Amateur

My dictionary of English etymology says amateur is formed from the past participle of  the Latin word amare or lover.

I'm an amateur at most things, dumbfounded about others.  I have no idea why a large format picture, like the picture of cedar waxwings in yesterday's post at first allows me to click into a larger image and then, an image large enough to see lice on the bird's wings.  Minutes later, when I click on the image while editing my spelling, I get a black screen with a mid-size image not much larger than the original image. If you know don't tell me, because I love wallowing in ignorance.  But that's not what I came here for this morning.

Jack of all trades, master of none, that's me.  As an amateur artist, I've created works of art like an acrylic painting I gave my mother when she was still alive.  Titled "Jaws of Death", she quickly hid the picture of gaping jaws dripping with acrylic blood in the basement rec-room of her home outside of Milwaukee. A few years ago, I found a complete rabbit tail leftover from an owl's late winter night feast .  That bunny behind coupled  with a weathered old board, a label that fell off a serviceable straw broom left in our pole shed by Crazy Angie (a Chief Sunbird #365 broom so the label said) and a momentary burst of inspired poetry is wrapped in plastic in the pole shed.  I ran across Haiku Bunny yesterday while sweeping out box elder beetle carcasses.

Artists like me are insecure about showing people their creations.  When the santero says, "You done good." after I showed him a copy of one of his Virgin Mary bultos I carved from cottonwood root he gifted me, I feel perhaps I may be an artist.  When a woman who lives both in Belgium and Sedona, AZ (she works as a translator) purchases a plank table I made and asks me to sign the table, I think I may be a craftsman. The momentary giddiness helps to dispel my fear of being alone with this attractive, single, cosmopolitan woman in her expensive home in the new age capital of the world.

There's a creative high after a work of art is completed and goes on display. One could bask in the glory of
the moment, however, my Anishnabe mentor and friend cautioned me to be careful about carving off  too much of myself. The thinking here is akin to an artist in old age unable to create something new, relying on repetitive copies like the mystery writer who takes the same characters, a thin plot line and writes another New York Times bestseller in the alphabet series A is for...B is for...you know what I mean.

When a Michigan tribe member and the chief counsel for the tribe drive ten hours to pick up a ceremonial drum that took me three years to make, I was thrilled that I'd made myself a niche as a white man making drums for Native Americans. I still list drum maker as my official occupation when I want to be flip.  I will always be a drum maker. By the way, I haven't made a drum in years, not counting the piece of elk hide with a hole I wanted to recycle.  That drum, although playable, is now a decorative work of art after the real artist in the family, Dawn, painted a hawk on the surface disguising the hole as the hawk's eye.  You can see it at Seven Roads Gallery  after I figure out where it is. It has been misplaced  In the meantime here's the drum.

When it comes to the written word, I'm also an amateur.  I spend way too much time searching for the right word,  agonizing about content, insecure that nobody but me gives a hoot for my thoughts. When I remember the old aphorism, in simplicity there is beauty, I'm vindicated for drinking too much coffee in the early morning.

My neighbor walks over to where I'm tossing limbs into the back of my truck on the south fence line.  He's bringing water to a feisty stallion penned in a shed.  He offers condolences.  In sympathy, he tells me about a recent encounter with the doodad neighbor who wants to fence the cornfield behind us( my neighbor's horse farm also abuts the field).  The neighbor(I'll name him Bryce) tells Rick( the owner of the horse farm) that his electric fence is crooked. He wants to install a new, barb wire fence the length of the Rick's south fence line.  Rick says, "you're kidding me," several times.  The last time he repeats, "You're shittin' me."  Then he says, "I'll send you the vet bill when one of my horses is injured by the barb wire fence.

We trade stories about Bryce and as Rick walks off he says, "I may have to throw his ass in the river." I don't feel so bad about all the curses directed toward Bryce for his anal retentiveness.  A crooked fence indeed. 

Bogey

Cedar Waxwings in the backyard. Click for larger image.

Wouldja look at the color of the sky.Check out the waning moon.


Jeez.  As a reformed cursor ( curser?) I try to use words that sound like cussin' but aren't.  Shoot, fudge, sunken ditch, jeez, cripes, durn, darn, dipstick is my George Carlin list.   In a never ending quest for knowledge, I consult my concise dictionary of English Etymology for the derivation of bogeyman.  Don't ask me why that name came to mind.  Probably the same reason Carole King's song, So Far Away keeps running through the empty corridor of my cerebellum.  Bogey, by the way isn't capitalized, unless it's used as a golf term.  Both entries in the dictionary refer to a person or thing much dreaded. (Devil) . Next to Bogey(golf) it says it's the number of strokes a good player should need for each hole. The Bogey is an imaginary partner ? ?  I thought a Bogey was one over par.  Then again, I haven't played golf since Joe Garry and I got kicked off the Brown Deer golf course for arguing.  Ever since, I've subscribed to Mark Twain's theory that "golf is a good walk spoiled."

