The Consequences of History

In a carved wooden box, on a shelf are things that would mean little to most  There are a couple of neatly posted pieces of newspaper, on which the date was manually stamped, a date of a clear Autumn Day.  There is my Mom's Badge from the Sheriff's Department, to lie alongside my own badge each night.  There is a small yet deadly knife and a delicate Ceramic skunk on which my Mom's initials lie.  It occupied Dad's shop bathroom until Big Bro and I remodeled it, to make it elderly-friendly, and Mr. Skunk came with me to live. All of them small things, by themselves, just objects, together a collage of joy and pain, things without consequence but for their history.

Most of us get the little things around us, from simple to sublime, some posting them cursively on paper, others capturing them in photos, some just cataloging them away in the brain for quiet afternoons of reflective thought. Some walk through life with a remote in their hand and blinders on, not realizing what they missed until all they hear is the final shut of a door.

Others look only ahead, paying no attention to the past, the remembrances of brave men, the battles and freedoms we have fought for. My flag was at half staff not long back and I bet half the neighbors did not know why, seeing only what's going on in this moment, however useless, with no intention of availing themselves of the lessons of history that rattle around in our pockets like rare coins.
Not I. For me, I'll take the slow path, the closer look, the unseen poetry in a drop of melting snow, the land and soul that thirst, the blood and the tears that united a nation.

I've never been one to collect things, thimbles, figurines, little knick-knacks that will require dusting long after I am dust. I've moved too many times over the years to even think about it. I have some cookbooks, I have some of my Mom's glassware and Swedish horse collection, I have a well-loved violin that follows me around, annoying the neighbors.

But I learned early to note and catalog things, starting with plants in my first botany class, then working on up to so many small bones. It's why I always liked science museums, having an ingrained curiosity since childhood as to what made things tick. But it wasn't just plants and animals, machines as well needed to be understood. It's why in high school, while the girls were gossiping and buying clothes, I was learning how to rebuild a carburetor.  Certainly now, with the Internet, much of the mystery is gone, the average person being able to learn how to do just about anything on a home computer. Even with graphics, computer animations and YouTube, there are still some ways we learn that are best-learned hands-on.  But with the Internet, you miss those integral steps, that human interaction that provides a corporate experience. It's physical interaction with the emotional understanding that you are not going to get with a 57 inch TV. Comparing a TV show on a subject to hands-on looking, touching, and watching what it's made of, is like seeing a picture of fresh pie, and tasting it on your tongue. The subject area may be the same, but the experiences are light years apart.

For I like to learn hands-on, be it in the field or in a museum, taking a close look at it, holding it close (it's not ticking is it?), feeling the heft of weight in my hand, the form of it under my fingers. All the senses involved. I'd read everything there was about dinosaurs in books as a kid, fascinated with both the size and the structure, but the first time I lay my hand on a dinosaur bone, I was awestruck. I remember it to this day, loitering there in a blaze of sunlight, hand outreached, besieged by the huge strangeness of what I was seeing, the unfamiliar feeling of comprehending for the first time, how old the world really was, and how ALIVE I was. It wasn't just a dinosaur, it was seeing the world as it was, not fairy tales or fables, but true, as that unfamiliarity divided into rivers of wondering that I would follow for years. Including that moment in the theater when I yelled out, "Jurassic Park? Those things with big teeth are from the Cretaceous era!"

But the wandering adventure never ended. Even as a pilot, it continued. I'd look through the window of the aircraft as if it was a doorway to another dimension, wild, tremendous landscape stretching farther than even the eagle could see, blue-green mountains reaching up from the vermilion shores of the high plains. I would dash out into the sky, like a kid released from school, dodging cloudbursts raining down unnamed canyons, looking down with a god's eyes onto the desert homes of the cliff dwellers, hundreds of houses built into stone before you were even born, abandoned thousands of years ago, seemingly close enough to touch.  There were always the museums, including the space museums. Actual vehicles that had returned from space. No story or animation can give you the feeling of seeing up close something that HAD "been there, done that". Some of the early models looked like Frank Gehry designs on crack. Or something my brother and I would have attempted to build with our erector sets, giant tinker toy constructions, resembling bulky 1960's foil Christmas trees more than modern spacecraft, topped with antennas that could have been placed on top by someone's Norwegian Uncle after too much Glogg.

