Joy, from a small fragment of wood...

My new treasure: a beat up fragment of a 80 year old green wooden shingle… To each our own… One of my hobbies is studying old house and railroad paint… I collect 19th century paint sample cards and books. I collect painter’s guide books. I collect books (most reprints) on style and decoration as practiced by Victorians…

And I collect fragments of painted wood and plaster… Not just any piece of painted wood… fragments with a known history… I have over 25 samples of “box car red” each cataloged with information about the car it was found on… I have samples of wood removed from a number of railroad depots… Last Sunday I found the very thing I was looking for, a Southern Pacific green wood shingle… I have tried before, but have been turned away by hazardous waste contractors concerned about any fragment that MIGHT contain a contaminant leaving… This is really a treasure. A small treasure, but a treasure.

I also think big… I am also trying to collect the entire building… It’s a tiny tool shed, maybe 102 years old. It was once at the north end of the Bay Shore yard serving San Francisco… Somewhere along the line this building along with 3 others ended up in the parking lot of a now closed factory… and as a result escaped being bulldozed by the railroad in the 1960’s with most of its brethren. Now, the factory site is being redeveloped, and the buildings are again threatened… but this time the owners seem to be interested in seeing them saved, hence the opportunity… (of course they may be motivated by San Francisco preservation law) Now I have to work out logistics, agreement and such to pick up and move a 10’ x 18’ building (or two… ). I have accomplices… Cris, a friend with whom I have sent a couple of British railroad cars back home, (Cris has his one project, a steam engine, with its own web site) Randy (a different Randy) an architect and preservationist… an inspired good thinker. This project is likely to succeed. We may speak of this again….

On to other things… Brian and I got the garden project completed today… Like many bigger projects this could be divided into smaller discreet parts… removing the rest of the roots, cutting up the trunk of the tree, digging out the existing plants, repairing the picket fence rail we had to cut away to drop the tree, building the new planter box, digging holes for the new trees (and a trip to the nursery to pick up the flowering cherry) planting the trees, planting the daffodils, cutting new fence picket and installing them, and cleaning up… each part was simple, small and definable… but collectively it was an all day sucker… By about 3:00 it was done… It’s beautiful, we took showers, cleaned up, and Brian left for his New Year’s Eve party…

As I write this it is nearing 10:30 pm on the last, the final day of the year. The fireworks have started… (in our neighborhood its not gun fire it’s fireworks, not the safe and sane of the legal fireworks stand, the big stuff, aerial mortars, M-80’s and the good stuff…) The year is ending fast. I am getting sleepy. There is a bottle of champagne in the fridge… The bottle may survive the evening…

Tomorrow I pack for the cruise…

Transitions… Off on a cruise vacation

I am off on Vacation in a couple of days… a cruise. We tend to equate travel with vacation, and travel with exploration

They are all different things…

A cruse is not really travel in the sense of exploration. It may be a vacation, an escape, but not really travel… Yes, you see a new part of the world, but a cruse is safe, contained, escorted. You see the world they (corporate travel companies) want you to see, not the real world.

To get to your cruise you fly, likely on an American airline… (a form of travel, but safe, and defiantly an exploration…) to an American airport, bus (likely provided by the cruise line) to the ship, don’t explore the city, If you spend the night stay at an airport hotel, with its chain restaurants across the street from the airport hotel, the next morning take the shuttle to the ship… don’t look at the harbor area… it’s industrial, real, not a vacation destination. Not approved for us tourists. Wait in lines, on to the ship, they may hand you a glass of champagne, take your picture, and show you to your cabin… It is nice, but not real.

On to the cabin .. It has a nice bed, a private bath, a TV, much like home… a portable home. Safe, well not safe enough, there is a safe in the closet… keep your good stuff there.

After you board its upstairs to the lido for a snack (food, we must have food…) an umbrella drink and hang off the rail while listening to a steel drum band… End of rant for now…

We are taking a different road to the ship… arrive a couple days before, hotel on the beach in Ft Lauderdale, local restaurant for dinner, breakfast at a beach joint, take in the local sites, then off to the ship… there needs to be a transition… there needs to be time to adjust. We need a sense of place as we move on.

