There is imprinted in my DNA a basic instruction. It says: Never throw away something you might be able to use later.
I am trying to rewrite that instruction, which I have followed all too well, or at least to redefine it. I am locked in a mental battle that parallels disputes over interpreting our constitution: strict construction or loose construction.
I have been a strict constructionist of my genetic instructions. If there is any conceivable possibility that I might be able to use something later, I've kept it. (And it has occasionally paid off: just the other day I used a piece of metal tubing left over from a boat shade, a bail from a five-gallon bucket and a hose clamp to repair a colorful little wind-driven whirlygig down by the patio.)
I am trying to accept the notion that I should keep only those things that there is a reasonably good chance that I will need. I'm not sure the bail from the bucket or the piece from the boat would qualify.
I have been given some impetus in my quest because we are thinking about downsizing our home.
I have already tackled my library and my closet, though much remains to be done in those departments.
But those have been minor forays compared to the task now at hand. Confronting stuff in general.
So, there I stood in the middle of a storage building, confronted with the reality of my resolution.
Various tools from past projects: a tile cutter and a grout float I bought when I remodeled the kitchen of an old house we owned in Montgomery.
A pipe flaring tool.
A gear puller.
I couldn't recall why I had acquired some of those items.
But realistically, would I ever use them again?
And the smaller things: screws and nails and bolts, all of differing sizes. Would I ever have or take the time to sort them out. An electric motor from a food processor, hinges from a glass door, things that I couldn't identify but which I obviously thought I might use for something.
Cans of paint that, even if it isn't a lump inside the can, probably wouldn't cover anything I started painting and which probably could not be matched.
I divided the stuff into two piles -- keep and discard.
Some of the stuff migrated from one pile to another more than once. After disposing of what I could bear to, I took the rest home and put it in the cave, the name we give to a part of the crawl space. There's standing headroom and lights, but now it is dense with the stuff from the storage building, and I still have a lot of decisions to make. If do sell the house soon, I either will speed up the decision process or carry a bunch of stuff on one more trip.
Sorting through the accumulation, I think of my grandmother. She saved everything: the string that closed a 25-pound bag of flour, the empty 10-pound sugar sack, the gallon syrup jug.
The difference is, she knew the end use of the stuff she was saving. I have yet to get there.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
Showing posts with label life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label life. Show all posts
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
I've Gotten Away With It Before
The following was written Sunday, but I could not post it for lack of an internet connection: I am writing this with one hand while sitting in a room in UAB Hospital in Birmingham.The other hand, swathed in bandages, is being held vertically higher than my heart to keep fluids from building up in the thumb doctors sewed back on Friday night.
It was a near thing. The surgery resident who was attending me had consulted with his boss and was already numbing the area around my dangling left thumb, preparing to amputate right there in the emergency room, His pager summoned him. His boss apparently had taken another look at the X-rays and decided it might be possible to save the thumb. I don't know whether he knew that I am left handed.
The upshot was that a surgical team spent four or five hours putting back together nerves and blood vessels, and I am tethered to an IV pole that is infusing me with antibiotics and blood thinner to try to prevent the vessels and capillaries from getting plugged up. The surgeon stopped by earlier this afternoon and said things are looking pretty good, though nothing is certain. He explained that he could not save the nail bed and that he pulled a flap of skin up to cover the missing nail. If it works, the thumb will be a little shorter with the first joint fused.If the flap fails, the thumb will be shorter still. As so often is the case, there was no indication that disaster was looming, On Friday morning, I was working alone in my neighbors shop on some Adirondack chairs for our front deck. I have worked with tools and wood almost all of my life. I know the safety rules, and like many others, I have skirted the safety rules from time to time without suffering consequences.
