It was only a matter of time

OK. Some mental midget spammed an old entry on this blog (not that I get all that much traffic, but that's fine... quality rather than quantity matters). It was especially galling because it was appended after one of Jo's few entries, and it was anonymous (coward) and it had a whole mess of links to buy cheap software, which you know has to source itself in piracy.

My apologies to my few faithful followers, but I'm now moderating comments, and you'll have to fill in a Captcha as well. I do appreciate the sincerity of your comments, but this is the internet, and part of that is the dark sewer of spam that flows beneath the bright surface of friendly interchange. I'll be as timely as possible in posting whatever is written by an actual human being.

Celebrate!

I've been impressed by the thoughtful responses to my previous post, about the difficulty of responding to an unintentionally awkward question in the aftemath of a loss. In some sense, the grieving person is put in the position of trying to ease the pain of the questioner, while having to deny his or her own feelings, however briefly.

Such denial contributes at least one more paving stone to the road to depression. Like all roadbuilding, it is a cumulative process, only not as obvious. So if that road is to be cut off, we need to find ways to stop building it, or reduce the pace of the project.

One way is to celebrate. If you hit the online dictionary, you'll find several different meanings, each of which suggests some approaches.

1. To observe with ceremonies of respect, festivity, or rejoicing.

In the case of the departure of a loved one, whether through death, divorce or duplicity, there are still things to celebrate:

• there was a time when we were the best of friends
• there were times when we understood each other perfectly
• we forgave and forgot the other times, at least for a while if not forever
• life was challenging, comfortable, exhilarating, difficult, worthwhile
• I grew up a little (or a lot): especially in regard to....

2. To perform (a religious ceremony):

• In certain cultures, a household shrine, or a table of mementoes, commemorates the ongoing presence of the spirit of the departed.
• In the case of some acrimonious departures, a dart board can be a target of ceremony that at the least reduces stress
• Writing a list of all of the things that one is thankful for, and all the others that were painful, and then burning it (preferably outdoors or in a fireplace) along with statements like, "Thank you for our love: I release you, and you me" or, conversely, "Begone miserable witch/warlock, and haunt no more this sphere of misery" can be as meaningful, if not more, as any priest or prophet can conjure.

3. To extol or praise:

• We generally get our first chance to do this at a memorial service or a funeral, but the stress levels are very high, despite the presence of empathetic supporters. So it needs to be done again, and again.
• The obituaries offered by the funeral homes are bland lists of living relatives, with standard phrases that conjure nothing of the intensity of feeling and emotion. And if you have too many survivors, the high cost of listing them brings out the natural Scrooge in many of us. And yet, "survived by her loving husband, Alfred, et al." would seem unkind at best. So put pen to paper, fingers to keyboard, mouth to mic, and write speak or record what you really feel. Then see that at least one other person reads, hears or sees it.
• With the passage of time, the mind blots up the inky spots of bad memories, and so, writing an annual or unscheduled remembrance is likely to take on a more silvery gloss as the days become weeks and the weeks months. Rereading previous peans will encourage you to see that indeed, you have actually grown emotionally and spiritually, because all paths eventually lead to forgiveness and understanding.

Note that I do not refer to those horrible, smarmy couplets that appear in newspapers, picked from prescripted Hallmarkian anthologies. "You are gone but not forgotten, though the leaves of fall be rotten".

No indeed. If smarm is your thing, well, good on you. I'm just saying that you can do better. As the Moody Blues put it, "Say what you mean, and mean what you say." "Best damn husband I ever had" is good, and true, especially if you've only had one so far.

4. To make widely known; display. Well, why not? If the mayor of your city, town or village can declare a day to honor a celebrity or an occasion, you certainly can do the same amongst your friends and relations.

An email message that has as its subject line : "I hereby declare: Today is Jo Day" is bound to attract attention. But do not pass it along by the carbon copy method. Send out one to each of the persons who would care, each one highlighting a different memory. It is impossible to remember everything about another that we would wish to remember. But in the replies you are bound to get, there will be others, some of which you may well never have know.

And should the day commemorate someone who is best forgotten, the above exercise should provide an opportunity to indulge in a little rueful irony, which may well help with the healing of feeling.

