Over the past few days we’ve been, once again, wrestling with a pond situation, namely how to fashion a workable stand pipe to keep the level of our pond steady and not have it overflow its side and constantly over soak the soil in a grove of titanic pines as well as surrounding ash, birch, and maple. Our pond is about an acre. It’s beautiful, we love to look at it every morning. It’s home to many creatures during the span of the year, right now, as you’ve probably read, a pair of Canada geese and their soon-to-be-hatched goslings are the main inhabitants. Throughout the year herons, cormorants, owls, as well as beavers, weasels, mink, and moose pay frequent visits. The area used to be swampland until Royce’s dad dug the pond over 40 years ago. It’s 12’ at its deepest and there are 2 drain pipes that were put in at its inception. One of them is at the bottom of the deepest part of the pond, made of an odd compound, half rubber, half hardened tar paper. The pipe elbows up from the bottom, its location marked with a stick, and Royce himself had covered it with a board and a rock before the pond was first filled. The second pipe, closer to the surface, is an 8” culvert pipe that diagonals from a patch of cattails at one edge down through the dam to a site at its base. This had been designed as a run-off pipe, but its exact location had been lost for years and it too had been plugged, but with muck and gunk.
3 years ago our pond started draining. “What’s going on?” “Is there a drought?” The weather had been pretty dry, but “it couldn’t affect the pond like that, could it?” After fretting for about a week at the slowly sinking surface, Royce loped over one day to say “I wondered when that board was going to rot through.” All attempts to find his pipe before the pond drained ended turned futile - Richard was not at all happy about this - and I suggested we view the “draining” as an opportunity to clean the pond and deal with the pipe situation ourselves, up close and personal. First we plugged it, cinching some new pvc pipe onto the old, weird compound pipe. Then we tried 2 different stand pipe attachments. Neither worked, leading to one more draining of the pond. Richard = not too happy again. Finally, last autumn, we really thought we had it licked, a stand pipe in place, very proud of our ingenuity and stick-to-it-iveness, but when the pond was almost completely refilled, something dislodged below and the top of the pipe listed up crazily breaking the surface. I kept waiting for the pond to drain a third time. That, amazingly, didn’t happen, but the listing pipe was frozen in place this past winter amid a crunch of ice, the sight of which drove Richard to distraction. I had no idea how bothered he was by that. Richard can keep things to himself. Even now, still waters run very deep. But I didn’t realize the dramatic depth of his detestation of the sight of said stand pipe until a few days ago when Richard let rip a monologue of his great pain on the shore of our pond which would have put King Lear to shame. Amazing. What really threw me about his “crack winds and blow” oration was that it had been triggered by a solution to the entire imbroglio, namely we had just discovered, uncovered, and unplugged Royce’s hidden surface pipe! Not only did it offer a more convenient and hidden among the bullrushes option for a stand pipe BUT its outflow would form a beautiful stream bed at its outlet near the base of the dam.
Well, some deep inner aquifer of my soul must have been moved by Richard’s outburst, because the next day I donned a neoprene top, bike pants, and flippers and waded out into the frigid drink to take care of the pipe ugliness once and for all. May I just say that the water temperature in a spring fed pond in Vermont in April IS COOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLDDDDDDDD!!!!!!!
AM I CRAZY?!! YES!!
I took my time, pausing every few steps to acclimate myself to the temperature. Luckily Richard sat on shore shouting out supportive things like “Just go for it! Come on! Hop to Hopsing, daylight’s burning!” He’s a prince, and a prince should be king. I finaIly took the “plunge” and quickly assessed the job that lay ahead. My main concern was that last autumn we had put a series of ropes tied to stakes around the bottom of the pipe when we were trying to fix it in place and there was always the possibility of getting tangled up in them. One dive to the bottom, though, alleviated that concern. The ropes had been pulled out and were lying out of harm’s way in the silt. I unhooked the standpipe and it sunk to the bottom, out of sight, out of mind. Of course, now pur pond’s water was coursing out of the pipe. I surfaced and shouted for Richard to toss me a slghtly deflated blue ball we’d gotten to plug it up. It was a little tricky bringing it to the bottom and then, it didn’t hold. Next solution? An old board I found at the bottom. It sort of work, bu still, not a perfect fit. I surfaced once more and yelled for Richard to fashion a plug much like Royce had made for the original pipe - a 4” by 4” board, one side staple gunned with intertubing to cinch it close, with a 2” by 2” by 3” board nailed perpendicular to the tubing side of the board that would fit down the pipe. He raced to the house to cobble it together while I bobbed on the surface, teeth chattering, giving one of the best Leonardo DiCaprio imitations from “Titanic” you’ll ever see. I swear I was beginning to hear Celine Dion singing by the time Richard returned and tossed me the plug. I swam down, plugged the hole, and when I stepped to shore, Richard was singing and dancing “Ding, dong the witch is dead” up and down the shores of the pond in celebration, mind you, with the original “little person” choreography (it’s not too difficult, but very entertaining). We were feeling very victorious. Hoorah and halleluja! It took about 20 minutes for my teeth to stop their clattering.
