CurlyShavings

I just might have to get the t-shirt from Chesapeake Light Craft.

The weather was perfect today for our first hike in the Cuyahoga Challenge. I'm not sure why we always wait so long to start but we do.

We saw lots of different trees (tulip, oak, maple, sassafras, pine, cherry, shagbark hickory and others), several millipedes, a toad or two, a deer, some yellow/brown slugs and a pretty grey speckled one, various fungi and some bird feathers.

We heard chickadees, woodpeckers, flickers and chipmunks.

And only saw one other person on the trail.

And it was a good hike.

The Forest Point & Pine Grove Trails (approximately 2.3 miles) can be found near the Octagon Shelter in the Virginia Kendall Unit (pdf) of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

I was reminded today of a trip my dad and I took about this time of the year in the late 80's.

I was headed to college for the first time and, looking back, it was a bittersweet memory for me.

Although I had my license, I don't remember driving, nor do I remember which car we owned at the time (probably the beige VW Dasher but maybe the late-eighty's silver Camry). It was a ten-hour trip.

Because I was from outside a certain radius, I was allowed early-access to the dorms. There was a legion of assistants to help me unload my foot locker, my bike and whatever else I owned (an Apple IIc, my $105 mouse and dot-matrix printer?) and get it into Luckett Hall. (Remember when a mouse was $105? I do, because I earned every penny to buy that one.)

I don't remember what we had for dinner but after I got settled, I remember asking which bunk my dad wanted (my future roommate was pretty local and hadn't arrived yet).

He wasn't staying. He'd booked a room in a local hotel.

"I've already had my first night in my first dorm room," he told me. "We'd just stay up late hearing me tell my stories and you wouldn't get a chance to have any stories of your own."

A wise man, that Dad.

So what do I remember about that evening? I remember thinking about this clean break. I remember how helpful the RA and RD staff were in getting my gear down the steps into my basement dorm room.

I remember that the bed was a twin long, the only sheets we could find to send with me that would fit were pink and that I had a creme cotton thermal blanket and a quilt my mother made me a few years earlier.

I remember being awakened at oh-dark-thirty by the fire alarm, rushing out into the hallway in my PJs, rushing back in again to grab my key and then heading for the stairwell exit.

I remember heading up the stairs to the ground level and seeing the pulled fire alarm handle. I remember thinking that since there wasn't any evidence of fire near the pulled fire alarm, I was probably safe and I should head back to bed.*

I remember standing there thinking that I should still treat this alarm as real since I didn't really know if there was a fire someplace else.

I remember still standing there when the RA showed up, saw me there next to the pulled fire alarm and started asking questions. Thankfully he believed me (or at least gave me the benefit of the doubt).

Most of all, though, I remember thinking about my dad and wondering about his first nights in his various dorms (Grove City, Penn State, etc.).

I wonder if he got to run around in his PJs.

*During my three years' tenure in Luckett, we had countless fire alarms and to my memory, every one of them was false. Sometimes my roommate and I would think about getting up and sometimes we wouldn't. Several times I remember being told to put my foot on the floor. Murphy's law said that the alarm would stop as soon as you woke up enough to step out of bed. Murphy's law also said that it would continue ringing as long as you stayed in bed. Murphy's law also said that if no one from the entire dorm left the building, the whole dorm would die in a terrible conflagration.

A Perfect Spy by John le Carré

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read A Perfect Spy (originally published in 1986) a half-dozen times in my teens and twenties but never considered Pym a traitor until I read it again in my forties.

What changed? Well certainly not the text. More likely, I grew from attempting to be a cosmopolitan to being an ardent patriot.

We are patriots because we are afraid to be cosmopolitan, cosmopolitan because we are afraid to be patriots.

I remember taking A Perfect Spy with me (actually and figuratively) on many border-crossings in the 80's and again on my more domestic travels in the early 90's. Pym, as whoever he presented himself to be to the dozens of people he met and worked with, was in many ways who I emulated each time I got on the plane to another consulting gig. Stopping short of inventing actual fiction about myself, I was still free to present an edited side of me that could change wildly when I met another client at the next gig.

