Family

Posts about my family.

Carthago delenda est

Tchad

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.

You Can Blame Or Try To Understand

Tchad

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.

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

Tchad

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!

Tchad

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.

What Should Be America’s Version of “Never Forget”*

Tchad

When I was in Evansville, IN last month, I did a lot of walking.  I would walk from my mother’s house on Madison Avenue just East of Highway 41 to the library downtown.

These walks took me straight down Washington Avenue to Haynie’s Corner, where Washington goes left to S.E. 2nd Street and right to Parrett and Third Street.  This was not entirely unintentional.  Besides being the most direct way to the new Central Library** it took me past the corner of Third and Parrett Streets.

Third and Parrett Streets Evansville Indiana

Third & Parrett Streets, Evansville, Indiana. Where did the marker go?

The intersection is one of those strange cut-in intersections that is a result of the original Evansville plat being SE-NW and growing due East and North.

I was looking for something specific.  When I was in high school I brought my Grandma into town for lunch one day and we went walking.  She brought me to this weird little intersection to show me something.  A plaque.  I wanted to get a picture of it.

But there was nothing to be found.  I asked around and a few people say they remember it.  I know it was there when I moved to Chicago in 2000.  Now I am pissed.

The plaque commemorated a Civil War refugee camp that used to be there.  It doesn’t seem like much to some folks, maybe. To me it is part of my core.

I put away thinking about it when I came back to the city until I stumbled across this thread on Metafilter a couple of days later.  I made a comment, but my mind was cloudy and I wasn’t thinking as clearly as I could have been.  I NEEDED to respond, though, so I did. Now I feel like I need to flesh it out a bit.

The Metafilter thread was a link to The Civil War Isn’t Tragic, an article by Ta-Nehisi Coates.  Ta-Nehisi writes for the Atlantic and has written some of the best modern social and racial commentary in his time there.

I have the same reaction to the Civil War that he does.  It does not mean as much for me and where I am today as it does for him (I am white and he is black) but we are in agreement.

It drives me nuts when I hear or read about Southern Romanticism, Civil War battle reenactments, or how maybe slaves had decent masters and it wasn’t all that bad… It drives me absolutely bananas when I am in Southern Indiana and see a Confederate flag as a bumper sticker or flying from a truck or in a window.

The Civil War wasn’t tragic.  It was the first step in what should have been the real leveling of American society.  It was a bloody birth that gave us the opportunity to make things right.  And we squandered it.

Let’s start at the beginning…

This is my Aunt Sarah Elliott:

Sara Elliott

Sarah Elliott*** c. 1880

 Sarah was born in the late 1840s in Elliott, IN.  Her parents were Welsh-Irish immigrants who were farmers, devout Methodists, and proud American abolitionists.  She grew up with the idea that one man shouldn’t own another.  It was part of their interpretation of the American identity that everyone really IS equal. One of the family sayings was (and still is): “If you are good enough to work for me, then you are good enough to eat at my table”.  When there were too many workers to eat in the dining room properly, tables would be set up on the farm and everyone ate al fresco. We are in the United States!

Her brother, William Elliott, was quick to volunteer for Union service when the war broke out. He served in the 42nd Indiana Volunteer Infantry from October of 1861 until October of 1864.

William Elliott Tombstone, 42nd Indiana Infantry

William's tombstone at Bluegrass cemetery in Elliott, IN

She then spent time with family in Evansville during the conflict at that refugee camp helping people get settled and reinvent their lives while her brother fought. He was taken prisoner at Perryville, KY at one point and was discharged in October of 1864 in Rome, Georgia.

The cedar trees in our front yard on our property where I grew up were trees that he brought back in his suitcase from the battle of Lookout Mountain.

Cedar, Juniperus Virginiana, from battle of Lookout mountain.

Cedar, Juniperus Virginiana, from battle of Lookout Mountain in Elliott, IN.

After the war, the family tried to do what they could to help reconstruction along.  Sarah and her mother took in orphans that were wandering the countryside and sent them to school so that they wouldn’t be taken advantage of by farmers who were using the refugees as cheap (often horribly abused and mistreated) labor.  They worked in town to help women get work and Sarah taught freed slaves that were now in Indiana to read.

All of this is to say that I grew up being PROUD of what these people did.  I grew up hearing about how OUR PEOPLE (meaning my family, not white people generally) did our part for the American struggle for equality.  I grew up with my Grandma lamenting that Southerners and Copperheads prevented a proper reconstruction and brought on the racial woes that we as a country had to face for decades after what should have been the beginning of the end of it. I grew up with the idea that April 9, 1865 is when the American dream of real independence truly began.