Today I’d like to say that the pond situation is finito, a thing of the past BUT it’s a work in progress. We thought we had it. We’re very, very close, just a few more kinks to work out. Emotions have run high. It’s been very Captains Courageous on the high seas at times, but with all the unsolvable things swirling around these days, it’s good to deal with something that has a definite beginning, middle, end. Sort of. Back to the drawing board and welcome to a new streambed. I’m out to yank a few more cattails and willows.
Monday, April 23, 2012
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
The Septic Man Cometh
No Art Carney he. No loquacious talk meister. No, Bob was a soft-spoken fellow. I had to lean in to hear him when I was right next to him. His hand barely made an impression on mine when I shook it, and it was soft and cushy, not callused. But of course, as I soon learned, most of his work is done wearing gloves, rubber made. I think he was a little afraid of me. As my husband Richard loves to remind me in acted out stories, I can be a little much in the full blossum of my effusiveness. Stronger men than Bob have been sent into a balk or a slight shielding themselves, maybe even thinking of going for a weapon when I’ve charged up to them to ask directions or wish them a good morning. And morning is my electric time. Bob didn’t know what to make of me. He froze upon my enthusiastic approach, stock still like a rabbit. Bob doesn’t seem like a people person. First impression. And let’s face it, his line of work doesn’t lend itself to conversation, to a give and take, to people coming out wanting to stand beside you and gab, as you uncap the cement block of a receptacle of mostly human waste from the past 3 to 5 years. Not really the kind of thing that conjures up a nostalgic look back. “Oh, look, that must have been when ...” No, septic tank cleaning doesn’t really do that. It’s a solitary undertaking. And Bob went to the beat of a different drummer. A drum with a very muffled beat. But I was garrulous. I wanted to keep him company. And I was curious. I wanted to ask him some tricks of the trade. Incisive journalistic questions like:
‘About how many tanks do you drain a day?’
(Slight pause)
“5.”
(Every answer was given staring straight at me, still, expressionless.)
‘And do you have to drain your truck’s tank after each one?’
“Yes.”
(Pause. Slurping sounds. Bob puts a shovel with an extra-long handle to work.)
‘How big are these tanks?’
“4 feet.”
(Another pause. Lots of looking down. Then he asked me a question, I was overjoyed.)
“You’re talking about how deep?”
‘Yes.’
“4 feet.”
And so it went. And Bob had a job to do. He had places to go, people to meet. Well, tanks to empty.
He was about 60 years old, a worn cap from some country club, thick white sideburns curling around the sides of his face, glasses. A kind-of-smile on his face. Somewhere in between a smile and straight flat line of an expression.
His job finished, he methodically wound the hose, packed up his tools, and then sat in his truck cab with the door open and wrote up the bill. I replaced the dirt and sod back around the green plastic raised cover to the tank. He walked over to me with his clipboard.
“You want to mail this in or ... ?”
(I had to lean in to hear what he was saying and that may have been why he trailed off instead of finishing his sentence, but it seemed as if he stopped speaking because he was too shy to ask for outright payment, as if that would have been an affront.)
‘No thanks, I’ll mail it in later. ’
He slowly fingered through the receipt and ripped it from beneath a carbon. When was the last time I’d seen carbon paper. He handed me my receipt and a card saying the day’s date of cleaning, almost 4 years from the last time.
‘Well, thanks Bob, good job.’
(I shook his hand. He had a faint, faint smile on his face.)
‘Have a good day.’
“Thank you. You too.”
Some people gotta do the dirty work. And Bob walked over to his truck without looking back, got in, started his motor, and drove right out of my life.
‘About how many tanks do you drain a day?’
(Slight pause)
“5.”
(Every answer was given staring straight at me, still, expressionless.)
‘And do you have to drain your truck’s tank after each one?’
“Yes.”
(Pause. Slurping sounds. Bob puts a shovel with an extra-long handle to work.)
‘How big are these tanks?’
“4 feet.”
(Another pause. Lots of looking down. Then he asked me a question, I was overjoyed.)
“You’re talking about how deep?”
‘Yes.’
“4 feet.”
And so it went. And Bob had a job to do. He had places to go, people to meet. Well, tanks to empty.
He was about 60 years old, a worn cap from some country club, thick white sideburns curling around the sides of his face, glasses. A kind-of-smile on his face. Somewhere in between a smile and straight flat line of an expression.
His job finished, he methodically wound the hose, packed up his tools, and then sat in his truck cab with the door open and wrote up the bill. I replaced the dirt and sod back around the green plastic raised cover to the tank. He walked over to me with his clipboard.
“You want to mail this in or ... ?”
(I had to lean in to hear what he was saying and that may have been why he trailed off instead of finishing his sentence, but it seemed as if he stopped speaking because he was too shy to ask for outright payment, as if that would have been an affront.)
‘No thanks, I’ll mail it in later. ’
He slowly fingered through the receipt and ripped it from beneath a carbon. When was the last time I’d seen carbon paper. He handed me my receipt and a card saying the day’s date of cleaning, almost 4 years from the last time.
