You know you've slid past your sell by date

If you've ever wondered if you've turned into one of those grumpy, you-kids-get-off-my-lawn codgers here's an easy test: have you begun pissing and moaning about how the younger generations are (take your pick) lazy, don't appreciate craftsmanship, are addicted to their phones, or simply aren't up to snuff compared to your generation? If you have, if you think there's something wrong with Gen X, millennials, Gen Z or whatever we've decided to call the kids currently in high school, because they're doing things differently than you did then congratulations. Welcome to silly old duffer-hood. 

People have been complaining about generations other than their own for as long as there have been people. There's the famous quote attributed to Plato about disrespectful young people who'd rather party than work -- Plato died 347 years before the birth of Christ. Obviously, sneering at Gen Z isn't new. 

Because I have way too much time on my hands (the joys of retirement), I wandered around the Intertubes looking for good quotes, memes, pithy insights on this particular topic: old people sneering at young people; young people sneering back. Why do people do it? According to psychologists, it's totally common for geezers to have unrealistic memories of their misspent youth. The grass was greener, society was mellower, school was fine, and their friends were fun. They usually don't remember classmates dying from measles or polio, but their memories of Crusader Rabbit (and his friend Rags the Tiger) are crystal clear. In their septuagenarian minds, everyone had lifestyles like on The Donna Reed Show or Leave it to Beaver.  

I do recall a kid about the same age as me suffering horribly from whooping cough when I was about 8 years old, but other than odd bits like that my own childhood and adolescent memories don't include much bad stuff, unless a giraffe snatching a hat off my mother's head when we went to a circus counts. My mom was upset about that hat. It might have been the last time she wore one so obviously it was traumatic for her. 

As for looking at it from the other direction, to anyone in their teens or early twenties now the folks who have survived past 30 might as well have one foot in the grave. Old people (and the cutoff for "old" is set rather low from the perspective of someone who passed that cutoff quite a few years ago) are technological dummies who need their grandkids help in turning on their phones. 

I'm not real big on including videos in posts, but this one does seem appropriate.

Strange addictions

I have never been a fan of "reality" shows, have never felt any desire to watch any of the "Real Housewives" variations, Kardashians, or similar programming. There is one exception: cooking shows, sort of. Stuff like Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares, Robert Irvine's Restaurant Impossible, and John Taffer's Bar Rescue. 

I have a definite addiction to Bar Rescue. Since I discovered it's possible to  stream Paramount Network through a Google tv box, I have been known to plop myself in a recliner, knitting or other handwork in my sweaty little hands, and binge watch Bar Rescue. I am so thoroughly addicted to the show that it doesn't matter how many times I've seen some episodes, I'm like a little kid with a favorite picture book. I don't do a blasé "oh, seen it before so I'll watch something else" for repeat episodes. Nope. I'm more like yelling to the S.O. that he needs to come see it because "this is the one with the raccoon in the ceiling" or "holy wah, there's a lot of mold in that ice machine!" 

I'm not sure what the attraction is. The Younger Daughter and I were talking about shows like Restaurant Impossible and Bar Rescue not long ago and mutually agreed it's moderately amazing we're still willing to eat in restaurants or bar and grill type places after seeing show after show with, as noted above, raccoons in the ceiling or mold in the ice machines. Not to mention the kitchens. The kitchens are always unreal. It's like just how drunk are the customers if they're willing to eat (or attempt to eat) the crap coming out of the incredibly filthy kitchens? Of course, given that these shows are always about places that are losing money while noticing fewer and fewer "guests" willing to sit on a bar stool maybe most of that crap food falls into the "tried it once; never going back" category. The last episode of Bar Rescue I watched featured multiple dead mice in a unbelievably filthy kitchen. Health departments obviously are not doing surprise inspections the way they should. 

It's not just crap food, naturally. It's also shit drinks inspiring "never again" reactions. A classic Taffer test is for consistency: if you have multiple bartenders, are they all following the same recipes? Are all the margaritas made the same way or is one bartender seriously overpouring the tequila while the other bartenders aren't pouring enough? And do they know how to make popular drinks, i.e., if someone asks for an incredibly common drink like a tequila sunrise or an old fashioned can the bartender make it without having to get out their phone and google it? In a recent episode (recent as in I watched it this week, not as in recent from the new season) two bartenders were totally clueless when asked to make a paloma. Palomas are apparently a popular alternative to margaritas. Margaritas are basically tequila, lime juice, and orange-flavored liqueur (triple sec); a paloma is tequila, lime juice, and grapefruit soda (Squirt) or actual grapefruit juice. It's a nice simple drink, no weird ingredients and can look good with the right garnish. You know, it's another drink that has people who see it thinking they'd like to try one, too. A bartender drawing a blank when asked to make a paloma isn't actually a bartender -- he or she is a person who knows how to remove the cap before handing the Bud Lite bottle to a customer.  

In any case, Bar Rescue always features people ordering a drink, taking one sip, and doing the classic "Christ on a crutch, this is bad. I need to spit it out fast" expression while clearly wondering if they can get away with spewing it on to the floor. How do bar owners not notice that customers think their bar's offerings are garbage?

Answer: easily. One thing that is consistent across multiple seasons is just how ignorant/naive/clueless bar owners can be. Lots of episodes with owners who think all they have to do is walk around the bar occasionally without doing any actual work (checking for cleanliness, for example). Of course, if your only exposure to a bar or a restaurant is as a customer, you most likely don't notice all the work that goes into a good drinking or dining experience: trained staff, consistency, a safe atmosphere. If you invest in a bar and just assume anyone calling themselves a bartender or a server knows what they're doing you're pretty much guaranteed to find yourself drowning in debt. If you own a business of any type no one with more than two brain cells to rub together should be hands-off and assume everything will take care of itself unless you're deliberately aiming for bankruptcy court.

Of course, you also have bar owners who bought a bar because they wanted a place to party, just kind of hang out with "friends" while watching their money go down the drain while they give away shots. Taffer has dealt with a lot of drunks who were more focused on having fun than on safeguarding their income. Sometimes he performs a minor miracle and gets them to realize they've been fucking up; sometimes you know that the drunk is going to go back to being a drunk as soon as the cameras stop rolling. Which is no doubt one reason there are sites that track the show and how the rescued bars do long term. A site called "Bar Rescue Update" includes a list of all the bars the show has visited and how many are still in business. I do find myself wondering whatever happened to the bar with the raccoon in the ceiling. Maybe I should figure out just what the name of that bar was and find out if the raccoon ever became a friend of Bill W. 

Out and about in Arkansas

One effect of the transfer case falling out of the truck has been to make me extremely reluctant to go anywhere or to spend any money. No trips to the local quilt shops, no wandering around flea markets, limited casual browsing at Books-A-Million, no going to see "Puss in Boots: The Last Wish" in an actual theater. Just general frugality because we still have no idea just how much the truck repairs are going to cost. A lot, obviously, and even though it probably wouldn't make much of a difference if we indulged in an occasional frivolous expenditure, part of me doesn't want to part with a single dime until after we've got the truck back. 

