Lessons from our Parents

There is no greater enhancement to beauty than confidence.
- Brigid

I found it there in the closet of my big brother's room, a little Savage, that had been my Dad's. It still had no child safety lock and didn't when I first picked it up when I was 12.

My parents believed in providing us challenges. I was on the back of a big horse before I was even tall enough to climb on without assistance. At first, I sat with an intrepid awkwardness, even with some lessons and the adventuresome spirit that seems to have been inherited by all the women in our family. The mare had been ridden by all the kids in the family and she seemed to sense my timidity and moved slowly and patiently as I took the measure of her and myself as my parents watching carefully. I broke into a grin as she began to pick up speed with my encouragement. Leaning forward I let out a yell as we broke into a gallop as if by doing so I could outpace the mare. We ran out free of the fence lines, free of ourselves, racing with a quality of movement in our motion totally separate from the pound of hooves or the whoop of joy as I discovered flight in its oldest form. So it was with all discoveries my parents exposed us to in that wild country, the next of which was in the form of that Savage .22.

For my parents a firearm wasn't some purpose of evil, but something that would help us learn and grow, with learning to use it as important as the possession. I held it, wood smooth under my hand, the sun at the quarry where we would shoot it shining off of the barrel. When I touched it, I felt an excitement of responsibility and promise whose reason I could not put into words at that age, being too young to articulate that. I felt responsible. Yes. Responsible. For something that cost more than many months allowance would ever replace. Responsible for the trust my parents put in me in handing over the legacy of guns in our house. Responsible for myself, my brothers. To use it properly.

So we watched, we learned. We started with soda cans in that old quarry, or out in the woods, using the center of the can as a little target area. We were well aware that for an adult it was a right, but a child it was a privilege, and one we worked hard at our schoolwork and chores, to maintain. Responsibility had to be earned. Trust had a price.

We paid attention, we listened. It didn't mean we didn't make mistakes, but they weren't potentially deadly ones. We weren't taught just how to clear a misfire, or clean our weapon, or to hit a nice grouping. We were given the talents to be safe and ethical shooters, guardians of an outdoor heritage of survival, stewards of the essential liberties which we now pass on to our children.

When we showed we could handle the smaller rifles and shotguns, a family member let us try out an 8 mm Mauser. It was heavy, it seemed to be as long as I was tall, and when I fired it, the recoil about knocked me down. There was a flash of powder and light as Thor's hammer struck in a slow, solid repercussion of sound and force that I felt all the way down my legs, in muscles and places I'd forgotten I had. Then the air cleared, a vacuum, an interval of recognition and amazing clarity and I knew something; in the tremble of flesh and the warmth of my hands. I wanted this. I wanted this again. I don't care if it will probably hurt me some in the process.

So many days where we would go out. We shot until we were out of ammo and our arms ached, and even then, worn out from the day, handed the guns back carefully with deep and somnolent reluctance. Even today I feel that ammo can echoing, trigger finger aching from the pull of the .38, and I hate to leave - one more, one more shot. Please. The last bullet is carefully loaded, and its discharge explodes into sound; a report out of proportion to the small piece of air it pushed aside, as if by firing it obtained some sort of ravening possibility, not to be inhibited by anything, not by threat, or by cold or by the wind. It fired in a burst of sound that put one last neat clean hole through the dead center of the target. Then the echo of silence.

I gather my range gear in an old green military tote bag in which are a just a few pistol pouches and supplies. The bag is old and worn, not much different than that I used as a child. The smell of gunpowder kissing my hair, the ache in my arm and my hand making me feel so very alive, no different than those days so long ago. In the quiet of a range gone cold, I hear my Dad's voice in my head. Well done kiddo, well done. I'd been here two hours, I could tell that from the sun, and the sound of the many birds in the trees. They were everywhere, constant and ceaseless, happy, chattering along with the various conversations as the shooters took a break. Shooters sharing information, knowledge, and history, just as my parents shared with us.


I was a bit stiff, the knee aching as it does when there is a pressure change in the atmosphere.  But the walk to the truck parked away from the range line would cure that, the urgent beating of my heart timed with the slap of the gun bag against my hip as I covered the distance across the now empty parking lot. My weapon, so much different than my first, yet still a paladin of equity, a fighter for justice.

I walk with that steady gait that is both aim and purpose, being free with that singular carrying of arms that abrogates both timidity and hesitation. It's a stride borne of training and practice so as to relegate fear to a place far away. I may be alone, but I am safe. I am safe because someone loved me enough to give me the tools to be confident.

April 19, 1995.

