New Beginnings.

Dear Democrats:

Looks like we won this thing!

DON'T FUCK IT UP.

Love,
The Idiot.

Posted on November 4, 2008 11:19 PM | link to this entry | comments (1)

Your Media Is Lying To You.

Sitting in our living room last night, quietly caring for our newborn daughter, we were watching news reports about the bailout rejection and the corresponding stock market drop. Both cable news organizations screamed bloody murder and blamed Democrats for screwing everything up; predictably, the talking heads all pointed fingers at the House leadership for failing to secure the necessary votes to pass the legislation. Nowhere do I remember anyone actually tallying the votes for us to hear.

Later, I made a trip to the grocery store during which I listened to the BBC World Service on NPR. The commentator quickly summed up the actual facts: a majority of Republican legislators in the house voted against the bill, and a majority of Democrats voted for it. So how is that a Democratic failure? Especially when most news services are now saying that a flood of angry pressure from constituents opposed to the bill played a crucial role in its defeat?

While I don't want to see our flawed, jury-rigged economic system collapse under its own bloated weight, I do wish there was some way to resolve the situation without having to pay to prop up the institutions that have brought it so close to collapse. I do hope that the final bill presented to and passed by the House has provisions for binding oversight and regulation; it's been made pretty plain in the last six months that the free-market system isn't so free.

Posted on September 30, 2008 10:35 AM | link to this entry | comments (0)

Distracting Myself.

My pop is now off the ventilator, with a tracheotomy tube, and sitting upright, which is a great sign. He's writing things we can actually understand and itching to get out of the bed; most of all he wants to EAT.

This is a revisit of the postcard Jen and I bought months ago, and for this one I decided to overlay the old with the new to see the changes 100 years will make. It took a little finagling with depth of field and a bit of Photoshop work to get the postcard light enough to see, but the results are worth the effort.

Posted on May 9, 2008 12:52 PM | link to this entry | comments (1)

Relics and Artifacts

Our new gallette iron (Berarducci model Grand GI-3) showed up yesterday! It's in absolutely beautiful condition when compared to the other one I bought last year. Notice the difference in the size of the patterns—the top is a Petit GI-1. I must now resist the urge to track down a GI-2 to complete the trio.

And, as a heartfelt and thoughtful birthday gift, the Scout's new daddy gave me this beautiful display case, with a fender badge cut from the original sheet metal and a copy of the VIN tag (he needs the real thing to re-register the chassis with the DMV). I need to dig up my Chewbacca action figure and put him in the case too.

Posted on March 28, 2008 10:26 AM | link to this entry | comments (2)

Local History.

Today I was at a client site attempting to troubleshoot what could generously be called the worst piece of commercial software I've ever looked at. It turned out that I couldn't do anything to solve the problem, but what made the trip worthwhile was the location: a bombed-out looking collection of stone and brick buildings, decidedly 19th century architecture, surrounded by fields of junk and a mountain of steaming mulch. Many of the structures looked fascinating and practically begged for further exploration, but discretion won out over curiosity and I elected to shoot from a distance (mostly).

My Google-fu reveals the origins of this strange wasteland: it is the remnants of Daniels, MD, a mill town dating back to the 1840s, which was laid waste by Hurricane Agnes in 1972. The cupola in the photo above is the bell tower of the St. Albans church, now bricked up to prevent vandalism.

For train nuts, this is a tour of the old B&O Main line, which cuts right through the heart of what used to be Daniels. This site is notable for the excellent aerial photo of the mill in 1956.

Posted on March 20, 2008 4:27 PM | link to this entry | comments (0)

Your Bill of Rights And You.

"You cannot expect phone companies to participate if they feel like they're gonna be sued. I...I mean...It is..These people are responsible for shareholders. They're private companies."

—President George W. Bush, January 28, 2008, talking about the warrantless wiretapping program and the "Protect America Act".

What is it about that statement that makes my blood pressure spike? Again, when did my rights as an American citizen suddenly vaporize? Whatever happened to my Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure?

I don't give a shit about the telco companies. I don't give a rat's ass if they get sued six ways to Sunday by every one of their customers. They chose to aid the government with this program (except for Quest), they have cadres of expensive lawyers who tell them what to do, and they can sink or swim on their own. It's obvious Bush doesn't care about being responsible for us, the citizens of his country, by the letter of the Constitution, which requires that a warrant be supported by probable cause and sworn to by someone who is accountable for it. We as citizens should be outraged by this invasion of our privacy, but we're not.

The argument "I don't care if they listen, because I'm not doing anything wrong," is weak and ignorant. We have laws that state clearly what the President is allowed to do in the interest of national security; in this case it's the 1978 FISA act, which never required a court order in the first place. This administration felt it needed to expand the scope of its powers beyond any type of oversight or accountability, which immediately makes me suspicious of its motives.

When a government oversteps the written laws, the erosion of those laws is the inevitable result. Grabbing for unlimited power is human nature, and our laws are there to keep that impulse in check. This administration has repeatedly asserted that it is not accountable to Congress for its actions, many of which make a mockery of its claim to defend "freedom".

I feel less and less like I want to participate in this society if I feel like I'm living in a police state, governed by vague threats of fear and panic. My President should be accountable to his shareholders too, but nobody seems to give a shit about what this administration does.

Update 3.7.08: See this article for more information on abuses of power.

Posted on February 29, 2008 11:11 AM | link to this entry | comments (0)

Familiar Church.

The only things we bought last week at the DC Big Flea were very, very small. Jen stopped at a vendor who had vast plastic trays of postcards arranged on a table, categorized by location, and her eagle eye found the county my parents live in almost immediately. She picked up a small sheaf of cards and two immediately caught her attention: the church across the street from my parents' house, and a shot of Main street in their town.