What does this have to do with anything?  A whole damn lot.

Being from original Lincoln Republican stock, it makes me sick that there has been a shift in the way we look at the Civil War and what it meant to the people fighting.  You hear about the tragedy of brother-against-brother and you read about how it wasn’t really about slavery but about “State’s Rights” you hear any number of things that may have some grain of truth, but (and let’s use the crazy-people caps lock for this):

I AM HERE TO TELL YOU AS A DESCENDANT OF PEOPLE WHO ENLISTED AND FOUGHT, WHO WORKED TO MAKE THIS NATION AND THIS WORLD A BETTER PLACE… FOR THEM IT HAD EVERYTHING TO DO WITH SLAVERY.

RIGHT FROM THE BEGINNING.

They didn’t care about whether South Carolina printed their own money or Tennessee could  give women the vote.  They were concerned with their own souls in the eyes of their god and they were willing to fight and shed their own blood so that the taint of slavery would not be on them.

Period.

In fact, they weren’t particularly thrilled with the consolidation of Federal power that the war brought with it, but freedom trumped it all.  Freedom trumped everything.

As far as Lincoln changing direction into it and making it about slavery:
“The greatest thing about the President isn’t that he is one of History’s great leaders.  The greatest thing is that he admitted to being wrong and did what was right.” That was what my Grandma said about her mother’s take on his stance on slavery and why he is a hero.

So please, the next time you hear some idiot tell you that the Civil War was about State’s Rights and that slavery was secondary at best or perhaps even an accidental point in the whole affair, please remember my Aunt Sarah and her bother William.

Remember what they did and how they thought about it.  The problem is that time is slipping by and people like me – people who still have these kinds of stories to tell – are going away without writing them down. Cedars in the front yard become “those trees that have been there forever” and Uncle Will becomes an unmarked black and white photograph fading in a box in the attic.  I am lucky because I am so young for someone who has this much of a physical, historical,  and emotional connection to it. Eventually we will lose everyone who has a connection. That is how History gets re-written, and it isn’t good.

*Tangentially related: I was having a conversation with a Rabbi friend of mine.  We were talking about the origin of the Reform Jewish movement in Germany and America in the 19th century and it struck me that there is something similar in America as it relates to general race relations, how we understand each other… It got me thinking something… something about assimilation… Something about the idea that if people just put aside and tuck away what makes them different culturally things will be OK… If we just try to fit in well enough and blend blend blend everything will be fine… Like a battered woman who, if she just makes the dinner without burning it, will go one more day without being hit…

**Kudos to Evansville on the Library, by the way.  It is probably the nicest and most useful thing to have gone up in a long time.

***Her married name was actually Sarah Elliott Smith, but through a particularly gothic turn of events**** we don’t use Smith.

****She was the first wife of her future sister-in-law’s first husband and died of TB around 1888 at 40. Got it? It takes a second and isn’t really easy to grok without more background.  You will just have to wait for my genealogy blog to come out.

Indulgent Redemption

Tchad

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.

I Am… SUPERMAN!

Tchad

I have a Superpower.  I don’t talk about it much in the city because I don’t get to use it very much in town.

But it really is a Superpower.

I have no dermatological response to this:

Poison Oak

Nah-Nah-Na-Na-Nah

That, my friends, is Poison Oak and Poison Ivy. Plants I am not allergic to.  It may not seem like much to brag about, but when you are in the woods with people who are allergic to it (and most people are, I have found) you may as well be bullet-proof and trying to catch rounds coming from the end of a 357.  The reactions you get are the same.

So while anyone with me cowers and covers and runs from anything vaguely vine-y with three to five leaves, I am swinging from vines that would make them turn into oozing pustules of despair and regret.

Chiggers, on the other hand, are my kryptonite.

Bacchic Delights

Tchad

My brother and his 7th Adventist wife named their second child Bacchus.  Yes, you read that right.  The woman who doesn’t give her children medicine and believes that demons were haunting her named her son Bacchus.  Irony abounds at the Elliott estate.

In any case, you can’t name your son Bacchus and NOT have pictures of him picking grapes, now can you?  There would be something very not right about that.

And this makes me very happy:

Bobby and Bacchus picking grapes

My brother is the father of a GOD!