Twenty-six years ago tomorrow the Oklahoma City bombing.  If you've not taken the time to visit the memorial there, you should.

In my travels, I try and take the time to visit local places of history.  Wherever I am, be it for work or play, if I have time I will explore. In my travels,  I've stayed in places as exhilarating as the Rockies, as surreal as the desert, and as desolate as corn swept landscape. Yet even in the most innocuous of places, there are discoveries.

I had a couple days in Hutchinson, Kansas a few years ago and went to the Cosmosphere. Yes, that's right. A premiere Space Museum in Kansas. With a U.S. space artifact collection second only to the National Air and Space Museum and the largest collection of Russian space artifacts found outside of Moscow, the Cosmosphere's Hall of Space Museum is uniquely positioned to tell the story of the Space Race. In the middle of the plains, you can actually touch capsules that went into space. Many of them look more like Frank Gehry's designs on crack. Or something my brother and I would have attempted to build with our erector set, 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 drunken Uncle after a holiday evening of cookies and grog.

Yet I walked away 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, simply more education. Museums are like that for me, humanness of history that brushes you as you pass each display, clinging to you even after you leave. Guns, Germs and Steel as Jared Diamond coined the title of his Pulitzer Prize-winning book; the genius, fixations and rage of humanity.

Some of it is sobering. Visit the Holocaust Museum in our nation's capital and you know, too well, the bromide of evil. The piles of shoes, obsessive-compulsive logic of sick record keeping. Sit among the silent chairs, one for each life lost, at the Oklahoma City Memorial. You can't help but think that a good portion of our misfortunes arises, not from fate or ill health or the vagrancy of the winds, but from human rancor, fueled by innate stupidity, and those ever-present justifications of the same, hell-bent idealism and proselytizing mania for the sake of religious or political effigies.

Some are places in which you leave feeling as if the presence of those it immortalizes stand silently beside you as you solemnly take it all in. Such was the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum up in Whitefish Point. I was in the area on business and had a day off before heading home and got a rental car at my own expense to go explore. It was well worth the drive, with a detailed display of sights and sound that chronicled the many wrecks due to the furies of that vast lake. But with respect to all the lives lost on the Great Lakes over the years, I especially wanted to see the display on the Edmund Fitzgerald, the most mysterious and haunting of all shipwreck tales heard around my beloved Great lakes.

It was this bell I wanted to see. In looking at it, at the inscription of the names of the crew lost, it was personal. These weren't just numbers on a wall or dates on a memorial, these were people living, these were people who like me, loved the wind on their face, the draw of wild nature.

In looking at the artifacts of loss, the fascination comes from the step we take into connection. Strolling past the exhibits, pieces of wood and glass and rope, what we are looking for are familiar things, the small quarters where the crew gathered, the hall where the hungry and thirsty ate meat and beans and drank strong coffee. We know that when the ship sent down, there were people thinking and scheming, composing a letter to their families in their minds, the seas too rough to write; worrying, handling a task, dreaming of calm seas and the blue eyes of the one they loved. That knowledge, that thought, brought with it a chill, and a touch of familiarity. Like a hand from the vast waters touching my shoulder, what I left with was not a concern for the dead, for they are at peace now, but for the living, those people with me, now.

There's a reason we visit these places, those that honor the dead, remembering the cruelties that brought them to that place so that we don't forget, that man does not forget. That is why I stroll the halls and displays of vast buildings that encompass all of man's wanderings, earthbound, sea-bound and airborne, paths both light and dark. For every journey I've made in this life there are some that had outcomes both joyous and bright, and others that during their course I saw things in my nature that were less than good. Times when I found darkness not only in the sky but in myself.

Such it is with history, and the viewing of its pages, finding darkness not only in one's world but within oneself. It is at such time when we are truly solo, truly adult, that we accept responsibility for a soul that survives in a world of such anomaly. You make good decisions based on the bad ones others have taken before you, or you, yourself will spiral down into blackness.

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 today 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.

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.

So today - give pause for those souls lost this day 20 years ago.  And next time that you travel--instead of going out for wings and a beer, take time to look at those places of history that often go undetected.  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 a life. Those lives vibrate through you.

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 the 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.

In the Cosmosphere in Kansas, I reached out and touched a spaceship that had gone to the heavens, and the cold metal felt no different to my hand than the cold-forged metal of a lost diving bell. As my hands warmed it, I realized that there are no absolute answers to all of the great questions. I can simply persist to live through them, as I learn and remember.

