|
|
| Line 1: |
Line 1: |
| ==stories==
| |
| ====garlic====
| |
| keeps vampires away and other health benefits
| |
| first up in the garden,
| |
| prolific
| |
| tender shoots to eat then
| |
| scapes then
| |
| bulbs
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| ====my younger brother====
| |
| "So tell me something interesting from work, some puzzle you have solved". My brother sat back and thought for a minute. "Gotta roof that just blew off. Kinda like the roof in the family room there". Ours was shed roof, high on the south side, sloping back to normal ceiling height. Exposed rafters, not really rafters, more like beams 3x10 maybe, 4 feet apart. "1-1/2 inch tounge and groove?" I asked? "Was it insulated?". He explained how the the roof decking which spanned the beams was insulated on the exterior with a cheap product, installed poorly. "Faulty workmanship is never covered by homeowners insurance" he said.
| |
|
| |
| Now this wasn't a particularly interesting tale of construction foibles but that was OK. For years we would talk over these construction related puzzles and we kind of pooled and expanded our knowledge base. Sometimes it was failed buildings, sometimes it was tracking an oil tank plume and how to stop it before reached the water table. He had a degree in environmental science and was assiduous in learning all there was to know about these things. I had a lot of respect for his knowledge and integrity and was proud of my brother.
| |
|
| |
| I didn't really mind that he was conservative Catholic Trump supporter. I mean, it was upsetting but not really surprising considering his background.
| |
|
| |
| I left home when he was 8 years old. I couldn't wait to leave. My dad would get drunk and rail on about how if some hypothetical black guy somehow came into our lilly white surburban Jesus-loving neighborhood and raped my sister that he would shoot him dead in the yard and that's why it was a stupid idea to repeal the death penalty. He wanted to drop the 'big one' on the Vietnamese. My mom and dad were part of that special group of Irish Catholics who voted for Nixon over JFK. My dad worked for 19 years, 8 months as a commercial artist but was let go so the company could get out of the 20 year vesting of his retirement benefits. My mom was of that strange group, a teacher in a district with a strong union and good benefits who nevertheless was a firm believer in free market, right to work anti-union republican ideas. There was no reasoning with them. Once they wouldn't chip in for my second semester UVM tuition unless I cut my hair I knew I was gone.
| |
|
| |
| I left behind six siblings, my future environmental scientist brother was the youngest. I didn't see that much of my siblings; things were toxic when I was around and when my siblings started to smoke pot and act out it just added fuel to my parents antipathy toward me as a bad example. Besides, my parents had my moms younger brother, a good right wing catholic football star marine to serve as a good example.
| |
|
| |
| We did stay in touch and after he finished college, my younger brother settled in a nearby suburb. I helped him out when I could; when he bought his first house we knocked down walls together, laminated countertops and rebuilt the kitchen. We found this professional idea space that ws kind of cool.
| |
|
| |
| Our conversation in front of the cabin overlooking the pond continued. Somehow he got to talking about a methane release. "So what do you think of the EPA lifting the requirement for fossil fuel companies to collect data on their methane emmissions", I asked. He answered with a short "That's bad". It reminded me of my mom, who recently had started putting short phrases in her emails like "So sad!," or "that's huge". He continued after a moment. "But what about landfills, or grass clipping, can you prove they are not just as bad" I was taken aback. Oh my god, my own brother who had an education and every reason to know better was acting the part of Trump soldier even to the extent of being a climate denier. He was trying to intimidate me with tricks of argument. This brother trained in environmental science with these few words had lost years of credibility and trust. I would no longer respect him. I was no longer proud of him.
| |
|
| |
| It is scary what is happening in the world and in our country and there is no scarier part then climate change. I have lived through Reagan and the Bushes, been conned by Clinton and disappointed by Obama. You can always tell yourself the the damage is short term, hopefully in 4 years things will be different. But 4 years of not even measuring the amount of methane released means we won't even know. One of the planets top producing countries will be able to claim ignorance as they flaunt planetary accords and accelerate irreversible damage to the planet.
