Noted In Passing
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WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2001-2022
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
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
FSA/8d22000/8d224008d22491a.tif
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
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
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
Van der Leun: The Normblog Bio of Your Host
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
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
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
Comments on this entry are closed.
is this directed at me? Its the estate sales. Wonderful tools and supplies and incredibly cheap in price.
Like the 1883 Drill Press. Only $100. Works good
Said no guy ever.
not possible
except for gurlbaby’s
not enough for the Road Ahead??
Honey Badger don’t use no roads..
we cut through the fields, scurry through the drainpipes,
scamper over the rooftops, ride the rear bumper of the buses,
we’ll smash through your fucking walls, we’re out to get you mfers.
I’m a sucker for garage sale hand tools, especially if it is a set of wrenches stamped with CRAFTSMAN.
Never, ever throw anything away.
It is written into the laws of the universe.
Go ahead. Toss out that rusty, bent, and battered whatchamacallit that’s been taking up room in the junk drawer since Kennedy was president.
The very next day you will not only have a use for it, it will be the one thing that could have rescued your project from total failure.
But you tossed it out.
JWM
Snakepit Kansas: I found that Lowes is carrying the Craftsman line now, since Sears went T.U.
I’d fully buy that antique drill press, but logistics.
Road ahead. My near target on the road ahead is a workshop they want me to teach in Central Cali, and on the coast. I wanna go badly, but homelessness. Who wants to walk through needles, trash and feces to enjoy the beach and boardwalk? I’m going to require a sanity guide of my hosts. And my requirement is: no masks or vax whoreshit. I understand Barbara Streisand demanded a fresh, new toilet in her dressing room bathroom at her gigs. I’m afraid my demands have increased considerably if Cali wants me…I used to only ask for coffee.
Casey:
Bet a nickel they’ll require diapers for the “Un-vaccinated” (who are pariahs, and must needs be shunned). The moonbattery increases the farther north you go in CA. I was actually going to go to a meeting at the local art association this last Monday, but they demanded masks unless participants had BOTH shots. I felt like tellin’ ’em to go buy a coloring book.
JWM
Spittin’ image of my wife’s handwriting, seriously.
I will never have enough tools and supplies.
And I pave my own road as I go forward.
Guns are tools, and ammo & components are supplies.
Molon Labe.
@Snake.
I too have lived a long working mans life around the foundation of Craftsman tools. I inherited that ideal from my Pappy. Unfortunately somewhere between then and now a major change has occurred and I am no longer loyal to Craftsman.
My oldest hammer, a 16oz smooth faced framing hammer was given to me by my dad when I was 16 for some house framing jobs I was helping him with. It is laying on my main workbench right now ready to go to work and feels like an extension to my right hand. I’ve heard that, to a hammer everything looks like a nail. A narrow minded person came up with that. Out in the field, when you don’t have access to your full arsenal out in the shop, your mind will compel your body to use your available tools in whatever way you need to in order to complete the task at hand. The straight framing claw can un-turn a large screw whether straight or phillips and it can punch a hole threw a 2×8 for running a cable in a crawlspace. It’s not all work. You can open a beer bottle and throw it hatchet-tomahawk style at a stealing assed mexican. Standing on a 6′ ladder while installing cross bracing on the bottom chords of trusses I have used my hammer to “stick” the claw into the top chord to pull myself up to the bottom chord to get better leverage.
My 7-1/4″ Craftsman circular saw is battered and needs a new cord but it’s sitting over there inside the tablesaw table with it’s fairly new Diablo 40 tooth blade ready to do whatever I want it to do. It has cut a million feet of wood and has done so in ways that some people may never have heard of. Fer instance. You can remove the blade guard and table and while holding it free handed with both hands, carve 4′ long model sailboat hulls laminated together from scrap framing boards of SYP. Put a plywood blade on it to get a smoother finish requiring less sanding.
In all the thousands of hours laying under vehicles or suffering trashed back muscles while leaning over fenders and radiators I have never once had to use Craftsmans “lifetime warranty”. I push my tools pretty hard and sometimes they do break. But I’ve never broken a Craftsman mechanic tool. Never. I have however lost some. Invariably a 9/16″ socket will get set up on the topside of the frame while changing out the rear shocks and someone walking along the road will find it. (I once found a Snap-On 3/4″ ratchet with a Craftsman deep set 1-1/16″ socket laying right there along the road! When have you ever seen a 1-1/16″ socket? Me neither, but I now have one. And I have yet to use it.)
I once found a 7/16″ Craftsman wrench under the battery in my truck 3 years after I replaced the battery, when replacing it again. I had already bought another 7/16″ so now I had an extra. YAY!
