Life and How to Live It

When I was living in a cow-town land-grant college, there was two or three places to get connected to new music. we could drive down to Dubuque, which was questionable, or make a trip to Madison. And there was a grocery store that had a rack of albums. And one week, REM’s debut album showed up – 2 copies. I bought one. And it became an instant fixture on our house’s turntable. Dunno where the other one went. They probably sent it back as unsellable.

When I moved to Milwaukee, their second album was also instantly a given on our stereo. And was this one. REM changed the paradigm of how music was produced and distributed and who it was being distributed to. And the band didn’t care about any of that, which was part of the attraction; they made music they wanted to, and they hoped you liked it, but they didn’t care if you didn’t.

And you might be able to tell, but that is a singular common thread with the bands I love. The Mekons have NEVER cared about being popular, or doing what labels wanted. Of course, that resulted in a reaction. And they didn’t give a shit, and 40 years on, record labels have died and the Mekons continue making some of the most vital music out there.

But the problem, these days, of course, is that it is nearly impossible for bands to find avenues for getting their music out. Normally, lesser bands would rely on touring and selling merchandise at shows. But there are no shows.

There are many efforts to support venues and bands on the internet going on. But hardly enough to keep everyone alive.

Many musicians are working their asses off to make some kind of revenue stream. The Mekons are weirdly able to make this work, because they have long ago managed to cobble together a life within their varied and diverse lives scattered around the world.

But that is hardly a way of living for musicians on a typical basis. And as you might know, I am fervently in favor of supporting musicians and the venues that they typically frequent. (I supported Ramblin Deano when he had a virtual tour, which was helped by a friend of mine)

This afternoon, a couple of those socialist bastards the Mekons, Jon Langford and Sally Timms (and fellow traveler John Szymanski) did a few songs on Langford’s deck (with cameos by his kid, his wife, and their dog) and asked for money to benefit a meal distribution group, for which we raised overer $5000. The musicians just had a total party. It was awesome.,

After that, I clicked over to a live stream from Wussy playing from one of their side rooms. They were awesome, too.

Yeah, I’ve seen them.

What is completely apparent is that most musicians want, beyond anything is to contact their audience. the connection and the exchange of energy. it’s gone. yeah, let’s blame that on Trump too..

The loss of live music is killing me.

I love that many musicians are finding ways of connecting with us. It helps me keep upright and working. But I really need to get live music back before I can only see it from a chair, like Lois (from the Dennis and Lois movie)

Thank you Bob, your fire and spit and anger helps.

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Sex, Food, Death, and Tarantulas

Of course, this post is not about any of those things.  It is, however, heavily involved with Robyn Hitchcock, who once used that as a title of one of his albums.  And I felt that a title that directly telegraphed the actual subject was just such a terrible giveaway.

A few years back, Uncle Robyn paid tribute to one of his musical inspirations with Robyn Sings, a cover album where he played the entire Dylan show where he went electric with the Hawks.  For the longest time, that album was the only Dylan album I had (which has since disappeared, so I am trying to figure out which blackout that was.)

Hitchcock (who is one of my favorite artists, and one of my favorite to see live – I have seen him with a band and color many many times, he likes Milwaukee and always plays his Cheese Song.

But the album Robyn Sings made me re-evaluate Bob Dylan, which then led me to the band.  And just recently, I watched the new doc “Once Were Brothers” which made me realize how intertwined The Band and Dylan were.  So then I watched The Last Waltz.  All well devoted time.

So, here’s Robyn Hitchcock, an Englishman raised on Beatles and English pop, who found himself in Dylan’s songs, and then converted them into twisted, punk-influenced neo-psychedelic classics.  And now Uncle Robyn moved to Nashville…

And meanwhile… a young musician from Oz decided that moving to Nashville was the thing that needed to be done.  while she knew almost nothing about Nashville music scene, or indeed American music in any way.  And somehow, Emma Swift met Robyn  Hitchcock and they are now a Nashville Music Couple.   And, while I have seen them play together, they got all about Bob Dylan together and in these times Emma released an 8 song homage to Dylan.  And.  Well.