| |
|
| |
| Around me was my family, lots of neices and nephews. One of them is starting to show, a baby will be here by Thanksgiving. I'll have my second grandchild in a few weeks. I was feeling really glum, more scared about the future than I have ever been.
| |
|
| |
| On the way home I talked about it with my own family. I heard of how he pulled his top-down convertible sports car into the driveway. My wife suggested he could cut the engine while he waited for my mom to come out. He ignored her and then with Trump-like provocation, got out of the car and went inside with the engine still running. My son told me that he had a conversation, similar to mine, a few months back. He relayed it to me and it was clear that my brother had used the same cheap tactics.
| |
|
| |
| I guess in the future it will better to keep these family gatherings non-controversial. Talk about things like sports or the weather.
| |
|
| |
|
| |
| You have written requesting I not communicate with your family.
| |
|
| |
| That makes Thanksgiving at your house uncomfortable for me.
| |
|
| |
| If you retract your gag order and apologize for the letter you wrote, copying your family, I would consider it never to have occurred.
| |
|
| |
|
| |
| Shaun I want you to be comfortable on Thanksgiving and would do anything I can to repair our relationship. It was never my intention to limit or stop communication between you and Ari, Tobin, Noah and Peri and I apologize if that is how it came across. Please accept my apology.
| |
|
| |
| Would that be OK to send out to Ari, Tobin, Noah and Peri?
| |
|
| |
| an aside on the specifics...
| |
| Firstly, the letter was to my kids, cc'd to you so it is inaccurate to claim "You have written requesting I not communicate with your family." I did no such thing.
| |
|
| |
| When I stated "I no longer support my sons efforts to engage with their uncle. I doubt his commitment to his nephews. There is little likelihood of a productive exchange of ideas, more likely he will be trading on his elder-family-member creds while playing them like he tried to play me." that was not meant as some kind of 'gag order'. Before the letter and for the entire lives of my boys, they knew how much I respected you. You have had an enormous positive influence on my boys and I am forever grateful. That conversation we had was awful, I was offended by your rhetorical climate denial nonsense. When Noah relayed a similar conversation he had with you in a bar it was clear you were using the same cheap tactics in talking with him. I decided I had to weigh in.
| |
|
| |
| I am OK with you considering it never to have occurred and I am more than happy not to revisit it. So much of our lives is connected by the love we have for each other as brothers, uncles, nephews, fathers and sons. Political beliefs are no longer on the table. We have plenty besides that.
| |
|
| |
| I hope this addendum doesn't throw off the process. Let me know if we are OK and I'll send it out.
| |
|
| |
| ===fire island===
| |
| The boat was already full of water. I felt like I was entering my nightmare from the night before. I hadn’t sleep well.
| |
|
| |
| There was 600 hundred pounds of crap to load in the boat, if you include my 250 plus and Uli’s 80 pounds. The water was all the way up in the tall weeds; the dog had nowhere to sit. He likes sitting on the shore watching me in the water. I used the dog bowl to bail out the boat. I wasn’t sure about my fuel supply so didn’t want to take a run with the plug out to bail it.
| |
|
| |
| Turns out there is no gas on Fire Island. The closest gas was where I had to get to. It is not really a ‘boaters paradise’ as the websites claim. The Great South Bay at this section of Long Island is a about 5 miles across. There are almost none of the small islands that are everywhere in the bay between Long Beach and West Islip so winds out of the north half of the compass have a lot of water to blow over. The water taxis that run between the towns have these blunt steel bows that press against the bulkheads, the props churning up the water behind to hold themselves in place long enough to pick up and discharge passengers. There are marinas in little islands of calm water almost completely enclosed by significant wharves or quays, expensive structures with narrow entrances designed to keep the waves at bay or in the bay, private enclaves that advertise their exclusivity with pointed notices to those not of their ilk. There are no bars, restaurants, moorings or public docks that you can pull your boat up to, none of the life on the waterfront you see in Freeport, LI or Vineyard Haven or Boothbay Harbor. I did go out one beautiful calm evening to pick up my sister and her family in the next town, but another trip with my son and his girl was less than wonderful, rough and windy. I think they were glad when I suggested they jump off for a nice walk back.
