Lucky Box

In my father’s workshop, there was always a container, usually an empty coffee can, full of ordinary things – things he found on his job sites, out in the fields, in parking lots, and lord only knows where. These were mostly bent nails, screws, bolts and nuts; the stuff of hardware store bins, the carpenter’s bits and pieces, the detritus of the blue-collar working man. Sometimes there were washers in the can, too; perhaps the stubby end of a well-used carpenter’s pencil or flints for his Zippo. We kids liked to dump the can to search for any coins Daddy might have found, which were always destined for the lucky box, never spent. We always put them back, after jingling them in our hands for a few seconds, but not before imagining how we would spend them, if only they were ours.

The can and its contents always smelled of old motor oil or tar, I suppose because of where they’d been found. Of course, Daddy worked on motors and big machines as part of his work, and tinkered with all sorts of things in his shop, so the oil might have come from his hands. My brothers played in Daddy’s workshop anytime they wanted, but I had to wait for an invitation – or sneak in when no one else was around. One of my jobs, when I was allowed in, was to straighten the bent nails. I was good at it, if I do say so; better than my brothers, even.

Now that I have a workshop of my own, I also have a lucky box. It started out as an empty jelly jar; then it spilled over into a large spaghetti sauce can. Last summer I had to find a larger home for my stuff. That’s it, above; a metal candy box. It contains many of the same things my father would have had in his lucky boxes, and a few things that never would have made it into his shop (starting with a bright red, heart shaped candy tin!). Among the things that are different are orphaned earrings, a huge rust-encrusted railroad spike, an assortment of keys (some from cars I no longer own), two headless toothbrushes, three crow feathers, parts to a broken pipe wrench, a tube of raspberry-flavored lip gloss, a couple of seashells and a broken blue-tooth ear piece – which might have been in Daddy’s box, had it been invented then.

Oh, yeah…and $2.17 in coins. All rescued from sidewalks and parking lots, all permanently housed in my lucky box.

T'row Me Sump'n, Mistah!

Catching beads at Mardi Gras

I'm feeling nostalgic this morning, homesick for New Orleans. Most likely, I'm homesick for a time and place that doesn't exist anymore, except in my memories. Part of the blame for this is the music I've been listening to (through the new, almost-NASA-budget, redundant speakers): Allen Toussaint, Irma Thomas, Buckwheat Zydeco, Dr. John, Randy Newman, Beausoleil, and others...as Jim Penny suggests, happy feets music.

Up here, in Hanover, the locals celebrate Shrove Tuesday by making fasnachts--doughnuts--using up all the lard and flour and sugar on hand before Lent begins, since there will be no sweets available (supposedly) for the next 40 days.

In New Orleans (the New Orleans of my memories, that is), we ate my Aunt Gerry's chili-mac and hot dogs, potato salad, my Mama's fried chicken, banana pudding and all sorts of comfort foods, from the tailgate of Aunt Gerry's old station wagon (estate wagon).

Then off we went, up and down Canal Street, following the parades, begging for the float riders to throw us some beads and whatever other trinkets they might have. In memory (and in fact), the beads were strings of Czech glass beads, that glistened in the sunlight on their flight from the float to our hands. Sometime in the 1970s, the Czech beads disappeared, replaced by cheap plastic crap, probably made in China. Oops, my political agenda is showing. Change that to "some Far Eastern, Communist, cheap/slave labor country." (Get a grip, Martha! It's only Mardi Gras beads, for crying out loud.)

If we were lucky, we could go out for a night parade. My best memory of night parades is the flambeaux carriers, groups of men who preceded the floats, dancing to wonderful drum beats, holding torches on long poles above their heads, lighting the way for the parade floats that followed. To me, the flambeaux carriers were the best part of night-time Mardi Gras. You hear a similar beat to the one from memory here.*

At the end of the day, we all returned to the station wagon, our necks and pockets laden with beads and doubloons, our faces sunburned and chapped, our feet (while happy like the rest of our body parts) tired and sore from all the "rattin' the streets." Good times, good memories.

Mostly, I'm homesick for my Mama and the aunts and uncles who are gone, just like the beautiful, glittering Czech beads.

*Go here for an even better example of the beat, as I remember it.

(Anybody else having trouble embedding things from YouTube today? Whassup wid dat?!?!!)

Crow's Computer

This is the cable that came with the monitor. On the underside of the monitor screen, there is a green jack port (probably getting all these terms wrong, but this sounds better than saying "a little round green hole where the green plug goes to the monitor"), so, logically - and since there were no written directions, and since the pictogram that came with the monitor gave no indication which end went where - I stuck the green end in the little green hole.

See the blue hole on the backside of the hard drive tower? Since I had a blue jack at the other end of the monitor cable, I (see explanation above) stuck the blue jack in the blue hole. No sound came from anywhere unless I plugged in my earphones (green jack on them, too) into the green hole at the front of the tower. Pictogram didn't show/mention this, either.

