Author Archives: spottywestgoeseast

February 17, 2024

I first started this post 40,000 feet above the Midwest somewhere on a double-aisled 767 jetliner on my way back from Tennessee. Through swaths of cloud I could see the land covered with snow like a white jigsaw puzzle on a black table top. The pieces that weren’t yet put together showed dark, curvy edges—a river and its tributaries crossing the otherwise rectangular allotments.

This whole business of flying is a remarkable thing and I felt particularly thankful to be alive on this second leg of my journey after a harrowing short flight from Knoxville to Atlanta on a smaller aircraft. We were in the midst of a massive east coast storm and it was bumpy. News stories and images were still fresh of a jet plowing into another plane then flaming down the runway. Another lost an escape door 16,000 feet in the air. 

Our ascent was bad but the descent worse. It felt like riding atop an avalanche on a 100,000 pound sled at 400 mph. I asked a flight attendant on the way off the plane how the ride rated in scariness from one to 10. 

She smiled and said, “That was pretty bad. I think it was a solid eight.” 

I was thankful she hadn’t said nine or 10 because I needed to know that things could get worse without dying if I was going to keep flying.

If I’m still at this regular Going-East business when I retire in a year or two I’m more likely to take a slower, statistically more dangerous, but psychologically easier method of travel. I’d like my mode of transport to be environmentally greener too, but short of riding in an electric vehicle with all the seats occupied or a Greyhound or Amtrak also at capacity (three scenarios not likely to happen) the comparisons and calculations I’ve found don’t point to one mode of transportation being much better than the other. I sometimes imagine a low-flying glider released from a giant sling shot. 

Realistically, walking or biking is the least impactful way to go from California to Tennessee. It’s a far-fetched proposition although I must mention that my friend Marlow made an annual 1000 mile round trip on a recumbent bicycle with a trailer and a greyhound dog from Jackson, WY to Moab, UT. He did this for seven years. The first few years it was a 2400 mile round trip to the Arizona/Mexico border until he decided he didn’t need to go that far south to comfortably winter in a better climate.

The options for travelers in the United States may be the worst they’ve been in fifty years. Available destinations for intra and interstate travel on busses and trains is less than half what it once was. How ironic is it that you can’t take a choo choo to Chattanooga? The Amtrak goes to so few places its website treats destinations like expensive hors d’oeuvres on a five star restaurant menu. 

The blue plate specials on Greyhound are a better deal but still limited. They don’t have as many buses or lines as they used to and many of their terminals have closed. When I travel by Greyhound to or from Knoxville I have to wait at a city bus stop next to a parking lot at midnight. Then if I’m coming to Knoxville the ride share to Corryton just 20 miles away costs almost as much as the bus ticket from Raleigh 360 miles away. 

None of this is terrible news for people who have means and money, but this continent has become less traversable to poor people. When you get on trains and busses it’s no surprise why they are often less than half full. 

In terms of combating climate change a full bus or train is better than a full plane or a single electric car. The problem is we all want to individually wipe our hands clean but attacking the problem requires a group effort and collaborative thinking.

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To pick up where I left off on my last post about doing a few smart things, number one among them was ditching my plan to demolish the old Sheridan cabin during this trip. I realized that even if I could get it down in some fast, probably dangerous—or at best merely destructive way—I’d barely have enough time to tear it apart, sort the usable lumber, and store it in a manner safe and dry from the elements. I only had a week. 

With this decision I slipped into a more thoughtful place. I began to look at the cabin as an interesting problem rather than something to conquer. As I began to work I let the knowledge of what was required manifest organically.

This laissez faire attitude extended to other areas that might otherwise have been stressful. Unbeknownst to the highway commissioner he may be doing me a favor in his failure to approve my driveway application that is almost two years old. Same goes with the new neighbor who has a road going over my land and was sold the property with the idea that it was his free and clear.

How to deal with that and the other are not cogs in the wheel but large gears that keep me from jumping into things too fast.

Besides, there is no rush to do what may never get done — specifically build a new cabin using parts from the old. In acknowledging this I freed myself from any anxiety on the subject.

I painted this sign and nailed it to the cabin perhaps 15 years ago when I first started having the idea of doing something on the land. I could see evidence that hunters liked to use the cabin as a stand. A fire pit showed that they warmed themselves here and probably used some of the lumber as kindling.
Lunch inside the cabin. It’s a good view for a hunter to catch a tiptoeing deer.

Smart item number two: I recognized that a deconstruction site needs room to move around in safely as much as a construction site does. Doing so not only helps avoid twisted ankles, it also saves time from stumbles and obstructed pathways. 

With this in mind I started tearing apart the fallen walls and roof of the part of the cabin that had come down several decades ago. The original structure was a backward L-shape and it is the shorter line of the L that fell and pulled with it about half the wall on the north side along with a good chunk of its roof. I’m guessing this room was a kitchen area because there is a rock structure at one end that could have been a fire place and a metal roof panel on top of the heap had a section cut out for a chimney. 

The debris of the fallen room.

I cleaned this fallen area working through the heap. I pried the metal roofing off, then knocked apart the battens from the rafters. It came apart easily since most of the fallen lumber is in different stages of decay. The wood got progressively worse as I got closer to the ground. In some places it was simply saw dust made by decades of insects and bacteria. 

Lattice of fallen roof after I removed the metal.
As night approached on my first day of demolition I used some of the roofing to make a dry box for some of the wood that may still be usable. Rain was expected the next day.

The demolition was difficult my first day because I was using less than ideal tools—a long, round pry bar and the back of an axe as a hammer. Both contained an unnecessary heft and imprecise bluntness. I returned the next day with an actual hammer and new pry bar that was flat and could grab the nail heads easier.

I took occasional breaks from this back-aching work to straighten up and look at the roof line where I intend to begin disassembly next summer. Over and over I assessed if I would be able to run a line between the trees and attach to a rope with enough lead to allow me to work on the roof and still keep me safe should it fall out from under me.

This is most of the wood I’d like to save.

I also took time during these breaks to assess the lean of the cabin. It was clear I was safe working on the fallen side, but working inside the cabin or on the opposite side facing the lean was not without the possibility of it falling on top of me. 

The cabin made a dangerous shift since my last visit. The rock pier that supports the northwest corner had opened like the pleat of an accordion. I have a feeling this development had something to do with my pulling up the remainder of the oak floor boards at the opposite corner last summer. This left only the north half of the cabin with flooring. A wood foundation is similar to a wall in that it relies on its sheathing to keep it from folding up in the way that a rectangle becomes a rhombus.

To safely take the cabin apart I would have to shore it up.  To do this I removed a 16-foot, 2 x 6 joists from its interior. The beam had spanned the width of the cabin but was now only attached on one side.

I hammered the stubborn wood from a rafter where it was attached with long, thick nails. The hammer blows made the whole cabin vibrate. I mentally practiced diving to safety between joists. The stupidity of it hit me later. To make the overall project safer I’d engaged in a dangerous activity in the moment and that’s when accidents happen. This could very well have ended with me receiving a Darwin award. I could have easily cut a small tree to use as the brace instead. 

To staunch the lean I braced one end of the 2×6 against the base of a tree and attached the other end under the eave.

After the brace was in place I continued to work on cleaning up around the cabin. Much of it is surrounded by assorted football size rocks hidden beneath a spaghetti work of vines. Unseen and unlevel they were ankle twists waiting to happen. The vines were great for catching a shoe and stopping me in my tracks. (I attributed an old-timey cowboy voice to them that said, “Whoa. Hold up there feller. Where do you think you’re going?”)

I pulled up the vines and lifted dozens of these big rocks from the ground where they were lightly seated in the loamy soil. I chucked them aside. In their place I began to make a path using the dirt that was soft and full of wood rot from the now cleared wing area. With no wheelbarrow I used a half piece of roof tin as a sled. Over and over I piled it with dirt and slid each load to the closest spot of the path I was making. In this way I was continually walking over the new dirt, packing it in as the path grew. 

Path around the cabin.
The lean is easy to see in this view.