Still, as the Younger Daughter likes to point out, it's not good to just sit in her living room binge watching "Maine Cabin Masters" and brooding about the possible outrageous prices of miscellaneous Ford parts. It will not do anything to improve my mood if I have time to spend wondering just how many payments the mechanic has left on his bass boat. We need to go out occasionally, venture out into fresh air and sunshine, and the venturing out should involve more than just going to the closest Dollar General for toilet paper and milk. So we've been doing things like checking out  campgrounds and RV parks as possible sites for Magee and visiting state and national parks. 

We've done windshield tours of several privately owned RV parks in the Hot Springs area. One struck us as acceptable, another was slightly better, and then there were the "Holy wah. People actually pay to stay here?!" gems. When the sites are uneven gravel and the RVs are parked so close together you have zero privacy you really wonder what the attraction can be, especially when none of the privately owned parks are cheap. 

On the other hand, there are a couple campgrounds in the Ouachita National Forest that aren't bad -- well maintained, lots of space between the sites, and best of all, Free -- that are tempting. They're basic -- no amenities other than the availability of a privy -- but Free when I'm busy stressing about money sounds pretty good. One campground looked okay to me, although I had qualms about the road in there. It's barely one lane wide with no where to go if you meet a vehicle. Someone would have to back up, and that could be a headache when towing Magee. The Forest Service does put a 14-day limit on how long you can stay on one spot, but even limited Free is better than paying every day. 

We also checked out a Corps of Engineers campground near Lake Ouachita. It's small -- only 9 sites -- but has full hook-ups. Our geezer pass would get us half-price rates, which would make it cheaper than any of the private parks, and it's got a nice lay out. Lots of space, no feeling like you have to worry about hearing every belch a neighbor emits. Photo above is from the COE campground. There were only three RVs there when we did our inspection tour. I checked on recreation.gov. Lots of open dates, including some really long blocks. The Corps sets a 14-day limit, too, but there's a loophole. It might be possible to do almost two full months without having to move Magee, or at least not move out of the campground, just shuffle over to a different site, because it's the off season. 

At the moment I'm definitely leaning toward the COE campground. Now all we need is the truck. As soon as we hear from the garage I can go online to make reservations so when we're able to pick up Magee we'll know where we're dragging him. 

Route planning

Sometime in the not too distant future the S.O. and I are going to hook up the 5th wheel (also referred to as Magee) and head South, destination Hot Springs, Arkansas. We know how to get there. US-41 to M-28 to US-45 to WI-17 to US-51 to I-39 to I-55 to I-40 to I-30 to US-70. Nice logical left, right, left, right, left, right, right, right, and right. 

The question is do we really want to go through Rockford, Illinois, again? Rockford itself isn't bad since there seems to be a lull this year in the endless construction projects, although the toll way is now kind of mysterious if a person doesn't have an EZ Pass (and we don't; why would we?). When we went down in April there no longer seemed to be an actual cash money lane for folks who are just passing through and don't plan to ever get on an other toll road in Illinois. 

But I can live with mysterious toll ways. I had actually been exploring alternatives to I-39 for awhile because there's a stretch of highway just south of Rockford that is remarkably rough -- it made the Guppy bounce around so much back in 2020 that the stove almost got jolted on to the floor, and it hadn't improved much when we went over it a few months ago. So, blue highways instead of Interstate. 

Google maps came up with one that involves zigging a bit west south of Madison, Wisconsin, and then doing some zigging east and then zigging west, all while more or less aiming south toward Bloomington/Normal while paralleling the Interstate. It didn't seem to make much difference in total miles, but I am of course dubious. The real trick is coming up with a route that will allow us to make reasonable stops, even if it's just in Walmart parking lots, because days have gotten shorter and it will be Real Winter by the time Magee is loaded and hitting the road. And we're old. 

Another alternative would be to skip Illinois and eastern Missouri completely. Just angle over to Minnesota or Iowa, go west until we hit I-35, and follow that down to where we could get on to I-49 and then aim for Hot Springs from the Fort Smith side of Arkansas. Maybe. A lot really will depend on the weather. The more miserable it is, the more likely we are to stick with a route we've traveled before.

It was finally our turn

For the past couple of years we've been able to say No when asked about COVID: no personal infections, no contact with anyone who has tested positive for COVID. There was always several degrees of separation between us and people we sort of knew who did get sick: you know, friends of friends of friends, people we used to see occasionally but haven't moved in the same circles with in years. That changed this week. 

Am I allowed to complain that it's been remarkably anti-climactic? Nine days ago we went to a small, belated birthday party at a cousin's summer cottage. There were only 9 people there, the S.O. and myself included. As of today, so far as I know, SARS-COV-2 has zapped maybe six of us, five for sure. Every person there has taken COVID seriously: vaccinations, boosters, masking, avoiding large public gatherings, the usual life in the plague years behavior. The virus slithered into our small circle anyway. The S.O.'s cousin messaged him Tuesday to say that four of the people at the cottage had positive rapid test results. The S.O. told me that he'd felt all day like he was coming down with a head cold so he dug out the box of rapid tests a generous government sent us several months ago. His test result? Positive. So I swabbed my nostrils, too. Good news, at least that day, for me: Negative.  

The S.O. turned into a snot mass production facility -- he went through an amazing amount of Kleenex in one evening -- and called his PCP at the V.A. clinic Wednesday morning. She emailed a prescription for Paxlovid to the closest pharmacy; I picked it up Wednesday afternoon. He took the first set of pills and, maybe it was a placebo effect, but snot production slowed rather quickly. He's basically back to normal now -- or as normal as he ever gets. I felt fine but kept testing, kept coming up negative. Then we ran out of rapid tests. 

Naturally, that's when I got sick. Felt fine most of the day then got hit in late afternoon with a massive wave of fatigue coupled with a vaguely feverish feeling and a whole lot of body aches. Crawled upstairs, napped, stumbled downstairs, checked my temperature (101), and mumbled a lot about bad timing: getting sick on a Friday afternoon is not ideal, especially when we'd used all the rapid test kits in the house. I decided that, well, I'll suck it up and if I'm sicker in the morning we'll drag my aching body to urgent care. I must not have been taking it all too seriously because I didn't bother telling the S.O. to call an ambulance if he noticed me turning blue in my sleep.

Except in the morning I wasn't sicker. Felt a little stuffed up and a little more tired than usual, but no fever, no aching. And that was it. It's like I just experienced the world's shortest case of the flu. Okay, I know there's no way to know if it was/is actually COVID (I am not curious enough to do the 45 mile drive to Walgreen to pick up test kits). If it was, the brevity of the feeling like shit must be a good sign the vaccinations worked. If it wasn't, maybe it was a new personal record in getting over a summer cold.

I am vaguely disappointed things didn't turn more dramatic, although I'm not sure why. The appropriate feeling should be relief. Life is strange.

Science marches on

Or maybe the title should be 'welcome to another revenue stream.'

