Carthago delenda est

I am avoiding the media today.

Ten years ago I was working at Jo-Ann Fabrics trying to get the Fall quarter visuals up to standard.  I had been up with my team all night setting and re-setting pumpkins and ghosts on the sales floor and decided I needed to put my head down for a bit.  Michelle came in about 8 in the morning (Chicago Time) telling me that a plane had hit the World Trade Center in New York.

I thought she was joking, told her it wasn’t funny what she was trying to do, and tried to put my head back down in my office.  She came over and bonked me on the head and told me to come into the break-room to look and see for myself.

{If I have the time and inclination, I’ll add the entry from my journal that day.}

I first started to study Classical Greek and Latin to counter my fundamentalist family members.  I wanted a way to talk about things that are important to them without debating their theology.  I WILL debate their theology when it is important that I make my point, but don’t make a habit of it.

What I didn’t realize was that studying Latin and Greek would give me as much political and historical insight as it has.  All of the sudden I start developing informed opinions based on historical sources instead of “Oh, it seems to me…” without knowing exactly why it seemed this way or that.

And that brings me to my early-morning September 11th musings as I avoid news feeds, newspapers, and get ready for my Sunday classes.

When the buildings collapsed I had this vague feeling of doom and gloom.  It wasn’t just that the buildings fell and the horror of what was going on in New York.  It was a sense of political dread.  It was like looking into a volcano. The nice thing is that the Patriot Act and its decommissioning of the Constitution didn’t surprise me.  The invasion of Afghanistan and  Iraq seemed like a foregone conclusion.

Enter: Carthage.

Except that George Bush is certainly NO Cato. You can see that in the streets of Kabul and Baghdad.  So either we are in some parallel First Punic War and are going to be pushed to the limit and see history out to the Third or we are floundering and poking Carthage in the eye ruining our reputations internationally.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthago_delenda_est

Of course, this needs to be developed more, and I barely have the slightest idea what I’m talking about, but I really think there is something to it.

It Was More Than A Month Before Hallowe’en, George

I am avoiding the media today.

It is early and I have to get ready for classes, but September 11th always bites me in the ass.
For me it will always be the day that George W. Bush decided to start channeling a learning disabled version of Cato.

I will write more tonight after class, but I hate what this has become.

Be Careful What You Consider A Solution

I was reading about Easter Island and the monoliths (Moai) on Atlas Obscura.

I vaguely remembered from school that there were almost no trees on the island and that there were all of these mysteries that surrounded them.  Who built them? Why? How?

I didn’t realize that we know the answers to most of these questions, nor did I realize just how horrible the history of the island was.

I started to think about the island based just on the Atlas Obscura entry.  It got me thinking about use of resources and problem solving.  There was an idea forming in the back of my mind that was saying: “Be careful what you consider to be a solution to your problems” which then developed into: “Easter Island is what happens when you don’t pay attention to the environmental impact you have as a human being and rely too much on spiritualism and/or religion to solve your problems”.

The island is only 45 square miles total. In the 16th and 17th centuries, statue building accelerated, and the population grew, reaching around 40,000. Then, around the year 1160, the whole thing collapsed. Some 2,000 people live on the island now, and the landscape is barren. No trees grow here except for a few invasive and problematic eucalyptus groves.

The article describes how the island’s original inhabitants at one point used the lumber on the island to build fishing boats and move the giant moai.  It briefly describes how the monoliths were created and moved into place, but the most interesting thing is what they were:

These sculptures (often called heads, though they are in fact disproportionately sized full-body figures, often seen buried halfway in dirt) represent specific ancestors. These representations were erected between the village and chaos — the ocean — as a wall of protection. The two major tribes of Easter Island lived in a tropical rain-forest, a paradise of food and fishing, with plenty of time to put into the Great Work of the statues.

This was leading me to think of the island in comparison to the West in the 21st century.  How we think about our resources, how we rely on religion and spiritualism as a means of problem solving instead of really looking at the problems that surround us.