Yet, in all their dated technology, I paused in wonder, seeing it all and thinking that all of the things I built as a child and a teen, the weather radio, the rockets, could have become something like that, with no more imagination, but simply more education. Museums are like that for me, humanness of history that brushes my skin as I pass each display, clinging to me even as I leave with the genius, fixations, and wonder of humanity waiting outside the door.

Like all things mechanical, all things living, what we look at is much more than a sum of its parts. Those early space ships, the eroded surfaces speaking of the intense heat of reentry, the thin outer skin belying the courage of the man that it cradled, just waiting to be blasted into the unknown. A Mercury wonder of heat and design and engineering unheard of in its day. Compare it with the Soviet ships, odd instruments with Cyrillic labels, foreign yet familiar. An animation can never give you that little surge of awe I got on seeing that warning stenciled on a Soyuz reentry module: “Man inside! Help!” -- words that are dense testimony to both the dangers of a landing and the human ignorance that may exacerbate it.

Those are the type of museums I like, boneyards of man and machine, unlikely mechanics in action, dismantled into their core components, laid out for us to wonder. The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry had this heart the size of a small kitchen in which you could walk through. In it, you experienced each chamber of the heart, complete with sounds, and as a child there on holiday, I would sometimes just stand in it for the longest time, before I could bear to leave it to go stare at the wall of bees. I still have fun in the children's section of science museums where there are no "don't touch" signs and the world is one big laboratory.

In the Berlin Museum of Communications, there is a postal service stagecoach, dismantled into its components, hanging up. Most walk past it, eager to get to the computer modules. Some look at it as only as a dusty visage, long divorced from reality, decaying quietly as only a glimpse of something no longer needed. I see structure, form, load-bearing surfaces, joints and sinew of wood, made by people that perhaps could not read or write, but oh, they could build.

Give me cross-sections, give me actual animals, preserved and on display, don't show me computer videos of things I can watch at home on the discovery channel. Give me not just knowledge, but touch, for when I do it's a tiny chill, partly the warmth of recognition. Early science was imitation and magic but it was more than that. If you go into the caves of Lascaux, the innermost and highest paintings were done at such elevation that they would never have been visible with the light possessed in that age, to anyone other than the artist who painted them. For he was not painting for them, he was painting for something else, a vision that only he saw and wished to document for time.

Unfortunately, most of the technology and science museums today cater to the computer generation with entire floors dedicated to Genetics with wall displays of the codes GAG, GAT TAC ACT) and huge stylized double helices of plastic, all a high tech but impersonal submersion into something that to me, is the Rosetta stone of life. The genetic code is almost universal. The same codons are assigned to the same amino acids and to the same START and STOP signals in the vast majority of genes in animals, plants, and microorganisms. We are all more closely bound than we think.

I didn't want to see plastic models of DNA, I wanted to see the real thing. If you want to show me DNA, then show me DNA - in test tubes, or through an actual working electron microscope.

This is why a chance to visit a museum in Dublin on the way back from an overseas speaking event a while back meant a lot to me. It's unchanged since Victorian days, the ground floor being dedicated to Irish animals, featuring giant deer skeletons and a variety of mammals, birds, and fish. Among the locals it's known as the "Dead Zoo" and when I heard that I knew I was going to spend a day of personal leave there. The upper floors of the building were laid out in the 19th Century in a scientific arrangement showing animals by taxonomic group, an incredible diversity, the interrelations of species through the evolutionary tree.

And my favorite, the bones, the incredible biotechnology of the animal machine, the structure and dentition, the vertebrate body scheme working and adapting. Sure a plastic model of a skull will give you an idea, but it can't possibly show you the exquisite detail of a creature dead hundreds of years. Photos weren't allowed, but I looked and with sketchpad I drew, bone gleaming through splendors last decay, eyes nothing but two empty pools in which the stationary world lurked gravely in miniature.

>Stop and look in a museum, stand in places where history stood still, the courtyard at Monte Alban in quiet sunlight you can almost feel the air shimmering with life, priests, victims, warriors, the ball court where to lose the game was to lose life. Those lives vibrate through you.

"those first firm affinities that fit, our new existence to existing things". That which remains are all things, past, present, they make us what we are, everything the human mind has invented, everything the human heart has loved and grieved for, that bravery has sacrificed for. It may touch only a few, but it connects us all.

I've felt this way in the field, hours spent bending down, sorting out the smallest detail.  Glaring into the sightless night, which was broken only by the events that brought me here, I tune everything else out, but that sound that will never be annealed until I am done, even as I sleep, the events, the pieces, the history, the why, roaring down around me until they stiffen and set like cement and take form.  Small things, inconsequential things, that, when woven with a human decision and the vagrancies of fate, form something that remains, for lessons, for closure, even if no more tangible than shattered echoes.

