Saturday, October 28, 2006
A Modern Bunkhouse?
The guys who designed the house we plan to build next spring have gone pre-fab. I think I might need one of their Jot Houses to use as a bunkhouse on the back flat! Congratulations, Leigh and Bryant!
Sunday, October 22, 2006
My Brush with Project Lameway
I’ve learned over the years to be leery when Frew asks for a favor, despite his innate ability to appeal to my sense of friendship and all its obligations. It’s not like he asks all that often, but when he does it is almost guaranteed that his “favor” will involve me embarrassing myself in some new and improved way. That’s why when he called last week to ask me to be his “model” for something called Project Lameway, I knew to ask for a little time to mull it over before I gave him my answer, which of course in the end was NO WAY! To lessen the blow, I offered to let him use my sewing machine. Then I heaped on the story about how I’d been emotionally scarred at age 11 during the Humboldt County 4-H Fashion Review when I was marked down for my slumpy shoulders and general lack of grace. No one told me I’d also entered a beauty contest. The year before I had won a medal for my snappy gabardine plaid slacks and accompanying belted terry cloth top (all the other 11-year-olds made Gunny Sax knock-offs with quilted jackets). I hadn’t sprouted boobs yet, though, so I guess no one expected me to carry myself in any particular way then. Everything changed once puberty set in. Neither my posture nor my ability to float like a lady was improved by having these problems with my appearance pointed out to me in a public forum by these well-meaning (or mean-spirited?) adults. In fact, for quite a while, things got much, much worse after that...OK, so I’m still a little bitter. Let’s move on…
Frew’s Project Lameway mission was to concoct an outfit from a paper sack filled with thrift store clothes and some other scraps. It was supposed to embody a made-up children’s book character (he figured I’d be the perfect Little Betsey Frankenstein). Relying on his own junior high sewing experience (denim apron), he got right to work hand-stitching half of a red t-shirt to half of another red t-shirt, which turned out pretty cute (I even secretly kind of wanted it). He paired this with a white satin skirt over the top of a black velvet skirt. A white 1970s polyester blazer with one silky arm completed the look (Frew felt a little uneasy about a certain Michael Jackson quality brought on by the latter, but it was too late to turn back). Using my sewing machine, he threw in some random seams to make the thing ride cock-eyed and voila! Fashion happened. Sort of.
I had no idea that when I turned Frew down and joked he should ask Luke to be his model that Luke would actually agree to it. And boy, look how tough he looks in that skirt! He would have had those 4-H ladies quaking in their barn boots.
Monday, October 09, 2006
The Taste of Yo-Yos (and Apples and Chili)
Over the weekend I traveled with Evany to Chico, California, for the National Yo-Yo Championships and later that afternoon to Manton, California, home of the world’s greatest bootmaking teacher, for the Apple Festival. The day started around 5am when I AIM’d Evany to see if she was awake and felt like leaving early (since both of us seem to only require about 47 minutes of sleep a night anymore, this is a perfectly acceptable thing to do in our friendship). I soon learned, though, that she was way ahead of me and actually about to leave her house for mine.
After an uneventful but gorgeous early morning drive up the Sacramento Valley, where a nearly full moon in the west faced off against the rising sun in the east, we arrived in Chico early. We decided to stop by and pick up my aunt, who treated us to a morning meal at Sin of Cortez (terrible name, but super yummy breakfast menu, complete with an eggless savory dish, which, by the way, is a lot more elusive than it should be, in my opinion).
Then we were off to take a gander at the yo-yos. I confess my main memory of my own childhood toy is that sticking my tongue in it caused a tingling sensation. This, it turned out, was way more entertaining to me than actually playing with it--let alone learning “tricks.” When I told Evany this, she knowingly replied without any hesitation, “Yeah! Why did it make your tongue tingle? What was that stuff in there that did that?” And yet while attending the yo-yo happenings, we were both inexplicably compelled to purchase a series of self-published books about yo-yo physics by a superhero named Captain Yo--even though neither one of us knows anything about physics and our knowledge of yo-yos is limited to how they taste. I don’t think Captain Yo needed any special powers to discern this about us, but he happily sold us three full sets anyway.
We didn’t need these books, however, to figure out that attending a yo-yo competition isn’t for wussies. We meandered cautiously through the crowd of mostly boys and a handful of girls while projectiles on strings in every possible form imaginable whizzed in all directions. During the 4A String Unattached to Yo-Yo competition, several yo-yos even went flying right off the stage. After about two hours of deeply enthralling people- and yo-yo-watching, I was ready to move on to the Apple Festival in Manton. Evany, on the other hand, probably could have stayed all day. She has what seems to be an insatiable appetite for these sorts of things.