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I had to use my 3x magnifying lens, with my glasses on, to decipher the tiny lettering on each jack port shown above. Blue is input, green is output, pink is microphone, orange is c/sub with a speaker icon, black is rear speaker and grey is side speaker. What I want to know is, with all these damned speakers somewhere in this computer, why did I have to buy external speakers?

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All jacks and sockets (whatever!), connected, at long last. I don't care if this isn't the correct configuration. I now have sound and picture and I don't have to put up with rabbit ears!

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L-R: Router box, new printer (which also now works the way it is supposed to do), sub-woofer of the (probably redundant) speaker set, with their attendant cables and power cords - prior to being organized and bundled together neatly.

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Neatness counts, especially when you don't know what the heck you're doing. And, yes, there are corresponding labels on the cords, farther down the line, out of sight.

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New tower, which is half again as tall as the old one.

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The BOOM-SHICKA-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM box, a.k.a. the sub-woofer.

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This desk hasn't looked this clean and well-organized since the Johnson Administration, and didn't again within twenty minutes of this photo being snapped.
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My short legs don't reach all the way to the floor comfortably when I sit at this desk, so I used the packaging from around the speakers and sub-woofer to help elevate them. My feeble attempt at being green.

PS: Why can't I get my text and pictures to line up right when I post this? Everything is where it's supposed to be when I check it in preview, but it's all screwed up when it gets posted. ARRRGGGHHHH!

Woofers, Tweeters and My Aching Hips

Sculpture by Ernst Berlach

The hard drive on my old computer finally bit the dust, and it cost less to buy a new one (on sale) than it would to have the old one repaired. I've spent the last week moving files around in the new one and getting used to all the bright and shiny other stuff that came home with it.

One of those new things was a sleek, black screen, 20-inch monitor. Aha, I rejoiced, no more squinting at that old tiny 15-inch screen when I try to watch Harry's Law. What I couldn't understand about my new set-up was the fact that no sound came out of the monitor speakers, yet if I plugged in a set of earphones into the hard drive tower, I heard perfect sound. I ended up taking the PC and monitor back to the store to have the techies take a look at it.

Turns out, I had placed the PC end of the sound cable to the monitor in the wrong jack. What can I say? I'm barely beyond computer literate -- well, actually, a good bit beyond merely literate -- but nowhere near as savvy as I'd like, or need, to be.

The techie-du-jour plugged the cable into the correct jack, clicked on a music sample and we both covered our ears in dismay. I rather imagined the shock we felt was akin to that suffered by attendees of the first talkies. I haven't heard such tinny sounds since my first transistor radio back in the mid-1960s!

Techie and I discussed the value of upgrading my new Screecher monitor for a more expensive one, but he said they all sound pretty much alike nowadays, and that I would do better to buy a $20 pair of external speakers. He said the sound would be much better. We went to the computer accessories aisle and picked up three sets to try out with my PC: the El Cheapos model, a Mid-range Modestly Priced set, and the Not-Quite-NASA's-Budget-But-Getting-There, Deluxe-Saw-Me-Coming set.

The $20 set was okay, and if I didn't intend to play music CDs or movies on my PC, they would have been perfect, background hiss notwithstanding. The Mama Bear set, about $10 more, were better yet, though still hissed a bit. The woofer that came with the mid-priced set added richness to the sounds, and I almost told Techie to wrap 'em up, he'd made the sale. But, I stayed my tongue, and he unpacked the more expensive ones and plugged them in.

Well, honey, let me tell you! I felt myself wrapped in music, my eardrums caressed by the most seductive bass notes, the most alluring mid-tones and the brightest highs like one used to hear coming from one of the more expensive hi-fi sets from years ago. (I'm gushing, aren't I? Forgive me.)

Techie told me, just before the NASA-budget set and I reached the cash register, that I'd probably want to keep the volume and tone knobs set at the mid-point, otherwise I might damage my hearing if I kept them any higher. I wondered, briefly, if he was making an unkind allusion to my advanced (to his view) age, but let it go.

First thing I did when I got the speakers home and plugged in (correctly this time) was find the sample music file on the PC. I clicked on a tune called Kalimba, by an artist named Mr. Scruff, from his (their?) album titled "Ninja Tuna". It's an instrumental, sort of samba-ish, a very good dance beat. Sounded wonderful.

Then, despite the warning from Techie, I cranked the volume up as high as it would go and played with the tone knob, first bringing the bass up as far as it would go, then in the other direction.

The bass! Oh, my freaking GOODNESS! Now I know why kids drive boom boxes on wheels. That sound gets into you, grabs you by the spine and gives you a good shake. Of course, I also know now why Techie warned me. I'm still hearing, a couple of hours later, a buzz from that boom-shicka-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM, BOOM-MAMA-BOOM-BOOM!

I looked at the wall, behind the shelf where the boom-woofer was ensconced, and saw it was vibrating something fierce. Glen, who lives next door, came out into his back yard, looking for the sound. The birds in the trees were struck dumb, their poor little eyes glazed over, their tiny toes clenching the limbs and twigs upon which they were perched. One starling pitched over and hung upside down, its claws in a death grip on the internet cable it had lighted upon only moments before.