On a small table at my home, this morning lies a simple crafted box in which contains the fired remembrance of pure love and loyalty. Each day as I leave, I gently lay my hand upon it.  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

Quote of the Week

“Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century:
Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others;
Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected;
Insisting that a thing is impossible
 because we cannot accomplish it;
Refusing to set aside trivial preferences;
Neglecting development and refinement of the mind;
Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.”
― Cicero

Forget Lab Safety I Want Super Powers

I had to get geek glasses, being in my 50's (and holding) now, putting them on mostly for close-up work or when I'm really tired.  The glasses do tend to wander away, and it seems I'm forever cleaning all the smudges off of them.  I'm not sure how it happens, I clean them until they're pristine and 15 minutes later, they're totally smudged. (and this is work mode picture which you would not have seen post going private, if you want to see the hair down makeup on, me, you'll have to buy one of my earlier books as there are actually full-fledged photos on the cover (shameless book plug done).

Picture a morning in the kitchen while preparing breakfast

Partner in Grime:  I think I know how your glasses get so smudged.
Me:  How?
Partner in Grime:  I just found them lens side down in the butter.

That might explain it.

So get out your glasses for a Monday morning recipe, sure to keep everyone nearby.

French Toast with Maple Bourbon Butter

For the french toast

Whisk two extra-large eggs in a shallow dish or pan with 1/4 cup milk. Add in one capful (half teaspoon perhaps) of good quality pure Vanilla (or any good quality non-imitation vanilla) 3 dashes of good quality Cinnamon, and a couple of pinches of sugar (perhaps 1/2 teaspoon). Slice day-old bread in 7-8 thick pieces and place in egg mixture, turning to let a little soak into it on both sides (but only for a few seconds, so it doesn't get soggy). Cook in a lightly greased fry pan over medium heat until lightly browned on both sides.

Serve with maple bourbon butter and bacon

Maple bourbon butter

1 stick plus 2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup pure maple syrup
1/4 cup good-quality bourbon (avoid anything called "Monster Mash" and costing $7.99 for a gallon)
Pinch of salt

Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat on the stove until just bubbling, stir in bourbon, maple syrup, and salt and bring to a full simmer, whisking constantly until golden colored and thick. About 5-6 minutes.

Serve over french toast, biscuits or pancakes. Excellent drizzled over any breakfast meat that goes with those.

There would be pictures of the bacon, but it seems to have disappeared.

Barkley's Ode to Spring

Sorry, it's been a while, work got very busy and I was beta reading several author's books as a favor for them (as Jim Curtis can tell you, having a beta reader who can tell you how to measure the height of someone missing their head is a gift :-) For flashback Wednesday, a Barkley memory. 

Spring

Discovered I Salute You

Female Gunbloggers and Fashion

Clothes make the man. Naked people

have little or no influence on society. 

― Mark Twain

Going into my first year of junior high, girls were not allowed to wear pants. Being the 70's, my classmates and I were allowed to wear an assortment of incredibly ugly clothing, including disco shirts, male jumpsuits (not just for prison anymore!) and the "let's dress alike in a creepy sort of way", his and hers outfits from the Sears catalog. But in our little town, our schools dictated that all young ladies wear dresses, even as most of the country had already relaxed the school dress code for girls to include pants.

Of course, being the era of the mini skirt, some of those dresses were pretty short and once even I had to kneel and have a female teacher measure the distance from floor to hem. It barely squeaked by but at least I wasn't sent home to explain to my Dad, how in Home Ec, I'd learned to change a hemline.

Finally, one Fall, as school started, the rules changed. The much anticipated day had come, where girls could wear pants (no jeans, that would be a few months off).

Except my Father said NO. There would be occasions where my wardrobe choice and my Dad collided (Daisy Duke shorts) but I never imagined that on that day, he would not allow me to dress like everyone else.   

So off I went, humiliated to be the only girl in the entire school wearing a dress.  No one actually said anything directly to my face as I was generally well liked. But I was not unaware of the many whispers and looks of pity from my friends as well as the looks of  contempt from the "popular girls".

We all know about "popular girls", for they don't change as they age, not content to merely overshadow others with their sex appeal and possessions, that brings with it popularity not earned, but to extinguish them with their scorn so that they are as inconsequential as they themselves, feel inside. Now I just pity them; back then it simply hurt.   At that age, no one really wants to be "different" and on that long day, I felt about as accepted as a Wolverine at a bunny convention.

I got through the day, waiting long after the last class was dismissed, everyone gone, so I could walk with my calm face into the empty halls, down into the schools entrance where I leaned against this big cooled vending machine that sold apples for 10 cents, leaning my face against the glass until the heat diminished. Then I walked home, head held high, but alone, under a sky the color of iron.