Back to THIS cruise.

This cruise is a celebration. It is my wife’s stepmother’s 70th birthday… an homage to her 50th birthday celebration… which was also her 20th wedding anniversary (to my wives father) and his 70th birthday…. That was also a cruise. They invited his 5 children, their spouses, their (10) children (his grandchildren) along with her mother, his brothers, his cousins… etc…

That was 20 years ago… Since then Holger has died… the grandchildren have had children (the great grand children), Maureen (the stepmother) has remarried, to Zabig, the polish rocket scientist (really, a Professor Emeritus at Perdue…)

To this families credit (I married in) 20 years and the death of the patriarch have not diminished the familial connections… Maureen is still mom… mom (Annette) is also still alive, and also still mom… The family is so strong that there can be two mom’s…

So, on the occasion of her 70th birthday, the step mom, and her new husband have invited her 5 step children, their spouses, their children (her grandchildren, buy now I am dropping the “step”, and by now the list includes a step, step grandchild ) and their children (the great grand children) for a Caribbean cruise… Miami to Jamaica, to the Grand Caymans, and back to Miami….

This isn’t exploration, it isn’t just travel, but it is a celebration with family, however defined… It should be good… I know I will have a good time.

It’s gardening time in the land of no winter…

Its 6 days past the winter solstice, and I have started gardening… Christmas day we had a hail storm… with 60+ mph winds… It was exciting, rather than alarming, as we were inside, with a warm fire watching the spectacle rather than dealing with it…

That afternoon, with the storm over, we discovered a tree in the front yard had been badly damaged, its main root broken by the storm, and was only standing upright because it was growing through our picket fence… It wasn’t a big tree, maybe 20’ tall, or an interesting tree… We thought about taking it out earlier, but the neighbor liked it and it did provide a visual marker… not a barrier, a marker… between our yards… The bed is maybe 20’ long, 2’ wide, white (only because the neighbor has recently repainted it…) picket fence along one side, the driveway on the other… There is another bed on the other side, maybe 4’ wide, but that is the neighbor’s problem…

I checked in with the neighbor, then started to cut the tree down… after I cut the rail on the fence the tree hung down allowing me to start by cutting the leaves and small branches… a few hours later it was reduced to a couple of 8’ tall naked trucks… They provided a lot of leverage to allow me to pull on the remaining roots while chopping away at the roots with an axe… 20 minutes later the tree was down, the roots out as well.’

I needed to clear out the planting bed before.. Now I need to pull the weeds, volunteer perennials and such as well and rebuild the planter box around the bed…

Then comes the big question, what to plant in its place… This for us in a unique question… When we purchase the house it was overgrown with trees, fruit trees, flowering trees, ugly trees, too many trees… We have spent 25 years taking trees out or at least cleaning up trees that dies of old age… We have planted a lemon and a couple of birches… The lemon was a necessity, the birches a crime of opportunity… but now we are really thinking about the landscape.

We visited the local garden center, not the fenced area at the side of the big box store, the real local nursery… Its winter so there is an unusual mix of plants, including burlap wrapped trees, something which we see for maybe two weeks here in the land of no winter. They had a couple of interesting trees… A couple of types of magnolia… various flowering cherries, some red barked maples… being immediate post Christmas winter there were few other customers… (in retrospect also the reason for the unusual mix of plants) the nurseryman was board… he was cold, he wanted an excuse to get out of the little booth… He spent some time showing us about… giving good advice, sprinkled with personal ideas… the kind of service you just don’t get anymore…

We bought a deciduous magnolia… I will go back on Wednesday and buy a flowering cherry as well… I have some Dutch iris stashed away, add a few lavenders, maybe sweet peas.

So the work list looks like; tear out the rest of the existing plants, repair, repaint the fence, rebuild the planter, then dig two big holes and plant a couple of trees… add other plants, add some mulch, and we have a garden… Oh, add water too.

