Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
Record Year
It’s a dubious honor, indeed, as our planet continues to simmer to increasingly frightening degrees (pun intended).
It’s pretty extreme to see the data so far above any previous record for such a consistent duration. You’d think the weather might start to reflect the conditions by growing more dramatic in intensity, bringing stronger hurricanes/typhoons, more intense hail in thunderstorms, and soaking rains that trigger flooding.
Oh, wait. That’s already happening all over the world. Yikes.
At least we got the rotting truss replaced on the log house up at the lake place.
All that remains is getting the new logs stained and sealed to match the rest of the structure. The roof is once again safely supported in case any wild climate-intensified weather makes its way to Hayward (WI).
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Some Songs
Yesterday afternoon, a song popped up on my random shuffled library playback and triggered a visceral response that none of the songs ahead of it did. My reaction wasn’t immediate beyond appreciating that I hadn’t listened to it for quite some time. Then I noticed it was building to an ending that has always been one I adore. The last two minutes of the 4-minute and 52-second song grabbed me.
I spontaneously told Cyndie, “Play this at the closing of my funeral.”
Now, I’m not currently in the thought process of planning for my funeral, so I don’t know where that idea came from. I also don’t know what it was in that moment that triggered my brain and body to react to the end of the song in the way I did.
Some songs just do that for us. Last night we coincidentally watched the 2018 version of “A Star Is Born” with Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga in which there is a scene that talks about the 12 notes between octaves…
…music is essentially 12 notes between any octave. Twelve notes and the octave repeats. It’s the same story told over and over forever. All any artist can offer the world is how they see those 12 notes. That’s it.
Sam Elliott’s character, Bobby, talking to Ally (Lady Gaga)
There is an article posted (Dec. 2022) on Psychology Today, “The Amazing Power of Music in Our Lives; Seven great reasons to incorporate music into your daily routine.” Music is good for our health.
I don’t know why some songs stand out more than others for us or why a particular moment I hear a song can have such a distinct impact.
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Yesterday, “Opposites” on Eric Clapton’s 1975 album, “There’s One in Every Crowd,” resonated deeply for me.
Some songs just do that.
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Puppy Energy
In February, our rescued shepherd mix, Asher, turned 2 years old. That is commonly considered the beginning of the end of the puppy phase for many large breed dogs. Anecdotally, I can report we are noticing an increase in more mature behavior from Asher, however, that hasn’t eliminated his moments of wild or chaotic romping.
Last night, Asher bolted from Cyndie, disappearing into the darkness when she tried to take him out for one last pee before bed. Luckily, she found him shortly after, down in the trees near the labyrinth. I guess we should take it as promising progress that he didn’t instantly take off for the neighbor’s property.
The other day, he sat down on a walk with me and surveyed the paddocks and fields for a long time. I sat down with him. It felt like a version of himself that was beyond the puppy phase.
It occurs to me that someday I might miss his puppy energy so I should cherish his moments of chaos while he still has it in him. I never seem able to keep that perspective when tripping on the bedroom rug he has whirled into a pile of wrinkles when trying to hump his dog bed sideways on its end.
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Ethnicity Estimate
Kiss me, I’m [almost] Irish! I don’t know if you can tell, but I am writing with an Irish accent this morning. In honor of my great connections to the fifth-century patron saint and national apostle of Ireland, Patrick, I am acknowledging this special holiday by revisiting my ancestral links.
But, wait. Ireland has always been a dead end in my attempts to verify the origin of the surname Hays. I haven’t identified the father of my 3rd-great-grandfather John Hays. I have always been led toward Ireland because a mention in an 1860 Canadian census that lists place of origin as Ireland.
Confusion was added when information on that John Hays (born abt.1795), found on the death record of his son, John B. (born 1834 or 1837) listed the father’s (John born 1795) place of birth as Vermont, USA. I have never been able to verify that.
However, I have DNA records to connect with my ethnicity so surely that will verify this family line to Ireland. Umm, no. It doesn’t.
The missing link is whoever the father was of the John born in 1795 and where he was from.
My cells indicate the top three places matching my ethnicity are England and Northwestern Europe, Wales, and Scotland.
So, I guess I’ve actually been writing in a Scottish accent all this time. Not sure if you can hear the difference.
Regardless, Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
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Blowing In
When Asher and I set out on our routine morning walk today, the sky was filled with heavy-looking clouds that cast a dark mood over the landscape. The weather forecast warned of strong winds but we weren’t feeling that on the ground yet. The blanket of low clouds overhead, however, was moving past at a high rate of speed.
It was as if the blue sky was blowing in.
The horses radiated a deep calm as they consumed their feed from the buckets. That sharply contrasted with the barn pigeons that were cooing with an insistence that bordered on drastic urgency. Maybe it was egg-laying time.