We all remember well the angst of such years, out of proportion, most certainly, to the actual severity of the events that took place, honed by hormones and need into something that stays with us for years until one day we just look back and say "was it really that big of a deal?"

On that day though, it was all you can think of.

I still recall that walk home, down a rural road at the edge of town,  past a sentient cow in a field, postulating life, not in the fact that it was breathing, but because it took the form of something that was breathing, even as it seemed to hurt to take breath in myself. I wanted nothing more than the day to be over, for that time when morning, afternoon and evening flowed back and drained the sky of light, leaving me in shadows where I could be invisible.

I  can smile now, thinking back.  But at the time, it was the end of the world; that simple social faux pas.

Dad didn't  understand the outcome of his actions, but apparently a brother did, one who attended the same school, and he had a frank talk with my father that night. Dad didn't apologize, he did what he thought was right, in the way that he was raised, but he knew it had caused me unintended hurt and the next day without much fanfare, I wore pants.

Soon, the dress code was even more relaxed and for the remainder of my school years I lived in Levi's, button down shirts, and shoes we knew as "waffle stompers". Other than church, volunteering at the local nursing home and this orchestra I played in well into college, I rarely wore anything else.

Then, after college and flight training, life was the "uniform thing".  I liked that. I didn't have to "coordinate an outfit". Nothing was figure flattering which leveled the playing field in the whole female "I look better than you do" nonsense, which unfortunately has existed among certain individuals since someone donned the first Saber Tooth Tiger Skin Bustier. I liked uniforms. No "what to wear" decisions at 5 a.m., no wasted money on something you'll not wear twice. However I did find out that to a black lab named Clyde, a uniform hat with "scrambled eggs" on it makes it no less edible. "Sir, about my cap."

I could  never understand the female obsession for fashion, for owning more clothing than you can wear in a matter of weeks, for having a closet full of things that some magazine tells you is what you have to wear to be liked, to be loved, to be desirable. I look at a designer handbag  and think "Wow, I could get a .380 for that".  Besides I already have TWO purses, one for the range and one that is powder residue/errant bullet casing free, so not to annoy TSA any more than I already do.

Then there is the whole Brides Magazine thing, where women fawn over dresses that have enough fabric to clothe most of Burma, and the engagement ring ads. You know the ones I speak of, that tell some poor guy that if he doesn't spend three months salary on a ring she is pretty much going to go to work and hold up her little 1/2 carat ring, point at his picture on her desk, laugh derisively and say "It's so SMALL".

That's simply marketing and has as little to do with love as integrity has to do with politics.

I look at my parent's wedding picture. Dad is in uniform, my mother is wearing a dark blue suit, tailored to compliment what he is wearing, yet feminine and something that could well be worn with other garments long after the wedding vows were past. The Depression was at hand, and both of them knew that what was important about this day was not what they wore, it was what they were. It was a quality that each recognized in each other, a single life's capacity for devotion  that abrogated the exchange value of any material thing given in an attempt to secure it.

But many people put great value into what one wears. I once interviewed a group of men for a position, civilian sector, the perfect job for a new grad school graduate. I looked out into a room full of blue suits, white shirts, red ties and a pink tuxedo. Not just ANY pink tuxedo but one with ruffles that looked like it came from South Beach Formal and Live Bait. Everyone was trying not to stare and failing miserably. When the young man came in, he handed us his curriculum vitae and said, with a soft southern drawl.  "I bet you're wondering about the suit."

Apparently, we bought him a ticket to fly in for the interview, The last leg was on a tiny, hot and cramped little puddle jumper, so he wore khaki shorts and a t shirt, his good clothing going into a carry on that ended up in the the cargo hold as it wouldn't fit in the tiny overhead. From there it disappeared. He landed at 9 something at night, with no bag in trail and literally sprinted to a taxi to go to the nearest mall, where the only thing still open was apparently the  South Beach Formal and Live Bait Shop. In the month of June, the only tux they had available in his size was this one, Sonny Bono apparently forgetting to pick it up.

He told me this tale while sitting tall and looking me straight in the eye. I hired him on the spot, without any further talk. That man had a pair and I wanted them on my team.

But many, like Mr. Twain, say clothes make the man, and I am certainly a sucker for a crisp dress shirt, the cut of a pair of dress trousers and a dapper hat, just as I am the smell of shop in the collar of a  faded, much mended shirt that bears on it the marks of taming a piece of shop machinery with sword or wrench.

I have my suits, mostly black and dark blue, the white button down shirts, the "uniform" for when I have to actually put on a couple of titles and play grown up.  For I can dress up to draw respect if I have to. Sometimes there are places where you don't want to stand out (street corners in certain neighborhoods in LA , tree stands or San Salvador, for example).  Sometimes you do.

