Archive for the ‘Cliff’ Category

Crash Bucket Chronicles — Day Two

Wednesday, January 28th, 2009

“Such are the trifles which produce quarrels on shipboard. In fact, we had been too long from port. We were getting tired of one another, and were in an irritable state, both forward and aft.”

—Richard Henry Dana, Jr.
Two Years Before the Mast
 

IDEAL FOR: Camping, Tailgating, Emergencies
    We made it through the night without any “casualties.” Before bed, Dana had reached her brother in California to discuss carbon monoxide safety issues. We cracked a window for fresh air and verified that the flames were burning a steady blue. I’d already made sure to set the flue damper for a decent exhaust draw. Dana also had contact with Joan. She was burning wood at a socked-in Kelley Ridge. Mombo had been evacuated to the Keep by Glenda, and the Hellyers were reportedly clustered around a kerosene heater. We hoped that they also had made certain of adequate ventilation.
    Bruce and I disagreed over his wanting to go outside to begin clearing fallen limbs. In addition to the hazard of continuous downfall, he’d just been released from the hospital over the weekend after recovering from pneumonia. I protested harshly and we both over-reacted in turn, which is usually how these stress-induced arguments take hold. As it turned out, we soon apologized and teamed up to clear the driveway just in time to relocate our other two vehicles before more heavy limbs from the big maple crashed down. Old “Simon Kenton” is taking a horrendous splintering, and the worst may be ahead, if the wind picks up. I’d dodged a bullet with one night of “Ned” sitting underneath, but once the knee-jerk emotions were cleared out, I knew we had to get the truck and Bruce’s Corolla over to the funeral home parking lot right away. Too bad we blew our cool for a minute. I shouldn’t have been so tactless with my objections. In fact, by myself, I might’ve been unable to extract both cars in time.
    So far, several massive limbs have cracked and jack-knifed to the roof of the house and garage, but none have caused significant damage. The pin oak out front has shed major downfall, too, but the only real damage to property up ’til now is one severed telephone wire. The power line looks unharmed, but we won’t have a net connection, even if the electricity is restored, until the broken land line is repaired. Our second phone line is intact, but has no high-speed service. It will be a bitch to deal with all of this when the weather breaks, but we have it no worse than nearly every property owner in sight, and clearly there are some who have sustained severe damage.
    It’s a good thing I’ve been reading Two Years Before the Mast, or I’d believe that this was true hardship. Nothing must compare to laying aloft in a gale of freezing rain to furl a sail with your bare hands off Cape Horn. Lord, how did they do it? Youth and necessity, I reckon—how it does remind me of the soft life I live by comparison!
    One of the first orders of the day was to get the propane camp stove from the attic, so Dana could prepare the hot meals she prescribed for all. I finally went down to the basement and opened the “crash bucket” to claim its fuel canisters and spare batteries. So long in storage for just this kind of misfortune, the large Rubbermaid tub filled with emergency supplies hadn’t been disturbed or replenished since the Y2K scare. We defied the warning against using the camp stove indoors and set it up in the kitchen, but closed off the room to the rest of the house, keeping the back door open for fresh air. While in use, the kitchen’s temperature was not much different than that outside. Dana is nothing else if not a trouper. She used some poultry that was in danger of spoiling to fix a tasty fried-chicken dinner, and I helped make the mashed potatoes.
    We had plenty of drinking water, since we routinely distill our own and maintain several days worth on hand. I dug out my Sony Walkman to listen to local radio reports. Garrard County has no public water. Wal-Mart and Food Lion sold out of bottled water. Inter-County Energy phone lines are out and even the 911 call center can’t make contact with them, due to jammed lines. Reportedly, crews are now closing in on 30 hours without sleep in their efforts to restore power. With the forecast of 15 mph winds tonight, lines could continue to come down again, even after repairs are made. If the current comes back on, I can’t think of anything to do first except distill more water, in case we lose power again. Other priorities? Cook food and run the furnace as long as it lasts. I can presume that downtown Danville will be a priority for responders, but, with the latest news, we may need to face another cold night without electricity before we have the benefit of repairs—maybe two.
    As the light begins to fail, I’ll make these last notes of the day. Lamp oil has been added to the lantern and new batteries have been inserted in preparation for another night without power. Radio says the entire twelve-county Touchstone grid is down, with a spokesperson declaring “several days” before expectations of wide service. No word from Kentucky Utilities about the city, but I would assume the prospects are better. No more news from Clan. Dana tried to reach Eagle Nest, but no success. Bruce was able to charge a cellular phone battery with his car’s converter. It’s getting too dark to write comfortably, so it’s time for me to be about my duties at nightfall. It will be colder than last night, but the gas is still on. God knows how much it’s costing us to burn constantly like this. My prayer is for a quiet night, and the return of power on the morrow.

Critical impressions

Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

I remember writing in my journal about the first time I attended a Chamber of Commerce banquet in Danville, and finding it a powerfully positive experience, as I acclimated to a new community. Cliff and Jeanne were there, and the keynote speaker was a newspaper columnist from Louisville. It seemed as though everybody present knew him, except for me. Another thing I remember is how perceptive and funny he was. Here was a nice guy who had grown up along the Hanging Fork, who had gone to the big city, and who had made it big. I now believe that the perspective he shared that evening influenced how I would come to perceive the people of my newly adopted state. If I was wondering, “Just who are these Kentuckians?”—and surely I must have been—I could have done a lot worse than listen to the keen observations of Mr. Byron Crawford.

