The Junk and I -or- From Scrounging to O.S. Design

The guy who got his people what they wanted

GiraDora foot-powered washing/drying machine

There they were in the moonlight, beckoning:  two large-size rectangular green plastic milk containers, in excellent shape.  Just about the most useful thing you can find for free after firewood.
The trash-collection night (Sunday) pickers have finally discovered our neighborhood, which can be pretty rich in useful items due to people moving in and out all the time and the old folks getting rid of things.  In fact, weeks earlier I'd scooped up two small oriental rugs, in perfect condition and just the size for inside the exterior doors.  One is even from Turkey (the other, probably Kohl's).  So, before the little pickup truck arrived on its rounds, I ambled over to do some primo recycling.
I had a similar Harrisburg Dairies square container that I had used for decades as a step stool and tool carrier (I think it's at Zach's place now), but these were stamped with New Jersey dairies' logos (imported!) and had more possibilities.  Soon there were attached end-to-end and mounted on the garage wall to hold all those plant pots that I'd tripped over before.
I do love scrounging and repurposing.  It's creative, definitely a treasure hunt, and provides the satisfaction of something homemade.  Over the years I've made a number of outdoor pieces, planters and tables, from leftover treated wood found nearby while they were still building.  To put them together, I dipped into the sizeable collection of fasteners and odd metal pieces I picked up off floors while on construction sites  in the communications biz.  I really admire the strong  furniture some craftspeople make from limbs and branches; there is a tool to make the joints easily.  Just might do that someday.
Toward the end of my eight years at the science museum, there seemed to be no money to design and build new exhibits (maintenance of the existing ones and a personnel structure heavy on overpaid chiefs using it all up), so I went into rebuilding with supplies on hand along with scrounging.  A friend knew the eccentric landlord of a three story Victorian apartment house with a chock-full basement nearby in downtown -- it looked pretty much like the Addams family's home --  so we went over and came back with a neon sign transformer, just what was needed to make a "Jacob's Ladder" exhibit.  The 1/4" clear plexiglas for the case to house it safely was picked from the store fixture trash pile at the loading dock in our building's basement.  Radio Shack had closed, so I also got enough plywood from their pile to make six bookshelves for myself at home, along with a dozen orange Formica-covered shelves to install in the basement.
Old industrial and agricultural metal parts can be remade into striking light fixtures which look and are a lot sturdier than what's sold at retail (and, yuck, made in China).  And going even further into working with existing components, people are developing "Open Design" projects like a bike-powered recycling machine to grind up and separate metal out of thrown-away electronics (see www.mkshft.org or www.notechmagazine.com).  The principles of Open Design are usefulness, durability, low cost available parts, and above all, non complexity ("Any fool can make something more complicated, but it takes real genius to make things simple again").
More important than the well-publicized effort to provide inexpensive solar-powered laptops to the Third World (still a cool idea, though) is solving widespread problems concerning the availability and safety of water.  Two students from Los Angeles' Art Center College of Design went to a barrio of 30,000 people outside Lima, Peru to create the GiraDora, an under-$40 foot powered washing and drying machine.  People there were wasting hours a day hauling water up to hand wash clothes, which were then getting mildewy because drying was slow and space to do it limited.  The user sits atop this portable (making it possible to carry it to the water source) machine and turns the agitator with the feet to save back strain from bending over as in hand washing.  After emptying the water, the clothes are spun almost dry the same way.  What's intriguing about the GiraDora beyond its usefulness to those who are ground down by what are simple tasks in the developed world, is its easy adaptation to many other modes of life, be they onboard boats, at cabins or tiny apartments, or for RV living.  And if you are among the few already living off the grid, what a find this would be.
So go out and get your scrounge on.  Let me know what you find.


   

When New Gets Old

Steampunk search engine?