Remember those who have gone before us. I thought of that as I left the museum that day, I felt it as I trudged home tonight, wearily looking up at the flag. I felt the hush of the wind, a soft voice that says, remember me, in layer and layer of ash in water and stone, bones to be studied, new life to be born. There in a puddle at my feet; a small leaf, decaying in the water, the tissue gone, only the delicate fibrous remnants of that which was vein and bone left. Rocking in the water as if in the motion of sleep, they waved their translucent goodbye.

On the dresser at my home, today lies a simple crafted box in which contains the fired remembrance of pure love and loyalty.  Remember me, remember this, from God's intricate creations of blood and bone and sinew to our own divined dust, the distance is small. - Brigid

Water Reclaiming Our World

Other than a few years in Indianapolis, I've lived the last 25 years along one of the Great Lakes.  When I had Barkley, it was on Lake Erie.  I used to take him down there when the water was at its calmest and clearest and he'd spend a solid hour chasing a buoyant squeaky toy in and out of the waves until he was too tired to continue. I'd go down in the evening sometimes with my drawing pad, or easel and paint, though I'm not very good. I have a watercolor of Headlands Beach in my guest room and in it, stands a large rock off the water's edge. It's actually one of my better pieces and people ask about it, but mostly about the rock. There's no rock on that particular beach. It was supposed to be a boat. Word of advice, with regards to Guinness and Watercolor? Don't drink and paint. 

But I especially loved the lake on the last edge of winter, when the air still held the bitterness of a Canadian clipper and I had the shoreline to myself, no kids and kites and noise, just clear, bracing air, and the look and sound of the ice. Most people don't venture to the shore during such weather, just as some people prefer to simply skim on placid waters their whole lives before settling into a placid grave.  It's as if they know the cold and the fury of the water exists, but prefer to remain ignorant of it, safe in their homes, never knowing the wonder of being alive that the grace of the storm and ice-tossed waters in winter can bring.

Being shallow, Lake Eire often froze clear across, and flying over it, it was as if my neighborhood was bordered by one vast ice rink. We had a particularly warm winter one year and in the Spring I made one last walk to the shore, to see the ice one final time. I'd heard that my position was being restructured, our division downsized and it was likely that this would be my last winter here. But it was too cold to get out my sketch pad, so I simply stood and watched. Surprisingly, I was not the only person there and I noted a woman, about my own age, wearing a thick hat that covered what appeared to be a bald head. With a beautiful face, skin drawn pale and tight across pronounced cheekbones, she sat on another bench in an expensive coat, not reading, not doing anything more than I. Just sitting there in that complete silence in which one does not need to be a doctor to see the translucent, drawn quality of her skin and the accepting gaze outward, in which she probably listened to the precious beat of her heart fueling the irreparable decline of her body.

I sat on some rocks about 20 yards away, so as not to disturb her and stared out at the lake. From a distance, it looked deceptively flat, as if you could walk on it. If you looked out beyond you could see the motion as the ice broke up and if you listened closely you could almost hear a faint sub-aquean rumble as chunks of it broke off as the movement of waves reclaiming their space disturbed the quiet.

What is it about the water that draws us? I remember as a kid we'd spend summers down at my Uncle Glen's almond orchard in California and we'd swim in the irrigation ditches, riding the rushing flood of water that came sluicing down, the water moving fast, grabbing our shorts and pulling us down and forward. Not so deep and fast as to be overly dangerous for a good swimmer, but enough so that as a kid, for a moment, you were part of something wild, wet, and unstoppable, something so much bigger than you. And as we came rushing down the sluiceway in that torrent of water, something as well spilled out of us was released in us, and we rode it until it was free. 

My swimming now is limited to the occasional pool, yet the water still draws me in. The Great Lakes aren't anything like the northern Pacific Ocean, whose shore I grew up on, but I can't imagine being more than a couple of hours from one of them; Erie with its warm water, Ontario with its beautiful boating, and my favorite - Superior with the Gales of November fury the sound of which in the height of a storm can take on an almost human sound of rage and longing, intertwined.  And of course, where I live now, Lake Michigan, water deceptively dangerous in its beauty, with riptides, currents, and crashing waves upon sidewalk and shore that have passed sentence on more than one unsuspecting wanderer, here in the shadow of Mordor.

