There's a Moon Out Tonight

Photo by NASA

Saturday night, the moon was full and at perigee, an event that occurs every nineteen years, or so I read at the PBS website earlier in the day. Since I have no guarantee that I'll be here for the next occasion, it seemed important to make the effort to view what some call the supermoon this time.

Supposedly, the full moon at perigee appears larger and brighter than usual, being about 5,000 miles closer to earth at this time. Perhaps if I had been outside when it rose above the horizon, I'd have seen something like the moon in the photo above. However, I was busy cleaning the kitchen and forgot about the moon until I took the trash out, around midnight. What I saw was pretty spectacular, but I couldn't tell that it was brighter than most other full moons I've witnessed.

Still, it deserved to be acknowledged and appreciated, so I sat outside for about half an hour, basking (if that's what one does) in bright moonlight, until the night chill reached my bones through my winter coat and sweatshirt jacket, and through my many layers of fat, which are supposed to insulate me from the cold. (HA! Fat chance, that!)

There is something magical and soul-stirring about sitting under a full moon, doing nothing more than watching it grow slightly smaller as my spot on earth turned eastward, away from its divine face.

That is, unless you've set the neighborhood dogs to barking because you dropped the dining room chair on your way out to the sidewalk, where you planned to set up your moon-watching station. Or when, a few minutes after you've settled down in the dark to watch the celestial show, you realize that you have become the show for your neighbors from Pittsburgh. Their kitchen lights come on as one of them lets their dog out, who was, no doubt, excited by all the chatter he heard from the other dogs and just had to go out to add his two-cents-worth, under the pretext of having to mark his territory again.

The Dog-from-Pittsburgh notices the full moon and begins to howl, which stirs up all the other dogs again. The Wife-from-Pittsburgh hisses at the dog to shut up and get his sorry butt back inside, all of which Dog-from-Pittsburgh understands completely, I am sure. Kitchen lights go off, then one of them goes on again, and I notice W-f-P's face at the window, aimed in my direction. Then Husband-from-Pittsburgh appears at the window, and both stare in my direction, until I wave at them, whereupon both bodies disappear and the lights go out.

I can only imagine what W-f-P said to H-f-P about that crazy old woman next door, sitting out on a chair in her backyard, after midnight, in 40 degree chill, just staring at the moon. That's okay. . .the dog understands the importance of a full moon in perigee, even if his owners do not.

I'm beginning to like that dog. Next time we're out together under a full moon, I believe I'll join him in howling our appreciation.

Pennsylvania Chainsaw Massacre

A few weeks ago, we had a terrific wind blow through town, starting around sundown. The wind chimes sang in protest non-stop through the night. At least, they were still chiming as I drifted off to sleep around midnight. I had a feeling the service-berry tree (about 30 feet tall) at the side gate might lose a few smaller branches, but I wasn't expecting the two main trunks to be snapped off. They had fallen across the alley, landing against Mike from Pittsburgh's fence. Thankfully, the fence was not damaged.

I called the borough for help in getting the trunks off the alley, and a police officer and I dragged them onto the apron of the carport. The company that had felled another dead tree for me last October told me they'd send someone around to take a look at it as soon as they could. They were overwhelmed by the number of trees knocked down during the night, but assured me someone would show up before the following Monday.

A week passed and no one came out, though, to be fair, we had another storm, with high winds, rip through the neighborhood the week after, so I didn't gripe too much. A second week, then a third, passed. The tree trunks remained on the carport.

When a month came and went, I decided to cut up the tree myself, despite the fact I've never done such a thing and was scared to death of the unused chainsaw I'd bought several years ago. It's an electric-powered saw, which I thought, mistakenly, would run quieter than the gas powered models.


By the time it dawned on me to photograph the butchering, most of the cutting was over. The saw and I will never be best buds, but I'm not terrified of it anymore. I have a very healthy respect for its power and pay careful attention to all the safety instructions printed on the body of the saw. Because the ground was wet from the storm, I put a piece of plywood down to rest the outlet box and the saw on, to help prevent possible shock. Might not have needed it, but better safe than fried.

The resulting pile of trunk pieces, some of which were quite heavy for their relatively small size, as I discovered when a piece I'd cut fell on my toes.
These were the branches at the ends of the trunks. Just got rid of the brush pile we'd been growing since we bought the house; looks like another has started.
My ex-husband made a huge power cord of 3/4-inch, 600 volt cable, with an insulated outlet box on one end and a grounded plug on the other. He made it for powering generators for his ham radio club's field day exercises. It became mine when he left it behind. It is a treasure. Here you see two reasons why the next chainsaw I purchase will be gas-powered, despite the noise they make: electric power cords and chainsaw teeth do not play nice together. I nearly fell twice while running the saw because I wasn't watching where I was stepping and tangled up in the yellow extension cord. (The cable is about 100-feet long and weighs a ton, and was stretched away from where the trunks lay, so it wasn't a problem.)
Yeah, I know - now - that I should have had on my steel-toed boots. I will next time. Was covered head to feet in sawdust, which smelled good but was the devil to clean off the shirt.

The rest of the sawdust. My next chore is to cut down the snags at the gate. I have to study how to cut them, because there are power lines running very close to them. Cutting up this tree was a good experience because it helped me realize I'm not helpless, nor am I incapable of taking care of my property (and, by extension, myself) on my own...a good thing to know.

Dear Japan

Our hearts are breaking for you.

私達の友人日本: 私達の中心はあなたのために壊れている。

(My grandson's stepmother is from Japan, so I posted this for him.)

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.