Monday, June 22, 2009

Random Weirdness

I need to write Miss Manners and ask her how you can ask someone if they're an idiot without being rude. Walking down the Walmart lot to go to work last week I passed a truck with a logo which read "Signs Excetera". Seriously. Excetera. So, how far does one trust a sign company that can't spell its own name? But it occurred to me, wanting to give them the benefit of the doubt, that maybe in some way that I can't figure, it's not a misspelling but rather a clever play on words. Maybe the owner's name is Excet? Or something. I'd ask, but I just don't know how to phrase the question.

In a book of ghost stories I came across a description of Block Island (extra points if you know what famous ghost story is connected with Block Island!) as looking like "an inverted pork chop". There's a right way up and a wrong way up for a pork chop?

I'm still working on getting my little cabin ready to move into. My various nephews' promised assistance has not materialized and I'm pretty much doing it all by myself. I am slowly accumulating things I need, though (got a good, slightly-used submersible pump last week!) and I figure every little bit of progress counts. I'm almost ready to finally look up the electricity. Little worried, though. My friend Chris explained exactly what I need to do and it sounds easy enough. But then he immediately launched into a story about how he almost electrocuted himself with a welder and a brush hog. :-[

This is the same guy who impaled himself on a tractor, took out the inseam of his jeans with a chainsaw, ran over his car with a skid loader and sank his truck. I swear I could write a book about the guys I work with! I'd call it, Fools Rush In With Power Tools Where Angels Fear To Tread.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Daddy

Sometime about 1959 or '60 my mother was living in Eugene, Oregon with her older half-brother. After twenty years of marriage, she'd finally left her abusive prick of a husband down in the Deep South, taken their eight children and moved away. Two decades of physical and emotional abuse had left her disillusioned with marriage and with men in general and she had determined that she was finished with the whole mess.

My uncle (whom I never met) was working as a mechanic at a shop that serviced the big logging trucks and one day he told her, "that logger I told you about, the one with the great big hands, lost his wife and now he's raising all those kids alone." Mom didn't remember him ever mentioning a logger with big hands, but she recalled this conversation later.

Some time after that (I'm not too clear on the timeline) Mom had moved into a house of her own. A couple named Harold and Margie lived up the street from her. Harold's sister had died of cancer and they kept her kids a lot while their father was working. Margie constantly sang the praises of her widowered brother-in-law, but Mom wasn't buying. Still, after a while she got curious enough to want to meet him. One day when she saw his car parked in front of their house she took a cup of sugar she'd never borrowed over to "return it" to Margie. That was the day my parents met.

Daddy was a big man, in every way: Physically big, big-hearted, great of spirit. Standing six foot two, he had to turn his shoulders to go through an ordinary doorway. You could drop a quarter through his wedding ring. And he was the kindest person I've ever met.

Children and animals adored him. Most of the pictures we have of him show him with a baby in his arms, a child on his lap, a cat on his shoulders and/or a dog at his feet. At one point we acquired a Shetland mare who'd come to us from an abusive home and had lost one eye. Dad was the only person who was ever able to approach her.

Though he'd never gone beyond the eighth grade, he was an intelligent person with a quick wit and an unexpectedly sharp sense of humor. (My mother told him once she was going to town to get bread. He replied, "okay, but don't hang my name on it.") He loved Louis L'Amour books and John Wayne movies (people have told me John Wayne reminds them of Dad), and hated cruelty, bigotry and injustice. He appreciated good comedy and was sucker for a happy ending, where the good guy gets the girl and the bad guy gets what's coming to him. I can still see him in his late seventies, when he was in the thrall of his last illness, sitting in his old recliner, bright eyes faded to a watery China blue, chuckling his deep, gentle chuckle at the end of some movie and surreptitiously wiping away tears.

If it sounds like I'm describing a saint, that's because in my mind, I am. I know he had flaws; that he wasn't perfect. He was human and never claimed to be anything else. But, whatever there was to detract from his sterling character, I cannot call it to mind, nor do I want to. In my memories he was all the best that a person can be: Kind, gentle, warm, wise, strong, safe, funny. Good. He died in April, 1991, after a lingering illness, at the age of 78.

I miss him still.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Time for the annual Cider Story

Cider is evil. Did you know that? Sure, it looks innocent, a rich, brown nectar sitting there on the shelf in clear plastic jugs, beckoning the unwary. But deep in its dark soul lurks dastardly and terrifying plots!

Okay, maybe not. But I am paranoid about cider, as everyone who works with me comes to find out each fall when the yearly pallet of Louisburg Apple Cider arrives in the store. But there is a reason for my paranoia, and it is this:

The first autumn I worked at Walmart I spilled 47 gallons of apple cider.

