Woodworking Gods

One of the more expensive and time consuming of my plethora of hobbies is woodworking. Seldom has so much money and so much time ever produced so little productive return. I am going to have to build something quite large and fancy to ever get the average price of my projects down below $2000 each.
In this hobby there are several groups of us each worshiping different shop gods. I personally am forced to confess that I actually enjoy the tools and machinery more than making wooden items. I have always been a tool nut, attracted by wonderful mechanical devices of all kinds. While some are content to sit down with one knife and whittle a bit of wood into a piece of art I am more prone to keep enough tools and machinery to attack the wood using "shock and awe" to force it into shape. Many of us are never quite satisfied with machines as they come so we make a lot of modifications to them and of course that requires that we acquire even more machinery to make those modifications.
Then there are those "plan" worshipers who spend hours and hours studying , buying and drawing plans. Some would spend $100 and 100 hours coming up with a suitable "plan" for a project and after all of those dollars and hours they would then spend 20 minutes of shop time building and another 5 minutes of time hanging the new birdhouse in the back yard. At that point they walk away, never looking back, headed to the shop to plan their next project. They are not sure what it will be but they have heard of a new set of plans out for a different shaped napkin ring.
Another group are the "wood" guys (and gals) who don't much care what they make or how they make it. They only care about the wood they use. Yes, it is only a toothpick holder but it is made of "Co-whatsit Wood" from the south bank of a horseshoe bend in the Amazon River 300 miles up river. Even then they will only use a piece from the east branch of the tree where tree frogs have sat for 200 years and have worn a smooth spot.
There is one group that worships the "Chip and Shavings" god and to them the smooth rolling curl of the shavings out of their hand plane is far more important than the board they have removed it from. The item being made is definitely secondary. Nothing is more relaxing to them than to be standing ankle deep in sawdust, chips and shavings.
In an opposing camp there are the worshipers of the almighty dust collectors. To them most tools are unimportant. The wood is unimportant. The project is unimportant. The only thing that really matters is that not a single bit of dust, chips or shavings ever reaches the floor. They set up such huge dust collection systems that when they click the remote control they wear on their belt 24-7 and the high horsepower collection units kick on, all of the doors and windows in the shop bow inward from the massive vacuum formed. They also tend to have a brush, broom and dust pan at each work station ready to flash into action in the unlikely event that the collectors should ever permit a small particle of dust to settle on any shop surface.
You might think sandpaper worshipers would be next but that is not the case. Nobody worships sand paper... It is just a necessary evil (except for rustic projects) that everybody hates. Even the plan worshipers only make one word mention of it. The dust collection worshipers don't like it because it clogs their high dollar filters badly. Nobody likes the stuff.
There is a group of woodworkers that worship the gods of "finish". Not the end of the project, rather the varnish,paint or oil used to coat the surfaces of projects. All of the other work to this point has just been a prelude to the finishing for them. You will recognize one of them when you enter their shop. Their scrap wood box has 27 coats of hand rubbed tung oil finish on it. Their front door has so much varnish on it that you can barely get to the knob.
I almost forgot the scrap wood guys. Actually that applies to most of us in the hobby. Almost all of us are scrap savers. At times it gets so bad that part of the shop machinery has to be removed from the shop and new lumber stored outside under a tarp just so that there is room for another scrap wood box. About the only thing that saves many of us is that we tend to use woodstoves for shop heat.
Lastly is the group that worships the sharp cutting edge. They have thousands in sharpening equipment and absolutely must have the very newest unit out. They have 312 different kinds of oil stones and complicated equipment that would put NASA to shame. If you could gather all of the little tiny diamonds together from their diamond hones you could put together another Hope Diamond (a rather ugly piece of rock by the way). Tool makers love these guys since they wear out so much stuff. Some of them have to buy new wood chisels and lathe turning tools every year since they sharpen them out of existence. They grind and sharpen on about anything and everything including the light switches and flush handles. You dare not lean on anything in their shop for fear of cutting yourself.
We woodworkers are generally a friendly bunch and in most of the different groups mentioned above there are members of other groups as there tends to be a lot of overlap of ideals. I can highly recommend the hobby especially if you enjoy being out of money much of the time and don't mind shaking a little sawdust out of your shoes. Woodworkers do tend to have nicknames, I know of a couple named Dusty. Then there is One Eye, Three finger Jack, Stumpy, Scarface, Stitches and Gimpy.
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Just How Dopey Do You Want To Look?

