Shackleton Speaks VII

Shack's strong suits do not include reading and writing. Given an assignment to choose five of his ten weekly spelling words and write sentences, he goes for brevity. Also, he doesn't worry too much about the spelling aspect of spelling practice. This week's list included "flake" and "public". So, he told the teacher: "I like con flakes." The other sentences were similarly structured and short. My favorite, however, was "Not in public!"

We learned this week that our wireless internet connection is sufficiently robust to support downloading Netflix movies through the Wii. Amazing. It works great. We now have a 30 day free trial so, naturally, we spent a half a day last week watching movies. We saw the gorgeous movie Babies. You've heard about that. It's that fly-on-the wall (well, fly with a super hi-def movie camera) documentary that follows four babies from four different parts of the world through their first year. Lots of amazing photography and lots to think about. One of the babies lives in tribal Africa. He's a lovely little guy who gets through his first year with no baby equipment, toys or diapers. In one scene, he leaves a deposit of baby poo on his mother's knee. She grabs a corn cob and cleans herself off.

Shackleton turned to his sister and I and asked, "Anyone want some corn"? We shouldn't encourage him, but we can't help ourselves.

Maybe some con flakes?

Hope all is well with you usual stoppers-in. Thanks for continuing to come around. I haven't been out there much lately but I hope to catch up soon. Happy Halloween.

File This Under "The Flight Goes On"

I signed in to read my email tonight and was distracted, as I so often am, by the AOL news headlines. This one was: "What Happens When a Flier Gets Sick Midair?

I have wondered about that, so naturally I read the article. I was relieved to know there's a protocol - even for that worst case scenario:

And when a passenger dies, [the airline representative] says, there are clear procedures to follow. "If they don't respond, we move them to the floor for possible CPR," he says. "If after 30 minutes, there's still no sign of improvement and they're dead, then we have to go ahead and put them into a seat." Standard airline procedures dictate the person is to be secured in the seat, says Gailen, "so we move the person to a seat -- preferably where few customers are nearby -- and ask for volunteers to assist in moving the person, if necessary."

Directives also require that the deceased not block an exit row, that the eyes are closed, that a blanket is placed under the body, and that the body is also covered with a blanket.

I don't know which would be worse. Being the dead guy or the passenger who has to finish a full flight next to the corpse?

What's the etiquette around being seated next to a corpse anyway? What if it lists? Can you give it a little shove? What if the face blanket slips down?

What if it slips down and you see the eyelids are open? Do you ask the flight attendant to get those lids back down? I doubt, somehow, that she would welcome a reminder about the eyes-shut protocol that you read about on America On Line.

Would it be permissible to use the tray table in front of the dead body for that last little plastic cup, snack bag, and crumpled napkin that seems to take forever to get collected? Hmmm. And what of, the, er, loss of bladder and bowel control that generally accompanies death?

I am betting that if you are the passenger tagged for seat mate with a corpse, especially a leaking one, the flight crew would promise you the sun and the moon and the stars, or at least one free round trip, to be a good sport about it.

And what, I wonder, if I were the unlucky one who transitioned mid-flight from valued (or at least potentially repeat) airline passenger to most unwelcome cabin cargo?

I heard once that Oscar Wilde's last words were, "Either this wallpaper goes or I do." I am no Oscar Wilde, but I would like to think I might manage, what? "If I don't get a lie-flat seat right now, I am out of here!" or maybe, "No, I won't wait for the plane to come to a complete stop at the gate or for the damned seat belt light to be turned off"?

Oh, I know this isn't funny. But, well, you know.

May all your travels be happy and healthy.

Shackleton Speaks VI

Shack and I went up to the middle school just after dark today to wait for the Understudy to return from her field hockey game in the wilds of Montpelier. It is cold here in northern Vermont tonight and very clear. The taxpayers of the school district object to seeing lights on in or about the school at night with the result that it was very dark as we waited for the team bus. The stars were twinkling over the parking lot.

"Make a wish," I said to Shackleton. (He's nine now).

He did, and I did. Then he asked me what I had wished for. I said I couldn't tell him or it wouldn't come true.

"Did any of your wishes ever come true?" he asked.

I told him I couldn't exactly remember, but I thought so.

"Cool." He said. "It's like a lottery ticket, but it's free and it's in the sky."

Not Realistic - Real

I was watching TV this weekend and tumbled into a building show on PBS featuring a young couple (maybe linked just for TV purposes - it wasn't exactly clear) who were building one of those multi-dormered suburban mansions. You know the types - the ones that were so popular before the real-estate bust: acres of drywall, cultured stone this, electronically controlled that, blah, blah.