The ground surface around the overhang is so dry I should be celebrating freedom from coping with massive levels of mud but the reality it reflects is the threat of drought that hovers near. I had time to contemplate the current conditions because Light and Mix were both taking their sweet time about emptying the feed buckets I was waiting to retrieve.
I treasure that we have settled into a routine that allows them to eat at their individually chosen leisurely paces as opposed to the racing randomness that was happening not that long ago. There are still moments when we need to convince one or two of the horses to get out of each other’s way to end up at what has become their designated positions, but once they get there, extra shenanigans rarely interfere.
The deep calm that materializes is something I don’t take for granted.
In the time it has taken me to finish my breakfast and write this, the wind has arrived at ground level and a fresh blanket of clouds has blown in. With a little luck, maybe it could blow some needed precipitation our way.
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Woods Work
While professionals were tending to the log truss, we had plenty of free time to wander in the wooded areas of the property that are usually buried under snow or overgrown with ferns and trillium. The “in-between” season is greatly expanded this year, allowing for unobstructed travel on days with very summer-like warm temperatures.
I needed to dig deep through stacked storage in the garage to reach a leaf rake that I wanted to use in reclaiming our mini-labyrinth path.
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Cyndie and Asher found a couple of trees girdled by a large metal cable. She asked me if I could do anything to save the trees. It looked pretty daunting to me at first but after pondering the situation for a while, I went back with some hand tools.
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I suspect there is probably an old ring of keys in the house somewhere, one of which might just match that big old padlock. Doesn’t everyone have an old set of keys stashed someplace with purposes no longer remembered? This could easily be one of those cases.
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After returning for a closer look, now wearing a good pair of gloves, I started pulling where the cable disappeared into the dirt. It had been buried for a long time but I soon discovered the length between the two trees had been cut. That meant I could pull it back through the loop and didn’t need to find a key for the lock.
On the other tree, I just needed to unwind the small wire that had been binding the cable together.
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Once that was done, I pulled the cables out of the bark up to the point where the tree had grown over the metal rope. I needed to return to the house for more equipment. I found a small pruning saw that was able to do the trick. I sawed into the bark on either side of the cable until I was able to muscle it free.
The trees should both be able to heal the wounds and continue to grow unrestrained. That would be the best reward I could wish for upon achieving completion of the rescue effort.
I would appreciate that a lot more than the tiny tick that found purchase under my chin as a result of my time in the woods. Dammit.
Janet.
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Cutting Away
There’s no turning back now. The guys started cutting away the rotting logs of the truss yesterday under the hot rays of mid-sixty-degree sunshine up in the Hayward area.
The view of this cross-section shows the degree to which the log was disintegrating. They also uncovered the bees’ nest I knew was there. Good thing there were no bees present at this time of year.
We won’t be around to see them install the replacement truss components because we need to head home this morning. Alas, that gives us an excuse to return as soon as we can arrange additional coverage for the horses.
We have a new project to undertake because they also cut off the bottom of rotting logs on the front of “cabin 3,” located just behind and to the side of the main house. It was decided the best finish there would be to fill the voids with faux river rock, which is something they don’t do.
DIY much? It just so happens that Cyndie and I have an excess of faux river rock stored in the hay shed at home. As a matter of fact, some of the plastered facades of our home have fallen off and need to be re-cemented. That’s a project we have been ignoring for lack of experience.
Now we have double the reason to learn how to do this repair ourselves. The next time we come up here, I guess we will be hauling a load of one-sided manufactured stones and bags of mortar mix. In the meantime, we better study up on proper materials, tools, and techniques.
It will be tough to decide whether we should practice on our own house in order to do a better job up here, or the other way around. I could see it going either way.
My choice will lean heavily toward which option appears to be the easiest of the two. I’m hoping that answer will be revealed after we discover all the factors involved in the process.
In reality, cutting away the rotting pieces was the easiest part of this whole project.
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Icy Adventures
We don’t usually spend much time up at the lake when the ice is about to vanish from the water’s surface. I find it very entertaining. Temperatures dropped far enough below freezing Sunday night that water to the shore, which was liquid when we arrived, had refrozen solid by yesterday morning.
As the sun climbed to a mid-morning angle, the lake began making a percussive symphony of booming and cracking sounds in response.
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There is an almost mystical energy unleashed by the intensity of natural forces pressing in multiple directions as the frozen surface reacts to wind, sun, gravity, the mixing of heat and cold, and the resistance of rocks and sand on the shore. When a fracture reverberates throughout the expanse of acres of ice, rumbling and echoing for almost a minute afterward, it can be felt in your physical core.
I notice my pulse speed up when it happens, and hear myself making sounds of appreciation that don’t actually form words.
