Goddard Avenue: Safe in Union Hands

Brian reported on this a couple of weeks ago, and it was something I’d never been aware of before. He saw it referred to on Wikipedia, I think. Then I was reading about something else book about the history of the Cherokee Triangle area and came across a section of a map reproduction. That gave me another lead, allowing me to find a large, full-color, and very nice map on the internet. Here is a section of it.

Yes, sir, it looks like if I could go back in time 140 years and stand on the site that would later be the home of my parents’ front porch, I could throw a rock and hit a Union cannon. Or, at the least, chip a golf ball into a rifle pit.

the location of Fort Hill

Smiling Guy and Two Rad Rides

This might be my favorite find so far:It’s pretty small—about ¾ inch tall. The back side merely has the concave impression of the front, and a divot in the metal that perhaps was where a pin or clip was soldered on. I suspect this was a lapel pin or small award badge of some sort.

I found it yesterday at lunch on the grounds of an orphanage/children’s shelter that was started in the 1920s.

Doesn’t he look like he wants to sell you something?

And here are two swell vehicles that I found when I was at a park with my brother last week:

Lost City pumps life-essential chemicals at rates unseen at typical black smokers

-- I had to read that headline, like, five or six times before I could figure out what the heck it was trying to say. With no context, it looks like three or four headlines cut up and scrambled together.

Oh, THOSE black smokers.

The most important thing I’ve done in weeks

…and no, it has nothing to do with metal detecting.

My parents bought a tall corner cabinet at a yard sale, painted so that it looked cute, and gave it to us to put in Jill’s room. It’s a nice, and quite useful, bit of furniture, and we finally placed it in her room the week after Christmas.

However, it was not bolted to the wall. That was a constant worry for me. Really, it was quite negligent of me to have allowed it to stand unbolted for so long, since it toppled quite easily (Erin or Jill could have done that without straining themselves) and no doubt was quite capable of killing a small child outright on its way down.

So last night, while home alone for a little while, I cut a couple of lengths from a 1x3 piece of pine to use as brackets, got out the drill and a couple of tool boxes, and screwed it to the wall.

It’s nice to have an hour or so where I’m actually doing something useful.

in the rain and mud

Lunchtime today:

1 dime, 8 or 10 pennies, and an Avon watch that I just threw in the bag without inspecting, but which looks a little dinged up.

The detector only found three of the pennies. The rest I found just looking at the ground nearby. I only had to dig for one of the pennies.

The dime and one of the cents I spotted sitting next to the sidewalk as I walked back to the car.

The watch was sitting on the grass near the playground as I walked by.

In most places, the ground was still frozen, except for the top inch or two.

I went with Brian yesterday to one site I was enthusiastic about hunting, but for the most part the ground was so frozen that it was like digging in brick. I found nothing to speak of, but after it warms up a little I’ll go back. I had a nice walk around that area, though.

Then we went over to a nearby park. The ground was frozen there, too, but there were sandy spots around the bleachers of the ball fields, and those spots were easy to dig in. I found 79 cents (some of that was not found with a metal detector; it was just sitting around when I walked past.) I also found two toy cars.

Then we plunged into the underbrush to look for an old home site. We found it, but it was getting dark, so we weren’t there long. I’d like to go back and take some pictures, because it was kind of interesting.

Today at lunch I went back to the same park and found 61 cents. There was at least one spot where I’m pretty sure a coin was buried, but I couldn’t chip my way through the rock-hard soil to find it.

One of the coins I found yesterday was a penny, sitting on top of the sand as I walked up. Next to it was another dirty-looking disk of the same size. I picked up the penny, then picked up the other disk. It appeared too corroded to be a coin, and I thought that maybe it was a rusted iron slug of some sort. I tried to bend it, and it snapped in half, revealing a white center; that’s when I knew I’d found a dirty, flattened, frozen Junior Mint.

a cold walk, part 2

Holy cow. It’s cold. My lunch break walk was rather short. Once I turned into the wind, I felt like I had an ice cream headache confined to my eyebrows and eyeballs. My pants throbbed and my fingers recoiled.

I did note that an old farmhouse near my work, which Brooke and David mentioned to me over the weekend, appears to be slated for a zoning change. I might have to watch that.

a cold walk

Going out to look at potential detecting sites at lunch in a few minutes. I had just about decided not to because it’s freakin’ 20 degrees and windy. But then I though, phooey on it, I really want to. Maybe if I cause myself some physical pain via a bitter wind, I’ll diminish my obsession somewhat and be able to focus on other things.

So I will attempt to go walk in a frigid field. I need the exercise. I will try to take some photos.

Another book report: Gentlemen of the Road

A couple of weeks ago I read Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon. Quite a nice little book. Also a quick read, despite Chabon’s juicy verbosity. He rolled out word after word that caused me to want to reach for the dictionary, but I didn’t because I’m lazy and because the story reads just fine anyway.

In the spirit of classic adventure yarns, the novel concerns two dissimilar traveling companions near the Caspian Sea, circa A.D. 950. Despite psychological and physical differences, they’ve formed a connection that has kept them together for years as they eke out a living, surviving with their wits and their weapons.

One, Amran, is a huge African bearing a Viking battleaxe. He is well-traveled and has seen years of service in the armies of the Byzantine emperor. The other is Zelikman, a slim Frankish physician prone to brooding. Both are Jewish, and become embroiled in a plot to return a young man to the throne of the Jewish empire of Khazaria after his family was overthrown in a coup.

Chabon grounds his novel in real-world grimness and violence, yet rarely strays far from a low-key wry humor. Amran and Zelikman have had hard lives and deep sadness, driving out any overt expressions of sympathy or philanthropy they might otherwise have shown; they are jaded “gentlemen.” Yet their own rootlessness and lack of attachment to anyone but one another (and even that is somewhat shaky) allows them to take risks to help others in need. They’d probably be right at home among Robin Hood’s merry men.

Fun book.

I learned a new bit of metal detecting slang: “Canslaw.” Canslaw is the little bits of aluminum can that are spit out by the big mowers that are used in parks. I have only a little experience with it, but in that short time I became quite annoyed by it.

More on Eleven Jones

Cool! Eleven Jones Cave now has a Wikipedia entry.Here.

Where the sidewalk ends

This is where Lagrange Road and New Lagrange Road come together—almost, since they don’t really meet but instead run parallel on opposite sides of the railroad tracks.

New Lagrange Road follows the old path of the Intraurban Railway that ran to Lagrange, and which stopped running in 1939. A road was put in its place at some point. What we now think of as New Lagrange Road once ended at Lyndon Lane.

1. An old white-painted concrete post with a “9” on it. I suppose it’s mile marker 9. It is old.

2. A turnoff that peters out before it gets to the tracks.

3. Long sidewalk that seems to end at the turnoff.

4. The start of another turnoff, but it’s even more abbreviated (or covered over) than point #2.

5. An asphalt path that seems to follow the same direction as points # 2 and 4.

I looked at #5, and the asphalt path is old, but not really old. It might be on top of something older, but I noted that the rises and dips in #5 correspond to the drives of the parking lot it passes across, telling me that it was laid at the same time. So it might be a coincidence that it lines up with #2 and 4.

Why is this sidewalk here? It can’t get a whole lot of foot traffic. And where did this little drive, #2, go? The sidewalk and turnoff are old, but I don’t know how old. I can’t tell if they are 30 years old, or 80.

Might there once have been a driveway or private road that stretched from Lagrange Road, over both the RR and the Intraurban RR, and onto someone’s property? Or might there once have been a little Intraurban boarding station there?

Dash my curry

Last night I dreamed that I went to a little roadside house-turned-eating establishment that, at night, hosted bands and large gatherings attended by college students and the adventurous in search of loud music and alchohol. It was my lunch break, and I had not been able to pack my lunch, so I went there to buy some absolutely delicious giant cloves of roasted garlic that you could eat, still warm, right out of their papery garlic wrapping. I also picked up some potatoes, chicken, and rice, in aluminum foil bunches on an outside grill.