Are we going to be as stuck as the original island’s inhabitants were when the oil runs dry or becomes too expensive?  How will we deal with that?  Will we erect huge monoliths to help or protect us?  Will we use up the last of our resources in an attempt to delay the inevitable?

How could a people smart enough to navigate to tiny landfalls on thousands of miles of Pacific ocean and capable of vast engineering projects like the Moai statues be so unable to deal with the coming of a doom which must have been obvious on such a tiny island?

It may have been easier then we imagine. A few years ago, locals on Easter Island discovered they could catch and sell lobsters from around the island. They then caught and sold those lobsters until there were no more.

Though much is known about the Moais, there’s lots more archaeology to do on Easter Island than digging up stone sculptures. Researchers are just starting on the villages — and their story is one of the most compelling on Earth: Humans can make their own bad luck. In the case of Easter Island, ever larger and larger statues were not the right defense.

Of course nothing is ever easy or as simple. *

When you read the Wikipedia article linked at the beginning of this post, you get a much richer and more traumatic history of the island.
Slave raids, Catholic missionaries, intentional germ warfare (smallpox), and any number of horrible, monstrous things.  So it isn’t as clean and easy as the shorter article makes it out to be.  Few things are.

It did get me thinking, though, that perhaps if the island were closer to the rest of the colonial possessions it could have ended up more like Haiti – perhaps the reason that Haiti is still what it is is because it has proximity to both help and information?

Just thinking about stuff.

*In all fairness, to Atlas Obscura, they are an amazing website that isn’t meant to be comprehensive.  Their goal is to bring neat places to the attention of people who are interested in… neat places.  I am in no way criticizing their narrative, just adding to it and making some commentary that is outside of their scope.

 

 

You Can Blame Or Try To Understand

But at the end of the day, you have to find a way to PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER.

I was having an email conversation with my friend Mitch the other day.  He said that, in his opinion, one cannot blame their parents or anyone else for things going wrong in their lives after the age of 30.  It is hard, but I think he is right.  You can try to understand it, but there comes a point when you have to just deal with things and not blame, blame, blame.

It is harder than you think.

I have to find the time and energy to get this together.  There is a lot I need to do and if I wallow in my own pain it both magnifies it and negates the pleasurable things that are going on in my life and takes so much of the energy that could be channeled into the positive (or at least productively neutral) things.

This is a real problem.

I have noticed recently that my general tone is getting more and more negative and that needs to stop.

It is one thing to point out where there are problems, but when you dwell on them instead of trying to solve them you are in trouble.  I am getting to the point where I am in trouble.

Classes have started this week, and with them underway, things need to be changing.  They need to be changing fast and they need to be changing thoroughly.  I am giving myself FOUR MONTHS to turn this boat around.

So starting today, I am sitting down and coming up with an outline for the next four months.  There is no reason for this to be this way.  No reason whatsoever.

Stay tuned and/or come along for the ride.

We will see what happens.

Perspective.

I’m NOT Happy

One of the things that a number of therapists suggest is to make your troubles ridiculous.  You take your emotional reaction to the problem and you scramble it up so that it becomes this stupid thing instead of this giant hand-wavey hysterical mess. It is a way of changing what it means to you.  You also learn to laugh at yourself in the process.
It works. I am going to have to record more of these.

And Then I Thought:

Unlike most every average human being since the beginning of the species at the age of 36 I have:

  • Lived longer.
  • Lived better.
  • Had better teeth.
  • Gone through less pain.
  • Worked less.
  •  Produced more.
  • Lived more honestly.
  • Lived a safer life.
  • Had more freedom.

Just trying to keep things in perspective.  While it may have been ok to have been born in the past 150 years (for me), boy howdy am I glad I wasn’t born in 922.

 

Awww… No, Wait… Oh, Nevermind…

I hate graffiti.*

I mean really, really hate graffiti.  It makes me angry on a cosmic level.  You want to express your distaste for the system?  Fine, whatever.  You are doing yourself no favors by doing it this way.  You want to tag SOMEONE ELSE’S property?!? Did YOU work for that?!? Did YOU bust YOUR ass to keep it tuckpointed and clean?!? Are YOU the one paying insurance premiums?!?