I got to experience a new-to-me preventive medicine screening procedure yesterday. A few weeks ago I had my annual wellness meeting with my primary care practitioner, the encounter I always refer to as the 'yes, I'm still breathing' encounter because it's not a physical exam in the old-fashioned sense of an annual exam. It's a question-and-answer session that doesn't go much beyond the practitioner demonstrating that yes, she does still know how to use a stethoscope to make sure you have a heartbeat. 

Anyway, as part of the Q & A, my PCP ascertained I had managed to dodge the tits-in-a-vise for over five years, had never been tested for Hepatitis C, couldn't remember the last time I'd gotten a tetanus booster, and had never even heard of being screened for an abdominal aortic aneurysm, let alone had that screening done. When did routinely doing ultasounds of geezers' guts become a thing? 

I do like to feel like I'm getting my money's worth out of my insurance premiums, though, so when I got told it was a covered procedure under Medicare, I said sure, schedule it. It's summer. I don't mind the drive from the ranch up to Portage Health in Hancock when the weather is good. I acquiesced on the tits-in-a-vise, too. I figured it's a waste of time, but didn't feel like arguing it. 

Then I started Googling abdominal aortic aneurysms. No surprise -- they're pretty common in the elderly. Not super common, but of all the age groups, old people are the most likely cohort to end up with blood vessel problems. You get old, stuff starts wearing out, including major arteries. And arteries don't come any more major than the aorta. If you think of the aorta as analogous to a rubber hose that is being repeatedly inflated and deflated multiple times per minute day after day, month after month, decade after decade, it's not surprising that it's doing to develop some odd bulges as it fatigues. Eventually the bulges can get bad enough, the tissues thin enough, that leaks develop. Or, worst case scenario, blowouts. 

So when did screening for potential blowouts become a routine procedure? As far I could tell, it goes back to 2015 and the recommendations of the United States Preventive Services Task Force. The USPSTF is an independent organization, a panel of experts that evaluates findings in scientific medicine, and comes up with recommendations for improving preventive care. Seven years ago the Task Force reviewed the extant research on abdominal aortic aneurysms and decided screening older persons who presented certain risk profiles would be a good idea. 

Who fit that profile, you ask? Overweight elderly men with a history of long-term smoking and high blood pressure. How did the Task Force feel about screening old ladies? Probably not beneficial for women. So why did I, a woman who has normal blood pressure and quit smoking over 40 years ago, end up getting referred for a screening? See the subtitle suggested above: revenue stream. 

In a Facebook post where I mentioned the screening, I described the experience as the hospital trolling for surgery patients. After all, that is the fix: treat the aorta like a bad tube on a tire by patching it. It can be patched in a minimally invasive way (insert a stent by slicing into the femoral artery and sliding a stent up to reinforce the aorta from the inside, a procedure that's still going to require a general anesthetic and no stair climbing for a few days) or you can slice the patient open and work directly on the bad section. So, yes, I'm still thinking trolling for candidates to slice and dice is an accurate assessment. The more old people you screen, regardless of whether or not they fit the high-risk patient profile, the more likely you are to reel in a few potential occupants of a surgery suite.

Am I likely to be one of those candidates? Based on the statistics I saw, this is a case where the odds are in my favor. Geezers might be the most likely group to experience abdominal aortic aneurysms, but even among geezers aneurysms are pretty rare. And then when you get into just how many people who have been diagnosed with an aneurysm, the numbers who experience actual ruptures isn't especially high. Yes, it's a risk, but in the overall scheme of things that might kill a geezer, it doesn't make the top ten. 

As for how I'd react if I did get told to consult with a surgeon, my feelings on medical interventions once a person hits their sell by date (or is close to it) have been documented elsewhere. Watching my mother age did a good job of convincing me I have zero desire to be a centenarian. She actually aged pretty well (no cognitive decline, for example) but it's still depressing as hell to become increasingly frail while watching everyone in your age cohort drop dead before you. Involuntary tontines suck; being the oldest person in the audience at someone else's funeral doesn't seem like much of a pay-off.

Travel thoughts, more than slightly late

 Otter sculpture, Garvan Woodland Gardens

We've been back from our brief visit to the Land of No Snow for two months now. It always feels a little weird to visit a different season and then return to the tundra with its depressing sloppy April mix of mud and slush. May usually isn't a whole lot better -- if I recall correctly, our last spring snow in 2021 fell on May 15. Heading south we perked up when we realized we'd passed the snow line; on the return trip we groaned when remnant snowbanks began to appear around Rhinelander. By the time we got home, our driveway was, of course, still snow covered and the picnic table was still buried. 

It did turn out to be a late spring. Lilacs did not bloom until well after Memorial Day, neither did the creeping phlox.

Anyway, I've always liked Hot Springs, Arkansas -- it was one of my favorite places to visit for work back in my days with the National Park Service -- so would naturally would have liked to stay down there longer. 

One of the things parents always get warned about is trying to live their lives through their kids.Well, the Younger Daughter got a promotion and a transfer and is now duty stationed in Hot Springs. She's working on the Ouachita National Forest and eventually will be in an office in the forest headquarters (supervisor's office) in downtown Hot Springs. At the moment she's still teleworking -- the official move back into actual offices may take place around the end of June, beginning of July. If memory serves me right, she'll be right across the street from the National Park headquarters. Or maybe a block away, but not more than that. Does that count as me living vicariously? Or is it just a lucky coincidence? I'll vote for coincidence. 

Nifty garden train at Garvan Woodland Gardens

 

 

I will take some credit for letting her know Hot Springs isn't a bad place to be -- we did a mother/daughter weekend trip there back in 2011 -- but I think the actual attraction for her (not counting the promotion) was the fact Arkansas is green. It's true the natural landscape can be hostile (briers and poison ivy [unofficial state flower of Arkansas], assorted snakes, wood ticks, chiggers) but it doesn't seem quite as determined to kill you in as painful a way as possible as the Arizona desert does. 

It was a quick trip, slightly over two weeks including the travel days down and back. Because The Kid has to work from home, we opted to stay at a hotel. She did take a week of vacation so we could play tourist (note photos from Garvan Woodland Gardens, a Hot Springs attraction), but we figured she'd be happier without us underfoot. Besides, we had Beelzebub with us and had no idea how he and Cupcake (Tammi's cat) would react to each other. If they never achieved an understanding, it would be a very tense two weeks, and if they became buddies then we'd get to feel guilty about splitting them up right away. So a hotel that was pet friendly seemed like the smart thing to do. 

I do not usually do hotel endorsements, but I've got to say the Hilton Home 2 Suites we patronized in Hot Springs was the type of hotel I would have killed for (figuratively speaking) when I had to travel for work. It had amazing work space (most of the time when I traveled for work I'd end up sitting on the floor with the laptop in order to have the phone cord reach an outlet -- we had to do a hardwire dial-up connection; no using public wifi), a full-size refrigerator (not one of those annoying dorm fridge things), a decent breakfast bar, and was clean and quiet. It also came equipped with basic kitchen supplies -- china, silverware, a couple microwavable casserole dishes, and a toaster. If I had to stay anywhere for more than a few days, I'd cheerfully stay at a Home 2 again. The rates were good, too. In fact, we paid a lot more for rooms that were not nearly as nice on our way to and from Hot Springs, with the most overpriced probably being the place we stayed in Poplar Bluff on the way down. Definitely more of a one-star type room with the added bonus of discovering during the night that the heat didn't work. We did get a partial refund when I mentioned the no heat problem during check out, but that's not going to get that particular Comfort Inn back on our list of places we're willing to stay. 