‘Well, thanks Bob, good job.’
(I shook his hand. He had a faint, faint smile on his face.)
‘Have a good day.’
“Thank you. You too.”
Some people gotta do the dirty work. And Bob walked over to his truck without looking back, got in, started his motor, and drove right out of my life.
Greening and s%#*
APRIL 18TH
We dipped down to 30 last night, a nice nip in the air to keep us honest. Heartened by the sun and the mid-60 degree weather, I planted sweet peas yesterday along with a little lettuce, spinach, and potatoes. I was jumping the gun a bit for Vermont, but the vegetables were all labeled “hardy” on the back of the High Mowing Seeds packets, “can withstand frost” “begin planting in early spring” so I felt protected, justified.. However, I did feel a bit sheepish later when I overheard a very emphatic Vermonter gardener up by the checkout counter with his wife in J & M’s landscaping yesterday.
“They just never learn. All these people who went and planted their gardens when we had that 80 degree weather in March.”
“mmm” (This was either the checkout counter person or his wife)
“You have to be patient, you have to wait.”
“That’s right.” (This was definitely his wife, very agreeable.)
“You have to wait until after Memorial Day if you really want to be safe. There’ve been times we’ve waited until the second week of June.”
“You just have to wait.”
“They’ll never learn.”
“Have a good day then.” (This the counter person to whom I confessed my planting craze earlier that day. She shrugged “it doesn’t matter.”)
A general sprucing up yesterday while planting: weeding the witchgrass out before laying a new layer of newspaper and straw down on the walkways between the raised beds. I may “chance it” and lay in some kale and beets today too. I love this rush of enthusiasm after a bout of spring fever reluctance. A reluctance to do anything having to do with growing things, feeling I’d be fooled by nature. But caution be damned. I can’t wait any longer, I won’t wait. I cracked open the Vermont Gardener’s bible in whose pages resided my sketchy plans for this year’s garden, taking into consideration rotations and what goes best with what, what matchings should be avoided, etcetera. Now to give me my due, I do have some transplants going inside so I haven’t been completely inactive. I think I drenched out one container, but they’re coming through despite my deluge, twiggy serpentines of broccoli and brussel sprouts, sprouty stretches of pumpkins and other winter squashes, apologetic delicate tomatoes. I can’t get over the miraculousness of seeds. Every year I feel a bit like a 4th grader planting my first seed in some school experiment and marveling how from this tiny nothing springs a huge, prolific plant. That renews faith in me. Faith in resilence and renewal, in nature, in life. It’s its own resurrection.
And man oh man, all the daffodils I planted last fall are blossoming, this incredible blast of yellow trumpets all over the place, along the bank in front of our stone wall, a little patch by the pond’s edge, as well as wherever I took a fancy to plant some more, in front of the house by the kitchen, dotted around our spruce. And this added to the slew of bulbs we planted the autumn before with our visiting friend Jean all along our side of the stone wall so we can admire them first thing in the morning from the kitchen. And this added still to the daffodils Royce’s mother planted ages ago in the far field by our birch and firs, their coming heralded by scores of multi-colored croci. Daffodils make me smile. They’re like hearing a chickadee song, this little chest of joy opens up inside me. I love it.
Green is coming through on everything. All the trees have tender little buds and the grass transforms incrementally everyday. It’s like a slow motion magic trick. The entire orchard carpet has changed. Not anywhere close to the show off green it’ll get soon, more a timid, stretching, waking up. The flute music I’m listening to right now on VPR is a perfect accompaniment. Inside we have blossoming buds on apple branches we brought in last week for our Easter feast. Oh, that’s 2 weeks already. Hmmm. And speaking of death and resurrection, I see outside that a goodly sized maple on our pond’s side has uprooted itself and toppled over, a bit of its top branches reaching out into the water, as if it were a dehydrated prospector reaching out its last gasp for a drink of pond water. Once we get our chain saw working again, that’ll cut up into some good firewood.
The pond is completely under the domain of our visiting Canada Goose “soon-to-be” family. And they are already impressive parents. The father is on constant pond watch, a decisive V trailing behind his patrols through the waters. The mother is on almost constant maternity duty, scrunched down over her nest so as not to be seen, blending in to the bare cover she has on “goose island.” Our geese, as expected, have been banned from the pond, so we’ve brought out their blue plastic kiddie pool and filled it for them out back and they are like little children, splashing around in it, flapping their wings, ducking under, shaking themselves silly, and using it as a general sprucing up about once an hour. I find myself frozen still watching them, marveling, again with a big goofey smile on my face, another chest of joy opened.
Goslings are due on Saturday so think of your shower gifts. Richard has 3 eggs in prime health, you can hear one of them cheaping from within their shell. He or she sounds very healthy. It’s broken into its little air sac at the end of the inner egg and sounds as if it’s more than ready to pip through soon. Also getting ready for birth are 6 duck eggs and 5 chicks. It’s a lively household.