Lousy camerphone image, sorry

The helpful vendor dated them for us sometime between 1901 and 1908, when they were known as "souvenir cards". At that time the USPS still prohibited private companies from calling them post cards, and the sender could only include a short message on the front side. In 1908 the prohibition was struck down, and anyone could publish post cards with the familiar divided back.

These two were printed in Germany, a sign of their quality, and have the location printed in script on the front (I've removed it to protect the innocent). At the time, it cost one US Cent to mail.

I would give anything to go back in time to turn the camera about 120° to the left for a shot of my folks' house.

Posted on January 17, 2008 9:25 AM | link to this entry | comments (0)

Swamp Ghost.

In old historical plane news, The Swamp Ghost, a B-17E sitting in a marsh in Papua New Guinea since 1942, is in the middle of a legal dispute between the PNG government and the American businessman who claims the salvage rights. In the 1960's, the U.S. Government relinquished all rights to any crashed or abandoned military equipment, excluding underwater wrecks, placing this airframe into a curious limbo. Other wrecks have been "salvaged" from PNG and restored to flying status, but for some reason the removal of this particular B-17 got people upset.

I've seen pictures of this plane before in its original location, but wasn't aware it's been moved—it's sitting on a dock, disassembled, awaiting the resolution of the legal dispute. From what I can tell, PNG isn't letting it leave, and most likely it will stay there (unless they ship it to the states for a restoration, which I doubt they have money for).

In any case, stay tuned for more airplane pictures this weekend...details to come.

Posted on October 11, 2007 11:57 AM | link to this entry | comments (1)

The Smell of Change

There's a certain scent in the air today. It's something I associate with the age of ten or eleven, when I lived in a big house in the Connecticut woods and spent most of my time outside exploring. At the time I had a fascination with hunting, the army, the woods, and survival in the elements, so I built forts and bunkers and tree stands with my buddies, who shared the same interests I did (and who also lived on multi-acre plots of land like us.)

We'd stay out in the woods until the sun got low and filtered through the low-hanging leaves, and the temperature would drop, bringing out a particular earthy fragrance from the forest floor: The rich, loamy smell of leaves, heated and cooled, mixed with rich, moist earth, and a touch of fresh-cut grass, signalling the shortening days and cooler nights of fall just around the corner. It usually meant we were wearing jackets and jeans instead of shorts, school was back in session (so we were ducking schoolwork as long as we could) and we stayed out of the wetlands so we wouldn't freeze as the sun went down.

Around the time dusk fell and we smelled woodsmoke through the trees, which meant that parents were home and settling in for the evening, we'd gather up our gear and say our goodbyes, then scatter our separate ways on well-worn paths through the forest. Days like this make me think of that brief, magical time of my life when afternoons lasted forever, Intellivision was my religion, Duran Duran were the biggest thing on the radio, my three best friends lived within walking distance, and the world was ours to explore.

Posted on September 14, 2007 11:11 AM | link to this entry

Crown Cork & Seal

Yesterday I had the lucky fortune to wander around a Baltimore landmark I've always wondered about but never been inside: The Crown Cork & Seal factory on the city's east side. I was searching for a vendor to drop off a package, and it took me some careful moseying around the property to find them.

Unfortunately, I didn't have a whole lot of time to explore or shoot photos, but certain parts of the sprawling complex have a Children of Men/Full Metal Jacket-type feel to them: ancient brick buildings, soaring courtyards filled with years of debris and trash, along with the odd shopping cart or plastic storage bin.

After being shuttered in 1956 when management moved the company headquarters to Philadelphia, the 15-acre site lay empty (as far as I can tell; information online is sketchy at best) until recently. Now it looks like the property has been split up into separate rentable buildings under the care of a management company.

At some point, I'd love to go back and spend a day shooting everything I saw.

Posted on September 7, 2007 11:18 AM | link to this entry | comments (1)

Because Two Isn't Enough.

Bush Aide: Military Could Go Into Pakistan.

So, let me break this down a little here. Our president, whose approval numbers are in the dumper, but who still controls the Senate, has a plan to make America love him again: He's thinking about going into Pakistan to get Bin Laden because Musharraf hasn't done so.

I can't think of a more misguided foreign policy that that, other than, perhaps, just nuking Russia for the hell of it. Pakistan is already a pretty shaky ally, and Musharraf by all accounts is walking a thin line between secular progress and another Islamic state. (Remember, Pakistan and India have been lobbing 'test nukes' at each other for ten years, and Pakistan is also pretty cozy with China.) What our government still hasn't grasped is the fact that things aren't black and white like they insist on believing—and why their policy in Iraq has gone so badly. A thousand years of tribal, ethnic, and religious quarrels between hundreds of separate groups is not going to miraculously work itself out after the tanks enter town and everyone gets a Hershey bar.

The simple idea that the leadership of this country is even considering entering another country and destabilizing the government there—can anybody say Cambodia?—makes me shudder. I hope to god the commanding generals find their balls and talk some sense into the cowboys in the White House.

Also, why isn't this the top headline in today's news? Seriously, in about 30-point type?

Posted on July 23, 2007 8:31 AM | link to this entry | comments (2)

History Classes.

I got an email a few days ago from a friend who recommended me for a teaching job at a local college. I don't have a lot of the details yet, but the position involves teaching courses within Adobe's design suite, which is right up my alley. The idea of teaching got me excited, because I really enjoy it, and it's something I've been thinking about doing (without actually knowing how to go about it) for a long time.

I got a taste for it back in 1999 when I was working for a web development shop and we were finishing up a custom-built content management system for a local weekly magazine, which had no previous presence on the web. After I'd designed and built the front end for the website, I realized we were going to need to train the print-based staff how to move their workflow to the web. I spent a long week organizing, designing and building an interactive training course for the staff, including some of the first rudimentary programming I'd ever done.