How You Doing?

It's interesting, and very kind, that people constantly inquire after your welfare once you have lost a partner. The professionals whom you have to contact about all the unpaid bills and the other legal miseries that inevitably come bobbing along in the wake of death pretty much universally use the phrase, "I'm sorry for your loss." This comes either early or late in process of taking care of business. My response is usually, "Thank you, so am I." It's sincere, but somewhat distancing. A statement of fact, it only requires a quick response.

People who know you more informally, however, take it farther. They ask, "How you doing?". This is a response that triggers thought, because it more or less implies that they're aware that you're going through a difficult adjustment period, and it's definitely more supportive in its intent. It's more nuanced than "How are you?", and less insouciant than, say, "How's everything going?" Its implied focus is on you and your particular feelings and situation.

But "How (are) you doing?" is difficult to answer, because sometimes you just want to stop for a minute and say, "Well, I'm glad you asked. I'm having a lot of trouble figuring out exactly what's going on with our bank accounts." Or maybe it's more like, "My God, I didn't know chicken got so dry and tough if you left it in the oven too long." But does anyone really want to have you do data mining like that? In the computer world, we call that a core dump. Probably it's best to keep it brief, honest, and appreciative in tone.

"How (are) you doing?" can be pretty open-ended like that. It's nice. It presents one of those rare opportunities that if you feel like elaborating, you may, but you don't have to. Nobody has a particular agenda, other than to show an interest, and offer an opportunity.

So if you happen to see me, and happen to say "How ya doin'", don't be surprised if sometimes I say, "Just fine, thanks", but other times, "Well, the cat threw up on my kitchen chair, and a raccoon chewed a hole in the swing seat, and I don't think I like the way I cook, but generally, not so bad, thanks." After all, you asked for it. And thank you for asking.

The Dumb Cluck in the Kitchen

I understand that in some parts of this country, especially in the south, there is a preference for meats of various kinds, blackened. This normally involves various spices, such as paprika, salt, cayenne, cumin, thyme, white pepper, and onion powder. Searing the chicken breast, for example, after oiling it and rubbing it with these condiments produces the desired blackening, and subsequent baking turns it into something special.

It is with great pleasure that I announce via this blog entry that I have found a much simpler way, involving no additional expense for condiments of any kind. Based on my extensive kitchen experience, this is how I produced it. One caveat: this recipe requires that you own a dog or cats, or maybe a ferret. Or a skunk.

1. Purchase a chicken. Without it, this recipe fails.

2. Unpack it and lose the giblets. I hate giblets.

3. Put it on a roasting rack (the vertical kind makes it self-basting).

4. Ask someone whose vision is good enough to read the oven temperature indicator to turn it on to 450 for you. (Thank you, A.)

4. Place it in the oven on the bottom rack. This assumes you have removed the top rack before the oven started to heat up.

5. Set the timer for about an hour and a half, if you like well-done chicken.

6. When the timer goes off, silence it and remove the beautiful, brown chicken, off whose bones the meat will be falling.

7. Turn off the oven.

8. Because your pets will materialize on cue when they hear you open the oven door, you cannot leave the bird on the kitchen counter. Instead, when you have carved off what you want to eat, return the bird, on the platter, to the oven, and securely close the door.

9. Set the table, throw together some accompaniments, and have dinner.

10. After dinner, you may remember that the oven was fairly dirty. Turn it on to self clean.

11. Busy yourself with other activities for about 20 minutes. By that time, the smell of well-done chicken should be permeating even the fabric of your curtains.

12. If you can see into the kitchen, run and cancel the self-clean cycle. If you can't, feel your way until you burn your fingers on something hot. It will be the stove. Cancel the self-clean cycle.

13. Tug at the oven door until you realize that the unreadable little red digital bar on the control panel is saying "LOCKED".

14. Busy yourself with other activities for about 40 minutes. By that time, the oven should have cooled enough to unlock the door.

15. Carefully, and with several pot holders or pairs of oven mitts, remove the platter and bird, and place on a non-combustible surface. Be careful not to set it down hard, as all the meat will fall off, except for the burnt parts which will stick to the bones like Velcro(tm).

