SmokeSound

Carpentry always means that there will be cut-off pieces of lumber, and cut-off pieces of lumber are Lincoln logs for a grandson.  Jao is building his own house in our back yard. At least, that is what he says.  My own theory is that he wants to be a landscape architect, and that his first step on that career path is to strew the landscape with rafter ends and birdmouths and shattered fascia scraps.  "First, cover up what's here and, second, create a neutral scape, something like a landfill!" I aid and abet.  I am thinking of showing him how to start my old chain saw, after putting on a dull chain, of course.  Kids, these days, are protected too much, but I am not as agile as once ago.  It is for my own protection. And please don't call child protection services!  Nothing I say in this blog is to be taken seriously. You know that.  I am no Donald Trump.  

Running errands on a Saturday or Sunday morning means that I listen to Garrison Keillor and Prairie Home Companion;  Guy Noir and The Lives of the Cowboys. Sometimes I wonder how so much nasal singing ended up on the same show with the news from Lake Woebegon; with Minnesota and pot luck Lutheran suppers, but I suppose only a deep analysis of Garrison Keillor could answer that, and that might be impossible. Today I heard someone sing about "wanting to go back when you belonged to me". If ever I should not want to go back, it would be to when we owned someone. Oh, I know!  I know!  what the sentiment is about, but it is a dreadful way to talk, nonetheless. It brings to mind marriage ceremonies in which a father gives his daughter away to a younger man and they are pronounced "man and wife". Not man and woman, or husband and wife: man and helpmate for a new household. "Yew belong to me-e-e." I liked, rather more, the song about gir

It is true that we, collectively, as a government, spend too much if you compare that to government income. A monstrous amount of what we spend is spent on military adventures such as the war in Iraq, which our (then) President and Congress refused to pay for.  They just shifted money around, short-changed our own social needs, and borrowed.  We still spend far too much for military expenditures; about as much as the next eight nations comnbined! As a consequence, we citizens scorn our Congress for the decisions it has made, fiscally, militarily, and politically.  They deserve scorn, and so do we.  We elected them, and agreed that they should not pay for their adventures, and urged them to look for new places to send in troops. Our tax system is a disgrace.  Taxes on the wealthy have rarely been so low in memory.  The wealth of our country is running uphill to the most wealthy like a river defying gravity. The state of our infrastructure--roads, sewers, water supply, power gr

After half a week away, Jao walked with me up to "his house" in our back yard.  He always hopes that I will have left a ladder standing somewhere, and maybe a hammer. He looked up. "Papa", he said--Papa is his name for a grandfather--"how'd ja do that?" I did not expect a three-year-old to ask:  "How'd ja do that?"  How do you explain a conical roofline to a three-year-old, or a 22.5 degree pitch?  Would a birdsmouth confuse him? I am used to, "Whatcha doin'?" and "Papa, c'mere!" But I rose to the occasion.  I mumbled.   Nosy little beggar!

"The Lone Ranger"--who might not be Tonto's closest friend (I am not an authority on the gender of javelinas, nor Ranger preferences, either, for that matter)--stops by occasionally to pick up a few seeds.  One never knows what might have been overlooked! Sometimes Coyote stops by, too, but he (or she) is noticeably spooked by the bird feeder, circling about it as if it were an intruder from outer space.  The Lone Ranger is more sniff- than sight-centered, and it is likely that Coyote ranges farther than The Lone Ranger, and has been shot at more often.  Here, in town, or at its edges, hunting is not allowed.  And, truth be told, javelinas and coyotes do the hunting here. A little space, and a stout fence make good visitors.  Coyote runs away, Bobcat hides, but Javelinas are a cranky sort, and savage when irritated, and even when not.

Fascia.   Fascia:  wooden board, orsome such thing, covering the ends of rafters.   On a rectangular building--that is to say, on a building a normal person might build using rectangular pieces of wood, such as 2X4s-- the ends of the rafters march off toward the horizon in a straight line.  The fascia is, then, a long, straight board. On a round building, the rafters extend from a center point like spokes on a wheel, which requires that the fascia be a kind of hoop.  Nobody cuts hoops from long, straight trees, or even from short, crooked trees.  They cut . . . oh, 1X4s, for instance.  OK, I thought, I will choose a 1X4 cut from a tree with a morally stout soul, and bend it carefully into a hoop. The first one snapped at the mere suggestion that I was going to violate its rectangular soul.  So did the second one, from a different forest and moral family of trees. Well, thought I, I will take my commitment to solidity and stoutness in hand, and use thinner materials:  pine t

I am nothing if not impatient. I am impatient. Our weather has been, not brutal, but inclement. The El Niño that has brutalized the rest of the continent, and continents beyond, passes by us altogether modestly, producing rain modestly, so far. Only when the cold fronts from Siberia and Alaska by way of the Pacific Northwest push down this far south do we get heavier rains, and frost. Even so, and just so, working outside is sometimes wetter and colder, lying heavier on the scale of comforts than dressing warmly and going outside. It has been that way. Progress on the rondavel-- if I dare to call it that, anymore-- has been slow.  One might say, at a halt.  Yes:  at a halt. It seemed to me that "Jao's house", or the round house, or garden shed, if you must be honest and pedestrian, needed another window:  the vertical one in the picture shown.  So now the round house has three windows; some best while standing, the latest if sitting an