| |
|
| |
| Today was another rough and windy one with gale force winds out of the northwest. The winds were in the process of moving around the points of the compass as they do after a storm, back to where they prevail out of the southwest. I would never choose to go out on a day like this but the rental was over, everyone had gone home and Peri had to work the next day. So it was.
| |
|
| |
| On the big waves the bow was plowing under water so I retied it to the eye closer to the waterline. I pulled up the chains and disconnected the heavy cinder block that was working with the big danforth anchor to hold fast to the sea bottom. I just dropped the cinder block back into the water. I pulled up the rear anchor and re-tied the kayaks to the stern. I hoped the boat wouldn’t pull free before I got loaded. If it did there would be no way to stop it from crashing into shore and little chance of ever making the journey. The tall weeds along the shore were littered with the remains of boat hulls. I had wondered what they were when I was on Google Earth.
| |
|
| |
| I had dumped all the boxes and suitcases by the shore, using the wagon to move them from the rental house. Now, one by one, I had to carry them 100 yards down the shore over sinking seaweed and the remains of pipes and trash and anchorages other assholes had left behind. I had to go up to my shorts each time to get around a hobicat that had blown off its mooring in the night.
| |
|
| |
| My foot still hurt from cutting myself on a rusted pipe a week before in this very location. Then I was so happy to be there, to be at the beach and to soon be seeing my kids that it didn’t really faze me. I couldn’t put me heel on the ground for the week but I didn’t care. It made body surfing all the more of an escape, I was carried by the waves.
| |
|
| |
| Now I was in the water and it wasn’t too bad, still in the 70’s. I carried each container over my head, the water was up to my rib cage at the boat. First the suitcases, mine then Peri’s and then the one with the wedding clothes. Next the cooler with the food too expensive to leave behind and then the big crate with the un-drunk liquor and beach toys and dogfood and other stuff. After arranging the fishing poles, tying things down, putting the engine down and re-bailing the boat I was ready to go.
| |
|
| |
| Ulysses bounded into the water and let me lasso his legs in my arms lifting and arching my back to set him on the deck. Things looked like shit. The boat was now down low in the water, in danger of sinking and the waves were still real bad. So bad that I couldn’t climb to the front of the boat without it going under. Once I untied it, one wave hitting us broadside would sink it.
| |
|
| |
| I do stupid stuff with the boat all the time. Miss some important item on my mental checklist. I’ve gone down the ramp with the motor down, scraping along the concrete, gone out numerous times forgetting to put in the drain plug. I have driven miles on the highway wondering about the noise of the trailer ball, never locked in place and bouncing up and down. I don’t let on about how incompetent I can be. Maybe that makes me more of a jerk. So now was one of the the crucial moments I had played out over and over during my sleepless night. It was good, I think, to have obsessed since now a plan was crystallizing. Still in the water, I walked around to the bow of the boat. I yanked it forward against the force of the waves until the anchor line slackened. I rigged the rope so when it came untied I already had a loop through the eye. Keeping the boat from slipping away by squeezing the taut anchor end tight around the eye in one hand, I pulled the loose end through the eye, pulling more and more of the slack line through until I had a loop that was about 12′ long. Then I walked along the side of the boat holding the doubled up rope plus the free end of the anchor line against the stainless steel rails as I made my way to the helm. There I tied the loop and the free end off at a secure spot and took a breath.
| |
|
| |
| The boat was still heading into the wind, still pulling on the anchor line from the bow of the boat. I hoisted myself into the boat, gave Uli a reassuring hug and started the engine. I loosened the loop knot but kept the free end tied fast. I finished untying the loop and let it go. Meanwhile I pulled on the remaining end of the line, pulling the loop through the eye, freeing the bow of the boat. Fast enough to get the bow out of the water I motored toward the anchor while furiously pulling in the line to keep it from fouling the propeller. The big danforth pulled free from the bottom and was soon in the boat. We were off.
| |