I have to wonder if this fresh dirt won’t end up being an incredibly fertile space for my two least favorite plants to pop up before I can get back this summer: The leggy, multiflora rose vines fall over when they get long and grab my clothes when I pass. I’ve already spoken at length about poison ivy. Anyway, it won’t be hard to clean up anything that grows between now and June and it’s a small price to pay for a level walkway.

Between the hard labor there was another area I kept figuring on. I kept walking through the missing northwest wall of the cabin wondering why this portion of the roof wasn’t falling on my head. What I’d thought might be a corner post turned out to be a few pieces of siding hanging from the roof without even touching the ground. 

Finally I figured out that it was just the upside down v-shape of the rafters with their opposing force and a few collar beams taking the place of the missing joists that was keeping this part of the structure from folding up. It seemed just slightly more solid than transcendental levitation and I pretty much dropped everything I was doing right then and there to make a post fashioned out of a fallen cedar that had not rotted out. 

The post

At some point early on in my deconstruction preparation, the neighbor whose goats died stopped to make sure I wasn’t some interloper stealing wood off the cabin. I walked out of the woods to meet him on the dirt road and told him about my plans for taking it down and reusing the good lumber for a new place. 

“Aw well, I know you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do, but we’ll sure hate to see her come down,” he said. 

I appreciated him saying that. I’ll hate to see the cabin go too. I like an old dilapidated cabin as much as the next person whether in person or in the form of an oil painting or artistic photo. It represents a special kind of peaceful solitude to anyone who’s ever thought of living out in the woods. But more than what it symbolizes I love the idea of reusing its materials and making it a part of a cabin that I can actually use.

January 20, 2024

It may be useful, I’m thinking, to recap a theme of this blog in the way that a cliff-hanger, double-episode of Star Trek, The Next Generation recounts what last went down. (An episode of this series has been a nightly treat lately for Jillian and me — often while we eat dinner.)

I inherited two parcels of land from my step-mom a few years ago. These were left to her by my father who died in 2009. She could very well have sold them off and used the money for any number of important things but knowing that I took great interest in this land and its proximity to dear relatives she deeded them to me.

There is a 12-acre piece shaped like a rhombus and a 26-acre piece shaped like an acute triangle. Both are heavily wooded, the larger parcel more so and with a prominent knob near the center. If you think of the top of the knob as a circle, about 270 degrees of it has a steep approach with the remaining 90 degrees connected by a more gradual incline like a wide land bridge. 

The smaller parcel does not have such an extreme elevation change but has deep rolls nonetheless. The land here is characterized by large grey boulders that may have tumbled from the high ridge of the Clinch Mountain range that sits behind it at 2200 feet. Over a hundred acres of this mountain side are for sale but finding a buyer for acreage measured on the side of a wall may be difficult for the owner who I’ve not met. 

My two pieces of land are separated by what is known as Poor Valley—the space between the knobs and the mountain—probably 250 yards as the crow flies. Despite its name, the best and flattest areas for farming and building are in this small valley. Together this made one continuous parcel of about 200 acres that my University of Tennessee, chemistry professor grandfather bought and pieced together in the 1920s and ‘30s.

This was the land that my father had enjoyed all through his childhood as a vacation retreat from their family home in Knoxville 24 miles away. It’s the land where my grandfather is buried and my grandmother and uncle have memorial stones. Three of its acres are designated a cemetery. 

Knoxville family portrait with dad in the dark jacket with his older brother Clifton on the right, his half sister Mary Elizabeth and nephew Bob, center and parents on the left. Older half-brothers Jack and Gilbert are not seen.

As a young man the joy and familial good times my father had on the land throughout the 1940s and ‘50s must have played like a silver screen in his mind — summers in the farm house, gardens planted and apples picked, horses ridden, sled rides in winter and always exploring the surrounding woods.  

But the movie reel must have been canned when my grandfather died suddenly on his last day of work, dressed in his doctoral cap and gown. Dad was still a young man—just 25. My grandparents had planned to retire there to the country farm house.

Alcoholism took several siblings. My parents battled with it themselves. Some sort of bitterness weighed heavily on the memory of idyllic earlier times–something related to the unstitching of the family.

No one treated the land as sacred ground when I was growing up. I heard stories of it but only visited two times, first in 1972. I stepped out of the car and kicked rocks on the side of the road. We were just passing through on our way to my mom’s relatives. The old farm house was still there but Grandma Robbie had put it up for sale. Dad’s remaining family were scattered by then. We were living in Florida. Dad was estranged from the half-brother who still lived in Knoxville. I don’t remember even walking to the gravesite of his dad.

Years later, the next time I went with my dad he had a hard time finding the place. The movie reel in his brain had been relegated to some dusty shelf.

The old farm house in Poor Valley where my dad’s family spent many happy days in the country. The Clinch Mountain Range is on the left. The knobs are out of view on the right. Most of the land was sold off after my grandfather died but a few parcels remained in the family.

On all the remaining 38 acres there is only one spot that is almost perfectly flat and the place best suited for a cabin or house. It is not far from the memorial stones and sits atop a small rise looking across the valley to the face of the mountain range. The one time I ever walked on this spot with my father he talked about its potential. I imagine he had discussions about it with his mother and siblings and probably his father before he died.

“This is the place, if anyone ever wanted to build a cabin or house…this is the place they would do it.” 

Those solid words became a whisper that nobody was left to say but myself. Last week I returned from a week-long visit to the land I’ve grown to love. It’s become a biannual pilgrimage these last four or five years.

The rare flat spot for a house or cabin. Lots of pines on this part of the land. The ph from all the fallen needles may keep a lot of deciduous saplings from popping up here.
This is the view from the flat spot. If I build a cabin would I cut down the trees in front for a better view of the mountain and valley? Not sure. I few hundred yards out there is the other parcel of land–the Rhombus.

One thing I’m convinced of now is that winter time is the season to take advantage of outdoor work. As long as it stays below 45 degrees the ticks sleep like clocks whose gears have been seized by the cold. The poison ivy loses its leaf and the fat and thin vines that climb the trees lose their chewiness and become dry and brittle, easy to chop with an axe or machete. Sometimes merely giving a twist of the blade between tree and vine is enough to break it. I’m not sure how bad these vines are for trees but I’ve got a grudge against them and figure the fewer the better. 

It can be cold in winter, but this is preferable to the summer whose humidity and heat is elevated by the need to cover for protection against the biters and allergens.

It is also eminently more walkable.  The ground cover that grabs your boots and threatens to trip you with every step has died back. The leaves are gone that reduce visibility. They are piled six inches deep. There is no way to walk quietly. They no longer hide the limbs that wack you in the face if you aren’t careful. There are no spider webs. You don’t have to carry a web wand to remove them as you walk. Poisonous rattlers and copperheads, although I’ve seen none, apparently disappear in the winter. I’m not sure where the snakes and spiders go. Perhaps they are having a tea party somewhere underground. 

The shape of the hills and valleys are visible. There are places where I can see a hundred yards or more.

The old shed is holding up well. I keep a lot of useful items in it like my hand tools and the wagon I use to haul things.

This would be the time of year to do a tree count by species and size. Leaves are not always a big benefit for identification anyway. Some species leaf out very high. Saplings, sweet gum, maples and other smaller species block the visuals by forming a lower canopy. I’m getting better at identifying trees by shape and bark pattern. What I’ve learned this trip is that I have many more oak trees than I previously thought.

I’ve also found that there were once many cedars. Now it is difficult to find a live one. The bodies of dozens and dozens lie in the southwest corner of the Acute Triangle and adjacent to the falling cabin on the Rhombus. 

Cedars are easy to identify for the many short, odd and horn-shaped limbs that remain on the fallen trees.

I’ve experimented with chainsawing into these cedars. Many are so deteriorated the saw goes through them like butter and the wood is crumbly and white with no distinctive cedar smell. However, the short limbs often have a solid core and maintain the smell and red color. I brought back samples in my luggage to experiment with.

These branches have solid wood while the trunk they came from is rotted.
This is called ground cedar but not related to the tree. It belongs to the plant Phylum of clubmosses. There is a lot of this in the area between the shed and the flat spot.
This was an exceedingly straight and long log. The chainsaw worked pretty hard to get out this piece. I brought the wedge to Stewart and he thinks it might be walnut.
Hundreds of fallen trees are on the land. Some may supply usable lumber depending on how long they’ve been down and how much contact they’ve had with the earth.