On that day long ago, the stranger and I sat there, both wondering the same thing perhaps. Will we be here this time next year to witness the ice break up? And if we are, will we even be the same person? Heraclitus is the Greek philosopher who once said essentially that you can't step into the same body of water twice. Maybe it was the same river twice, I don't recall the exact quote but I do remember he said that just as the water " is not the same, and is, so I am as I am not." As the water moves and changes with the seasons, so do I, and I believe my life is as fluid and momentous as the water I love.

 The high disinterested sky was darkening and it was time to head back but I hesitated. With temperatures forecast in the 60s for the next few days, the ice will have likely turned to water by the time I could return, and the shifting expanse of thin ice would be just a memory. Winter faded as darkness ascended; a great chunk of ice tore free, as water reclaimed yet another area, sending seagulls into the air with an alarm. I looked at the woman and she gave me a smile of understanding, for neither of us cared to get up and leave. The water held us there, pouring in. Water reclaiming our world. - Brigid

Always on Watch - Canine Edition

It's Sunday, no UPS man, too cold for squirrels. Maybe Mrs. Og will stop by and I can take out her other kneecap with my tail

Wait - I detect movement.

Someone's in the kitchen

Dad's getting Mom's pancake griddle off the shelf!

Uh, did you forget something?

The pancake was good - how is this look to get a piece of bacon too?

Leading Edges

Off to the East were lofty mountains hung with mourning garments of dark clouds. Fog has rolled in off the ocean in the early morning seeking the lofty foothills of the mountains and not winning, the sun, as sailors would say, waiting to eat it up.  The few stars remaining above flicker feebly, soon to lose their dominion over the sky as the sky, land, and sea are inevitably conquered by the sun's arrival. The leading of a cold front was but a whisper of warning on the sky last night, hopefully not to arrive until I was safely back home today.

The hangar is dark, of course, the aircraft I am scheduled to fly is all the way in the back, which requires getting the tug and moving 6 other airplanes first, then putting them back, all without damage.  Easier said than done on 5 hours of sleep. There are no lights on, the hangar, windowless, as dark as a cavern.  Even the eye of God, were He awake this early could not likely see what would be going on in the next 20 minutes, probably for the best given some of the language that came with impunity as wingtips barely cleared one another, million-dollar toys vying for my termination in one form or another. 

My aircraft is not quite so luxurious, it's a small single engine bird used to go pick up parts from another company owned facility in another city to be in the mechanics hands when the shift started.  From the outside it looked nice, but it had a fuel selector on the floor that would occasionally squirt fuel on your shoe on long flights, and on landing on such days you prayed the line service technician didn't light a match near you. Of course, if you wrote it up for maintenance it wouldn't do it again, until you were alone with it.  But I was entrusted with it, and at that age I was still a bit proud of that.  This was not a tycoon's transport; this was a workhorse. Aircraft, like ships, are often referred to as being of the female gender. I however, named this particular craft "Elmer" as if he was an actual horse, he would have been headed for the glue factory.  His mission was to get from point a to point b, coming as close to towering ugly rocks as possible, seeking as if he had a nose, what particular route would have the most turbulence in an otherwise clear sky

 But so far, Elmer had never failed to deliver that pallet of magnetos, brake parts and future burnt offerings, never got lost, and hadn't set me on fire yet.  Starting was optional depending on the temperature and the aircraft's mood.

This morning was no exception. After pulling it out to the flight line Elmer just sat there as if waiting, the door discretely but suspiciously ajar. I hope the last pilot left the charts in there, otherwise I was going to be late.  Nope, no surprises, flight kit was on the floor, minus anything edible that may have been in there and I was off, hopefully. Some proper priming, a mental roll of the dice, a turn of the key, and . . sound of crickets.  Literally, the only thing out in this remote place other than myself and the occasional coyote I tried fixing the instrument panel with a stern glare that carried with it some threat of heinous menace, but the aircraft, like most of the world, just saw red hair in a little ponytail and countered with unfathomable indifference. OK, Try it again, being careful not to flood the carburetor.  Finally, the engine roared with triumphant sound, like a polished military band in some war torn South American country, playing between Revolutions.