16. If you prefer, transfer the chicken to a new plate and scrub the platter with any strong abrasive. The burnt-in lines on the bottom where the platter sat on the rack provides a pattern unique in the industry. Your dinner guests will be fascinated by the permanent black spots and the Rorschach smear where the chicken rested on the platter.

Voila. Blackened, Ready-To-Discard Chicken. This recipe will undoubtedly work with a wide variety of dishes, although blackening times may vary. Be sure to include cooling time, as the entree cannot be removed before the oven latch releases. And don't forget to clean your oven afterwards.

J has left the building

After a nineteen-month* struggle with the nastiness of breast cancer, the effects of chemotherapy and the short-lived relief of blood transfusions, Joana Hudgins, always previously referred to as "J" in these entries, has moved along. Nothing more to see here.

Jo was born in Ohio, and apparently always wanted to leave to see other places. She travelled to 26 of them, mainly reflecting her attraction to Florida and its beaches, birds and palm trees.

Her marriage to The Old Guy resulted in a few short years in Canada, where she learned how we say "out" and "about", eh? As close as we came to paradise was a quarter-acre lakeside bungalow north of Kingston, Ontario. When The Old Guy found new employment, it brought her back to Ohio, although this time to Jackson, in Appalachia. Two years later, that job was eliminated, and another move across the bottom of the state found us in Hamilton, Ohio, a city in the Greater Cincinnati area.

If one were to stick pins in a map where her friends are located, it would be too heavy to lift. Her fascination with the internet probably began with the need to express herself in writing, an endeavor that took her on flights of imagination, grounded in the hardship of not the happiest of childhoods. The net offered her an outlet for her loneliness as well as her sense of humor and her natural empathy for all types of creatures.

The Old Guy met her at the right time: email lists were in vogue, and Jo's musings became public on a listserv called "alt-support-loneliness". It was there that she caught the eye of this former high school English teacher, partly because she held nothing back, and that included creating the occasional portmanteau because her brain worked far faster than even her flying fingers.

Over our 14 years of married life, Jo continued on the nets, became expert on The Sims, got into website creation, and maintained a continuing dialog with anyone who would listen. There were many.

The drum circle called OGADE was a compelling interest for her, not only for its rhythmic appeal, but for the friendships she made there.

Her life in the politics of social justice was just the latest in her many creative ways of expressing her love for people and her frustration at the selfishness and avarice of the oligarchy that saps the political will of this republic. In her role as webmistress for both her own website and the local Democratic party, she worked beyond her limitations to bring in a better life for all.

Her five surviving children experienced unconditional love, and so did the world of animals. Jo got involved in rehabilitation of five raccoon babies, three skunks, a few bunnies and many cats and the birds they wounded. Various landlords had trouble with that side of her loving nature. The internet became her daily source for information on how to heal the hurts of all creatures, great and small. Although she became a fan of "Deadliest Catch", she could not help commenting on "those poor king crabs" while watching an episode. Fortunately, she could not bring them all home.

Neither she nor the oncology team could heal the very aggressive breast cancer that she discovered too late for remediation. It was difficult for her to leave, for a time. But her unconditional love and playful humor glowed brightly even as her candle began to flicker out. Life without Jo will go on, better for her having shown us the way.

*Footnote: Jo was diagnosed in February 2008. I can't do math. Also, her daughter tells me that the phrase "a few bunnies" should be amended to read, "more than a few bunnies". I do remember having to get up early each morning when the dew was still on the ground to pick the finest, largest dandelion leaves (and there were thousands to choose from, such was my groundskeeping expertise) for feeding time.

Parking: now, there's the ticket!

What is it about parking on your driveway (as opposed to driving on a parkway?)

This isn't a rant, or at least it's not intended to be. There's always the possibility that it will turn into one.

The fact is, however, that the world divides into two types of people: those who, when they come over to your house and notice that your car is parked in the driveway, blithely park behind you, and the (very few) others who don't.