After I got it finished, I showed it to my bosses and they nodded their heads blankly. I found out at that point there was no plan in place for setting up the training courses—they hadn't set aside a room, I had no provision for computers, and we didn't even have enough tables.

Working quickly, I scrounged up eight Macs (their production workflow was Mac-based), a conference room, a crateful of keyboards, mice, and network cables, and put together a networked classroom in one afternoon. My company hadn't made provisions for food, so I organized morning coffee and snacks, as well as lunch deliveries for the break.

The training course itself went off without a hitch—after all that preparation I was feeling very confident, and after jitters at the beginnning my delivery smoothed out and my breathing returned to normal. The staff was trained properly, and they still use the CMS we built to this day.

Fast forward eight (!?!!) years to this email: I knew I had a good copy of the training course archived somewhere, so I went back through my disc catalog to find the best copy and spent a half-hour cleaning up the pages and relinking the scripts on my webserver. I was, and still am, proud of that course, because I put the entire thing together myself, and used the experience to get over my fear of speaking and teaching in front of a group. I found, as the days went on, that I actually liked it, and that I had a talent for finding different ways to explain a concept until everyone understood it.

This experience made it easier to agree to teach a flex design class at MICA a few years ago, which went off pretty well as far as I could tell. While I had some problems feeling qualified to teach a design class while I was employed as an artist at a videogame developer, I felt good about the design problem I created and better about some of the solutions the students came up with.

I followed up with the contact yesterday, linking to the class pages and my resume, and crossed my fingers. This morning I got a very positive response and an invitation to the senior thesis opening where I'll be able to meet the contact face to face. While I'm told the money isn't huge (but, then, when did anyone ever get rich as a teacher?) I'm excited to dip my feet back in the water—I'm looking forward to widening my horizons.

Posted on May 17, 2007 9:04 AM | link to this entry

Return From The Land of Cheese.

The Lockard Tour Van is back in town after a whirlwind three-night limited engagement to support Annie, who kind of got her diploma Saturday morning, and all I can say is that I'm still tired. Our first stop was Ashland, Ohio, to prepare for the graduation ceremony, and as we loaded up the van we were given our itinerary, typed neatly on a single sheet of paper. To the hour, our schedule was outlined in Times New Roman to keep the caravan on track, and even though it was handy to have, we used it to poke fun at Jen's dad good-naturedly throughout the trip.

Despite some last-minute drama, the graduation went off without a hitch, and even though the threat of rain loomed, it turned out to be a beautiful day. We shared a late lunch with Jen's aunt and then passed out back at the hotel to sleep off the carbohydrates. Before venturing out for a late dinner, we hijacked Jen's father into a visit to the CHEESEBARN, an inexplicably-named highway attraction up the road from our hotel. Unfortunately, the CHEESEBARN was closed and we weren't able to explore its wonders in detail.

However, we did stop for a picture out front.

Then we enjoyed a prolonged tour of the seedier side of Mansfield, OH, looking for somewhere other than a Perkins to eat dinner; the directions given were, shall we say, vague, and it took a while to get oriented until we found an Olive Garden to stop at.

Sunday morning we were under strict orders to be loaded and ready by 8:30, because the day was tightly planned: we were stopping in to visit with Jen's great aunt, who is in a retirement home, and then on to visit her mother's gravesite. Her great aunt is still sharp and funny, and we were presently joined by a group of cousins who helped us take over the entire front room of the facility.

Driving on to the gravesite, we passed fields that had been flooded in January of 2005 (we were some of the last cars allowed in before the state troopers shut the highway down that night), through the sleepy, worn-down town, and up the hill to where her marker sat in bright afternoon sunshine. The family had about ten minutes alone with her before a gaggle of extended family arrived, and then we stood around and caught up with folks we hadn't seen in two years.

And then, it was time to load up the van and get on the road. The trip back was uneventful, apart from everyone in the van (including driver) dozing off after lunch at the Sonic, and we were treated to a tour of the rolling hills of West Virginia and miles of empty countryside until we made it back to town last night. And I'll be damned if Jen's Dad didn't get us home a half-hour ahead of schedule.

Posted on May 14, 2007 9:28 AM | link to this entry

Danger

The peeling wall of a gun battery in Golden Gate National Recreation Area. This place reminded me of the old batteries on the North Jersey shore by my grandmother's house, and the photos I've seen of the prewar fortifications in the Philippines. This kind of stuff fascinates me for reasons I can't explain; I like the idea of modern concrete castles and huge guns on disappearing carriages guarding the city from attack by sea.

Posted on March 27, 2007 2:02 PM | link to this entry | comments (2)

Flying Aces

I'm sorry for the extended absence; between a nasty stomach virus (the 8-20 day kind) and a healthy pile of work, I was a pretty quiet boy last week. I'm pressed for time this morning, so any update is going to have to wait until this afternoon, unfortunately.

I leave you here with a picture of my father-in-law's new posessions: a stack of airplane magazines from the late 30's, featuring vivid color covers, bare-knuckled serial tales of air pirates, dogfights, and adventure, balsa wood kit plans, and grainy pictures of exotic airplanes. Simply beautiful.

Posted on February 12, 2007 9:16 AM | link to this entry

Martin Mars Flying Boat

Via a circuitous route, I found this article on the NYT last night: Flying Behemoth May Find Its Way Home. Some background:

Glenn L. Martin was an early aviation pioneer, a contemporary (and one-time partner of) the Wright Brothers, who started out building trainers for the US Army Air Corps, and later several successful bomber designs used by the Army and the US Postal Service. Starting out in Cleveland, he bought a huge parcel of land in Middle River, Maryland, and moved the company there in 1929. The Martin company became known for its bombers, and, more visibly, its flying boats, including one version of the famous China Clipper, which flew the San Francisco to Manila route before World War Two.