Until Friday. A moving saw blade, a hand too near it, and a mangled thumb. No one was around, so I wrapped my T-shirt around my hand and walked home. My wife was not at home and I couldn't reach her on her cell phone, so I found some gauze and tape and wrapped my hand and drove to the Russell Medical Center emergency room. They quickly determined that I needed to go to UAB and made arrangements. I had plenty of time during the ambulance to reflect on my own folly, and I am no less chagrined by hearing the doctors stories about power tool accidents much more catastrophic than mine. I've had time to consider, too, that it is not just guys with tools who grow dangerously complacent after years of getting by. Recent reports about inattention in airline cockpits have stirred concern. And I suspect that the many of the people aboard that oil-drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico were doing things they've done for years. The consequences of my complacency were great enough. Complacency on a larger scale can be truly catastrophic.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
It was a near thing. The surgery resident who was attending me had consulted with his boss and was already numbing the area around my dangling left thumb, preparing to amputate right there in the emergency room, His pager summoned him. His boss apparently had taken another look at the X-rays and decided it might be possible to save the thumb. I don't know whether he knew that I am left handed.
The upshot was that a surgical team spent four or five hours putting back together nerves and blood vessels, and I am tethered to an IV pole that is infusing me with antibiotics and blood thinner to try to prevent the vessels and capillaries from getting plugged up. The surgeon stopped by earlier this afternoon and said things are looking pretty good, though nothing is certain. He explained that he could not save the nail bed and that he pulled a flap of skin up to cover the missing nail. If it works, the thumb will be a little shorter with the first joint fused.If the flap fails, the thumb will be shorter still. As so often is the case, there was no indication that disaster was looming, On Friday morning, I was working alone in my neighbors shop on some Adirondack chairs for our front deck. I have worked with tools and wood almost all of my life. I know the safety rules, and like many others, I have skirted the safety rules from time to time without suffering consequences.
Until Friday. A moving saw blade, a hand too near it, and a mangled thumb. No one was around, so I wrapped my T-shirt around my hand and walked home. My wife was not at home and I couldn't reach her on her cell phone, so I found some gauze and tape and wrapped my hand and drove to the Russell Medical Center emergency room. They quickly determined that I needed to go to UAB and made arrangements. I had plenty of time during the ambulance to reflect on my own folly, and I am no less chagrined by hearing the doctors stories about power tool accidents much more catastrophic than mine. I've had time to consider, too, that it is not just guys with tools who grow dangerously complacent after years of getting by. Recent reports about inattention in airline cockpits have stirred concern. And I suspect that the many of the people aboard that oil-drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico were doing things they've done for years. The consequences of my complacency were great enough. Complacency on a larger scale can be truly catastrophic.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
Monday, October 27, 2008
Lessons to Be Learned -- Again
Many years ago, Martha Mitchell, the sharp-tongued wife of disgraced U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell observed, “Life is slippery, like a bar of soap. If you think you’ve got a grip on it, you’re wrong.”
I have been seeing the truth of her observation play itself out in recent weeks.
I had thought that this time of year would be a good one for enforced idleness. Time to catch up on some reading, watch some sports on television.
Instead, I’ve sat hypnotized by the train wreck that is the stock market. Even when I have muted the shrill voices talking past each other on CNBC, it has been all too evident that a large hunk of our life savings has been evaporating like rain on hot pavement.
I am like many Americans who played by the rules, as we understood them: live within your means, save for the future and invest those savings so that you can have a secure retirement. We thought that we were giving up immediate gratification for security.
Now we wonder whether we have been played for fools.
We have been let down – by just about everybody.
The so-called leaders of finance have been too willing to abandon prudence in order rack up huge bonuses and pack golden parachutes.
Now our so-called political leaders are trying to assess blame. They should look in the mirror. Some of them have been such doctrinaire free marketers that they have believed their own rhetoric that the marketplace could regulate itself.
Sen. Phil Gramm provided the vehicle for the train wreck. Surely his philosophical blinders shut out skepticism. Even Alan Greenspan, who was regarded as at least a demigod during his reign at the fed, was an apostle of the libertarian gospel.
Greek mythology is filled with tales of what happens when hubris mixes with avarice. Somehow, though, we have to keep learning that lesson.
We have to keep re-learning, too, that the essential purpose for establishing government is the police function not just to protect us against violent crime but also against those who steal with a fountain pen.
Folk singer Woody Guthrie talked about that kind of crime in the last two stanzas of The Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd:
My late father-in-law, who funded his own retirement through by saving money (fortunately before avarice overtook judgment on Wall Street), was something of a cynic.