Pym was all things to all people except himself. He played both ends against the middle and lost it all. I'm not even certain he had hoped to keep any of it. Even Mary was chosen for reasons other than married bliss.

"Pym, you bastard, where are you?"

Frankly, Pym's actions are so distasteful (as he betrayed his country, his wife, his son, his firm, his colleagues, his friends, his father and himself), I'm not interested anymore.

I found much of what I read in Shop Class as Soulcraft to make sense. Some of it even put words and reasons to some vague theories I've been working on for a few years.

One situation he describes captures how I feel about plumbing projects. I have an older home that has seen its share of owners and repairs over the years. Sometimes that age makes a "simple" plumbing project take a silly amount of effort.

You can quadruple the amount of horsepower a VW engine makes, or even more, if you need it to last only for a single race and are willing to spend absurd amounts of time and money building it. I was reminded of this by Chas when we first discussed what was to be done about my engine situation. Scrawled above the dingy parts counter at Donsco was a slogan: "Speed costs. How fast do you want to spend?" It represented a kind of anti-salesmanship. If the usual method of the salesman is to insinuate himself into your favor, play on your hopes, and lead you imperceptibly to an expensive decision, the mechanics behind the counter at any old-school speed shop seem to adopt a more ambivalent stance, in which the desire to sell is counterpoised with haughty professionalism. If you want chromed "bolt on" baubles that claim to give you power, go to a chain auto pans store to indulge your shallow fantasies. Then put the sticker on your rear window. If: on the other hand, you want to go deep and have your crank journals nitrided, you've come to the right place. Just tear down your motor and bring us the crank. This Olympian stance can have a powerful effect on the customer. It hints at the existence of an exclusive club that he might aspire to be a member of (those who have held a bare crankshaft in their hands). So perhaps the disdain one encounters in speed shops is a higher form of salesmanship, the kind that announces a hierarchy of human beings. But you can't buy entry to this world, you have to earn it. There is no sticker.

Page 86-87, Shop Class as Soulcraft
emphasis added

In particular, I'm thinking of the joy I feel when I am finally able to extract a faucet stem from some antiquated fixture or device, then wrap it in a blue rag and take it to the local hardware store. Not the Big Box place, but the one about a mile down the street that has all the parts for the old houses in this neighborhood.

I walk in with a smile and my package and we talk about grease, packing with graphite string and whether or not the seats should be replaced.

I can usually walk out for a few quarters or maybe a dollar. Yeah, it might take me longer to replace these pieces and fix the device than it would to throw it away and replace the whole device for thirty-five dollars.

Speed costs. How fast do you want to spend?

But in the process, I've learned about teflon tape and where (and where not) to use it, how to sweat a pipe, I've learned about washers, gaskets and collected the right tools for the job at hand. And the knowledge of how to use them.

And when I'm done and the project is put back together and the fixture is working again, I can turn on the faucet, feel the cool (or hot) water run over my hands.

"[I] can simply point: the building stands, the [water] now runs, the lights are on." There is no need to boast. I simply point. (page 15).

Chip Richter is the most fun, upbeat singer-songwriter I can think of. And I'm not saying that just because we've been listening to him on the radio, the tape deck, the CD and DVD players and now our iPods for the last dozen years or more.

We first heard Chip on WCRF in the late 90's and have been swinging, singing, bopping and dancing with him and our growing family ever since. Just last week I had the privilege to deliver Chip's newest CD, Are We Almost There? (available here and soon on iTunes) to my nieces and nephews in Virginia. It was my privilege because it was their total delight—the shrieks and excitement told the whole story:

"Yay, more Chip!!!!"

You can follow Chip on Twitter and that's how today's story came about. I check into Twitter a couple of times a day and today I saw that he was going to be in Warrensville Heights this morning and Beachwood this afternoon for library shows. Those libraries are just a few miles away from us, so we thought we'd drop by and enjoy him in concert!

Did I mention that Chip is awesome? It's been six or so years since we've seen each other in person but that didn't stop him from recognizing me and my family and being excited about it. He even remembered the woodworking project I'd done for him some time ago (hopefully in a good way)!