Not that we're likely to be staying in any motels any time soon. If everything goes as planned, the next time we're in Hot Springs it will be with the Bobber (the travel trailer) so we'll be thinking about campgrounds and not whether or not a hotel is worth whatever it might happen to cost.I really do not want to spend next winter in the U.P.

So how's your Spring Break going?

It's been one of those weeks. I have thoughts, but they're not particularly coherent. It doesn't help that the Mud Season has arrived in all its glory. Our driveway is that interesting U.P. spring mix of mud and slush. Yesterday temps got up into the 40s, the sun was shining, and life seemed reasonably good. Today it's not as warm, it's gray outside, and there's a dusting of new snow. I was going to wander up to the Woman Cave to do some sewing, but am having a hard time working up the ambition to put on boots. 

My mood is not improved by the knowledge that the Original Plan for today was to pack. We were supposed to be heading south tomorrow, going down to Arkansas to visit the Younger Daughter and to scope out RV parks in the Hot Springs area just in case we decide we'd like to winter down there, but Life Interfered. Before we left we were going to gift our currently car-less Older Daughter with our old F150, which we refer to as Silver. The vehicle spent the winter buried in snow but started with no issues last week. It did take some shovel work and a tow with our plow truck to drag Silver out of the snowbank but we weren't worried about any mechanical issues. After all, it ran when we parked it. 

Famous last words. I got tasked with steering while the S.O. towed. I noticed the brake pedal felt soft. You know, soft as when I stepped on it the pedal sank gracefully and swiftly to the floorboards with zero resistance. "Sort of like stepping on a plum." This was not good. The S.O. did some checking. Turned out one of the ancient brakelines had rusted through. Why is a mystery -- the truck is barely 22 years old. Why would anything on it be rusted? Okay, slight delay in truck delivery. Had to make a run to the parts store for a new line and fittings, but it's mechanically a simple fix. The work gets done, everything seems good, the S.O. takes the truck for a test drive. 

He figures that's when he blew out an other brake line, the flexible rubber one. It's not as common a part as the metal brake lines. We checked online to see if Auto Zone had the line in stock at the closest store. Nope. We would have had to drive to Rhinelander, Wisconsin. This morning he called the local parts store in Baraga. They claim they'll have it by this afternoon. I'm not holding my breath. Once he gets the part, then he gets to do the installation . . . and we get to wait a bit to find out what will go wrong after that. 

I shouldn't complain. I'm not the one who gets to crawl under a truck that's parked outdoors on melting snow and try to loosen and tighten fittings in just barely above freezing temperatures.   

 

 

Rest in peace, C. W. McCall. Ever since hearing the song I've wanted to go over Wolf Creek Pass. 

Provenance

The old stove

I just went up to the Woman Cave to get a fire going in the new-to-me wood stove. Theoretically after it's burning for awhile it'll get warm enough in the WoCave for me to be able to do some sewing without wearing mittens. The only question now is how long it'll take. It was still below freezing in the building when I wandered back down the driveway in search of a hot cup of coffee. I do like the way my current stove looks but if I'm going to be honest, it does not draw nearly as well as its predecessor and does seem to take a lot longer to get things warm. 

The old stove, long time readers (all two of you) may recall, was a homemade box stove. It would probably have given an insurance agent nightmares, but once it got going it burned really well. I liked to compare its appetite for consuming wood to a wino's grabbing for bottles of Ripple. I once decided to ask the S.O. about the actual history of that stove. As I suspected but wasn't sure about, the stove was created locally. Charles B. Dantes (aka Young Charlie) built the stove in his garage/shop in beautiful downtown Herman. I do not know (and doubt if the S.O. knows either and I forgot to ask if he did) if Young Charlie built it meaning to use it in his garage or if it was purpose-built for where it went: the Waiting Shack, the small building the Herman kids hung out in while waiting for the school bus in the morning. 

Why was there a Waiting Shack? Because the full-size school bus couldn't navigate the side roads, or at least not the one that probably had the most kids living on it. The bridge over Dault's Creek (which is always referred to as the Herman Creek when you live in Herman but is Dault's on the maps) for the Summit Road was considered unsafe for the buses. The fact fully loaded logging trucks ran over it all the time was apparently irrelevant. It's one thing to chance dropping multiple tons of pulpwood into the creek, risking a busload of school kids is a different story. The school board dealt with the bridge issue by contracting with someone to drive a feeder bus, i.e., an ordinary car, out to the kids who lived on the various dead end roads that fan out from beautiful downtown Herman. (In retrospect, that car was like a rolling human sardine can, way more bodies crammed into it than it had been designed to hold, all sans seatbelts. Then again, nothing had seat belts back then. In a family sedan mom's lap was presumed to be the baby seat.) 

It is also possible the bridge wasn't an issue at all. The fact the back roads were pure shit may have been more of a factor, but I like the bridge story. 

The feeder bus would go up Lystila Road to pick up the kids from there, drop them at the Waiting Shack, and then go out the Summit Road to pick up kids, back to the Waiting Shack, out the Nestoria Road, and back, until all the kids were waiting for the big bus. Whoever drove the feeder bus got a fire started in the Waiting Shack before the first run out.  The kids who got dropped off would then toss additional logs on the fire if necessary while waiting for the rest of their colleagues to arrive. 

I'm not sure when the system with the Waiting Shack started. I never thought to ask my mother. She mentioned riding a school bus into L'Anse for high school in the 1930's but before that, i.e., first through 8th grades, she and her siblings either walked or skied to the Herman School. (That school closed around the time World War II began; the building is still standing, which is a real tribute to the guys who built it considering how long it's been sitting vacant.)

Anyway, back to stove history. At some point, the S.O.'s uncle Waino bought the stove. I'm not sure when the Waiting Shack stopped being used -- they were still using a feeder bus system the last time our kids were in the L'Anse schools, which was past the time when we acquired the stove, but apparently if the shack was still there it wasn't being heated anymore.

Waiting shack, Herman School in background

Not sure why the S.O.'s uncle bought the stove, but we acquired it from him in the late 1970's. We got it set up in what was then the back porch for the Shoebox (a mobile home) and it hasn't moved since. We did try to do it reasonably safely. As noted in other posts, we started covering the wall with a sheet of asbestos, which kind of shattered while being handled so it never really got all the way up. We also put an asbestos-backed metal pad under the stove. (Asbestos really was everywhere at one point. I'm always amazed there aren't more people dropping from mesothelioma. Check out an old Girl Scout handbook sometime: there are craft projects described in pre-1970's manuals that used loose asbestos fiber to mold candle holders.)