I’m still not adequately worried about snakes although another neighbor introduced himself from his car window and showed me pictures of two local timber rattlers that had been killed. Both appeared to be approaching baby anaconda size. One was held chest-high folded over a pole. Both halves of the draped body almost reached the ground. The head was a surprisingly sharp and large equilateral triangle. I’m guessing this was accentuated by the head hanging down and it being dead. This video has convinced me not to kill a rattler or copperhead if I come across one. I do, however, think I will invest in some snake gaiter leg guards. 

I had no more sightings of bears but almost every neighbor I talked to had new stories. The two goats from an earlier picture I posted have succumbed to predators and their human parent suspects bears although another neighbor thinks it’s packs of canines bred from wild dogs and coyotes. 

The goat-daddy’s theory gained some authority when he told me that one of the goats had been found dragged up and over a barbed wire fence, a feat that only seems achievable by bears (having no reports of mountain lions in these parts). 

The other goat was found several weeks after it went missing—just a spinal cord attached to a skull which in my mind lends itself more to the wild dog theory. 

In terms of goals, I accomplished as much as I could have hoped for on this trip which included a fair bit of relaxation, visiting family, and except for a few strenuous days only mild exertion. 

There was a good deal of thinking about how to proceed though. The phrase work smarter not harder came to mind more than once. As I approach my last year in my fifties I’m feeling prepared to shuck off at least some of the traits that mark me—according to one close friend—as a dang fool. 

With that in mind I surprised myself with what I consider a few smart choices this trip. Retelling that will be part of my next post which will come out soon. It is mostly written but is too long to include here. 

December 31, 2023

I had a video of me singing Cat Steven’s “Oh Very Young” here as a bit of a teaser to get people interested in this latest blog. I figured some people might be more interested in bad singing than good writing. (Bad and good are likely overstatements on both accounts.) I actually think the singing was okay, but in the end, after a few problems getting the video to appear as the featured photo I chickened out.

Voice lessons are on my bucket list though. I say this while acknowledging that the bucket spills over like a child’s ten-thousand lego collection. It includes ideas that, like the toy, venture far beyond the original rectangular-shaped blocks. My bucket list is messy and unachievable if what science predicts is true and I only have one life to live.

To that end I recently gave away a guitarrón that I found tied to a pole and labeled “free” near the elementary school where I take Sasha to play. Learning a bass, string instrument is one of those legos scattered in the corner of the room collecting dog hair and dust far from the bucket.

This new year, I’m likely giving up several other things that are not on the bucket list but have been a part of my life for many years to a greater or lesser extent—motorcycle riding being the greater one. 

About a month ago I was in two fender benders two days in a row both, coincidently, on my way to see a movie in the theater—something I don’t do on a regular basis making the accidents all the more odd.

In the first incident I was standing at the box office when I heard yells across the parking lot. My truck had rolled backwards and bashed into the bumper of a parked vehicle. In the second incident, I was on my motorcycle stopped in traffic. I looked backwards for a clearing and then quickly accelerated around the car in front, raking off my side view mirror and doing considerable damage to the side panel of that vehicle. Both accidents were 100% my fault. 

Amazingly I was still able to make both movies without illegally leaving the scene. 

The first movie, Radical, was one of those teacher-hero movies that  we like to indulge in. (Not a feel good movie as much as an empowering one.) The second was Fallen Leaves a reluctant love story and bemusing comedy with interesting directorial choices that created a different time and place. I liked them both. 

The two accidents might be a small price to pay to bring an end to my participation in this notoriously dangerous activity. I’ve been riding motos for about 40 years. It’s fun, convenient, and inexpensive but in my estimation I no longer focus well-enough to ensure my survival. 

I’m replacing the mirror housing which I’d already glued together three times. I’ll spit-shine the bike and sell it in the spring when people are more interested in riding.

The other activity I will be giving up is down-hill skiing. There is no great emotional cost here. I’ve only done it about ten times in my life. I went a week ago and found myself close to terror after deciding to take three lifts to the top of the mountain and then finding there were no easy slopes down. (Planning and stupidity play a part in this as well.) 

A view from the ski lift.

I don’t have a problem staying on my skis as much as slowing and, of course, with that equation there is a point where the two lines traversing the x and y axes cross each other and end like a cat’s ball of string. Fortunately, helmets are standard issue these days. To be fair, the conditions weren’t great with a lot of crusted over snow, but when I figure in the cost of a lift ticket, rentals, a hotel room, and gas to get there it is a hobby I can afford to give up. 

A view from the top.

The dangerous activities I intend to keep (living being among them if you pay too much attention to the news and Next Door Ring camera postings) include riding my electric bicycle and bouldering in the climbing gym. Concord has dramatically increased the safety of bicycling by painting new bike lanes. My heart has leapt for joy with each new lane that has appeared. 

Yesterday I shipped my bicycle battery to a business in Colorado to get a complete rebuild. The battery is ten years old and losing its range. The cost is $700 versus buying a new one for $1700. The rebuild is supposed to be better than new as it will add on some extra range and amperage. 

I was just shy of 20,000 miles on the old battery before I shipped it off for a rebuild this past Friday.

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Tomorrow I leave for Tennessee to finish off my vacation at my Aunt’s in Corryton and work on my land which is nearby. On the to-do list is finding out why my driveway permit has not been granted although I put the application in with the county over a year and a half ago. The driveway is the space off Poor Valley Road that I intend to gravel near the footbridge I built this past summer. Crossing this footbridge is a short uphill hike to the tabletop where I may someday build a cabin that will overlook the valley between the knobs and the Clinch Mountain range. 

That intention relates to another thing on the to-do list which is to deconstruct the falling Sheridan cabin to use some of the timbers for building the new structure. There is hundred-year old metal roofing that I’d like to salvage along with strong, oak dimensionals of similar age. 

I’ve given plenty of thought on how to do this deconstruction with little surety that it is achievable in the short time I will have this trip.

I’ve been watching YouTube videos which are helpful although most show deconstruction of structures that are more stable than my falling cabin. Common wisdom seems to suggest that taking it apart from the roof down is the best way to insure the maximum undamaged salvage. How to do this safely is the trick since the whole structure is leaning precariously. Walking on the roof secured by a rope attached to an overhead limb might be a good strategy if there is one available. I might also be able to brace the leaning structure adequately with wood on one side and tie it to trees using a winch on the other side. 

I’ve also thought of just pulling the cabin down. One person suggested this might be accomplished with less damage to the wood if I first cut halfway through the supports at the bottom.

Whatever progress I make, or don’t, I’ll be sure to include it in my next post. 

The image on the left makes the cabin seem almost usable. The image on the right is what you see when you go around the other side.

There is a lot of good century-old wood in it like these 2×6 joists.

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This coming year feels fraught with tension at home and abroad. I sure hope people stop fighting. I know that sounds like a simplistic wish for these complicated and deeply ingrained divisions, but it’s a starting place. People agreeing to not kill each other is always a good starting place. 

Peace in the New Year. 

The couch under the front window is a favorite spot for our fuzzy family. Old man Buddie and little lady Ruby Lou sit atop while the incredible Sasha Moonbeam faces the camera.

November 25, 2023

It’s hard to remember what I did for Thanksgiving breaks those first few years when I was in college in Ithaca, NY. I was a mid-year transfer student to Cornell in January 1985 having done my first year and a half of school in my hometown at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg. I tried to make it home most Christmases but it was a long train or bus ride just for Thanksgiving and too expensive to go by plane. In later years I went with friends, but there was at least one Thanksgiving, maybe a whole Christmas break when I wondered the campus feeling lonely with the other few who appeared as bundled miniatures stepping from giant buildings or walking across barren quads.

The flat-roofed, three-story cinder block coop I lived in was a former sorority house with architectural elements of Frank Lloyd Wright pasted on Soviet brutalism. The coop was on the North side of campus across both gorges from College town. There was a pervading sense of quiet especially in winter bundled against the cold with footsteps on new snow. Where footpaths paralleled or crossed the salted roads the sharp sound of wet, spinning tires came alive.