I went inside to see M.I.A, who owned and operated the place. She was cleaning the floor in front. I suddenly realized I had forgotten my wallet. I told her my situation and asked her if my credit was good with her. I was a regular there, and she sort of knew me. She said it was no problem, and I told her I would pay her back the next day. I accidentally spilled something from my food on the floor, and spent a moment cleaning it up with a damp paper towel, hoping that the extra cleaning I was doing (the floor was pretty dirty, as one would expect in such a party spot) would meet with M.I.A.’s approval.

Site research update

Well, I’ve been in contact with the director at the second site I mentioned. The response was better than I expected, but not as good as I hoped—but there might be potential for some detecting fun. He said detecting on the property was permissible, but that I must stay away from the buildings, since some of them (often or always? I don’t know) have children that I shouldn’t be near. He said that just to be safe I should stay away from the buildings.

Areas near buildings are the best places, since they had the most foot traffic, so that is a bit of a bummer. However, there still might be something worth looking at there: There is a sports field around which I could probably detect, and some detective work might reveal sites of structures long since vanished. I think it certainly can bear more investigation.

Book review

I finished reading Tolkien’s Children of Húrin last week, and I liked it quite a bit. The first 70-80 pages dragged a bit, as the main character is a child and events all feel like a set up for the main part of the story. But once the central character, Túrin, gets a bit older and starts hitting people with swords, the story really takes off. It’s much shorter that LOTR, and much darker than The Hobbit. Anyone with no familiarity with Middle Earth might find it too inaccessible, but it’s much easier to get into than The Silmarillian, which I have never finished and have no desire to pick up again.

Site research

At lunch today, I visited two potential sites for metal detecting. The first site has a building on it dating to the 1830s, and in 1896 became a military academy with numerous buildings. It also functioned as a day camp, middle school, and college prep school, lasting until the just a few decades ago. I spoke with a gentleman in the engineering department of the organization that runs the site now, and he said he would check with someone “in administration.” I think I have a reasonable chance of being allowed to detect there. I sure hope so, because that should be a really great place for it. There are loads of old buildings and foundations, sports fields, and hang-out spots.

The second site is near the first. It’s part of the same old estate, and later became an orphanage in the early 1900s. There are numerous old buildings, but I don’t know how old—I’d guess they were built between 1920 and 1940, with some other very new ones. Not as much potential as the first site, but still very good. It is no longer an orphanage, but is run by the state for other programs. I met the regional director at his office there. He seemed very nice, asked me a few questions about my intent, and said that he would inquire with someone else in state government. If it were simply up to him, I think he’d have said, “Go ahead!” but since we’re dealing with a bureaucracy I don’t know what answer I’ll get.

Both places would be pretty cool, I think. I hope I get the answers I’m looking for. Brian—if I get an affirmative response, I’ll ask if I can bring my brother.

I keep thinking of more and more places I want to go, but I sure don’t have much time to capitalize on it.

If any of you lovely readers have any missing rings that you want me to hunt for you, let me know.

backward and forward

I just found a dollar bill that was numbered F 64440446 H. That is the closest I’ve ever come to finding a radar (palindromic) note.

Erin's "craft"

Erin likes to work on craft projects, which when initiated by her involves cutting and pasting whatever items strike her fancy and that she has permission to work with (she’s very good about asking permission to use things, thank goodness.) I’m quite impressed with her mixed-media tendencies. On Christmas, she decided that some of the foam packaging from some of the gifts would form a good basis for a craft. She started cutting it, and then she glued parts back together, and then cut up construction paper and glued it in place. She recruited me to help cut some of the paper in the artwork pictured here, but most of the work (and all of the placement) is hers.

The couple of foam/construction paper collages she worked on around Christmas mark a departure for this young artist from previous efforts in that she has started mixing together multiple colors; her work was more Louise Nevelson-ish before, and has recently turned late-career Matisse.

Perhaps my tongue is somewhat in my cheek. But I insist that I am both proud of, and intrigued by, her artwork.

The three leftmost items were discovered in my back yard today. An hour or so of searching revealed these, as well as the badly rusted and corroded remains of tin cans and some aluminum foil from some disco-era cookout. Or Reagan-era.

The three items were some kind of a metal bracket or brace, a pink car, and a cent.

The other stuff was found at a local elementary playground. I poked around for an hour until it got dark. Half of the coins were found in the first ten minutes, in one little spot.

Looking at the picture in the post below makes me wince. The Pixies and The Fall tapes that Mike French gave me were excellent. Will I ever again get to hear the Hula Hoop album “My Sweet Amputee”? There were two or three songs on that which I loved. The Lou Reed tapes given to me by Al. The misc. rockin’ collection from George. Even the puffy but thoroughly enjoyable Big Dipper tapes. It was all so sweet. How could I have dumped it in the trash?

Heartbreak

For Jillian's birhtday, Kim and I worked on fixing up her bedroom while she spent the night at her grandparents' house. My first task was to empty out the cardboard file drawers full of my junk that I'd been keeping in her room. To make room for all the shuffling, I had to clear space in a closet. I decided to throw these out, although it hurt to do so.

Some of these tapes I've had for twenty years, maybe longer. There is some fantastic music here. But I just don't listen to tapes much any more.

So sad.

I did a short bit of metal detecting on my lunch break at Hounz Lane Park today. I found a Mike's Hard Lemonade bottle top and an old pull tab. I also spent fifteen minutes hunting for something that was showing up as a dime 6-8 inches deep, but had to return to work before I fount it. I suspect it's junk metal, a hunk of it, and it's deeper down than I dug.

Misc.

Busy Holidays coupled with inconsistent Web access equals no posting by me. And it sounds like Erin will wake from her nap (on the floor of the hallway) soon, so this is likely to be brief.

All yesterday I worked on a painting for Jill's bedroom for her birthday. Pictures forthcoming. It is not done, but is nearly so, after about twelve solid hours of work. 28 x 40 inches of kitty cats and butterflies.

Like my brother Brian, I got a metal detector for Christmas. It's a Garrett Ace 250, which is a good one. Lots of fun so far, but the time I've been able to spend with it is limited. According to his blog, he's found a dollar in change, and I'm only at 48 cents. 18 of that came from my yard or the yard next to mine (the house is unoccupied). The rest came from my parents' back yard. I've found bottle caps, nails, construction material, and misc. bits of crud, but the major component so far has been coins, so I guess that bodes well. I find myself mentally tracing driving paths across town, trying to remember places I've seen that might be good hunting grounds.

I'm reading Tolkien's Children of Hurin. Good so far.

Two D&D games this month. Friday night we left off with the three PCs present entering the forboding and fortified lair of goblins and ogres, looking for two missing comrades. Last time they tried this, two party members died. However, they succeeded in killing dozens of goblins and ogres, including some really tough ones. This time out, the PCs are trying to be a little less frontal assault-ish. We'll see how that goes. I'm very interested in seeing how this plays out.

Today I raked the front yard and crushed aluminum cans.

More D&D

This takes way too long, but how could I not?
What D&D character are you?

I Am A: Neutral Good Human Bard/Sorcerer (3rd/2nd Level)


Ability Scores:

Strength-12

Dexterity-15

Constitution-12

Intelligence-14

Wisdom-13

Charisma-13


Alignment:
Neutral Good A neutral good character does the best that a good person can do. He is devoted to helping others. He works with kings and magistrates but does not feel beholden to them. Neutral good is the best alignment you can be because it means doing what is good without bias for or against order. However, neutral good can be a dangerous alignment because because it advances mediocrity by limiting the actions of the truly capable.


Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.


Primary Class:
Bards often serve as negotiators, messengers, scouts, and spies. They love to accompany heroes (and villains) to witness heroic (or villainous) deeds firsthand, since a bard who can tell a story from personal experience earns renown among his fellows. A bard casts arcane spells without any advance preparation, much like a sorcerer. Bards also share some specialized skills with rogues, and their knowledge of item lore is nearly unmatched. A high Charisma score allows a bard to cast high-level spells.


