Culture, Economics, Science

Getting Charged Ain’t Easy

The nation is getting its head around all-electric powered cars by 2035. It sparked me -haha- to wonder if electric cars really generate a carbon footprint smaller than gas-driven cars. My research confirmed it: in a “well-to-wheel” comparison, an electric car generates about one-third the level of carbon compared to the gas guzzler. So case closed on that.

But what troubles me is the generally held notion that we will just plug our car into an outlet every night, and be ready to drive by daylight. Where is the electricity coming from? That is a thornier question, and it doesn’t appear to have a satisfactory answer yet.

Here are some numbers worth knowing. 

  1. The US annual consumption of electricity in 2020 was 3,800 Twh. A ‘Twh” is a terrawatt hour. Because I know you really want to get into this, a terawatt is one trillion watts. That’s with 12 zeros.
  2. The US annual production of electricity for the same year was 4,009 Twh. 

Understanding these two numbers, you see we have a margin, say, a surplus of 209 Twh. Just for fun, that’s 209,000,000,000,000 watts.

What is interesting though is that the US also sells and buys electricity during the year, based on peak demands and capacity levels. But net, we imported 47 Twh last year. So we did not actually have enough to go around, based on our own production capacity.

Not having enough is generally a foreign concept in America, but there you have it.

So: will we have enough electricity for the car in our garage come 2035? That troubles me. Here’s why.

In 2016, American automobile mileage was 3.22 trillion miles. We are “trillionaires” for everything, it seems. Assuming that electric cars replace all the gas guzzlers, and that we still drive the same distance, happily guilt-free of carbon fears, will we have enough electricity?

I am not so sure. Tesla’s 2018 Model 3 has a commendable “mileage” rating of 26Kwh. That is, it can drive 100 miles using only 26 kilowatt hours of electricity. This is the best there is, today, beating out the Chev Volt, VW Golf, and BMW i3. By the way, 26Kwh is the equivalent of burning a 40-watt light bulb over your stove for 27 days. Doesn’t seem so bad, really.

But the total mileage of 3.22 trillion divided by Tesla’s 26Kwh/100 miles will require a total of 837Twh of electricity. That’s additional energy over what we use today. And we only have a margin of 200Kwh.

We do get one break. By shutting down the unnecessary gasoline refineries, we will save 47Twh. So our actual new requirement for electrical power is only 790Twh. That’s 790,000,000,000,000 watts.

Meanwhile, the State of California is enduring periodic black outs. Why? Because in the effort to be a good environmental steward, they have been closing their coal and nuclear power generating stations in favor of wind turbines, solar and hydro-electric power, aka, power dams.  Unfortunately, when there is no wind, no sun, and no water, there is no power. Local cynics refer to the disruptions as ‘Green Outs”. 

It turns out that the engineers in public and private sectors have been noodling on this. Some of the more common solutions are wind turbines. Did you know that today there already 67,000 turbines thrumming the winds in America?  And solar panels? There are 2,500 such farms today.  Of 80,000 dams in the country, some 2,400 are hydro-electric power generators.

These solutions generally fall under the heading “renewable energy” sources. In total, renewable energy supplies 20% of all the power generated in the US.

There is another solution which is being developed, and that is the reversible battery charger. It allows for energy to flow both ways from your electric car. You might plug it in for one night last week to charge for six hours, and then you left your car undriven, and cooling in the garage for several days. During that time, if you have a permit, the power company may take electricity back from your car to top up the grid. You would get a credit, and maybe an empty battery, but you would be a good person.

The lack of surplus electrical energy is not top of mind for many right now, but as we approach the next decade, the subject will arise much more frequently. Stay tuned, and as usual, turn out the lights upon leaving.

Thanks for reading and sharing! Will you get an electric car? Will you get the charger too?

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Sports

Nailing It: Mind Over Matter

Young Phil

A younger Phil Mickelson engages the gallery

Phil Mickelson is not new to golf, but Sunday’s performance at Kiawah Island’s Ocean Course revealed a new player that few of us have seen before. He seemingly shed a skin, and reappeared as, no, not a younger person, but ironically, as an older person playing a young person’s game. How did he manage to abandon the old “Lefty”, and become the new sheriff in town?

I am not a golf zealot. I love the game, and occasionally have actually landed a drive on a fairway as opposed to the much more inviting rough edges. I don’t follow golfers, record statistics, recount games or ponder golf equipment. But I do get enjoyment in watching professionals pit their best against the elements: wind, gravity, foliage, water, crowds, blimps, cameras and second doubts.

Walks Alone

He walks alone from pin to tee.

Watching Mickelson at the PGA Championship this past weekend was like staring up at Nik Wallenda hike across a tightrope 40 stories up in Chicago. Actually, the comparison is not a fair one, in that it was always a certainty that the high-rise circus performer would do it okay. Not so much for the 50-year-old golfer who has for 30 years soared, spun, fallen, struggled and recovered while collecting a den full of trophies. He is a gallery favorite in the PGA, but not necessarily a sure winner.

