thunder and a touch of rain. I looked at the moon through binocs during the day yesterday and it was spectacular. The winter solstice has Christmas. The summer solstice has 4th of july. The vernal equinox has Easter. But what has the autumnal equinox? Labor day? That's a lame holiday. Going back to school? That's already happened. I want to celebrate these four important holidays of the sun. The natural holidays. The calender holidays. The earth's cycle holidays. We all get to celebrate them. Regardless of our culture, race, or religion. These four sun holidays can remind us that we all live on one planet. We all depend on one planet. We have to be good roommates. Race. What is race. The DNA between races amounts to about one tenth of one percent! We are the same. Folks. I want to celebrate the holidays we all naturally own. If you have a deity that you worship and a certain day is his holiday, fine. Don't expect others to respect that day. But four times a year there are these sun holidays. You can't deny them. And say, "Oh I don't believe in the shortest day of the year." We all live and we all die on planet earth. Fed by star Sun. I think we should all be off work and school today.

Utah

Last Monday, on my way back from Alaska, I wound up in Salt Lake City. With a few hours to kill. I had been up all night. I considered sleeping in a chair at the airport. But I was chatting with a ticket agent, that I think remembered me from my Detroit days. He told me how to kill a few hours in Salt Lake. He said the Mormons run a van every hour to "Temple Square" in downtown Salt Lake. It's free, and not usually crowded. From Temple Square, one can walk to other downtown sights and restaurants. So I caught the van for the ride downtown on a beautiful Utah day, surrounded by purple mountains. There was a driver, and a tour guide, and one other passenger along with me. Our tour guide pleasantly chatted with us the whole time. She asked about our religious backgrounds. She told us about Salt Lake City and it's climate and geography. But mostly she talked about the Mormons. How they trekked from Illinois in the early 1800's. How Brigham Young led them as their prophet. How the blight of crickets nearly wiped them out in their second year at the promised land. But God intervened and sent seagulls from California to eat the crickets and the settlers were saved. We were dropped off at the east gate of Temple Square. And we were placed in a "tour" of the temple. The "tour" was the two of us tourists being led around a bit by two young Mormon missionaries. We were taught that the Mormons always have a living prophet to lead them. When he dies, one of his twelve disciples is chosen to be the new live prophet. He is sort of supernatural, like the Pope. I was tempted to ask how many wives he had, but I kept silent. We saw pictures on the wall in the beautiful visitors center. Of the live prophet. Of Brigham Young. Of Jesus Christ. The large picture portrait of Jesus Christ was the most Caucasian depiction of Christ I have ever seen. Jesus looked absolutely Scottish with long red hair and a pasty white face, and very handsome by western standards. We were shown a very lovely model of the temple. This was when we found out that we could not actually enter the temple. Even a Mormon can not enter the temple unless he meets certain criteria. We were shown the first chapel which had the original pews from 1845. It was amazing. All too soon our little tour was over. Our guides, the two young missionaries, strove to get us tourists to sign up to have a local Mormon back home come to our house and convert us to the one and only true religion. I gave them my address and phone and smiled a lot, but I stopped short of setting up an invitation for the conversion. And I told them the truth. That I was 61 years old. And a slow learner with ADHD. And still seeking my relationship with the supernatural world. They said that I must pray more and God will answer me. Sage advice from two twenty year old girls. With the tour over, I wandered around on my own. Just for fun, I approached the temple as if to walk in the huge locked west doors. Of course some volunteers approached me and we chatted. It took forty years of hauling granite, block by heavy block. Forty years of volunteer stone cutting. The temple is perfect and an amazing artifact. A miracle. I stared at it for a long time. There was more to see. But I didn't see it. I slipped away from temple square without seeing Brigham Young's house which is the jewel of the tour. Without seeing the rooftop gardens which are a wonder. Without seeing the oldest and finest grand hotel in Salt Lake which the Mormons bought and restored to it's former splendor. I wandered away from religion as I have always done. I headed to the worldly part of town. I was short on rest and had no energy to learn. I found a lovely Italian restaurant. And a table in a lovely dark corner. I had a long cool meal with lots of caffeine. My thoughts were of missing home, and my dog. And what an adventure Alaska had been. And how utterly thankful I was that it had all happened. And the Mormons who were pioneers crossed the country in a different way than I did. Eighty thousand of them walked from Illinois to Utah. Six thousand died during the journey. Every church in the Mormon system is completely paid for before the first service is held. I had a second diet coke and got out my American Express Card. My journey will soon be over. I 'll probably never find the Supernatural. But once in a while I may touch it.

Ak holic

I just got back from a two week visit to Alaska. I suppose I'll bore you with an essay entitled "what I did on my summer vacation". Guess how many pictures I took. None. I like it when somebody else takes the pictures, and has the camera. Alaska is beautiful. So beautiful in fact, that there are lots of wonderful pictures of it all. You all know what it's like. I wasn't in the cold part, like Fairbanks. I was in the balmy area, Anchorage. I had been to Anchorage a few times before, back around 94. That was when I was a First Officer on the 757. I knew everything back then. All I saw though was Anchorage airport and the hotel where we were laid over, and a bit of the town. The flight from Seattle took about 3 plus hours and you saw nothing at all on the way except frozen tundra. So this recent visit was really seeing Alaska for the first time. I ate salmon almost every day. I saw a moose right by the house I stayed at. I worked on a log cabin, mostly stripping bark. I soloed in a small power boat. I soloed in a canoe. I got a ride in a big Grumman amphibian airplane called an Albatross. I got a ride in a "float plane", a bush plane called a Piper Super Cub. I helped tow logs across the lake to the cabin. I stayed in a tiny log cabin for a few nights. I slept in the Albatross one night. I slept in a beautiful luxurious lake house most nights. On clear days I could see Denali more than 100 miles away and her sister peaks, snow capped. I went to the town of Wasilla several times for supplies. I went to the Alaska State Fair in Palmer. At the fair I watched loggers do some pretty crafty chain saw art with the long mufflers on their saws to protect the ears of the crowd as they carved beavers and bunny rabbits out of logs. But their skill was no better than the expertise of my buddy that I watched free- cutting notches in logs for his cabin. The lake was so clear you could see the bottom details and the fish. The sunsets were so bright you couldn't even look at the reflection in the lake. The nightly campfires were large and fun and kindled by birch bark and fed by birch and spruce logs. I got to sing a bunch of ballads by the fire. There were three guitar players at the fires. I was the third best. There was an amphibian fly-in at the lake on Saturday the 4th. It rained all day. Two Grumman Wigeons flew in. And a Grumman Goose. A couple of Cessna 180's on floats. A couple of Super Cubs. Our hosts provided food and drink for every one. And T shirts. The day after the fly-in the weather improved and we did it all again. Then the weather became clear and sunny for four days and I was back to stripping logs and clearing brush. When I got back to my truck in the pay lot at BWI, the bill was $114. It had taken me 20 hours to get home riding space available. Now I get to go to two fly-ins here in the Md, Pa area this weekend. And I get to hang out with my son before he leaves for California. But I just can't get back on east coast time. And when I close my eyes I still see the log and the hatchet and the bark. And I've got that good kind of ache again. LLITTY :::::_:::::