Actually, I didn't spill it. It spilled itself at me. I just got to clean it up. In the Walmart "spills and hazardous waste training module" it says that "spill in excess of 10 gallons are considered too big to be cleaned up by store employees". Don't you believe it! See, it happened like this:

We have a walk-in produce cooler that's about eight feet wide and about twelve feet deep, with wide steel shelving lining both sides. When the shelves are full, the excess is stored on wooden pallets down the center of the cooler, and there is almost always at least one pallet full of freight in the cooler. (Sometimes there are as many as three. If we get slammed with more than that we have to take over the meat prep room which is unpleasant because then we have to kidnap Glen, who bitches about it, and tie him up in the Culligan water softener cage. We'd take over the deli cooler, but those deli girls are just scary!)

Well, the first fall I worked produce we had a pallet full of cider against the back wall. The cider was stacked seven cases high with four one-gallon plastic jugs per case and we were down to two rows of cider with other things on the front of the pallet. None of us were aware that the bottom cases had gotten wet and that the only thing holding up the cider stacked against the wall on the left side was the stack in front of it. I took the cider from that stack out to fill the floor display, came back and the entire stack had collapsed. The cooler floor was littered with busted jugs, sopping cardboard and approximately 24 gallons of apple cider.

Obviously, I couldn't clean up the mess with the pallet in the way. I got a pallet jack (sort of a manual fork lift) and very carefully pulled the pallet out into the produce area in front of the door. I successfully maneuvered it past the floor drain right outside the cooler, swivelled it slowly and set it down ever so gently.

And POW! Another stack of cider went over!

That's how I spilled 47 gallons of apple cider. Two years have passed since then with no other major mishaps (we did have a couple of jugs explode last year, but that's only to be expected). I still don't trust the stuff, though. I know it's just sitting there . . . watching . . . biding its time . . . .

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Obama, in St. Louis, speaks before historic building

Today, presidential candidate Barack Obama spoke before massive crowds (estimated at 100,000 people) on the lawn of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, MO. In the background and, so far as I have seen in news stories, unremarked, the Old Courthouse watched history unfold yet again.

In the background of the picture at the top of this news story: http://tinyurl.com/5e8mu6 look for a white building with a patinaed copper dome. This is the Old Courthouse. It is a white, Federalist-style building with two wings flanking a rotunda capped with a copper dome based on the Basilica of Saint Peter in Rome. Built in 1827, it served as a center for law and order in what was then known (to some) as the last civilized city in the west. In 1947 the County of St. Louis deeded it to the Federal Government and it is now listed on the National Historic Registry and is home to a museum.

It is uniquely fitting that this building should bear witness to Obama's historic run for the presidency, for it was here, in 1847, that the Dred Scott anti-slavery case was first heard. After a series of appeals and counter-suits, in 1857 the Supreme Court ruled against Dred Scott and his wife, who had sued for their freedom. The case was a landmark because it established that no one of African descent was considered a citizen of the United States and that, not being citizens, they were not entitled to bring action in a court of law. It also struck down the Missouri Compromise, which made northern parts of the Louisiana Purchase "free territories", by ruling slaves to be property which could not be taken from their owners without due process, even if their owners travelled to places where slavery was illegal.

This ruling angered northern politicians and abolitionists, polarizing the opposing factions on the question of slavery and quite possibly hastening the onset of the Civil War. Ironically, the Scotts' owner, a widow, had re-married to a congressman who was an abolitionist and he arranged for them to be freed shortly after the Supreme Court ruling was handed down. Sadly, Dred Scott had but scant time to enjoy his freedom. Just nine months later he died of tuberculosis.

And today, within sight of where Dred Scott and his wife were first found by the law to be property subject to the fifth amendment, 100,000 people of all races turned out to hear a charismatic black man speak of his very real aspirations for the presidency. I'd like to say here that I, personally, support Barack Obama, not because he is black (or in spite of the fact that he is black), but because I am impressed by his intellect and his achievements and I believe he is the best person to guide our nation through these troubled times. But it is nice to look across this massive crowd to the green copper dome of the Old Courthouse and reflect on how far we've come in 161 years.

Incidentally, I have to confess that I didn't notice the Old Courthouse in the background because I am a super-savvy historian (alas!). The Old Courthouse is one of the locations that appears in my as-yet-unpublished murder mystery, The Reenactment.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Dear Mr. Hillerman

First, allow me to say how much I enjoy your Navajo mysteries. Please write more. Now.

I do have one question for you, though. You have said more than once that Sergeant Jim Chee believes that having a cat as a pet is like having a human slave. While I can't help but agree that this is an apt analogy, I wonder. Does Chee realize that the human is not the master in this relationship?

My cat Layla prefers me to sleep on my left side with my left arm under her head and my right arm cuddled over her back. If I try to sleep on my right side, she slaps me until I roll over.