I never went over Thurston Avenue bridge without thinking of the students reputed to have thrown themselves into the gorge. It was said guards were placed on this bridge after chemistry exams. I assumed this was for all the hard sciences. No one thought hotel school students like me were in danger. We were the ambassadors for service-oriented capitalism and spent Wednesday afternoons drinking alcohol in Statler Auditorium for the two-credit, pass/fail Intro to Wine and Spirits class.

It was Philosophy that did me in — specifically Existentialism 213 which I took as an elective the second semester of my junior year. The professor was a charming, short, middle-aged man with a pockmarked face who slowly paced with a cigaret as he lectured. He hopped a seat on the front of his desk when he wanted to pose a serious question, taking a deep drag on his cigaret and giving us all an open, friendly look through thick glasses that made his eyes look watery and big. He’d swing his legs a bit like a child. It was halfway through the semester before I realized one of his black shoes had a four-inch thick sole so the length of his legs would match.

There were six books on his reading list. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky was the cheeriest of the texts. Then there was The Stranger by Albert Camus, The Will to Power by Friedrich Nietzsche, and the Concluding  Unscientific Postscript by Søren Kierkegaard. Jean-Paul Sartre had two titles: Being and Nothingness and Nausea.  

I understood very little of what Kierkegaard had to say. Still, of all the authors, his long essay gave the clearest prescription for becoming a more enlightened person. He said that the greatest despair of all is not knowing despair. That is, we all have despair but it is much worse to be in despair and not recognize it. 

Reading this I was hell bent on finding my despair. Apparently I had a great aptitude for this. I started to question everything about my existence. My grades started to drop. I succeeded so much that I had to take a leave of absence the next semester. I stayed in the 32-member housing cooperative sleeping late everyday while friends went off to class. 

It’s debatable whether one finds despair or it finds you. It was my first encounter with depression. The next time I wasn’t actively looking for it, it just showed up like a mobster picking his teeth and leaning against the wall waiting for me to come out of my door.

The second depression was much more serious. The gap in my soul was much wider than any of Ithaca’s gorges. Even today, remembering that person so completely taken by nihilism invokes a sharp fear.

Revisiting Ithaca always carries with it that memory. Yet, there is something useful in returning to places of your past and witnessing the change. This time I found a forest that grew up where a field once was.

I have reason to remember this field because one evening when I was still in college I was with a group of friends at Friendly’s — a chain of ice-cream-parlor diners that was high on our list of favorites. 

We’d just finished eating at the Elmira Road location. It was perhaps the last commercial establishment within the southern bounds of the city’s street lights. The bill had been paid and we were hanging out when a line of wailing fire engines passed by spinning red in the crisp, autumn night. For some reason we decided to chase them and ran to our one car and packed in. 

The night was black. The red lights ahead were a beacon that soon brought us to an orange conflagration. We pulled onto 327 which split off from Elmira Road and watch the dramatic fire from a safe distance across a wedge of unobstructed field. It was the beautiful ginger bread victorian that housed Turback’s Restaurant on fire. We could see the multi-peaked roof poking through the flames.

The picture above shows what was then an unobstructed field that we looked across to watch the fire. The trees that now stand there are a representation of the time that has passed. New as well is the road which is another entrance to Treman State Park. 

This is on the other side of those trees across Elmira Road. The Victorian was rebuilt but never occupied by a restaurant again.

Friendly’s restaurant took a longer time to die, as did The Nine’s Pizzeria and Bar, another favorite hang out. Reports indicate they both went under in the last few years. Time swallows all things. 

The Nines had everything I wanted in a bar. It was walking distance from my campus coop. It had pizza, beer and a pool table that if I was lucky I could hold all night. There was a regular band that became my favorite. Neon Baptist‘s preacher/lead singer slung a southern drawl full of dark prophecy and sordid endings that fit with my brand of pessimism and inspired me to perfect some signature dance moves with housemates. 

Time marches on. It’s not on your side or against you. The Thai Cuisine where I worked as a waiter for several years after college is also no longer in existence. The tiny strip mall that contained the restaurant as well as my optometrist’s office is torn down. 

Lex, the restauranteur has had other successful operations over the years and when I’m in town I go visit whatever his newest is. This time it was Mia, a popular upscale Asian restaurant on the commons. I went my last night in Ithaca this past September. I learned from the hostess that Lex had passed the restaurant on to a relative and moved to Syracuse. 

Talking more with the hostess, the thin face of an attractive young cook from 34 years ago pierced the extra padding and spectacles she wore. My younger face emerged to her simultaneously and we both laughed with the recognition. It was Bun, the sister-in-law of Lex and she told me her husband, Noi, who was the main cook at the Thai Cuisine is now a monk back in Thailand. My waitress was their daughter.

The Thai Cuisine was always a family affair. Lex’s mother who we all called Mom was a fixture when I was there. Lex and his brothers Max and Noi all cooked though Lex was most often the front-of-house manager. It was a busy place for many years after opening in 1988– one of the early Thai restaurants to bring this new delicious cuisine to the states. It took the cuisine seriously. The tables were white cloth and the staff was black tie. It was several years before Lex put any artwork on the walls. He wanted the focus to be on the food.

In the days before people were trying to kill themselves with Ghost peppers and Carolina Reapers, the heat of the dishes were always a point of discussion. We offered them served hot, medium or mild, with strong warnings about the hot.

Max, the oldest, biggest and jokiest of the brothers was cooking one day and he put on a serious face and asked if I knew the three kinds of hot. When I said I didn’t he explained, “You’ve got hot, Bangkok hot and then GOD-DAMN-HOT!” At this he exploded with laughter.

His two daughters who were four and six when I first met them are now professionals–I believe Bun said a lawyer and a social worker. I’m glad the older girl survived. She always arrived standing on the bench seat next to her father as he swung his big sedan into the parking lot at a high rate of speed and slammed on the brakes. When she came through the front door she often had messy hair and a big smile on her face as if she’d just gotten off an amusement park ride. Max’s trademark was fun.

Below are some things I’m thankful for. New bike lanes on several routes I take to the grocery store, the BART station and to the gym. And of course Sasha!

Sasha at the nearby school where we go every week to play.

October 21, 2023

That one-hundred dollar forged steel art pencil I bought this summer really hasn’t served the purpose I imagined which was to motivate me to keep my desk clean for writing. The photograph below tells the story. The steel pencil is buried beneath the clutter somewhere and I sit in bed typing these words. 

I had good intentions—not the sort that the road to hell is paved with. There is really no damnable offense here. Just clutter. If I had to use an aphorism to redirect this character fault I’d say cleanliness is next to godliness. That is more in line with my way of thinking about a higher power and how being clutter free is related to thoughtfulness and meditation. 

I also like to believe that if this relationship between god and cleanliness were true that my grandmother Knott would be very close to god. You could eat off the linoleum floor in her kitchen and a wet, hard candy that fell from your mouth onto her living room carpet wouldn’t bring with it a single hair or speck of dust.

Grandma was a god-fearing woman. She went to church every Sunday and would sit with the bible and read it though I sometimes wonder if it was primarily a sleep aid. 

The most enjoyment and inspiration I ever got from that book was as a discussion starter in a bible study group I belonged to with a bunch of (mostly) homeless men in the rectory of St. Boniface Church in the Tenderloin. 

Barbara Graves was the only woman I ever saw in the group and she was the leader. A Quaker, anti-war activist and bronze star recipient for her work for the Red Cross in WW2 Europe — which she later gave back in protest — she was eighty years young—compassionate, strong and good-humored she celebrated people speaking their mind. 

I think she probably had a straight and narrow path she followed like my grandmother but her’s involved listening to people’s stories that might include one older man’s regular recitation of working at a laundromat and giving blow jobs to customers at the back of the store. 

Entertaining such discourse would have been as alien and inconceivable to my grandmother Knott as an invitation to board a spacecraft and be taken to its leader. 

The bible study group always started off with a song and when I was chosen to pick it from the binder I always chose “Lord of the Dance,” because it had a catchy, exacting beat and our motley crew reminded me of medieval people who I could imagine ticking their heads back and forth to the sound of lutes and flutes and whining bagpipes. The dance would have been closer to hopping on and off one leg.