Jerks.

Graffiti makes me feel like some angry old Grandpa.

This makes me really angry
Nice. Really nice.
More B.S. Graffiti

Trash

Because the antique terra cotta needed some help.

Because the antique terracotta needed some help.

But then I came across this.  This “FORGIVE” graffiti has been popping up here and there throughout the city over the past few years.  Sometimes it will be up and obvious, sometimes it will be tucked away in a little corner.

And then I soften a little…

Forgive Graffiti

I get romantic about this.

I make narratives.  I think of things that could be… What does this mean?

More Forgiveness...

More Forgiveness

And then I think of James Baldwin and that maybe it is just a little but of that sensibility in all of it…

And I see this one:

Forgive Yourself, my friend...

Aww...

Following the drips from his paint can…

Drip Drip Drip...

Following....

Drip II

Following....

Up the block…

Drip III

Following...

Oh, man… nevermind.  Damnit…

Oh, nevermind...

Oh, nevermind...

You almost had me thinking you were something there for a second, Mr. Graffiti.  Almost.

*I think I have to note that graffiti in my mind isn’t the same thing as public murals or street art.  They serve very different purposes and operate on different planes.

If I read this ONE more time:

Please advise. 

Please advise. 

Please advise.

I hate it.  It drives me bananas.  There are way too many other ways you could phrase things without this little fleck of douchebaggery.

It always comes up in emails when there is something that the person is disputing or wants to correct:

Your mannequins are too expensive.  I will pay $75 for each, not $200.  Please advise.

I was under the impression that x, y, and z… and that is not the case, I would like a refund.  Please advise.

I am interested in the 3-6 class but can only come every third week and have to bring special (whatever).  Please advise.

I really try hard to be kind and understanding, but I HATE this phrase.  It feels very passive-agrressive to me.  Maybe I am wrong.  Maybe people think that it feels neutral and corporate.  Maybe I am the one with the issue.  BUT FYI: It feels threatening and almost ENSURES that you won’t get what you are looking for.  At least from me.

So consider yourself advised.

 

Don’t roll your eyes, Don’t roll your eyes, Don’t roll your eyes…

A few years ago I stumbled on a series of Anthony Robbins’ self-help cds at the thrift store.  I guess whoever bought them gave them away when they moved into their Castle on the beach in St. Croix.

Anthony Robbins

You can roll your eyes, but it does help some of us.

In all seriousness, I was grasping at straws when I found them.  I was (am) skeptical about self-help. I have a parent who turned to them (not Robbins, but others in the “rage therapy” vein) and I blame them for a lot of my late childhood issues.

But I was struggling.  It was 2005-06. I had no support, was essentially bankrupt, and had just spent the better part of the past year taking care of an alcoholic friend who manipulated me into one of the most soul-sucking friendships of all time.

I was desperate.

So I bought them and started listening.  I wasn’t doing it right. I was coming from an “I’ll show all of you assholes what I can do” instead of “Here I go! Watch me explore and develop my world!”.  It turns out that anger CAN drive you. The caveat is that it can only get you so far. In my case, I got up to 180 Lbs (in a good way), built an almost 3,000 square foot workspace from scratch, dated, traveled, and wrote a lot. Once you have grown and matured a little, it cools a bit and then you have to decide what to do with all of the emotion that you invested in these things that it created.  It taints the creation a bit.*  Others may not see it, but it does.

I’ve gotten better since then, but have gone back to those cds.  Friends make fun of me, and that is totally ok, but there are those of us who have no emotional tools to work with.  I am not a child abuse victim, have never been sexually abused, and enjoy what most people would consider to be a good helping of first-world racial privilege.  I can do just about anything.  I can make you an evening gown (or suit), tell you the best way to grow Paw-Paw trees, cure leather & hides, conjugate (some) Latin verbs, tell you the finer points of the NEC code as they relate to Chicago, make GREAT sutures (don’t ask how I know, please), and (poorly) code html.  I grew up with parents who told me that I “could do ANYTHING!” which meant that I could do anything with that little tidbit of motivation as long as it meant that I got married, became a doctor, and had millions of babies.

