ramblings

Or -- String too short to save

In his book “Learning to Fall -- the blessings of an imperfect life ” Philip Simons tells about his childhood memories of life in New England. This is one of my favorite books, I'll talk about it later.


In his boy eyes, the town dump was the epicenter of the village. It was a small town and every one knew every one at least a bit and when they made their weekly trip to the dump (there was no “garbage collection”), they met friends, visited about the world and exchanged throw away stuff.

I went to our “Solid Waste Site” yesterday, we are way too sophisticated to have a "dump". Ours is a huge affair where trash is piled and compressed by monster machines and covered with more trash. I have seen city disposal trucks from 150 miles away adding to the “collection.”

But it is the people there nowadays that are amazing. The lady at the scale was pleasant, even touching on friendly. Her predecessor was not friendly and not always pleasant, but she got the job done.

At the place you leave your trash: Steel appliances here, refrigerators there, a place for motor oil, old tires, computer parts, wood and so on, there are two grumpy guys who drive around all day in pickups.

Someone important died and left them in charge, and they take their job of being tin gods very seriously. As you offload (an interesting term) they watch.

Often there are guys from the county prison to help you unload. They have a little shelter where they can get out of the weather if they like. They don’t talk much, but they can be very helpful.

Yesterday I was left with the metallic gods.


I took over cooking in our house a while ago. I think it has been about a year, but I did not keep track exactly.

In that time between Miriam and I we have lost about 30 pounds.

If I ever put in an application for a job as a cook, I’ll not put that on my resume.


I am not one for ritual, though I appreciate a lot of ritual in others.

But when I get up in the morning I go through this series of actions, in the exact same order.

First: I put water in the electric tea kettle to heat water for my morning tea.

I start a fire in the stove, taking the old fashioned tea kettle off the stove and filling it with tap water. I try to load the stove with lots of small wood to make a lot of heat to take the night chill away.

Then I get dressed. Clean socks, handkerchief, undershorts, and sometimes a clean shirt, and some denim jeans (Wranglers if the brand matters).

In the middle of all of that, the tea water has come to a boil, and is converted to tea.

Then I can sit down, open my computer and begin to write.

Ahh routine.