Well, he got tuned up, sang his traditional (mandatory?) "Hey There, How Do You Do?" (mp3) introduction song and I think we had kids bouncing, dancing and singing along from that point on.

When Chip is singing and playing, the kids all get blurry!

Of course since it's summertime, we just had to sing "Ice Cream" (mp3) and a new one, "Ridin' My Bike" from his new CD that had everyone with imaginary helmets on, riding their "bikes" around the room. He treated us to the story of how he and his daughter (when she was six) came up with "Ladybug's Living Room" (mp3) and then led us all in singing it.

It all ended way too soon, but that's the way things go sometimes. And we'd never have caught him if we hadn't made the effort to get there. Summertime is like that. Ice cream melts, opportunities fade away, songs go unsung and bike rides remain unridden, unless—unless we get out there and eat it, sing it, ride it, swing it and enjoy it.

Thanks, Chip, for a totally enjoyable afternoon. I'm off to go ride my bike before we're due at the pool. Thanks!

Our Honda Pilot hit an important milestone recently.

We swing like there's no tomorrow because we both know there isn't.

For her, she has this innate sense of carpe diem—soon you will make me go home, soon it will rain, soon I may want to slide instead of swinging.

For me, I know too well how fast a summer rushes past us both. How, in August, "tomorrow" can so easily become October. How our busyness and our business rob us of the moment. Split each day into ever-decreasing slots to seize.

We swing like there's no tomorrow to slow today down. In our speed the world seems slow. We become the ones out of control and not the reverse.

This summer, I will at least remember.

At least I will remember this summer.

This summer, at least, I will remember.

I will remember this summer.

And in October's longer nights not startle to awareness that the summer we so anticipate has slipped away into a darker fall. Again.

We swing like there's no tomorrow because we both know there isn't.

Our doorbell rang Sunday afternoon. Not the single "ding" that tells us that one of the kids has locked themselves out of the house and is impatiently waiting on the back steps but the double "ding-dong" that indicates someone waiting (patiently?) on the front steps.

My wife and I arrive at the front door together and we find a guy on our porch wearing shorts and a "Matt Brakey for County Council" t-shirt. And a two-day stubble. And a big toothy grin.

Turns out this is actually Matt Brakey, so we pin him down, follow Frazz's advice and asked him lots of questions. And he hung around answering them. He answered the ones we posed to him well.

Things like backing out of the Medical Mart (if it's really so important, why can't private industry find their own funding?), the role of government in the economy (make it easier for private companies to create jobs), limiting government and reducing taxes.

He said he'd look into a response on the Ameritrust property debacle and what he thinks the county should do. I'll post back if/when I get a reply.

If I'd known more about Matt Brakey before his appearance on our porch, I'd have asked him more and different questions.

• Under your proposal of no sales tax but higher property taxes, how might that impact retail purchasing trends? Our property ownership trends? Do you have any examples to point us to?
• Is it the red-light camera that disproportionately hurts the poor or just tickets for running red lights that does so? (Don't get me wrong, I think red-light cameras need to go, I just don't understand your reasons.)
• I'd also like to understand where you think we have a right to privacy. Or do we just expect that we have that right? (I like and enjoy privacy but am not quite sure where that "right" is guaranteed.)
• And I'd like to question some of your usage of social media. Some of your Twitter posts and responses on CleveScene.com aren't exactly County Council caliber. Some of your Facebook posts are. (I'm fairly certain that you, as a 29 year-old, have different views on this than I do!)
  On second thought, scratch that. Our current elected public officials frequently say things that seem intended for a different audience.
• Can we define "corporate welfare"? Let's make sure we're talking about banning the same thing.
• Oh, and one other thing: Where's the RSS feed for your blog?

What do I think of the candidate? Well, his sign is still in my yard. I urge you to give this fellow your consideration. Let's get through the primary and see what our choices are then.

Footnote:

I wish we hadn't changed our county government structure so quickly. I still maintain that it isn't the county structure that's corrupt but the folks in the structure. And I think the nearly-unanimous guilty pleas from all these indictments in our "County in Crisis" back me up.

Update (8/6/2010): Here's a link to the county's cast of characters.