So yeah, I have lost tools but I never knew I lost them til the next time I needed to use them, then that means another trip to the Craftsman store. And every.dam.time I go there, even if to just buy a $10 lost tool, I end up spending more. Sometimes much more.
Going to the Craftsman store with my brother, another murderously addicted tool owner/user, is always dangerous to the checkbook. He was the sonofabitch that svenjolly (lol) like hypnotized me into believing I just had to have that 80 gal, 250psi, 30cfm oiled 8hp compressor and the whole set of hook-ups and black air tools. Man, it took me 2 years to pay that stuff off. My brother. LOL, I got him back later.
I do have a failing, of sort, with Craftsman but not over their hand tools.
Ever since my dad showed me how to use his DeWalt radial arm saw when I was about 8 yo I knew something wasn’t quite right in my life and only a RAS would straighten it out. A few years ago I went searching and found the highly desirable digital version built in 1991 and the seller just wanted it “out of here” and sold it to me for $60, table, saw, and some accessories. Holy Gwokamolley! Turns out Craftsman RAS’s have a bad reputation since the 80’s. It would not cut straight no matter what and there was no way short of replacing almost everything to fix it. DAM! Hate it when that happens. Researching that saw online I discovered a website named something like craftsman-radial-arm-saw-recall.com. That’s not the URL but it was something like that. Turns out a couple people with gender issues from the left coast got their 3″ pink fingernails caught up in the splitter while in rip mode and the 2.75hp motor shredded several acres of their hide. Then a Johnny Cochran clone chased that ambulance down and sued everybody north of the mason dixon. JUst kiddin’. That website sent me a cardboard box and packing materials to send them, post paid, the motor from the saw. After they received the motor they sent me a check for $200. YAY!!!!
My best Craftsman days are behind me, sadly, and this was made more than clear a year or so ago. Apparently I left my 12mm combo end wrench on that nefarious frame member and the next time I needed it it wasn’t where it was supposed to be. After many days of searching online (Craftsman stores seem to no longer exist) the best price I could find for that 12mm was $34 plus shipping. I’m loyal like no other, but yes, when it comes right down to it I am just a lowly hor like everybody else. I likes my legal tenders and refuse to give them up willy nilly. Craftsman can eat a boxcar full of dix. I went to Walmart and bought a Stanley 12mm, completed the task at hand, and several more since. Yes, it grates my ass like you wouldn’t believe that in my long line up of Craftsman wrenches in the big red tool rig over there, there is 1 Stanley that seems woefully out of place. If I could replace that Stanley with say, a $10-$15 Craftsman, even if used but in good condition, I would instantly. But that ain’t gonna happen. The past is called the past because it’s gone. One of these days though I might take Casey’s advice and stop in a Lowes store and saunter into the tool area, just to see what’s happening, and no I won’t take my brother with me. He’s an expensive date.
The trick is , discovering how to apply the tools you have, to the situations you encounter.
Most here are fifty plus, if you’ve lived Well, your tool belts should be well stocked
VI
@John the River….
“Said no guy ever.”
…and…
@Mac Siccar
“Never, ever throw anything away.”
While a neutral party might look at my collection of tools and say that I’ve got more than I really need (a charge to which I, if I were honest with myself, would have to plead guilty), I have rid myself of some of my “stuff”.
Some of the stuff that I’ve kept is family heirloom stuff…a couple of braces (minus the bits) and an old measuring stick (precursor to the measuring tape) that trace back a couple of generations. My dad was enrolled in some sort of “tool-per-month” subscription thingi and I’ve got his old toolbox with his name embossed on the lid. I’ll pass these to a grandson named after him, and I’ve got an old Estwing camp ax from my late father-in-law that’ll go to the grandson named after him (once I repair the dried out and busted stacked leather grip). “My” tools can get split among whoever wants them.
But really, I do have too much. I’m just sorta handy, but I know that I can put my hands on 6 tape measures. There’s a little 3′ model that could hang from a keychain, a 6′ Stanley (pretty much wore out), a 16′ Milwaukee, a 35′ Stanley Fat Max, a 100′ tape from somebody, and a 16′ Lefty/Righty that is very handy, and if my guess is right, made by a small company looking for a larger company to buy them out.
https://www.amazon.com/FastCap-PSSR16-FastPad-Standard-Measuring/dp/B0001GUE3G/ref=sr_1_5?crid=6FPFCQOPFIMN&dchild=1&keywords=left+right+tape+measure&qid=1624481215&sprefix=left+right+tape%2Caps%2C197&sr=8-5
Six tape measures really makes no sense, and I could repeat that story throughout my little workshop. Saws, hammers, sockets, wrenches….on and on and on. There is a use for each one of them, but I could get by with far less. We moved a couple of years ago, and I used that opportunity to get rid of a good number of tools (what D-I-Yer needs 2 circular saws?)
azlib axed: (what D-I-Yer needs 2 circular saws?)