Think about it. In our situation, we have a long, very narrow, single strip of tired old asphalt that accommodates three cars, but we only have two. So when someone comes over, sees a parking space behind the second car, they have a decision to make. For most, that is easy, apparently. Nature abhors a vacuum.

Here's the thing. There are no parking prohibitions on our street. It's a long, dead-end avenue, filled with houses populated mainly by older people and younger families, many of whom have only one vehicle. There's room in front of our house, and our neighbors', to park at least six vehicles. That's more cars than we have friends.

Here's the next thing. My wife's disabilities qualify our cars for handicapped parking. Unlike most, she doesn't put the tag on her mirror unless she's actually in a designated parking space. I have a duplicate tag which I use only when she is with me, or I'm picking her up from some appointment or store. Nevertheless, everyone who visits us knows about her condition. So why, then, would they not assume that I need extra room on the driveway to load the trunk or the back seat with the wheelchair, walker, oxygen tank and whatever else is needed? Sometimes I need to get out and back the car in, to put the passenger door on the easiest side for loading.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a rule around here that if your car is more than ten feet away from the house, it is fair game for vandals. There are street lights, but they are largely concealed by ancient tree foliage. One night both rear doors of my car were keyed in a random spiral pattern. Another time, a brand new front tire was slashed, but that was likely because we were proudly displaying an Obama lawn sign prior to the elections. Raccoons don't carry shivs, so it had to be a message from a political opponent.

In an effort to keep the car from being damaged, I leave it close behind the other one, so that when the vandals appear, the porch light automatically turns on. At least this allows them to complete their masterpieces with less chance of hurting themselves. Bottom line: there is generally a full car length of free space behind my car.

On some occasions, I've maneuvered like a truck rodeo contestant, inching back and forth with much turning of wheels and adjusting of mirrors, to make it out of the three-car trap. This usually ruts the lawn somewhat, but as long as it doesn't happen in the spring, the grooves even out over time.

Let's be clear here: there is no possibility of a double width driveway. The gas and water lines would end up being directly under any such extension, so that in the event of a problem, a Bobcat would be required.

I think there are two influences at work in this whole situation. America's car-centered culture demands convenience. Why have a car if you have to walk more than twenty feet to its doors? Hence, the development of valet parking services, the drive-thru church, the drive-by funeral home, and, of course, the fast food joints.

Apart from the obvious air and noise pollution that occurs while drivers wait impatiently at a window, there is much to be said for not having to get out of a car to go into a pharmacy, especially when you look at the lineup at the dispensary, and the distance you have to travel to the rear of the store to get in line. It's always good to know that the fast-food joints are doing their damnedest to get you fed up faster.

The other influence, sad to say, is thoughtlessness. I never park in anyone's driveway unless there is a good reason, or better yet, an invitation, to do so. Why would I want to inconvenience myself by having to go out to the car (especially in winter) to move it so that the host can get out of his own driveway? Why waste the gas and generate the pollution?

Even if I were carrying, say, a trunk load of concrete blocks, my instincts are to deliver them and then find a parking space elsewhere until it comes time to leave. Who knows? If there were an emergency, wouldn't it be better not to have blocked the paramedics?

But judging from the number of perfectly-abled drivers who pull up into a handicapped parking space, hang a permit from the mirror (or not) and march into the shopping centers, this whole parking thing is never going to go away until the car does.

So I'm sorry, I guess this was a rant after all. I guess I'm guilty of the desire for automotive convenience after all.

Breathing room.

Well, it's been a different few days. It only took a couple of minutes for the oncologist to send J to be admitted at the local hospital for lung function testing. After four full days there, the news came back: her cancer has started to show up in her lungs.

A couple of transfusions and a chemo drip later, we have a new noisemaker in the house: an oxygen concentrator, connected through a nasal cannula . I've consigned the machine to the middle bedroom with the door shut, where only my collection of teddy bears will suffer the annoyance. If this proves inadequate, we may try the upstairs, with a hole through the closet ceiling for the tube.

Already the newest adopted cat has demonstrated a pernicious interest in the 50 foot long tube. To fend off what may be inevitable fang marks, I've taped the tube to the wall until it reaches our bedroom. J should be able to shake off any attacks when she feels the need to venture out. We use a spray bottle of water along with a vigorous "Get off the table!" as our weapons of choice.