That’s about it for today. Our septic tank guy should be by any moment to give our tank a once every 3 years or so drain. I’ll saunter on out and look “in charge” and see if it gets a laugh from any of our poultry. The septic tank guy is kin to what my dad used to call “honey dippers” when he was growing. They were the fellows who would come through the country and empty out the outhouses. Thus his expression of frustration “Well, I’ll be dipped!” when I was growing up. And speaking of septic and to end with a little Vermont lore (pardon me if I’m repeating myself), about 3 years back we had a “septic” problem which entailed digging up a long trough and then hole in our front yard. But we couldn’t really determine whether it was a “septic” problem or just a water leak. Well, Royce, our neighbor who grew up in our house, sauntered over one afternoon in the midst of this unearthing and overheard a discussion of our dilemma as I stood down in the trough digging, and he blithely bent over, dipped his finger into the moist dirt piled along the trough, then stood back up, touched it to his tongue, tasting it, and announced “It’s septic.”
Speak of the devil, the septic tank truck just rumbled up.
Bye.
We dipped down to 30 last night, a nice nip in the air to keep us honest. Heartened by the sun and the mid-60 degree weather, I planted sweet peas yesterday along with a little lettuce, spinach, and potatoes. I was jumping the gun a bit for Vermont, but the vegetables were all labeled “hardy” on the back of the High Mowing Seeds packets, “can withstand frost” “begin planting in early spring” so I felt protected, justified.. However, I did feel a bit sheepish later when I overheard a very emphatic Vermonter gardener up by the checkout counter with his wife in J & M’s landscaping yesterday.
“They just never learn. All these people who went and planted their gardens when we had that 80 degree weather in March.”
“mmm” (This was either the checkout counter person or his wife)
“You have to be patient, you have to wait.”
“That’s right.” (This was definitely his wife, very agreeable.)
“You have to wait until after Memorial Day if you really want to be safe. There’ve been times we’ve waited until the second week of June.”
“You just have to wait.”
“They’ll never learn.”
“Have a good day then.” (This the counter person to whom I confessed my planting craze earlier that day. She shrugged “it doesn’t matter.”)
A general sprucing up yesterday while planting: weeding the witchgrass out before laying a new layer of newspaper and straw down on the walkways between the raised beds. I may “chance it” and lay in some kale and beets today too. I love this rush of enthusiasm after a bout of spring fever reluctance. A reluctance to do anything having to do with growing things, feeling I’d be fooled by nature. But caution be damned. I can’t wait any longer, I won’t wait. I cracked open the Vermont Gardener’s bible in whose pages resided my sketchy plans for this year’s garden, taking into consideration rotations and what goes best with what, what matchings should be avoided, etcetera. Now to give me my due, I do have some transplants going inside so I haven’t been completely inactive. I think I drenched out one container, but they’re coming through despite my deluge, twiggy serpentines of broccoli and brussel sprouts, sprouty stretches of pumpkins and other winter squashes, apologetic delicate tomatoes. I can’t get over the miraculousness of seeds. Every year I feel a bit like a 4th grader planting my first seed in some school experiment and marveling how from this tiny nothing springs a huge, prolific plant. That renews faith in me. Faith in resilence and renewal, in nature, in life. It’s its own resurrection.
And man oh man, all the daffodils I planted last fall are blossoming, this incredible blast of yellow trumpets all over the place, along the bank in front of our stone wall, a little patch by the pond’s edge, as well as wherever I took a fancy to plant some more, in front of the house by the kitchen, dotted around our spruce. And this added to the slew of bulbs we planted the autumn before with our visiting friend Jean all along our side of the stone wall so we can admire them first thing in the morning from the kitchen. And this added still to the daffodils Royce’s mother planted ages ago in the far field by our birch and firs, their coming heralded by scores of multi-colored croci. Daffodils make me smile. They’re like hearing a chickadee song, this little chest of joy opens up inside me. I love it.
Green is coming through on everything. All the trees have tender little buds and the grass transforms incrementally everyday. It’s like a slow motion magic trick. The entire orchard carpet has changed. Not anywhere close to the show off green it’ll get soon, more a timid, stretching, waking up. The flute music I’m listening to right now on VPR is a perfect accompaniment. Inside we have blossoming buds on apple branches we brought in last week for our Easter feast. Oh, that’s 2 weeks already. Hmmm. And speaking of death and resurrection, I see outside that a goodly sized maple on our pond’s side has uprooted itself and toppled over, a bit of its top branches reaching out into the water, as if it were a dehydrated prospector reaching out its last gasp for a drink of pond water. Once we get our chain saw working again, that’ll cut up into some good firewood.
The pond is completely under the domain of our visiting Canada Goose “soon-to-be” family. And they are already impressive parents. The father is on constant pond watch, a decisive V trailing behind his patrols through the waters. The mother is on almost constant maternity duty, scrunched down over her nest so as not to be seen, blending in to the bare cover she has on “goose island.” Our geese, as expected, have been banned from the pond, so we’ve brought out their blue plastic kiddie pool and filled it for them out back and they are like little children, splashing around in it, flapping their wings, ducking under, shaking themselves silly, and using it as a general sprucing up about once an hour. I find myself frozen still watching them, marveling, again with a big goofey smile on my face, another chest of joy opened.