This is a recent song, and if that old bastard can still write like this, I guess the argument is pretty much over.  But for me, I have pretty much listened to this song AT LEAST twice a day for the last week.

 

And if you want older crap,

 

Go to band camp and download this shit.  I order you.  Or I will eat your fucking brains.

Home is where You Hang Your Head

Today, I came into my office for the – what, 3rd time?- in 3 1/2 months.  The first time I came in, the air handler had stopped working and it was stifling hot. Managed to get the owners to fix that. Then, the mailbox lock got jammed and it got replaced, but it still doesn’t work.  Then I managed to get a couple of prints of the things I needed, but the next time I came in, the plotter needs 3 of 4 print cartridges replaced. Paid for and replaced.  Now it is demanding 3 printheads be replaced.  So I have spent $250 on consumables for this fucker. Plotters is difficult.  And expensive.

This is an old one, even the repairman I had in remarked on how it was remarkable I was able to keep it going for so long.  I guess I better start putting aside 5 or 6K for a new one…

The limited opening nonsense is going on, but fuck that, I wear a mask and get take out.  Many do not.  Many are idiots.  At least I can get a lunch from local restaurants.

I had to do much normal maintenance that has been deferred…cleaning the toilet, taking out the trash…

Our office is low density, there is a handful of tenants and most people are being careful about their appearances, working from home where possible.  My office doesn’t really have anyone right now, except me, so it is extremely low exposure risk once I get here.  Travel is all mask-based.

And we all complain about the difficulties of working remotely; but a year or two ago, the Mekons got together across like twelve continents to gather in the southwestern desert, resulting in a brilliant, spare and arresting album Deserted”

But also the way the song keeps saying “you should see us after the rain” and then it devolves into Meat Puppets soundscapes, all spiky and atonal…

But here is the real lesson to be learned, and once again you will be taught by the Mekons. The have always refused to even write an album until they are in the same place, and they were scheduled to be in Valencia to create the next album.  Which obviously had to be canceled. So they pulled back, and figured out how to get it all done, and Dave Trumfio and Lu Edmonds figured it all out.  A true collaborative effort.

They responded to the fact that we can’t be there, by saying we are still artists and we know how to do this.

They did.

Most of you will hate this.

 

You are wrong.

 

Sing For Joy

Just watched “Florence Foster Jenkins” and it has much drama involved, and much outside of the life of Florence herself.

It is postulated that she knew that she was a figure of ironic mockery, but that she loved music and singing so much that she didn’t care.

In that, she was the first punk  FUCK OFF IGGY.

Her husband never made love to her, always had a bit on the side, and still spent much of his time making sure that she was never exposed to ridicule for her appearances.  Even without sex, that is a level of love and devotion that is fucking epic.

The movie minimized Cosme McMoone’s ability to be a sarcastic piano player who did not respect his patron but cashed all the checks.  Frankly, he could have been an architect…

But we also saw a performance of  “Souvenir” at the Milwaukee Skylight Theater which was played for comic effect.  And it was fun.

But her story is so much more.

She loved music within every aspect of her life.  She gave up her inheritance, at one point, to continue musical pursuits.  She was moved to tears by musical performances.

She played piano . but what she desired, more than anything, was to sing.  She did not have the talent.  But she had the will, the desire, the discipline to work at it for hours.  She had a loving husband who managed to produce shows in front of people who did not laugh at her. And she played Fucking Carnegie Hall.

In the movie, and the stage show, the line is “people can say I couldn’t sing.  But they can’t say I didn’t sing”

Florence Foster Jenkins, the First Punk.  Many people will tell you that you can’t sing, and you can’t play.  But FUCK THEM. You CAN .  You can sing.  You can paint. You can sing.    no one can tell you that you cant

She loved music more than her ability to perform it.  But that never stopped her.  If she ever encountered an electric guitar, she would have played it like I do.  If she had ever lived in Britain, she would have been a Mekon.