On other issues… by now it’s dark. the ladies are doing a jigsaw puzzle… I sit at the computer. On the blog feed I have changed the photos… We are now looking at photos if the Nevada State Railroad Museum’s Carson City facility, both photos of steam operations and photos of the un-restored cars and artifacts scattered about the site… Larger version, as well as the Peru photos up previously are on line at //my picasa page./

Bye for now, Randy

The Christmas Report

The Christmas Eve dinner went very well… all courses timed well… (this is an art not understood by those who do not cook) all food good… (ok, great, bow, bow.) A quite evening around the fire with food, drink and talk…

The next morning was slow, Steph off to work (at the home for temporally abandoned dogs and cats), I got up with coffee, the paper and some time alone… She, Steph, called and said she was coming home, the que to start breakfast… Then food, stockings and presents… Then off to Erik and Mia’s house for Christmas Dinner… Erik is Tina’s (aka the wife) brother, Mia, his wife…

Christmas Dinner guests included her Dad, her two brothers, two sisters and their families… 25+ folks in all… the menu included turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes (baked after mashing) Pongas (their family name for mashed rutabagas) as well as a selection of pies and most important, Danish rice pudding…

The rice pudding is important… very important… there is a competition involved… in the white goodness which is rice pudding (basically white rice cooked in milk, folded into whipped cream… as a sister in law says, it is an excuse for eating whipped cream….) back to the white goodness… there is a blanched almond (“am-amd” in the dialect of Northern California) hidden in the pudding… the blanched almond is white, the pudding is white, the rice glissens in the pudding and simulates an almond (“am-amd”). The person who finds the almond (“am-amd”) gets a prize…

The only way to improve your odds of winning are to eat lots of rice pudding… The only rule is you have to eat all you take… I ate a lot… late in the third very large bowl I found it… and won… I am the champion…

I think the brother in law is still mad…
.
So, Santa and his associates did well by me this year… I got a couple of books, one on railroads on the Eastern Sierra… of little interest to the readers of this blog, the other, a surprise, “Who Would Buy This, The Archie McPhee Story” … a history of THAT store which specializes in absurdities like devil ducks, rubber chickens and donkeys which dispense cigarettes out their ass… We have talked about Archie McPhee before… We likely will again, I am not proud…

The book is great, with descriptions of product, their origin stories, their catalog cuts… it is an orgy of useless wonderful stuff…

From the book, a quote, for at least today, our quote of the day….

“As the world became more practical, I decided to fight that tendency with the impractical, the useless and the just plain strange. It was a futile and absurd strategy, however, it turned out very, very well for me.”

Mark Pahlow, founder, Archie McPhee

It sounds like a sound stratagy to me... bye for now,

Randy

Christmas Greetings

Merry Christmas… Where ever Christmas finds you… Our son is in Everett on board his destroyer… He gets New Years off. One nephew is in Germeny, in the Army. We will miss them but take comfort in knowing they are safe.

It that time, time to start Christmas dinner…

But first a report on the state of the “Christmas Retail world”… It’s not good… I did a bit of last minute shopping this A.M.… nothing we couldn’t live without, but stuff we generally buy… I went to three stores… Target, Home Depot, and Trader Joes… lots of parking available, no lines… Trader Joes wasn’t as busy as a typical Saturday.

Later the wife and I went to the mall… again, lots of parking, few lines… we bought her a couple of pairs of shoes on drastic sale, 80% off, as Mervyns closes for good…

At least the local non-chain super market had lines…

Back to dinner… The Roast Beast is in the oven… the Yorkshire pudding batter is made and resting in the fridge with the salad dressing, sauce for the shrimp salad and horseradish sauce… I will prep the asparagus next, then plate the spinach salad and the shrimp… Tina is making pies, two Pecan chocolate pies, one for us tonight, the other for tomorrow at her brothers… she is also making a pumpkin chiffon for tomorrow…

The fire is lit. Music is on (Kfog, of course)

Tina is feeding the extra pumpkin to the feral cats, they seem to enjoy it but the house cats could care less…

Steph is walking dogs, the first bottle of wine is gone… Life is ok…

A note on the continuing report on Dave Morey’s last day… I have it on good authority that Friends was Dave’s last song… those that followed were Annalisa’s tribute…