“If you want a good retirement,” he used to growl, “Work for the government.”
He was talking about the security of having a check arrive every month regardless of how the economy was doing.
Just like Social Security checks. We can breathe a sigh of relief that the effort to privatize Social Security went nowhere.
My father-in-law was part of that generation that was marked by the Great Depression.
It is difficult at this point to know how deep this meltdown will go, but I think that more than one generation
But I think more than one generation has developed a deep distrust of our institutions.
In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, William Faulkner said, "I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail."
At the moment, enduring might be enough.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
I have been seeing the truth of her observation play itself out in recent weeks.
I had thought that this time of year would be a good one for enforced idleness. Time to catch up on some reading, watch some sports on television.
Instead, I’ve sat hypnotized by the train wreck that is the stock market. Even when I have muted the shrill voices talking past each other on CNBC, it has been all too evident that a large hunk of our life savings has been evaporating like rain on hot pavement.
I am like many Americans who played by the rules, as we understood them: live within your means, save for the future and invest those savings so that you can have a secure retirement. We thought that we were giving up immediate gratification for security.
Now we wonder whether we have been played for fools.
We have been let down – by just about everybody.
The so-called leaders of finance have been too willing to abandon prudence in order rack up huge bonuses and pack golden parachutes.
Now our so-called political leaders are trying to assess blame. They should look in the mirror. Some of them have been such doctrinaire free marketers that they have believed their own rhetoric that the marketplace could regulate itself.
Sen. Phil Gramm provided the vehicle for the train wreck. Surely his philosophical blinders shut out skepticism. Even Alan Greenspan, who was regarded as at least a demigod during his reign at the fed, was an apostle of the libertarian gospel.
Greek mythology is filled with tales of what happens when hubris mixes with avarice. Somehow, though, we have to keep learning that lesson.
We have to keep re-learning, too, that the essential purpose for establishing government is the police function not just to protect us against violent crime but also against those who steal with a fountain pen.
Folk singer Woody Guthrie talked about that kind of crime in the last two stanzas of The Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd:
Yes, as through this world I've wandered
I've seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.
And as through your life you travel,
Yes, as through your life you roam,
You won't never see an outlaw
Drive a family from their home.
Lyrics as reprinted in Woody Guthrie, American Folksong, New York, NY, 1961 (reprint of 1947 edition), p. 27. © 1958 Sanga Music Inc., New York, NY.
My late father-in-law, who funded his own retirement through by saving money (fortunately before avarice overtook judgment on Wall Street), was something of a cynic.
“If you want a good retirement,” he used to growl, “Work for the government.”
He was talking about the security of having a check arrive every month regardless of how the economy was doing.
Just like Social Security checks. We can breathe a sigh of relief that the effort to privatize Social Security went nowhere.
My father-in-law was part of that generation that was marked by the Great Depression.
It is difficult at this point to know how deep this meltdown will go, but I think that more than one generation
But I think more than one generation has developed a deep distrust of our institutions.
In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, William Faulkner said, "I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail."
At the moment, enduring might be enough.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
Sunday, June 8, 2008
A New Front Opens in the Little War With the Squirrels
The squirrels have opened a new front – actually reopened an old one – in our low-intensity conflict.
After I declared victory in our battle over the bird feeder, they decided to seize the territory under our widow’s walk for a housing development.
I could see why they would find the landscape inviting. Our house sits on a steep lot overlooking Lake Martin. From the lakeside, the house is nosebleed tall. There are two chimneys, a real one for the fireplace flue and a false one with a door that opens onto the widow’s walk.
The widow’s walk is reached by climbing the XX rungs of the ladder hidden inside of the false chimney. It is not of much practical value, but it is a good place to sit on a clear summer night and watch for shooting stars or to lie on your back and look straight up into the far reaches of the Milky Way. And it does make the house distinctive. When you say you live in the house with the widow’s walk, people who have seen it from the water know which one you’re talking about it.
