This beautiful fellow is a Piliated Woodpecker, which is apparently rare compared to the other types in this area. He sat at the base of what used to be our cherry tree and cleaned it out on Saturday morning, giving me enough time to put the long lens on and snap a couple of pictures when he looked up. He’s bigger than he looks—I’d say about the size of a crow.
The tomatoes in the greenhouse are going gangbusters. I’d say they’ve grown about 5 times their size since I bought them, and they’re all putting out flowers, which I’ve been dutifully trying to fertilize every day. I sure do hope we get some good fruit on each one. I have to repair a bunch of holes in the plastic this coming weekend, because the replacement cover I bought seven years ago did not last as long as the stuff I installed in 2005.
The weather forecast was supposed to be much different than what we got this weekend, which put a bit of the kibosh on my outdoor plans, but I was able to get some things accomplished.
Saturday morning the Boy Scouts were having their yearly yard sale at the church down the street, so I bundled Hazel into Darth Haul and we puttered down to check things out. I made a beeline to a stand where a family was getting rid of multiple bins of assorted tools, and spent a half an hour digging for treasure. I wound up walking away with a decent replacement toolbox for my electrical kit, which I’ve outgrown (and which never really closed securely), and filled the top section with a wide assortment of hand tools. I’ve found you can never have enough US-made screwdrivers, 1/2″ and 9/16″ wrenches, tape measures, and pliers, and I added some unique things like hose cutters, a bag of hemostats, and some specialty wirecutters and dikes, among other things.
Returning home, I picked Finley up and drove to the Baltimore waterfront near my first house, where a very unique ship has been docked for years: the NS Savannah, one of only four nuclear-powered cargo ships ever built. In the 1950’s, President Eisenhower launched the Atoms for Peace initiative, to show the world how nuclear power could be used for the advancement of man. the Savannah was one of the projects developed under that program, and was launched in 1959 as a combined passenger/cargo vessel to showcase America’s command of industry and science. In person, it’s huge, but compared to a modern container ship it’s a plastic bath toy. Designed before the advent of container shipping, it’s long and sleek and looks like an early 60’s sportscar.
Inside, we came aboard at the original passenger embarkation point, which had been restored to its original design. Descending down into the ship, the tour took us through the now decomissioned nuclear containment vessel, through the engine room, to the main control room, and back up to the passenger cabins.
The cabin we toured was actually pretty small and not that inspiring, if I’m honest; I would have expected something a lot more spacious and elegant. Most of the original furniture was gone, but they’ve done a good job of sourcing as much period-correct stuff as possible.
The Savannah will be decertified as a nuclear power facility this year, and her future is uncertain; none of the docents know what’s next for the ship or how long she might stay in Baltimore. So I was glad to be able to check it out while we did, and take Finn along with me.
On Sunday I did some work around the house and countersunk a set of rear seatbelt mounts into the Travelall before driving out to Frederick to pick up a used Mirra desk chair from an estate showroom. This was to finally replace a disintegrating 18-year-old IKEA chair that’s been giving me a sore butt for a year or so now. New Mirras go for stupid money, so I was happy to score this one for a fraction of the price, and I think it’ll last a good long time.
Then I headed up to a Travelall aquaintance’s house north of Frederick to look over a truck he’s selling—not for me, but for another fellow Travelall owner I met through the YouTube channel. I shot some video and caught up with the seller before heading home to buff the paint on the hood of the truck, and when it got dark, headed inside to edit video.
I’m back at home after a great visit with family; projects at work are ramping up and I haven’t felt much like writing here. This photo of a mercury dime is 20 years old (!!!)
Jen made me some cream of wheat for breakfast this morning, and it made me think of childhood weekend mornings when Dad would make us breakfast; I preferred his cream of wheat to his eggs. He’d load a bowl full for each of us and make a little island volcano in the center: butter in the cone, brown sugar on the land, surrounded with some milk. The way the flavors mix always felt like a warm hug, even when we knew he was preparing us for hours of cold dreary manual labor outside.
I miss you, Dad.
I walked out of the UPS store this afternoon with a paper slip in my hand and a feeling of melancholy. It didn’t help that the sky was gray and the wind was blowing. a few moments before, I walked in the store with a neatly taped box to mail off to a guy in Miami: inside a protective cocoon of Kraft paper lay my Steinberger bass guitar, something I’ve owned since college and carried with me since then. It’s been sitting in the corner for years, and every year I would take it out and play it, but after I bought the bargain Jazz bass and compared the two, I realized how much more I enjoyed playing the Fender. I’ve shopped it around to several stores in this area and gotten lowball cash offers for it, so I put it up on Reverb at a price that seemed to be reasonable for the market and waited. That was four years ago.
Last Thursday an offer popped up from this guy in Florida, and after some back and forth we settled on a price that I felt OK with. It’s lower than I was asking (after having reduced my initial price once) but still much more than I paid for it, and at this point in history I feel better about having cash in hand than a bass collecting dust in the corner. Strangely though, I’m not as bummed out as I thought I would be; I think I came to terms with selling it a few years ago, and was just waiting for circumstance to catch up with me.
So the bass will make its way to Florida, and when the buyer takes possession, I’ll get my payment from Reverb. I feel better about rolling the dice this way—eBay was never an option—and I’m hoping it all goes smoothly.
In the Yale Review, Chris Ware looks back on the author/illustrator Richard Scarry:
The Busytown books, as they came to be known—with their dictionary-like visual presentation paired with lightly slapstick situations and the presence of recurring, memorable characters like Huckle Cat, the Pig family, and my favorite, Lowly Worm—grew into a real-feeling big world that Scarry seemed to be letting little ones into.
As a kid, I spent countless hours poring over our collection of Busytown books: There was a welcoming simplicity to them, and they described people and places in a way I could understand easily.
I also picked up on something Ware mentions in his essay: a markedly European feeling to each book. There were cars and buildings and words that weren’t like the ones around me in Massachusetts or New Jersey and I was smart enough to notice the differences. So it made sense when he mentioned that Scarry lived in Switzerland after 1967, and during the period when his most popular books were published. There’s also an approachable quality to his artwork I always appreciated. His early work is technically excellent, but the loose style of pen and guauche artwork in the later Busytown series influenced my drawing style in ways I hadn’t really realized until thinking about it.
We had our first real snowfall in something like 700 days, so naturally we had to get out there and get some sledding in. I sanded and waxed the rails on our wooden sled, dug out the car, and we headed over to the local community college to meet up with the Geblers and get some runs in.
Greased Lightning did not disappoint. I had an envious kid ask me if our fast wooden sled steered; I told him to hit an antique store and get one for cheap.
On my third run or so I ran into a jump someone made, and the sled stopped while I kept on going. Laughing, I picked myself back up and walked back up the hill. Later I realized that landing on the snow had broken the zipper on my jacket and shredded several of the down pockets at the bottom, as well as popped one of the lenses out of my glasses that were in the pocket.
A few runs later, Finn drove our plastic sled directly into a tree and gave herself some mild abrasions on her chin. We returned home to get some hot chocolate and attend to the patient. I went online and found The North Face Renewed, where they repair and re-home used gear. I got a replacement jacket for $100, which is half of what a new Patagonia is going for (and from what I’ve read those don’t hold up very well). I’ve had this jacket for (5? 6?) seasons and it’s been great, so I figure it will be the new work jacket.