This is a quicky... For the love of Pete people, when you attend a funeral or wedding yank the stupid Bluetooth off of your ear! I don't care if you have ego issues, if you can't appear in public without it for even a short time maybe it is time to visit the shrink for a tune-up again. No matter how important you like to think you are, in the grand scheme of the universe you are just another grain of sand... If you are sitting next to me in a restaurant and yelling into a mouthpiece I may be forced to politely tell you to "shut the hell up". Other people are also using this planet.
While I am at it... Consider driving in traffic = number one, cell phone use in traffic = number two. Translate that to suit yourself.
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Macular Degeneration, a failure to communicate
I first heard of macular degeneration maybe twenty years ago when my mother was diagnosed with the condition. She was a little luckier than some in that it did not make her blind and only reduced her vision by a reasonably small amount by the time of her death a couple of years ago from Alzheimer's. My mother-in-law on the other hand became legally blind from it some years ago and lives with the blindness yet today. Even she is still able to see a little and thankfully does not have to live in total darkness. Still today living in a nursing home she can play bingo by holding the card up very close to her face and memorizing the card for that game.
I will not go into the technical aspects of the disease here but rather want to try to make others aware of one of the side effects of the condition. Sadly while the medical community is generally aware of the condition they are totally failing to discuss or prepare the patients for what might happen. If you want to know more about macular degeneration a simple Google search will fulfill your desires. The failure to communicate involves the fairly common propensity of the patient to "see things"... It can manifest itself in any number of ways. People will at times simply see very clear but sometimes completely nonsensical images in front of them. My mother-in-law sees chickens among other things. She has also describes seeing "mouths" moving. Some patients describe seeing mountains especially when climbing stairs. Some end up falling on stairs from the visions since one common vision when climbing stairs is more stairs than are actually there. The failure, and in my mind shame, of the medical community in this situation is that even though I know of a number of folks with this condition that have the "visions", that not one of them has ever been given advance warning of their possibility of occurring. Not a single one... This shameful omission results in most patients developing great fear that their mind is going. Most clam up and never say anything about seeing things and just sit and worry in silence about their sanity. My mother-in-law has a very good mind for 92 and once she knew that the images were just a normal part of the condition has sat and laughed about them for years. When she lived with us I used to tease her that I didn't want her to look for a cure to seeing all of those chickens because we needed the eggs. In her case she has a very lively sense of humor. As I understand it the images are just a projection of sorts from the brain trying to make sense of the garbled signals it is receiving through the optic nerves. I have read that the images are most often of something the patient has seen in their past. In my mother-in-law's case she raised flocks of chickens years ago on the farm in their ongoing efforts to raise their eight children.
If you are ever in a position to discuss this condition with a macular degeneration patient, be sure they know that "seeing things" is normal for that condition. It seems that their medical "professionals" typically cannot be bothered to do so...
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Weenie World

OK, do understand that I'm not talking hot dogs here. I'm talking about a world full of people that have become so spoiled and pampered that they have no concept of the real pains of poverty or hunger. They have no concept of compassion. Their whole world revolves around themselves or at the most their circle of family and close friends. Somehow even many people that have been through tough times can end up being seriously selfish and lacking in compassion. It is almost like they have just blocked that part of their lives out of their minds. Not all of them do it, some of us that have known poverty can and do feel the pain of others that are in a serious struggle. We also sometimes feel great anger at those that believe that waste and massive overspending are a proper way of life. Don't get me wrong, if I won a $100,000,000 lottery my life style would most certainly change and I don't begrudge folks living well or even living very well. Then again the Wall Street guy that spent 1.2 million dollars remodeling an already luxury office and who then said that it was completely unusable as it was is just so far out of touch with the rest of the world that they might as well take him out and snuff him as a waste of space... Bring him out to my farm and let him either muck stalls or starve for a few months. Let him wade snowdrifts at zero degrees carrying hay and water. Let him wrestle hay bales out of the back of a baler at 95 degrees all day long. Let him crawl in the mud and snow on his belly under a broken piece of farm equipment at midnight. For that matter send him out with our brave troops and let him see hell for a while... Then stick him back in that “unstylish” office and he just might think it is a pretty damn nice place to work...