Such was a life of a young pilot trying to build hours to get that airline interview. There was no time for anything but university and school, working full time while going to school at night, cut into the free time, to say the least.  I remember waking up in my little studio apartment, cold, and on rough sheets, knowing that watered down big box mart coffee that was probably grown in New Jersey was NOT going to be enough to get my excited about my day. There was no TV, I couldn't afford one, and my car once got a ticket (in jest) from the campus police for "impersonating a motor vehicle".   But I had a goal, and during an occasional rare hour off when I could just sit at the airport and talk to other pilots, it spoke to me 

It spoke in the eyes of a retired Flying Tigers pilot, whose eyes were old, but were as sharp as an eagle, in the animated talk of others who had taken my path, working a multitude of jobs, instructing, flying cancelled bank checks, freight, the best years those of the long summer, when the warmth stayed longer and the cold kept at bay until well into November.  Those were good memories, of stories shared from a sky steeped with stillness or frothed with storms, of lukewarm sandwiches and burning dreams, of sweat and occasional tears.

Now I sit in the warmth of the house, nearly 20,000 hours of flight time in my logbook, three engine failures (one right at rotation in a T-39), two fires, and countless really bad airline crew meals and I don't think about the airline flights, the exotic destinations, the kids who would salute me when they saw me in uniform, back in the day when pilots were not viewed as overpaid bus drivers. No, I think to those early morning flights in that little plane, the chatter of air traffic and periods of seamless silence, climbing up over the coastal mountains; the clear air steeped in a clear stillness of liquid that hushed all sound but for that of the engine and the inaudible sonnet sung by a sunrise.

I think back to that morning, the engine suddenly snorting like a horse (OK, carburetor heat - PULL), the mental image of the tramping of hooves on an open landscape, the horizon wide open as we galloped towards our destination. My trusty stead and I had strengths as elementally different as fire and water, but working together, a cadence of hands and eyes, pistons and pressures, our horizon was limitless. Those flights were brief but the memories, though hazy, remain, like the smoke from a farm field being burned, rising weightless into the bright air, a V-formation of geese providing punctuation to unformed letters of distant contrails. -  Brigid

Today's Range Report - "Cooking with Decaf"

Why I should not cook before caffeinating,  While trying to get the waffle out of the maker (I forgot the non-stick spray), the fork pried it loose, only to have it launch itself with force across the room just as Partner in Grime entered.

EJ: "What just flew past me?!" 

Me: "Luftwaffle."

Men of Letters

It seems as if no one is teaching cursive writing anymore. I look at the letters my Dad sent to me, even more precious now that he's gone. The writing got a little more shaky as he aged. Still, there was the unmistakable detail in the forming of each word, two "o's" that loop like little Slinkies, a "b" that was as bold as the word it formed. In failing to teach that, we will lose something, one more remnant of civilization, of creativity, scrapped in favor of a world of electronic messages.

I rarely text. Perhaps a simple "I'm home" if I don't wish to interrupt Partner in Grime with a phone call at work, but that's pretty much it. When I eat out with friends, they may look up something on the magic elf box or take a picture or two, but we mostly talk; simple and animated human interaction is much missed when we're apart. I watch young people out dining together, and everyone has their heads down constantly texting or surfing the Internet with a look of bovine interest, no one looks at each other, no one talks. They're friends only in that they share a table, eating food they don't fully taste as they type in words discarded with a press of a button.

In the attic at my parent's home was a locker in which were Dad's WWII uniforms, photos, and remembrances.  My brother and I were adopted when Mom and Dad were well into Middle Age. They had a history that went so far before us, yet it was one we wished to learn of as soon as we were old enough to comprehend.

So he and I carefully, and with Dad's permission, went through that locker.  There are so many photos of the Liberator, flying among flack as thick as snowflakes, flying desolate above land whorled with the unreasoned, the craft solitary about the destruction that it would rain. There, underneath the photos, a stack of letters he and my Mom wrote to one another while he was gone for four years, not returning Stateside once in that time. Reading them is almost like eavesdropping, as you can almost hear the words as they formed, heartfelt, intimate. I open one, and there is just that one single page and the thought of the way the day stopped at the brink of it.

There was talk of how much they missed one another, how their families were faring, of good coffee and how Dad missed vegetables from the farm, of burning heat and a cold on the field that would murmur to your very bones. They had been inseparable since sixth grade.  There was playful affection, there was unstated passion and stated promise. Some were in Mom's flowery script, the rest in Dad's meticulous, indomitable hand. "Is everyone there well?" Mom would ask, and Dad would reply they were (though some were now only well beyond Lamentations). "How is the homestead? he would ask, and Mom would reply, "Fine," not telling him that they were occasionally going hungry.

