One year ago today: January 21, 2016, holding tools overhead? (Not me.)
Five years ago today: January 21, 2012, siding with the accused.
Nine years ago today: January 21, 2008, you missed a spot!
Random years ago today: January 21, 2007, “DAY-nee-uh” Beach.
MORNING
Ha! Trump cancels the endowment for arts. Good, it’s a start. “Taxpayers should not be forced to pay for plays, paintings, pageants, and scholarly journals, regardless of the works’ attraction or merit. In the words of Citizens Against Government Waste, “actors, artists, and academics are no more deserving of subsidies than their counterparts in other fields; the federal government should refrain from funding all of them.” In my books, entertainment should always be a user-pay situation. Go, Don, but your still not after the DMV.
[Author’s note: few people are aware that the DMV is not a government department, it is a "state agency". You have no constituional right to remain silent if the DMV demands information. It is a private organization (you can look that up) that uses government regulation to guarantee itself a profit--and often has departments staffed by government employees. It exists mainly because so few people know the difference between what is legal and what is lawful. The DMV is not lawful. Under the Constitution, no restrictions can be made upon a citizen’s right to travel, making the requirement of any license unlawful. The right to travel is, in the Constitution, a Human right. It does not belong to the citizen or the government because it is a right, not a privilege.
Incidentally, the lawful definition of a driver is a person who operates a vehicle for commercial purposes. That would not include the majority of people who use a car for shopping, to get to work, etc. The authorities work around this by enacting statutes about licensing, but they cannot make those statutes “lawful”. The idea is to make the public believe the DMV has the force of law. It does not. Even otherwise reliable sources like Wikipedia fail to mention these discrepancies.
Hence, requiring people who travel by car to get a driver’s license produces an interesting quirk in law. It means that a person getting a license has to partially give up a Human right. The Constitution forbids this. You cannot give up a Human right even if you want to. It is not yours to forfeit. The American system is corrupt because while there is no law that says you must have a license to travel, they enact laws that punish you if you do not. Corruption.
A nice Friday evening at home, just me, the teapot, and some good reading. If only I could slow down like that every day. Yeah, just wait long enough, I suppose. The point is, I didn’t go out like I’d planned, instead I read another chapter of “Burma Road”. I was unaware that leprosy was still an incurable problem in 1939 or that it was believed to commute by sneezing. Did I read it could be cured with a 15 cent shot of antibiotic? Anyway, except for cholera, it appears to have been the most dreaded disease in southeast Asia at that time. Cholera. What do I know about cholera? I’ll look it up.
Here’s the phase of corner-squaring the door (in the photo). There are a few things I’d change if I did things over. Like I would saw off the factory edges of this cheap lumber. It soaks up glue and as noticeable here, gets weathered to a different color. This might disappear when I sand the door. And I’d build a cutting jig. Even with the closest measurements, I still found gaps on what should be matching surfaces. On the shed door from earlier this week, I’m trimming an inch off the bottom and so what if that leaves a small gap. This is because the door originally had a rim to seal the edge but over time all it does is drag in the dirt. Banana for scale.
I myself found that I often changed technique from one half of the door to the other. Or that some procedure that worked fine on one side was wrong for the other. I thought these were mistakes when building the shed door, but I see they are part of the trade. Other than Taylor pounding on my door looking for a real man, the only thing I want to do tomorrow is work on that door. Obviously I’m enjoying what for some is a chore. There’s something natural about working with wood that I evidently like. It was a warm day and my consumption of peach tea was 3/4 of a quart over six hours.
British Museum reading room.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
NOON
Another day (2 hours) and the frame is all glued-up and clamped. I opted no picture because from the bystanders view, it doesn’t look like a lot of progress. But having some daylight to spare, I hauled out the old toothpick router. See it lying on the turf? That’s the same heavy duty unit that was the first real tool I bought, some 15 years ago now. The bit-changing clamp is busted, but I built a home-made replacement that works fine.
Many a year ago he worked in a wood shop that produced parts for airplanes. So he invested in a shed full of fancy saws and wood-working equipment, pointing to that big barn in his yard. That’s the yard that had the Civil War mansion. The he says, he never got around to building anything. I didn’t say anything, but you bet your wigglies I heard him say he was building airplanes. And here I am trying to make my first screen door.
There are quite a number of brands of wildflower seed for “the southeast”. Can’t leave it much later this year, so I’ll invest in a $20 bag. The philosophy is simple, there has to be something that will grow in that shady area, and that something should be nice and as unique as possible. Wouldn’t you agree? It’s my yard and when I grew up we lived next to a churchyard that never grew any flowers except dandelions. Which, like, aren’t even real flowers, nomsayn? Dandelions everywhere. Same with sunflowers. Not in my front yard. Around back, anything goes, Petunia.