We made our annual trip to apple country (Adams County, PA) last weekend, specifically Hollabaugh Brothers Fruit, where you can dig into massive crates of apples that are refilled all day.  The new varieties like Honeycrisp and Nittany are too good -- I mean, just perfect.  Nothing wrong with the old ones either (except for the mass-market long-range shipping creation, the Red Delicious, which is the first but certainly not the second part of its name-- you won't find it here).
The cider makes me think a little while I'm enjoying a big cup of it and gazing out at the sturdy trees.  Still picked from ladders, still good for you just as they are without the ministrations of a multinational corporation...little round miracles.  An ancient once said you must respect the intelligence that a seed possesses.  Compared to the smart phone in your pocket, which can produce nothing, it is astonishing.

What things are best done in the old way?  What old objects and methods do you know that delight you?  A short while ago I had reason to use my 100-year-old jack plane to make a piece of pine fit.  It took three short sessions, and the paper-thin shavings piled up while the air filled with a fragrance as naturally perfect as the apple's.  I cleaned it off and put it away, on its side, not resting on the precious leading edge of the blade.  The handles are real Indian rosewood, the hardware solid brass.  It says "BAILEY" at the front, a name like many others respected back in the day and forgotten now.  There aren't many who could look at it and see that the blade is a "butcher weld" and that is why it cuts, when adjusted and sharpened correctly, better than anything made since.

We might rationally know what's best or just be emotionally attracted or attached to certain things.  We may be blinded by pride in our specialized knowledge or just by unexamined prejudices.  Feelin' ain't thinkin,' our Dr. Spock side might say; it is amusing to step outside ourselves and examine what we value and why.  A few iconoclasts still use straight or safety razors, can't abide automatic transmissions, or sport a fountain pen.  Some things have class above and beyond practicality; the mechanical watch or camera has history and shows great levels of artisanship.  They wrap function in beauty and can be repaired and used by subsequent generations, if those ideas warm something inside you.  Ansel Adams didn't need digital.

It took a long time for us to get rid of the dependable and inexpensive landline phone (because of unending spam calls), but the Asian-made instruments we've had for decades were all short-lived pieces of unrepairable junk.  You can call me over the hill, as Bob Seger sang, but the wall-mount rotary dial (OK, its pushbutton successor was good too) Western Electric model that graced most kitchens for decades was as good as telephones ever got.  Even if dropped on the floor, I never saw one in a home needing replacement or repair.  And if disaster or small children struck, you could get parts and rebuild them (I did that many times for an exhibit at the science museum that used two of them, and had no trouble restoring them fully). 

Except for the peer pressure, no one is actually stopping you from taking notes on paper with a wood pencil, holding and reading a real book, using paper maps, washing dishes with your hands, or cooking from scratch with real ingredients.  I read that LP records are being released in increasing quantities, but have never seen them for sale new.  Ironic -- you might have to order them online.  I don't miss checks or cassette tapes, but they were midpoint technologies; cash and LPs are solid old school.  And we miss our old Atari. 

I'm with you if you're thinking about slowing down to do some things the old way.  If you're driving by in a manual-shift car with crank windows, you'll warm one old but still servicable heart.
  







   

Buyer's Remorse

Can you spot the fatal flaw that made this a bad buy?

Mr. Carlin, a good buy in philosophy.

If you are living on limited resources, a bad buy hurts a lot more than one made when you're in a comfortable state.  The unfortunate fact is that the first condition probably describes your younger years when you are short on the experience and knowledge to appraise a decision wisely before making it.  I can think of two times when I really screwed the pooch in this area. 
In June of 1967 I decided that a VCU degree would be worth about what I was paying for it (not much), so I enrolled in the summer session at the University of Richmond to get a leg up on credits, knowing that paying for the full semester in the fall would strain my self-financed educational budget (i.e., 80% of income) to the limit.