May your Christmas be all you hoped it would be… Randy

The Christmas Color lithograph from Louis Prang & Co. c. 1862 was lifted from the Beyond the Exhibition blog. (ah, back to the footnote issue) bye again, Randy

Frozen Alaskan Seafood and squirrel underpants

So, this Christmas my daughter and I have been shopping at Archie McPhee, a somewhat infamous Seattle area store and web site… They are actually located in Ballard, a suburb with is still mad about being forced to abandon its independent identity over a issue of drinking water… “Free Ballard” bumper stickers are not unknown…

So, for those of you not familiar with Archie McPhee… you really need to check them out… Some of their wares include squirrel underpants, inflatable fruitcake, and the “Angry Mob Play set”… and much more… If you are a friend you should be scared… very scared… We placed two orders this year… I also made a pilgrimage the store itself in person last May but that is not what this blog entry is about…

It’s about the shipping box…

When I first order arrived several weeks ago, it came packaged in a “Frozen Alaskan Seafood” box… For us, here at Chez Hees this raised hopes as we have been known to receive care packages of frozen Alaskan seafood… but alas, this box was filled with such treasures as grog flavored pirate gum and a Crime Scene Band-Aids and temporary food tattoos… Treasures yes, but not the hoped for fresh miso black cod filets and smokes salmon… (the brother is an Alaskan fisherman, and he and his wife, residents of Kodiak Island operate a smoke house as a hobby and send goodies south with some regularity.)
In retrospect the “Alaskan Frozen Seafood” box was appropriate for a mix of bad jokes and kitsch…

Today we were disappointed to find that our second order arrived in a box marked “Archie McPhee.” By now we were hoping for a box marked "tractor parts"

Going, going, gone...

We started about 9:00 this morning and as of noon Christmas is pretty much gone… in its place are bags of garland, naked trees awaiting their turn in the elevator on their way to the attic, and lots of boxes of debris…

Even with time off for the holidays, taking time to dust, sweep and clean the house should be back together by early January.

Today we have Thomas Nast’s 1863 “Union Army” Santa… Our beloved President Lincoln was not above using Santa for his own purposes… How would the little southern rebel children feel if Santa didn’t cross the Mason-Dixon line…

On other issues… I put more photos of Peru in the album. You can view all the pictures at Picassa (another Google product of course…)

Of course, we need an appropriate quote…

“Its not over till its over and you throw away the tree…” from Laughton Wainwright III’s Suddenly its Christmas

Bye for now, and Merry Christmas, Randy

Christmas is Over…

At least at Patterson House… the last tour is winding its way through as I write this… Of course the rest of the world thinks there are a few more days to go…
Here at Patterson House we will start to take it all down, every ornament, every bit of garland, all the wreaths, and bows, and try once again to stuff it in the attic…
I encountered this quote…

“Christmas is the Disneyfication of Christianity” - Don Cupitt.

Having just celebrated our Victorian Christmas it makes way too much sense… In 1857 when our house was built Santa Claus didn’t exist… they had Father Christmas, dressed in buckskins… The celebration would have looked a lot like our Thanksgiving dinner…

Artist Thomas Nast drew a series of pictures for Harper’s Magazine, creating the Santa (including a civil war era Santa in red white and blue…) we know and love… Coca Cola took those images and used them to market their products… The Christmas tree was unknown outside of Germany…

Queen Victoria brought a Christmas tree to Buckingham Palace, it was covered in Godey’s Ladies Book (a magazine) and everyone needed one from then on…

Today its an ongoing debate about how much Christmas we need at our historic house... Too much wins hands down... Thanks to Coke, Halmark, Macy’s and Gimballs, today Christmas is something else…

Its starting to rain… Its cold… I think I will put another log on the fire…

Accidental experiments in experimental archeology…

Experimental archaeology (we will just call it EA) is a somewhat controversial field, prone to public stunts. At its core someone tries to duplicate lost technology as accurately as possible to gain insight into the technology.

There is a good (many wiki pages aren’t very good, this one is, and is footnoted… I probably will write about my love of footnotes some day…) (I bet you can’t wait) wiki page on the EA at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_archaeology .