That is nothing but respectable and honorable, and this one is for you, Florence Foster Jenkins.

If I ever release an album, it will be titled “Florence Foster Jenkins”

Revolution Blues

(the guy in front is Alan Doughty, from Jesus Jones)

A recent comment thread at Lawyers, Guns and Money, reminded me of a minor episode from the past. the moment that brought this up was:

In their mind, once you’ve taken away their impunity (which they are often very happy to use against white people that piss them off too – just that white people don’t piss them off as much because they are racists),

This goes back a few years, and I may ramble.  Fair warning!

Back in the old days, I shot darts in a league (steel tip, none of this fake plastic tip bullshit) and our team was know as the one that would pay our way at the bar-sometimes the bartender would say, ‘yeah, these guys take one drink all night.  You guys, you make it work!’  and after one Dart Night, we went up to a bar near Marquette University, where we bought beers and paid for music.  However, since this was a bar that sometimes had underage drinkers, the police descended, unplugged the juke, and demanded we all get in line to exit.

Since we were all of age, we didn’t care and elected to finish our beers.  However, that did not show the proper obedience.  Some of our group managed to get out the door, but me and another friend did not, and the cop said “you didn’t get in line, so you can’t leave.”  Some of our friends were the last ones to be ‘authorized’ to leave, and one of them turned to see what was going on, and he asked the officers to be able to talk to us about where we could meet after.  The cops told him “THEY AREN’T GOING ANYWHERE, JUST GO ON” and my friend said “no, I just want to talk to them” to which the cops said “HANDCUFFS”

Here’s the hilarious part.  My friend who was cuffed is an attorney.  My missed opportunity would have been to ask the cops if I could call my attorney, and then responded by saying “Hey Pete!  I need a lawyer!” to the guy sitting 10 feet away from me.  Pete spent the episode fuming.

So, I sat there, being obnoxious white guy.  I asked the bartender for another drink.  He told me to shut up.  At this point, I had not ever done anything wrong.  Let’s emphasize that.  We were drunk, but that is still not a crime by itself.  We were drinking in a bar that sometimes had underage drinking but that is still not a crime.

So I was beg horrible and my buddy was trying to be conciliatory, and eventually took our IDs and gave them to another officer, saying, just run these, we’re OK and she snatched them and they were fucking gone.  Meanwhile, I was being obnoxious, getting snacks from the machine.  There were a few underage drinkers sitting there, watching in astonishment while I was completely refusing to acquiesce.  But we still had not broken a single law.

At this point, I watched one of the cops with a terrible toupee arguing with the cop that took our IDs, saying “What the fuck is his record!” and she responded “nothing” and then he said “DON’T GIVE A SHIT, I WANT TO BUST HIM!” and two other cops said ‘he hasn’t actually done anything” to which toupee cop said “I DON’T CARE!!”  I was not being properly subservient.  Yeah, I managed to be a white guy pissing off a white cop.  He was frothing.

Meanwhile, all the time this is happening, my friend Pete who is the attorney has been sitting on a stool on the other side of the room, furious.

Oh, this is where I will mention that Pete is Hispanic.

I was being ridiculous, but this was obviously white privilege.  I would not have been allowed even this level of insolence if I wasn’t white.

Pete was not even out of order, and in the entire episode, he was the only one in cuffs.  I was obnoxious and ridiculous and confrontational, and yet I walked.  It was obviously racist. It was, in a word, Milwaukee.

After an extended time where they were obviously deciding if we had ever done anything wrong (let’s keep in mind that at this point, all we had done is come to a bar), the one police officer came over with our IDs, and an obsequious grin, saying, you guys can go.

This is hardly comparable to the experiences of black Americans, I know.  But after seeing what we have over the past couple of weeks, this memory came back, and the obvious difference in treatment based on race became obvious.  I was a drunk, obnoxious white guy who faced no backlash; my friend, a hispanic who just wanted to double check on our status, respectfully and without being confrontational, was handcuffed.