I’m not a religious person but I do have some faith in a higher power whether that is a collective consciousness or a million wings of monarch butterflies in migration. 

Recently, an offence to my non-religious nature has been reignited. I know this makes it sound like I look for opportunities to be bothered but I think I really do my best to not be offended but at times find myself suddenly worn down. This time it has to do with the “under god” version of the Pledge of Allegiance that one of my schools says over the loudspeaker every morning. 

To the credit of the principal, after my original complaint, he made the pledge optional by adding in the words “if you would like to join us”. Still, I don’t think it’s enough. There is a lot of talk about equity and what that looks like in the school district. By my way of thinking, in the case of the pledge, equity would mean not just telling the students that they have a choice of whether to join in, but also educating them on the other way to say it and why some people do not want to use the word god.

Previous to working at this school I worked at another school for four years where this version of the pledge was also said. At that school I was sometimes with a group of students when the pledge was recited. I’d either pause and leave out “under god” and return to synchrony with the students as they finished “indivisible, with liberty and justice for all” or sometimes I’d just drive on through out of sync and end before them. That would get odd looks and sometimes questions that gave me the opportunity to explain the different way to say it and why. 

Occasionally I’d be caught in the office with other adults and I would simply stop what I was doing and stand without speaking. One morning I was in the office crouched down filing papers in a lower cabinet when the announcement came on led by students in another room. “Stop, stand and face the flag. Put your hand over your heart and begin,” was the script used. 

The principal was in the office with me and that day I chose to not stand but simply stop shuffling through the files in respect of quiet. Seeing that I wasn’t rising, my principal looked at me quite pointedly and I rose though I did not join in with the words. The look she gave led me to write a note to her about my beliefs and why I did not like using the word god. 

While it changed nothing at the school, the principal apologized for offending me. When a new principal came the next year the pledge was no longer said and I felt a sense of relief at not having to go through the motions.

In 1954 President Eisenhower added “under god” to the original pledge that was written in the late 1800s. It had become increasingly popular in public use and Eisenhower wanted to add the words to protest growing communism. By the 1970s and presumably earlier there were enough protests that most school districts dropped “under god” and resumed the earlier form. In the heavily Christian deep south where I lived for all of my primary and secondary schooling “under god” was mostly not used. 

I don’t understand when people complain that “you’ve taken god out of school” since we have a long history of leaving deities out of it. One of the pillars of this country is freedom of religion and the separation of “church and state” and what fits more in the category of “state” than public education? 

It would be nice if a treatment of different religions and non-religions were added to the common core standards of education. Religion is an important aspect of humanity and tolerance for different beliefs is a worthy subject. Mentioning god to the exclusion of other beliefs does not have a place in the education of people representing all those backgrounds. 

In recent history, it has been common practice for presidents to end speeches with “and may god bless America.” Ronald Reagan began ending his speeches with it and all presidents since then have as well. To my annoyance Barack Obama, who I consider a great orator, continued the tradition. It’s pandering to the masses. Thoughtful Christians should rethink what it means to be all for one and one for all. 

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I intend to return soon to the subject of Ithaca and my late summer visit. There is more left there to be said but something I’m beginning to learn with this blogging is that if I try to get everything in that I want to talk about I often end up frustrated with the end result of putting out nothing. 

October 4, 2023

It’s been difficult to get back to the blog. I’ve been burning my candle at both ends. On top of that shifting from summer to work mode is never easy for the teacher.

My resistance to the chore of work has not been what it was last year, it’s just that it hasn’t fit in with my social life. I’ve been dating up a storm. I may have mentioned in an earlier post that Jillian and I transitioned to housemates about a year ago now. I hesitate to say that this is all we are because housemates is quite a lot and in many ways we remain each other’s number one support person. But I will say that not viewing ourselves as partners has taken a lot of the pressure off.

I’m about to slow down on the dating and take a more measured approach. It’s fun but exhausting. Over the summer I cast my net far and wide with profiles on three different dating sites—I even met someone for beer at a brew pub while I was in Tennessee. Just recently I put two of my dating sites on hold. I’ve been operating under the opinion that it is better to engage prolifically than to be extra choosey. There is just so much you can know about a person without meeting them. Even for basic attraction this is true to some extent. The animated individual holds the truth while the curated individual can never be known. 

With this in mind I’ve been on perhaps a dozen first dates in the past few months. Of those three turned into second and third dates and of those three only one had some romance which was nice but of course complicated things and currently has a dubious but hopeful status.

Whatever the case, I’ve got at least one or two new friends, but the energy for continuing this pace is waning. Life goes on whether you are dating or not. There are always things to do when I get home from work. Today it was pay my motorcycle license renewal which sat on my desk with a not-too-serious-but-annoying-threat to bump to a higher bill if it wasn’t paid ASAP. It was also necessary to suck up the cat fur that is beneath my bed. Peeks under there revealed that Ruby Lou, our little buff cat had made a broad nest of her own hair between the plastic storage bins. This—and lately my bed—have become Ruby’s favorite spot after finally giving over Jillian’s room entirely to the newest family member, Sasha, Jillian’s 15 month old, blue heeler cattle dog. My room is now cat central with Ruby Lou— technically Jillian’s cat—and my own cat Buddie making it their home base when they aren’t outside.

Sasha spins in circles when I come home. If traced with a spirograph they would make a dozen red, blue, green and yellow links as I point her toward the kitchen saying “back, back, back, back” so I can unload my mochila and bike pannier then make it to a chair to sit and properly give her some loving. The alternative to her spinning her way there with my repeated commands is to allow her to leap to my sides and belly, shredding my clothes and skin with her sandpaper pads and black claws with their razor sharp edges honed by the red lava rock in our back yard.

Sasha is also Jillian’s animal—more technically I suppose than Ruby Lou because I made Jillian sign a contract that she is 100% responsible for the dog before I agreed to have another pet. The fact that I love Sasha beyond words…(A cheap out for a writer. I might try to describe it at some point)… and that I have a big role in her play and exercise—as well as her financial upkeep—gives me nothing more than uncle status. I’m not allowed to call myself daddy. This is a firm rule for Jillian.

At times it elicits small pangs but it is not a harsh price to pay for having no responsibility which, otherwise, might include cleaning up mounds of poo in the back yard and helping to feed the beast four times a day. 

Blue heelers have their one person and that is definitely Jillian. Despite the absolute ecstatic excitement I’m greeted with by Sasha, her fierce protective nature extends to me and is demonstrated whenever I pass through Jillian’s bedroom door. If I should want to talk to Jillian or visit her in her private space, Sasha leaps onto the bed, crouches and begins a fierce growl.  I dare not approach with anything but caution. To get  close I must offer up my arm to be bitten which she does with expert constraint that says watch it buddy. Someone intent on harm would come across a dog more like a tornado filled with nails and plate glass shards with powerful winds shifting in unpredictable directions. 

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For my last blog post I wrote about the long wedding weekend I attended near my old college town of Ithaca, New York. I’d like to continue that here.

This homecoming-of-sorts was one reminder after another of time passing, decades measured across the lines on the faces of old friends—among them, the organic farming family, The MacDonald’s. The first of several notable reminders wasn’t in the wrinkled face of an aged one but the still fresh countenance of Parker MacDonald. 

Shelley and Tom’s youngest child was born a few years after I’d left the area. I asked Parker how old he is now expecting to hear something in the low twenties. When he told me thirty I was reminded that this was the age when I first considered I was really, in all actuality, a grown up and that, depressingly, there was no turning back.

On my last day in Ithaca I went for Indian food and a walk in Cascadilla Gorge with some of the MacDonald children–and I mean the adults here. From left are Trevor, Lucas, Parker and his wife Binna. The three smart youngsters are all Trevor’s kids.
This is why they say “Ithaca is gorges”.

Parker was left in my care as a baby when his mom came to visit and attend an organic food event at Fort Mason in San Francisco. I’d made my escape from my beloved college town to the big city a few years earlier mostly leaving behind a bad case of who-the-hell-am-I?

