Address for Donations, Complaints, Brickbats, and — oh yes — Donations
My Back Pages
In Memory Of W.B. Yeats
Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice.
With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress.
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountains start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
– – WH Auden
from “1054 AD”
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
As if I had just woken from all water into dream.
— Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, 1973
Your Say
My Thinking Hat
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The People Yes
The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:
This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can’t be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can’t hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?
In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
“Where to? what next?”
— Carl Sandberg
Camouflage
Sourdough Mountain Lookout
Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.
I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.
BY GARY SNYDER
Chimes of Freedom
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
The Vault
My Back Pages
Byzantium
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
– – W. B. Yeats, 1865 – 1939
De Breanski
VAN GOGH
Hillegas
To the Stonecutters
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
— Robinson Jeffers
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
from “1054 AD”
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
As if I had just woken from all water into dream.
— Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, 1973
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Delighted to spot my absolute favorite titanium trim hammer in Mr Wadsworth’s tool belt! Great minds and all. Sure seemed expensive at the time, well over a hunnie, but I’d get another without even batting an eye if I could. Ruger made it. If you ever see one, get it, I doubt they are even made any more.
I use Paslode cordless angled finish nailers
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Paslode-16-Gauge-Cordless-Lithium-Ion-Angled-Finish-Nailer-902400/203410132
and Ryobi cordless brad nailers
https://www.homedepot.com/p/RYOBI-ONE-18V-Cordless-AirStrike-18-Gauge-Brad-Nailer-Tool-Only-with-Sample-Nails-P320/203810823
cause I don’t have the luxury of taking all day to get stuff done.
Hammer: Stiletto FH10C
Different subject, just came thru the Bootleg fire in southern Oregon between Chiloquin or, and Lakeview Oregon, fires brutal,200;20 thousand acres, zero containment. At1700 I sat in on a meeting with the lake county Commissioner’s.
The fire bombers and helos in Lakeview have no JP4 fuel to fly suppression missions. Zero,ziltch, Alturas Ca has zero fuel, Modoc County,,, Cal Fire is supporting two large fires their, they can’t fly suppression missions with.
Bend has fuel but non to spare their battling huge fires outside of Sisters Or themselves.
If I understood it correctly, Oregon Air Guard Portland is heading south with 1 twin trailer. Which creates a different problem. Mil planes and these civy birds use a different style of fuel connection.
Watched the CET “single engine tankers” roll out each carrying 400 pounds/ retardant in the sump
tank. These look like crop dusters but sporting a turbo prop power plant. Appears USFS rules only allow JP “A “ Fuels,, not high octane small aircraft fuel now.
Very educational day for me, only went to help a friend redo a vacuum line in his C 185-
VI
The front entry needs leaded glass.
I want that guy to work on my house!!
Ghost, I used to work in, but not for, The Home Depot. A merch company looked after all the products in a department; my department was hardware, which included Paslode nailers. Since I was in the store 40 hours a week, I had trained the returns folks to call me when someone brought in a big ticket item that seemed used.
That day, it was a Paslode nailer, which uses butane explosions to drive the hammer. Solid, reliable and fairly light, since there was no cord or hose. The customer had a receipt from the previous day, and said this nailer wasn’t working.
The first thing I noticed was that the Torx screw heads on the body were packed with sawdust. That doesn’t happen in one day. Next, the code on the body told me it had been manufactured three years earlier. And of course, I could see the carbonization on the drive mechanism. I told the customer that this was not the tool purchased the day before, and no refund would be given.
The customer promptly pitched a fit, demanding a manager. I waited for the manager to arrive, and pointed out all of the things I had seen. The customer said it was probably one that had been sitting in the overhead for three years. I told him, no, there were six there right now and all were no older than six months.
For once a retail manager had some courage, and told the guy to get the hell out, and we would be holding on to the unit and receipt (so he couldn’t pull this at another store).
You should have seen what horribly abused wet/dry vacs were returned.