Still, there he was for four straight days the uncontested leader, the number one performer among a field of 157 competitors. At nearly 51 years, he was also the oldest of the pack, surrounded by 20- and 30-somethings, and having his way. How? What became of our young, adventuresome, risk-taking, wavy-haired, reckless, canny, plum lucky player who smiled and winced his way through golf’s grassy treacherous gauntlet, game after game?

 

Enbrel Phil

A pitchman for Enbrel, relieving the painful grip of arthritis.

Remember, this is a golfer who is, or certainly was, a pitchman for a psoriatic arthritis medication. We used to watch him smiling, nimbly making sandwiches with previously pained hands. A golfer’s grip is everything you know.

Viewers would have to agree that they were watching a reborn player. Mickelson has shed weight. The boyish plumpness that rolled forever beneath his shirt is gone. The curls that used to blossom from beneath his cap have been replaced with a neatly trimmed bang at the back of his head.

Phil Shades

Older, calmer, in his own thoughts.

His face is older, more lined, lacking the baby fat that used to dimple as he smiled. His demeanor has shifted into a stoic look that was unchanged over 72 grueling holes. The camera never captured a smile, a frown, or a coy glance over four days that we saw. Dressed head-to-toe in black for much of the event, he appeared formidable. And he wore impenetrable reflective sun glasses that hid any emotion that might reveal his thoughts. He looked more like an ocean-going sea captain in stormy waters than a hiker surrounded by thousands of adoring fans.

I remarked on this to a golfing friend, who said, “He uses meditation”.

Meditates

The pause that clears the head.

That explained the trance-like poses he took before every shot. Some say you need to visualize what the ball is going to do, and then you make it happen. That is a load of bunker. In golf, once you have hit the ball, its path is entirely, literally, out of your hands, and will be whipped around by wind, vacuums, heat, cold, grass blades, spectator feet and discarded ice cubes.

IMG_4254Clubhouse.jpg

The Ocean Course complete with water, wind and crowds.

Never mind that the Ocean Course is a sandy, windswept collection of swamps, twisting ponds and encroaching bunkers that seem to surround every green and fairway like marauding predators.

In Mickelson’s case, he took that pause to settle his nerves. What was his mantra during those moments? The Lord’s Prayer, The 23rd Psalm, Latin declensions, his locker combination? We won’t know, but physiologically, the long pauses released his mind from the last shot, and possibly washed away his thoughts about the one coming up. More likely, he dreamt for a moment about the best shot he had ever made in similar circumstances. The act of mentally drifting away from the current threat makes it easier to handle it. Without thinking about it, Phil was channeling his own natural “force”.

This conquest was a joy to watch, if even the victor seemed oblivious to it. He strode from pin to tee alone, head down, occasionally giving a thumbs up to the gallery.

The Putt

A simple two-putt to win the game.

On the last hole, as he approached the 18th green, he was swarmed by an uncontrollable gallery, knocking him off balance at one point. If golf ever had a mosh pit, this was it. And after he calmly two-putted his win, he held up his club in a salute, hugged his brother Tim who caddied, and walked alone up to the judge’s station to finish the paperwork.

They say that golf is a lonely game for competitors. Indeed, Mickelson was not tackled or hugged by his wife or children as he finished. They remained at home, and he spoke to them by phone only after filing his card.

Now, a day later, can he lower the shields, and rejoin the other world, that one off the course?

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childhood, Culture, Science

Darwin’s Warning and The Good Old Days

We have come a long way in avoiding the classic dangers so present in our youth. But sometimes I still wonder how we got here. We can laugh today at the hapless winners of Darwin Awards, but that is only because the past three generations have regulated us to observe the principles of Charles Darwin.

I recently toyed with the idea of taking a stab at etching, for the purpose of creating an art print. Etching is the ancient science of scratching an image onto a wax-covered copper plate, and dipping the plate in acid. The plate gets engraved in the process, and when it is inked, the plate is pressed onto a paper which receives the image.

To learn more, I could have Googled the subject, but instead, I turned to the Popular Mechanics Do-It-Yourself Encyclopedia, published by J.J. Little and Ives in 1955.

Popular mechanics Do It Yourself–our small town bible.

In my hometown of Delhi, a small but once influential tobacco-growing community in southern Ontario, the PM DIY Encyclopedia was a bible. Actually, it was a collection of 13 illustrated bibles bound in red and black leatherette, handsomely gold-embossed, and proudly displayed in its own pre-engineered wooden shelf by my father, and countless other DIY-ers at the time. You didn’t have to go far to learn about plumbing, carpentry, automotive repair, sewing machines and gardening when you had these books sitting right there beside the record player.

So I was pleased on picking up volume 4 “EL to GA” and finding the lowdown on etching on page–wait, there are no page numbers–on the pages between “enlargers” and “extension cords”.