I took the baby to the broad sloping lawn on the park above the buildings where a fine, large Beniamino Bufano statue happens to show a serene mother with a child in her care. Her peaceful face pointed out a rather large discrepancy as Parker was crying loudly and I was trying to do everything I could to stop it. I spread out the small blanket his mom had provided and laid him down still crying. 

I did some cooing and some empathic listening, responding with, “I know, I know.” I put my hand on his chest. I picked him up and rocked him. I repeated all the things I’d seen caregivers do in my still short life (still a few years younger than Parker is now). Nothing worked. His little face was red from all that concentrated effort to sing his one note aria with an all-too-brief pause to replenish the lungs between wails. 

Maybe that’s what gave me the idea that singing might help. But what? For a writer I have probably the worst memory for lyrics. I only retain the refrain in popular songs. After that, the words disintegrate into mumbling and made up lyrics.

The one song that I reliably knew was the theme song for the 1960s television series The Beverly Hillbillies. After about a decade of daily, after-school tv- watching I’d seen every episode three times. 

When I began to sing this it almost immediately worked. Parker stopped and listened to my story about a man named Jed. When I reached the end and the dreadful lack of melody about swimming pools and movie stars and the terrible, get-ready-for-the-bow, title-proclamation—The Beverly Hillbillies!—I started again before the baby would be jangled back into unhappiness. 

I continued to sing on repeat until, miraculously, his eyes grew heavy and he fell asleep. Even then I was afraid to stop. When I finally did the mother statue with the child made a lot more sense. 

Standing before me, 30-year-old Parker MacDonald felt very much like a hyperspace jump between the decades. It was a reminder that life is short and will be over too quickly. It’s a good reason to slow down and smell the roses or taste the grocery store samples—whatever is your metaphor of choice. 

This is the sculpture at Fort Mason. Bufano is purported to have over 500 public sculptures in the SF Bay Area.
This is the Hand of Peace also by Benjamin Bufano. This is his largest sculpture and is on display at the Civic Center Park in Walnut Creek where I went with Jillian and Sasha for a field trip to see it. Scroll to the bottom of this link for a fun video about the piece and the artist: https://walkwc.stqry.app/story/192816

Much of Bufano’s work is about peace. With that in mind the answer to the popular question “Haven’t we learned anything about war?” seems to still be “No”. Here is a July article about the cost of the Ukraine War: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/7/8/500-days-of-war-in-ukraine-at-what-cost

The statistics and pure stupidity of blowing up people are a compelling argument for ending the war as soon as possible with negotiations that might include Ukrainian concessions for land and giving up the idea of it joining NATO which may be the reason Russian felt compelled to invade in the first place.

I can only begin to understand what might be fair having no expertise on the issue. Defense and revenge are both gut, automatic instincts, but so are love and compassion. Everything in between is a confusing business.

August 28, 2024

(one week ago)

It may be that in Ithaca, New York—a liberal, knowledge-soaked, university town—the best internet cafe on a Sunday night is McDonald’s. It was the only place I could find open and with internet…and it wasn’t even “open”. I had to sit in the parking lot cramped between my steering wheel to click out a daily write to this week’s partner in my writing group. A sign penned with a faint pink marker was on the outside door explaining that they were short-staffed and could only operate the drive-through. 

I’m back this morning, Monday, to Internet—if that can be a verb. It really might be the most convenient place given my location up the hill toward Enfield were I’m staying in a pickle-delivery vehicle — a 2000 Toyota Sienna—on Luke MacDonald’s homestead. (Note the a between the M and c. No relation to Ronald-the-clown who has been hawking American burgers since the 1950s.) 

Fortunately, the restaurant is fully staffed this early a.m. and as a bonus, the piped in music is playing hits that were a background to my transferring to the Cornell School of Hotel Administration here in January 1985. At the moment it’s Julian Lennon’s Much Too Late For Goodbyes preceded by Ashford and Simpson’s Solid. 

I’ve come back to my college town perhaps a half dozen times since I left for California in 1991. When visiting, I’ve always had a feeling of something unresolved, reminders of the mistakes I made, an extra internal organ sensitive to the terrible depression I experienced before I left. This time, however, it feels like my past here is a finished canvas. I can see all the parts like an elaborate piece of narrative art. There is beauty mixed in with the ugliness and pain.

I’m here to attend the wedding of my old friend Thor to his long-time partner Rachel. I first met Thor through a friend at my University housing coop where I lived from 1985 to 1988. One of my early adventures with him was to go slaughter a lamb for the coop’s formal dinner in which we all dressed smartly each Spring to enjoy an end-of-year dinner in our dining hall. 

I was co food-steward at the coop for several years with my first partner Cathy followed by Jackie another year. Together we planned meals for 32 people, scheduled cooking and clean-up, placed food orders, and made runs to the grocery store for things that could not be obtained through Sysco. Jackie and I could carry four full bags of groceries on my little Honda 250: a bag in front, one squeezed between and two hugged by said passenger instead of holding onto me or the bike.

Slaughtering and dressing lambs was not in my job description but this along with the normal responsibilities may be the closest I came to following the career path of a hotelie. The pay was not much—just free meals—but my parter and I could usually breeze through a plan with scheduling and orders in a couple of hours every few weeks. 

Slaughtering the lamb, while educational, was traumatic. Thor’s Aussie sheep farmer friend whose rolling pastures were some miles away had a lame (but otherwise healthy) lamb that we could have for cheap. Unfortunately, after tying the back legs for hoisting, the knife placed under the bleating babes chin was found to be too dull for the deed and guess who was chosen to hold the shivering little lamb while the utensil was taken back to the house for sharpening? I don’t remember if I immediately became a vegetarian but in certainly influenced the decision that lasted for most of a decade. 

I’d received my college degree by the time I started waiting tables at the Thai Cuisine. It was upscale Asian, black-tie service and I was eager to get in on the big wads of cash I saw my girlfriend bringing home. Waiting tables wasn’t the kind of work most hotel school graduates did. They ran restaurants—whole chains of them. They ran hotels.

Still, I was happy to have found a community which seemed more important than running off somewhere to be in a management training program. I’d also become something of a black sheep in the hotel school before I graduated. Rubbing shoulders with too many people outside the school had turned me into a critic of the corporate world. The liberal university had done its job of making me worldly, pro-union, environmentally-minded and critical of materialism. I wore a red arm band and protested to get the university to disinvest funds from South Africa. On a more personal note, I was scared shitless of being a manager of people. I couldn’t think of anything I was less inclined or capable of doing.   

After three years waiting tables, first at the Cafe des Amis, a delicious Tunisian Restaurant where I worked my last year of school, I was beginning to have a hard time putting on a smile. I was ready to try new things. 

While still working at the Thai Cuisine I began to sideline as Thor’s grease monkey in the VW repair shop he’d opened west of downtown in a space that backed up onto an inlet of Cayuga Lake.  It wasn’t an official job. I was mostly just hanging out and changing oil but also learning more complicated things if a teachable moment aligned with the opportunity to be useful. Sometimes I was just learning the names of tools to hand to Thor. 

With the lower half of his jump suit sticking out from under a car he might say, “Hey will you pass me that torque wrench next to the compressor?”  

Thor is a natural teacher. People like hanging out with him because beyond being a fun person, he’s likely to teach you something. Around this time he started a second job teaching car mechanics to high school students at a garage run by BOCES in Tompkins County. 

He also introduced me to the MacDonald’s, an organic farming family I became very close to over the years.

(to be continued)

The groom arrived on a tractor and the bride on a giant combine that swung its grain arm out to reveal this banner with their initials inside a heart. Thor’s brother Troy and friend Bill led a beautiful, heart-warming and funny ceremony. A barn full of tables and food, a beer and booze truck, and a mechanic’s shop with bands playing music all night made for a great celebration with all the people who said “I do” to support and love the newlyweds.
Thor’s a successful grain farmer now but still does his own mechanics. Bigger wrenches are needed for bigger machines.
Out of town attendees were treated to staying in the beautiful, retro-style, Grayhaven motel. The motel maintains fourteen acres of wild marshland.
Paths are mowed for guests to perambulate.
The wild, nature illustrations of one of Jillian’s favorite artists, Ernst Haeckel, came to mind as I walked the grounds of the motel.