Our builder resisted building the widow’s walk, because it’s challenging to support a structure like that atop the roof without having leaks. He could save us money by leaving it off, he said. Build it, we said. You won’t ever use it, he said. Build it, we said. It will just collect leaves, he said. Only if leaves fall up, my wife pointed out. He gave up.
The squirrels were glad that he did.
I happened to gaze up at the widow’s walk one day last summer and noticed a substantial number of twigs protruding from under a part of it. It clearly was not an accidental accumulation. I climbed up to the widow’s walk for a closer examination. Looking over the railing, I could see portions of the nest sticking out, but there was no way I could reach it.
The boards on the deck were nailed down, and I had to pry one of them up in order to gain access to the nest. I broke it up and sent the twigs sliding down the steep roof. The squirrels also had tried to chew through the soft cedar siding, presumably to get inside the false chimney. I repaired that.
Throughout the winter, I didn’t see any construction, and I thought the squirrels had given up.
I should have known better.
The drought-stressed oak trees produced a bumper crop of acorns, which in turn produced a bumper crop of squirrels, and, I suppose, a demand for housing. Spring brought a new construction season.
We sat at the dining table and watched squirrels stretching out on the tiniest of limbs gathering twigs, arranging them in their mouths, and leaping from a tree limb to the roof.
I climbed to the widow’s walk. Sure enough, a new project had started, this one far more ambitious than the previous one, a condominium compared to a cottage. Fresh limbs with leaf buds
But this time, I thought, I had outsmarted the squirrels. I had replaced the decking of the widow’s walk, fastening down the boards with screws so that they were easily removed.
I directed a cascade of twigs down the roof and into the flowerbed. I did not replace the boards, figuring that the exposure would discourage them.
A few days later I was sitting at the dining table watching morning come to the lake when I heard what sounded like a parade on the roof above me. I went out to the front deck and looked up. Three squirrels bearing twigs were marching up the ridge of the roof, headed for the widow’s walk.
I destroyed. They rebuilt. I destroyed again. In the end my perseverance won the skirmish. I guess they were under some pressure to finish new homes somewhere, so they gave up on the condos for this season.
They returned their attention to the bird feeder. Last year the feeder hung by a slender cord from a limb on a white oak tree, and I swelled with pride as I watched a squirrel, practically hanging from the tree limb by his back feed as he tried to reach down to the feeder.
This spring, they discovered that a tree near the white oak had grown, and its limbs reached out toward the bird feeder. I watched as a squirrel scampered out a pencil-sized limb and launched himself at the bird feeder. The feeder is only 10 feet or so outside the dining room window, but the squirrel simply smirked at me when I tapped on the window glass. It was only after I raised the window and shouted dire threats that he retreated.
So I moved the feeder to another tree that is visible from the dining room. I hung it well out on a limb, suspended six feet or so below the limb.
It did not take long for the squirrels to discover it had been moved. I watched a squirrel scurry up and down the tree, out on every skinny limb anywhere near the feeder, and back again.
And I watched as he launched himself from a limb downward at a 20- or 30-degree angle across 10 feet of space and make an aircraft carrier type landing on the feeder. The Flying Wallendas should be so daring.
I raced onto the front deck and shouted at him. He shinnied up the cord hopped onto the tree limb, laughing at me as he leapt from one tree to the next.
I replaced the cord with wire, thinking it would be too slick for the squirrel to climb.
I was wrong. He jumped. I yelled. He scampered up the wire with ease.
I sprayed the wire with lithium grease. He slipped a little as he darted up the wire, but not enough to discourage from trying again.
So, it’s back to the drawing board.
I could get one of those feeders with shutters that close when something as heavy as a squirrel lands on them. We’ve had them before, and they work, but they seem to last only a season.
Besides, getting one would somehow seem like cheating.
After I declared victory in our battle over the bird feeder, they decided to seize the territory under our widow’s walk for a housing development.
I could see why they would find the landscape inviting. Our house sits on a steep lot overlooking Lake Martin. From the lakeside, the house is nosebleed tall. There are two chimneys, a real one for the fireplace flue and a false one with a door that opens onto the widow’s walk.