 

It Is Funny You Mention Demons…

Tchad

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…

Tchad

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.

 

 

Gaul Reiten V. Riding Gauls

Tchad

As I was riding today, I remembered part of an old WWII era joke I heard one of the old men at the VFW tell.

I always understood the German for horse as Pferd.  I was doing something online and came across Gaul as an alternative.
And all of the sudden the half-remembered punchline of this forgotten joke made sense.  It had to do with riding a Gaul (Frenchie) as if she were a Gaul (horse).

And there you have it.  A joke I don’t really remember that I just figured out after a 20 year comic pause.

 

 

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

Tchad

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

Tchad

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.

 

At some point everyone should learn this balance:

Tchad

It is something I’ve never been able to master.  This need to do and be (whatever) balanced with the need to care for others and make things right.  I am either running around trying to fix things, being the martyr that no one asked me to be or I am working on my projects for months on end.  Alone.

It is hard being a Secular Mother Theresa and/or a Spiritual Howard Roark.  I don’t advise it.

I found out this afternoon that a very good friend of mine is in the hospital (again) and will probably not make it through.  He is 61. This is the same friend I nursed from the beginning to end of his last hospitalization four+ years ago.

I couldn’t do it then, but did.  It almost killed me, but I did it.  I ended his extended hospitalization and rehabilitation for 4-6 months and dropped everything.  I almost lost everything as well.

When he started drinking again it made me sever ties.  I couldn’t cope.

And now this.  Some part of me, the younger more maternal part, says that I could have stopped this.  It tells me that just giving enough will fix things.  But I think emotional energy works like scientific energy:  It cannot be created or destroyed – it just changes form.

The last time it drained everything I had emotionally, financially, and physically.  I am still feeling the effects all these years later.  And yet I sit here thinking, thinking, thinking.

He never changed his condo admittance papers, so off I go tonight to find his will and business papers for his sister.  I am the only one allowed in the building unattended without a power of attorney.

It reminds me of a story of a distant cousin…

He worked out West for a widow as a ranch hand.  This would have been 30+ years ago.
She was a hopeless alcoholic, and as such was too much for him to deal with.  He tried, but it got to a point where he just had to go.

As he was leaving, she said: “You may have lost your loyalty, but I WON’T lose mine!”

He thought “sure, whatever” and cut out.

Fast forward 10 years.  He gets a notice.  He finds out that she has died and left him everything.  Every single thing.

Not that I am interested in my friend Greg’s things but there is some part of me that wants some kind of grand movie ending like that.  Some part of me that wants to show off how, even though he never stopped drinking, never straightened out his act, never did any of the things I thought he would when he essentially got a second shot at life…  that… I don’t know.  Validation? Vindication? Admiration?  What?

Then the hyper-rational side of me kicks in.  It has been my dominant side for the past few years.  It tells me that this has all (all of it!) been a lot of effort invested in someone to whom I am not related and with whom I don’t have  a romantic connection.  A LOT OF EFFORT.

Sigh.

So I’ll go to his condo after class tonight and find the appropriate papers.  I’ll think about where I want to go from here.  I haven’t been there in two years, so it will be hard to do it, but I will.

 

Mirror, Mirror, on the wall…

Tchad

If there are two things I rely on too much when I write they are ellipsis and exclamation points.

Sorry. I know better. I really do. But they are so tempting when I am trying to convey my tone of voice.

So here is an image I took the other morning when I noticed the mirror in the dining room had blushed a little more.

This was the mirror that my grandma used to get ready in. It is missing this tiny piece of walnut trim and so she never had it hanging up in my lifetime.

She did say, though, that is was interesting to have a mirror that was so obscured when you remember it being clear.

Her mirror aged with her.

 

And in keeping with the theme of the blog…

Tchad

I named the blog what I did because I seem to always be surrounded by conspiracy theorists.
This may be some kind of sample error, or it may be that my sense of the crazy is heightened from growing up with them. In any case, they are steel to my magnet.

If there is someone in the room who subscribes to any number of crackpot theories (they would balk at calling them theories) they engage me in conversation, and then before I know it *BAM* “Of course that was before the Masons and Oprah started stealing all of my ideas.”

Some of these people have ended up being good friends, but I have learned not to poke the bear in the cage as far as this stuff goes.  So Oprah and why your business aren’t going well are conversationally off-limits.

I do, however, like this image and may as well throw it up while I am fixing the images on the site and getting everything in order.

stay asleep gif

Stay asleep.