I realized my wood splitting is in fact an EA experiment… I am learning how much time and effort it took to heat a 19th century home… Yesterday I spent close to 20% of my time tending the gathering wood, splitting it, and tending fires. And the damn house was still cold… Similarly, a few times a year we light the house with oil lamps and candles… again, it takes significant time to fill the lamps, trim the wicks, clean shades and light everything. It takes lots of lamp oil (more than a gallon a day). It rapidly becomes obvious that they didn’t light the house much… a couple of lamps maybe, only in the rooms they were using.

10 years ago I lead a crew that built a wooden railroad flatcar during Railfair 99 in Sacramento. Usually we rebuild 19th century narrow gauge cars… this one was a 20th century standard gauge car. All the parts were heavier and larger. Heavy enough that they likely would have needed mechanical help to lift beams into place… This wasn’t true of the narrow gauge cars… there was no part which couldn’t be lifted by 6 men…

The draft gear took as long as building the rest of the car on our last narrow gauge project… The Sacramento car had iron bolsters… like the draft gear it was much slower work…

This says a great deal about the infrastructure needed to support the technology, something I wouldn’t have understood if I hadn’t built a couple of railroad cars with 19th century technology.

On other subjects, three people have asked what Dave’s last song was… (You can listen to his last show at www.kfog.com) He came on for a moment after 10 at 10 only said it wasn’t a Beatles song… then played Friends by Elton John…

Friends was followed by without commercial or other interruptions….
I left My heart in San Francisco - Tony Bennet
Hello Good bye - the Beatles
You didn’t have to love me but you did – Sam & Dave?
I always turn the car around – OAR
Love is the seventh wave – Police

Only then did Annalisa come on… In typical KFOG fashion no one has said anything about the set…

Morning observations

First an update on the stove… I got really dirty taking the stove apart. The stove problem turned out to be a piece of fiberglass insulation used to seal the flue… So in a sense the solution to the problem had become the problem… too often true.

It continues to be cold and rainy... . Snow has been visible on the hills… At work I continue to spilt fire wood, now because I need the wood.

I have added a slide show to the blog… (of course you probably have already realized that) The first photos are from a trip to Peru a couple of years ago… It’s a spectacular place, with layer after layer of culture, archeology, and color…

A local morning radio DJ, Dave Morey, is retiring today… (http://kfog.com/ ) It seems strange but it seems like a funeral, shared by a large but undefined community… For myself, and many of us listening to the radio is really a solo activity, in the morning with my coffee as I read the paper or check email, in the car, but it seems like everyone I know is talking about Dave… the solo activity has evolved into a greater community…

Off to work..

It’s raining….

Winter has finally arrived here in Northern California… We finally have rain, accompanied by occasional thunder. We stare at the sky looking for hail or snow… The snow level is down to maybe 2,000 feet… we may have snow on the hills on both sides of the bay. It must be winter just in time for Christmas. (an in time to really screw up the Santa Cruz to San Jose commute tomorrow morning….)

At the house, the historic house museum, there is a song about the house museum, or is it about Alice and her restaurant, no, there is a song about the house museum too… The house is full of smoke… every time we light the stove. Maybe something has climbed in one of our chimneys and died… at least that’s the best explanation I can think of for all the smoke when I light the fire in the stove (wood fire, wood burning stove.) That is tomorrow’s problem… Soot, wood smoke, sheet metal, ladders… I am getting excited.

Outside I am using Christmas lights to keep our orange from freezing. If it gets colder I will put sheets over the tree.

We are spoiled here near San Francisco Bay… The coldest EVER temperature is about 20 degrees, for a few hours… the hottest is just over 100 for a couple of days… We can do fine without air conditioning… While we complain, it’s never really that cold.

Until tomorrow...

A Sad Day

So, a friend committed suicide a couple of days ago…

I can‘t say it’s a surprise, he had been troubled for a long time… I hope he has now found peace.

He was a Vietnam vet, a tunnel rat. I don’t know if he was a troubled as a result of being a tunnel rat, or if he was a tunnel rat because he was troubled.

