the art of life
28 June 2012
Just finished the rough out of the flamingo I started yesterday. Still needs hand sanding and varnish. I may do a touch of cutting here and there, but it's done, for the most part.
This one replaces the one I broke. Never did find the head. Chain saws can toss things far, far away.
I have a hankering to do some horses now…
27 June 2012
I've been doing a lot of woodworking. First, some wooden swords in the Japanese tradition; second, shaving strips of redwood for a large model boat; third, but most important, carving again.
I made these from ash wood. My neighbor had a fallen limb, and I cut it up for him in exchange for some wood. I get most of my wood that way. Ash is perfect for such applications. It's so tough you can smash concrete blocks to bits. I already sold these two pieces... No, that's wrong. I sold the smaller one and another, heavier sword not shown.
I decided not to upload the pix of the redwood. Without something to show where it is all going, it would be boring. Here, however, a pic of me and a flamingo I'm making for a friend.
Except, I blew the head off when I nipped it the wrong way with the chain saw. No worries. I have another already carved further along than the one you can see in the picture. That wood had cracks in just the wrong spots. That's the problem with salvage wood. I keep veering towards using laminated wood and building up large pieces rather than trying to work with single chunks. But for now, I still have a large pile of wood to carve.
And that's all the news that's fit to print.
15 June 2012
I read Jane Jacobs Cities and the Wealth of Nations some years ago, and it amazed me. One key point I got is that Jacobs disputes the notion that centralized control of economies is ever going to do much good, and, in the long run, is certainly doomed.
This agrees with the evidence of history. The plunder economies of the Assyrians and Myceneans, and, late in the game, the Romans, show the long term results. Centralized control of economies means a redistributive economy; that is, you take from one sector and give to another sector. The basic problem is that one must draw funds from productive sectors, but the money tends to be redistributed to unproductive sectors. The unproductive sectors could just as easily be a class of idle rich or poor.
I have heard it argued that both classes then spend the money, thus generating markets, but the problem with that is in order to get those funds, and industrious sector was suppressed. So you have a net loss. Further, the suppression of industrious sectors inhibits the creation of new industries that create jobs, and this is bad for rich and poor alike.
But that was not even the central thesis of the book. It was just one of the things I took away, and from it, one can see that Democrats or Republicans, Fascists or Socialists are NOT going to be much interested, for they are all hanging onto essentially the same economic model, and the model itself never worked.
Jacob's main point is that cities are the engines of economies. As an historian, The fantastic eras of innovation, as in Classical Greece, Ancient China, and Renaissance Italy point to the power of city states as engines of industry and innovation.
Sadly, their internecine bickering always tended in two directions, both bad. First, it weakened them; second, they were thus susceptible to internal "commanding generals" or external conquerors.
Thus, most people will concede the need for some sort of strong central authority.
If only such authorities could keep their grubby little hands off the economies of cities!
It's no wonder Jacobs is largely ignored.
12 June 2012
That's what they call it. Not "Sea Ranch," but The Sea Ranch. It's an upscale community of second homes north of Fort Ross on the California coast. My cousin Chuck has a cabin there. He calls it his "dacha." That's Russian for "superb rural house." See, "cabin" does not have that quality meaning you get in the Russian.
This was the first time I used an iPhone exclusively for the pictures, and that was a mistake. The low light capability sucks, but the screen is so small I did not notice how many duds I was taking. As a result, this picture, the only only I have of Chuck's whole dacha, is all shaky.
I flew out from the Fresno Air Terminal. I hate commercial air transport. You have to get there so damn early, you may as well have taken the train. And then there's the ridiculous security. I wish we did what the Israelis did starting in the seventies—just put a Mossad agent with a gun on every flight. Presto! No more hijacking! Getting ahead of myself, the departure lines at SF are insufferably long, and then my flight was delayed two hours. I actually would have gotten home sooner had I taken the train.
Flying military transport is more fun. The pilots are kinda wild, and there's usually these net seats you can lay on. Also, since they know you, you don't have all those dumb as posts security guys to deal with.
Here's a picture of me in front of this lovely little non-denominational chapel they have there.
One thing I got from seeing pictures of me is that I need to lose weight. Ick. I'm in the "linebacker" category these days. So consider these some "before" shots!
Chuck's place is really quite magical. We had a great time. Mainly we just talked and talked. We also had fun doing chores around the place. We saw very few people, but everyone is super friendly. One of the problems with Leftist propaganda is that they don't seem to get that far and away most of the upper middle class are quite socially conscious and civically responsible. In the case of The Sea Ranch, this is expressed in a hyper aware environmentalism as well as dignified public manners.