Etching– the art and science of engraving metal.

Excited now, I read on. The thoughtfully drawn black and white illustrations showed an enthusiastic, friendly looking craftsman decanting fluid into a tray. Reading more closely, I saw that for etching glass, and/or metal, the active ingredients were tallow, hydrochloric acid, hydrofluoric acid, potassium chlorate, asphaltum paint, glacial acetic acid, sodium fluoride…and washed up with gasoline, before pouring down the floor drain with plenty of water.

Gadzooks!

I decided some time spent on Youtube was a better idea, and put that off for later.

But thumbing through the book “EL to GA” I was stunned to learn about all the other DIY projects we pursued back in 1955.

“Electroplating With Gold and Silver” was particularly instructive.

Electroplating..all that glitters!

A well-drawn and focused craftsman is mixing up a solution of sodium cyanide and caustic soda in a pitcher of water. When dissolved, the reader is advised that rubber gloves and ventilation are a must, to avoid deadly hydrocyanic acid fumes. To this concoction one adds some copper cyanide. The book says to hook the brew up to a six-volt battery, and dunk the target object in for an hour or so, and voila: a silver-plated stapler, shoe horn, ticket puncher, egg beater–whatever suits your fancy.

I felt like I had my hands on a secret, forbidden book– techno-porn is the only way I could describe it.

Now tantalized by this collection of ideas, I thumbed to “Electrical Rotating Contact”.

The electric rotating gizmo..for all ages!

This gem only took half a page, even with the helpful drawing. Mission: to create a spinning brush-style power source that would rotate as some electrical engine drove around it.

The picture tells a thousand words easily. A pole is positioned in the middle of a backyard wading pool. At its top is the ingenious electrical rotating contact which is attached to an electrical cord plugged into the engine of a child’s model boat, floating in the pool. The pole is cleverly hooked up to an extension cord plugged into the house, drawing from the 120-volt line. Two excited kids stand by the pool, gleefully cheering as their model racing boat  circuits the water, leaving them smiling in its frothy wake. One can only imagine the hours of joyful entertainment as the craft orbits the sparky contraption.

The book is filled with helpful suggestions for mixing your own weed killer, building a forge, a blast furnace, and simply maintaining your home coal furnace.

Thinking back, we were, if not fearless, certainly adventurous. In our house, we were frequent users of gunpowder. Simple chemistry would be put to use with benign, parental encouragement, and a helpful smiling assist from the local druggist.

Powering up the acid solution.

A typical exchange was,
“Hi Mr. Taylor! Can I have half a pound of potassium nitrate and another half of sulphur please?”
With a wry smile, his response, “Heheh, okay, and don’t blow yourselves up.”
When I consider that discussion, and our brazen, guileless approach, I should have added, “and a dozen prophylactics too, please.” It would have thrown him off course, I am sure.

Somehow, the ingredients were mixed with a third, which I will omit for current security concerns, and we would enthrall and impress our friends with carefully rolled fireworks, stink bombs and countless rocket duds that never made it off the launch pad.

Through all of these semi-innocent shenanigans, we never paid a serious price, but I am sure that there were others not so lucky. In any event, today, 65 years later, these escapades are pretty much eliminated from the experience of young kids, and I am thankful.

Back then it was just part of growing up. But Darwin was right.

Still, I have to see Volume 3, CO to EL.  I can only imagine.

 

Thanks for reading!  I hope you are thankful for all the precautions and safeguards we now have in place today. Still, you have to wonder how we made it this far.

 

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Culture, Thank You, USPS

The Letter We Didn’t Get

Zoom friends from places near, far, and unreal.

One of the great facilitators during the COVID pandemic and its obstructive lockdowns has been Zoom and FaceTime technology. While we can’t have and hold our distant loved ones, nor sit beside our business associates in a real meeting, we can still stay in video touch. And a plus: who knows where our correspondents actually are, given the virtual backgrounds.

Now we can sympathize with those resolute souls drifting out there on the International Space Station.

But closer to home, our more traditional communications technology has taken yet another hit. Last business quarter, October 1- December 31, 2020, the United States Postal Service delivered only 4,214,093,000 letters. Understand that these are single-piece letters in the three months ending with the nation’s biggest holiday season.

Writing the Thank You Note: A Lost Art

That includes birthday cards, get well cards, condolences, love letters, thank you notes, party invitations, wedding announcements, birth announcements, bridal showers, baby showers, graduations, promotions, retirements, Thanksgiving cards, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa cards, letters to friends and family. It will also include payments to utilities, healthcare companies, credit cards, presidential campaign donations, doctors, lawyers, landlords and landscapers, to name a few.

You may consider 4.2 billion pieces a lot of mail. It is not. In 2012, just 8 years ago, the USPS delivered 6.3 billion single piece letters.  Today’s effort has shrunk by a third since then.