I'm turning over a new leaf.  It's not avoiding cliches or puns in my blog.  It's adding content more frequently without whining about how much work is out there waiting for me. The work load has diminished dramatically but I'm depressed that the growing season is over.  Shelling dry beans listening to NPR is my fun of late. In the fall the bogeyman follows me around like the dog.  The loss of fall color, impending cold weather, filling the iron jawed monster in the basement to keep the heating bill from increasing the national debt, gunshots echoing off the hills in yet another Great American Manhood Spectacle of slaughter makes me want to get out of Dodge on the next train..

Thanks to open season on pheasant, it's been four years since I've seen ring-neck pheasants walk underneath the fence on the east property line.  The sound of a cock pheasant skrawking ( my own made up word)  in the tangle of woods down by the river is just a memory.  The summer we lived in an apartment on the outskirts of Madison we'd see 17 turkeys walk the field below our patio.  That's because one cannot hunt in the Madison city limits.  Here, the turkeys are smart enough to stay well off in the distance away from the bogeyman's pea shooters.  When I do see one fly over Moore Road going over the ridge to my Amish friends, it's startling and impressive that such a large bird can fly. Yes, I'm pontificating. No I'm not opposed to deer hunting, just the bullfeathers that accompanies the season.  

Dawn's camera fits nicely in my L.L.Bean lined shirt-jacket.  I can take it with me to catch  Kodak moments that arise without warning.  Mandy and I walk the corn field perimeter behind our house.  When we near the neighbor's farm, the horses in the corral near the highway all walk over and line up by the electric fence. Standing side by side to gawk at us, I  can almost see a cartoon balloon over their heads as they gossip about these intruders. I'm not clever enough to figure out what they're saying.

I wish I had taken a shot of the coyote lying dead on the highway in front of our place. A coyote getting slammed by a vehicle is strange enough, but I shudder to think it may have been one of those nights Mandy was sleeping out in the breezeway with the door open to her backyard pen.    

Squanto

Thanksgiving is coming.  That means Dawn will have to work at the old folks home. Jorge will snivel his way out of celebrating any holiday including one that's absent of religious overtones, save being The Feast of Gluttony.  Besides, he's gone vegan. That means spending hours roasting a tofu turkey.

I started out wanting to title this post SQUANDERED.  Then Squanto popped into my mind. I kinda like the way the name rolls off my tongue.  So I changed the title to accommodate some tongue rolling. It's what Republicans do these days. The fact is I squandered my time this morning.  I went to the computer before breakfast with a half cup o' coffee laced with clover honey.  Screw the extra calories. It's Sunday. Let's celebrate.Yahoo. Can I say that without copyright infringement?

The cat came up after seven to announce the day. He's running a bit slow of late. Then, he jumps in bed.  That wakes up the dog, who yodels her , "I want to go out." (I swear when she yawns in the morning it sounds just like the word "out"). She jumps in bed. Sneezed seven times getting enough dog snot over the flannel sheets that I decide it'd be best getting her outside before she pees on something.  Of course I give her a hug first because I'm  glad she back to normal ( yodeling, snorting, jumping in bed, harassing the cat...) It's been over a month she's been under a doctor's care for Lyme disease.

Yeah, so I wander over the net checking  favorite blogs wanting to be able to write like those people like I useta be able to write years ago when I drove a '60 Pontiac between Sheboygan and Milwaukee, driving with my knee, jotting down quips in a notebook in between wrasslin' with nine year olds in the ghetto.Pretending I'm Kerouac. Squandered. Squat. Both are similar. So here's what you get.

That black line isn't in the original shot. No idea why it's there. Must be some reaction to downloading a picture larger than the closest town. I'll do better soon. I promise. 

Waiting For The First Load of Wash

Are we going, yet?

panther

 In the beginning. You should see it now.

If I wrote, "In my day..." I'd be typecasting myself as an old fart who spends his days ruminating on the past.

Let me rephrase that.   "In a galaxy far, far away."  Heh, heh.   No, strike that. Let's try again.   Third time's the charm.  A long time ago there was a comedian named Henny Youngman.  While I'm waiting for the picture to download, I go to the bathroom, trim my nose hairs, check to see if Mandy's still in her dog bed, look for the cat, turn the keyboard upside down to see what gunk falls out and wonder, What is a Henny?  Who'd call himself Henny?