A lot of the breadth of my interests were mocked as silly.  Latin, especially.

So anyway:  I have picked up the Robbins series again and am listening to it with a more neutral ear.  My friend is dead, I have no romantic relationships, and I am running a business I never planned on having but enjoy more than most people enjoy their jobs.  I am in a good place to re-develop where I am going.  I can’t change who I am but I CAN change how I look at things and what is important to me.  Isn’t some of it ridiculous?  Yes, yes, it is.

And yet: One hour every morning is now going to be going back to the personal development basics.  To give myself the tools I wasn’t given and redirect a bit.  Kind of like adult braces: You are always going to have to wear that damned retainer because the bone is already formed.  You have to get over the anger and resentment that your parents didn’t take care of it when they should have and just move on.

* You should also know that if you connect it to music as inspiration, you will never be able to listen to those songs again.  And some of them are good. But nope – all you remember is the anger behind them and how that felt.  It is especially problematic if the person is dead or you really really liked the songs.

 

It’s Putalca Time!

I originally wrote this on an old MySpace Blog 12 June 2007 at 10:45 P.M.

I wanted to rescue it since I really don’t use the MySpace page anymore.

It’s Putalca Time!

Current mood:contemplative

Putalca. I always think of the word the first or second week of June.

I had a friend in high school named Marc, who was dyslexic and a little backwards. We would play cards with Marc and his wife when we got off work at the Burger King. I guess you could say that it was strange my friend Kristie and I were hanging around a 40-some-odd year old couple when we were 16 and 17, drinking beer, and playing cards in the side yard until three or four in the morning. But it was something different from the faux-goth angst I dealt with at school, and a whole lot more interesting in terms of life experience.

I did not sit down tonight to write about my relationship with Marc and Judy. In their side yard there was a large tree – one of my favorite trees – a Catalpa. Catalpas are a favorite of mine for a number of reasons.

Functionally, they are the perfect wood for fence-posts and damp areas. The wood is dense and has a green cast. Because the live trees can take a lot of abuse, they are also good for tree houses. Once the tree is cut, the wood is difficult to split and does not work very well for lumber or firewood. This was good for me, as I had a special affinity for them. More on that later.

Aesthetically, they are a kind of strange and knobby tree.

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They remind me, in the fall and winter, of strange and burdened old men. Crooked and worn, they are easy to pick out of the dormant woods. In the spring and summer they remind me of an old man in love. The leaves come on fast. They are large and heart shaped and have a heft to them. The first week in June, they start to bloom cascades of creamy white flowers spotted with orange and brown that smell sweetly and fall from the tree. By the second week in June, they are well in bloom, and the smell of the flowers can carry for yards and yards.

Catalpa in bloom

My particular affection for the catalpa tree developed around age seven or so. I had always known what they were thanks to a forestry program in which so many of the kids in the country were enrolled. They were also used as plantings along property lines and in cemeteries, so they were very common in the near-south, where I grew up. We had two of them on each side of our sandbox.

These two catalpas were planted around the civil war and used to mark a large gate that connected the barnyard to pasture. By the time Dad built the sandbox, the pasture was long grown over and the barnyard had become our side yard. But there stood these strange trees. Our sandbox was a large 16 foot square made of 2x12s that Dad had filled with two tons of sand. We did not have a TV at the time, so I spent a lot of time in the sandbox over the next five years letting my imagination go. These trees helped.

I should mention that we did not have a TV because we had no electricity. Mom would play a battery operated radio in the kitchen, but if one wanted control over their music, the only option was a wind-up Victrola in the living room. That Victrola informed and fueled my fantasy life in the sandbox.

For those who may not know, a Victrola is a record player that plays the old 78 rpm standard records. You wind it up, put the record on, and then lower the needle onto the grooves. When you release the clutch under the spinner, the record starts to spin and sound is vibrated through a series of baffles in the front of the case. There is no electricity involved, and the longest record you can play is – maybe – 10 minutes. This is labor-intensive aural enjoyment for sure. By the 40′s they were for the most part obsolete in all but the most remote areas. Most everyone had switched to electric phonographs by the 30′s and 40′s.