We got the old stove out of the WoCave last summer. We debated doing something with it, like turning it into a legal incinerator. Michigan now has a law stating that if you burn trash outdoors it has to be in an incinerator that includes a chimney. No more using a basic burn barrel or pretending we're in Texas or Missouri and burning trash in ditches. We've got some old brick we could have made a pad with so it wouldn't sink out of sight immediately. In the end, though, it went up to the field (or what used to be a field) to reside on the scrap iron pile. It's probably going to be in that location for a long, long time. It is made from really thick plate steel and isn't going to rust into nothingness any time soon. Does it count as a historic object? Now that it's on the scrap iron pile, knowing the provenance becomes kind of irrelevant.

I wonder why they might have trouble filling this position?

If the following is an example of the typical Help Wanted ad, I don't think there's much of a mystery as to why the applicant pool might be thin even in an area with traditionally high unemployment rates. This is a part-time job that's going to require a bitch of a commute once it gets to be winter. Granted, it's only 10 miles from downtown L'Anse out to the Forestry Center and US-41 is real highway, but even so. . . if the shift starts at 6:30 a.m., it means being on the road before the snowplows go out. The position is less than full-time, and by today's standards the pay kind of sucks for a job that is dirty and physically demanding. 

Granted, there are people working locally who do longer commutes -- I know people who drive from Republic or Houghton to work in L'Anse -- but they're not washing dishes part-time at a job where the hours and intensity of work can vary widely from week to week. 

On the other hand, if a person is willing to work in a kitchen, working for Tech would surely beat working in one of the local restaurants. Among other things, Tech won't try to stiff you on your hours by asking you to work off the clock or to ignore health code violations. There are definitely worse jobs to be found locally. 

Vacuous space filler

AKA cleaning out the gauno collection. So here are some random memes I saved because when a computer has a gazillion gigabytes of memory you've got to fill it with something.

Improvements at the ranch

I may be able to water the garden this summer. The S.O. succeeded in pulling the old point for our shallow well. In the photo he has succeeded in jacking the pipe up to where he's been able to remove two 5-foot sections and is close to having another section almost high enough to remove. 

The well is close to the Woman Cave and provided our drinking water back when we had a mobile home. It's also one of those wells that the Health Department freaks out over -- not particularly deep so could be prone to contamination. Never viewed it as an issue for us, though, not when we're perched close to the highest point around here and are sitting on glacial till. 

Even better, that glacial till was beachfront a few thousand years ago. What is now wetland on the lower half of our property is the remnant of a pothole lake formed when the glaciers retreated. Over millennia a whole lot of water soaked into the gravel under us. Our place has never lacked for water. The problem has been getting it out of the ground. Glacial till tends to have a lot of sand in it. Sand has a nasty habit of clogging the screens on well points as well as shredding the working parts of pumps. 

Which is what happened to the most recent well a couple years ago. The sand content in the water that made it through the pump seemed to get worse until it was more like the pump was sucking mud -- the last load of laundry done using that well water had so much sand in it for all intents it wasn't clean at all. We brilliantly figured out it was time to pull the point, clean the sand out or replace it, and hope the problem was solved for awhile.

Except the point did not want to come out of the ground. The well consisted of (as far as the S.O. could recall) four 5-foot lengths of drive pipe and the 3-foot point. One of the couplings on the pipe must have gotten wedged under a rock because it would come up maybe 6 inches and stop. He tried multiple times a couple summers ago, even had help in the attempt, and the pipe would not move. We did talk about simply buying more pipe and driving a point in a few inches away from where the old pipe was sticking out of the ground, but we'd already done that once. The sand has been an ongoing issue for decades. When we put the new point in this time it's going to be, as best I can recall, the fourth one since 1973. 

The original well on the property was a dug well, really shallow, farther down the hill and close to the sauna. It hadn't been used in years so when the S.O. and I set up housekeeping in the Shoebox in 1973 he decided to do a new well a few feet away from the old dug well. He excavated a hole so the pumphouse would be basically underground and protected from freezing in the winter, and then drove a point. I think that one went down maybe 15 feet. Only problem was that in the spring, the pumphouse tended to fill with water as the snow around it melted. So then he drove another point farther up the hill and built an above-ground pumphouse. That point worked fine for a few years, had amazing water pressure, and then things began slowing to a trickle. 

We brilliantly figured out the screen on the point was getting blocked. We tried a couple remedies, he tried pulling it with no luck, and then he drove Point Number 3. Which worked fine for a few years. . . and here we are getting ready to finish pushing Point Number 4 into the ground. At least this time it's a little easier getting the point back in -- he's just shoving it into the hole the Point Number 3 came out of. It had about two feet left to go when he quit for the day. Once it's down far enough to reconnect the pump, all  we have to do is hope the old pump still works after having humongous amounts of sand pass through it for a decade or two.    

Photo is of the point following its removal. It had a long split down one side and was packed two-thirds full of sand. Not much of a mystery any more just why it was pumping mud. 

I didn't bother with a garden last year because I figured out a long time ago I can not count on rain keeping things growing. This year, of course, when I will be able to run a sprinkler it'll turn out to be the wettest summer in 50 years. 

This well also supplies water to the guest cabin so if all goes the way it should, the next guest in the cabin will have cold water on tap again.

Small town amusements

The S.O. and I both enjoy perusing the local buy/sell/trade pages on Facebook, the ones like Baraga County Shit Stuff for Sale, where people try to unload items that vary in asking price from not a bad deal to holy shit, are they delusional? 

Yesterday someone put up a sales ad for a vintage travel trailer. The box on wheels wasn't exactly in the really desirable category (e.g., a 1960's Shasta, complete with wings) but it was new enough that the blue book value still includes a comma, a number this trailer was listed well below. Like, really, really well below. My reaction to the extremely low price was "I wonder what's wrong with it?" The seller noted there was a minor water leak, he was still in the process of cleaning the trailer out, and he had a clean title. I may have been skeptical, but other folks saw that low price and decided to bargain hunt. 

That first ad was followed by one in which the seller noted he'd had over 30 inquiries and was pretty sure the trailer was sold PPU (pending pick up). That's when the drama began unfolding.

Another post went up, this one by someone accusing Trailer Boy of trying to sell a travel trailer that he did not own. Not only did Trailer Boy not own it, the accuser said the trailer actually belonged to the accuser's grandmother -- and if the trailer moved, his grandmother was going to report it as stolen. The clean title did not exist.

That's when the comment threads started getting interesting. Lots of back and forth about how you leave something unattended for 30 days you've given up your ownership of said item, which as it happens isn't exactly true. If you know who the legal owner is you're supposed to make a good faith effort to get that person to come get their stuff. Then, if it's a large item, like a recreational vehicle that is issued a title by the state, you're supposed to go through law enforcement to get it gone. If you don't follow the rules as laid out by the State of Michigan you risk getting accused of theft or worse. Like cheating old people or ripping off the elderly.

Several of the commenters know the people involved and were fairly blunt in their assessments of Trailer Boy and his motives. Turns out the travel trailer apparently belonged to Trailer Boy's ex-wife's grandmother. I am rather relieved that so far none of the names in the comments have belonged to anyone I'm related to, at least not that I know of.

In other developments, Trailer Boy has a new post up trying to sell a ring theoretically worth several thousand dollars, but he'll let it go cheaper. He says he needs money to help pay for an attorney.