During the war, they designed and built several medium bombers (the infamous B-26 and its lesser-known British-used cousin, the Baltimore) and flying boats (the PBM Mariner, and the JRM Mars), and after the war the company enjoyed fewer successes in a consolidating marketplace. After Martin's death in 1955, the company ended production of airplanes in 1960 to focus on missiles, and after few mergers in the 60's, the company became Lockheed Martin. Production on missiles was already happening elsewhere, and employment at the Baltimore aircraft plants was scaled back dramatically from a wartime high of 53,000.

This story circles back to a famous plane Martin built during the war, though: The JRM Mars, originally conceived in 1935 as a "battleship of the sky", was designed with a 200' wingspan—greater than a 747. The first model was built and flown through the early years of the war until the Navy realized that huge armed seaplanes were more of a target than an offensive weapon. However, they recognized a need for a long distance cargo carrier, and in 1944 they requested 20 Mars flying boats. The Martin company redesigned the plane for its new role and began production. After the surrender of Japan in 1945, they scaled back the order and six planes were eventually built. They were christened with exotic names: Two Hawaiis (the first was destroyed in a fire in 1945), the Caroline, the Marianas, the Phillippine, and the Marshall. The Marshall was lost off Hawaii in 1950, but the remaining Mars boats served the Navy until 1954, when they were retired and sold for scrap metal.

They were then bought by an enterprising Canadian pilot in 1959, who converted them for use as water bombers on the Pacific coast. The Marianas Mars was converted first, and had a few successful months before it was crashed by an overzealous pilot in 1960. The Caroline Mars was converted next, but unfortunately was lost in a winter storm in 1962. The remaining two boats have remained in trouble-free service in British Columbia since then.

However, the 60-year-old planes have gotten more expensive to run, and their owner has put them up for sale. Several interested parties have expressed interest, including the National Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola, and a consortium of Baltimore businessmen and avaition historians.

Personally, I'd love it if they were able to exhibit one here in Maryland, but I'd be afraid they'd have to keep it outside in the elements where it could decay in the weather. Pensacola is too far away but much more temperate, and the scope of the museum down there ensures the plane's future preservation. A happy middle ground: The Udvar-Hazy museum out by Dulles—there's plenty of room there, and the Smithsonian takes good care of its planes.

More reading:
Glenn L. Martin Aircraft Company, from the Maryland Online Encyclopedia
Martin Aircraft History, The Maryland Aviation Museum
The Martin Flying Boats, Vectorsite

Posted on January 31, 2007 11:01 AM | link to this entry

My Pops

Over a tray of clear liquids, which is a good sign. His appetite is strong and he's looking much better.

Posted on January 6, 2007 10:21 PM | link to this entry

Crossed Fingers

This is the best news I've heard in a long time. I realize there are still votes to be counted, and here in Maryland the Governor's race is up in the air, but it's looking better and better as the morning progresses. Let us all hope that the Senate swings Democratic as well as the House, and that some sanity is restored to the political process here in America.

Update: Oh, it's going so much better than I'd hoped. Governor hairpiece just conceded, Democrats won Montana, and now Rumsfeld is resigning? Bust out the party hats and the whisky—it's time to celebrate.

Posted on November 8, 2006 9:30 AM | link to this entry

Confused.

I don't know which is worse—the fact that after Spetember 11, our government has been reviewing our phone call histories, the fact that the three big telco vendors sold our records to the government (no big surprise there), or the fact that half the country doesn't seem to give a shit. One of the key reasons I'm socially Democratic is because I am a firm believer in my civil liberties (those I still have left, that is.)

It's not so much that the government is looking at who is calling who (when one caller is in a foreign country, from what they claim). It's that this administration does everything under the nebulous veil of "National Security", without consulting my representatives in Congress, something that is, um, AGAINST THE LAW. Or, at least, that's what Mr Fahey taught me in public high school seventeen years ago.

Posted on May 13, 2006 4:47 PM | link to this entry | comments (2)

A Little More Vehicle History.

When I was a sophomore in college, my parents sent me back to school in a silver Mazda pickup. They'd obviously considered the choice, and now that I look back at it, they were smart: I could move all my crap with it, I couldn't put more than two other people in the cab with me (although I did haul quite a few people around in the back, in less-than-optimal comfort) and I made a pretty good second income moving people around the neighborhood between semesters. My father was kind enough to give it to me as a graduation present after college, and I think he knew that it would come in handy.

I had to sell it sometime around 1997 or so when the amount of oil I was adding each week eclipsed the amount of gas. Two little men showed up in a lowered teal Nissan and drove my little truck away to be chopped, bondoed, and painted primer gray. Since then, I've forced the cars that followed to fit the mold of all-purpose utility vehicle: I stuffed four sheets of plywood into the hatch of my CRX with four bags of ready-mix cement—you'd be surprised how much a Honda will hold. The year I bought the Scout, I hauled the debris of my basement demolition project to the dump in multiple pre-dawn trips. I think the Tortoise probably bore the brunt of my ambitions, though: hauling recycled brick in the trunk across Canton, sheets of drywall on the roof rack—hell, every stick of wood that went into my rowhome, and every bag of cement.

The Jeep has been great for moving building materials around, but where things like yard waste and carpeting are concerned, it's not big enough and I can't wash it out with a hose. And given the amount of garbage we've generated since we've been in this house, I think I'd be broke if I tried to haul it all myself. Our good friend Dave finally got tired of being shanghaiied into helping us haul trash for the umpteenth time, so he lent us Clifford the Big Red Truck on Wednesday.