Henny Youngman's is most famous for beginning his monlogue with, "Take my wife..."  You're thinking he's going to launch into a description of wifely things.  Instead, he follows with, "Please."   

The uninterrupted line is, "Take my wife... please."  Bear with me while I explain.

Dawn ( my wife) shoots pictures with her new camera.  She has no idea what the icons means and little experience with digital photography.   In my fervor to go back to blogging this morning, I download all 61 images she's taken since December,2010.  The image of the garden is so large, I had time to revise my last will and testament. If you double click on the image you may be able to enter the picture ala a Harry Potter movie. You may understand now, how I dug a half tons of potatoes from this garden.

Originally, I intended for this to be a short travelogue. Then, Mandy and I would hit the road while I'm waiting for the washer to complete its cycles. We'd go to Dent and Bent just down the road a piece for discounted juice.  I'm  hoping that in the load of unsorted boxes full of dented and discarded items, some beyond expiration date, that  they acquired new stock of Mexican espresso.  They sell packages of the fine ground coffee for $2.  In the regular store it's $3.50 and up.

The nice thing about  a discount grocery store run by the Amish is that they are unfamiliar with exotic cooking items..  Special marinades, hot sauces, nori rice wrappers, garbanzo beans, Raspberry Chipolte sauce, sell for ridiculously low prices (5/$2.00).  One of the elders put up a sign that said buy one get one.  A daughter minding the store had no idea what that meant.  At the old teacher's desk near the door, I watch her charge me full price for both cans of beans.  She obviously never heard of the expression, buy one get one free.  I had a difficult time explaining to her the expression.  She thought I was pulling a scam.

 The washer has completed it's cycle. I'm still here. The dog is still sleeping.  The sun is going away along with my dream of painting trim frame around a newly installed window on the rear addition. 

Hoops& Dolts

This isn't one of those attention grabbing techniques, you know,  where someone says, Oh, please look at me. I'm so ...( insert proper adjective for terminal dumbness) Puleeze, won't you tell me I'm not so incompetent . I want you to make me feel better by telling me I'm not a dolt.  Throw in a few compliments by the way because I've thrown in a long thin 6 lb test line to fish for consoling words.  Really. I'm not doing that. This is merely a description of events, since I've been away so long. I need this.It's a form of therapy for me.

I'm fending off  Salvatore Pucci, the cat who wants to make a flying leap from floor to desk top and then to my monitor where he can gaze al-Qaddafi-like on the world below. Pushing him off my lap for unnecessary squirming, he curls up like a dog at my feet. Then he squirrels his way to the left of the keyboard.  It is essential  that he alert me to several important things. 1. I am your best buddy. 2. I am really photogenic lying there on the butcher board desk top. and 3. By touching my left hand with his paw , I want you to acknowledge my grunt, nuzzle and long groan and allow me to perch on the computer.  If this doesn't work, I'll make it really difficult for you to write with your left hand.

He's made the rounds outside.  He's mooched additional food besides his usual fare of  raw chicken liver
( 1/2 portion-he's a on a diet) and crunchy dry cat food.  He's supplemented his diet with a fresh caught deer mouse which he either imported into the house or discovered in the back of the pet food cabinet in the kitchen.  After perfunctory growls and hisses, he's relieved of the mouse which is in that semi-limp, comatose posture all captured mice assume as a life saving technique.  Knowing full well that said mouse will suddenly spring to life and run into the deep reaches of the Christmas wrap remnants/paper towel cubby hole under the stairs, I risk a scratched hand and take the mouse to the garage.  In the garage I take the smallest ball peen hammer and render the mouse really done-dead but not smushed all over my work bench. Then I can deposit the critter in the lined waste basket to ripen until dump day.

Prior to El Gatto's escapades, I decide enough is enough. My seven year old dinosaur of a digital camera I'll toss on a growing pile of ink-jet printers and a 20 year old DVD player strewn on the office floor. I'll install the software from Dawn's new digital camera and add some of the fifty odd pictures she's taken  since Christmas last.  To accomplish this I must first add a cable to connect camera and computer via the tower USB port.  I have an existing cable from my dysfunctional Canon digital.  I assume that nothing is ever standard, therefore I must disconnect old cable and reconnect new cable.  It's dark at the rear of the computer tower resting on my butcher block desk top.  In the entryway I keep a flash light for my evening walk with the dog. 