Within a few weeks, I saw that what I thought I wouldn't like about UofR was looking to be all too true.  I had my motorcycle for transportation, an expense I couldn't really handle, but it was a long way from my Fan lodgings and there did not seem to be anything available in the nearby tony area.  I thereby learned that the parking situation mirrored American social structure neatly:  everyone but fraternity and upperclassmen dorm residents was relegated to a pine grove, far from any classes and a mess to navigate in bad weather.  I had a nasty accident due to wet pine needles, loose gravel and one of those big pine trees.  After repairs, I parked nearer classes in safe places and instantly got tickets galore.  And phys. ed. was a requirement (mandantory Baptist chapel had just ended, though), which was a waste of my already scarce time and money.  And I had thought the indifferent student part-timers one had to deal with during registratrion at VCU were bad -- the old biddies in the office at UofR were like the love children of Rush Limbaugh and SNL's Church Lady!

I'd decided on a philosophy major, which wasn't available at VCU at the time.  The initial class was on the English trio of Hobbes, Hume and Berkeley.  It's been decades, but I still can't see why the study of these fossils had not been relegated to the senior level of courses, where you could have avoided them by picking another specialized area you had some interest in.  Even at the time, ignorant as I was, I wondered why we weren't starting where it all started, with the Greek atomists, Thales first and foremost.  I was paying for this with my $1.15 an hour gross income, not a scholarship fund or parents, and I felt then and now that I'd made a lousy buy. 
Broke after the fall and spring 1968 semesters, I sold the cycle and returned to VCU after negotiating a payment plan.  Spending more for presumably a better product got me exactly nowhere.

Needing a car that provided both economy and carrying capacity, in the late 70s I bought a 1969 Volkswagen 1600 Type 3 Variant, known as the Squareback.  It was priced reasonably, looked like it had been pretty well cared for and not been in an accident, and more than fit the requirements.  Plus, it was dark blue, not one of those usual yeccch VW colors.  That was all I had to go on; today we have the Internet and Consumer Reports, and with little effort, can look past the surface and identify what is actually a good buy.
Those listed under "Worst Used Cars" are off the prospects list immediately.  Bullet dodged.
What I did not know (like the silent snake in the grass, that's what gets you) before it was too late was that VW's new "Einspritzung," or Bosch fuel injection system, was nothing but problematic as the cars aged (otherwise, all I replaced were a belt and a few light bulbs).  At 90,000 miles, the FI system's race was run, and it left me stranded in bad neighborhoods and rain several times.  I hauled new, valuable audio and videotape equipment that wasn't my own for my job at the public school system, so the car sitting in a desolate areas made me pretty nervous -- with no cell phone or AAA to the rescue.  That said, I did love the Squareback otherwise.  So simple, just enough room for everything, and nice looking, too.  That unreliable fuel injection system may be why you never see such an excellent old car around anymore.  Well, that and rust.

So we either learn the essential lesson that being unprepared and uninformed is going to cost us, or we don't.

I'll let Consumer Reports and CarFax guide you expertly on major vehicle purchases, and in the area of philosophy, I'd recommend either Mr. Carlin (now on YouTube) or a young fellow by the name of Michael O. Church, whose blog is more than well worth digging in to.  Look up http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com for brilliant essays on American social structure, the three phases of the U.S. national identity, or an argument for the survivial of the spirit.  For the price of your Internet connection, that is a very good buy. 

Oh, and Smartwool socks for winter.  Great buy.