There was one formal reception, held in some capital somewhere,  I wore a green velvet gown.  The dress was quite low cut.  A colleague I was good pals with said - "Wow. . you have . . (best  to shut up now)"  and I grinned  at him and said "don't worry, there will be plenty of other boobs in the room, no one will notice mine", with a sly grin.  I did feel somewhat like the fairy princess there, but it's not a look, or an outing,  I'll probably willingly repeat..

My closet  at home or in a hotel, is mostly cotton and wool, sweaters and coats and things meant for tramping around the outdoors or places where the temps are low and controlled. The closet at home has its share of camo as well. There are a couple pair of work dress shoes, a pair of tennis shoes and one pair of boots.  I don't really need any more footware except there are these boots that one lady gun blogger had out her site.

But what I have is functional, timeless, things I could have worn 10 years ago, and can wear 10 years from now.  I hate shopping for anything but tools or toys or things made with wood, so if I find something I like, I buy five of them in slightly different colors.   If it is is damaged through long wear, I'll repair it. I may not wear it to work but with a needle and thread I can make it useful to wear in the shop.

But I still have a little black dress and an old fashioned sweater and camisole set I  went out and bought to wear with black silk and pearls at a wedding where Partner was playing Bach on violin as people entered the church as his college friends wed.  What I wore would have fit in the 40's, though it was new.  When I entered the sanctuary, everyone looked  up and the young usher stammered and said "bride or groom?" I gave him the full wattage teeth and green eyes, with a "I'm with the band" and a nod towards my smiling friend.  For that moment, it was worth braving a "girl store" and  a dressing room to buy something  timeless and elegant, not for this crowd, but simply for that smile.

But  "Fashion", with everything else in the world that affects us, those things that threaten our rights and our way of life, means little to me ."Designers" now are often just talentless  Hollywood bimbos who lend little more than their overexposed bodies to the whole creative process, eager only to make a buck.  It's nothing more to me than clothes as status, fake padding and spandexed flesh, little more than thrust and parry, rendering what we put on more about proving something than keeping warm and comfortable.   Perhaps I'm just odd, but fashion for the most part is just not something I want to spend a lot of money on.   That's what Midway and Brownells is for.
 

Dad, bless his kind heart, is still somewhat clueless on my wardrobe needs.  After a day in the field after a promotion, where I was working out how to get the team in to someplace very rugged and remote with a helicopter, and who would have sidearms for the bears, Dad called and asked "so, did you wear a nice dress?". But I do love my Dad, especially for that day long ago, where he put his own feelings and wishes aside to ensure I was happy.

So many years ago, I was humiliated at school by being different.  I wanted nothing more at that age to fit in, to be a part of the crowd, to not walk home alone from school. Now, my crowd is simply a small tribe of people who accept me as I am, with no expectations or demands.  If I am not in their company, I am perfectly fine being alone with my thoughts and my button-downs.

As I went for a walk this evening, the park is empty, everyone off having dinner somewhere. I walk down the path, waffle stompers on my feet, in jeans and a sweater and a .45 on my hip under my vest. I walk alone, as the shadow of the day's retrograde washes over me, splashing down deep into the darkened bowl of the evening, the placid well that is twilight. Now, years later, being different is simply who I am. What is in me, what you see in my eyes, see in my stride, has nothing to do with what adorns my body, but what drives it.

But there are those boots. . . . .

Why Women Spend So Much Time in the Bathroom - The TRUTH REVEALED

I have had a number of people, well, women readers who have become friends anyway, that have sent comments via email regarding my hair photo on the right sidebar of the blog and it's alleged natural beauty.

Just so you know, said picture involved a haircut cost that would have made Congress proud, three different hair products, a round brush, a hair dryer, a curling iron, cursing in various languages including really bad Swedish, good lighting and 45 minutes in the bathroom.

Gentlemen, there's a reason the women in your life spend a lot of time in there. But for their loved ones, for those special occasions and the occasional internet picture, it's worth it. For yes, because we want to look nice for you, we are doing the hairstyling equivalent of photoshopping our head

For THIS is what my hair looks like when I wake up in the morning.

Baby It's Cold Outside

It's 5 degrees out (NOT considering wind chill).  Miss Schmoochieface Dog did NOT want to go for a walk.

On Failure - Flatjacks

How can you screw up a pancake? Well, you can.  

After a hard work week, I had a serious craving for them. It was 10 degrees out and I was teleworking.  A perfect morning for pancakes. I was seriously tired, (when your eyes look like Chinese flags even VISINE® is not going to help) but was determined to make them, turning down Partners offer to make some eggs and toast..  I decided to try a new recipe using some self-rising flour.  Once on the griddle, I noticed how, well, thin, they were.