If you really think about it, a few decibels of rattling are a small price to pay for the possibility of extending life expectancy.

Live long and respire!

Tourist Trap

The article in Wikipedia under the heading "tourist trap" explains very clearly and with a hint of irony the meaning of the phrase, and lists a large number of the better-known places. The final entry under North America is, "the Tennessee cities of Sevierville, Pigeon Forge, and Gatlinburg have numerous tourist traps."

"Numerous" is an understatement which could be enriched by editing it to read "too numerous to mention".

OK, so Dolly Parton was born in Sevierville. That explains the Dollywood attraction. But how about all those other wall-to-wall traps that do everything from stuff you with pancakes to fling you around in a vertical wind tunnel.

None of the above, not even the food, attracted us. As the driver on the trip, I had to negotiate the passage through Gatlinburg to the mountains. Crawling along at an average of perhaps two miles an hour reminded me of the time we drove to Canada up I-75 and got caught in an interstate parking lot between two exits miles apart. I seem to recall it took 2 hours to drive 10 miles.

Since we're not great photographers, I figured that YouTube would fill in the gaps.

This video gives you one person's experience driving through the town. Traffic, people, and multiply by two, and you have our experience.

The real attraction, of course, is the mountains themselves, and the thrill ride is driving the twisty-turny US-441 that takes you to Clingman's Dome. Once there, we were content to watch the perpetual fog blow in over the slopes, and the hundreds of tourists who hiked up and down the trail. We were not among them. Although posted with handicap wheelchair signs, it is clear that an electrically-assisted chair would be the only reasonable way to hike to the top. Walking normally, the hike is 30 minutes to the outlook tower. We came, we saw, we demurred.

And then, there's the bears. This one clouted a car back a few years ago. That bear really knew how to trap tourists.

If you can't lick them, join them

Well, Sylvie is well on the way to adopting us. In fact, she already has. It's just that we have to keep her separated from the other cats so that there won't be pitched battles when they finally come together in the house. And, of course, she has to wait for a few more days until the clinic removes her powers of reproduction.

Spaying/neutering go a long way towards civilizing a stray, as most folk know. Sylvie will miss the excitement that goes with mating with some other local stray, the stress and responsibility of raising kittens two or three times a year, and the vulnerability to disease and early death that inevitably skews the feline actuarial tables.

The Feral Cat Coalition of San Diego puts it this way:

Many people assume their animals will survive when they move away and leave them behind. Contrary to popular belief, domestic animals do not automatically return to their "natural" instincts and cannot fend for themselves! Already, U.S. animal shelters are forced to kill an estimated 15 million homeless cats and dogs annually. ...

And think of the reproduction rate:

A pair of breeding cats, which can have two or more litters per year, can exponentially produce 420,000 offspring over a seven-year period.

The Feral Cat Coalition subscribes to the Trap-Neuter-Release theory that releasing a feral cat once it can no longer reproduce is the antidote to being overrun with cats. An opposing argument is, of course, the one that says that ferals become experts at avoiding traps, and hence they are not vaccinated against the deadly diseases that put the public, especially children, at risk. And this is in addition to the vast numbers of birds killed by cats.

A page at the University of Michigan, Detroit says:

If each outdoor cat only killed one bird per year, it would equal over 60 million birds annually.

Well, Sylvie, who doesn't know about all these facts and opinions because she doesn't spend any time on the internet, is quietly sitting in the Zinn Center at our back door, where, we hope, she will be protected from the nightly maraudings of various male cats and various raccoons of undetermined gender. In a few days, the great experiment of seeing whether she and Orange and Dusky and Kaboodle can co-exist in the same household will begin.

My guess is that there will be a few territorial puddles and some feral feces to clean up, and perhaps a number of free-floating balls of hair in the atmosphere, but the time will come when the ancient wisdom of cats will prevail, which is, I suppose, "a bird in the paw is worth two in the bush."

Robin In The 'Hood?