Goslings are due on Saturday so think of your shower gifts. Richard has 3 eggs in prime health, you can hear one of them cheaping from within their shell. He or she sounds very healthy. It’s broken into its little air sac at the end of the inner egg and sounds as if it’s more than ready to pip through soon. Also getting ready for birth are 6 duck eggs and 5 chicks. It’s a lively household.
That’s about it for today. Our septic tank guy should be by any moment to give our tank a once every 3 years or so drain. I’ll saunter on out and look “in charge” and see if it gets a laugh from any of our poultry. The septic tank guy is kin to what my dad used to call “honey dippers” when he was growing. They were the fellows who would come through the country and empty out the outhouses. Thus his expression of frustration “Well, I’ll be dipped!” when I was growing up. And speaking of septic and to end with a little Vermont lore (pardon me if I’m repeating myself), about 3 years back we had a “septic” problem which entailed digging up a long trough and then hole in our front yard. But we couldn’t really determine whether it was a “septic” problem or just a water leak. Well, Royce, our neighbor who grew up in our house, sauntered over one afternoon in the midst of this unearthing and overheard a discussion of our dilemma as I stood down in the trough digging, and he blithely bent over, dipped his finger into the moist dirt piled along the trough, then stood back up, touched it to his tongue, tasting it, and announced “It’s septic.”
Speak of the devil, the septic tank truck just rumbled up.
Bye.
Saturday, April 14, 2012
April 14th - 100 Years Later
100 years later.
I still have my yellowed copy of the paperback of Walter Lord’s “A Night to Remember.” It has traveled with me more miles than the ship sailed, from Indiana to California, than to Rhode Island, New York, California again, and now it resides on an upstairs bookshelf in Vermont. Along the way it has picked up traveling companions, namely James Agee’s “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men” (which I never really read all the way through, though I made many attempts. Love the beginning, oh that beginning) and Gabriel Marquez’s “A Hundred Years of Solitude.” There have been other books that have traveled with me over the years, many, but these 3 are the Holy Trinity, the 3 Musketeers, and “A Night to Remember” outlasts them all . It has staying power. And since tonight is the 100th anniversary of Titanic’s brush with the iceberg, I thought it fitting to herald the book's unsinkable status in my life.
I’ve been a history nerd from waaaaay back. The Civil War ignited the first fires of my fantasies. Also around that time, the idea of a Time Machine, anything to do with traveling in time, captivated me. And I always wanted to go back, never forward. Back to see Lincoln and Lee (and later, much later, Walt Whitman), to be there at Gettysburg, Appomatox, Ford’s Theatre. I checked out a 20 reel version of “A Birth of a Nation” from our library and watched it over and over on our home movie screen. From there World War II and the relentless rise of the Nazis enthralled me. (Why was it wars and disasters interested me? Hmmm?)
I don’t know how the Titanic first cruised into my imagination. There are several possibilities. My grandmother was an expert storyteller, a former teacher in a one room schoolhouse, and a great lover of history. Did she first bring it up or did I ask her about it? She had been born in 1900 and was 12 when the ship sunk. She remembered the headline. And since I was an early collector of old newspapers, obtaining that particular headline whetted my appetite. (I have a Fort Wayne News Sentinel original from that date.) Another possibility would have been the 1950’s movie “Titanic” with Barbara Stanwyck and Clifton Webb which was going to be shown on Saturday Night at the Movies one Saturday in my early youth. I’d seen previews and had anticipated its coming for at least a week (it felt like weeks plural, but time stretched and seemed like an eternity back then), but on the afternoon of the fated day, I had my own brush with disaster. I rode my bike into the street without looking both ways and a car brushed the front tire. No injuries, but my mother witnessed this and as punishment forbad me from seeing the movie. I begged, pleaded, cajoled, tap danced, spun plates, sang in black face (no I didn’t), nothing worked. She was firm as a glacier. Not a crack in her resolve. I didn't see the movie until years later. But maybe the interest was already there. We did have a book about the sea and famous ships in which there was one page that had an artist’s rendition of the Titanic going down, the iceberg still in sight, lifeboats filled with powerless people aghast at the horror they were witnessing. I would stare at that picture, conjuring up my own versions of events. And there were also versions of the Titanic on the tv show “Time Tunnel” and in the movie and musical “Unsinkable Molly Brown” but these again came along after the image of the doomed ship had been firmly branded.
At some time in all this, Walter Lord’s wonderful book steamed into my hands. It’s a thin paperback, with a startling artist’s rendition of the sinking, different than the book’s I mentioned. It was sepia toned and proved an excellent page turner. I wanted, needed to get inside that book. And it held the most effective forward to any book I’ve read since. It speaks of a fictional book written by a struggling author in the 19th century in which he takes a boat dubbed unsinkable, fills it with some of the world’s richest people, and then sinks it on its maiden voyage. I forget now whether the fictional book hit an iceberg or not. The forward goes on then to briefly describe the actual White Star Line ship. Amazing similarity. And then the last line is the clincher, and I paraphrase: “The fictional ship was called the Titan, the real ship, the Titanic.”