When switching to a vehicle the length of a schoolbus, the technique of pre-visualization comes in real handy. Simple operations like navigating a parking lot take planning and nerves of steel. One doesn't simply make a lane change, especially with a bedful of yard waste flapping around by the tailgate. Turning a corner brings one much closer to the folks in the opposite lane than they're usually comfortable with (however, the look of terror on their faces is always good for a laugh.) The amount of respect one commands while driving such a truck at the rental office, though, makes up for any inconvenience. We rented the largest tiller at the garage, a 14-horsepower hydraulically powered beast, and within 15 minutes had turned over a 10'x20' patch of grass into arable dirt.

After four trips to the local dump, the piles of leaf bags, small brush, elm bark, and construction debris all disappeared, and our yard began to look presentable again. In a final trip to the Lowe's we picked up a shiny new grill to replace the hand-me-down that fell apart last year and assembled it in time to cook three filets to perfection last night.

This afternoon, I reluctantly turned the keys back over to Dave and we said our goodbyes to the Big Red Truck. I think after the Jeep's time is up we'll have to look into a pickup of our own, but I have to thank Dave again for letting me dream for a few brief, wonderful days.

Posted on April 9, 2006 9:45 PM | link to this entry | comments (1)

Civics Lesson.

Check out this quick audio interview with George Packer about his article in this week's issue. The article covers a maverick officer's successful attempt to lower the amount of violence in Tal Afar, one of the insurgency's hot spots in Iraq, through unconventional (read: non-Army doctrine) methods. This article dovetails nicely with the book I've been reading, which stresses the desperate need for a new style of military: smaller groups of autonomous soldiers, tasked with the simultaneous role of security, nation-building, humanitarian aid, and training, instead of large Cold War-style troop movements or Rumsfeld's high-tech, no-troops approach.

The article isn't online, but interview is a good start. I may have to find this book as well.

Posted on April 5, 2006 12:35 PM | link to this entry

A Little Personal History.

I have a coffee can I've kept my assorted small junk in for years. The printing on the can has a copyright of 1984, which doesn't accurately date the origin of the collection. I think I started collecting some of the stuff in the can in high school, when I was working at a mexican restaurant in my hometown. As anybody who works in food service knows, lots of money changes hands. (Anybody who still habitually re-arranges a sheaf of singles to all face the same way probably waited tables or worked in a bank.) I started switching out wheat pennies for my own pocket change when I saw them in the bottom of the till. At the bottom of the coffee can, I found 37 total, starting with a banged-up 1919 example and ending with a 1959. The most represented year is 1956 (7). Also from the restaurant days are two 1976 $2 bills, from a freaky guy who used to come in and pay for bowls of chili at lunchtime and try to pick up on me.

I have three 50-cent pieces (not so rare), two buffalo nickels of unknown vintage (everything but the profile of the indian and the word LIBERTY is worn off the front) and my favorite, a 1937 mercury dime. I also have an English five pence and two shilling piece. The shilling is smaller and more fussy, while the design on the back of the shilling is thick and bold, like a manhole cover. The man on the front of my German two-mark coin is pinched and constipated-looking, and his thin hair is combed off the back of his head.

I have a pile of buttons from the various military surplus pants and shorts I've owned over the years; one of the issues when owning 30-year-old old clothing is that the thread tends to be brittle and old. I always thought I'd get around to sewing them back on, but usually, I just put a belt on and wore them untill they fell apart.

There's a quartet of NYC bullseye tokens, from when I was riding the S train between Penn Station and Grand Central on my way to and from college. Along with these I have a single pentagram token from a later era.

I have my father's ID bracelet from the '50's. It has his (our) name engraved in a very elegant script. Unfortunately, it's about four sizes too large for my wrist, so I look like a mafia goon when I wear it.

I made a silver ring in high school in jewelry class (I was padding out my transcript with as much "art" as I could so that I could get a Regents diploma which ultimately did me no good). We carved the shape from wax, cast it with silver, shaped and polished the result, then added a setting and a stone. The ring is a little too big for my finger and the stone gets in the way of everyday life, so it sits in the can.

My sophomore year, I had a friend in Admissions help me make a fake college ID. My alias is William Edwards, I was born in 1969, and I still have the shitty dork-style glasses from high school—this was right before I finally got a sense of style—but looking at it now, there's no way I'd pass for a man of 21, let alone 18. There's also a staff pass from the Cones and Rods show back in '97 or '98 (the closest I ever got to VIP anywhere) which I used to wander around during the show and not talk to anybody.

There are two buttons I've had for years. One is a shamrock, and I have no idea where it came from. The second is a maroon button that says DUGAN in white letters. My sister found it in the drawer of an antique store in upstate new York years ago. I had it on the lapel of a denim jacket for a while, and then on a hat for a while longer, until I was afraid I'd lose it altogether, so I put it in the can.

I have a bullet that fits the Czechoslovakian army rifle hanging in my father's gun rack in New York. It's old, stamped 1951, and is long and sharp.

I have two brass clips from a backpack I bought in Maine in the early 90's. The backpack (probably) dates back to the first World War, as far as I can figure. It came with two very old and dried out leather straps, adjustable by unclipping each of the two brass clips and moving them up or down the strap and into new holes. I had to take the straps off when they finally broke, and someday I'll buy the leather to replace them. I've used the backpack for years to hold my illustration portfolio.

I have an assortment of seashells from various trips to the beach-mostly scallop shells, mostly black, but there's one beautiful white shell with flecks of red at the bottom. I don't know which one came from where.

There's a turquoise lapel pin from the Cloisters in New York City, someplace my father liked to take us as kids during Christmastime. I loved those trips as a kid. Going into the city always made me feel more grown-up and cosmopolitan, and the exhibits at the museum were beautiful and exotic. Plus, there was a guy in the parking lot who made some of the best chili dogs I've ever had.