The most hilarious thing?  We were all pretty drunk, and all they had to do was follow us to our cars for a righteous bust.  Not only imperious, but kind of stupid.

Yeah, we need a revolution in what we consider to be law enforcement in this country.

I’ll bet the Mythbusters can figure out a way to melt the tanks and war pieces in our police ‘forces’

LET THE MOTHERFUCKER BURN

Minneapolis, the central home of polite people, is burning.

There was an innocent black man, choked to death by a white man he had worked with, by kneeling on his neck, for an alleged fake 20 dollar bell.  Kneeling on his neck for 9 minutes while three other cops looked on, and they ignored the pleas from EMTs to release the man and check his pulse. Now a black man’s life is worth a fake 20 dollar bill, which is actually worth nothing.  This was a straight up execution. Because cops know they are untouchable.

This was mere days after police-associated vigilantes pursued and shot a black man for jogging, in his own neighborhood.

Since then, protests have erupted across the country, which are echoing other protests when black folks have been senselessly slaughtered and murdered by white police, or just random white people with guns deciding they are the law.

When not being strapped, white racists decide to call 911 when black people are just in their presence, being black, knowing that the black person is pretty much going to be arrested if not shot dead.

Henry Louis Gates was arrested on his front porch for being black in his own home. I guarantee he worried for his life.

AND NOW.  A black man has been senselessly and ridiculously executed by a white racist violent militaristic cop, who kneeled on Floyd’s neck.  He fucking knew what he was doing, the three other cops let him do it. It was white racist fucks lynching a black man, because they could.

I have a friend that I worked with here in town, and now is an architect in San Francisco, and is African American.  He posted “Living as a black man in America is fucking exhausting.”  I have no frame of reference for that pain.

And now.

Tonight, my city is experiencing a second night of curfew, and the protests persist.  I’ve got a friend reporting on FB from his bike. There are caravans of armored vehicles, and incessantly circling helicopters.  The common game of ‘gunshots or fireworks?’ seems to be nearly continuous.  Parts of the freeway were shut down yesterday.

Trump is hiding in the Bunker, and tweeting every-more insane incitements to violence.  His white supremacist worshippers are listening, too and showing up at protests to try and turn them violent.  There is some organization to the effort, too; pallets of bricks are showing up before the protests start. The police are reacting as expected: they are waging violent war at the least provocation or no provocation.  The are shooting rubber bullets at the heads of journalists, when they are intended to be target to legs. On more than one occasion, this occupying army has been proudly flashing the ‘white power’ hand sign and giggling like Chucky the murderous psychopath doll.

I change my assessment.  America is burning.

This makes me feel like I need to go listen to Nick Cave’s Murder Ballads album, which led me to Mercy Seat, which led me to Johnny Cash’s cover, which led me to the most perfect cover video of a Nine Inch Nails song (aside-that song is playing on a perpetual loop at the Cash museum in Nashville):

And now – now, the dog needs to go outside to pee, and that’s getting harder for her.  We have started the process to bring in another rescue, because after all these years, the concept of not having a dog is kind of incomprehensible.  So, life goes on.  Somehow.

I am not usually one to echo Imaginary Digital Friend mikey’s glum worldview, but I am having a hard time imagining the way forward out of this.  I can imagine Murder Hornets, tigers roaming the city streets,  and a zombie holocaust, but that’s not one my brain can wrap around.

But life will go on.

Won’t it?

I had forgotten how much I loved that Nick Cave album.  But a word of warning; do NOT listen to it if you are feeling fragile.  It is harrowing.  Over the course of the album, hundreds of people are killed. And after all that bloodshed, they did an all-star cover of “Death Is Not The End” which is normally a song of hope for the afterlife but coming at the end of this travelogue of murder, insanity and depravity, becomes more of a threat:

BRING OUT YOUR DEAD

America, the “most advanced country in the world” who is actually, somewhere around 25th when averaged, has such poor management and health care that we are now about 12th in the word for deaths due to the plague.