And speaking of such high awareness, here's a picture of cousin Chuck. He hates having his picture taken, but I was able to sneak in a few shots. Chuck has worked for Chevron for many, many years. He's in contracts right now, but he has spent a lot of time overseas in places like Angola and Kazakhstan. He's hyper smart, and he had really good advice about how to turn my wood carving into a viable business.
After the weekend at The Sea Ranch, Chuck dropped me off at my brother Mike's place in San Francisco. Here's a picture of the view from the street in front of his house.
We were out walking his dog, Bosco, who is a scrappy little Boston Terrier and also my buddy. I didn't get a picture of Bosco. [Edit, 13 June. Actually, you can see Bosco just behind Mike.]
Mike's wife, Yoko, and his four year old daughter, Haruno, are in Tokyo right now, so Mike has his house to himself. He's using the time to make some boxes designed to fit in the back of his Subaru for camping. Mike's a designer genius guy. He works for Gap Inc. designing displays, mainly.
I was telling him about this idea I had for a retractable wing sail for a sail boat, and he suggested something that would reduce the cost and weight so dramatically, I just about fainted with the simplicity of it. He does that. He sees into things.
Except for the damn plane and airport, it was a great trip.
01 January 2012
It has been so long since I posted, I almost forgot I had a blog. I'm too flaky to run a blog, I think. It's too much responsibility. Having to get on a computer every day is a terrible burden for me. I'd rather play outside.
I have not been doing much music. I've been playing so infrequently, I lost the callouses on my guitar fingers. That's a pain. It takes a month for me to get them back, but I do have some recordings of ancient Greek to put up. This is in keeping with the anti-commercial nature of this blog. Who gives a skatos about ancient Greek?
Also, a friend of mine—well advanced in years—suggested that I start writing things down about my life every day. Before it is too late.
24 June 2011
This is the first song I learned to sing and play on guitar at the same time, so it's fitting that it be the first song I post. The file size is a little hefty—5.3 megs, so I have no idea how it will load and play for you. Hopefully, it won't be too bad. I have put the link here so it can load while you read on.
(Here's a Direct Link for Flash disabled devices, like iPhones.)
Kurt Cobain made this song famous with Nirvana's MTV Live [edit, 25 June, That should have been MTV Unplugged] version, and he credited the Meat Puppets,[edit 25 June, No, he didn't, my mistake. He credits Leadbelly] but it's a much, much older song than that. Dolly Parton said it was one of those songs that everybody knew and everybody played, so it was just a part of growing up. It's at least as old as the American Civil War, and there are quite a few variations. For example, one version has "Black Girl" instead of "My Girl." You will also see this song titled "In the Pines." It is definitely a train song, and it's a ghost song. In my version, I've podged (I think I made that word up) together bits and pieces of different stanzas, and, as a slight filip, added a couple of resolving lyrics at the end.
That sort of thing is very much in the folk tradition.
You will hear in the lyrics something called a "driving wheel." That's a big gear in a train engine. In older trains, it was exposed, and it was dangerous to be near. But the main thrust of this song is that there are two voices, a man and a woman, and they talk to each other. Sometimes, the man is sad, other times he is jealous and angry.
What has happened is that the woman is homeless, and she has taken to sleeping in the woods. It is possible she has been forced to do things a woman would not want to do in order to survive, for she has lost her man, and there was no public assistance program back in the day. In another version, there are references to a lost watch, and these refer to lost time. There are always eerie train references, and occasionally, snippets of these lyrics appear in chain gang songs. Like I said, I have podged together different versions, but there is continuity and resolution.
I never did "learn the chords." I rarely do. I just come up with my own progressions based on melodies. In this version, I've tried to simulate the sound of trains, so it has this repetitive hammering. I think this the first recording where I used a little iPhone app called "Easy Beats" to tap out a percussion track. There are little random squeaks and thumps and creaks in the first mix, but they kinda disappeared in the final mix down. In addition to acoustic guitar, I also play the bass in this. Factually, I'm not much of a musician or a singer. For me, it's as Tchaikovsky said, (more or less) "The purpose of music is to express the feelings of the soul."
Anyhow, I am curious to see how this version appears on your end. I have some other music to put up. This is my first stab at posting music. Hopefully, you won't find it too awful.
08 April 2011
Hey all,
I am alive and well. I just have been offline for a while. Periodically, I need to do that.
I've been recording music, doing schoolwork, carving wood, working on my truck, building a new bicycle, and learning to auto paint. These are all activities which are inimical to the World Wide Web, so it seems.
Soon, I'll be putting up some music. You will have the dubious pleasure of hearing my singing and my guitar playing.