Yesterday, J spent several hours intently researching bird songs on the internets. She had noticed an unusually clear and melodious tune coming from somewhere in the neighborhood, a voice that seemed familiar, but yet one that she couldn't place. Off she went to the computer, and for the next four hours bird calls peeped, squawked, chirred and pippled from the speakers. This one was clearly complaining, "People never know our song tunes."

We had to leave for a drumming gig, so I busied myself loading the car. It was a day of audible contrasts. We played on the sidewalk and at the curb on a very busy street, with big diesel buses stopping beside us to board and discharge passengers. The store (10,000 Villages) had arranged for the group to celebrate Fair Trade Day, dedicated to the principle that if we're going to buy from other countries we should not take advantage of them. I bought a bamboo pan flute and J purchased a clay ocarina.

Unusually for the drummers, the noise levels out on the street were almost enough to silence them. The pedestrians had no trouble, and many paused for a while to listen. Some danced a bit, and some of the kids took over a djembe or two for a few licks. 

The band flailed away valiantly for three hours despite the physical layout. The musicians at either end could not hear their opposite companions well enough to stay crisply on the beat at times.

At dinner, J announced that she had found the bird song. It belonged to a baltimore oriole, who clearly believed in being heard and not seen. The identification of a baltimore oriole is relatively straightforward if you can see the bright orange breast and black head, but the bird is very creative when singing.

At one point, a technology company offered an in-field pair of binaural bird identifiers, the Song Sleuth, a portable device with a built-in sound matching algorithm that could identify the likely source of whatever you focused it on. According to the site, it was too expensive to manufacture for the target market ($299), but they're working on a new model and looking for a manufacturer. 

I hope they succeed, because as everyone knows, spring is the best time for birding: the birds are calling, the leaves are not fully out on the trees, and in the clear air of a fine spring day, what can be more satisfying than to know that even if you haven't seen it, you can be sure of the bird you heard. Meanwhile, pass the mnemonics, please.

Archaeology: can you dig it?

Yesterday, for something completely different, we took our portable GPS and set off for the Cincinnati Museum Center, a huge former train terminal from the 1900's when trains were the preferred intercity method of travel.

On arrival at the parking lot, we were told that all the handicapped spaces opposite the building appeared taken, so we parked in the main lot and tugged out the wheelchair. The wind chill was pretty palpable, but we survived the push up the sloping drive to the main building.  After a few attempts and some compression, we were able to get the 24-inch chair through the 24-inch doors, and proceeded to buy tickets to the Natural History Museum section.

We navigated several areas of the NH, mainly by trying to brake the chair from rolling down the interior ramps. Many exhibits display the natural history of Ohio. It gives one pause to contemplate the lower jaw of a mammoth, compare it with that of a mastodon, and realize that both stomped the Ohio landscape from the Ice Age until about 10,000 years ago.

As a learning center, this museum is not burdened by today's computerized electronics. Rather than clicking mice or breaking lightbeams, these exhibits tend to offer specimens mounted on the walls, with a bit of natural history narrative below, terminating in a question which can be answered by lifting up a cover, below which is printed the correct response. Most of these are multiple-choice. This simplistic, non-mechanical approach means, essentially, that the only thing that can go wrong is that a lightbulb may burn out inside a display case. In fact, the few displays that actually used computers didn't seem to be working.

Have you ever seen the underside of a blue jay? Perhaps. But all of the birds in the collection are mounted on their backs, so the undersides are pretty much all you see. This is interesting because it's not the usual way you see birds, except in flight, and they are too fast to study in that mode.

It took about two hours to move through to the end of the museum, which terminates in a display of the contents of a number of 19th century outdoor privies, excavated in the back yards of older houses in the earliest parts of the city. What is left of a 38-caliber revolver tossed down the hole is perhaps the most interesting of the many household articles and vast quantities of hand-blown bottles. This exhibit is artfully located just down the hall from the restrooms on the lowest level.

At 3:00 pm it would be time to watch the Omnimax film "Grand Canyon Adventure". We were led to the elevator, where we ascended to the globe-shaped theatre. While waiting for the current showing to release its audience, we bantered with a couple of older couples, who "always wanted to see the Grand Canyon/always wanted to go whitewater rafting".