Secondary Class:
Sorcerers are arcane spellcasters who manipulate magic energy with imagination and talent rather than studious discipline. They have no books, no mentors, no theories just raw power that they direct at will. Sorcerers know fewer spells than wizards do and acquire them more slowly, but they can cast individual spells more often and have no need to prepare their incantations ahead of time. Also unlike wizards, sorcerers cannot specialize in a school of magic. Since sorcerers gain their powers without undergoing the years of rigorous study that wizards go through, they have more time to learn fighting skills and are proficient with simple weapons. Charisma is very important for sorcerers; the higher their value in this ability, the higher the spell level they can cast.


Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

थे आर्डर ऑफ़ थे स्टिक।

Hmm. It seems I've tripped some switch for Hindi.

Anyway,

I’d guess that everyone who is interested in such a thing has already seen The Order of the Stick, a D&D online comic. But just in case you are interested and haven’t seen it, here is the link. I think it’s fine geeky entertainment and provides an excellent view of the D&D Experience.

I’m only up to episode 163.

OOTS

Inside this skinny person is a fat person trying to get out.

The past couple of days I’ve not been well. I’ve had a head cold with a cough and congestion (and that has been the status quo for a couple of months, except for a 1-week break from it last week.) And for the past day or two, my stomach has been a little off; whether from Crohn’s disease, or cold medicine, or related to my head cold in some other way, I don’t know, but it’s just been sort of yucky. And I’ve been tired and run-down.

I say all this to explain why, as I was driving to work this morning, it occurred to me that I should really lay off the holiday snacks for a day. I said to myself, “OK, no cookies or candies or whatever at work today.” This office, you know, is zonkers for snacks. It is definitely worth checking the break room every morning to see if anyone brought in donuts or a cake or cookies. This time of year, we’re up to our incisors in sweets.

So I issued my own little moratorium, and yet I walked through the break room and saw Krispy Kremes and a tray of candies. I ended up taking a chocolate-dipped Oreo and a chocolate-covered pretzel. The Oreo was especially good.

I don’t gain weight because the things that make me gain weight (that is, food in general) make me sick. But I have no will power. Or very little. I just successfully fought a fifteen minute battle with myself to resist the strong desire to get a donut. “There are only a few left!” my glutton self said.

“They should go to someone else,” my wise self replied.

“Well, let’s compromise. Go get another Oreo.”

“Good idea. A compromise. Yeah, that Oreo was better than a donut, anyway—hey, wait a second. I said no more, and I meant it.”

“Well, how about just one of those little cookie bar things. They were small. Really small.”

“Yeah, they were. But, umm, no. Nice try. I feel like crap already.”

“I’ll be back later.”

“I know.”

The funny thing is, now that a half hour has elapsed since my inner contest, I have almost no desire for sweets. It doesn’t sound good. Like many other things that I find very hard to resist, if I can hold out for just a little while, the impulse subsides.

Leonard Cohen waltzes back in

Once, a few years ago, I decided to listen to my Best of Leonard Cohen CD, but the case was empty. I checked the CD player, Kim’s old one that hadn’t been used too much in a while, and it wasn’t there either. Then I remembered, “Oh, yeah, I put it in the CD carrier I took with me to Oklahoma City when I went for training a while back.” I looked in the CD carrier, in all the CD carriers. Not there either.

After searching some more, I pretty much concluded that I had left it in my rental car in OKC. I’d looked behind book shelves, behind the entertainment center, everywhere. Very sad, although I was amused by the idea of some dude in OKC sitting down in the rental car, and suddenly hearing “So Long Marianne” or “Sisters of Mercy.” He’d have to think, “What kind of weirdo had this car before me?”

I don’t know what trip to OKC this would have been. I’ve been out there twice in the past five years: Winter 2003 and Spring 2005. I can’t recall which trip this would have been, although I really feel like it was before Erin was born, making it 2003.

This Leonard Cohen CD had not been what I expected it to be when I got it. I thought it would be more brooding and electronic, but this was much older Cohen and sounds acoustic and, I don’t know, dippy. Brooding but with a slightly whiny voice. But I listened to it and tried to like it, and pretty soon I did. I began to like it quite a bit.

I’ve missed it from time to time, but never replaced it. The empty CD case hung around just in case, somehow, the CD turned up.

Last night I was switching out our computer monitors, and knew it would take a little while to do. It was late and everyone else was in bed, so I decided to put on some music. Nothing too intrusive. As I skimmed the CDs, I saw the Leonard Cohen case and pulled it out. I could tell by its weight there was nothing in it. I opened it, looked, closed it again. “I suppose,” I thought, “I should throw away the inserts and use this case to house one of our other music or picture CDs. There is plenty of stuff here I can get rid of to make a little room, and this case is at the top of the list.”

Then I skimmed a little further, and saw Radiohead’s Amnesiac. It’s been a long time since I listened to that, maybe a couple of years. That would be perfect. I opened it and there, on top of the Radiohead CD, was The Best of Leonard Cohen.

What’s weird is that I feel quite strongly that I have listened to Amnesiac since the other CD went missing.

Hmm.

No more leak

Oooh, I forgot to mention. The back of our house no longer leaks. The gutter guy put in a nice new drip edge, and that took care of it. The contractor’s advice: The damage inside the walls is minor and non-structural. It has dried out now that the water has stopped leaking into it. Instead of spending thousands of dollars to fix it, just whistle a happy tune and be glad you caught it before it got worse.

Warhammer 40K

It was Warhammer 40K on our dining room table last weekend. My small detachment of Space Marines evaded David’s semi-sentient floating mines and torched the three small bio mine factories in the area, allowing for the safe escape of the lieutenant who bore the valuable gene seed that would aid in our eventual victory against the encroaching Tyranid enemy. The models were all David’s. I had a lot of fun, and it was a quick little skirmish.

Space Marines, using a lone flame thrower, head towards the first of three mine factories. The mine that is hitting them in this picture shook them up a little but caused no fatalities.

There is glee in mayhem.

Coins:

This is a somewhat odd JFK half I found. Note that JFK’s part is unusually wide, and he appears to have shaved the side of his head from his temple to above his ear.

This isn’t from normal wear; it’s on the deepest part of the design, which translates to the highest points on the die used to mint the coin. This makes me think that this results from over-polishing, or some other form of wear, on the die. The high points on the die wore off, leaving the low points on the coin with pronounced flatness. (“Pronounced flatness”—pardon the oxymoron.)

[I was unable to take a decent photo of it today. The pics came out sort of rotten.]

A gentleman in London whom I recently made contact with via a coin discussion forum recently mailed me a bunch of “extras” he had no use for in his collection. I have yet to go through them in any detail, but there is some fun stuff. It was very, very kind of him to mail them to me. If we send Christmas cards this year, he’ll have to be added to the list for sure.

Likewise a forum moderator on the same Web site. He ran a random drawing contest on his forum, and I won a 1963 Cyprus proof set of five coins. I received them in the mail yesterday. Very cool.




Not even December yet, and it already feels like Christmas!

Garden:

My glads are still pretty green, so I haven’t touched them. After the foliage turns brown, though, I think I’ll be digging them up and spreading them out a bit. I guess I’ll store them in the garage this winter, which may be a bit of a gamble. I don’t know the best way to store bulbs (or “corms,” really; glads don’t technically grow from bulbs), but I suspect that digging the bulbs from the ground with the intention of keeping them warm in the unheated garage all winter might only slightly lessen the risk of freezing them. It worked a couple of years ago, though. I left them in the ground last winter. I think, after I dig them up, clean them, and let them air out a little, they should be safe if I wrap them in something like newspaper and box them up.

The rosemary that I have growing in a pot is now at my office. Last week I brought it in and placed it by a consenting co-workers cubicle, next to a window. I hope it over-winters well, because a grand two-year-old rosemary plant should be nice to have next summer.

Movies:

I watched the critically acclaimed “Army of Shadows” last week on DVD.