I have a cap bomb I got from somewhere. It's a small metal toy in the shape of a bomb, with fins and everything. There's a weight at the front which is spring-loaded to the back, allowing a kid to put several caps (do they even sell caps anymore? answer: yes) between the weights and throw the bomb in the air. The weight and aerodynamic shape of the bomb ensures it will come down on the front, and fire off the caps—preferrably behind the back of the intended victim target.

There's a bunch of other stuff in there too, but some of it is boring, and some of it I don't have time to write about. But there's a look into the brain of your author, and what he finds worth keeping around.

Posted on December 1, 2005 11:19 AM | link to this entry | comments (1)

Disappointed.

I find this story so sad, on so many levels. When I was a kid, I used to love to read about fighter aces, and I looked up to them as heroes. I'm saddened by the fact that this man, who (I thought) stood for honor and courage, sold himself out for a fucking Rolls Royce, a house, and some antiques.

Posted on November 29, 2005 11:01 AM | link to this entry | comments (1)

Wheel Of Karma.

The five or so regular readers here are probably wondering where I've gone. After all, I'm working from home, so I should have lots of time to write, right?

The sad truth is that I feel like I have less time to write than before. Between three current projects that actually pay money, our kitchen installation (countertops are going in as I peck away) and life in general, I think the folks here at the Lockardugan Estates have less free time than they did two months ago.

There have been several folks who have made our lives easier this past month, as we hunt for food out of the boxes in our dining room and wash dishes in the bathroom. The Cauzzis generously offered their kitchen during our demolition phase downstairs, and we've taken them up on many delicious warm dinners. They are also raising three tiny babies, so we've tried to be respectful of their time and help out if we can. When Todd asked me if I could take a look at their front windows before the cold weather swept into Baltimore, I took him up on it without thinking twice.

Indulge me for a minute as I bring up a little Dugan History here. During my junior year of college, I got a side job painting the house of one of my professors, which made eating and drinking (primarily drinking) more economically feasible. I spent the fall of 1992 on her porch, scraping and painting the ceiling, listening to Pearl Jam and Nirvana from the nearby Loyola dorms and working until the dusk made it too dark to see. As word got out in the neighborhood about the student handyman, I got another job after that working on her friend M's house, shifting to interior work for the winter and back outside in the spring. She liked having me there, and we settled into a comfortable routine during the season—I'd come out and work for four hours, and she'd cook us both dinner. We became friends outside of the work I was doing on her house, and she went so far as to host a graduation party in her backyard for me.

After leaving college with a less-than-practical degree in Illustration, I kept housepainting, switching back and forth between houses, getting more and more involved as time went on. Simple painting gave way to repair carpentry, removing shingle siding, basic roofing, restoring sash windows, running air conditioning ductwork, insulating, and eventually gutting/rehabbing a bathroom in a third neighbor's house. I worked in that neighborhood for the better part of two years, and while I thought I did a pretty decent job, I was a lousy businessman. After two years I had to give it up to seek a better-paying job doing design.

Working at the Cauzzis' yesterday reminded me of that first fall I spent outdoors, working hard to keep warm and race the sun. I pulled the storms out, scraped and glazed the windows, and got a coat of primer to dry with an hour of sunlight to spare. H. made me lunch, which I finally ate at about 3, and I headed back out to put a coat of paint on the windowframes. As I was on the ladder, I was thinking about all the people in my life who have helped me along the way, and about the simple pleasure of helping my friends. I don't think I've done a very good job of tipping the scale back, but I'd like to think I made a good start yesterday. So, thanks to W. and M. for keeping me employed (and fed) back in the day, and thanks to the Cauzzis for letting me pay it forward.

Posted on November 3, 2005 8:44 AM | link to this entry | comments (1)

Sherwood Road

This is an animation of my grandparents' house between a photo taken in the mid 50's and another taken in the early 90's. I put it together about 5 or 6 years ago and forgot all about it until recently.

Posted on October 4, 2005 10:48 AM | link to this entry | comments (2)

WOW.

This is the best commentary I've heard so far from anybody, and I think it should be reprinted everywhere. (via)

Wow. Right on.

Posted on September 7, 2005 11:40 AM | link to this entry | comments (2)

You, Sir, Are A Douchebag.

"The director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Thursday those New Orleans residents who chose not to heed warnings to evacuate before Hurricane Katrina bear some responsibility for their fates." Tell that to the thousands of people who live below the poverty line and can't afford to leave, asshole. Isn't it your job to, um, figure out where they should go?

Update: This is disturbing...

Posted on September 2, 2005 10:54 AM | link to this entry | comments (4)

Call The Electrician.

So we've begun the complicated dance they call 'professional home renovation'. It's a complicated number; it involves being clean and dressed by a certain time, and the steps are more tightly choreographed. I've always compared it to swing-dancing in a minefield, based on my previous experience.

Up until the reality of hanging thousand-dollar cabinets in an out of square room hit me, I was happy to do just about everything myself. For the more specialized and dangerous tasks, like hooking high-voltage circuit breakers up to the board, or sanding oak floors, I was happy to hire somebody in. But this kitchen is a whole project; there's demolition, plumbing, electrical, carpentry, framing, and finish work to be done in a particular order, and it's all pretty specialized. If I had a million dollars and a month off work, I'd actually be looking forward to doing things like moving the gas line, or hanging the cabinets myself. But this house is out of square in four dimensions—which means I'd wake up two weeks after I started with nothing done, holding a pile of sawdust and some nails, and have no recollection of where I'd been or how the basement got flooded.

