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skeletonized windfall
Thursday, January 14 2016
This morning after feed the cats their lumps of wetfood, I saw Ramona doing a serious no-no. She was up on her hind legs with her paws on the top of the cabinet where the cats are fed eating something. The cats are fed up there specifically to keep the dogs from eating all their food, and if the dogs start doing what Ramona was doing, the whole system for feeding the cats would break down. So I told her "No!" At that she turned and gave me a "But Dad..." look and went back to what she was doing, which was, it turned out, eating some fresh cat puke. I could see her point. She's encouraged to eat cat puke, and I didn't mind her bending the rules and going bipedal for a case like this. So I corrected myself by saying, "Good girl!" Amusing, though it's clear that Ramona could just eat all the catfood if she decided to, she knows the rule, and only breaks it when it conflicts with another rule (or, in this case, a privilege).
Late this morning, I went on another firewood salvaging foray. I headed briskly down the Stick Trail, admiring the absence of downed trees below (east of) the trail. A normal forest would have some, but I'd salvaged them all. But then, about 300 feet south-southeast of the Chamomile crossing, I noticed a fairly large fallen tree in an area I'd picked over heavily this Fall and that I surely would have salvaged by now had it not just fallen. This windfall (in the original sense of the word) had probably come down while we were in the Galapagos. I walked over to it and saw that it was a semi-skeletonized Chestnut Oak whose heartwood was wearing a punky koozie of rotten sapwood. About four feet from the roots, the tree was about 12 inches thick, which is at the upper limit of trunks that I attempt to salvage with my ten inch battery-powered chainsaw. Today I only salvaged crooked pieces from the top of the trunk. These pieces were the driest and most skeletonized, though they were mostly too gnarly to split and would have to be burned intact. Today's load came to 110.6 pounds, of which only 100.3 pounds went inside, as there were torpid ants in a 10.3 pound piece.
There would be another "shit show" Republican debate tonight, and I very much wanted to be able to drink alcohol while I watched it. So, according to my rules, I was forced to paint yet another painting. Using a good photo of a Blue Footed Booby taken by my father in law, I produced this four by five inch painting:
As for the debate, it was full of the usual mix of lies and simian chest pounding, but there was one thing that this debate had that the other ones lacked: Donald Trump debating well. I'm no fan of Donald Trump and the hellbound handbasket of which he's a symptom. But any time anyone rubs a shit pie in the sanctimonious mug of Ted Cruz, you can be sure I'll be among those celebrating. So when Ted Cruz thought he had Donald Trump in a rhetorical headlock for the most innocuous thing about him (his having been born in New York City), it was delightful that Donald Trump trumped him with a nostalgic (and, dare I say, almost eloquent) reflection on the glory of New Yorkers on a certain terrible day that, unless you're reading this fifty years from now, you probably haven't forgotten. Busting on New York might have worked in the days of fax machines and floppy disks, but since 9Eleven, hinterland hatred of New York City comes with an incoherent mix of weepiness about a pair of ugly office buildings full of dead strangers.
For years now I've been a nascent fan of Bloc Party (a contemporary dance-pop-influenced post-punk alternative rock band), but I've only recently been actively listening to their music. This happened (as it sometimes does these days) after watching a video for another band (in this case, Aberdeen City's "God is Going to Get Sick of Me") and it was automatically followed by a Bloc Party song. Both "Banquet" and "Helicopter" are so good that it caused me to download the entire discography. But so far those songs (which I was already familiar with) are the only one I really love. They're really fast yet spare and I could imagine them being great in headphones when doing something like riding a bicycle.
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