It’s a French film from 1969, about the Resistance during WWII. It was not released in this country until early this year.
I was expecting greatness, but my reaction was tepid. There were some very good things about it, but overall I can’t really recommend it.

Thanksgiving night I went to the theater with my brother Kevin and saw “No Country for Old Men.” Really, really good. I’ve had it on my mind quite a bit since viewing it.

Art:

I still need to finish the Cherokee Park landscape that I started the weekend before last. I haven’t touched it in a week.

I bought some black sumi ink to augment my ink experimentation. I’m eager to break it out, but so far I’ve only smudged it around a little. I wonder what a drawing done with both sumi ink and walnut ink would look like.

Carrie has loaned me some lino cutting tools and a brayer, which drastically reduces the already fairly modest start-up costs for doing some relief prints. I’ve really wanted to do this for months now, but now that the real opportunity is here, I’m not sure what I want to do.

At first glance, linoleum block printing seems quite a bit different from the way I normally work. I think of lino prints as typically depicting a self-contained object, or small group of objects, graphically clean and somewhat simplified. But when painting or drawing, I tend to work very sketchily, with a large variety of marks, and somewhat improvised. This method of drawing doesn’t directly translate into block printing. Also, the subject matter I keep thinking of doesn’t seem to reflect my general subject interests (that is, landscapes, vegetation, and buildings.) However, it just occurred to me that there really isn’t any reason at all that I can’t do a landscape as a block print. And it had already been on my mind that interesting buildings would be great to work on (I keep thinking of churches for some reason.)

I want to launch into a multi-color block print, but it seems wiser to do at least one single-color print to sort of feel my way into the process. It’s been a long time—more than twenty years—since I’ve done it.

Random cute kid stuff

Jill’s longest sentence, to date: “Peach jelly momma buy p[l]ease,” said to Kim at the grocery. I guess the syntax could use a little work, but I’m still impressed, especially with the use of the word “buy” and the considerate addition of “please.”

Yesterday at her preschool, Erin’s teacher, Ms. Kathy, had the students paint paper plates with a mixture of tempera paint and spices. The result was a painted pumpkin pie: A coppery-brown painted plate that smelled strongly of pumpkin spice and cinnamon. On the way home, Erin told Kim, “We painted with a [s]poon!”

“You painted it with a spoon?” responded Kim.

“Yeah,” said Erin. Pause. “I don’t think Ms. Kathy knows.”

“You don’t think she knows what?”

“what a ‘poon looks like and what a brush looks like.”

Last night Erin begged me to get out some grown-up games. She has been very interested in some old games that Kim’s dad brought over from storage a few days ago. She’s asked both Kim and me to get them out and just play them by ourselves; I suppose she wanted to see what they looked like, and was intrigued by the boxes, especially “The Game of Life.”

So I consented, first getting out a chess set. She and I played chess (she now knows that the horses are called knights, and that the king is important, and that you can capture other pieces on your turn.) Then we played Life, spinning the spinner and moving the little cars around the board. She’s a pretty good counter, and can recognize many of the numbers on the spinner without my help.

Also last night, Jill and Erin were playing with electric musical toys in the kitchen and dancing. Jill started doing this chicken dance--tucking her hands in her armpits, flapping her elbows, and saying “Ock, ock, ock” as she rapidly stomped in circles. The effect was very, very funny.

Cherokee Park

I dressed warmly and went to Cherokee Park today. Here's a decent (I think) start to a painting.




I also sketched some airplanes at Bowman Field, but the scenery just wasn't frosting my brownies. It's something I may come back to. However, for the time being, the notion of painting parked aircraft on the tarmac is more appealing to me in theory than in practice.

Usually when I hold the camera at arm’s length and snap a picture of myself, the results are awful. This photo turned out very nicely, though. I think it helps that my head is turned and the highlight of the picture is my much more photogenic daughter.

Two ink drawings

Here are two sketches I started on lunchbreaks and then worked on a little more at home. These were done with my homemade ink, homemade bamboo pens, brushes, forythia twigs, and crowquill nibs.

The ink not being as dark was I want has forced me to work a little more in layers. I don't think these come across as "finished" works of art, but I'm pretty happy with the results. Since they were mostly done on lunchbreak, I had to work fast, and I like the look of fast work.Sycamores and Black Walnuts, 16 1/2 x 11 1/2, walnut ink on paper

Gravel Path, 16 1/2 x 11m1/2, walnut ink on paper

Rearranging the cold goods

Yogurts are never big enough to satisfy.
The bottle of margarita mix
from back with the crumbs
four years, an unused señorita
now dumped to make room.
Some things aren't made in Jelly Belly flavors
Things unmentionable to some
hot fantasies,
Things so savory.
When was this meat from?

How to Make Black Walnut Ink

Homemade Black Walnut Ink11-8-2007

I recently began making my own black walnut ink for use in drawing. There are various recipes around the Internet, and all of them are similar.

This is a long process, but most of the time is devoted to waiting. Very little of it actually involves doing something.

The basic process for making black walnut ink is this: Get rotten black walnuts, husk and all. Boil the heck out of them. Strain the mess and use the brown juice for drawing or writing. That’s all there is to it, really, but I’m always game for elaborating…

Step 1. Find your walnuts. Black walnut trees are fairly plentiful here in Louisville, and that seems to be true for much of the eastern half of the U.S. In October, one can spot the green, leathery, round fruit (usually just a little smaller than tennis balls) on the ground or getting ready to fall. One doesn’t use them when they are green, however. Gather the blackest, rottenest, gunkiest ones you can find. If there aren’t any that are black and icky, gather the green ones. Gather the entire fruit. The small, hard shell with the nut in the center is a non-essential piece for the ink. What one needs is the leathery rind. Just pick up the whole thing.

Newly gathered walnuts. Eat 'em? Naw! Get back, squirrels! I'm an artist!


(Warning: Black, oozy walnuts will stain hands and clothing, so use some caution.)

Step 2. Put them in a plastic bag and let them rot. The green ones will turn black over a few days or weeks.

(Another warning: At any step in this process, one can set all these walnuts aside. They are already rotten; it’s not like putting one’s ink-making on hold for days or even weeks will ruin the batch. If you store the walnuts outside, however, critters will be drawn to them. Squirrels will tear open bags and gnaw on pots.)


I refer to the walnuts in disgusting terms, and they are pretty gross. They get slimy and moldy, and you’ll probably find all kinds of strange little bugs living in them. Don’t worry. It all cooks down to the same brown sludge. Except for those little pale brown beetle larvae. They stayed shiny and intact even after hours and hours of boiling. If the ick factor is too high, just remember that you must suffer for your art. So must those with whom you share your kitchen.

Step 3. After they are black, put them in a large pot for which you don’t have any great affection. I used a large aluminum pot that we use very infrequently. I was surprised that, after I was done, the pot cleaned up very well; other sources, however, say that their pots and pans can become discolored. Stainless steel or enamel-coated pots seem to be the general recommendation, but my aluminum one worked just great.

Cover the walnuts with water and let them soak for at least a day. The longer they soak, the better. My first batch soaked for a day, and my second batch soaked for several days. I plan to make a third batch which I will allow to soak for several months.

(Another warning: The walnuts, water, and ink all have a high capacity for staining anything they come into contact with. This includes kitchen counters, fingernails, dishes, wooden spoons, and your clothing.)


Step 4. Dismantle the walnuts. Tear, mash, and break them up. The more little pieces one can get, the better. Remember, the rotten, black pulp material is the stuff that turns the water into ink.

With my first batch, I tore them up before I soaked them. With my second batch, I didn’t really break up the husks until they were cooking. Step 4 can kind of be inserted anywhere in the soaking step, or early in the cooking step (Step 5.)

Use this water, which at this point has started to turn black from the walnut juice, for the next step.



Step 5. With the walnuts still covered in their (now-blackened) water, put them on a medium-low heat. Let them simmer for a long time—hours. If the water gets too low, you can add more. The goal, though, is to let it slowly cook down.