This is so appalling that even the NY Times has made it a front page issue, posting names of the deceased.  But it has been pointed out that they can’t get there, they can only do about 1000.  The number they need to post is 100,000.

100,000

That’s just Americans.  Worldwide is much larger, but reporting numbers from places like Russia and Chine are not reliable.  Actually, I would say the reporting number from America are not reliable either, so thee numbers are almost certainly a fair bit higher.

100,000

One hundred thousand actual people, with families and children and loved ones (and some of them were children) with families and friends and loved ones who not only were not able to be there at their agonizing last moments, but are now left to mourn them with no contact, no ability to make last contact.

100,000

The Vietnam Memorial Wall is currently showing some 58,000 Americans who died there.  The Vietnam war changed American politics forever. Now, we have A plague that has already killed twice as many -and the predictions are saying we are on the way to more the 200,000 Americans before this gets under control.  Other countries have already said that we are so bad at control, that they refuse entry to anyone from the US.

100,000

Zombies acknowledge that Fucknozzle Trump is not the source of the plague.  But it was happening in December of last year, and he was notified.  He couldn’t be bothered.  He was golfing.

In January he was warned.  He couldn’t be bothered.  Too many words. He was golfing.

In February, there were were alarms from the CDC and the  military.  He cut their budget. He was golfing.

100,000

In 2018, Trump destroyed the agencies created in order to respond to pandemics and the people who could have led the effort.

Now we have 100,000 Americans dead due to negligence.  And Trump is golfing.

 

 

 

Wisconsin Death Trip

(title lonk) Because there is no musical link more appropriate than this book.

Wisconsin has a long, dark history.  Joe McCarthy was one of the least appalling episodes.  We have had labor wars, the two sides of the Milwaukee river lobbing bombs at each other, Native slaughters, trappers killing over turf wars, housing riots, cannibals and serial killers, and a Playboy model murderor.  We have a dark bent:

And let’s not get into how we are deep into cardiac cuisine and deep alcohol based lifestyles (guilty!).

But during Turdwaffle’s interregnum, Republicans managed to hardwire the Manders of Gerry in such a way that Democrats are disadvantaged to about 7 points, on average. And somehow, this ends up with partisan elected Supreme Court judges, which means we currently have a 5-2 asshole versus reasonable person ratio.  Our recent Death Election, where this biased court decided we had to proceed with a hazardous election – “don’t vote or die” which was the most straightforward expression of Republican politics ever – one of which was turned out but a resounding 13 percent. but he still got to give us a Fuck You and also give  a Fuck You to Governor Evers (which the Wingnut Legislature is always eager to do) when they canceled his Safer at Home orders.

It is notable that they rushed this misbegotten misshapen horror in such an anti-Democrat frenzy that they fucked up how to integrate, and basic direction as to how it applies to existing orders.  They are incompetent, they got their positions by being right wing lunatics, not because they were competent. All that was required was compliance with wing nut orthodoxy.

most higher density cities and counties have their own SIP rules in place, or they put them in place.  In one of my own stomping grounds, Platteville, a picture of a packed bar was immediately pushed far and wide.

Hilariously, one of the most common photos of Wisconsidiots is of a bar in Platteville.  I went to college there for a few years, and drank in that dive quite a few times (it had a different name). But when I was in town, they had $1.50 pitchers on Wednesdays, so we were usually there. Of course.

I got to know the townies in that land-grant college town, and am entirely not surprised by their behavior. They are mostly stupid, is what I am saying.  To be completely harsh, them deciding to make themselves dead bothers me hardly at all.  The people they will infect, I care more about, because they never asked for it.  But they probably all voted for Trump because they are racists, and will do it again, and I really have very little sympathy.  You shitholes want to make all of us get sick and die, so I may be harsh saying I DGAF when you get sick and die from going to a bar when you shouldn’t have, you complete amoral idiot.