We're thrilled with the kitchen planning company we went with (more info on that later: Movable Type now has unlimited weblogs, which means the house will get its own specific page) and we already have a plumber we know and like. We had an electrician, too, but I kept losing his number. I'll back up:

Two years ago, we moved into this wreck of a house with a few conditions on the settlement. One of them was for the sellers to merge both electrical services into one (the doctor's office was separate from the house) and upgrade the panel, which dated back to the 60's and was a brand known for its ability to spontaneously catch fire. BG&E Home sent out a crew the first week we were in the house, which was a minor miracle based on further experience—I'm not recommending them—which consisted of one very nice man named B. who came to sort out the rat's nest of wiring in our basement. I was at work, and Jen was upstairs in the kitchen unpacking our collection of orphan dishes, when she realized somebody was standing in the back doorway: The doctor's son, who smelled like he'd fallen into a bottle (this was before noon on a weekday.) Jen's curiosity got her talking to this man, and she felt safe enough to walk outside with him, knowing that B. was downstairs and by the window. (I'll let her tell the rest of that story.)

Later on, after seeing the work he'd done, we got to talking with B. and asked him if he did electrical work on the side, pointing at all the ancient, deadly outlets around the house. He gave us his cell number, and I promptly lost it in the shuffle of housework and an upgrade to OS X. We tracked him down through BG&E, who gave us the number of his current employer, and I did a little social engineering with their receptionist to get his cell number. He came back out to hook up the wiring I'd prepared in the bedrooms, and a fair price for four hours' work turned into a fair price for eight hours' work (through no fault of his). He also got to meet Jen's Mom, who had that particular ability of the terminally ill to ask probing questions into his personal life. He took all this in stride, which meant he was Good People. At this point he'd left BG&E Home and was working for another company, but was doing work for us on the side so we weren't paying the markup. Unfortunately, I lost his number again during one of the many moves up and down the stairs before the wedding, and my focus was directed elsewhere after we returned from the honeymoon.

I should also add that my previous encounters with electricians have all been expensive and unsatisfying: For example, the job done in my first house was three times as expensive for half the work (and I'd done most of the prep, thinking it would save money.) This did not make me happy, and I decided never to re-hire that particular white trash electrician and his toothless apprentice.

Now that we've got the gears whirring, I realized we had to track B. down again through the various things we knew about him. Jen did a search online and found his old address down the street. (Aren't the internets wonderful? Isn't that also a little frightening, too?) There was no phone number associated with the address, and 411 couldn't tell me anything. We decided to do a little footwork, and stopped at the address last weekend. I rang the doorbell, and we waited outside for a few minutes, but nothing happened. As we were walking back down the sidewalk, the door opened, and a woman in the throes of a massive sinus infection asked if she could help us. It turned out that this was B.'s wife, and that she didn't have his number (they're separated) but she'd pass along our information. We gave it to her, apologizing for getting her out of bed, and put the whole thing in the hands of the Sky Pilot.

As I was driving home yesterday evening, I called Jen to talk about dinner plans, and she told me she was talking with B., who was standing in our living room! He'd heard part of the story from his wife, knew of only one family on that side of Frederick road he'd done work for, and stopped by to see if it was us. As Jen explained all the work we had, his eyes got bigger and bigger. We stood and caught up for about a half hour, and he seemed happy to know we were looking for him. The sense of relief we have for getting him on the job is immense—he's reliable, he's good, and we like him. We've got first dibs, but if you need a good electrician in the Baltimore area, let me know. Because we have his number.

Posted on September 2, 2005 8:25 AM | link to this entry | comments (1)

Because I Feel Like I Gotta Say Something.

Two years ago, only a few scant weeks after Jen and I moved into an old, creaky house surrounded by old, creaky trees, hurricane Isabel flew through our neighborhood and knocked out the power. The two of us hunkered down on our mattress in the living room (this was before we'd accomplished anything upstairs) and and waited out the storm by candlelight, hoping we wouldn't wake up in bed with the neighbor's car. It turned out alright, though a family down the street had their house crushed by a tree (and almost wound up getting crushed themselves.)

I suppose, since there were dire predicitions of disaster earlier this year, that I got a little callous with Katrina. I also figure because I wasn't watching as much TV this past week, I wasn't getting the breathless "Storm Warning Updates" by the chuckleheads on our local newscasts. I was dimly aware of the hurricane and its aftermath, but it was only last night, sitting in front of CNN and watching footage of the disaster, that I really understood how fucked up the Gulf Coast actually is. Jen and I talked about making a donation to the Red Cross (which is apparently the best thing to do right now-they can't handle canned goods or delivering supplies just yet) and we'll get some money out to them in the next day or so.

My heart goes out to the folks in Louisiana and Georgia. God bless, and good luck.

Posted on September 1, 2005 11:24 AM | link to this entry | comments (5)

I Almost Forgot...

Remember when I was talking about shark attacks a week or two ago?

Posted on July 11, 2005 1:55 PM | link to this entry | comments (2)

Now I'm Worried.

There's all this crap on the news about shark attacks this week. Does anybody remember four years ago, when there were all kinds of hysterical reports about shark attacks? Something else happened, and we forgot all about it.

Posted on June 29, 2005 7:34 AM | link to this entry | comments (3)

Mystery E's.

I don't think I've talked too much here or elsewhere about my Dad's reposession agency. Back in 1984, my Dad decided to leave the rat race and purchase his own business. After a bunch of research, he found the most unlikely of ventures in the most unlikely of places: an established reposession agency based in a sleepy town north of New York City. I'll have to go into some of the stories of culture shock at a different time, but this was a huge leap of faith for the whole family. We moved into a prewar house on the side of a mountain, surrounded by forest, and facing a fenced impound lot. When I say fenced, I mean chain-link fence topped with barbed wire and floodlights. The house was decent, if you count the inground pool, jacuzzi, and huge living room; it sucked for me because I lived in a tiny unheated room in the middle of nowhere with no car.