Periodically, dip a brush into it and test the liquid on some paper to see how dark it is. Once the liquid is as dark as you want it, your ink is nearly done. It has probably cooked down quite a bit by this point.

The smell of the boiling walnuts is distinct, but not especially strong or unpleasant. It reminded me of rotten logs and damp forest.

Step 6. Let the dark brown mess cool for a while, and then strain it. The best method I’ve found so far is to stretch an old pair of nylons over a glass or plastic container, and pour the walnut sludge into it. Squeeze the sludge in the nylons to get as much liquid out of it as you can. Empty the walnut crumbs out of the nylons into the garbage (or your hedge, or compost heap, or your neighbor’s porch) and repeat until you’ve strained all the liquid into your container. Your container should now hold ink, free from all but small bits of sediment. This sediment, which will settle at the bottom of jars, shouldn’t be a problem.I tried letting the muck drain through coffee filters. I don't recommend it. It was painfully slow and messy.
A page from my sketchbook, where I was testing and playing with the walnut ink.

Straining the ink. I put an old pair of nylons over the opening of a large plastic can that pretzels came in. After I filled it partially with walnut sludge, I pulled it out and squeezed it over the glass bowl. By the time I was done, the glass bowl was nearly full of the ink.





Step 7. You might want to add a preservative, since the ink can grow mold. The best recommendation I’ve heard so far is to add a small amount of denatured alcohol (add it so that it constitutes 5% of the ink). Salt would also work, but salt can lead to corrosion in metal pen nibs. Vinegar also can retard mold and bacterial growth, but its acidity renders the ink non-archival.

Optional: Most black walnut ink makers recommend the addition of gum arabic to improve the ink’s flow.


Results so far:11-8-07: After a couple of batches homemade black walnut ink, I am unsatisfied with the ink’s darkness. I tried taking a couple of jars and boiling them down further, and the ink did become more concentrated. The ink also became a little thicker and didn’t flow as well. This might be where the gum arabic would come in handy, but I haven’t bought any yet. A 2 ½ jar at the art store runs about twelve dollars. If I had that kind of money, I wouldn’t be making my own ink! Heh heh. I may try buying some powdered gum arabic on Ebay.

Even though the ink isn’t as dark as I’d like, it still is pretty nice. I think I might be able to make the next batch darker by letting the walnuts soak a lot longer—months, instead of days.

I am also running a lightfastness test with the ink on the dashboard of my car.

I will edit this post periodically as I learn more.

2-7-2012:  I guess I should add another update.  A couple of months ago I made another batch of ink from walnuts that I had sitting in a pot in my garage for about two years. Or was it three?  Anyway, they were sitting covered in water for a very long time.  I've read that there are chemicals in walnuts that discourage mold growth, and that must be true, for there was no mold in the walnuts. (Then why does the ink grow mold, I wonder?)

       These walnuts had also been soaking with some old nuts and bolts to add some iron content, on the theory that it would darken the ink.  I don't kow whether it was this iron, or the age of the walnuts, or a combination of the two, but the ink came out noticeably darker than previous batches.

6-27-13: Another brief update.  I am still using ink from previous batches and have not made any ink since that mentioned in the update above.  But to elaborate on the above point, I recently had four drawings side-by-side: three done with the newest batch of ink, which had very aged walnuts as well as rusty metal added to the mix, and one drawing done with an older batch that had not sat around soaking as long and which had not metal in it.

   The first three were brown, but were more of a charcoaly brown, whereas the the one had more of a burnt sienna appearance.

   My goal had been to make a darker ink, but comparing them, I think I actually like the browner one more.  It just has a more vibrant feel.

Pastimes and interests, waxing and waning:

-Making art: /\ 5 points
-Coin collecting: \/ 1 point
-Roleplaying games: \/ 3 points (commentary: Despite my recent excursion into Dan’s Cthulhu-land, I’ve not invested the time I want into RPGs. I really need to do some DMing soon before my players forget what they did last. Writing a long recap is a pain in the butt.)
-Gardening holding steady at seasonally low value.
-Boardgames: \/ 1 point. (commentary: I haven’t played much lately, although I did get the opportunity to play a really cool card game with the Sparkses last weekend.)

I’m working on assembling my pictorial tutorial for the creation of black walnut ink. Over the past few days I’ve made a couple of landscape drawing with it, and I’ll post pictures of those, too. Unfortunately, with the time change, I don’t have any decent daylight to use for photographing them when I get home from work.

The basil in the garden has all flowered and turned ugly. Between drought and then torrential rain and then cold, the tomatoes are all split and yucky. I was kind of burned out on them by early October, anyway, although I have a few green ones that I intend to fry.

The Call of Cthulhu, Part 2

We had arrived in the fishman cult room unobserved, for the monsters were absorbed in their diabolical ceremony. In a short moment, the waters of the great pool stirred, and a colossal beast arose: Something like a bipedal eel, a fish-man-demon of immense proportions, matching the golden statues of the altar. The chanting increased in volume as the beast strode from the water and sat his obscene bulk upon the golden altar. It was the fish-god’s chair.

Our stunned amazement was broken by Police Sgt. Willis, whose military rifle thundered to life. His blasts ripped the demon’s eyes apart, sending it into a frenzy. The others of our group produced weapons as well, and I pulled Willis’s pistol from his hip holster for my own use. I think I acquitted myself well, considering that I have almost no firearms experience. I killed one of the fishmen, and wounded two others. The photographer used his large photographic apparatus to blind the fishmen with flashes, and I think that had he not done so, we may have suffered greatly. As it was, we slaughtered the mutants as they closed in on us.

As we fought, the great fish demon struck the three captive girls with its tail, killing two of them. It then vanished back into the water.

After a hail of gunfire, the fishmen were dead. The one surviving girl was beside herself with fear and babbling incoherently. After a brief talk, it was agreed that the doctor and I would accompany her quickly back to the sunlit world. The rest would hurry down another tunnel, seeking the rest of the missing girls.

The doctor and I fled with the girl we had rescued back through the dank tunnels. We had come a long way through these menacing sewers, and the way back was sure to take at least an hour. It seemed to go on forever, and we hoped to encounter other rescuers.

Suddenly, our hopes seemed bourne out, as we spotted a flashlight ahead of us. We encountered a large man with a light and a gun, hurrying in our direction. We greeted him gladly, but he leveled his gun at us.

(Here the story ends, and Fr. Duddlesworth’s account mysteriously leaves off. How did he present this story? Was he dictating? Who knows? I kindly invite one of the other players from the night to put the ending on the tale, as I was not present. Yet I’ve heard how it ended. If no one else recaps in a few days, I’ll tack it on myself.)

Happy Halloween!

We went trick-or-treating in Chris and Helga's neighborhood tonight, after dinner at their house. Lots of friends on hand, and we formed a pretty big trick-or-treating gang, but we didn't see many other kids out in the neighborhood. It was a beautiful night, just warm enough that you could probably get away with wearing a t-shirt. Our girls are little enough to be real slow pokes, so we lagged behind, except Ed and Loraine and their daughter stayed with us. We went to a half-dozen houses, and it wasn't a quick affair, let me tell you. C & H were wonderful hosts, as always, with great decorations and even better food. It was all very pleasant."Trick or treat!"

Trick-or-treating

Earlier tonight: The Chicken and the Pumpkin

The Call of Cthulhu

(Part 1) Friday evening I drove up to Dan and Amy’s in Florence for a “Call of Cthulhu” game. Dan ran the game, using the Savage Worlds game system. There were seven players, plus Dan.

I arrived with a full stomach, but that didn’t keep me from eating some of Amy’s truly fine chili and homemade bread rolls. There was also a large jar of candy corn and peanuts which, when eaten together, taste almost exactly like a Payday candy bar. Also, dark chocolate peanut M&Ms. And corn chips.

Dan passed out pre-generated characters for each of us. I took the role of Fr. Angus Duddlesworth, founder of a runaway shelter. The year was 1983. A CD player near the game table played music of the early 80s until we got tired of it.

