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