They speak of the future, of their past. They do not speak of the B29's that limped back to England only to crash on approach, their violent end felt through the ground like a vibration rather than heard. They do not speak of her working two jobs after her Dad's death while logging to support two younger brothers and her Mom. So much spoken and unspoken, two mourning doves calling back and forth across an endless summer, all now just held together by a blue silk ribbon.

Not all missives that went back and forth the seas were good news. Just up the road from Mom's, the week after Pearl Harbor, a neighbor stands by the mailbox with a piece of paper not even big enough to start a fire with, the envelop fallen to the ground as bland words exploded one by one, and that families grieving began. There was only the notice; there was nothing to bury, though you don't need a wooden box to capture the form of courage and sacrifice.

How many millions of messages like that went out in old wars, not taking long to read, as there was no real time in it, not in that demarcation between the hope that someone lived and that place where you knew that was no longer true,  that you wished that this moment existed only outside of time. There were only moments in which a written word hung in the air as if hopeful silence had been so long undisturbed it had forgotten its purpose.

I look again at those letters my Dad kept. The actual forming of the letters is uniform, flowing, like words pent up too long; the letters were sixty years old, powdery, and delicate in my hand. But sixty years was just a moment ago for my Dad; something so fierce and encompassing as war always stood out in his memory, no matter how many years distanced him from battle.

In his last years, I got fewer letters from Dad, perhaps one every few months. I've kept them all, some faded with time, a bit frayed around the edges, the words upon them written with clear, flowing script, the stamps carefully placed, the envelopes addressed with precision.

They began when I first moved away from home. No one really had computers then for personal use at college; the phone was the most common source of connection for family. But as computers became second nature, my father continued to write me letters, refusing to learn to use a computer for such a purpose.
Simple letters, simple words.

The letters themselves are not full of particularly sage wisdom or things that might be considered of great depth. They are simply the doings of his day and the memories of his heart. What he planted in the garden, where he went out for lunch after church. A bird he saw on a long drive, a story of that steelhead trout he finally caught under the covered bridge at Grey's River. He wrote to me after he buried someone he loved more than life, words flattened out on paper, like rain, but not lost like rain, streaming out to a valueless torrent of dissolution. His words, though heart-rending, uplifted me, a love not lost through life's unravelings. When I held on to him at her grave while taps played in the distance, his words were engraved on my heart.

They were words that didn't teach, lecture, or portend but words that, on their reading, mattered. For they filled me with elation that in their capturing, those moments would never be lost. Even when my Dad was gone, leaving a few days after his 101st birthday celebration, there would be stories of meals, of moments, of caring and service.

Is that a testament to the power of the word or simply the power of the habit of writing? That which, however mundane, comes to our mind each day. Small, succinct phrases of thought that capture the dots of our lives, connecting us, transcending time or moment. What was in the past is here in my hand now, as if it transcends time, and for just a moment, we are free of the confines of past tense.

He is here with me now in one such letter, with his story of that fine day that could have been seven years ago, or seventy, in words caught and released, a brilliant day, a fighting salmon. A trip to the store or a small prayer over his breakfast shared with me here as if the paper had caught it in time. Our lives are in these moments, gone too quickly, rushing water over our days.
Each of us lives in the present, yet we contain our past, and we can not put our future into words until it, too, becomes our past. Time is an illusion, and death is a transient bend in a long journey that will take its own time. Past, present, future, I'll retain my Dad's stories, his laughter splayed across a small white page as if part of the paper. As I fold it up and place it carefully in my desk drawer to perhaps be opened up again one day, a thought comes unbidden. I realize that what is here, be it thought, emotion or the trivial events of our day that we share, for someone, somewhere, will be the most precious of memory.

I take out an envelope and a small piece of paper, and on it scribe some words. You are the best of men. I love you. I can no longer mail it to him,  but I put it in the envelope and seal it with a small kiss from my lips, the paper resting for a moment like a wafer on my tongue, confession, redemption,

When the generation of texters has departed the earth, who will there be to inherit all those messages, the loves, and losses spelled out there in the abbreviated script that aren't published for the world, intimate moments and messages that were simply sent and discarded?  Will anyone chronicle, the building up of hope or the cold dismissal of it, there upon a word. What remains of them, those words, short scratchings, almost depthless there against old, transparent glass? So many words, so many thoughts floating around the ether, impossible to capture with a faded blue silk ribbon.

How sad to me that there will be no one to physically inherit those stories, and perhaps a story of that one great love, all those words have gone silent as ghosts, vanished into a chill emptiness of electronic space, like sparks of ice.