   

Problems with Miss Translation

Unless you never go to such places and haven't seen it, these days McDonald's has a Spanish translation for each of the chirpy catchphrases on their signage around the counter area.  This would give one a quick chance to brush up on his creaky school Spanish, except that they are mostly different phrases and not translations at all.  That is because idiomatic or colloquial expressions in one language are just about impossible to render in another.  But, bless 'em, people keep trying. 
Now, these McDonald's signs make me cringe a little, because they bring back an old memory, and those are almost always cringeworthy.
Within the great blur that was thousands of days of school, I remember one most clearly:  in Spanish IV (I like to stick with some things), we were assigned to write a mini-book of ten stories, poems and/or essays in Spanish; only two could be translations.  Having to hurry up this end-of-semester surprise (don't big homework projects always come at the same time?), I started the translations first, thinking them to be the easiest, with selections from The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce. 
I have to mention that what syntax is, its definition and how essential its mastery is to translation, was never gone into in class.  So endeavoring to translate quirky American humor into correct Spanish (you're being graded on what you don't even know!) in such a fog of ignorance was like trying to repair a car without even knowing what the tools are.  So all ten efforts, when done, looked and sounded just like the English sentences I had in my head being replaced, word for plodding word, with ones sloppily covered in a Spanglish veneer.
Words and phrases from the Bible are often puzzling, because after going through Hebrew, Aramaic, Hellenistic Greek, Latin and English, they really make no sense.  Take the statement about John living in the desert having only "honey and locusts" to eat.  True, they eat grasshoppers in Africa and Asia, but that is a strange combination, considering how difficult it is to get honey and how plentiful date palms are where he was.  Scholars have finally sorted it out, though:  the "honey" was probably pressed from dates, and the supposed insect portion of the menu was actually flour made from grinding the seeds of locust tree pods (still done today).
Of course, misunderstandings due to spotty education, visual error, ongoing changes in languages, original meanings lost and modern connotations attached should be assumed.  Often, as manuscripts were copied by hand, things were changed intentionally by individuals with an agenda.  Those people nicely referred to as "servants," for example, might more accurately be called indentured or slave laborers.  Incidentally, the Greek word for "servant," DIAKONOJ, has been transliterated as "deacon."  One word in Proverbs (26:10) has been translated ten different ways.  A ball of confusion, as the Temps sang.
He whom we call Jesus was either Yesh'yahu, Yeshua, Joshua, or even Isaiah.  Some say not Isaiah; some say Yeshua was never the Hebrew spelling.  Translating Semitic languages without vowels -- oy vey!
On a less cosmic level:  as General Motors found out to its corporate chagrin, the name of the Chevrolet Nova means "does not go" in Spanish.  The closest sound to "Coca-Cola" in Chinese, the Coke people found, was ko-kou-ko-le, which nicely means "happiness in the mouth."  McDonald's "I'm lovin' it" can only be put into Chinese as "I just like it."  Not quite the same punch.
I recently finally read the Roman Lucretius' On the Nature of Things, in which he regrets that he cannot express new scientific ideas in his limited "native tongue."  And you know how much the French hate to adpot an English term that can't be expressed in their Latin-derived language (but they can say many things we can't; and elegantly, of course).
I'll leave you with this, proclaimed by a newspaper in Chennai, India:  "Our editors are colleged and write like the Kipling and the Dickens." 




 


    
       