August 13, 2023

There are a lot of dead poets in my life. Probably more dead than alive at this point since I don’t go to many poetry readings or workshops any more and mostly only read poetry by friends.

Rhett Stuart, Janice King, Marsha Campbell were all members of the Tenderloin Writer’s Workshop that took place at Central City Hospitality House in the 1990s and before me in the 80s when it was run by Robert Volbrecht. The workshop may still exist there with another facilitator though I haven’t been back in many years. Robert was a serious person who smoked and gave good comments. Janice and I smoked as well, along with others.  It would have been a cloudy room if not for the high ceiling. 

Mark Schwartz, a well known North Beach poet and open-mic host,  never came to that workshop in my time but sometimes showed up at the Tenderloin Reflection and Education Center (TREC) People’s Library where I volunteered. Dozens of others crossed my path over the years—many now deceased. I facilitated what I called the “Out of a Hat” writing workshop at TREC when it was in the old St. Boniface Neighborhood Center and later, when we were ousted, at the YMCA across the street. 

This morning I thought of something that Marsha Campbell said in defense of me once when I was accused of being opinionated. She said, “A person without opinions lives without ideals.” That has helped me to have compassion for myself over the years. 

Yesterday, I went to the city for breakfast with a friend followed by tennis with another friend. I did a bike/BART which is so much nicer than driving, if nothing else because I can get some reading time in, but also because I arrive more relaxed than when I lane split on my motorcycle all the way across the Bay Bridge arriving with a tight jaw and every nerve in my body set to react. 

The city is strange for me now. It’s filled with nostalgia for the excitement and possibilities it held when I was younger but sadness for the people I know who have died, people I have lost touch with and regret for all the mistakes I made. If nothing else, life is messy. 

I turned my electric bike off as I rode through the flatlands of the Mission district. Between breakfast and tennis I had three hours to kill. Memories associated with place popped up every few blocks. 

Out of the six places I lived in San Francisco, only one was in the Mission—a second story flat that was leveled to make what is now the rear parking lot of Rainbow grocery. But I always had reasons to go to the Mission —parties, readings, friends, shopping, barhopping, art, books, Dolores Park near Mission Dolores for which the Mission district is named. 

Rents have always been high in San Francisco. During my time from 1991 to 2002 I only lived two places by myself—my first nine months in a Tenderloin SRO hotel room and my last five years in a Tenderloin studio apartment. 

Inflation-wise I don’t have a good sense if things are worse. That’s what you hear but then that’s what you heard thirty years ago too. The streets are as rough as I ever saw them in the TL. 

By the time I left, I had golden handcuffs keeping me in my apartment. The rent was $650 — a hundred dollars more than when I moved in. But I was tired of the armor I had to put up when I stepped beyond the slamming iron gate of the building entrance.  It wasn’t armor for fear of bodily injury, but psychic armor for my accosted senses. Actual violence was pretty rare for the amount of humanity that ambulated on this corridor of Hyde street. But I was tired of stepping over passed-out bodies, being body-blocked by prostitutes, being asked what choo need? by drug dealers, and seeing every imaginable kind of human waste. 

Never mind there were often children skipping by, flower shops run by lovely people, the bustle of workers, delightful restaurant smells, access to busses and trains going every direction, my Buddha birds (pigeons) circling in the blue sky. 

I was working as a substitute school teacher in Berkeley and it made sense to be across the bay. It made sense to take my opinionated self somewhere else and to start fresh. 

I’m feeling a similar need now though I don’t think it’s necessary to move. I need a mental reboot. Maybe a long break from alcohol. Maybe a new job. 

When I was fired from work at a bank in Ithaca, New York after graduating from the Hotel School, I spent a month or so collecting cans on the street. There is really nothing more I’d like to do but keep it simple. Not without ideals, but I’m a little tired of my own opinions right now.

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…and now a little so back Sunday

Here are some pictures from the fields of the ramshackle farmhouse in Denton, Texas where I lived for half of third grade and all of fourth and fifth. My summer trip of 2021 revealed that the house is not there anymore and most of the fields are part of a housing development that took its place. 

This is me and my sister Leslie on our quarter horse Sugar. Sugar was a former barrel racer in the rodeo and could turn on a dime and take off at lightening speed with a simple tongue click.

I named our family cow “Fern” after the novel, “Where the Red Fern Grows” that my fifth grade teacher read to my class. Fern was a red jersey and a sweetheart. Cows have to be milked twice a day and she often put up with the four hands of my parents sitting on both sides of her milking all teats at once.
Riding bareback with short legs on a big horse is a little like picking up a marble with chopsticks. Bareback was fine for walking about but trotting would likely send me over the side especially if you rode double with someone behind whose hands were holding your rib cage. That felt an awful lot like tickling. A canter made me feel one with the horse, but still a saddle is better for going fast.

July 28, 2023

I bought this pencil at the Penland School of Crafts for a hundred bucks. It’s made of steel–pure art. You can’t write with it.

It is quite an extravagance for me to buy a piece of art, but beyond its gorgeousness it has a purpose that I dreamed up while gazing at it in the school gallery. I have a desk in my bedroom where I never work. It is used as a place to stack things and for my cat’s water and food dish. Buying the pencil gave me resolve to repurpose my desk as…a desk. 

I’ll still read the NYTimes and do Wordle in bed, but I want to have a place that I can at least play like I’m focused on writing and editing.

—————

I was at Penland to deliver my friend Alice who was taking a jewelry making class. She flew into Knoxville to visit a few days before and we spent some time working on the land. Our first day there was auspicious. 

We had just loaded up the cart with tools for trail blazing and were about a hundred and fifty feet from the shed when we heard the whoosh of leafy saplings, brush and sticks breaking like the clackety clack of a speeding train. We turned toward the sound just as a young bear shot into the saddle at the base of the knoll, its downhill momentum making her appear slightly out of control. She braked to a stop twenty five yards from us. 

I was of the opinion that she had been chased. Alice thought she was exhilarated from her downhill run. Whatever the case, the adolescent bear seemed slightly dazed. She had run toward noise, not away from it. 

Poor Valley Road runs parallel to the trail here and is close enough to see through the woods. The neighbor’s black lab was on the blacktop oating at Alice and I. The couple’s twelve-year-old was buzzing the road and fields on a dirt bike. I lifted my hands and yelled at the bear not wanting her to come at us in the confusion. (Bears are known to have poor eyesight.) She turned and ran toward the shed disappearing in the dense brush. 

I can’t say whether this was the same bear that I had in pictures from a previous post. Her coat looked less mangy and more fluffy and full, but otherwise she was about the same size. 

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It’s always nice to have other opinions when working on a project. Alice and I used some logs to line the trail toward the memorial site and then Alice had the notion that instead of trying to build steps up the knoll to the top, it would be easier to make a trail that followed a gradual curve along the less steep side. 

My chainsaw, newly out of the shop, was exhibiting the same problem of being impossible to start so we didn’t do clearing then but more reconnaissance. 

Top of the Knoll

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I didn’t appear anywhere in work boots and a yellow dress as I suggested I might to protest Tennessee’s anti-drag law. However, I did wear my rainbow t-shirt on numerous occasions which is about as much courage as I could muster to be an ally to LGBTQIA2S+. A rainbow shirt that wasn’t advertising for the clothing maker would be cooler but I bought it on impulse after listening to a speaker at a teacher conference in Long Beach. He talked about how we need to be active allies to communities under attack. (When I was in Raleigh I noted signs that said “Black Lives STILL Matter.”) 

A t-shirt or sign may seem insignificant but can make people who are targeted feel safer.

The idea that people in drag are sexual predators grooming the young is as absurd as the Boy Scouts of America saying that there is no place for gay men to be scout leaders or that queer folks should not teach in public schools. There is no correlation between sexuality and predation. The majority of child sexual predators are heterosexual as is the general population.

First off I should clarify that drag is performative whereas transgenderism is about identity. Drag performers are often not transgender. Dressing in drag does not denote any specific sexual identity. And neither drag or transgenderism denotes preference in sexual partners.  Anti-drag laws are as silly as telling people they can’t celebrate halloween or put a cheese wedge on their head at a football game.