Having no car wasn't an issue until I turned sixteen, because I wasn't driving anyplace anyway. The bus sucked ass, but I knew my parents were too busy to be carting me all over creation. Besides, I got to drive cars all the time. I had a built-in job helping the yardman start, move, release, and fix the cars in the lot. How many people do you know who were driving Porsches at fifteen? I could parallel park a standard-shift car two years before the driving test. (I got pretty good at picking car locks, too, but that's another story.) Besides working for my Dad, blowing shit up and exploring the local woods were pretty much all I did in the 9th grade.

By the 10th grade, though, life was getting pretty hellish. The local asshats were making bus rides a nightmare (it's difficult to stand up to four guys who each outweigh you by 100lbs) and I was getting involved in school activities which meant I was staying after a lot.

Now, my best friend S. was taking a driving course at the Boces which meant he didn't need a learning permit after taking the test like all the rest of us pukes. He also came from a large family which demanded a part-time chauffeur, something that was difficult for his parents, who worked all the time. They decided that he could help out and be the chauffeur, so they bought him a car. Not just any car, but a used 1970-something Cadillac Coupe De Ville. It was the ugliest car on the road, which is probably why it was affordable. It was also huge. Each door weighed about 500 pounds. The rear bench seat was half a mile wide, upholstered in a lovely shade of blue vinyl. (The car had once been baby blue, but someone had painted it rattle-can gray in the early eighties, and the paint cracked, so it looked like cat puke on a blue rug.)

Now, bear with me here. We spent a lot of summer days at the Dugan house, because of the pool. We also had a fully-stocked garage with lots of outlandish and exotic tools. One day S. came by with the Caddy and asked if I could help him replace the original AM radio with a new cassette deck. No problem, I said. This shouldn't take more than an hour or two, and then we can swim for a while. We grabbed some pliers and screwdrivers, turned on the radio in the garage, and got to work taking apart the dashboard of his car.

Three hours later, cursing, sweating, and covered in twenty-year-old dust, we still hadn't budged the thing. We had disassembled half the dashboard, laid it all out in neat sections on the driveway, and still couldn't figure out how the engineers in Detroit had designed this car. It sounds like we were both idiots as far as mechanical engineers are concerned, but don't let this story fool you: I had been taking apart and fixing things like radios, engines, and tools for years. S. also had natural skill in taking stuff apart—we weren't just a pair of monkeys banging on suitcases out there.

For awhile it looked like we were going to have to remove the windshield to get at the back of the radio (I'm not kidding here. There was a flap of metal that curved up and over the back of the glass and down below the back of the thing) but we realized that there was another way. After taking apart most of the AC ducting under the dash, we had enough room to get at it, or at least, see the bottom of it, and we realized we had a problem: the damn thing was huge. I mean, the size of a toaster oven huge. The hole we had was about half the size, and there was no real evident way how to get it out of there.

At this point, S. had had enough of this shit, and just wanted to get the damn thing out of the car. We switched from finesse to brute strength, trading screwdrivers for chisels and hammers. Fifteen minutes later, we had a big enough hole carved out of non load-bearing metal to yank the bottom of the radio down toward the floorboards. When it finally came out, in a cloud of dust and old cigarette butts, we breathed a sigh of relief. It was then that we realized just what a bastard this thing was: it weighed about fifteen pounds, and it looked like a piece of discarded Soviet military equipment. But the corker was that it had one thick wire hanging off the back, which lead to a complicated, ancient plastic harness with no diagram. This meant bad news. This meant there would be no new radio in the Cadillac.

This radio had to die.

But how to do it? How to properly dispose of this foul, ancient, cursed beast?

It turned out that the answer was right over our heads.

At some point, when my mother's back was obviously turned, S. and I found that we could easily climb onto the roof of the garage. From there, it was a simple matter of time before we started jumping from the roof of the garage, over four feet of solid concrete, and into the deep end of the pool. (The garage was separated from the house by the pool, and was built to withstand hurricanes. It had a two-story peak and a slope gentle enough to scale.) In a good clip, it was a one-minute circuit around the back of the garage, onto the roof, and into the water. We decided we would use this ninja skill for purposes of evil. S. backed the Cadillac up twenty feet (after filling the trunk with the assorted debris from the dashboard-half of it would remain there until the car was officially retired) and we climbed onto the roof of the garage and met at the peak. S. said a few words, which have now been lost to the ages, and lofted the radio up into the afternoon sunshine.

It came down onto the pavement with a dull thud, bounced, and came to a stop. There was no evident damage. I climbed down to retrieve it, handed it back up to him, and he threw it again. This cycle repeated at least five or six times, until one of the corners began to give way. Then, it seemed like the thing just flew apart. In a cloud of electrical components, metal, and plastic, the radio exploded, and we cheered heartily at the death of the beast.

Before retiring to the pool, we examined the lump of metal that had once been a radio. Tubes and wires stuck out the side, and little sheets of metal fell from the back plate. We realized we were standing in a circle of these things, and I bent to pick one up. It was flat, and shaped like an uppercase "E". There were hundreds of them on the ground. It took us another half an hour to police all of the damn things up.

S. finally did put his stereo in that Caddy, hanging out of the cavernous hole left by the Beast, and it stayed with the car until its retirement. We never did figure out what the 'E's were for, but when I take the Jeep radio, which has begun to fail on me more and more, and throw it off the roof of our house onto the pavement, I'm going to be looking for those goddamn 'E's.

Posted on May 12, 2005 6:07 PM | link to this entry | comments (5)