Or, as someone in that comment thread noted, possibly bail. 

But what about my right to privacy?

The S.O. and I made a run to Hancock yesterday. He had an appointment at the V.A. Clinic for Shot Number Two so I tagged along. I had a minor errand to run that involved a stop in Houghton. The museum had new brochures run off that I needed to pick up from the Print Shop.

By coincidence, it happened that the Print Shop was offering a new service: photocopying and reducing a person's completed COVID-19 vaccination record and then laminating the copy so one can hang it on a lanyard with other ID cards -- or, if not interested in dangling it on a lanyard, at least having a laminated card that would stand up to wear and tear if one anticipated having to pull it out of a wallet or pocket on a regular basis. I have no plans to avail myself of the service but it struck me as a handy idea.

Also by coincidence, sort of, I've been noticing a fair amount of discussion over the use of vaccination cards. Should they be required for certain settings or events, like for travel? Should people be able to prove they've had the shots or is that a violation of a person's right to privacy? 

I am not real sympathetic to the "privacy" argument. Your right to privacy goes out the door when your actions affect other people. And I'm also not real sympathetic to the whiners who make it sound like requiring vaccination cards would be something new, a requirement that no one anywhere has ever had to think about before. The whiners don't know much history. 

Smallpox used to be the killer disease everyone worried about. Back in the days when smallpox epidemics were still happening, it was standard procedure to require people coming into a country to provide proof of vaccination. The card above was issued by a ship's surgeon to a person traveling on the S.S. Abyssinia back in 1883. The flip side of it specifies that the vaccination in question was for smallpox. Thanks to the wonders of Google, I was able to find that the Abyssinia's regular run was from Liverpool to New York and back again. Odds are that the government requiring anyone getting off that ship to show proof of vaccination was the United States. 

You know, just about every time someone starts yammering about freedom or privacy and asserting that some particular rule or regulation is completely unprecedented, it's a pretty good bet they're wrong. The author of Ecclesiastes nailed it thousands of years ago: "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun."  

Vaccination card image from the Baraga County Historical Museum, of course.

Upgrades coming to the Woman Cave

The Woman Cave experienced major trauma this past spring. Raccoons did a thorough number on trashing it, including chewing holes in the ceiling and turning my desk into a latrine. The Woman Cave wasn't much to brag about before the 'coons decided to mess with it; after cleaning out the crap it was clear we needed to do some serious DIY soon. Soon, of course, has always been a relative term with us. We know we have to take the damaged ceiling panels down but it didn't get done in the summer, and once cold weather arrived we decided to wait a bit. (I got lucky with the desk. The furry bastards dumped a bunch of books on it before starting to build a mountain of feces. It was disgusting, I wound up tossing about $300 worth of books, but the desk wasn't damaged. My dad made it so it has sentimental value.)(I also got lucky with my sewing and craft supplies. Trash pandas might be smart but they didn't open any drawers and apparently couldn't figure out how to open latched Sterlite totes.) 

We should probably invest in some throwaway coveralls and some N-95 masks before we start the ceiling removal part of the project. You know that when the ceiling paneling comes down it'll be accompanied by over 40 years of rodent droppings and squirrel souvenirs. I figure the squirrels in the ceiling were the original reason for the raccoons getting up there from the outside: those little red pine squirrels would be an attractive late winter snack to a trash panda. Then once the raccoons were in the ceiling, they decided to see what might be hiding beneath it. 

Anyway, we decided that as long as we're taking down a good section of the ceiling, we'll redo the insulation up there and maybe put in a new lighting fixture, something more recessed than what's there now. And if we're going to insulate part of the ceiling, we really should finish off the wall behind the stove, the one we've been meaning to finish for the past 40+ years but let slide because the wood stove was in the way. That gray stuff is a sheet of asbestos that broke into multiple pieces back in about 1976 and has been leaning there ever since. It's long past time to do something about it. If we're going to finish the wall, including insulating it better, then we're going to have to move the stove. If we're going to deal with moving that beast, we might as consider replacing it entirely.  

Of course, we've been talking about doing something about the woodstove since the '90's. I have blogged in the past about the joys of using that stove, the one that inhales wood the same way winos suck down Gallo. It is a rather crude box stove made from plate steel. It was a used stove when we acquired it. I can't recall its history, but it's gone through a couple owners before us. We got it in the 1970s and it had flaws then. The door has never hung quite right so the draft is hard to control, and the grates got eaten through ages ago. It has a water tank on the side toward the wall, which would be a handy feature if it actually held water. 

It is, in brief, a homemade box stove that would give any fire insurance agent heart failure. It is also the stove that was our primary source of heat for The Shoebox when we lived in it during one of the coldest winters on record, but that adventure has been documented elsewhere. And, yes, that is a brick on the front door. It's the draft control. Doesn't work real well when there's a half inch gap at the top of the door, but it's the thought that counts. On the other hand, when I fired it up the other day it got the Woman Cave from right above zero degrees Fahrenheit to almost 80 in less than an hour. 

I'd been kind of watching for a decent woodstove of about the right size to show up on the local buy/sell/trade page (aka Baraga County Shit Stuff for Sale). Last week I spotted a contender. A seller listed a "vintage" parlor stove. A parlor stove! Nifty. It wouldn't be just a source for heat -- it would be a decorative feature. The Woman Cave would have "decor." The big questions were (a) just how big was it (the Woman Cave has limited space) and (b) how badly was it rusted?

Turned out the size is just about perfect. It does have flaws, of course. Some of the mica in the door, the see-through one that lets you admire the fire, is missing, but mica is cheap. One of the pins for a door (it has two; one on the front and one on an end) is gone, but that's also a simple fix. And, yes, it's looking rather rusty but the S.O. has a sand blaster. When warmer weather approaches, he'll clean it up, we'll get some black stove paint, and the Woman Cave will acquire vaguely more style. 

I had been a little worried about how the new stove would line up with the chimney, such as it is, but turns out the answer is No Problem. 

This is how the stove should look cleaned up, except we don't have the nifty decorative top. 

I need a timeout from the Intertubes

I managed to get myself blocked for being a little too bluntly honest in a local buy/sell/trade group on Facebook. I can still see posts and message sellers directly, but can't do public comments. Which is probably a good thing. Some people have watched far too many episodes of "Flea Market Flip" or perused the recycling photos on Pinterest because, holy wah, they're peddling some bad DIY. I'd managed to restrain myself most of the time, just scrolled past the most horrible examples, the pieces of beaver puke (aka MDF)(medium density fiberboard) someone actually wasted time refinishing, but a mutilated 1930's vanity triggered me the other day.

I guess I can ignore it when someone is dumb enough to waste time doing chalk paint and distressing a cheap dresser that is no more real wood than I'm Meryl Streep, but when it was something I knew had been actual furniture once? I couldn't restrain myself. It was the ugliest example of DIY I'd seen in a long time, and I said so. 

