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AMY SMITH LINTON

"Hope is the Thing with Feathers"

4/28/2016

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White-Breasted Nuthatch
Thank you, Emily Dickinson. Even though that poem is not my favorite of yours (I like the shocking ones like, "Because I would not stop for Death/He kindly stopped for me––").

But still, these are the words that come to me over coffee as I sit watching the birds at the feeder. 

Who doesn't like a bird-feeder? (Answer: don't even tell me. Killjoys.)

There's a nice variety swooping in the first week of April: nuthatches and chickadees, house finches and gold finches, cedar waxwings and juncos. (My sister intones "There's a rumble in the junco!")  Plus flickers and downy woodpeckers, robins and pigeons, red-winged blackbirds, a single determined crow goose-stepping at the perimeter. 

The birds are at war, I think, despite how they sound chipper and some poets might suggest they embody hope. They are always skirmishing over seed at the feeder. Or chasing off potential suitors. Or courting like overcharged sixth-graders.

It's a little like watching the television news. Only a little less bloodless and a lot less duplicitous.
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Frontier Justice

4/15/2016

4 Comments

 
Seems we've had a rash of misbehaving signage 'round these here parts. Like this one:
Picture
Evidently, it didn't.
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The Would-Be Farm: Water

4/12/2016

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At the heart of it, a plant has a few simple needs: some sun, some nutrition, a little water. Provide these and a tiny speck of a seed can magic itself into a murderous thistle plant, a red-petaled poppy flower, a curly head of parsley, a sycamore tree.
Thistle
The Would-Be Farm?  Well, the soil could be richer and tastier for a hungry plant –– more stew than thin broth –– but it has been successfully nourishing a vibrant variety of flora for centuries. We're working on enriching it, but it's a slow process.  I can't argue the sun into shining more (or less) than it will (or won't), but the long Northern days of June suffice for the crops I hope to grow.  

​The one immediately"manageable" factor is water. ​
The Farm has water. A beaver pond, a couple of separate streams that stay wet throughout the summer. But So far, Timmy can't fall into the well at the Farm because there isn't one. 

Sadly, given how widely placed the plantings are, I don't know when or where to sink a well.  

At present, we scoop water from the various streams, ponds, puddles, or the old cistern and tote it by hand and Kawasaki mule to where it's needed. In the height of dry summer, we carry a 55-gallon drum of water in the back of the truck from tree to thirsty tree. 
Picture
When we aren't in residence, we just hope that the plants will tap into their inner Nietzche and embrace that which does not kill them, for it will make them stronger.
​

It's not ideal. I'd like to have at least one well. And a hand-pump. Maybe next year.
Would-Be Farm, rainbarrel
A short drive away, my sister has the same spring water as the local bottling plant, cold and delicious straight from the faucet –– I'd be greedy to hope for water like that, but simply potable water would be great. Knock wood not sulfur-water. 

My favorite skipper set up a small water catchment system at Base Camp.  He put a gutter along the length of the roof, with a downspout leading into a connected pair of food-quality plastic barrels.

​Aside from the lingering vinegary scent of peperoncino, an afternoon's drizzle turns into something like 100 gallons of plant-pleasing f
isherman's daughter. It's not a lot, but the asparagus appreciate it. And while it's not drinking water for us straight from the bucket, rain-water is very nice for washing up. The application of ten minutes of boiling makes it safe enough to drink, though it's pretty small beer compared with my sister's spring water. 
Given the weather, the rain-barrels are good for most of three seasons, anyhow. Winterizing this portable system is easy: disconnect the downspout (windage! -30° temps!), remove the hoses, empty the barrels, open the spigots (water freezes and expands with destructive predictability), and put the barrels under cover. 

But that's a job for next fall. April showers are in full gush, and there's a spring clean on at Base Camp. Apparently, the mice have been having a rave. Every cupboard seems to have been used as a most rodential flop-house. Mousey love nests. Grrrr.  The plants are fully hydrated; this week's cache of water must go to the annual boiling of the cooking utensils.
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Turnips

4/8/2016

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My parents were whatever the opposite of helicopter parents might be called –– submarine parents? Their goal, Mumsie explained later, was to raise up independent children who could think for themselves.

As a result, my sister and I mostly handled our own little problems. 


Then came the trouble with Mr. Jarosz, my sixth-grade teacher. Mr. Jarosz made a habit of assigning "lines" for punishment. Such as, "Please write out 200 lines of 'I will not take shortcuts, Amy.'" Somehow, lines had accumulated over the semester until it had reached a ridiculous level: upwards of 25,000 lines.  

I was a talker-back, a smart-aleck with a big vocabulary, and I doubled my punishment more than once by getting busted writing the lines out as "I, I, I, will will will, not not not, take take take, shortcuts, shortcuts, shortcuts..."

Picture
25,000 lines. It was this crisis point where I took it to Daddo.

His Delphic cave was the living-room counter top that we called "the bar," where he stood for hours, gazing into the beautiful vista of Lake Ontario, smoking cigarettes and sipping beer.


I poured out my tale of woe and asked what to do. Daddo took a drag from his cigarette, considered the quandry for a lengthy moment, and then made his pronouncement: "You can't get blood from a turnip, honey."

Back in my room, I pondered turnips and blood and the usually mild-mannered Mr. Jarosz.  How ridiculous it would be to actually commit 25,000 lines to paper. Did I even have enough notebook pages?

Eventually I parsed Daddo's phrase to my advantage: be a turnip. A turnip might just hold tight and wait for the squeeze. Or it might just pretend that the huge task had never been assigned. No blood, no fuss. 

From that day forward, I never mentioned the debt. Neither did Mr. Jarosz. It was a huge relief to turn turnip on the subject. I think the teacher was likewise happy to let the thing go. In any case, there were no consequences of not handing in all those lines. 

Which, come to think of it, makes yet another solid vindication for a well-placed shortcut. 
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Sailing Vocab: Headsails

4/4/2016

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The first Russian novel that I really enjoyed came from a friend who included an index card listing the names of the characters, including their various nicknames and honorifics.

Turns out that Russian names really are complicated. Alexander becomes Sasha. Also Alexi. And something like Alexandrushka among friends. Or they might call him Ivanovich, because that's his middle name. Another time, the same guy is referred to as Alexander Ivanovich or Alexander Dolohkov. Dolohkov being his last name, although the reader has probably long forgotten it. And so on. The index card was both a kindness and a necessity.
It's a little the same with boats. That triangular sail at the front of the boat?

​Called a headsail, a jib, a foresail, a genoa (or "jenny" between friends), an overlapping jib, a 130%, a number 1, a trysail. Or maybe it's a jenniker or a code zero. 
So many terms for what's at heart the very same thing.

Of course there are technical differences between them. A genoa is gennoally bigger than a jib (see that? I slay myself!), A trysail is usually the smallest possible headsail, saved for the windiest of conditions.
Picture
Does it matter what you call it? Kind of no, but kind of yes. It's the difference between a socket wrench and a open-ended one. A pencil or a pen. A steak knife or a cleaver.

In this case, here's a video clip of Spawn from the 2016 Everglades Challenge. The boat is winging along under jib and main.  
​​
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