Slavery indeed!

Sunday, June 29, 2008

Stolen Items

I've been debating for three days whether to write about this, the decision postponed by rampant paranoia and sleep deprivation, but today I decided to set it out in visible form. Late Thursday night (or, rather, early Friday morning) I got home from work and my house had been burgled.

The first thing I noticed was the front door, which was not quite closed. That puzzled me, as I'm very careful about checking the door each time I leave, but I only thought I must have slipped up. Then, coming into the living room, I saw that things were in disarray. Okay, I have cats. Things are often in disarray. Even when I found an old CD clock radio sitting in my desk chair, my initial reaction was to try to think where it could have been that the cats might have knocked it down.

Then I saw the empty shelves around the computer where I kept all my favorite DVDs. After searching frantically for them, in defiance of the obvious fact that they had been stolen (maybe I put them in the filing cabinet and forgot about it! Maybe they got knocked off and they're all on the floor under the sewing maching! Maybe . . . ), I ran out to the car, got my purse and my cell phone and locked the car. Then I came back in and called the sheriff's department. As I was talking to the dispatcher I heard a loud thump and the dogs all started barking. At the time I was certain that it was someone going out the upstairs window and being chased down the hill by the dogs. On reflection, I think perhaps it was something or someone who was already outside.

I really want to believe that it was something outside! It was after one in the morning and I live alone in the middle of nowhere.

In any case, the person was gone by the time the deputy arrived and there was nothing for him to do but take a report and give me a hug. (The hug is not normally part of the emergency services bit, I don't think, but in this case the deputy who responded was one of my nephews.) After that, well, I called in to work and sat up all night, listening for strange noises. About six in the morning the dogs started barking frantically again and I called out another deputy, but she didn't find anything either.

The thieves got away with a random assortment of DVDs including most of my collection of old TV shows. Of all the things they stole, what hurts most is my four boxed sets of Emergency! DVDs. It was my favorite show and I bought each one as it was released and watched them often. They also took a carrying case with almost every CD I owned (I only had a few -- maybe twenty?), a brand new mp3 player that was still in the box, my Word 2000 disc that I've misplaced the authentication code for (I'll probably find it now), and my desk calendar. I had also just gotten a new computer -- a low-cost emachines that came without a monitor. When I set it up, I just took out the tower and left the rest in the box, because I already had a mouse, keyboard, etc. They took that, box and all, probably using that box to carry my other stuff.

In monetary terms my losses weren't huge. Maybe $500 to replace everything? And, yes, it could have been much worse. But, for me, it was a lot. I don't make enough money to splurge very often on things like DVDs and it had taken me years to accumulate even the modest collection I had. And, besides all that, it was mine damnit! The injustice of someone else profiting from it makes me seethe.

I've told this story about fifty times now and people always ask the same questions, so I'll go ahead and answer them now.

Was the door locked? No. I've lived on this hill since I was three and we've never even had a lock on our front door. There's a lock on it now.

Do you have a gun? Nope. I've never even fired a gun, barely even touched one. I've been offered a couple in the past few days and had people try to sell me pistols. I will admit that, in light of these events, it has been tempting. I doubt I will get one, though. They say that if you have a gun, you have to be prepared to use it. I'm not certain that I could.

Where were your dogs? Probably hiding. They bark ferociously at anyone coming up here, but they won't confront strangers unless I'm here. Once someone starts to leave, now, they're fair game, and anyone who runs from them is asking to be attacked. Also, if I'm out in the yard and a stranger comes around, SallyJane (my rotti) stays right next to me and is extremely protective. She even growled at Joe (another of my nephews) the whole time he was putting the new lock on the front door, and Sally knows Joe.

What are you going to do now? What can I do? This is my home. I'm not going to be chased away. I'll lock the doors now, lock up my car when I park it in the yard, leave more lights on. I've given the police as detailed a list as I could come up with of what was taken and I've been calling all the pawn and second-hand shops, asking them to be on the lookout for my stuff.

I'm sure that, in time, the nerves will ease up and things will gradually get back to normal. But I look around. The dogs are on edge, barking at any strange sound and every passing car. The cats sit in hunched bundles, staring out the windows and flicking their tails with tension. As for me, I have taken to sleeping fully clothed with the car keys in my pocket and my purse and cellphone beside the pillow. And it occurs to me that there's something I left off that list of stolen items.

Peace of mind.

Monday, June 23, 2008

R.I.P. Rufus!

How do you mark the passing of a great comic when one of his most famous routines was on the euphemisms we use for death? George Carlin went into the hospital yesterday afternoon complaining of chest pains, experienced a terminal episode and expired last night.

The world is a less funny place today. Story here: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5ina7M8zC1QQGSxe-e-PxBrf9kl0gD91FSLO80