Short pause here to move a flicking cat tail from keyboard and to push a furry paw further away from the CAPS LOCK key.

I undo the twist tie around the new cable, unravel it, unplug old cable, lay new cable next to old cable and disconnect several plugs at the rear of the tower to access the same port.  God help me if I connect the camera to a port designed solely as  "video out"  and fry Dawn's camera innards.  This is child's play to even Mountain Man Johann whose sole form of entertainment during his youth was gazing up at a light bulb on the ceiling after the REA came through and electrified farmhouses.  Not so for me.  I have bi-focals.

To see clearly with bi-focals one must tilt one's head back so that anyone standing next to you can see your nose hairs. A passer-by would assume there is something wrong by the sneer like expression on your face.  I by pass the nose hairs and sneer and remove my glasses to press my face in the maze of wires.  Making sure that the plug is inserted correctly with the flat plastic inside part of the plug matching the rectangular slot, I connect the cable.  Wow. I did it.

I insert installation software software in the tower. It whirls and hums.  I'm half way to Nirvana with fright, fear and fulfillment. I look at the cable I've installed.  It's not possible that my hands were that dirty to smudge the white wire cable.  Ah, shucks.  I installed the cable that was originally there by mistake, leaving the new bright white new cable lying on the desk top. Crap.

Comparing old cable end and new cable end, I discover they are exactly the same.  I twist tie the new cable carefully to disguise the fact that I've taken it out of the box.  I'll return the software .  Dawn will never know I've been tinkering with her camera or software.

Now for the big one.

I bypass the new Yahoo front page and go directly to blogger.  Since the last time I've added a post to my blog, there have been changes to the blogger network.  It will not let me access my account. I don't remember my password.  Seven hoops later and a lucky guess and I'm back home.  Seven roads to home is more than a co-incidental name to the blog.

I luxuriate in the minutes and hours.  The past few weeks have been a frenzy of catch up and clean up.  Days and weeks of dry, warm, fall weather allow me to complete most of the painting, some of the farm work and even a few hours in clearing my south property line for the dolt who's fencing the cornfield behind us.  Mid-afternoon it begins to rain. Hard rain. River flooding rain.  The water that gushes down Kickapoo Center Lane is stained with leaf tannin. I've mulched most of the fallen leaves into fine particles that I  spread around the compost pile to keep my red worms from freezing in below zero weather.  Shirofumi organic edible podded soybeans are dry in their cardboard boxes on a table in the garage. I shell one box, of pods which yields over a pound of soybeans.  At $18.50/lb. of seed I'm hearing cash register bells when I look at the harvest.

I shell beans while listening to NPR.  I learn that before Columbus, there were no earthworms in America.I listen to the guest speaker tell that white laborers imported from Europe died of yellow fever or malaria. One third of the population of Philadelphia in Benjamin Franklin's day died from yellow fever.  African blacks had an immunity to the diseases. I listen to a man describe the process of naming a product. Swifter, Google, Kleenex are a few clever examples.Oh I am getting smarter by the minute.

Mandy, the dog pictured above, with what appears to be a banana in her mouth is sleeping on her chair in the living room.  I've become an expert in baking exquisite dog treats which I smear Amoxicillin to ward off the effects of lyme disease.  With a face like that how can I resist a slurp across the face as she jumps on the bed at dawn to show me I number one in her book.

Darn. the sun is peeking out from this morning's fog and haze.  Back to work.

Fall colors have peaked in Kickapoo Center. It's downhill from here. I cringe at the thought of four months of black and white.

The Amish patriarch, Jorge and I travel to Hillsboro to find parts for a manure spreader and greenhouse polycarbonate panels(clear plastic 4X8 insulated panels that will make the roof and sidewalls of my future greenhouse).  The colors along highway 82 from Lafarge to highway 33 which runs through Hillsboro are incredible and different than our hillside display.  Seems the farmers in that area decided that a mixed deciduous woods was an important ecological diversity worth preserving.  Even now, locals in the area are harvesting hardwood trees.  The logging trucks ply highway 131 which runs past our house with all too frequent diesel engine brakes and fumes. Our hillsides are a mix of muted yellows and an occasional stand alone hardwood of red or brown.  The dairy farmer down county highway U mentioned that in the 70's the hillsides were almost denuded.  The Kickapoo wreaked havoc with spring floods and the "gummit" stepped in and decided to build a dam north of Larfarge.  400 families were bought-out and evicted.  One old grandmother refused to sell and stopped the Army Corps of Engineers dead in their tracks. There's a park dedicated to Grandma.  Now the area is called the Kickapoo Reserve and is a scenic, unspoiled area save for one large concrete tower that was to be part of the dam preserved for the future in memory stupid government and ignorant people who value the greenbuck above nature.