And we can’t point to the monthly billing and statementing habits of utilities and financial houses as the culprit either.  In 2012, for the same period, they mailed 9.9 billion pieces. Eight years later, the 2020 volume only shrank 15%.  Meanwhile, personal letters dropped 33%.

The USPS picks up at your door.

It’s easy to shrug it off as a sign of the changing times. We are happy to resort to email to send our personal messages. Postal mail takes too long.

Except now, in this pandemic we live in a communications desert devoid of real, personal contact. And with time on our hands, there is the opportunity to take pen to paper.  

To wit: last June, we received a post card from an enterprising lady in Kansas who announced her personal goal to write cards to everyone she knew.  She wrote and mailed over 300! We have another friend who makes it a regular effort to mail us a short letter, just to keep the lines open with family news.  We have neighbors only four houses down the street who send a thank you note by mail for the simplest of favors received.

A simple etiquette

Who does that any more?  What kind of forgotten politeness is that? But yet so important when you consider the time and energy taken to practice this simple etiquette. 

Another instance, I released Norfolk Chronicles last July.  In it I wrote a chapter “Will You Write Me?”  Lo and behold I received a number of handwritten letters from my readers, totally unexpected. It struck a nerve.

This lockdown has taken away the traditional time restrictions we used to incorporate in our daily lives. We aren’t commuting.  We aren’t traveling to meetings. We forgo vacations.  Stuck at our home offices with flexible hours, in our pajamas, the time for composing and writing is opened up. And when the USPS will pick up at our door, what’s the obstacle?

747s chilling in the Mojave

Meanwhile, we didn’t get 226,580,000 letters just last quarter. They did not show up. Because we failed to write them.

In real terms, the USPS reported that the quarterly shortfall weighed 1,837 tons. If that weight is too hard to visualize, think of nine empty Boeing 747s lined up on a desert in Nevada. There’s your missing letters.

 

 

 

Thanks for reading! I hope you have a few family friends and neighbors that deserve your written words.  Just as an aside, the USPS did have an astounding quarter delivering parcels. In 2012, they delivered 752 million pieces in the three months leading to Christmas. This past 2020, they topped out at 2 billion-plus.

 

 

 

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Culture, Entertainment, Music

Tom Rush: Concerts and Conquering COVID

“Normal” is something we all want to retrieve. It’s out there somewhere, some day. Mean time, here is a great example of a guy who just won’t quit, despite the continuous obstructions of a COVID lockdown.

Tom Rush is a singer entertainer from the near dark but enlightened ages of the 60s. He has remained musical, entertaining and present even today, despite the virtually complete shut down of group entertainment.

If you are of, or enjoy the 60’s-70’s vintage of coffee house music, Tom Rush is part of your past and hopefully present. We first listened to this bluesy story teller at the Riverboat in Toronto. Hailing from Massachusetts, he made the trip north to hang out with Gord Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, Jim Kweskin, Eric Anderson, Richie Havens, James Taylor and Livingston Taylor and a host of other free-range folk singers entertaining small groups in Yorkville, Toronto’s original coffee house district.

While many entertainers went to the big stage, Tom Rush centered himself in small gatherings of a 100 fans or so. He delivered a rich medley of stories and songs that telegraphed heartaches, pains, humor, trains, cowboys, dirty deed doers and other colorful characters. His presence was magnetic, personal, and his shows were always full.

Fast forward 50 years and we find that Tom is still composing, strumming and singing, seemingly unaware he was supposed to retire. Did not get the memo. He has a website and a newsletter, and a regular itinerary up and down the east coast, and occasionally wandering into the Carolinas and the Midwest. The venues remain the same: small crowds sitting at tables tapping their feet and soaking up the vibes.

So what do you do when a pandemic shuts down the tour? Many entertainers escaped to the islands. Others are on their boats. Some have postponed concerts and floated out new dates a year or so into the future. But who knows? Meanwhile, they sit by their phones and wait for a call to get their vaccination.

Tom took a different approach. He went back to his website followers, and invited them to sign up for a weekly concert. Rockport Sundays is just that: a podcast from his kitchen in Rockport Mass. It is available for streaming every Sunday morning. At a measly $10 a month, his fans get a morning wake up call where Rush and his genius accompanist Matt Nakoa perform a song, tell a story, and just tune in for 10 minutes or so. It is a comfortable setting, with Rush maybe shoeless, surrounded by some beautiful guitars, and frequently flanked by Nakoa and his six foot wide keyboard, totally COVID compliant.

The experience is profound. This guy was a folk blues icon when most of his fans were just getting into university. For more than half a century (ouch) he has not let go. In fact he has grown into our present as a constant reminder of where we came from. And the beauty is, it’s current stuff. He sings old songs, tells stories about his many travels and sidekicks, but also unloads new music. Through it all, the website allows for comments, and would you not know it? He responds.