Because they were out of favor early-mid century, there was not a whole lot of selection as far as music was concerned. While my friends were listening to what we would now call “the best of the 80′s” pour from their parent’s radios and cassette players, I was content with Operas staged in the teens and 20′s, JaZZ recorded in Chicago, traditional German hurdy-gurdy oom-pah-pah, and blues from Mississippi.

One of my favorite Operas was “La Traviata”. I understood it. The other was “Lucia di Lammermoor”. But these particular versions were special. I am probably one of the only people in my peer group who has heard Lily Pons sing. The scene that was the most powerful for me was the “Mad Scene” in “Lucia…..”. Here, even if you do not know what she is singing, you just feel that her life is crumbling and she is losing her mind as well as her body as she is getting ready to kill her husband. The part is written for a very dynamic soprano and its power was enough to bring me to my knees. I was eight or nine.

Well. I was still a little kid in the middle of nowhere and needed something to do, so I began to incorporate these operas in the sandbox. While my brothers played baseball, (which I refused to play) I staged elaborate operas in the sandbox. On the south side was the stage – the proscenium framed out with twigs and pieces of rags. The audience sat in very graciously sloped stadium seating and an old wooden ammunition box was propped up over the audience for the more respectable and genteel members of society who had the taste and good fortune to purchase private box seats.

Unfortunately, my audiences were very lean most of the spring and summer – except the first two weeks of June. These were my prime attendance weeks. All of the ladies would come out in their finest dresses.

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La Traviata and Lucia di Lammermoor would play to standing room only crowds. Almost all of those in attendance would be women. And, even though they were all wearing very similar garb, they were secure in that they were very, very elegant.

I think the gentlemen who were in attendance at these performances resembled popsicle sticks or clothespins. Probably the latter, as the clothesline was next to the sandbox.

One day, as Lucia was just getting ready to murder her bridegroom, my father decided he had had enough. I should be playing baseball and not “Lost in my own world” (his words). I ignored him when he asked me to join him and my brothers, I avoided him when he told me to join them, and I forgot that he wanted me to play ball when he outright demanded it. So Lucia was getting into her highest notes when my father started toward me. My back was to him, so I did not see it coming. Lily (who was playing the part of Lucia – duh) must have been frightened to death. She could see him coming, and yet she kept climbing the register. Up and up she went, higher and higher, when – throughout the audience – there was muffled shock as someone was yelling “WHEN I TELL YOU TO DO SOMETHING IT BETTER HAPPEN MR DO YOU THINK I AM KIDDING I AM TIRED OF YOU WITH YOUR HEAD IN YOUR OWN LITTLE WORLD OR UP YOUR BUTT AND YOU ARE GOING TO PLAY BALL WITH YOUR BROTHERS”

Imagine the audience’s shock and horror as my father stomped them all into the sand as he jumped over my shoulders. In my head, stages were crashing as the gilded columns fell into the orchestra pit. Women were running every which way as their lacy petticoats were torn from their gowns. Men were driven, feet first, into the floor of the opera house. And there I stood. Unable to do anything about it.

I did end up playing ball that day – all the while thinking about the carnage in the sandbox. I don’t think I ever staged another opera at that particular venue. It was deemed too dangerous. The foundations must have been bad. We moved a few of the performances to the more secluded venues near the lake, and eventually the troop disbanded. Or I grew up a little.

I am not sure what made me first think that Catalpa flowers looked like Victorian ladies when they are inverted, but to this day I look forward to the first two weeks or June. I am very lucky that there are Catalpas in Chicago. I go to the park and eat lunch around them, let them fall on me, and before I leave I always remember to set up a few of them as if they were having a small get-together. Theatre troop veterans having a laugh at tragedy they escaped from that tense afternoon in June sometime around 1983.

Indulgent Redemption

I am going to try to be blunt but not offensive here. It will be hard for me, but in the interests of not seeming too ignorant, I have a nascent thought about what I have always privately called “indulged redemption”.

I was reading Metafilter today and came across this post.