The guys –brothers, Jedediah and Caleb– showed up to work on the rotting truss and were quickly introduced to Asher and some of Cyndie’s fresh-baked scones.
They installed extra (temporary) support to the deck and the bottom chord of the truss itself in preparation for assembling scaffolding for the job. After further analysis and some outside consultation, the decision was made to change to a “hammer truss” design for the replacement.
I’m looking forward to what they come up with. It should be easier to build and will eliminate at least one of the key points that was trapping water and triggering the rot. It will change the appearance of the front of the house and may take a little getting used to at first, but I am open to the possibility it may end up being more appealing in the end.
It will certainly open up overhead space on the deck and produce a more spacious feeling.
As the warm afternoon eliminated most of the new ice that had formed the night before, Cyndie and I let Asher have some fun along the shoreline.
He had a blast breaking ice and chewing some of the chunks. Falling into the water as sections of ice gave out beneath his weight didn’t seem to bother him one bit.
Icy cold doesn’t seem to startle him either.
It looked like so much fun, I needed to keep reminding myself I couldn’t step out to join him in the shoes I was wearing. That, and the fact that icy cold would absolutely make an impression on my feet.
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Feeling It
It’s been over two years since I retired from commuting to a day-job and yesterday was one of the few days in that span of time when I fully felt the liberation of not being tied to a work schedule. Sure, I’ve thrilled repeatedly over no longer feeling dread on Sunday nights, but those have seemed like small victories.
Yesterday morning, I didn’t change my routine with the shift of clocks to Daylight Saving Time. It felt liberating. Around lunchtime, Cyndie, Asher, and I hopped in the car to head for the lake place. Leaving on a Sunday night to go up north felt rather decadent.
We can go to the lake any day we’d like. We are retired. And I am feeling it.
With only ourselves to accommodate, I enjoyed the luxury of ordering a cheeseburger and fries “to-go” from a nice lakeside diner along the route to fulfill a craving that usually goes unmet. It’s often not the right time when we pass by or there are time constraints, or some other random obstruction that prevents stopping there. Finally getting what I always think about when we pass that restaurant made it taste even better.
There was no traffic heading our direction, though we passed a fair number of cars returning to the Cities. Many of them were carrying muddy fat-tired bikes after a weekend of riding CAMBA trails.
There does happen to be a method to our madness for being here on a Monday. Some work on the house is scheduled to start this morning by a contractor that Cyndie arranged over the phone. This will be a chance to meet him in person and be on hand in case any issues arise in the replacement of a bottom chord truss under the eave on the lakeside of the log home.
Being the only ones up during the week this time of year feels a little disorienting. We can make a mess of the house and not be in anyone’s way.
Actually, the place looks a little like the empty mansions in the movies with covers over the furniture. Cyndie didn’t want Asher to shed on the couches.
There aren’t enough people around to occupy the furniture so he thinks it becomes his responsibility.
I doubt he’ll have any time to rest with strangers working just outside the windows all day long. I expect they will need to be barked at with gusto.
It’s either them or the squirrels.
I think maybe Asher is feeling the same as us. Seems to me this feels a lot like being retired.
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Collective Action
What can I do about the ills of the world? My fallback attempt to make things better tends to rely on the age-old art of wishing. I wish wars would cease. I wish that criminals would never get away with it. I wish people wouldn’t fall for the rantings of lying politicians. I wish the world could figure out a way to adjust societies to function consistently year-round without moving clocks twice a year.
One belief I hold that is well within my abilities to practice and encourage others to take up is to practice LOVE with as much or more gusto as they do all the world religions. Drop all the centuries of concocted dogma and simply produce and share LOVE.
There is one dilemma where my solution of sending love as a fix may only be as effective as merely wishing for improvement: the over-cooking of our planet Earth.
My news feed recently led me to an opinion piece by climate scientist Bill McGuire offering, “If you knew what I know, you’d be terrified too.” It is posted on CNN.com and listed as a 4-minute read. I hope you will take the time.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/07/opinions/climate-scientist-scare-doom-anxiety-mcguire/index.html
The terrifying realities of the ongoing climate change underway are enough to scare people into doing nothing since it appears all is lost. Scientists who rant about the issue can get labeled as “doomers.”
I approve of Bill McGuire’s point that people can handle being scared and still rally to take action.
The bottom line is that many things in life are scary or worrying, from going to the dentist to noticing a potential sign of cancer, but ignoring them almost invariably results in something far worse happening down the line.
The key is finding a way to have hope. One of the ways to cultivate hope is by collective action.
There is a wikiHow that explains ways to become an Activist.
It will take more than simply wishing to solve all the ills of this world. Let’s all seek out a way to contribute positive energy toward groups of like-minded people, driving change that will lead to better outcomes for ourselves and those around us.
We all do better when we all do better. Paul Wellstone.
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