Well, I was had.
I devoured the book. This was how history should be written. Captivating, edge of your seat, what’s going to happen next, oh if only they’d done this they could have avoided the whole thing, tales of heroism, foolishness, fate. I loved it. An expert job. Even describing it now it makes me want to open those sad, brittle pages and embark on the voyage once more. It’s as if it’s a cautionary tale against human pride with the scale of a Greek tragedy. Amazing. And there it is in my mind’s eye, the Titanic, its ghost, not at the bottom of the sea, but sailing the same route 100 years later, all the rich in their pomp, all the poor below decks, enjoying what they have no idea is the final day of this ship, of their lives perhaps. It so captivates the imagination. A great story. A great book.
So here's to Walter, to the book, to the ship itself, to all the many stories and myths and conversations its spawned, to all the people, all the people, survivors, the dead, the storytellers.
Postscript: If you’ve never seen the British film “A Night to Remember” adapted from Walter Lord’s book, watch it. Excellent. Far superior to James Cameron’s “Titanic” in my estimation. If they could’ve melded the story and script of the British film with the effects of the most recent version, it would’ve been perfect. But that’s the old history nerd speaking.
I still have my yellowed copy of the paperback of Walter Lord’s “A Night to Remember.” It has traveled with me more miles than the ship sailed, from Indiana to California, than to Rhode Island, New York, California again, and now it resides on an upstairs bookshelf in Vermont. Along the way it has picked up traveling companions, namely James Agee’s “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men” (which I never really read all the way through, though I made many attempts. Love the beginning, oh that beginning) and Gabriel Marquez’s “A Hundred Years of Solitude.” There have been other books that have traveled with me over the years, many, but these 3 are the Holy Trinity, the 3 Musketeers, and “A Night to Remember” outlasts them all . It has staying power. And since tonight is the 100th anniversary of Titanic’s brush with the iceberg, I thought it fitting to herald the book's unsinkable status in my life.
I’ve been a history nerd from waaaaay back. The Civil War ignited the first fires of my fantasies. Also around that time, the idea of a Time Machine, anything to do with traveling in time, captivated me. And I always wanted to go back, never forward. Back to see Lincoln and Lee (and later, much later, Walt Whitman), to be there at Gettysburg, Appomatox, Ford’s Theatre. I checked out a 20 reel version of “A Birth of a Nation” from our library and watched it over and over on our home movie screen. From there World War II and the relentless rise of the Nazis enthralled me. (Why was it wars and disasters interested me? Hmmm?)
I don’t know how the Titanic first cruised into my imagination. There are several possibilities. My grandmother was an expert storyteller, a former teacher in a one room schoolhouse, and a great lover of history. Did she first bring it up or did I ask her about it? She had been born in 1900 and was 12 when the ship sunk. She remembered the headline. And since I was an early collector of old newspapers, obtaining that particular headline whetted my appetite. (I have a Fort Wayne News Sentinel original from that date.) Another possibility would have been the 1950’s movie “Titanic” with Barbara Stanwyck and Clifton Webb which was going to be shown on Saturday Night at the Movies one Saturday in my early youth. I’d seen previews and had anticipated its coming for at least a week (it felt like weeks plural, but time stretched and seemed like an eternity back then), but on the afternoon of the fated day, I had my own brush with disaster. I rode my bike into the street without looking both ways and a car brushed the front tire. No injuries, but my mother witnessed this and as punishment forbad me from seeing the movie. I begged, pleaded, cajoled, tap danced, spun plates, sang in black face (no I didn’t), nothing worked. She was firm as a glacier. Not a crack in her resolve. I didn't see the movie until years later. But maybe the interest was already there. We did have a book about the sea and famous ships in which there was one page that had an artist’s rendition of the Titanic going down, the iceberg still in sight, lifeboats filled with powerless people aghast at the horror they were witnessing. I would stare at that picture, conjuring up my own versions of events. And there were also versions of the Titanic on the tv show “Time Tunnel” and in the movie and musical “Unsinkable Molly Brown” but these again came along after the image of the doomed ship had been firmly branded.
At some time in all this, Walter Lord’s wonderful book steamed into my hands. It’s a thin paperback, with a startling artist’s rendition of the sinking, different than the book’s I mentioned. It was sepia toned and proved an excellent page turner. I wanted, needed to get inside that book. And it held the most effective forward to any book I’ve read since. It speaks of a fictional book written by a struggling author in the 19th century in which he takes a boat dubbed unsinkable, fills it with some of the world’s richest people, and then sinks it on its maiden voyage. I forget now whether the fictional book hit an iceberg or not. The forward goes on then to briefly describe the actual White Star Line ship. Amazing similarity. And then the last line is the clincher, and I paraphrase: “The fictional ship was called the Titan, the real ship, the Titanic.”
Well, I was had.