While I’m appalled by Tennessee’s “Adult Entertainment Act” and see it as an attack on self-expression. I’m not sure all anti-trans laws are actually anti-trans. The issues are more complicated and plenty of people are jumping on board to create a polarizing atmosphere. Controversy and sensationalism sell. They are a cheap way to get a platform. A thumbs down is as good as a thumbs up when it comes to sponsorship and advertising. If anyone proved that the last U.S. president did.

One of the more controversial issues in transgender rights is transgenders in sports. But I bet if you asked if transgenders should be allowed to participate in sports, most people would say yes. The question is how can this be done in a way that honors their accomplishments and feels fair to everyone? 

Strict regulations guide the thickness of foam that can be used in the running shoes of marathon racers. Why do people expect there to be easy answers to how transgender people participate in sports? 

Some state laws allow female athletes to participate on male football and baseball teams. I think the idea is if no program exists then the unrepresented sex may join the gendered team.  I assume this would allow males to join female teams if there was not a male gendered team.

Male transitioned females wanting to join cis female teams or compete as individuals is new territory. While many transgender advocates would like for society to believe we all are who we say we are and who we change ourselves into with hormone replacement and surgery, much of the public is not in agreement, especially when it comes to bringing home trophies and medals. 

It’s one thing to identify at work, on the dance floor, or in the bedroom, but it’s another thing to say, “I am what I am” on the competitive sports field. 

There are compelling arguments on whether transgendered females have an advantage or not. On one side, some say the hormone replacement mutes any advantage male-born people might have in lung and heart capacity and size. But how do you measure this?

Stories about transgender males competing don’t make the headlines as much because they aren’t usually viewed as having an unfair advantage. It is commonly thought that males are superior in almost every sport due to speed and strength, but we haven’t had a level playing field to accurately make that assessment. I don’t think we can downplay our history which until recently did not include programs for instructing females in sports. When those programs became available, they were usually second string and underfunded. 

A girl that could throw a ball was a rarity when I was a boy…as rare as a girl that wanted to throw a ball…as rare as opportunities and encouragement to throw a ball.

As a side note, the tallest and fastest person in my fifth grade class, indeed in the whole elementary school, was a bucktoothed, gangly girl named Patty. I viewed her with equal parts admiration and freak-a-cation. 

Short, but not yet far outside the bell curve, I would go on to become the shortest boy in school until an amazing growth spurt hit during the summer between 10th and 11th grade. As a self-defense mechanism I got very good at picking out the slightest imperfections in my classmates. 

Why am I saying this? Because I believe that our societal obsession with difference is stopping us from making good choices. I don’t agree that the transgender female, Lia Thomas, should have been awarded the women’s championship in the NCAA Division 1, 500 meter free style. However, I do think she should be allowed to participate in competitive swimming. 

New rules push the controversy into an even more heated area. The international Swimming Federation (FINA) effectively wipes their hands by barring all transgender athletes from competing in professional women’s swimming, with the exception of athletes who “can establish to FINA’s comfortable satisfaction that they have not experienced any part of male puberty beyond Tanner Stage 2 (of puberty) or before age 12, whichever is later”. (Wikipedia) This does seem to allow the possibility for trans women to compete with men but it also encourages twelve year olds to manipulate their bodies before they mature.

In the future perhaps more sports teams will be divided by weight class or height like wrestling and boxing and not by sex. How much does football—as it is now—serve a high school boy who is short and under 120 lbs or the vault in a gymnastics competition for a six foot tall girl? 

My guess, is that when all is said and done there will need to be rules for each particular sport at each level of athleticism from intramural to professional, peewee to senior league. There will also be new sports developed. We’ve already seen an expansion of sports in the Olympics. Is it mere coincidence that pickle ball has become the most popular sport in the United States. What’s next? 

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I celebrated my 58th birthday with family who took me to El Toril Mexican Restaurant in Kimball, TN for fine dining and Karaoke. This might have been a safe place to try dressing in drag or maybe a more urban area, like nearby Chattanooga. Of course, protest isn’t about being safe. 

Restaurant employees stuck the sombrero on my head and then smashed a piece of whip cream- topped cinnamon bread in my face. It took me 20 minutes to get it out of my beard and off my glasses just in time for my turn to sing Closer to Fine by the Indigo Girls. I didn’t know this would be in the new Barbie movie. I was blissfully ignorant of how bad I was until I listened to a recording.

Direct action protest where people are confronted with their prejudice and fears takes incredible courage. I think the early 1960s Freedom Riders and Lunch Counter Sit-ins that protested racial segregation are great examples.

The San Francisco Castro District is widely considered the mecca of gay culture and activism. I was just in the branch library and there was a display of drag history. 

Asheville, NC seems to be similarly loud and proud. On my recent drive back from Penland I went through the town. In that brief visit, I encountered a half dozen or more transgender people. 

I will leave it to the beefy, well-groomed bearded man wearing a halter top, sandals and a flowing ankle-length skirt to say whether he was dressed in drag or transgender. Maybe gender fluid is a safer description for everyone I saw: a lanky red-haired teenager with a light kilt and bordello/pirate-style puffy sleeves; a pretty Whole Foods worker with long, dark hair and a short, plaited maroon skirt, black leggings and undershirt topped with a white crochet cover-up; a group of four youth evenly matched of each sex, bending genders toward the other. 

Minority and non-conforming groups need allies everywhere, not just in the south. On a recent community bike ride that featured a lot of low-rider and chopped out bicycles I hung toward the back of the group at the start of the event going from Pleasant Hill BART to Todos Santos Plaza in downtown Concord. Some young homies at the back were playing sexually explicit rap music and drinking 40-ouncers as they rode. A man driving in a Miata waited for us all to roll through an intersection and one of the young men looked back at everyone riding behind and smiled saying, “You know they say gays drive Miatas.” 

I wasn’t sure if this was meant to denigrate gays or Miatas or both but it didn’t sound like it was just a statement of fact — as in Gays love their Miatas. Not that that would be much better. Generalizations are offensive but people do them — especially members of the group being generalized. Paul Lynde could get away with saying that better than Johnny Carson — if either were still alive. 

Anyway, I’ll wear my rainbow shirt on my next ride and pull up next to the homies. 

Here are pictures of what I’ve been doing on the land: 

I took out a section of about 12 floor boards from the Sheridan cabin to get enough wood for my foot bridge.
I was able to fit the boards in the trunk of my aunt’s car for the quarter mile drive to the footbridge site.
I picked this 55 foot, 10 inch oak for the structural beams of the bridge. It was straight and just a few feet from the bridge spot. Oak weathers well and will last longer than the more plentiful poplar trees.
Numerous instructional videos later, I was able to land the tree in the exact place I planned without getting it hung up. I cleared several small trees in its falling path and put guiding marks on the tree with the chainsaw before making the front wedge and final cut.
I wasn’t able to get a good look at the leaves until it was on the ground.
The all-important hinge directs the tree to fall safely. It guides the tree in the intended direction and doesn’t completely release until the tree is near or hits the ground.
The tree I picked had been a double at some point in it’s life. I cut the tree high to save the hollow log for possible use as a vice in case I have logs I want to split with the chainsaw.
I cut two 17 foot logs to span the gulley. Short logs aided me in placing the longer logs. The heavier of the two was probably about 225 pounds.
I added to my small collection of battery operated tools with this 6.5 inch radial saw.
I could get three planks from each floor board.
My other completed bridge was the one cut from the fallen pine near my shed.

I used logs to line some of the trails.

I started clearing new trails. The first set is going east near the shed. The ones after that are for the proposed trail that winds around to the top of the knob.

Before
After
Before
After
Before
After
This is me playing “angry hillbilly” about a friend calling the Knoxville 1982 World’s Fair site a ghost town.
The fair is where I heard Walter Cronkite before I saw him. “And how’s the baby?” he said in his deep, resonate voice. I can’t tell you how many times my dad shushed me over him.
Views from the sphere.
I did my first “controlled” burn on the land at the proposed cabin site.
This picture toward the end of the burn shows the five gallons of water I placed around–just in case.

A little ELO…just because.