In my mind, indulgent redemption is when one squanders a good deal of time and energy in things that don’t matter and then (TA-DA) finds their redemption in something outside of themselves.  Usually it involves lots of judgment and sometimes it even gives birth to screeds or political movements.  In my mind, it is almost always a negative thing.

I started thinking about it when I was a kid.  My dad, when he first met my mother in the early 1970s, was a fraternity party-boy.  My mother grew up with alcoholics and so wasn’t thrilled with being around it.

So in order to court her, he made a HUGE deal of not drinking anymore.  He was from a teetotaling family anyway, so it was fairly easy for him to do it.  So I grew up with one side of the family raging alcoholics and the other side prim teetotaling Methodists.  It was interesting, to say the least.

And that was my first introduction to indulgent redemption.  It comes close to martyrdom, but not quite.  It is more like wearing a judge’s gavel around your neck 24/7 because you deserve it.

This is just the beginning of an idea… Maybe I’ll get more into it later.

Oh! THAT is what it is!

I picked up a book a few years ago called The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, The World’s Most Astonishing Number.

Phi

This, my friends, is Phi.

I have been reading and re-reading it for the past two years and have never really gotten a good sense of it. I get that it has to do with the Fibonacci Sequence, but I am not a math major. While the idea of Φ (phi) makes sense to me, the nuts and bolts of why it makes sense don’t… make sense.  I mean it is the number or ratio I use when I don’t have an image in my head – chamfering an edge on a piece of wood, establishing a ratio of height-width, et-cetera.  1.618 just works.

So I re-read and play around with it, but it just doesn’t set in my brain.

And then I stumbled across this thread the other day on Metafilter. It is about a 13 year old kid who is experimenting with Fibonacci to harness solar power more effectively based on his observations of trees.

Then my friend Erin posts a link to this story.  And all of the sudden it makes sense.  The article isn’t very well written.  It seems rushed and a little cobbled together, but it has this:

My investigation started with trying to understand the spiral pattern. I found the answer with a medieval mathematician and an 18th-century naturalist. In 1209 in Pisa, Leonardo of Pisano, also known as “Fibonacci,” used his skills to answer a math puzzle about how fast rabbits could reproduce in pairs over a period of time. While counting his newborn rabbits, Fibonacci came up with a numerical sequence. Fibonacci used patterns in ancient Sanskrit poetry from India to make a sequence of numbers starting with zero (0) and one (1). Fibonacci added the last two numbers in the series together, and the sum became the next number in the sequence. The number sequence started to look like this: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34… . The number pattern had the formula Fn = Fn-1 + Fn-2 and became the Fibonacci sequence. But it seemed to have mystical powers! When the numbers in the sequence were put in ratios, the value of the ratio was the same as another number, φ, or “phi,” which has a value of 1.618. The number “phi” is nicknamed the “divine number” (Posamentier). Scientists and naturalists have discovered the Fibonacci sequence appearing in many forms in nature, such as the shape of nautilus shells, the seeds of sunflowers, falcon flight patterns and galaxies flying through space. What’s more mysterious is that the “divine” number equals your height divided by the height of your torso, and even weirder, the ratio of female bees to male bees in a typical hive! (Livio)

And there you have it.  The sequence explained.  I think I am going to pick up the book again once classes start and take another crack at it.  I think I can really get it this time around.

Agriculture Blog Is Up And Running

Just finished setting up the Agriculture blog I have been wanting to get going for a while now: Rural Pursuits.  You can click on the link or go to http://blog.tchad.ag.

Overall, I am happy with it.  It does need just a little tweaking, but it is there.  I have tons of things in the pipeline that I am writing – everything from Hedge Apples to Horses.

Ok, getting called away for real work now.  Stay tuned.

And Here We Go Again

So the Summer is almost officially over and I am back at the Workroom trying to make things happen.
I sat down last night and very loosely cobbled together a set of numbers that need to happen between now and the end of the Spring classes 2012.  It is A LOT, especially for what I do here. So I need to get on the ball and not just wait for my MacArthur genius grant to come through.