The widow’s walk is reached by climbing the XX rungs of the ladder hidden inside of the false chimney. It is not of much practical value, but it is a good place to sit on a clear summer night and watch for shooting stars or to lie on your back and look straight up into the far reaches of the Milky Way. And it does make the house distinctive. When you say you live in the house with the widow’s walk, people who have seen it from the water know which one you’re talking about it.
Our builder resisted building the widow’s walk, because it’s challenging to support a structure like that atop the roof without having leaks. He could save us money by leaving it off, he said. Build it, we said. You won’t ever use it, he said. Build it, we said. It will just collect leaves, he said. Only if leaves fall up, my wife pointed out. He gave up.
The squirrels were glad that he did.
I happened to gaze up at the widow’s walk one day last summer and noticed a substantial number of twigs protruding from under a part of it. It clearly was not an accidental accumulation. I climbed up to the widow’s walk for a closer examination. Looking over the railing, I could see portions of the nest sticking out, but there was no way I could reach it.
The boards on the deck were nailed down, and I had to pry one of them up in order to gain access to the nest. I broke it up and sent the twigs sliding down the steep roof. The squirrels also had tried to chew through the soft cedar siding, presumably to get inside the false chimney. I repaired that.
Throughout the winter, I didn’t see any construction, and I thought the squirrels had given up.
I should have known better.
The drought-stressed oak trees produced a bumper crop of acorns, which in turn produced a bumper crop of squirrels, and, I suppose, a demand for housing. Spring brought a new construction season.
We sat at the dining table and watched squirrels stretching out on the tiniest of limbs gathering twigs, arranging them in their mouths, and leaping from a tree limb to the roof.
I climbed to the widow’s walk. Sure enough, a new project had started, this one far more ambitious than the previous one, a condominium compared to a cottage. Fresh limbs with leaf buds
But this time, I thought, I had outsmarted the squirrels. I had replaced the decking of the widow’s walk, fastening down the boards with screws so that they were easily removed.
I directed a cascade of twigs down the roof and into the flowerbed. I did not replace the boards, figuring that the exposure would discourage them.
A few days later I was sitting at the dining table watching morning come to the lake when I heard what sounded like a parade on the roof above me. I went out to the front deck and looked up. Three squirrels bearing twigs were marching up the ridge of the roof, headed for the widow’s walk.
I destroyed. They rebuilt. I destroyed again. In the end my perseverance won the skirmish. I guess they were under some pressure to finish new homes somewhere, so they gave up on the condos for this season.
They returned their attention to the bird feeder. Last year the feeder hung by a slender cord from a limb on a white oak tree, and I swelled with pride as I watched a squirrel, practically hanging from the tree limb by his back feed as he tried to reach down to the feeder.
This spring, they discovered that a tree near the white oak had grown, and its limbs reached out toward the bird feeder. I watched as a squirrel scampered out a pencil-sized limb and launched himself at the bird feeder. The feeder is only 10 feet or so outside the dining room window, but the squirrel simply smirked at me when I tapped on the window glass. It was only after I raised the window and shouted dire threats that he retreated.
So I moved the feeder to another tree that is visible from the dining room. I hung it well out on a limb, suspended six feet or so below the limb.
It did not take long for the squirrels to discover it had been moved. I watched a squirrel scurry up and down the tree, out on every skinny limb anywhere near the feeder, and back again.
And I watched as he launched himself from a limb downward at a 20- or 30-degree angle across 10 feet of space and make an aircraft carrier type landing on the feeder. The Flying Wallendas should be so daring.
I raced onto the front deck and shouted at him. He shinnied up the cord hopped onto the tree limb, laughing at me as he leapt from one tree to the next.
I replaced the cord with wire, thinking it would be too slick for the squirrel to climb.
I was wrong. He jumped. I yelled. He scampered up the wire with ease.
I sprayed the wire with lithium grease. He slipped a little as he darted up the wire, but not enough to discourage from trying again.
So, it’s back to the drawing board.
I could get one of those feeders with shutters that close when something as heavy as a squirrel lands on them. We’ve had them before, and they work, but they seem to last only a season.
Besides, getting one would somehow seem like cheating.
You can e-mail the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
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