- Brigid

Snow Bound Breakfast - Sourdough Aebelskivers

 Woke to the first real snow of the season. A good day for aebleskiver (Danish Pancakes). I don't make them often but since Partner in Grime shoveled our walkways and the elderly neighbors', I wanted to surprise him. This is the first time I've made them with sourdough and they turned out better than I had hoped for. But first, a ride in the doggie elevator out to the back yard for some playtime.

If you can find a cast iron aebleskiver pan, get one.

.

Sourdough Aebleskiver (low sodium and regular instructions provided)
In large bowl blend
1 cup milk, replacing 1 teaspoon of milk with apple cider vinegar or lemon juice and let set at room temperature 5 minutes.
1 cup active sourdough starter (mine today was made with whole wheat pastry flour from Bob's Red Mill)
2 eggs (beaten before adding)
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 stick unsalted butter melted and cooled for a couple of minutes before adding.

In another bowl mix:
180 grams unbleached flour (1 ½ cups)
3/4 teaspoon reduced sodium Himalayan Pink Salt
1 Tablespoon Hain Sodium Free Baking powder (or 2 tsp regular b.p.)
3/4 teaspoon EnerG Sodium Free Baking Soda Replacement (or ½ tsp regular baking soda)
Pinch of cardamom

Blend wet and dry ingredients just until mixed, (may be some small lumps).  Heat the Aebleskiver pan until hot (about 10-12 minutes - a drop of water on it should sizzle) and give it a quick spray with non-stick spray (I use an organic Olive Oil one) or brush with a pastry brush with melted butter. Then using a teaspoon, fill the depression to no more than 1/8 inch below the rim.  As soon as the Aebleskivers begin to bubble around the edges, use a wooden skewer, knitting needle, or sharp edge of a knife to flip them over half way, letting the batter slide around to fill in the bottom of the cup. Continue cooking, turning the Aebleskiver again to let the batter fill in the remainder of the sphere and continuing to turn until golden brown all the way around and cooked through.

NOTE: plan on totally murdering two or three before you get it right, have small bucket handy to remove the remains. 

As far as temp, my 80-year-old gas stove has two settings, not warm enough and surface of the sun hot, so I have learned to just adjust between those settings.  For those of you with a modern stove, aim for medium heat, around 325 degrees.    Place in a clean town in a bowl and keep covered to remain warm as you cook the rest.  These freeze well. 

 Serve with powdered sugar, butter, and lingonberries. Or do what my Scandinavian Mom did and put a little piece of apple in the center as it cooks.

Makes about 3 and a half dozen with the pan I have; they freeze really well if placed in a sealed container after cooling completely.

Colt Magnum Carry - A Range Report

Many folks new to handguns consider revolvers "old fashioned" or even not worth looking into.  This may be due to their relativity low ammo capacity and a design that says more Maltese Falcon than The Matrix (like that's a bad thing).  But revolvers were used for serious defensive shooting, chosen above other firearms for a good reason. Back then, the average revolver was more reliable than a standard auto pistol.

Design had changed greatly over the years with respect to autopistols  and their reliability can be as good as the care you give them and the ammo you feed them.  But I can say one thing for a fact.  Even with the best of care, even with the best of ammo, and no "noodle wristing" allowed,  I've had a misfeed in an auto.

So that is something I think of whenver I tuck a revolver in my holster for defense carry.  I've never had a misfeed in a cleaned and cared for revolver. Ever. I wish I had a bigger budget to own more, for they fascinate me, from a function standpoint, from a historical standpoint.  

The Colt Magnum Carry.  It's a model of the Colt  that was only manufactured for one year, through the year 1999. This wasn't too long after Colt discontinued the last of the old "D" frame revolvers with plans to  build on the series.  The planned replacement for the "D" frame, was to be a series of small frame revolvers to replace the old Detective Special and Diamondback types.  Many of you reading here, I'm sure, are familiar with the Detective Special. Detective Specials were a snub nose revolver manufactured by the Colt Company starting in the late 1920's with a shortened barrel and compact frame, typically used by undercover policemen, which explains the name. The guns have been portrayed in many movies, one of my favorites "Reservoir Dogs" and "The Godfather" and on TV shows like "Dragnet" and "The "A-Team.."

And yes, for the Range Report, I wore too much bling,  assumed a modified Weaver, scowled and said "Pity the Fool" as a water (milk?) jug was slain.