I feel very sorry for those who are actually suffering due to the degrading economic conditions (but not the guy above) but at the same time this mess could well help us as a society begin producing a better grade of people than we have been doing lately. “Experience is the best teacher” and about the only one that really works. It is already making many folks look a little closer at how they live. I just read that credit card spending is dropping and that saving is actually increasing as strange as that seems. Our society offers so much stuff (things) that even many children in families with incomes below the poverty level suffer from what in years gone by would have labeled them as “poor little rich kids”. Too many things and not enough love, time or discipline given to them. One of the most selfish things a parent can withhold from a child is discipline. A parents primary job is to produce a good quality child turned adult and that is not accomplished by pampering or catering. Yes tough love can be painful for many parents but as a parent you have a responsibility to be the adult and place the kind of young adult you will send out into the world when your child has grown up as a top priority in your life. I have seen many parents who could not stand to discipline their child when they are still small children also become heart broken parents after that spoiled child either treated their parents like dirt due to lack of respect, or even worse yet they ended up visiting their child in prison since they could not fit in to society as they grew up. Even more regrettable, is having to bury their child who just went wrong or became such a misfit that they took their own life in desperation. That possibility should make applying proper discipline seem like an easy path. Understand that I am not advocating the beating or abusing of children. Discipline of sorts can began while a child is very very young and can be as simple as the parents just being in charge. I used to listen to a police scanner a lot and I used to often hear calls where a parent called in saying that their 2 year old was out of control. I would be very embarrassed to say that I was unable to control a 2 year old... Far too many parents just fail to be in charge. Its not all their fault, many didn't have a good example to learn from... It is nice to ask a child what they want to do from time to time but not “always”. They also need to be told what to do much of the time and to learn to accept that. Such will be their lot for most of their lives. Be the parent. That is your responsibility. If you do not take charge as the adult then you and the child will both suffer from it as will much of society.

The two generations ahead of mine lived through the great depression and many learned life lessons from that experience that they carried all of the rest of their lives. Many had so little that they became terrible pack-rats in later years (a family curse I carry genetically). Some became just plain miserly. Many others came through it remaining pretty normal but carried an abhorrence of waste with them the rest of their lives. I also carry the abhorrence of waste gene. The wasting of foodstuffs is the thing I hate to see the most. With millions starving in the world the waste of food is unbelievably repulsive to me. When I see someone diving into a huge vat of Jello the first thing I think of is how many meals that would have made for starving fellow humans. Sure Jello is not much of a meal alone (especially green Jello) but much like a glass of muddy water it is a lot better than nothing...

I am fond of buffet dining. Waaay too fond of buffet dining. I do always try to balance the relationship between my eyes and my stomach. If I leave something on my plate it must have tasted pretty bad. It annoys the bee-jeebers out of me to see people fill plate after plate after plate and just pick over it leaving enough plates still over half full of food sitting on the table to feed a family of four for a week.

One of the current “simpleton fads” that many of what I generally refer to as “simpleton experts” are advocating on TV shows these days is the concept of controlling your weight by leaving food on your plate at each meal. How stupid. How selfish. How wasteful. Why not just eat less? How about just buying food and take part of it to a food pantry instead? If you want to lose weight post a picture of a group of children near starving to death on your refrigerator door... Just maybe you will not only control your weight but just maybe you will actually feel a twang of compassion and do something to help in some small way. At the very least it may make you aware that there is absolutely nothing “fashionable” about wasting food.

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Just a little too much of a good thing.

Spring is coming, finally... Now comes mud season which is an annual event on the farm. Farmhouses used to be commonly built with mud porches. Many city homes often were too. Many times the mud porch was an unheated room and often it was wooden walls just one board thick. Most of the time it was not insulated and sometimes the snow sifted in through the cracks. I have not very nostalgic memories of shoving my young feet into chore boots that were at times below zero inside to go out to feed the livestock.
I now, in retirement, live in the house that I grew up in from age 8 until I got married. Back then it was 4 rooms totaling about 1300 square feet, a long narrow unheated back porch that was about 8'x36' or about 288 square feet and a tiny cellar. Oh, yes, and for part of those years, a path to a really cold and drafty in winter outhouse. Today the house is 5,000 square feet and still due to grow a bit more.
When my parents added the largest addition, about 40 years ago, which was 36'x40' with a full basement and some attic storage space, they converted the old living room into a good-sized utility room and a mud hall. The mud hall has a closet and when we did the conversion we installed a smallish register from the furnace inside of that closet so that rain or snow wetted work clothing could dry quickly from the heated air blowing up inside of the closet. Louvered doors allowed the heated air to get out of the closet and warm the hall right at the door to the outside. It all works quite well.
Recently I came in from feeding the horses and I was pretty wet from head to toe. I hung my jacket and hat on the hooks I installed right over the floor register knowing that they would be dry in no time. I also decided to sit my waffle-stompers (lug soled work shoes) right on the register. Now the current heating system does not make the register hot so I was not concerned about the shoes over heating or burning like those of you that like to try to jump ahead of me might have thought. What did occur was that I was fairly soon informed that Diana's favorite potpourri is not Ode de Horsey-poopy... That is what was wafting rapidly out of those louvered doors. I did have a slight edge, my nose is one of a number of things that does not work as well as it used to. Don't get me wrong; Diana has no qualms about pulling on a pair of mucking boots and working in the stable or hugging a horse that decided to get some sun while laying in the muddiest part of the pasture. She just doesn't care to have that scent distributed evenly throughout the house. Lesson learned, don't sit muddy shoes on the register...
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