They weren't puffing up at all. Partner looked in on them and said "are we having French crepes?"

No, Flatjacks.

I looked at the counter at the two flour containers.  *%#@  I used the NON self-rising flour.  I was making hardtack.

OK, I can make another batch, except I was out of eggs and butter and though the store is just a 10 minute drive, it IS kind of cold out.  To the Internets!  I found a vegan pancake recipe on a blog, made with no butter or eggs and the picture looked like regular pancakes.  I made them as instructed and they looked like the picture.  But let's just say, assuming they have a long shelf life, they'll be perfect for the first aid kit to pack wounds. Absorbent, not edible.  Another failure.

Flopcakes.

Attempt #3, with fresh butter and eggs from the store (and look, bacon fell into the cart!), went much better.

But I realized until I catch up on my sleep,  it's best to putter around using the simplest of tools.  Perhaps like 3 or 4 new screwdrivers that showed up on the Range last weekend.

The screwdriver, the tool that likely every household has at least one of.  It has long genealogy, with Archimedes considered to have invented the screw in the third century B.C.with others saying it was Nebuchadnezzar II who did. Actually, what Archimedes of Syracuse invented was designed to transfer motion (as in the continuous worm of a worm and gear assembly), rather than to fasten two things together, so I'd say he didn't really likely "invent" the screw, though no one really knows for sure.  What we do know is that  around the first century, screw shaped tools became common,  with early  screws were made from wood and were used in wine presses, olive oil presses, and such.

If you have enough books, you'll find there's historical records on everything, tools, cars, party boats (which according to famed tool guy Red Green, date back to Cleopatra and the crew of the Exxon-Valdez). But there is a ton of information on the Roman Era and the many developments in tooling and building that came about during that time. Romans had most of our other hand tools and also invented the stiffened backsaw, whose blade is reinforced at the top. This prevents straight-through cuts, but in combination with a miter box, can be useful for cabinetwork.

Cranks showed up in the The Middle Ages, as did the carpenter's brace.  The handsaw, too, is even more ancient.  Archaeologists have found metal-toothead Egyptian saws dating back to 1500 B.C., with  broad blades, some as long as twenty inches, curved wooden handles and irregular teeth.

A soft metal was used, copper, which required the saw to be pulled, not pushed to keep it from buckling.  Since during the pull you can't bear down on the cutting stroke, sawing wood for the Egyptians must have been about as much fun as plumbing.  The Romans used iron for the blades, making them stiffer.

The Romans also added something to the world's toolbox of cutting tools that were beyond ingenious for its time. The frame saw. A fairly cheap narrow blade is held in a wooden frame and is kept taut by tightening a cord. Wooden frame saws worked so well that they continued as the most common type of saw well into the 19th century and if you look at your hacksaw in the garage closely, you can see the principle is still alive (though if your spouse catches you in the shop fondling and staring at your hacksaw he or she may cut off the beer supply).

The first metal screws used as fasteners date back to the 15th century. They had square or hexagonal heads and were not turned with a screwdriver, but a wrench. Screws also appeared as a spinoff from Renaissance warfare, keeping the parts of a matchlock rifle linked. The screws of the 16th century were hand-cut which is both expensive and less than reliable, but they were needed for timepieces as well as armaments. At the end of the 1700s, screw-cutting lathes were developed, making screws more widely available and consistently sized.

But when did the "screwdriver" show up on the scene?

Scottish crafts manuals from around the time of the American Revolution give screwdrivers as "turnscrews"; the same word in French, tournevis, turns up in 1723. .But the origin of the screwdriver itself is obscure and not widely mentioned in texts even though screws were evident in many applications during this early period.

Now, there are multiple types of screwdrivers, cabinet screwdrivers, stubby screwdrivers, electricians screwdrivers, spiral ratchet, etc, and assorted tips, Parallel tip, Pozidriv,  Phillips, Clutch, Robertson.

Some handles and shanks can take multiple tips, and one of them here even has a magnet built into the shaft.  You might laugh at the Ronco Food Dehyradator/Flashlight/Auger but combination tools have been around since ancient times, the two oldest woodworking tools being the ax (timber!) and the adz, with its blade turned ninety degrees, which is then used for dressing the timber.  The Minoans in Crete were using it long before the Romans started getting that bigger toolbox.

Some of the modern screwdrivers have the head as you see in the pictures here, others have a bulbous head, which provides a little better grip, with a greater area of surface contact between paw and tool, but that's just my preference.