If you like a little bit of kitchen table music and playing, dressed up with a background story, you should check out Rockport Sundays. It is indeed a treat.

It actually feels a bit like normal.

 

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Agriculture, Culture, Thank You

Orange Ya Glad?

As a kid living in the country we enjoyed a seasonal treat sent to us by my grandad who vacationed at Vero Beach every winter. He sent a bushel of citrus fruit packed in green straw for Christmas. Inside we found dozens of oranges and monster grapefruit, tangerines, and strange little kumquats.

The memory comes back to me now as last Friday the USPS delivered a box to our front door. Puzzled, we opened it to find a similar trove of tangelos. Nearly three dozen, unbidden, but happily accepted. It turns out that a distant friend in California went out to his backyard and picked them for us.

Tangelo Box

I say unbidden, because we had no idea he lived in Claremont, California, and that his home was built on 40 acres of grapefruit. He sent these along, perhaps as a thank you for a couple of books which I had sent to him. The return of the tangelos was a happy surprise, but the best was yet to come.

Tangelo 10

We in the north do not grow citrus fruit, or certainly not to eat. I have a few Texas grapefruit plants in a pot taking up the winter sun in the den. They get outside in the summer. These plants will be converted to bonsai. It takes about 25 years, so I am planning on that. But that’s another story.


Tangelo Peel Light

The tangelos are larger than tangerines, but smaller than oranges. At least these were. In fact, they are hybrid of a tangerine and pomelo, a type of grapefruit. They peel like a tangerine, very easily, and are particularly absent of any pips.


Tangelo 3

After reading the friend’s accompanying letter, I learned that he picked these from two trees in his backyard. That in itself is nearly astounding. We are forking out $$1.99 a pound for oranges at the grocery store, and he’s growing them wild over the shed out back.


Tangelo Box 3

He went on to explain that they are easily peeled, but his preferred entree is chilled and then quartered to be eaten like Don Corleone did in The Godfather. Orange smile!

So, waiting no longer, I grabbed one, and literally popping off the skin, sectioned the fruit into segments and stuffed them into my mouth. One bite, and the juice spurted out like a tomato, and the flavor of fresh citrus exploded in my mouth. The tangelo was sweet and tangy, and rich. I could sense thousands of little vitamin Cs all lining up for a march across my tongue.


Tangelo 1

We could not believe our good fortune, or the thoughtfulness of our distant friend who marched his product down to the post office for our pleasure. Paying it forward, we bagged up a dozen for an older couple who lived down the street. At their door I assured them these were a sure complement to any COVID vax they might get, a certain cure for scurvy, and twelve doses of pure delight.

Our task ahead is to finish up the box rapidly while these little gems convert to pure sugar.

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childhood, Culture, Education

The Escape Hatch

As kids we found it was smart to have a safe spot to head to whenever it got a little too hot or too crowded around the house. The public library in Delhi was our escape hatch. This tidy little building with the gabled front porch and rounded windows was the perfect destination. At least in the eyes and minds of our parents. And that worked for us.

Our escape hatch: the library.

The library was in the center of town, nestled beside the fire house, just off Main at Church Street. You could reach it from the farthest reaches of our suburbs in less than five minutes by bike. If you lived anywhere near the school, it was a two, or three-minute walk, and for many of us, we did that by skirting down a path between Quance’s house and Hills’ backyard.

Because of its integrity as a public educational institution, our folks could only nod as we pulled on a jacket at night, and headed out the door, “off to the library”. In reality, those sorties rarely followed the flight plan. Out for a romp? Library. Soap a few windows at Halloween? Library. Need a smoke? Roam the streets? Meet some friends? Hit Chainway? Shoot some pool? Make it to the Dairy Bar? Library-Libray-Library.

We had a willing if unintended accomplice. Mrs. Roberston was the librarian, and on any evening, from 4-9pm she was seated at her desk at the back of this small repository of well-thumbed books, magazines and periodicals. As we strode up the concrete steps, through the door, and into the single room, we would see her studiously sorting through library cards, opening and closing books, stamping dates on cards and filing. All the time she continued a quietly confident narrative with the borrower in front of her. “There you are. I have your number, and we’ll see that book back here in two weeks, all right Philip?”

The card system was possibly our first introduction to institutional control. At some time in our early consciousness, our parents had escorted us into the library, and we were registered with a subscriber number. That was a huge advance forward for many of us who up until then only had our name as an identity. But Mrs. Robertson had carefully recorded all of our details onto a card: address and phone number, to which she assigned each of us with a number. The card went into one of her many wooden boxes. Who knows what that meant to us?