Wisconsin just became  a Posse Comitatus state.  It is now controlled by an evil connection between the Trump Republican party in a state that is completely rigged for them, and the media foghorn of Fox News.   The Republicans in the Lege, let’s name the worst of them:  Robin Vos and Scott Fitzgerald (spit).  Vos is the motherfucker that wore full PPE gear including a gown, while proclaiming that everyone was “incredibly safe” to go and vote after they strongarmed the State SC into not delaying the election.  Subsequently, we are rapidly approaching 100 cases of COVID related to the election.

Green Bay, Madison, and Milwaukee are the centers of sanity.  They are also the centers of commercial activity in the state. Which irritates the racists in the rest of the state to no end, which is why we have a regular racist vote, every time.

So now we have a huge number of Wisconsidiots, who are suffering from hardly any difficulty, who packed bars and spread everything they had with everyone else. And then they went home to spread it to their families, who spread it to their parents.  And some of them will die.

These people are willing to kill their own family because they are so insanely paranoid that they will fill bars.  The impulse to pwn the libs is so firmly entrenched by the Right Wing wurlitzer they see that as some kind of solution.  To what, nobody seems to be able to articulate.

Apparently none of them ever watched the Mythbusters.

It is completely laid bare that the Republican party wants to kill everyone who is not part of their owners.  Fuck that, they just are OK with killing all of us.

Wisconsin shows how Republicana want to make this country into a feudal system\, where you work or die.  They don’t really care which.  And they have convinced 40% of the country that dying in agony with destroyed lungs is preferable to voting for a DEMONCRAT.

This is terrible. My fellow Wisconsinites will die because of this, fellows even if they are morons, racists and benighted ignoramuses,  and I don’t know if I have a way to respond.

Lord Dampnut immediately crowed as if it was a win.  And most populated cities and counties immediately reaffirmed the Safer in Place order they had established locally.  On the first day, it seemed a bit loony round here, but it seems to have calmed down somewhat.  Most people are still being respectful, although when I went to the bodega today, he wasn’t wearing a mask although I was.  People gave wide berths when walking down the sidewalk.

We have a very weird situation in this state.  We have a good governor, elected over the Turdwafle, but we also have a locked-in Republican legislature due to the ridiculous gerrymandering of the state which would embarrass Mussolini.  All that is missing is painting the Trump jut-jaw face on every government building, and does anyone want to say that won’t happen?

I will send out a classic number to this misbegotten Court:

 

 

Passage to Bangkok

 

 

Ok, here’s a personal story.  Feel free to ignore.

Back before I was an independent, when I was working for a very repellent boss (another story), I had friends who had acquired a very beautiful site in a development northwest of Milwaukee, on a site that was hilly and wooded and was cheap because it was considered the least usable in the development.  To me, it looked beautiful.

The asked me to design a home for what they expected to be a full family.  after initial consultations, they said they wanted a timber frame house; with experience in barn renovations, I was full on board.  In one of our first meetings, in their house not far from Milwaukee’s airport, I noticed some particularly lovely deco-style sconces in amazingly well built brass.  One of my first comments is that they replace them with builder grade fixtures from Home Depot, and take them along.  They did; they look amazing in their new entry hall.

They were worried that they disagreed about what the house should be.  They argued.  I calmed them down, and got them to express their own desires directly to me, rather than between themselves.  When they kept getting into their own disagreements, I said “let me work on this; I’ll see what I can do.’

Brothers and sisters and capybaras that is what I did. I designed a house for them on a difficult site, overlooking a lovely valley and a cathedral known as Holy Hill, that not only achieved all their goals but resolved every thing they thought they disagreed about.  During the discussions, the biggest resolve was whether the laundry should be part of the bedroom level or the first floor.

Working with timber frame was also a tremendous experience.  It was very similar to the work I have done for years in mill-style industrial buildings.  We also had a timber contractor who was very sympathetic to our design work.  In a memorable exchange, once when he was erecting the exterior insulated panels, which were not pre-cut for windows, he was approached by a neighbor concerned by the blank face which would face their appallingly bad suburban ranch. He responded by saying “oh sure, we will cut the windows later” and then cut the smallest window opening in that wall, leaving the rest for later.  I like that guy.