Game synopsis, in short: I read in the paper that the teen boys who had been staying at the shelter were horribly murdered in the night, and all the girls were missing. The boys had been ripped to shreds.

I hurried down to the crime scene. The door was guarded by two officers. One of those lads was a good Catholic, and I talked my way past. He accompanied me, but soon had to run back out: Inside was unimaginable carnage. The bodies had already been taken to the coroner’s office, but the gore was everywhere. Officer McCarthy could not stomach it and went back outside to retch.

I steeled myself with prayer and tried to understand what had happened. I saw no sign of forced entry, until I noticed the basement door. I appeared as if something had forced it open from within. Had someone been locked in the basement?

I no sooner saw this than Sgt. Brian Willis arrived on the scene. He was irate that I was walking about the premises, and hurriedly showed me outside. As he questioned me, a reporter –whose name I never learned—showed up, as did a man named Dr. Connick. Sgt. Willis began to realize that his two officers, one nearly incapacitated from nausea and distress, were inadequate to secure the building.

I searched the building’s exterior and found nothing of note. By the time I was done, I found Dr. Connick and the reporter discussing the matter with a woman named Jodi, who was looking for her missing god daughter, one of the teens from my shelter. A man named Randy was there, too, as well as a teen named Jimmy, a young man who had stayed in the shelter previously and who was looking for his girlfriend Sharon.

With Sgt. Willis intent on keeping us in the dark, we retired to a nearby eatery. Dr. Connick told me that he had been at the coroner’s office, where in one of the bodies had been found a large fish scale. The reported said that there had been a history of girls missing from this area, going back fifty years, and that unidentified, eviscerated bodies sometimes wash ashore. The police, it seemed to us, were not acting quickly enough to find the missing girls.

Jodi worked out some plan to distract Sgt. Willis. She may have done something to make him hold a press conference. I’m not sure. At any rate, were were able to sneak back in the back door of the shelter.

In the basement we found that the iron sewer cover was opened. Equipped with flashlights, we began exploring. Jimmy spotted a strange trail of slime starting at the rungs we had descended, so we opted to follow that.

After quite a bit of walking down the main passage, we found rough stairs leading downward, straight through the bedrock to another series of tunnels.

There, we found a circular room with a pool in the center. I saw what I first took to be a person swimming in the water there, but it lunged from the water and attacked us. It was a horrendous fish-man, like a beast from a horror movie! Jodi killed it with a shotgun blast. I do not know who this woman is, but I’m glad she was with us.

The doctor examined the corpse. We all fervently hoped that it was a man in a rubber costume, but it was not so. It was some mutant or horrid hybrid.

As were struggled to come to terms with this awfulness, Sgt. Willis and one of his officers arrived. They had been pursuing us, and had heard the shotgun.

We explained the situation, and he told us that we must leave. However, he recognized that this was a matter beyond any with which he had dealt before, and knew that he could not force us. Jimmy, at the least, was uncontrollable in this eagerness to save his girlfriend. We continued down another tunnel, desperate to find the missing innocents.

Horror of horrors! We found a tremendous cavern in which dozens of the horrid fish-men were holding blasphemous rites with insane chants. A giant golden altar, flanked by huge fishman statues, stood next to a pool. As we watched, three of the teen girls were led to the altar.

(To be continued.)

"Once"

Last night I had the idea to go see a movie with Kim. Originally, I’d been thinking that I’d like to see the 3-D version of “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” but there weren’t showtimes that seemed very agreeable. On a whim, I scanned the rest of the showclock, and noticed a listing for a movie called “Once,” which the Courier-Journal gave four stars. It was at the Village 8, the “cheap theaters.” That’s good, because I’m cheap.

I had never heard of this movie, and looked up a few more reviews for it. The critics loved it. It sounded interesting, so we went.

I won’t describe the film; you can find plenty of reviews. I’ll just say that I thought it was a true little joy of a cinematic experience and I’m really, really glad I saw it.

Wood rot

I had taken today off to go with Kim and the girls up to Huber's Family Farm, or whatever it's called. We were going to look for pumpkins, and go through the corn maze, and admire the gourd selection, and watch apples being turned into cider, and whatever else they do there.

Those plans fell through, however. The heavy rains earlier this week poured through the window of our family room: The water drips from the top of the window pain, having entered the wall through a seam in the roof. Today, a building contractor that Kim's dad knows, and a window guy that the contractor knows, came out to investigate the situation.

It's pretty bad, but I guess it could be worse. It turns out the drip guard above the gutter over the window doesn't reach far enough under the shingles. The roof has a slight flaw there, allowing water to pool under the shingles just at the edge, next to the gutter. It there seeps (or, in some cases, pours) down through the wall.

We also discovered that some of the wood inside the wall under that window (and likely above that window, too) is thoroughly rotten.

It will take quite a bit of repair. A gutter and siding guy that the contractor knows is supposed to come out early next week to look at it.

I called State Farm, and they said they only cover it if it's an accident, as opposed to a maintenance issue (in other words, they cover a lightning strike or tree limb damage, but not rotten wood from a leak.)

We may be able to save a hundred dollars or more if we take down and put up the gutter ourselves, which would be a 3-person job with three extension ladders, but that seems do-able. Even so, it'll be at least a thousand dollars, I'm sure.

totally loaded, I suppose

I had many dreams last night. In one, I was a werewolf, but not really: It was sort of a game. Read that as dream ambiguity. I ran after friends and family members to scare them. Kim and someone else pinned me to the ground and tranquilized me with something they injected into my arms, in the same places I get my allergy shots. We were all laughing.

In another dream, or possibly a continuation of the same one, a bunch of large owls flew down. They were brown and white barn owls, I think. One landed on my arm. It was sort of threatening due to its size and sharp talons and beak, but it wasn’t attacking. Then it became a beautiful woman in an owl costume.

There were other dreams, I think, involving car chases and art. I woke up thinking about ink, wonderful inks of black and brown, all varieties, waiting for me to draw or paint with them.

Big Lunch

Today for lunch I am eating the largest peanut butter and jelly sandwich ever made in the history of the world. It is 4 ¾ x 7 inches, more than 1 ½ inches tall, and weighs 9.9 ounces.



Post-lunch update: It was delicious.

I worked on my first batch of walnut ink this weekend. I took photos along the way, so I’ll post a step-by-step outline of the process. I’m not entirely happy with the results, but I’m happy enough that I’ll use what I have.

I’ll be making more, I think, and tweaking the process.

"Pan's Labyrinth"

I finished watching “Pan’s Labyrinth” a couple of nights ago. Almost all of my DVD watching is a multiple-night affair. This movie was spread out over five days, in three different viewing sessions. It’s really the only way I can watch a movie without staying up way too late or abdicating my responsibilities as husband, father, and homeowner. I’ve found that it lessens a movie’s impact.

Perhaps it lessened the impact of this movie. But, wow. I sure wish I’d seen it at the theater. Some viewers may have very legitimate reasons for not liking this movie. It is art, after all, and all response to art is subjective. Perhaps it seems too violent, or too fantastic, or too gloomy. Perhaps you hate anything touching on fantasy. Perhaps you hate subtitles.

Surely, though, one must recognize that this movie is masterfully assembled from the finest quality ingredients. Everything about it, I thought, was dead-on. Fortunately, I liked the ingredients, too. I could handle the violence, I like fantasy, I don’t mind subtitles.

So, wow. Best movie I’ve seen in years.

Ghostly encounters #2

I used to work for the county District Court Archives, which had offices on the first floor and basement of the former county jail, downtown. At some point in the past, the jail was renovated into office space for the district courts, county attorneys, and other county agencies.

It was nicely renovated, but the construction was still old brick and limestone blocks. Catty-corner to the Hall of Justice, the building held thousands and thousands of records relating to various court cases going back to the 19th Century, and saw all kinds of traffic during the day. Lawyers, cops, private investigators, criminals of all stripe, and the mentally ill all paraded through, providing me with interesting anecdotes.