As it happens one of my (many) unrealized life goals, is to someday build the house of my imagination. If I ever get that far - you heard it here first - I will not allow the builders to put anything in it that provides a realistic facsimile of a real thing. I want plaster walls. Doors that are solid wood. I want a fireplace - actually, several fireplaces. These fireplaces are to be built of stone, or brick, or some other form of honest masonry. More importantly, on one will be able to turn them on and off with a remote. Logs, smoke, ashes. That's for me.

Not that you asked, but I have been building this house in my mind for years and it just kind of spilled out.

In other news... Still unpacking the old van with the unsold goods of last weekend. I went to an auction preview on Thursday and didn't go the auction on Sunday. This is a first. I think it's progress.

Security!

So here's my little mock-Roma family with our tent and our wares at the British Invasion car show last weekend. We spent two days trying to tempt the white people (they were mostly white, but you know what I mean, metaphorically, when I say that) to buy the goods we have spread out upon our blankets. Lots of browsers strolled through our tent but very, very few of them reached into their wallets and bought anything. And darn it, I forgot to teach the kids about how to pick pockets before we got there! As a result, I undertook an effort roughly akin to moving house, twice in a weekend, and made no money.

Still, it was not altogether a bad experience, really. It may have put me off antiques for good, which may be a good thing. Also, Whusband really chipped in, helping to pack and cart and dealing with the kids and this was quite nice. He has tended in the past to be, uhm, "critical" of my collecting and has expressed doubts about my claims that all this stuff was valuable. He had a prime chance to say "I told you so" here, but he didn't. He even agreed that the stuff was nice and encouraged me not to sell it cheap. His chit chat with one of the (rare) paying customers may even lead to the sale of an old Porsche we keep in the barn and drive three times a year. So, not a total loss. Oh - and I sold one of those three saddles, in case you were wondering. The guy who bought it really put the screws to me, trying to get an even deeper discount from the fire sale price posted. (Whusband said I should send him packing but I sold it in the end for $15 more than I paid).

Maybe next year I'll try fortune telling. What do you have to pack for that? A crystal ball? A deck of cards? That I can handle.

It's going to take some time for me to recover from all this. A perfect time to sit with the computer and read other people's blogs.

The Iron Age Was Rough, But the Stone Age. Don't Get Me Started. ...

Someone, some woman, I work with subscribes to a popular archaeology magazine. I worked this out from a clue she left in the ladies. The clue was a back issue of the magazine.

Thanks to this unidentified but interesting co-worker I spent a few minutes of my day today reading about bog people. You know them. Those human baseball gloves (see below) that turn up periodically in Denmark or Ireland or other northern peat bogs looking disconcertingly like they must have looked when they got pitched in a couple of thousand years ago. The pictures in this article made me think (among other things) about how throwing stuff out, even burying it, doesn't make it go away. Mummys are like an argument for composting.

Here's a tidbit on the bog people from Wikipedia:

Many bog bodies show signs of being stabbed, bludgeoned, hanged or strangled, or a combination of these methods. In some cases the individual had been beheaded, and in the case of the Osterby Head found at Kohlmoor, near to Osterby, Germany in 1948, the head had been deposited in the bog without its body.



Usually the corpses were naked, sometimes with some items of clothing with them, particularly headgear.In a number of cases, twigs, sticks or stones were placed on top of the body, sometimes in a cross formation, and at other times forked sticks had been driven into the peat to hold the corpse down. According to the archaeologist P.V. Glob, "this probably indicates the wish to pin the dead man firmly into the bog. Some bodies show signs of torture, such as Old Croghan Man, who had deep cuts beneath his nipples.

Wow. And I thought a day at Six Flags was torture!

The bog body article tied in with a thought that I have been turning over for the last few weeks (you'll probably want to stop reading now)about these unimaginably long periods of time in human history before anyone started writing things down.

One of my library-sale books (English history, naturally) says that homo erectus, or at least his immediate ancestor, made his first appearance in what would become Britain during a break in the second ice age, known, apparently, as the Hoxonian period. That would be something like 125,000 years ago. One hundred and twenty five thousand years!

How could they stand it? What, exactly, were our ancestors, who were biologically identical to you and me, I am told, doing for tens of thousands of years at a time? OK. Hunting and gathering -- but for a hundred thousand years? I guess it's hard to be bored if you might be killed by a saber-toothed tiger or a neighboring tribe at any moment, but, come on! Would a little innovation have killed them? Nobody got around to bronze until 2,000 BC and iron took another 1,000 years.