But that’s not what I am here to talk about. I am here to talk about the draft.

Wait.  Let me refresh my drink.

Ok, looking back, apparently I am here to talk about an episode.  Settle in, this is great, and believe it or not, the preceding is pertinent.

So after that house was built, Paul and Katie loved it.  And they often told me that they would discover great details in the course of their lives that they didn’t expect . And they had the expected family, two boys, and unexpectedly Paul started some very effective brewing in the basement level. They told me early on that they wanted a house that would become a legacy. They have one.  I made it.

After that house was built, and before they populated it, they recognized the amount of effort I did without asking them for payment (remember I was moonlighting). I did a lot of interior design and detailing, for which i never requested any payment.  I even built them a model of the timber frame, which they displayed on their fireplace for years!

They wanted to give me a thank you.  They had a time share in Puerta Vallarta, and said we should go there with them.

Well, are we dumb?  We are not, so Of course we did, and two other couples got standard rooms in the joint. when we got there, half the group went to check in, and the other half went down the street to the Corona bottlers to stock up on Coronitas.   We wanted to hit the ground running…

So we went down there and had great times with much alcohol.  but at one point, we decided we also needed some weed.  So a couple of the guys went to talk to one of the bartenders, who accompanied them into town, with the 50 bucks or so we had all thrown in.  They came back after a fair amount of time, grinning like idiots.  When we asked the outcome, they just pulled out this bag of pot as big as my forearm.  50 bucks goes a long way in Mexico.

We tried heroically, but there was no way we were going to kill that in the few days we had left, and none of us were dumb enough to try and take it back into the States.  So we hit on the idea of making brownies.  As you do.  A quick trip to the grocery for brownie mix, and we used the mixer to chop the leaf thoroughly, and voila!  Fresh baked stoner goodness!

I’ve had terrible pot brownies, but these were good, and if you didn’t know, you wouldn’t really notice.  Also, if you didn’t know the difference between smoking pot and eating it, then you might not be careful….

Katie had never had baked edibles before, and she was amazed that they actually tasted pretty good.  So she had one, waited a few minutes, then said “maybe these are a bit weak, I’m not feeling anything yet”. How many have you had? we asked?  “Three”.  Uh-oh was the consensus. so we had to explain to here that absorption through the stomach than through the lungs, and that it took longer, but lasted longer.  after a little longer, she said “Oh yeah, I am starting to feel it.  How long will this last?”  You had three?  You are in for a long ride, most of the rest of the night.

Paul and Katie are pretty certain that their first son was conceived that night.

 

 

 

Power Windows

When I was in high school, I took many college entry courses in English Lit, 4 1/2 years of math, physics… as well as almost every shop and art class offered. I had no control over what I was interested i, and I was not being adequately supervised. My parents worked, and I never got arrested.

At the time, I was working in the drafting department of a tech equipment company (while I was there, they were working on a machine that could scan a sample and return the percentages of minerals within.  There was much amusement when they scanned a fly)  At the time, our CAD machine occupied an entire goddam room, and had to have a separate cooling system), but everything else was hand drawn.

Hilariously, the obviously ill-equipped High School counselor, when performing the rote pre-graduation review, looked at my transcript and could not figure it out.  He looked at me, and said, “what do you think you should be doing?” to which I replied “I am already white collar, motherfucker, and that’s a good coin for this podunk town” (maybe not in those words.  He shrugged and put the file away.  Thanks, asshole!

However, my father, who succumbed to the anti-college sentiment of a suburb adjacent to a college town, had a chance to go to land grant state school and I think regretted not going, insisted that I go to some kind of post-secondary education.  To which I said (already being a punk) well, then fuck this I am going somewhere else to college, and found a UW school in the middle of nowhere (shut up, you with the ‘aren’t they all’ comments) and enrolled in the engineering curriculum.  That turned out to be a bad fit, but we corrected course and got into pre-architecture and subsequently moved to Milwaukee.