But the other day, there was a Sears Hardware going out  of business and well

Tools

Sale

Need I say more.

Just a few were picked up, with one deciding difference.  Something you all may know, but I didn't catch on to immediately.

Square versus round shank.  What's the advantage of the square?

You can place a wrench on the square shank so you can apply torque with one hand and downward pressure with the other which is more effective than simply trying to twist the handle, especially when you don't have the upper body strength of most handymen (but more than Justin Beiber).

It's also more effective in stripping out slots on screws on 1960's British Cars.

On Friendship

Chapter 22 - On Friendship (From True Course - Lessons From a Life Aloft, Outskirts Press 2019.

I think the friends we make in the aviation business are unique. There's something about sitting inside for a meal after a long day in the cockpit, watching the lights reflected in your beverage, a long day ended, that sometimes is the best part of the day. It was a chance to relax and share conversation with someone, who between 4:00 a.m. show times and approaches to minimums in heavy snow squalls and turbulence, became your friend.

It's the time you review the doings of the day, when you tell stories and bragged softly and the advertised glamour of being a pilot emerges long enough to make you believe it and forget for a moment the lack of sleep, lack of pay when you first started out, and too frequent lack of respect.

Growing up in a mostly male household and spending all of my early life in a male-dominated profession, I have no idea how most women choose their friends. But it seems that men have two kinds of friends. The first kind of friendship develops slowly, the friendship growing like an oak, thickening each year. My dad, in his ‘90s now, has that kind of friend. The kid with whom he played stickball is now the guy with whom he plays cards.

The second kind of friend is different. The bond is instant, forged under fire, molded in the heat of battle. For many that friendship is forged in the military or law enforcement. For me anyway, that kind of friendship was forged in the cockpit. I guess it's for this reason, rather than for any love of the thrill of working long days in decrepit aircraft for five hundred dollars a month, that I remember my first days as an airline pilot as being the best years of my life.

When I wasn't flying, I was hiking and climbing. It was more a technical hike than a true climb but we still loved it. My friends with whom I flew also joined me on such adventures.  Climbers, at least those who manage to do it without breaking something, learn early on that there is no adversary in climbing. You can't “conquer” a mountain. There are times when I got halfway up, and enveloped briefly in both cloud and the excess of testosterone in the air, stopped, afraid to move. Yet my friends were with me, encouraging and guiding as the sun came out again and, on those occasions, the mountain sometimes granted me the privilege of a successful summit.

I did most of this in the Pacific Northwest and Colorado and the friendships formed there warm me still. Understand now, we reached the summits of nothing more than a couple of 14,000-foot peaks, not anything requiring professional mountaineering skill. I did my excursions with a ragtag bunch of amateurs rounded up from the crew lounge.

Our hikes and climbs weren’t the stuff of today’s YouTube videos. Our efforts were simply free form days of testing our limits. Adventures fueled by caffeine, youth, and the unspoken octane of facing up to fear in something other than an airplane. We tackled such trips with fierce pride, in our unity, in our will, even as we prayed to God each night that we’d make it home safe, to that God that looks after new-hire copilots no doubt. With this faith, we simply put one foot in front of the other, until the journey was complete.

It was on one of these climbs that we met Frank. He was from the U.K., the robust sort of fellow who looked on life as an exercise for the heart to prepare it for encounters with the rest of the world. He was an ordained minister, and one morning on a trail on the side of Mt. Rainier he produced a Bible, a small metal flask of wine and some week-old bread and ministered a quiet communion to us.  As I held that little piece of bread in my mouth, looking out onto a landscape that was as pure and pristine as forgiveness, hearing the sounds of nature behind the words of sacrament, that simple act brought tears to my eyes.

The major airlines started hiring again, and most of us moved on, but stayed in touch, trading stories of our flights in the Army Reserve or the Air National Guard as well as pictures of our new and improved airplanes. We would try and get together each year, usually in Montana where a couple of us had family.  Frank even joined us a time or two, and we could sit around the fire after a day of fishing or just wandering the woods, proclaiming this an aviator’s true calling as from the white ash of a campfire, our old memories cooled as we made new ones.

It was a few years later, most of us scattered and gone, with new jobs, spouses, and all the trappings of adulthood when the call came.  Frank died while on a trip visiting his family.  There was going to be a funeral in his homeland.  But our flying schedules and budgets prohibited the majority of us from such a trip.  So we met someplace close.  We drank too much, we reminisced at length, and it was only when the words grew cold with the night air did we raise our glasses to the man in the empty chair.