But we could pull a book off a shelf–there was a limit of two–and presenting that to her, she would open to the front pages where an envelope concealed another card. That was entitled with the book’s name. She extracted this 3×5 card, and with the dexterity of telepathist, would quickly, magically recall and inscribe our number onto the card, and rubber stamp it with a date. The little stamper was geared to change by month, date and year. She placed the card into another wooden box. That box was partitioned by little dividers with metal clips segregating groups of cards by date. While the rubber stamp was still wet in her hand, she then stamped a lined slip of paper stuck on the envelope in the book with the same date. Handing the book back to us, she reminded us it was due on the date.

Failure to meet that due date would incur a fine of two cents a day. There was never a time that we visited the library where Mrs. Robertson wasn’t collecting fines. The revenues would clatter into a cash box, and with a quiet, but sternly enunciated warning, she would exhort the tardy miscreant to be more punctual in the future.

For all of the protocols of checking out books, the library itself was a warm, welcoming place. It was a one-room establishment, not larger than most rural schools in size, and was shelved on three sides, with two long oaken tables in the center for study and display. Heavy oak chairs lined the tables. Mrs. Robertson regularly groomed the shelves, straightening books, sequencing by the extraordinary Dewey decimals.

The library was her treasure. The shelves were packed with hard covers, propped up with metal supports. Running her fingers across their spines, each labeled with a number, she could retrieve a subject in seconds. The room was her vault and it whispered volumes while a faint scent of glue and perfume floated in the air. She demanded quiet. She respected the privacy of those who sat at study tables, but would also encourage young readers to try out a title. She was genuinely interested in seeing us pore over these books.

My favourites: Tom Swift, woodcraft, indian lore, and biographies. I alternately scoured the bottoms of oceans and soared through ionospheric clouds in wildly imagined vehicles with Swift. Closer to earth I learned how to build traps and snares, skin beavers and build bows, arrows, and tomahawks with Ben Johnson. I was inspired by Churchill and Eisenhower, all thanks to Mrs. Robertson’s direction. She was “Ginger” to her friends, named for the colour of her wavy hair. Not an imposing figure physically, she had a wonderful command of english, delivered with a brogue of Irish. When she spoke, we listened, and with respect.

I point out the ironclad system that our Mrs. Robertson managed, because it added to the credentials of our purported evening’s activities. How could anything go wrong if we were at the library?

Delhi kids were essentially masters of their small universe. There were no particular boundaries, no warnings about strangers, no admonishments about distant expeditions, no guard rails other than daylight, school hours and meal times. As a result, we were habitually off to the woods, to the dam, to Quances Mill, or in town, roaming the streets and alleys, window shopping and dropping in to the local barber and pool hall for a quick look-see, maybe get a popsicle or a coke if we had money.

But somewhere during our circuit, there was a definite rendezvous at the library. We got a book, had it stamped, and were on our way home.

Thanks for reading and sharing! I have been able to give back to the library. Norfolk County Public Library now contains and lends out volumes of my latest: Norfolk Chronicles, published 2020.

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childhood, Culture, Entertainment, Uncategorized

Those Thrilling Days Of Yesteryear

If I could imagine anything better, I would. It just happens that the COVID lockdown has actually delivered an unintended dividend which has captured my conscious state most every day. Cowboys and horses.

I am not much of a daytime TV viewer, but as we are under a house arrest, since March 2020 for the record, I have seen a lot more TV than I ever dreamed. The center of my attention has been a parade of cowboy shows: Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Laredo, Alias Smith & Jones, The Virginian, Branded, Rifleman, Palladin.

The Virginian: great viewing while under COVID house arrest.

Now you may think that I have dissolved my brain and body into a bowl of mush after viewing these chestnuts. Not quite, but I have come to discover the glory days of TV-show series productions that no longer grace our screens. The “horse opera”, or “oater” was edged out in the mid-70s. They fell ratings-victims to the more glib sit-coms, pant-suited police shows, and family drama shows.

Bonanza: the family western!

In the 60s, and I mean 1960s, we sat as entranced kids, knees akimbo, or chins on hands, hunched in front of the black and white TV watching westerns like Bonanza. But a decade before that popular series began, we could choose to witness the escapades of Wild Bill Hickok, The Lone Ranger, Hop Along Cassidy, The Cisco Kid, Rin Tin Tin, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and Cheyenne.

The 50s: those thrilling days of yesteryear.

There are plenty more, and just to check them off for you detail-minders: Gunsmoke, Have Gun Will Travel, Rawhide, Wells Fargo, Maverick, Bronco, Wanted, Dead or Alive, to name the many.

But by the 70s these had mostly been displaced by shows that deleted three items from our consciousness: cowboy hats, six-shooters and horses.

Instead, we alternately suffered or enjoyed the Partridge Family, Odd Couple, Three’s Company, Jeffersons, 8 is Enough, All In the Family, Brady Bunch, Mary Tyler Moore, Happy Days and Here’s Lucy. There are more, but let this marquee of family-centric shows suffice.

The horse, the hat, the six-shooter: all gone.

In the time that many of us breached puberty, we had lost the thrill of leather, cattle, wagons and corrals. We were deep into relationships.