No doubt the original veneer had been shot long ago, gouged up beyond the hope of a decent repair, but that still didn't excuse the battleship (or possibly automobile primer) gray or the not original drawer pulls that were massively out of proportion for the piece. The seller referred to it as dresser, but it wasn't, which makes it no surprise she totally botched the repurposing. It was an art deco vanity. At one time it apparently had a mirror, which no longer existed, but there was a chunk of plywood with some oddly spaced shelves and a whole lot of clutter on them attached where the mirror once lived. It was weird. It was ugly. It was sad because it could have been cute. With a less weird color choice and better staging it would have been easily marketable as a fun piece for a kid's room. 

But, nope, it was just crap. 

Photo is of a vanity similar in style to the one that got mutilated. Now try picturing it in matte gray primer. I felt you all flinch, gentle readers. The thought is indeed painful. 

In any case, asking the seller why she'd turned it into a giant gray fungus was probably a mistake. The comments section turned nasty. The seller apparently has a posse who are quite happy to heap praise on her for mediocre work. Either that, or they have as little aesthetic sensibility as the furniture mutilator does because they kept insisting it was "cute." Nope. It looked like an old piece of furniture someone had pulled out of their grandparents house and had been using for storage in the garage for 20 or 30 years. Solid, but not exactly something to hype.  

The comments sections on various buy/sell/trade posts do have a tendency to turn into flame wars. I've seen some remarkably obscene comments about buyers, sellers, and products. I do not envy the admin. Then again, she can't even manage to get people to pay attention to the fact that group is supposed to be "no clothes," but every other post seems to be someone hawking their kids' slightly stained, torn, whatever garments. 

The site also amuses me by the way folks under the age of 30 refer to anything that was sold before they graduated from high school as an "antique" or "rare." Right. You inherited a mass produced beaver puke Sauder bookcase your parents bought at Kmart in the early 80s. It's not an antique, and for sure it's not rare. But that's a subject for another time. 

Irony in action?

Back when we were still sheltering in place in Arizona the S.O. noticed the Focus had a minor vibration in the front end. It wasn't bad, really only noticed it at highway speeds, but it was there. We'd been talking about investing in new tires but decided it would be good to first figure what was causing the vibration. After all, depending on what it was it could cause the tires to wear unevenly. So he tried tracking down the problem. No luck. 

I wasn't keen on the idea of driving the Focus the 2000 miles back to Michigan either on almost bald tires or with a mystery shimmy, but then the Guppy died. We wound up renting a U-Haul and tow dolly to get home. If we'd had the Guppy we would have convoyed. Dragging the Focus instead of driving it meant we acquired more procrastination time. Every so often this summer the S.O. would talk about bringing the Focus over to the neighbor's (a person who was a professional mechanic for many years and has an actual lift in his garage so it would be possible to get a real look at the various pieces and parts hiding under the car, the stuff that can be hard to get a clear look at with just jack stands) but it didn't happen. 

Then Winter hit. Doing local driving on Italian racing slicks didn't bother us much when the pavement was bare, but once it started icing up? Not as much fun, especially on days when the infamous "wintry mix" was falling. So the S.O. coordinated with the neighbor on a good time to bring the car over. They put it up on the lift, did multiple things to do it, and totally failed at finding a mechanical problem. The expert's advice? Keep driving it until it gets worse and then maybe we'll be able to figure it out. 

That meant suppressing any qualms we had about uneven tire wear. Yesterday afternoon found us in Marquette at Mr. Tire enjoying a "contactless" transaction. No sitting in the showroom sipping bad coffee. Instead we got to sit in the car while the tires were changed, which was interesting in itself, watching the guys in constant motion (four guys in the service area plus the manager and they did not get a whole lot of breathing time -- as soon as one car left, another was pulled in). It didn't take long and we were on our way. 

First thing the S.O. noticed was the annoying vibration seems to be gone. After putting over 70 miles on the car coming home, it appears the vibration never was mechanical. It was one of the tires. 

I guess the up side is we're now heading in to winter with brand new tires instead of ones with several thousand miles of wear on them, but it's still a bit annoying to realize we spent six months wondering how much hassle it was going to be to repair the front end when it appears it never needed fixing at all. 

Life goes on

 I went into town recently to put in a few hours at the museum cheerfully communing with PastPerfect, The current cataloguing task is to inventory and scan the gazillion photos stashed in a decent sized Rubbermaid tote. Not sure how many photos there are total, but it's a lot. There's everything from turn of the century (as in the beginning of the 20th, not the end) cabinet cards to fairly recent color snapshots. 

Most, of course, have no labels whatsoever. No dates, no names, no information on where the photo came from. And, of course, there are a lot of snapshots taken by people who were apparently the world's worst amateur photographers: out of focus or so poorly composed (groups of people where all you see are their backs, for example) that they're worthless. The trash can is filling fast. 

On the positive side, every photo that hits the trash is one less to scan. The scanner is not noted for its speed. 

I do know why some of the photos have no labels. At the time they were donated, the museum still had members who knew exactly who everyone was and where the pictures were taken. They forgot no one lives forever so almost none of that information got written down. End result 20 or 30 years later? Stuff gets tossed. Not everything, of course, even if it is unlabeled. Street scenes where the location is obvious, like parades in L'Anse or Baraga, even if the date isn't known because we can come up with approximations based on what businesses are where or figuring out the model years for any vehicles that are included. Now when there are parades they don't allow on street parking but that wasn't always true.  

There was one photo in the stash that intrigued me. Wasn't exactly sure at first glance where the building was, but the year is obvious: 1964. Struck me as an interesting coincidence that as we're hearing about one candidate losing I stumbled across a photo for another. 

I wasn't old enough to vote yet so don't remember much about that election year. The only politics that interested me in 1964 were purely local: a referendum on consolidating two school districts. The district I was in lost: the result was based on total votes in favor regardless of how the individual district's totals added up. The Saxon district was small and rural and overwhelmingly rejected consolidation; Hurley was an actual small city with a lot more warm bodies and for some reason favored it. Not sure why -- a friend who was on the school board in the early '80s told me Hurley was still stuck paying Saxon's debts for the bond issued for a new gymnasium in about 1960. In any case, I went from being one student in a class of nine to being one student in a class of (I think) 131. It was. . . interesting. 

As for Goldwater, his run for the Presidency briefly interrupted his Senate career. He'd served two terms, could not run for the Senate again while also being on the ballot for President, so wound up taking a 4-year break. He then went back to the Senate for three more terms. By today's Republican party standards, his positions would be anathema: he supported abortion rights, thought gays should be allowed to serve in the military, and firmly believed religion had no place in politics.  

When will I learn?

 It doesn’t pay sometimes to re-read books even when those books were penned by a favorite author. 

I am, for example, a huge fan of John Sandford’s writing. It’s quite possible I’ve read every work of fiction he’s published. Sandford is one of those rare authors where I’m even willing to suppress my distaste for crowds and get in line for book signings or a scheduled talk at a book festival. (The Younger Daughter said she didn’t realize authors had groupies until she saw me mesmerized by Sandford at the Tucson Book Festival a couple years ago. She likes Sandford’s books, too, but apparently not quite as much as her mother.)