The first in the series was the Colt SF-VI or Colt "Small Frame, Six Shot" (a .38 special revolver).  The name was to prevent confusion with the last of the Colt Detective Specials as they were still in the distribution pipeline.  The Colt SF frame was a stainless steel revolver that was essentially a small Colt King Cobra action with the King Cobra's transfer bar safety/ignition system. It was also essentially the same, dimension wise, as the D frame though.  Once all those were through distribution and to their new homes, Colt changed the name to the Cold DS-II, which many revolver buffs called the Detective Special Two.  That was never it's official name, which was simply DS-II.

Along came the  Colt Magnum Carry. This was the SF-VI/DS-II with a somewhat  thicker top strap and chambered in the .357 magnum. The first batch even carried the roll stamp "2nd Edition" on the barrel next to the words "Magnum Carry". Packaging was in a Colt Custom Shop's Box and Serial numbers start with the prefix SYxxxx. It featured fixed sights with frame notch rear, a serrated hammer, a nicely smooth trigger, fluted cylinder for six rounds and a factory Hogue black textured wraparound three finger groove grip that feels like home when you place that hand around it.

One year, just one year, it was available, to be discontinued in 2000 when Colt dropped most of their double action revolvers and .380 autos.

As the design evolved all of the guns were unique  with some similarities, and some differences.  The SF-VI and DS-II have a Colt contracted copy of the Pachmayr "Compac" grip.  (they look like the Pachmayr but don't have the steel liner inside and were made by Vintage Industries for Colt, not the Hogue grip of the Magnum carry.

None of them were big guns but they weren't the firearm equivalent of a Paris Hilton Purse Chihuahua either.. The standard barrel length for all three models was 2 1/8", but there some 3 inch ones floating around, I've heard.  

Range Report. 

Ammo - .357.  Need I say more?  .357 is rightly known for its power and is used in many other Colt revolvers, like my favorite, the Python and Anaconda models.  Like the other Detective models it holds six cartridges unlike the J frames which I believe typically held 5.

The Colt Magnum Carry instruction manual states that the gun can use regular .38 Special ammunition, as well as .38 Special +P and .38 Special +P+ ammunition, (high-velocity cartridges typically only used by law enforcement.) The Colt Magnum Carry may also fire .357 Magnum cartridges. Both were tried, both are dependable.  This firearm is a double-action revolver, so that when you press the trigger, it both cocks and releases the hammer, so you don't have to manually cock the hammer in order to fire.  Nice!

Finish and Frame:  The original Detective Special models had a dull black carbon finish. the Colt Magnum has a bright stainless steel finish with a black rubber grip and three finger mounts. It carried a frame-mounted rebound firing pin and transfer bar as well.  Frankly, this, to me, is just a beautiful firearm, in looks and function.  

Weight:  It's light, stated as 1.31 lb (0.595 kg). That's lighter than the Lawman which leads me to. .

Trigger - Heavy but pretty smooth.  I'd almost bet this one has had a trigger job.  There aren't a lot of gunsmiths that can do a really bang up job on a revolver trigger but they ARE out there and further down, I have included a link for one of them.

Recoil:  Think the slightly heavier Lawman packs some recoil? With .357 it's batten down your bustle and plant your feet in firmly, this baby is going to let you know it means business.  With .38 though,  it's about comparable to the Lawman though and it IS less than the Smith and Wesson Airweight.

Sight - Whoever designed the front sight was a 22 year old with 20/20 vision.  It's a smooth stainless steel blade with not as much contrast as these eyes needed but it was manageable close in. 

Concealed Carry:  The Magnum Carry is easy to conceal, it's not a big gun considering the power. It's sort of a modified "round butt". I was told long ago that rounding increases concealability but to me, it just seems like you'd lose some of the grip dimension you need for solid control of the firearm during rapid fire situations. Still, with just some basic shooting from low ready and defense shots, it was imminently controllable.  It tucked smoothly into a holster as well.

Sight Picture - One thing with snubbies is that when they feel natural in my hand, they shoot just a tad too high. When you get it where you are getting the shot placement you want, it will initially feel like you are "pointed down".  Just something to be aware of.

Overall, I was impressed when I first fired it. This is not a gun for the meek or the broke, but it's an excellent carry gun if you can find one. They are somewhat scarce and prized by some as a "must add" to a well rounded collection.  If you can find one, I'd seriously consider it.

Now if you will excuse me, I need to go adjust my bustle.