The movie itself is an experience that can be, at times, disorienting. It's a bit like watching the news crawl at the bottom of a weather channel: when you look up at the main screen after watching the marquee scroll for a while, you could swear the screen was moving. But because the Omnimax is like having your head inside a globe, some scenes, such as lifting off over the edge of a mile-deep gorge, can make you feel as though you were actually on board the helicopter. It's not 3D, unless you mean disorienting, dizzying and death-defying.

So, yeah. We got our money's worth, and more. And we left promptly at 4:00 pm. Within 20 minutes, we were in a traffic snarl that came close to being a parking lot, on I75.  There had been "an accident". All it takes in the big cities is one car to depart from the norm, and we're all in trouble. I truly believe that an evacuation order from Cincinnati would be impossible to fulfil.

Some time later, after successive arguments with Jill, our GPS unit who seems always to want to bring you back to the route that you were taking when the trouble occurred, we stopped at a Cracker Barrel to fill the stomach and pass the time. On the wall were three old tools that evoked some reminiscences of my days in the cottage country of Central Ontario.

The first was a two-man crosscut saw. My Dad and my Uncle Sid (who is now about 98) are preserved on DVD cooperatively trimming the logs that underpinned our lakeside dock with one of these. 

The second was a drawknife, used to rip the bark off branches when making wooden rustic furniture.

The third was a nipper, that I had seen a couple of times used by a blacksmith to pull the old nails from horses' hoofs.

Was that a day!

A trip I didn't enjoy.

A paradox. That's what it is. 

As a library systems person, I have always had the conviction that the library's computers must be kept running at all times. When I worked at the Thunder Bay Public Library many years ago, I sometimes suddenly woke up in the early hours of the morning, usually from the rumble of distant thunder. If lightning accompanied it, I would instinctively feel around for my clothes, and before the storm hit, I would be dressed and out the door, on my way to the workplace.

In those days, electric power supplies were not as sophisticated (for the money) as are today's versions. Even though our computer room circuits were protected by a massive Uninterruptible Power Supply, they were not certain to survive everything nature could throw at them. And in any case, the batteries on that UPS could only keep things running for perhaps a half hour at best.  Today's versions have software that can phone a designated person in the event of a failure. (Ever notice that phone service rarely goes down, while power is more vulnerable?) 

Our service probably could have included that extra cost feature, but did not, but in any case, it didn't matter. My instincts served me well. I was like a wolf in an earthquake zone. 

After the storms passed, I would be there to restart any gear that was down, and assess damages if any. In those cases when the event was prolonged, I might have to restore files from a backup tape.

Today, I work in a system that has a very large UPS in a separate computer room with environmental conditioning. There are about a dozen servers, and some other computers drawing power from the room's own service panel. Power interruptions are, thankfully, rare, and when they occur, the UPS generally gives us an hour to shut things down gracefully.

So why did the entire room shut down instantly yesterday, servers, services, UPS and all?

We decided to set up a brand new server that will take over the duties of one of the ones due to retire. I crawled under the counter to remove a small power supply (also known as a "wall wart") that powered a set of computer speakers, to make room for a power strip with six receptacles on it. I plugged it in, and then plugged in the power supply. As I pushed it home, I noticed a small blue spark. Instantly the room went dark and quiet, except for the emergency lighting and the light from the windows. HUH?

This was a case of the 25-cent engine part bringing down the plane. Presumably, a faulty power strip shorted out when the plug was inserted, and the main circuit breaker tripped. It was electrifying.

It took my boss and me a few minutes to find the solution, because, unlike many breakers whose handles flip to the half-open position, everything seemed unchanged. Finally, he toggled the main switch, and the lights came back. Half an hour later, we had the servers back up.

Fortunately, the incident occurred on a day when the first heavy snowstorm of winter had rolled over the area. Not many people were making it to the library in any case, so the main complaint was that users couldn't get on the internet for a while.

I'm no electrician, but I would suspect that the UPS basically protects the circuits from incoming events. When the wall wart shorted out the circuit, it did was not a power failure or a surge from the main supply. It was a problem from the circuit itself, flying back to the main breaker, which did its job. Don't try this at home, if you can.