What's on YOUR TV Tonight

I seldom watch TV at home. Mostly as we got rid of ours about 5 years ago and just watch boxed sets of our favorite shows on the humongous computer monitor I have in my office/den/writer's den of brain block.

But sometimes when traveling for work, I arrive back at the hotel, peruse the room service menu, and too tired to post anything of worth, consider TV. But not for long. If I watch, I do like the History Channel, NCIS, Red Green, Firefly, Top Gear and some old shows and movies, especially westerns and old classics. When I was commuting and had the crash pad I got the most basic and cheapest of cable service and only because with Internet I got a deal. So in watching that I discovered several things. There is NO subject off limits in commercials. (Seriously, I don't want to know about the amazing merits of "Panty Shields with Wings!". Wings? Good Lord, they act like we won WWII with those things. Also, "have a nice period" Shouldn't that be changed to "vehicular manslaughter is wrong")? If you are dead due to Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (caused by breathing the microscopic dust of ground up yard gnomes used in older insulation) you are NOT able to call the attorney listed at the end of the commercial. No matter what time it is and how basic your cable, on one channel will be Law and Order Special Victims Unit. 

I also rediscovered why I don't watch much television. One late nights selection: Talk show with guest - liberal Hollywood airheaded "actress" Zombie Strippers (wait, wasn't that just on the previous channel?) Cindy Crawfords Skin Secrets! Bridalplasty Rock of Love Murder She Wrote (look, every time Jessica Fletcher shows up at a dinner party someone gets murdered, and yet she keeps getting invited, hellooooo) Great Horse Cleaning Tips ( Maybe that was "house cleaning", at least I hope so.) Depression and Anxiety Help (you invited Jessica Fletcher over for beer and Brats didn't you?) Pimp my mailbox (or some such home decorating show) Infomercials (I've got to get one now, I've nothing to wear if Caligula comes on later) , Petty Officer Junction - (the silly other NCIS show) BBC's "Fastest Animals on Earth (sorry folks it's still a fully grown Holstein dropped from a C-130 at 150.626 ft/sec assuming a 0.7 drag coefficient) And of course, Home Shopping Channel: Buy Jewelry Now! Jewelry and You! Jewelry to accessorize with your wearable towel! What were/are your favorite shows? If the Internet was down tomorrow for something what would you watch? Or would you watch at all?

Sourdough Start to the New Year - This is for you, Old NFO

I knew I could get your attention. . . 

If you're going into the New Year and your familiarity with sourdough is the occasional store bought bread, you owe it to yourself to try the real thing.  There are as many starter recipes as there are cooks.  One that is popular is a sourdough starter made with mashed potatoes and potato water  from a well known celebrity chef.  A great recipe to be sure, but also much more labor intensive.

A number of other starters require one to constantly "feed" the starter, which results in a really distinct taste over time, but for those that may not bake regularly, or get all distracted out in the shop, your sourdough starter will end up as dead as your house plants and if you've used a recipe that takes a lot of time, you're not likely to start another one.

This recipe is easy enough that you can start one over easily, and with the help of the potato that jump starts the yeast, it ferments quite rapidly so you can make your bread just a day after you have started it, though longer time gives a more noticeable "sourdough" taste.

1 package (or cake) active dry yeast (not the instant)
4 cups warm spring water or quality tap water (my tap water tastes like someone soaked a deep sea diving suit in it).
3 tablespoons sugar
4 cups unbleached all purpose flour (I'm a fan of King Arthur' flour for general baking)

Dissolve the yeast in the warm (not hot) water (about 3 minutes), then stir in the sugar and the flour. To help feed the fermenting yeast  I add one medium sized Idaho potato, washed, peeled and cut into quarters. Place mixture in a pottery bowl, cover with a clean  kitchen towel and let stand  8-12 hours in a warm place, free from drafts, stirring occasionally. Then keep lightly covered and stored in the refrigerator until ready to use.   If you do wish to "feed" the starter, rather than start the recipe over each time, replace used starter by adding equal parts flour and warm water with a couple teaspoons of sugar (i.e. for each two cups starter used, add in one cup flour, one cup warm water and the sugar).

Sourdough is obviously good for baked bread and biscuits, but it has other uses, a great batter for chicken fried steak (that recipe another day), waffles and corn bread.

Yes cornbread.  Sourdough Cornbread

It's got a slight tang and a much softer texture than regular cornbread while maintaining that tender crumb. 

Serve it with some HOTR King Ranch Chicken made with lime marinaded chicken, Penzey's Chili 9000 and Indiana's own Scoville Brothers Singing Smoke Hot Sauce.

Whatever the New Year has on your horizon, it can't hurt to face it with a really good meal.