I realized this as I settled in to a season’s COVID binge of cowboy shows. My realization also cast some light on a lost art and science of TV and movie production. Actors needed to master these techniques: riding a horse, drawing a six-shooter, faking a jaw-breaking punch, managing a team of horses and wagon, staunchly taking a bullet to the shoulder, shooting while galloping, sipping mugs of sudsy beer and bolting shots of bad whiskey frequently. The broader science of running a herd of cattle comes to mind as well.

I mention these activities, because they are gone from sight. Hollywood can’t do it any more. Yet they were at the time, a serious accomplishment, a competency equal in every way to playing professional sports, race car driving, gymnastics and kick lines. You can’t fake it.

As a young kid, I was immersed in these early cowboy shows and learned the swagger, the tilt of the hat, the quick draw, and taking the eventual body shot that required a complete tumble, head over heels and into the dirt.

Budding cowpoke, ranch hand and saddle tramp.

The High Production Quality That Followed

There are two family shows, both from the 70s, which I do admire for their high production quality and diverse, detailed stage production: Little House On The Prairie, and The Waltons.

Little House boasted a full fictional community in Walnut Grove, Minnesota during the 1870-1890s. In 204 episodes viewers were taken into the workplaces of the saw mill, Oleson’s General Store, the church, the ice house, the school, the post office, the bank, Nellie’s restaurant, and Doc Baker’s office. We sat at the table of the Ingalls, the Olesons, the Garveys, Mr.Edwards and the blind school.

Little House On The Prairie–Quality Production

All the while, we followed Laura, Mary, Albert Ingalls and all of their school friends over the fields, through the streets, and to the ponds and streams. Sometimes they rode horses, plowed dirt rows, delivered calves, milked cows, fed chickens and held piglets in their arms. In spectacular scenes they climbed mountain sides, rode railway cabooses, forged steel bells and ran through burning houses. Where do you see that today?

The Waltons took us to the mountains.

The Walton’s gave us a rural mountain picture of life in the 30s to 40s with the same comprehensive production settings: a two-story farm house, a 1929 Model AA Ford truck, a cow named Chance, a working saw mill, Blue the docile mule, Reckless the dog, Rover, the occasional peacock, plus a menagerie of other pets and wildlife. The characters lasted for almost the entire series of 221 episodes. We watched as they worked the mill, cut and dipped fence posts, drove their jalopies to school, visited Ike Godsie’s General Store, hiked the back woods, went to church and college, sat at the kitchen table, circled around the radio, birthed calves… these scenes aren’t happening on TV any more.

For the record, Little House was mostly shot around the Big Sky Ranch in the Simi Valley, all under the direction of Ed Friendly Productions.The Waltons was filmed around Hollywood Hills and Burbank by Lorimar productions. Walton’s Mountain itself was on the backside of the same chunk of granite that displays the Hollywood sign.

I am not criticizing the state of television viewing today. But I am marveling at just how full an education the young actors and actresses of Waltons and Little House received.

And at the same time, what young viewers also learned from these classic family shows. Waltons and Ingalls children took their viewers out of their homes, out of the cities and alleys, and gave them some wide open spaces to enjoy and appreciate.

When this COVID blows away, I hope we get outside some more. Mean time, there’s Wagon Train.

Thanks for reading! Take a preview at my latest book, Norfolk Chronicles, a treasury of 50 tales, sightings and vignettes from the tobacco fields, alleys and roads of Norfolk County, and Delhi, my hometown.

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Culture, Thank You

Now Where Did He Go?

I just received an inquiry about my health. I have not posted since April, (Birthday Buzz) and one of my readers suggested that I was not well.

Not so! Never been fitter!

The truth is, I last posted in April, shortly after our COVID attack, and then was busy finishing up the final pages of my third book, Norfolk Chronicles. It was published in May, and I am happy to report that it has sold out. I am waiting for my second bulk delivery to arrive on our doorstep soon.

Since then, I volunteered to help supply content for a very special website, NorfolkRemembers.Ca. The site is dedicated to memorializing the great expense of the many sons and daughters who fought for peace and freedom in World War 1, The Great War, and World War 2.

Norfolk County, scenically and prominently, takes its place on the north shore of Lake Erie, in Ontario. Between 1939-1945 the farms and towns of Norfolk gave up 153 soldiers, sailors and airmen and women who never came home to their families nearly 80 years ago. Today, their names may appear on a brass plaque in a park somewhere that we might pass by on our way to the variety store or the coffee shop.

RCAF Pilot Officer Donald George McLeod, age 21.

The website is fascinating and inspiring. It has numerous exhibits of stories, letters, photography and events. Our current effort is to research and write a more comprehensive story for each our fallen heroes. These stories speak to their youth, their families, plans, hobbies and loves, and how they lined up to enlist. The narratives will also reveal their final hours and how they were remembered some 75 years ago.