Here’s some useful trivia for you, from my own experience. You can never butter the ides of your baking pan enough that your corn bread won’t stick. And that jar in my kitchen is soaking flower seeds. What? Listen, city kids, flower seeds are tiny so birds can’t find them, so the way to tell if a seed is good or bad is put a teaspoon of them in water overnight. The good ones will sink, the bad ones will float. Another hint from Texas. Plant three seeds in each hole. One will always grow. What? Oh, that’s easy. Coat the seeds in flour and you’ll be able to easy see them.
AFTERNOON
It’s rare to have so much fun on a job, but I moved along quite well with the screen door, once again, continuing until past sunset. This is the final production cuts to one of the trim molds shown in the above picture. Most of you will recognize how these pieces fit into the puzzle. I’m more than happy as this is the first time I’ve ever done anything like this. I would not want to do it for a living, but now I understand why ready-made trim (millwork I think it is called) is kind of expensive. It is a bit of luck that I have enough of this wood to trim the door, for I had not planned that far ahead when I sliced off these parts.
Earlier I made that trip to Wal*Mart and chose one of those seed mixes that includes everything. It’s that brand I mentioned that says “shady mix”, a product that says just apply it directly to the prepared ground. Says it will cover 200 square feet, that’s about right. Here’s something new to me. The mix includes special crystals (their wording) that swell and glisten when enough water has been applied. Do not water again until the crystals disappear. If it works, er, brilliant.
The label says the flowers are: Chinese Forget Me Not, Annual Baby’s Breath, Annual Candyfluff, Sweet William Pinks, Lance Leaved Coreopsis, Purple Coneflower, Alaska Shasta Daisy, Clarkia, Tall White Sweet Alyssum, Baby Blue Eyes, Corn Poppy, Forget Me Not, and Johnny Jump Up. Shit, I thought I was reading the names of Millennial garage bands.
Say, speaking of Millennials, after I ran up to Wal*Mart for printer paper, I stopped for coffee at the BK. That’s the one JZ likes with the sofas set up around coffee tables. Well, there was some kind of wimp show on that had me wondering whether to laugh or cry. It was a call-in program named something like “shred hate”, where teens call in and relate their experiences with bullies and bias. Damn, is that a generation of sissy tenderfoots. All poor me and help-groups. Then I looked up from my crossword to notice most of the place was watching this and buying into it.
Jesus Christ, are these sniveling chicken-shits for real? “That was so hurtful.” “I was devastated.” “It made me cry.” “I couldn’t get in touch with my feelings for the whole day.” Somebody get the hell in their and kick their sissified asses before they hit the streets and learn the hard way.
“I Wish I Were In Dixie, But Tonight She's Out Of Town.”
NIGHT
How goes “Burma Road”? Great, it’s much better entertainment than the Russian spy book. However, the reasons I wonder if it is factual goes beyond the accuracy of the author’s personal touch. He was there, but the snag is those people he meets. Yes, they are characters, but they are characters we’ve all seen before somewhere. The lady who runs away to a mysterious island and scares away the locals by pretending to be an evil mermaid. Or the concubine whose mother casts a spell to keep the Frenchman from returning to Europe to marry a rich widow. Our writer was there, but did he meet these people or was he repeating local legends? (It’s still better than many European novels that focus on what people had for lunch and what they were wearing.)
From what I’ve read thus far, the tale concerns the intentions of an American photojournalist to visit the Burma Road. This is being built to ferry war supplies to China, since the French ports and cities in Indo-China cannot handle the load. Even the railways are described as toys, or Shetland ponies, built for little other purpose than to supply the colonial masters along a string of hotels from Hanoi to Kunming with French wine and phonograph records. Most of the people he visits along the path are 30-year career diplomats and directors of pitiless mining or factory concerns with up to 30% annual death rates among the underage workers.
The road, being a military project, is built without meaning to last or be safe. Permission is needed to even approach the path and no photos are permitted of the frequent mudslides or other tunnel collapses. Our writer pauses to visit, it seems, everybody along the way who was wealthy enough to be educated in America, and all of whom state the road will fall to ruin as soon as the war with the Japanese is over. Remember, China had been at war with Japan for six years by 1939. Still, that was a remarkable observation from the side getting their asses kicked.
Last Laugh
Return Home
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