I devoured the book. This was how history should be written. Captivating, edge of your seat, what’s going to happen next, oh if only they’d done this they could have avoided the whole thing, tales of heroism, foolishness, fate. I loved it. An expert job. Even describing it now it makes me want to open those sad, brittle pages and embark on the voyage once more. It’s as if it’s a cautionary tale against human pride with the scale of a Greek tragedy. Amazing. And there it is in my mind’s eye, the Titanic, its ghost, not at the bottom of the sea, but sailing the same route 100 years later, all the rich in their pomp, all the poor below decks, enjoying what they have no idea is the final day of this ship, of their lives perhaps. It so captivates the imagination. A great story. A great book.
So here's to Walter, to the book, to the ship itself, to all the many stories and myths and conversations its spawned, to all the people, all the people, survivors, the dead, the storytellers.
Postscript: If you’ve never seen the British film “A Night to Remember” adapted from Walter Lord’s book, watch it. Excellent. Far superior to James Cameron’s “Titanic” in my estimation. If they could’ve melded the story and script of the British film with the effects of the most recent version, it would’ve been perfect. But that’s the old history nerd speaking.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Testimoney
I continue to sit in on Senate Finance Committee meeting hearings where testimony has been going on. Yesterday, we heard from quite a slew of insurance brokers and though they seemed like likeable individuals and they each had a slightly different story, the subtext seemed to roar - "I'm afraid! There's a lot of really scared people out there. Fear is just going to increase. Panic, fear, upheaval! Locusts, earthquakes, disaster!! Could we just slow down. CHANGE IS NOT A GOOD THING! It scares me. I'm smiling in front of you now, but I could easily shit my pants. We're going to lose out here and we're scared, so you should be scared too. FEAR, FEAR, FEAR. MORE FEAR FEAR FEAR. Things are changing. Do you realize you're making us feel like dinosaurs. We provide an invaluable service. People need handholding through all the morass of the ever changing premiums and costs and hidden hoo-hahs. There does need to be reform, we're part of the solution, we like most of what you're saying, but don't change us, don't change anything about us, change other people, but not us because this is the way it's been done for years and that's what we know, and did I mention that I'm scared, fearful, in panic, and just trying to hold on to what's mine?! Could we just slow down?!!"
It is refreshing when someone comes into the room and parries through the hype and simply speaks facts. It dispels fatigue. You sit up. There is a ring of authenticity and clarity. There is a gratitude. And my hat goes off to the senators on the committee. They treat everyone with great respect, ask cogent questions, and are dedicated to their offices.
This afternoon I'm to sit in on a full Senate debate. Someone has tacked on a Death with Dignity amendment to a Tanning Salon bill. Hmmm? The move was done in "revenge" for someone else's underhanded move to vote an add on to a bill while someone clearly opposed to it was momentarily out of the room. Testimony and debate on this should be interesting. They're dubbing it Tanning with Dignity. I'm imagining tanning salons set up in hospice care facilities. Let them look good as they're on their way out.
Health Care tidbits.
Back to testimonies. I listen to these personal stories and it seems as if the recurring theme is "burying the lead" unconsciously or consciously. What's not being said? Or what's being passed over that's really where the emphasis should be. For instance above when I mentioned the broker's saying they are really needed to help client's machete their way through the kudzu vine of new premiums, new hidden costs, etcetera. To me, more than proving their indispensability, it screams that if we had Single Pay, save for the transition over, everything would be simplified and clear and under one umbrella. Everyone could be their own best expert. In another testimony, a woman who works for the insurance industry was citing an example from her own life where her 2 chronically ill children with $10,000 deductibles each were prescribed an prohibitively expensive drug by a doctor who thought it was covered by her insurance. She was attempting to blame the medical profession or that doctor specifically, but what screamed to me was "$10, 000 deductibles each?!! That's criminal!! And drugs weren't covered? And you work for the insurance company? You don't question greed in this? Doesn't something sound wrong about this set-up?!" Excuse my passion, but sometimes it seems so obvious. Yet another testimony by a nervous, sweaty representative for small businesses spoke of a 20 question questionaire he passed out to a goodly chunk of small business owners. He kept saying that it was "totally unbiased, completely unbiased" and then proceeded to list these findings - 95% didn't know this was going to go into effect in 2014; 12% would keep their insurance, the rest get rid of it. Now what was screaming to me, and one of the senators inquired about this in an indirect way, "Where's the questionaire? What were these questions? How were they worded? Was there an option that this change would be a good thing or was it all fear, horrible, panic, don't change, horror, hell, end of the world?!"
Fascinating process.
It is refreshing when someone comes into the room and parries through the hype and simply speaks facts. It dispels fatigue. You sit up. There is a ring of authenticity and clarity. There is a gratitude. And my hat goes off to the senators on the committee. They treat everyone with great respect, ask cogent questions, and are dedicated to their offices.
This afternoon I'm to sit in on a full Senate debate. Someone has tacked on a Death with Dignity amendment to a Tanning Salon bill. Hmmm? The move was done in "revenge" for someone else's underhanded move to vote an add on to a bill while someone clearly opposed to it was momentarily out of the room. Testimony and debate on this should be interesting. They're dubbing it Tanning with Dignity. I'm imagining tanning salons set up in hospice care facilities. Let them look good as they're on their way out.