The records I worked with were a mix of district and circuit cases. The circuit cases were generally more interesting, and often more grisly. Those were the cases the dealt with more serious crimes, like murder, rape, and arson. A couple of the rooms had been used for storage of evidence, although not much evidence was around at the time I worked there. Just a few odds-and-ends. Just knowing the room I was in had recently held murder weapons was enough to add to the atmosphere.

I recall my boss and others saying that a prisoner had hanged himself in the area our offices were, and that one of our storage rooms had been solitary confinement. Where the parking garage is now, there had been a courtyard, where there had been hangings.

All this made the building sort of a creepy place to be at night, when the doors were locked and hardly anyone was around. I worked there in the evening for a while, and there nights when the time was up and I was out of there with a pretty solid case of the creeps.

By eight o’clock at night, there were few people in the building. Often it may have been just me and the security guard, who had a booth by the front door, far out of earshot. I listened to the radio and tried to keep from my head thoughts of the frustrated, irate, disappointed, or just downright strange people I’d met earlier in the day, perhaps skulking around outside the building, looking for unlocked doors. Or hiding in the restrooms or under the stairs.

A friend and co-worker related this story, similar in a way to my Mountain Dew story: He was in the farthest corner of the archives room at the end of the hall in the basement, filing circuit court cases (those are the ones that dealt with, for instance, murder. Photos included.) The case files were kept in heavy cardboard bankers boxes, stacked on metal shelves four or five high. The boxes lined the walls of the room and also filled a free-standing set of shelves in the middle of the room.

After filing a load of cases, he walked around the room making sure all the drawers were closed. He shut a few drawers, walked around to the other side of the room, and shut a few more. Then he turned to leave, looked back, and saw that a couple of the boxes he shut were open again.

Weirded out, he almost flipped the lights off and slammed the door with the intention of just getting the heck out of there. Instead, though, he stopped himself and forced himself the think calmly about it. There had to be a good reason the heavy cardboard drawers had dragged themselves back open, right?

After thinking about it a bit, and then messing with the drawers, he realized that when he had slammed shut the box drawers on one side of the island of shelves, the backs of the drawers had bumped against the backs of the drawers on the other side, bouncing them back open.

Rational explanations aside, it was still a damn creepy place to work.

My ghostly encounter #1

Just about ten years ago, at another place I used to work, I had a supernatural experience. Not really. But the experience was one that I remember as funny and, for a few seconds, slightly startling.

I was sitting in the otherwise empty breakroom, having polished off my lunch and the last of my can of Mountain Dew, and reading a magazine. My lunch break was nearly over.

Without warning, my can of Mountain Dew slid noiselessly and smoothly from one side of the table to the other.

My reaction, for a couple of seconds, was to sit slack-jawed, the hair on my neck prickling upward. Then I looked around to see if anyone else was around. I didn’t see anyone.

After another couple of moments of consideration, I formed a theory about what had happened, experimented, and solved the mystery to my satisfaction. We’ll play “Encyclopedia Brown” and see if one of my thousands of readers can guess. Here’s another clue: This happened during the summer.

More Ghost Fiction

Here’s another ghost story, one that I recall reading many years ago. I suppose I read it somewhere between sixth and eighth grade, and I found it memorable enough that the plot and the title stuck with me (I had the title slightly wrong: I thought the phrase was the “Watery Ghost” instead of “Water Ghost.”) It was in a collection of short stories I checked out of the school library.

The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall

Aluminum cans

I guess I could have posted this a couple of days ago during the blogosphere’s environmentalist Action Day, but I only thought of it just now.

Last week I decided to save aluminum cans. Normally I throw them in the recycling bin at home. Now, though, I’m making an extra effort to seek them out. I keep a cardboard box under my desk at work, and pick up the ones I find around the office. In addition, I’m keeping a bag in my car for when I find them as I’m sashaying about town. Soon, I’ll procure a bin of some sort for my office’s break room.

I’ll save the cans for a while and then cash them in. I figure after a year, I’ll be able to afford a hundred –dollar coin! Or maybe a tube of cobalt violet oil paint!

I don’t believe in the supernatural, but I love ghost stories in spite of--or perhaps because of--this. Here's one of my favorites:How Fear Departed From The Long Gallery.

In the spirit of Halloween, here isThe
Straight Dope on the curse on MacBeth.

Caufield's Halloween Parade 2008

I didn’t take any photos of the Halloween parade, though I could have taken twenty. I refuse to write twenty thousand words, however.

There was a pretty good crowd there, more than last year, and the weather was nicer—a slightly cool with no wind. The street was lined with families, many of whom were in costumes.

The thing I love about this parade is that it’s such an amateur affair. There was not even anything as fancily practiced as a high school marching band. It’s campy, silly, cute, and weird.

My favorites were the JCPS librarians. There were about fifteen of them, dressed as witches in striped pointy hats, but still looking very much like school librarians. They were pushing library carts and occasionally spinning in maneuvers to music blaring from a boom box.

There were a couple of costumed Girl Scout troops riding in decorated pickup trucks, hurling tootsie rolls at spectators. Several of the area seasonal haunted house attractions had marchers or decorated vehicles (plenty of hearses), as did a few other area businesses. The Korsair Charities Flying Fezzes drove a street-bound helicopter which had bats suspended from its slowly rotating rotors.

In my opinion, some of the imagery is too strong for little kids. Some of the costumes are frightening, and some of the marchers menaced the crowd with chain saws. (Although I enjoy it as silly fun in parade context, this sort of gory slasher stuff has always been a very non-essential ingredient in my enjoyment of Halloween. I love the spooky and the creepy, but the out-and-out violent and gory is off-putting.) Despite this, there were plenty of small children among the spectators, and I didn’t see any of them run shrieking in fear. Which surprised me.

I’ll plan to go again next year.


I have recommenced working on my own costume. I don’t know if I’ll have it done by the 31st. I need to pick a deadline prior to the 31st; maybe the 26th. I am taking photos of the work-in-progress.

I think I fixed the comments. They had disappeared.

A ten-minute shrieking fit, during which she was placed in her room, ended with Erin asleep face-down in her doorway. It's like Marlin Perkins popped her with a dart.
On the "Mombasa Express," the old VW bus that kids can play on, at the zoo: I just thought Jill looked really cute in this picture.

An old landscape

This is a landscape I painted at Riverview Park in 2002. It's about 40x30 inches, on a panel. I've sent it across the country, and I sure hope it gets there in one piece. I tried to take some nice pictures of it before I boxed it up, and this is what I got. Five shots with an awful glare, and one shot that's all yellow. Just try to picture this in your head as being somewhere between the two.

I really thought I had the glare worked out. I took the picture at an 80 degree angle to the window. What the heck? I'm sure Candy is rolling her eyes.

I just realized that the opening sentence of the preceding post makes it sound like I find my wife and children uninteresting. That's not the case at all. I could go on at length about the cute things that Erin and Jill say, and the wonderful things that Kim does. But, really, I know that everyone who reads this blog (hi, NSA!) are only interested in Slovakian coins, growing watermelons, and landscape paintings.

Although I feel like I rarely have anything going on in my life worth blogging about, I find that if I go for four of five days without posting, I have stored away in my mind too many things I want to comment on and don't have the time or energyt to write about them. Even though they are just little things.

I went to the First Friday trolley hop downtown on the fifth. I saw some good stuff. One gallery had a couple of violinists playing; their music filled the small space, and it was beautiful.

Swanson Reed Contemporary had an exhibit by Louisville artist Ted Bressoud. Mr. Bressoud has cut up paper money (ones, tens, twenties, hundreds...) and arranged the pieces into crosses. He says in his artist statement "Making a religious icon out of money was, at once, destroying what I worshipped and deitizing it." The results were, I found, fairly simple in their elegance, pleasing to the eye, and provocative.