=======
There’s that ominous word “needs” again.
I remember seeing a tag on the front of a big dangerous truck, “Coz I wanted it”
I have 4 circular saws and only use 1 regularly.
But.
I have used all of them out of necessity.
Ever cut the tops off 66 10″x10″ PT wood pilings?
I have, and it required a $250 Milwaukee 12″ circular saw.
I could have used one of my recip saws with a 12″ blade but it would have looked like it.
I can’t say with certain that it helped, but by using the Milk I did a good job and the owner was happy, paid me, and referred more work to me. I give credit where it’s due and that Milwaukee served me well. And I’m ready for the next set of 10×10 pilings that need trimmed.
I’ve never counted them so I’ll just guess that I have 30 or more “saws”, powered, stationary, and hand, of various types. I’m always on the look out for more, of everything. It ain’t about need and never was. Compare your life to that of the caveman of 40,000 years ago. Do you need all the stuff you possess?
Using my tools and supplies to build more road ahead. It tends to shorten without the proper attention.
jwm: thank ye for the timely intell. I may seek you out before I pull the trigger on this deal in SC. My hard boundaries are: no workshop with masks. That’s a cucky situation and nobody can hear or really understand (faces have expressions) anyone else! I also will not provide vax info and if that is a deal-breaker, then so be it. My only hope is that some soul on this 6-person cohort is intelligent enough to see through the cock-and-bull of covidiots.
And, I want someone responsible to guide me around the beautiful city, and who I can look at over my glasses at when insane homeless types interdict my regular-guy personage. IOW, one needs an urban guide in Cali beach towns, now. I may be a man, but I like some native guides for a margin of safety. What say you?
Oh, this is me. I’ve been on a website that is an auction aggregator (hibid.com) and have brought home more tools and Useful Stuff than I have years left in me. Commercial grade Delta 12″ compound miter saw on a wheelbarrow stand….$34. Yeah, I’ll buy that all day long.
Oh, and some pretty nice stereo gear, albums, etc.
It’s more fun spending money on that stuff, than watching it’s purchasing power evaporate. I can listen to the Grateful Dead for many road trips and not run out of live performances…and it was a buck.
@TC, thanks for the tip, I may be checking that place out. Already a vintage Craftsman drill press has caught my eye. I have a custom Delta 14″ model but those old Craftsmans get me wobbly.
Casey:
I can’t speak for Monterrey, but I know it is seriously well-to-do. The beach towns, somehow, manage to keep the worst of it away. Except, of course, for Venice. For example: very few bums in Newport. (lots of beach houses right on the sand) Slightly more in Huntington, right next door, (no houses on the sand) You’ll sometimes see them at the river mouth, but HBPD is not cordial. They push the “campers” inland enough that is doesn’t totally ruin the beach.
Throughout So Cal, the camps are mostly along the riverbeds, and creek channels. I doubt you’ll have to worry much in Monterrey.
The mask fetish, though, is still alive and well. I still see people slouching along outdoors, all alone in their face diapers. Unfortunately, (as you are well aware) lots of artsy type folks are hard lefties. I’m thinking it’d be a good idea to throw that gauntlet down first.
JWM
Ghost,
My Dad had used a Craftsman radial arm saw that he bought in the early 70s. and used it for year. It sits idly now. I acquired an old cast iron top Craftsman table saw with no motor. My Dad found one and got it going for me, several years ago. I’ve also lost and found various tools while walking. Most recetly a 3/8″ swivel head ratchet. Don’t remember the brand but stamped USA. It has some miles on it.
Casey,
I’ve been to San Diego/Carlsbad twice this year so far on business. Still many many fools driving around on the highway with masks on. FFS. Carlsbad beaches were sparsely populated and a good 20% of the population is still walking around with masks on. Restaurants were balls to the wall and packed, wear your mask to your table and to the bathroom otherwise nobody gave a shit. I did not see any homeless folks on the Carlsbad beaches. Local businesses probably wouldn’t put up with that.
Snake, that 70’s RAS may be a good one. I understand Craftsman changed a few key elements in the 80’s that cause the quality to decline. Next time you see that RAS make sure the arm is locked in position, then try to push it sideways, both ways. It should not move, not even a millimeter. The older ones had a gear mechanism that could be locked down preventing sideways movement, which meant accurate repeat cuts. The newer ones, like I had, changed that. Mine had a cast aluminum part that rode in a machined steel slot. In time and with use the play between the cast and the machined grew larger. No matter how tight I tightened the clamp the wobble persisted. Design flaw. I saw no good way to fix it. Tearing it down and replacing the worn part would be ok at first but with use it would wear again. Realizing that I just got rid of it, and made a couple bux to boot. I till want one cause they are very versatile.