The statistics on the 153 are eye-opening and gut-wrenching, but cutting to the chase, the youngest I have encountered so far was 19, and the oldest was just over 33 years of age. Imagine the loss. Had they returned home, they may have been our parents, grand parents or great grandparents.

So, for the time being, I am pursuing the job given me with a group of others. I may not be posting much until done.

Be safe, and get on with the things you like to do.

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Culture, Science

Birthday Buzz

        Why did Benjamin Franklin think it a good idea to fly a kite in the rain? And why did he further believe that tying a key to the kite string was a helpful experiment?
        Never understanding the whole event, I learned that he really was determined to prove that lightning was electricity. The kite string was hemp, which was soaking wet in the rain, but contrary to many depictions of Franklin standing, drenched to the ears, in the middle of a field, he was not. He was standing dry in the doorway of a barn, where he was holding onto a dry piece of silk string tied to the wet hemp. He tied the key to the hemp.
        What happened next is important in preserving life. As the winds tore around the kite, it collected static electricity that was transmitted down the wet hemp cord. When the charge began to accumulate, Franklin saw that the strands of the hemp bristled like a brush. Impressed, he moved to touch the key with his knuckle, and got a little buzz for his curiosity. This was enough for him to conclude that there was electricity in the air around the kite. Had he hung in there for a lightning strike, he would have been a cindered lump, incapable of later writing up his findings.
        I present the true events of this mythical story because I am not good with electricity. I do not understand the relationship between amperes and watts and volts. I have experience with volts, but limited at that.
        I hate electric shocks. Like scrubbing across the living room rug and zapping yourself on the stereo. Once, I stepped out of my car and the shock was so strong I nearly welded my hand to the door. I cannot imagine the blind temerity of electric car owners who drive about, sitting on top of twelve hundred pounds of lithium battery, the same stuff that spontaneously ignites laptops and cell phones in one’s pocket.
        My electric experience was early in life, but indelible. There was a time in history, before the advent of digital cameras, that I was charged with taking a family picture at a birthday party. The flash extension on my camera used disposable flash bulbs. As the crowd grouped together, I called cheese, and at the critical moment of a united smile, the flash did not work.
        So off I went to the photographic shop—remember those? With the old flash battery in hand, I entered the store, and placed it on the counter. It was a small metal cube about the size of a thimble. The girl across from me looked at it.
        “I think it’s dead. Can you test it?”
        “Yes sir,” she responded and pulled out a contraption with wires and a needle under a plastic window, “let’s see what we’ve got.”
        The needle wavered lethargically.
        “Yep, you need a new battery. This one’s flatter than a hat on a highway,” she smiled.
        But I wasn’t so sure. “Just hang on,” I said. “What if I just do the old taste test?” With that I placed the little cube on the tip of my tongue, and touched its other end with my finger. It felt a little warm on the tongue, which meant the battery still had some juice.
        “I think it still might be good.”
        She looked at me like I might stick a pen into an outlet, or put my thumb into a light socket. “No, it’s dead. You need a new one.”
        “Well, just wait,” I countered, and lifted the battery again to my mouth. “Let’s give it another go.”   With that said, I touched my tongue to the bottom of the battery, but inadvertently my lip touched the other end.
        Shazowee!!
        The shock arced through my brain like a giant blinding klieg light with tinsel exploding in all directions. For a moment my eyes froze wide open like Buick hubcaps in a car show: bright, spinning and impossibly shiny. I had never seen stars before. The jolt was so strong I nearly swallowed the battery. Then my eyes slammed shut and I spat the battery onto the counter. It skidded to a rest beside her calculator.
        “You okay?” she asked, incredulous. I jiggled my head.  My mouth was limp.
        “Could you teth it again? I hink it thill hath thome juith lef.”
        She picked up the little brute and studied it closely, and then the tester.  “Oh! No wonder,” she chuckled. “It’s fifteen volts. I set it for one and a half! Hah! Sorry!”
        I pointed out that you can start a Mack truck with twelve volts. She tested it again, and it registered “replace”. I took her word for it, and bought a new battery, which was egregiously expensive I thought.
        “Eight bucks?? That’s adding insult to injury,” I protested.
        “Would you like to test it?” she countered.
        “Ha ha. Wrap it up.”
        I stomped out of the store and returned to the party which was in full session. I had missed the cake and candles, and the ice cream was relaxing in a pool at the bottom of a crystal serving dish. I installed the battery, and again herded the partiers to the couch for the birthday shot. Everyone retrieved their smile. The camera clicked, but no flash. A collective groan followed.
        “Hey maybe you bought a dead battery!”
        “Yeah, did you test it?”
        “Yeah, why don’t you test it now?”
        “Yeah, just put it on your tongue…”
        I cut them all off.   “We are going outside to the picnic table, now!” I instructed. “Out! Out! And when we’re done, you can all go fly a kite!”




 

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