Another highlight was David Schuster's studio and gallery at 211 South Clay Street. His paintings are very approachable. They are realistic without being photographic, they're colorful and vivid, and they display a love of both drawing and paint application. He paints the way I want to paint. He also seems like a very nice guy and I enjoyed my brief conversation with him. His work is a lot of fun to look at, and I recommend a visit to his gallery space to anyone who's visiting galleries downtown.

Other weekend highlights that I hope I get some time to post about: I harvested some bamboo from alongside Interstate 71, and cut some of it down into dip pens. I greatly enjoyed Erin's soccer game on Sunday, and it wasn't even miserably hot, although the thermometer said it was. Last night we had dinner with the Gilberts, and had the privilege to enjoy a visit from Shagufta, who regaled us with fascinating tales from the last dozen years of her life.

Kyrill & Methodius

St. Kyrill, or Cyril, invented the Cyrillic alphabet. He and his brother, St. Methodius, are considered patron saints of Europe. They were born in Thessaloniki, Greece in the 9th Century, and converted a lot of Slavs.

There you go.

Erin the builder & destroyer

Here's a Slovakian coin I bought at the coin show. I thought it was sort of pretty; that's a nice design. Those two fellas are St. Kyrill and St. Methodius. I'll have to look them up.

Saw in its final stages

My workspace in the dining room.

Finished saw

The Wine Tasting

Saturday evening’s wine tasting party was a lot of fun. Each of the twelve guests was to bring a bottle of wine under $10. I didn’t know until immediately beforehand that we were also supposed to dress up like our bottles of wine, but I think I looked smartly TV wine commercial-like in my green jeans, black T-shirt, and tan sport jacket.

Kim and I brought a bottle of malbec and a bottle of strawberry wine from a Kentucky winery.

Disclaimer: I don’t know anything about wine. I don’t know a malbec from a zinfandel from a merlot, except that I think all zinfandels are white. And, actually, I think I might have had enough merlots over the past decade that I might be able to guess if it’s a merlot if I haven’t been told. I swear, though, Saturday was the first time in my life I ever heard the word “malbec.”

Laura wrapped each bottle of wine in a paper bag and numbered it, so that we could only go by the numbers, not the labels. Then we were seated outside on the porch. It was a beautiful evening. Pat and Laura had a long table with candelabras, and place settings. There was a fire in the yard. It was very dark.

Chris G. was dressed as a butcher, Loraine as a gaucho (gaucha? Gauchita?), Chris S. like a Kentucky Colonel. Helga was in her tango outfit. Ed wore a long wig and a sleek black dress that showed off his tattoos. Everyone else was dress strikingly, also.

We all had scorecards, passed around the bottles as we dined on salads, bruschetta, rolls, and these awesome hors d’oeuvres consisting of almond-stuffed figs wrapped in prosciutto. (Hmm. My spell check function wants to change “prosciutto” to “prostitute.”)

There was a main course of chicken, pork, noodles, and vegetables, but I had very little, as Kim and I had just eaten. All the food I had was excellent.

The two wines that we brought fared well, getting generally favorable comments. The strawberry wine was mild and sweet, and the malbec was decent and somewhat interesting, though not a favorite. The greatest commotion was over an elderberry wine that Aaron brought, with the opinion seeming to run from “Hoo, what is this crap?” to “Wow! Undrinkable!” My comment: “Like a pack of Smarties dissolved in Alka-Seltzer.” Although the beverage was dislikable (really, it might not be bad poured over vanilla ice cream), I must give thanks to Aaron for providing great entertainment.

After a tiramisu dessert, we all sat around the fire and chatted. Then Kim and I had to go home to relieve our baby sitters, who were asleep on the sofas.

And now, your weekend update

Weekend synopsis:

Friday:

Coin show, already mentioned.

Dinner with the Sparkses at Wendy’s, just for the fun of it.

D&D at Brent’s house. We started at about 9 p.m., and stopped at 1:15 a.m. David brought bourbon. At the end, I accelerated game time to get the chronology of in-game events up to about where I wanted them to be. Now, though, I have a list of things I really need to get together before the next game night. I need to get a map of the island of Thanos and the ruined city of Marding. I need to work on weapon enchantment options and prices. I need to complete details of another location they may end up very soon, and another location they may go.

Saturday:

Up with Jillian at 6:15, after a somewhat more than 4 hours of sleep. I spent a couple hours ruing my Dungeon Master status. Jillian was in a really good mood, though, and very cute.

Kim ran errands and worked much of the day. I played with the girls and cleaned. Cleaning in our house is like using a small plastic shovel to clear a long driveway during a moderate snowstorm. One may take a small step back and see the progress made, but another step back reveals that the task is overwhelmingly big and that the work that’s been done will be swallowed up again quickly. That’s why it’s best to focus on little areas. I used the dirt devil on the upholstered glider-rocker and parts of the family room carpet. I took some old toys out to the garage. I cleared off parts of the kitchen counters. Erin and I made fudge.

Mom and Dad came over to watch the girls while Kim and I had a date night. Bless my mom and dad! They do so much for us, as do Kim’s parents. We had a great night. After dinner at Rocky’s, we went to Pat and Laura’s for a wine tasting party.

Sunday:

After we worked at church, we went to Erin’s soccer game. Those games are a hoot. The weather was much nicer than last week, although the sun was still hot. It’s fun seeing the three-year-olds watch the ball roll past… Sometimes it even bounces off their shins, and they don’t move.

I played with Erin and Jill in the back yard, which is where we also had dinner, despite the mosquitoes. I pulled some of the gourds off the fence. I think some of them will be cured soon.

I went to bed at a reasonable hour.

Coin Show

Last weekend’s annual Fall coin show seemed to be a success. I don’t know how things were on Saturday, but Friday went well, for the time I was there. I worked from the time it opened, at 10:00 a.m., until 1:00 p.m., at the front table. We handed out name tags to dealers, prompted visitors to put on name badges, and sold raffle tickets.

There were about fifty dealers and eighty tables, and the venue was spacious. I could have spent much more time and money if I’d had either. As it was, I spent 1 ½ hours and $20.

I had to return in the afternoon after work to take back one of the coins I purchased, for I became convinced that it was a counterfeit. I wish I’d taken a picture of it so that I could show people what I was talking about. I was a little excited when I first found it: In one dealer’s binder of world coins, he had a couple of pages of 18th and 19th Century reales and half-reales. I’ve been looking for such a coin from the 1730s, because that’s the kind of coin that would have been in common usage in the Colonies when the first Tablers came over during that decade. I spotted a 1737 half-real for $18.95, and the dealer said he’d let me have it for $15. It wasn’t in great shape, but that was a good price, so I purchased it.

When I got back to work I looked at it a few times, and became troubled. The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that this was a replica. Finally, I became sure that it wasn’t just a fake, it was a poorly done fake that screamed “I suck.”

The details on the coin were poor. There was metal between the bars on many of the letters. Importantly, there were bubble-like raised nodules of metal, which is what would occur if the coin were cast in a mold that had bubble-holes in it that had formed when the mold-making material had set. Most damning, there was a broken flange of metal protruding from the top edge of the coin from where the metal had been poured into the mold.

At least, this is what my eyes told me. (For anyone reading this who doesn’t know, all those hints of the coin being cast in a mold are important because legit coins are not cast in molds.)

I took the coin back, explained to the dealer my concern, and handed it to him. He looked at it with his loupe and mentioned something about the quality of the coins at that time varying considerably, and then he gave me my money back. So I have no problem with this dealer, except that I think it was a seriously problematic coin that he himself should have caught. There were a few other world coins I bought from him that I’m satisfied with.

The best deal of the day: In found a 1960 Franklin half in nice shape marked with a price tag for $10.00, and a 1971 Eisenhower dollar that was sort of worn, marked at $2.00. However, both of these were in a bin marked “half off,” making the Franklin half = $5.00 and the Ike dollar = $1.00. I thought, “A dollar for a dollar? I’ll bite.” I took both of them over to the dealer, and he said, “I’ll just take five for both.” So, essentially I got the Franklin for $4.00, which is significantly below today’s bullion value for the silver in the coin.