If these stone-age types had been a little more inventive I'd have my jet pack by now. I know it.

The Iron Age, just for a reminder, was that bit of time from about 700 BC til (in Britain) the Romans showed up in 43 AD. When you consider all that nearly blank vast stretch of prehistory, the Romans feel like some relatives with whom we fairly recently stopped exchanging Christmas cards. The Iron Age people, the one that tossed their neighbors into the bogs, or sacrificed them there, or whatever, are like great great grandpa. OK, so great great grandpa couldn't write, but that's how people were in the old country. And, yes, he worshipped bull scrota and took part in human sacrifice, but don't let's get all bourgeois and judgmental. He was us. At least he wore clothes and had village somewhere. (They can tell this by looking at the contents of the bog people).

I saw Quest for Fire when I was in high school, slightly after the Iron Age. I think I'll rent it again. I want and explanation for those 100,000 lost years.

About the Blog

Thanks to any stalwarts still stopping by. I have been preoccupied with Splendid, the booth we'll be setting up at the car show next weekend. (Getting and spending...) I suppose I have also been taking a kind of Quaker meeting approach to the blog lately - sitting here with my mouth shut - waiting for the spirit, or at least for the right combination of bathroom reading and spare time. I am off now to watch American Pickers. See you at the British Invasion in Stowe next weekend.

Three Saddles; Three Little Words

Above are three English saddles I bought at an antique store in Morrisville this week,being investigated a little by Maisy. I paid $60 for the lot, which felt like a bargain to me because, my gosh, they're leather and someone in Argentina must have had a job of work to make them. Of course, I am leaving aside the fact that I don't ride horses, nor does anyone in my family. Allow me to digress on this point for a moment...

I have actually resolved not to ride horses, nor to allow anyone in my family to develop an interest therein. Of course horses are gorgeous and I am connected with some lovely horse-riding people. I have noticed,however, that horses are sort of like the Sun (or at least Jupiter) in the lives of these people. They are massive, gravity-creating entities around which their owners seem forced to orbit. Everyone I know who has horses spends more money on them than they do on their mortgages. They all seem happy enough to revolve around their horses and to pay for the privilege but I am not going there - despite the fact that we own lots of land and I have a 12-year-old daughter... She can put one of these saddles on a saw horse and pretend, for free. Until I sell the saddles of course.

I bought these, as you have probably figured out by now, with the purpose of reselling them at what I hope might be a small profit. I have decided (and you knew this was coming if you've been following along), to make a foray into the world of commerce. This will, I hope, take the shape of a booth at the upcoming "British Invasion" car show in Stowe this September.

Maybe I'll take a cue from the London street hawkers of yore and develop a cry for my wares (you know, along the "cockles! mussels! hot chestnuts! scissors sharpened!" variety). Since I plan to sell all manner of items, mostly the English dishes and books and pictures - and saddles - that I can't seem to resist, this call will take some time to work out. I am open to suggestions. If you get to Stowe Sept. 17-19 this year, look for me and the kids under the blue and white striped pop-up shelter called (I have ordered a banner) "It's Splendid. I'll Take It!"

I am still awaiting approval for my booth from the event organizers but I have sent them my check and I think they'll let me in, even though I am not selling car-themed stuff. I am afraid this may mean that the kids and I will be lonely at our booth but we're all kind of excited about venturing forth. I may require Shackleton to dress like the Artful Dodger and drag the car people over to buy a teacup. I don't know...

Three Little Words

I have been thinking lately of the power of three-word descriptions to sum people up.
I was reading a little booklet on English Architectural Drawings of the 1930s, something produced in conjunction with a show on the subject in London during the 1980s, and the author of the beautifully written forward referred to someone as an "antic Cambridge don."

Hmm, I thought. This is sort of like Haiku. Let's think, what three words would nail me? I can't hope for "antic Cambridge don." Maybe, "sour-mouth bi__ch"? Sometimes that would be fair. "Past-it writer manque?" (I count that as three words because hyphenated words count as one - sorry about the missing accent). Perhaps this seems too harsh. I'll keep thinking. Why not try this out on yourself. It's not a bad exercise for a Sunday when we should all do a little reflecting.

I have been occupied these last few weekends with planning work on "It's Splendid" and will be continue to be so for the next few weekends to come. This is one reason the old Blog has languished. Thanks to those of you who have continued to drop by. I send best wishes to you to enjoy what's left of summer.