He was formerly married to a friend… a neighbor… We went on vacation together a couple of times. His ex-wife and mine are close. My daughter stays in touch with his daughters… He helped strip the roof off our house when we were remodeling it… He didn’t exactly fit in… the rest of the crew was in blue jeans, he was wearing jogging shorts…

When he and Holly got divorced I was their “worst man” I delivered the papers. He knew about it in advance, and delivering the papers, then getting the signature was a formality, not a surprise, but it was weird…

He spent a “good” day with his daughters and made peace with his son a few days before. He left his Army uniform so they would know he was a vet…

Apparently he went to a hospital, then shot himself… I find it strange that I can’t find anything about his death on the web… I hope this is not so common that it doesn’t qualify as news.



Rest in peace Joe…

It's the ecconomy, stupid!

It's and old line, from several Presidential administrations ago... but seems appropriate. Local intelligence suggests we are up THAT creek without the paddle.

So, the wife, who has been packaged out this year from one employer, only to land an another, much better employer, goes to have her hair cut last Saturday... Of the people in that day only two had jobs...

I had the day off today... so I checked our collective stocks, 401k, 403k (fer us government types...) We are down about 40%... We are not into risky stocks, but I can't speak for the 401k's... That isn't allowed.

My local used book store is closing... it can't make it in this economy.

A good friend (we met at a beer tasting, we share a fondness for good scotch) sent me this... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IrR3o7x1ps

I don't share all of Fred Thompson's opinions, but this is too close to home for comfort.

PS, the wife rarely wears a hat, it messes up her hair...

Beer and Christmas Lights

Christmas won, instead of taking the Kayak out I am putting up the outside Christmas lights at home… This year I am trying all red and white (or clear) bulbs… This is a departure from my regular “if I find it in the box it goes on the house”

Of course, my tall step ladder is at work. Predictable… On the other hand at home I can drink beer while decorating… (Lagunitas Pale Ale, “New DogTown”)

From their web page… (http://www.lagunitas.com/beers/paleale.html)

"Here, Have a beer. It will make you right." Ernest said to Tarzan. Tarzan had never had the true beer before and Ernest knew this would not be his last. He Drank the beer quickly. It was cold, and Tarzan knew this too. He looked at the beer coolly. "Me Tarzan, you beer." Ernest looked at Tarzan and felt old. "Vas iz schviss vit da old schtuff?" Ernest and Tarzan turned to watch as Sigmund entered the room strangely. "Sigmund," Ernest said, "my old primitivo! Have a beer with us". Sigmund knew what Ernest meant and he could not bear it. They all had a beer and it was good. Ernest said "Do you remember how it was in Stinson with the running of the dogs and how we ate crullers and got drunk on the Lagunitas Pale and stole grunion from the from the young girls at the Cafe de Sand Shekel?" Sigmund thought of how Ernest could be cruel and he did not answer. He thought how only dogs were not cruel. And also how sometimes a cold beer was just a beer. Tarzan thought of nothing. They all ordered contuuzti corratzo and spoke not of their big cigars.

If you drink a couple of beers it starts to make sense…

The lights are calling my name…

I be a beaurcrat...

I work for a local government agency... by definition we are bureaucrats...

By definition we (the bureaucrats) rule by rules and regulations... I prefer to just do my job, make my guests and docents happy and take care of the place. This works better for me.

I spent 4 hours in meetings today... I didn't get much done, but I attended the meetings as required.

on the plus side its my Friday.. I may take the Kayak out tomorrow and go for a row... What hat should I were... I am thinking the DDG 86 Shoup cap...

Surviving Christmas

We are two days into our public Christmas celebration... aka "the slog..." On many levels its great, a big Victorian house, decorated to death, fires in fireplace and woodburing stove, docents in coustume, Father Christmas (don't call him Santa) in the Gazebo, a fluggle horn band on the porch, and kids everywhere having a wonderful time...

On the other hand I get trapped taking care of the place, building fires, putting out food, dealing with grumpy guests and such...

Overlaying the whole season are marketing meetings and budget work... I think Dilbert got it right when he said... "Its not a meeting until someones time is wasted"