Before the back door danced off its hinges, I shut and locked it, then turned down the volume and adjusted the bass back to more normal levels. Notice the qualifier. "To more normal levels."

Not exactly.

It is a mystery what came over me this afternoon. Maybe it is Spring working her magic. Maybe it is the last of the depression vacating my soul. Maybe it's hormonal (my dreams have taken on an erotic flavor of late, now that I think of it.) Who knows? Who cares?! I danced to the beat of an invigorating South American sound for a good twenty minutes or longer, hitting the replay button over and over again.

I'd do it again, right now, if I could get up. I think it was a mistake to sit down to write this, because my hips have calcified in this sitting position. I can't move.

Techie didn't go far enough with his warning.

Oh, My Darlin'

In a world full of perfectly wonderful things, there are few more wonderfully perfect than clementines, a variety of tangerine that appear in blessed abundance in local grocery stores from mid-

December through mid-February. These little Spanish beauties bring joy and sweetness to our lives just when we have reached our breaking points with frigid temps and icy windstorms.

Right now, toward the end of their season here, the price has dropped to an affordable five dollars for a crate of 24 or so, and I bought one for the kids and one for myself. I never thought I'd ever say this, but for now, clementines beat out the world's finest chocolates as my preferred indulgence.

Where do I begin to explain my infatuation? Their near perfect roundness settles heavily into my cupped palm in the most sensuous manner. I rub my fingers along the highly polished, leathery skin, releasing pungent oils into the air. I lift the glowing body to my nose, breathe in the citrusy musk and close my eyes in ecstasy. The feel of the slightly nubby, oil-slicked peel against my lips is almost more than I can bear, and I must sit before my knees betray me, sending me crashing to the floor.

Then I plunge my thumb into the peel at the stem end, where it has parted from the flesh, as if in anticipation of the rent. The clementine's thin skin comes away easily, hurriedly, perhaps eagerly? When my fingers rip it apart, the peel sounds like heavy silk tearing - thread by thread, strands of pith fly away from the fruit, like buttons from a lover's shirt in a moment of unbridled passion.

A globe of segmented lust fills my hand. The first clementine is pulled in two and one half disappears behind my lips, my mouth pressing the segments until their juices spill over my tongue and down my throat. The other half meets the same fate.

The second clementine is consumed more slowly, after a careful examination of each segment as it is pulled away from the others. Sometimes, I pull too roughly and the skin splits, squirting juice onto my face, my lips, my nose. I don't care. I am lost in clementine heaven.

I don't want to stop at two, but if I don't there won't be any left for tomorrow...and I want there to be some for tomorrow.

Great Day in the Morning

Not much to report yet in my neck of the woods.

In the kitchen, the dishwasher is growling through its cycles, an annoying noise, but satisfying in that it signifies I am on a cleaning binge (about time!).

Outside, the snow lies in tattered splotches atop grasses that are beginning to push upward. I've started watching for the winter aconite and the snowdrops.

New hatch of crows are being shown the neighborhood by parents and older siblings. Funny - they mewl like kittens sometimes when they're this age, with one or two trying out their crow voices, imitating Ma and Pa. Reminds me of teenage boys when their voices crack in mid-word.

The cat is back. I guess the queens are no longer in heat, so he's come back to his nest under the back steps. It was a bit unnerving the other morning, before sunrise, to see two glowing orange dots staring back at me from the top step. Took me a moment to realize the cat was watching me, asking in that silent way of cats to let him in so he could eat. Presumptuous little fart - as if all I had to do in life was spend my grocery money on his food and keep a plate of it at the ready, just in case he should deign visit me. (He knows me entirely too well!)

Going out to a movie with the kids this afternoon. Leaving the Octopus behind, completely, for the first time in four days. We're going to see The Green Hornet, based on one of my favorite comic books from my youth. Hope the movie lives up to my memories of the comics.

Watched The King's Speech the other week - a good movie. We in the audience cheered and applauded when he gave his first speech, and we wanted Bertie to smack David upside the head when he began mocking him. Of course, Bertie didn't, but we all wanted him to - I even said aloud, "Oh, just smack him!" At the rear of the theatre, someone said, "Here, here!"

I hear a rusty gate swinging on its hinges - must be a blue jay nearby, singing to the sun.

Ah, the dishwasher has stopped. Time to unload and reload, then get my shower before the movie date.

Glorious morning; it is, it is!

For Anne, 20th Century Woman

" . . . when you die, you are grieved by all the atoms of which you were composed. They hung together for years, whether in sheets of skin or communities of spleen. With your death they do not die. Instead, they part ways, moving off in their separate directions, mourning the loss of a special time they shared together, haunted by the feeling that they were once playing parts in something larger than themselves, something that had its own life, something they can hardly put a finger on."-
David Eagleman
Sum

In response to your wonderful post, Anne.

Shame on me: I neglectected to say where I found Eagleman's quote. I borrowed it from Whiskey River.