There won’t be any clothing made this year – at least not until the late Spring – I am thoroughly burnt out on making clothing for the time being and the idea of making a dress sends me into paroxysms of anxiety.  I am thinking of coming up with more designs and extending/developing the way they would be produced, but that is IT.

Instead I am going to try to develop the classes and other facets of the business.  This is going to include some instructional video work,  some language instruction, and more than a little high-end agricultural development in both Wisconsin and Indiana.
Today I have two girls coming up to work for a bit and then it is on to getting the Workroom up and running.  With Greg’s estate, the extended Summer vacation, and my general malaise since March… Well, the place could use some tending-to.

But I feel more put together than I have for a very long time.  It is funny how that works.

 

 

It Is Funny You Mention Demons…

After the Fire Demon that got his poor dimensional portal burnt up happened, I thought I would be done with demons for this trip.

Nope.

I was riding with my brother and his wife today.  They had just picked me up from the coal cabin I was staying at and were taking me to Grandma Schlachter’s house to spend the rest of the afternoon before either of them had to go to work. We drove down Hwy 245 past the small house they used to live in on our way.
It is a neat little farmhouse with a garage, outbuildings, and barn.  It is a very sweet little setup.  I liked it.

But then Bobby (that’s my brother) said: “I am so glad we moved.  The old lady was getting to be too much for me.”  I pressed him a little and he told me that they thought the place was haunted.  He said something about being driven crazy by ghosts when my sister-in-law piped up and said “It wasn’t a ghost, it was a DEMON”

Now, let’s do a little setting-of-scene here.  It will help you understand what is going on as we drive through Santa Claus (yes, that is really a town), Indiana.

My sister-in-law wants desperatly to be a good 7th Day Adventist-slash-fundamentalist.  Nevermind the fact that she has a mouth like a sailor, married a muslim in her first marriage, a rabid atheist (that would be my brother) in her second, or can’t distinguish any particular version of the bible.  Forget that she has only the loosest grip on any theology whatsoever. She knows what she wants to be and grasps at straws blindly to get there.  It makes for some interesting (if uncomfortable) family dinners to say the least.

So I look at her and say “Demon?”. “Yeah, a Demon!  Amir (that is her son by her first marriage) said that it would blow in his ear!  And I felt it too!”

Now.  I grew up around a LOT of fundamentalists.  The world was always ending, the end was coming, the coming was at hand, the end is nigh, et-cetera, et-cetera, et-fucking-cetera.  I am used to this kind of talk.

As an adult, I have found that it doesn’t work to directly counter what the person is saying.  What you have to do is engage them without insulting them or discounting the ridiculous thing that JUST CAME OUT OF THEIR MOUTH.

Needless to say, it is a battle.

So she mentions that she both believes in demons and thinks one was haunting her at the place in Spencer county.

Another aside: This is the same sister-in-law who told me that she doesn’t believe in medicine or pharmacology because “You know where we get the word “phamacology” and “pharmacy” don’t you?  We get it from the Latin word for evil magic.* Why would you want to give your children evil magic?”  Did I mention that she is an RN and is going for her PA?  Yeah. That.

So knowing that she had a love of etymology and that it was important to her in making theological decisions,  I thought it would be a good time to say:

“You know where we get the word ‘demon’?  It comes from the Greek word Dæmones!’ (‘ΔΑΙΜΟΝΕΣ’); which were not evil spirits, but rather neutral or positive spirits. In fact, Plato said that at Socrates’ trial he [Socrates] attributed his inspiration to his daemones.” {You, as a reader, can read more about Socrates’ trial here.}

She said: “Well, they must have been wrong or not know what they are talkin about!” She believes that the English language has been around “at least since the Romans”.

I said that it wasn’t until the Christian era we came to understand demons as malevolent or dark.  Well, she wasn’t having any of it.  She looked at me as if I had just said:  “Follow me to the dark side and let me rape your children while you eat the flesh of your mother. ” For. Serious.

And that was where demons in the real sense came into my sabbatical for a second time in as many weeks. Personal demons?  Well, that is a totally different story.  They are an everyday occurrence.