But wait.  That’s not what I’m here to talk about.  I’m here to talk about the draft.  (wait while I refresh my drink)

No, wait, I am here to talk about historic windows.  Wait.  I’ll come in again.

I’m here to talk about drafting standards.  Ok, we’ll go with that.

During that checkered high school history, I took every drafting class offered.  I also took every shop class available, and most of the art classes.  And 4 1/2 years of math.  And 3 years of English and Literature.  (The traverse from one end of the school to the other for these wildly divergent classes sometimes challenged an ability to actually cover the distance in the class break time).  The drafting teacher (who also doubled as my freshman basketball coach) was kind of bemused, teaching a class balanced between art and science and shop, and as that kind of class had many students who were aiming for trade school.  But he discovered I had great skill at hand drafting, and while the rest of the class diligently worked on the current assignments, often struggling, I mostly blistered through them and he had to scramble to give me extra work to keep me busy. At several points, he just told me to not come in for several days until we got to something new. “Take a week off”….

I learned how to handle a pencil to create effective line weights, and what those line weights could mean.  Eventually, in college, I bought some (relatively) expensive graduated ink pens to do those time-consuming presentation drawings.

This is something being lost in the CAD environment.  Colored lines on a screen mean nothing, and do not translate to physical prints of drawing – which we still use, because we need hard copy in the field.  A friend who is in the State plan review area, agrees- he says most plans come in with no line hierarchy control at all.  One of the things I have had to really emphasize employees, especially more recent graduates is that construction drawings are a form of communication, and line weights are the inflections that help to make sense.

in an early preliminary collidge class, I was criticized for using what are derisively called “bubble trees” .  In defiance, I checked out several books on how to identify trees in profile from the library, and most importantly found many illustrations in the endpapers that showed all these various trees.  I  used these to illustrate my next project , and the amount of ink I put on the paper was so much that I had to matte the whole thing with a black border just to make it balance.  One person kept wandering back and forth during my presentation, and insisted that he could see shadows moving in those trees.

But in that high school class, at one point the instructor, I think desperate to find more things for me to do, and maybe looking to present a challenge, had me do large-scale (3″) details of windows and doors.  I fucking loved it.  But I suddenly had a crash course in how windows were built and installed.  It was, frankly, one of the most instructive and informative single episodes in my pre-professional life.

Here is what it looks like when I use those skills on a contemporary project.  And unlike those projects in high school and collidge, this is for-real and for construction, and since they are part of applying for historic tax credits, real value in actual Ameros (if you are interested, those details are now approved by the National Park Service):

Because, for the most part, most windows are based upon hundreds of years of figuring out how to make windows that work pretty well.  In recent years, window technology has gotten vastly better, but the basics that were well established when my house was built in 1904 are still valid.

Amusingly, although I went into college as an engineer but left as a baby architect, when my younger brother who was still in high school told my old drafting instructor that I was going into architecture, the guy said “well of course”.

So here I am 4 fucking decades later, working on an historic building and during investigation, we discovered that a fair amount of the original ground floor windows still exist and they weren’t destroyed and are in good shape because they were covered up at some point which protected them, which will allow for restoration.  Of course, those concealments were unnecessarily destructive, as it far too common. Out initial submission to the NPS showed new windows in these locations, but considering the condition of the existing windows, my recommendation is now restoration, with new thermal panes added to the interior for modern energy expectations.

And here I am, preparing a change to our original NPS approval, showing that we will be preserving the original windows and doors where our original application indicated new construction (since it was all concealed and we had no idea what was underneath), and I am doing details of the existing and since I did those old detail assignments in high school, I know how these windows were built.

Look at what they did to that masonry detailing. fucking vandals, it would not surprise me if it was done by the Trump family. Also love the GE marketing.

Look at the damage, done so they could put really ugly aggregate panels over everything.  I do not forgive.

Mind you, this is what the masonry looked like when before those savages attacked it with chisels and hammers.

 

But I dearly love reusing buildings and historic buildings. And doing this does  makes me happy.

Happy.