I like Sandford because besides being a great story teller he gets stuff right. He does actual research. When he describes one of his characters speeding to a crime scene in Minnesota, he’s accurate in how long it takes to get from someplace like Marshall to up by Ely. His descriptions of topography are spot-on, too. No weirdness that can knock you out of being focused on the story to thinking, “What the. . .? That’s would be a 4 hour drive under ideal conditions. Why does the author describe him as doing it in 20 minutes?” I loved Tony Hillerman’s books, but have to admit his compressing a hundred-plus miles on the Navajo nation into trips you could do in no time at all annoyed the crap out of me. Even when a person is reading fiction, the reader wants to the background to feel right.

Which brings me to the latest revelation that one of my idols isn’t perfect. I hit kind of a dry spell for reading material and decided to re-read the first book in Sandford’s Virgil Flowers series, Dark of the Moon. First thing that hits me is a continuity error. I want to know exactly when Virgil’s father switched denominations. In later books in the series, Virgil’s minister father is Lutheran. In Dark of the Moon he’s Presbyterian.

Okay, minor point. As the series progressed Sandford probably unconsciously decided that Lutheran made more sense in thoroughly Scandinavian Minnesota, which we all know is full of Norwegian bachelor farmers and church suppers at which dual purpose Jello™ molds (if there’s Cool Whip™ it’s a dessert; if there’s Miracle Whip™ it’s a salad) dominate the menu. Pastor Flowers is a minor character, a side note in the series overall scheme of things, so Sandford’s copy editor didn’t catch it in subsequent works. No big deal.

And then another character’s name caught my eye, and I cannot unsee it. I have groused in the past about writers and their weirdness in naming their fictional people. Terry Brooks and the Shanarra chronicles full of people who sound like diseases or other health conditions (I’m still surprised none of his characters were named Dysmenorrhea), William Krueger looking at maps of Minnesota and coming up with gems like Marais Grand.

So what did Sandford do? No doubt he was drawing a blank, had another detective he had to slap a name on, and nothing was coming to him. And then he looked down at the keyboard.

Del Capslock.

Okay, so on most keyboards it’s CAPSLK, but we all know what the inspiration was. What can we expect next? Paige Down? Con Troll? 

The mind boggles. . .

Living in Interesting Times

I started re-reading The Stand a week or two ago. It’s maybe not the smartest reading choice while living through a pandemic, but I picked it up anyway. For those who aren’t familiar with the book, it’s Stephen King’s usual Good vs Evil using a man-made killer disease, an airborne respiratory infection that is the ultimate in horrible influenza-like illnesses. It wipes out most of the population and leaves survivors who as the book progresses are going to be sorted into Good Guys and Evil’s Minions. Fairly standard post-apocalyptic plotting, in other words.

I’m not being real ambitious about it so I’m maybe only about 40% into the thing, which maybe should be called The Doorstop or The Brick instead of The Stand. The sucker is humongous. It was a fat book the first time around, and what I’m reading now is the revised edition, the one where King got to indulge his writer’s ego and plug in all the sections that publishers made him cut in the name of corporate profits.  nhi there’s a calculus publishers indulge in, a formula that incorporates the author’s past performance, likely sales for the new book, and how many pages a book can run before it slides over the line into Not Worth It. When the first edition of The Stand came out, King’s work was selling at a decent clip but hadn’t yet hit the point where Doubleday or whoever could have slapped the name Stephen King on the cover of a New York phone book and seen it top best seller lists. A few years later, of course, King had slid into golden territory and could do more or less anything he felt like doing. Result? A book so fat that calling it a brick would be massively misleading. It’s more like a cinder block. Or maybe one of those giant sandstone blocks that Cheops used to build the Great Pyramid at Giza.

But, as usual, I’ve begun with a long digression. I’m re-reading The Stand while the world is dealing with a pandemic. I have to say King did his homework (and he does acknowledge the help he received from epidemiologists and other experts). He invents an air-borne infection, a respiratory infection that is remarkably virulent. The infection rate is close to 100%. So is the mortality rate. And it’s fast. Victims are exposed to minuscule amounts of virus; 48 hours later they’re dead after coughing out humongous amounts of snot and then choking to death with swollen glands.

To me, King’s super-flu reads like a cross between typical influenza and diphtheria. Diphtheria victims basically choke to death, although not quite as messily as the super-flu victims in The Stand. Diphtheria used to kill a lot of people in the usual depressingly random fashion all diseases kill people. A diphtheria epidemic hit the U.P. in 1916. Locally, one family went from being a married couple with 8 kids to a widower with 5, a set of twins had one girl die while the other never got sick. The randomness really makes it easy to see why people want to believe in supernatural factors. Why would the three boys in a family die and the five girls survive? When everyone is living together in a tiny log cabin, how can some people never get sick? Depending on time, place, and culture, the survivors have either been blessed by God or are the Devil’s spawn.

The Stand picks its victims in a similarly random fashion. Some survivors have major exposures – handling a sick person repeatedly with no precautions – while some victims are exposed in such a random, tiny way (walking past someone who is infected but not yet visibly sick, for example) that if a person didn’t know that such casual contacts really can spread disease you wouldn’t believe it.

Then again, maybe that’s one reason why so many people enjoyed reading The Stand. Most people didn’t understand disease transmission really can be that simple so they viewed it all as just fantasy. From the way some people freak out over the idea of wearing masks, it’s obvious way too many people still don’t get it. If they can’t see it, it’s not real.

Out here in the real world, of course, there are no diseases quite as virulent as King’s Captain Trips. There are some that come close, especially at the novel stage and hitting a naïve population (i.e., one that has never been exposed before), but generally none manage to kill 99.9% of a population in one fell swoop. It took repeated smallpox, measles, and other epidemics of European diseases to eliminate millions of indigenous persons in the Americas, and even that had help – the American military giving smallpox-contaminated blankets to Native Americans, for example. 

Today, of course, COVID-19 is getting a helping hand from all the idiots who somehow smell a government conspiracy or an infringement of their rights every time they're asked to behave like civilized members of a community instead of the selfish twits they actually are. The bizarre part is that even when the twits hear about fellow cov-idiots who proclaimed loudly that they would not wear a mask, the virus was a hoax, it wasn't any worse than the flu (which they conveniently forget kills thousands of people annually, too, just not quite on the scale COVID-19 does) and who then became infected and died (or came close to it) the twits still proclaim proudly they are fine in their own personal little delusional bubble. A friend suggested that maybe we should just let natural selection take its course, but natural selection isn't particularly smart. It won't just take out the cov-idiots; there'd be collateral damage: the twits' friends, family, strangers who were exposed because one selfish twit was too lazy or too stupid to believe the science.

Given the way hot spots erupt almost every time people decide they're tired of being cautious and go to large group gatherings or hang out in crowded spaces I'm thinking we're going to be living with COVID-19 for a long time. It's not fading into obscurity until mask wearing becomes the new normal for everyone. I pin no hopes on a vaccine. Even if one is developed soon many people won't benefit -- it's pretty clear  Big Pharma won't just give it away. They'll price it the same way they do everything else: obscenely high.