*We really don’t.  Here is the etymology for the word pharmacology/pharma derivatives.  They are Greek in origin. Considering it comes from the period after Christians destroyed nearly ALL of the world’s learning, well, I am surprised that we got this far <insert more rant here>.

And just for fun:

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Algol

I’ve… Been Working On The Railroad…

Pretty soon the website for Rural Pursuits will be up and running, but in the meantime, I am helping my friend’s sister around her place.

Getaway farms is a great place that Greg’s sister runs by herself.  Try managing 15 acres, 7 horses, a huge barn and a track and see how far behind you get.

One of the jobs we tackled yesterday was getting old railroad ties up and out of the ground in a corner of the yard that used to be garden and grading it back into lawn.

Hauling Railroad Ties

There were 15 of these damn things!

Here is the thing:  When you tell me there is work to be done, I turn into a Real German®.  Not the happy lederhosen wearing beer drinking German that you see at the Bierstube, but a hardcore task master that stays on task and WILL complete the job.
We were laughing together as we dug out chinese elms and maple trees.  There was a little whining halfway through, but we powered through.  At one point, she was ready to give up and go eat.  I said: “Let’s finish this and then we can eat.  Let’s power through.  We get no comfort until the work is DONE!”  To which she replied: “OK! OK!  I know what happens to us Poles when we get under the thumb of a German!”

So the day went well – we worked in really humid windless conditions, changing clothes 2x because we couldn’t stay cool or dry, but we. got. it. done.

Needless to say, I don’t normally look like this after a day of work:

After pulling railroad ties for 7 hours.

Done.

 

 

Spartacus, Jesus, And The Lack of a Fourth Servile War

I would like to read about this, so if this is your line of work and you want to steal this for a paper of some kind, please do.

I was thinking that there is some tie between Christianity and the lack of a fourth Servile War in Rome.

I don’t have any more for you than that, but you are welcome to it.

Thanks.

Reite Das Pferd /Nicht/ Das Pferd Wird Von Mir Geritten

I rode again today for the first time in a while…

Here we go!

My horse was Kayla, a chestnut Quarter Horse with (what seemed like) an even disposition.  Even until we got out on the track, that is.  She was pulling me this way and that and then started cantering to the barn.

View to the North as I got dragged along the track.

View to the North as I got dragged along the track.

We eventually came to an understanding, but not before a couple of scares.  Once we began to understand each other, we really had a nice time.

Riding in the practice field.

Riding in the practice field.

Like Cyndi was saying: Horses just want a leader.  The herd mentality is strong and they need that direction.  If they don’t get it, they assume it for themselves.

Out of the Gate!

Out of the Gate!

So we rode for a while in the heat and it was really nice.

A lot of the time I will talk to myself in a kind of broken piginy German.  In this case, I kept repeating “Reite Das Pferd! Nichts Das Pferd Wird Von Mir Geritten!”  A real German would laugh at that, I think… They would rather see something like: “Gerittente Pferd” or something, but whatever.  I use the word Tagleuchter too, so what do you want?

I know what you want.  You want more pictures from Getaway Farms.

Well, here you go:

 

 

The Champagne of Beers Tastes Like Child Abuse to Me

I think I made my Uncle Roger mad.

He is the beer expert in the family and I asked him what made Miller High Life beer taste so specific.  There is this kind of astringent peak-i-ness to it that I can taste and smell from a mile away.

My Uncle Gary (his brother) used to drink it all the time.  He was not a very nice person and was pretty hard on me and my brothers in the name of “manly fun”. This included being picked up by the ears, being thrown around, and any number of other fun things… all while surrounded by the distinct bouquet of MHL.

So I asked Uncle Roger what made the flavor so different so that when I am talking about Miller High Life beer I can say “oh, it is the yeasts” instead of “it tastes like child abuse”. In my mind, the smell of child abuse isn’t whiskey and cigarettes or leather or rope.  It isn’t duct tape or the basement closet with its mold and slightly damp air… it is MHL.

Roger said that it probably IS the yeasts.  He did not comment on the child abuse.