Get Lost



The site of the stage is to Nancy's right, the hillside amphitheater to her left



The bucket list is shortening

Lovin' the Lazy Pond B&B

The Hog Farm Bus in the museum

Happy visitors to Grossinger's in 1950

The "Hawk Nest" overlooking the Delaware River

The traffic, light as it is, slows to a crawl as we approach Jeffersonville, Sullivan County, in the green countryside of  the southern Catskills in New York State.  We find that we've landed in the middle of the tractor parade, part of the Second Annual JeffFest -- more shiny red antique Farmall tractors than we can count, and a big beautiful Oliver (my favorite).  We exchange a look which says, "Of course.  We're the people who got caught up in the Gay Pride parade in Cleveland a few years ago, waving to the tighty-whitey clad fellows wearing cowboy hats on the float ahead.  Quirky must just be our thing."
Thanks to (1) murky Internet directions and (2) a completely missing County Route 114, we've gotten off track returning home from our trip to visit the Woodstock festival site and museum (on the bucket list for so long now), but we're not minding it since it's a beautiful near-autumn day and Jeffersonville (originally named Winkelried!), which we get a chance to see at a slow pace, is an astonishingly charming small town (under 400 peaceful souls).  Patty Hearst was kept captive here in 1974, believe it or not.
The Catskills have been an accessible vacation destination since the 1920s when autos got people out of the cities, and thus this small town has at least seven restaurants and cafes, several small inns and the inevitable antiques shops.  A busy creek runs through it, and it sports its own 23 acre lake -- the attraction of this area has been, in large part, its hundreds of ponds and lakes.
Getting lost got better as we entered the Minisink area along the upper Delaware River.  The road rises then tightly winds, hugging the steep cliff, providing lovely views of the river dotted with canoeists, kayakers, and rafters (we passed at least a half-dozen river outfitter places, where everyone seemed to be having a fine time).  It reminded us immediately of Virginia's Blue Ridge Parkway.
We had spent Friday afternoon at the Woodstock festival site and its new Bethel Woods Center for the Arts (Woodstock itself is about 50 miles away and has its own museum, which I'm sure causes confusion).  The grounds are immaculate, and due to the end of the busy season after Labor Day, we pretty much had the lush outdoors and the museum to ourselves.  The ticket taker told me he was a local, who had wandered over to the festival site on the night of its first day (a Friday), not having even heard it was coming -- his father's gas station had seen more customers than in years combined and ran out of gas in mid-afternoon.  He grinned and said, yes, it was disorienting but quite an experience.  We had time to view the films and read all the signage; it is not filled with memorabilia but with quotes and memories.  The Hog Farm bus just made you smile and feel good. 
After reading about it in books and seeing it in films ("Dirty Dancing") I've always wanted to get a feel for the "borscht belt," as they affectionately called it, that wildly popular summer vacation destination for millions of New York City residents, mostly Jewish, from about 1920 to the 1970s.  The great hotels -- the Concord, Grossinger's, the Tamarack Lodge, the Laurels -- are closed or burned down now, and the summer camps with Hebrew names strung out almost every mile along country roads are forlorn, decaying and look disturbingly like old concentration camps.  Bungalow colonies were as popular as the camps; we saw two that looked new but were weedy and empty -- I guess the 2008 bust stopped any comeback that was beginning.  The auto, and a two-hour drive, brought millions of urban immigrant families to a little piece of the American dream where they felt they belonged, for many decades; the airplane and rising prosperity with a proliferation of choices spelled the end of the unique Catskills experience.  Every entertainer of note, and every single Jewish one, performed here:  Jack Benny, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, George Burns, Woody Allen -- even Larry Storch! 
And then, as unexpected as anything could be, Woodstock in 1969.
Quite a place, Sullivan County.
 
 
 

You Can Ride a Tron Cycle. Really.

The original.  Cool as the Batmobile, no?

LIT Motors C-1

A recent visitor to Shanghai noted that 80% of the vehicular traffic was electric bikes and scooters.  I've been casually researching this mode of transport, and, distressingly, despite one each high-quality American and  French entry into the field, pretty much all you see for sale locally or online is Chinese-made.  Do you think they're going to flood the Western markets soon after building out their manufacturing base at home?  Do you think the sun will probably rise tomorrow?
I'd pay no more than $40 for one, since it is going to last about two months until something fails and the thing is pushed to the back of the garage.  Meanwhile, the well-designed American and French brands are not available.
Let's say you too have been thinking about avoiding some of the average $8000/year cost of operating a gasoline car and want something that is more of a car substitute and less of a battle between you and the elements.
Just this month Mr. Danny Kim of LIT Motors announced the launch of his C-1 untippable enclosed motorcycle in San Francisco -- and I wish him all the breaks he can get.  At low speeds and in chancy situations, two flywheels gyroscopically stabilize his vehicle, removing most of the dangers of two-wheeled travel; an enclosure offers bad-weather comfort as well as air conditioning, airbags and power windows, things which people generally require these days.  With a 200 mile per charge range, there's no comparison with the tiny 25+ mile range of electric scooters.  And it will cost you about $1 worth of electricity to go those 200 miles --not $4 a gallon for liquefied ancient sunlight.  And it is a motorcycle, not a bike:  it does 0 to 60 in six seconds (electric motors have full torque at 0 rpm).
There is a need, a few of us think, for a one-person commuter vehicle (a solo driver piloting an Escalade or Range Rover to work just seems a little wasteful, don't you think?), and this may be it.  Cost?  Around $24,000 initially (2014 production start), declining to a projected $12,500 by 2018.
The amazing Mr. Kim is an automatic transmission expert, has studied architecture, and attended Reed College, UC Berkeley and the Rhode Island School of Design.
Finally, you can be ecologically responsible, economically prudent, and futuristically bad-ass all at the same time!
   