If I didn't have enough to do in the race before winter's icy grasp relegates me to pissing and moaning in front of the computer with nothing to do but dream about getting my hands dirty in sandy loam, the dipstick neighbor decides to purchase the ten acre corn field behind us.It was a small part of a bankruptcy sale.  Being a poster child for Anal Retentives Anonymous and a huge fan of Ron Paul, he decides to erect a fence around the huge ten acre parcel.  I'm picking beans in the front field. I hear a commotion in the corn field and decide to investigate.

"Wisconsin law requires that I construct a fence on my property," he tells me.  "What law?" I reply.  "After the corn is harvested I'm going to run cattle in this field," Mr. Dufus replies.  He speaks of bulldozers, chain saws and hiring itinerant workers to clear the fence line between our property and his. I retain an attorney and become an instant expert on section 90 of Wisconsin Law which requires that "good fences, makes good neighbors."  It also says that I'm responsible for 1/2 the fence:material costs and labor.

Cut to the chase.

Dawn has to work on Saturday because the retirement home is hosting a quilt show and benefit. I work on the western portion of our south fence line hauling out tree limbs and removing brush that will interfere with a four wire barb wire fence.  I'll haul all the detritus to a burn pile in our front field.  My @#$ F-150 pick-up which I'd filled to the brim with large limbs clicks and will not turn over.Click. Click. Crap.  What's that quote about the best laid plans of mice and men?

I gaze wistfully at all the fallen leaves.  My newly repaired Cub Cadet riding mower I affectionately call Ted does a wonderful job of mulching leaves to fine particle.  With the lawn cart in tow I carefully line perennial herb gardens and start to cover the compost pile.  Two years ago my son-in-law gave me a box of red worms.  Ah shucks, red worms. You shouldn't have. I exclaim. They are eating machines, turning vegetable waste to compost in weeks.  BUT, they won't survive in a compost pile that freezes in minus twenty five degrees.  Hence the leaf mulch.

I'll wait until the wind dies down to mulch and take my trusty Stihl weed-wacker with the nylon blades and clear the other half of the south fence line.I quit after the blades jam up five times when I hit weeds the size of small trees, when red nylon rope winds the reel and I have to disassemble the head to unwind the mess and finally when smoke starts to rise out of the cutting head.  I'm dirty and smelly.  The sun block I use on my beardless face is covered with bits of weed and grass.  I shave my beard in the fall when I no longer worry about 12 hour days in the sun forcing me to spend six hours at the Mayo Clinic undergoing mohs surgery.

 It's time for a beer, I tell the kids.

Which Indian Gave Us This Summer?

It looks like it going to be a week of  Indian Summer warm days.  I'll be trying to remember the words to  "October's bright blue weather" a poem that Lucy Ladwig made us memorize in 5th grade. Fall colors are peaking with a few stand-out-alone Maples shouting, " look at me, look at me."  I never thought I'd be describing a tree as drop-dead gorgeous. 

Work days are slowing down.  That means after a short lunch, I snooze is a lawn chair in the garage for 15 minutes with the cat on my lap.  With dusk just after 6:30 pm, I can't claim 12 hour days as an excuse for not blogging.  The nap is necessary.  One, I'm low-energy and need a recharge to be able to dig up the last 10 feet of spuds.  The other, like yesterday, I anticipate a customer will pull up in the middle of things-I've got a paint brush full of "pineapple citrus" halfway through the front face of the garage- Armin drives up wanting onions and somebody to listen to his spiel about the chiseling local hardware store.  Then another guy drives up in an 88 Oldsmobile and wants to talk about his potato harvest.  He also wants 100 pounds of Kennebecs.  Turns out he's been dumping wood ashes in the garden over winter and it reduced his harvest.  Not good for potatoes.

My word processing skills are diminished.  Typos abound. Thank God for spell checks.Ten days ago my 30 year old son went to emergency with a fever and other associated symptoms.  At the hospital it was determined he has a aneurysm of the aortic valve and an enlarged heart.  Mid-week last he underwent open heart surgery.  From 7 am until 3 pm the doctors replaced the valve and did repairs in three incisions.  I spoke with him briefly on Saturday. His voice was till hoarse from all the tubes down his throat.  He's at his mother's house recuperating. 

He might as well be light years away in distance, because he's been overwhelmed with phone calls, pre-operative visits and now wants to just be able to heal.  It's a helpless feeling on my part.