We didn’t arrive in Manton until about 2pm and there wasn’t an apple-related item left on the premises--save for an apple fritter I bought from some Jesus people. Lucky for us, my fellow bootmaking student and generous friend Glenn had been able to secure a dozen apple pies through Jack’s inside connections, pre-festival. Jack’s brother and friends were also in town and insisted Jack wear a “cattle buying hat” at his boot booth (he is prone to wearing berets and pink train engineer caps). After the festival, we went back to his place to drink some of that box o’ wine he likes so much (also pink) and listen to stories. While he made some delicious chili from a tri-tip he bought at the apple doin’s, Evany and I raided his garden and apple box.
Over the course of the night, I learned something about Evany Thomas that I didn’t know before. She accidentally let slip that not only does she know what a Ghillie suit is, but that she is also a regular reader of the Cabela’s catalog. If you don’t know what that is, let me explain: You are more likely to find a Cabela’s catalog in the homes of my people than a phone book or the Bible. It is filled with “3-D clothing” that comes in various odors, guns, knives, cute tops, giant fish pillows, and other miraculous objects. By the end of winter, many men I know (and apparently Evany) can recite the master catalog from front to back. Needless to say, Evany was a big hit in Manton.
Sunday, October 08, 2006
Outlaws, Dynamite, and Really Nice People
Sometimes people do really, really nice things! Take my friend Taki Telonidis at the Western Folklife Center for example. When I asked him for advice about how to clean up a 1970s cassette recording of my great grandfather explaining how he and his brother moved a herd of horses from Montana to Washington in 1903, Taki said, “Oh, just send me the file. I’d be more than happy to do it for you.” He made it sound like it was just a lil’ ol’ thing, but after receiving his new and improved version in the mail a few days ago, I’m pretty sure he spent a fair amount of time on it. I was so excited (and grateful) that I converted it to streaming Quicktime over the weekend so I could share it here with you. There are still a few parts where it is difficult to understand (particularly right at the beginning), but there are some things technology still can’t fix.
Great Grandpa Jack was just a teenager when most of this story takes place, and it is not short on thrills and excitement. There is even some gunplay as they try to cross the Flathead Reservation without paying the required toll. They had very little money at the time and simply couldn’t afford it (at one point they even have to trade horses for food). One of the things that interested me most about his tale, though, is the political and sociological picture he paints of life in the Northwest around the time of the trip.
His brief mention of the dynamite-induced destruction at the Bunker Hill Mine in Idaho was something I’d never heard about before, and I immediately had to find out more. What I learned is there were large and violent labor strikes in 1892 and 1899 at the mine because Bunker Hill had managed to remain non-unionized. When Governor Frank Steunenberg--who entered office as both a Democrat and a Populist--asked the federal government to send troops to quell the unrest in 1899, the miners felt betrayed. The troops rounded up and held hundreds of men in “bullpens” without hearings or formal charges, and a few even died. Steunenberg was later killed by a bomb at his home in 1905. Big Bill Haywood, a prominent figure in the labor movement at the time (and a founding member of the Industrial Workers of the World), was one of three people charged but later acquitted due to lack of evidence. I recently picked up the very thick and detail-packed Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America by J. Anthony Lukas, which is about these events. I’ve only read a few chapters so far, but I feel comfortable recommending it if this sort of stuff interests you.
Additionally, Grandpa talks about the outlaw Harry Tracy, who escaped from an Oregon prison in 1902 and (according to Grandpa) shot up Cle Elum, Washington, as well as some other places before finally being tracked and killed by a posse. Hollywood made a movie about it in the 1980s starring Bruce Dern and, it turns out, Gordon Lightfoot (Sundown, you better take care...)? Anyway, Grandpa claimed to have owned one of Tracy’s guns.
Permalink • Books • History • My Movies • Technology • (1) Comments
Friday, October 06, 2006
They Call Me DJ Old-Timey
Just a few days after my last post I was able to get the PhonOcord to play those records, although for the most part pretty faintly. It is tempting to leave you thinking that this accomplishment might have involved some tools or arcane knowledge of vintage electronic components, but the truth is I figured it out while talking to my mom on my cellphone one night while coming home from San Francisco. It turns out that these are special records that play from the inside out! Problem solved!
Well, not really because they still need to be digitized. I decided that since there are so many of them, it would be unfair to burden Mattmarg with this task. So I ordered a USB turntable (you heard me right) that I thought was special because it would allow me to capture sound at 78 RPMs. I felt kind of dumb when I realized that you actually just digitize the sound at 33 or 45 RPMs and adjust the speed of the file with a pulldown menu in the accompanying software. Nevertheless, I’m extremely happy with it and excited about getting this project started. After a couple of test runs yesterday, though, it’s become apparent that I have a lot to learn about cleaning up audio files. Since a lot of the records are made from cardboard, they sound pretty dirty. I sure hope there is something that can be done for them.