    

But Things Have Changed

It was a cool, pleasant evening at the Hershey Star Pavilion after a surprise afternoon rain, but it got hot when Bob Dylan and his band barrelled into "Route 61 Revisited," even though the lyrics were more in our memories than heard from the stage.  All I got that was recognizable was "bleachers;" for each song the music was pretty much made up and only, at times, were there faint phrases similar to those melodies we have known for decades.  After playing guitar for the first three numbers, Dylan spent most of the rest of the show behind the piano.  I'm certainly not qualified to judge anyone's playing, especially a 50-year veteran's, but I'm not sure he would have passed the audition at Miss Prunella's Music School.  He did perform one lead on the guitar, though, and it was sweet.
His voice started out as a shocking croak that would have frightened a raven, but loosened up at little further in.  The words came in short bursts as if he just didn't have the wind anymore.  Well, the Queen is quite old and not as lively either, but they're both still absolutely one of a kind and we're glad they're still here and doing what they do. 
The crowd  responded enthusiastically to his brief harmonica bits -- it is his signature sound, like screaming feedback is with Neil Young.  There were two other guitarists, a rhythm section (the bassist switched to a red Rickenbacker mid-way; loved that), and a versatile fellow in back who played lap steel, pedal steel, electric mandolin and finally, violin on the encore "Blowin' in the Wind" (he really should have played the keys also).  Speaking of which, I missed the rolling Hammond organ on the old songs, which had been piloted by Al Kooper way back in the day.  It's like Santana without Greg Rolie today.
The other highlight, predictably, was "All Along the Watchtower."  Whatever did Dylan have in mind when he sketched out that mysterious story?  We've all been wondering for quite a while, but he will probably go on keeping his secrets.
After writing and touring for so long, he's pared both down to the dry-bone basics.  There were only white lights on the stage, everyone was dressed in black, and not a word was spoken except to mumble the band members' names once.  The lyrics in recent years have been simple, almost commonplace phrases, and he's been mining and quoting outside sources; they're so unlike the inscrutable epics he penned in the 60s and dangerously close to what I think of as plastic top-20 "country."  As far as I could tell, all the numbers performed were the older ones.
Another icon opened the show, solo:  Bob Weir was barefoot and bearded, but full of energy and conviction.  The sound was loud and clear as he made his acoustic guitar work hard for a living; the old vet looked like he could go lots longer than the hour he performed nonstop.  I was really hoping for "My and My Uncle," and there it was near the end; "Not Fade Away" was just as good and got the crowd jumping and cheering.  Women of our age (who were about 17 when the Dead appeared) were dancing the snaky Dead dance with practiced skill and some certainty, I suppose, that their grandchildren would never see it.
Needless to say, there were great clouds of blue smoke drifting through the air.
As we left with old but great music in our heads, we passed a dreadlocked senior in bare feet, a group being hauled off by the authorities, and one fellow looking forlorn in the back seat of the police car. 
The 60s ain't over til they're over, bro.