Health Care tidbits.
Back to testimonies. I listen to these personal stories and it seems as if the recurring theme is "burying the lead" unconsciously or consciously. What's not being said? Or what's being passed over that's really where the emphasis should be. For instance above when I mentioned the broker's saying they are really needed to help client's machete their way through the kudzu vine of new premiums, new hidden costs, etcetera. To me, more than proving their indispensability, it screams that if we had Single Pay, save for the transition over, everything would be simplified and clear and under one umbrella. Everyone could be their own best expert. In another testimony, a woman who works for the insurance industry was citing an example from her own life where her 2 chronically ill children with $10,000 deductibles each were prescribed an prohibitively expensive drug by a doctor who thought it was covered by her insurance. She was attempting to blame the medical profession or that doctor specifically, but what screamed to me was "$10, 000 deductibles each?!! That's criminal!! And drugs weren't covered? And you work for the insurance company? You don't question greed in this? Doesn't something sound wrong about this set-up?!" Excuse my passion, but sometimes it seems so obvious. Yet another testimony by a nervous, sweaty representative for small businesses spoke of a 20 question questionaire he passed out to a goodly chunk of small business owners. He kept saying that it was "totally unbiased, completely unbiased" and then proceeded to list these findings - 95% didn't know this was going to go into effect in 2014; 12% would keep their insurance, the rest get rid of it. Now what was screaming to me, and one of the senators inquired about this in an indirect way, "Where's the questionaire? What were these questions? How were they worded? Was there an option that this change would be a good thing or was it all fear, horrible, panic, don't change, horror, hell, end of the world?!"
Fascinating process.
Monday, April 2, 2012
This morning, this evening
This morning ...
Flocked trees, morning sun spotlighting the top of the hill, glistening a rich vanilla. The pond is still frozen, but the surface is wet through. Our pair of Canada geese are sitting on top of the ice, resting, laying claim to it like explorers of old. They're itching to nest and on the squawky lookout for hovering ravens, weasels and minks, and other Canadians.
We had a slight fire in our stove pipe yesterday, comes from not having been very diligent about cleaning it and the flue out this winter, every month had been suggested. We shut off the oxygen to the fire and, after the pipes cooled, we disconnected them and discovered that the fire had sizzled off most of the offending creosote, turned it to gray flakey ash. Lucky. The stove's all spic and span and safe now, and a fine warm flame from within has the kitchen in its embrace.
This evening ...
A big smile of clear water scimitars from the still frozen part of the pond. The Canadian geese have just settled down after staging their version of an Alfred Hitchcock attack on Richard. Of course, he was in a big orange kayak attempting to crack up more of the ice around the pond and was closing in on their nesting area. He knew the chance he was taking and laughed in the face of danger as the male, quite courageously, went after him. Richard's gone now, in the house getting ready to drive across the state for a 6:30 meeting, and I'm about to go on a 4 mile hike. The wind has picked up the geese's earlier fuss and is swaying the big pines into a hypnotized hula and sending gusts of grounded brown leaves skyward in a scatter of false life, back from the dead, one more flight through the air before compost.
Such a blue, blue sky, so pure, innocent, clear. Almost every trace of the morning snow is gone. But it'll be cold tonight. Into the 20's. Maybe that's what the wind's Paul Revere-ing about. Unseasonably warm to unseasonably cold. Unseasonable.
Flocked trees, morning sun spotlighting the top of the hill, glistening a rich vanilla. The pond is still frozen, but the surface is wet through. Our pair of Canada geese are sitting on top of the ice, resting, laying claim to it like explorers of old. They're itching to nest and on the squawky lookout for hovering ravens, weasels and minks, and other Canadians.
We had a slight fire in our stove pipe yesterday, comes from not having been very diligent about cleaning it and the flue out this winter, every month had been suggested. We shut off the oxygen to the fire and, after the pipes cooled, we disconnected them and discovered that the fire had sizzled off most of the offending creosote, turned it to gray flakey ash. Lucky. The stove's all spic and span and safe now, and a fine warm flame from within has the kitchen in its embrace.
This evening ...
A big smile of clear water scimitars from the still frozen part of the pond. The Canadian geese have just settled down after staging their version of an Alfred Hitchcock attack on Richard. Of course, he was in a big orange kayak attempting to crack up more of the ice around the pond and was closing in on their nesting area. He knew the chance he was taking and laughed in the face of danger as the male, quite courageously, went after him. Richard's gone now, in the house getting ready to drive across the state for a 6:30 meeting, and I'm about to go on a 4 mile hike. The wind has picked up the geese's earlier fuss and is swaying the big pines into a hypnotized hula and sending gusts of grounded brown leaves skyward in a scatter of false life, back from the dead, one more flight through the air before compost.
Such a blue, blue sky, so pure, innocent, clear. Almost every trace of the morning snow is gone. But it'll be cold tonight. Into the 20's. Maybe that's what the wind's Paul Revere-ing about. Unseasonably warm to unseasonably cold. Unseasonable.
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