He called me yesterday for a phone interview, as he prepared to write a bike-to-work piece for his column in the Courier-Journal. On the eve of my annual conclave with the Kentucky Bicycle and Bikeway Commission, it’s interesting to think that my desire to make a mark on the quality of life in this Commonwealth might in no small way trace back to that night nearly twenty years ago when Byron came to town.

Various & Sundry, part sixty-eight

Sunday, December 9th, 2007

— Each time this year I’ve run the 5+ miles back downtown from the cabin, the time has felt shorter, even though I’m running pretty slowly these days. The silence transpired more quickly for me this morning, too. Milton handed out his periodic survey to the group, and I discovered a 1961 Horizon in Mack’s studio that had an interview with Andrew Wyeth, famous at the time, and now the greatest living American painter. I’ll have to digest the whole article during another visit, but I was able to scan a few stimulating quotations, and then Sara Jane offered me a new commission, with the freedom to interpret a photographic image with my choice of style—the perfect assignment. Everything conspired to boost my motivation to aggressively advance the Brady and Eckerle projects, plus my fine-arts enterprise in general. I couldn’t think about anything else as I ran home. So, why am I sitting here with this log entry?

Cliff and I had a conversation about blogging the other day and it got me thinking about my string of 616 or 617 consecutive posts, and how important making daily entries used to seem. Brendan still refers to this site as a daily journal, but that hasn’t been true for well over a year. Once again, time is malleable, and, as Arnold has said, there’s adequate time each day for everything meaningful enough to do. Blogging isn’t about the time, but about having something worth saying to yourself, maybe worth recording, possibly worth sharing. I eventually figured out that doesn’t happen every day. When it does, not much time is required to get it down.

— Terie and Marty bought the M:I:3 DVD and left it at our house, so, late last night, I watched the J.J. Abrams picture for the second time, and I liked it a bit more this time around. I think Tom Cruise is the Burt Lancaster of his generation. Regardless of what I might think of his personal life, his work product demands respect. (Hey, not all celebrities can be a James Stewart or Charlton Heston; Lance Armstrong falls into the same category.) If Cruise had not become an actor, he would surely have been an Olympic or professional athlete in some discipline. He has the mentality and natural capacity for high-performance physical achievement. Although one of the least flamboyant stunts, his Chinese-village tile-roof footwork is probably the riskiest choreography in the movie. As I’ve declared before, I think he squandered the full potential of the classic franchise and put its longevity at risk, but this sequel is the best of the lot, the most team-oriented, and it fits nicely into our ancient family idea of an M:I Saga Series. In my opinion, Abrams is a creative, meticulous director with a feel for the spy genre compatible to Mission: Impossible—Cruise certainly can’t be faulted with his selection—but Abrams will need to have further honed his story-telling skills to do justice to his upcoming Star Trek feature, another Desilu-originated concept from the “silver age” of television.

— Local historian, R.C. Brown, is dead at 90. He once saluted me on a Danville street as, “Mr. Dixon, the Spin Doctor!” We often held different political perspectives, but shared a fascination with local heritage. I recruited him in 1991 to expound before a camera, as part of a fundraising documentary (the same program in which we cast Alyx as a child actress). He was in his 70s then, and I was young enough to think I might have a future directing videos (as close as I got to being Ken Burns when I grew up). Brown was the doctor, not me. He was from Ohio, too, but went on to get a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. He taught history at Buffalo State College for 28 years. When he retired to our area, he rapidly became an authority and wrote The History of Danville and Boyle County. I’ll always believe that Professor Brown respected me as a talent, even though I consider his remark shaded by a mild one-upmanship. Perhaps he did understand better than most the true nature of my commercial craft, but I hope he wasn’t thinking of Victor Papanek’s quotation:

“In persuading people to buy things they don’t need, with money they don’t have, in order to impress others that don’t care, advertising is probably the phoniest field in existence today.”

I prefer this one:

“The only important thing about design is how it relates to people.”

Thomas Bewick, my newest hero, couldn’t escape the ongoing necessity of making money with “coarse work” (as his daughter called it), despite his artistic reputation and unmatched skill as a wood engraver. I wanted to return the library book and avoid fines, but couldn’t help myself, and finished the biography by Jenny Uglow this week. As I said previously, learning more about his life has reinforced for me the notion that, although everything changes on outward levels, nothing really changes in the human dynamics of making a living as an independent, creative craftsman. I was notably saddened when I learned that he never fulfilled his dream of having the cottage workshop close to nature described in his memoir:

“The artist ought if possible to have his dwelling in the country where he could follow his business undisturbed, surrounded by pleasing rural scenery & the fresh air and as ‘all work & no play, makes Jack a dull Boy,’ he ought not to sit at it, too long at a time, but to unbend his mind with some variety of employment — for which purpose, it is desireable, that Artists, with their little Cots, should also have each a Garden attached in which they might find both exercise & amusement — and only occasionally visit the City or the smokey Town & that chiefly for the purpose of meetings with their Brother Artists.”

Dana reminded me that we all tend to get what we desire if we want it badly enough.

V & S

Various & Sundry, part fifty-four

Monday, June 4th, 2007

— 7:30 am, meet cycling pals for an early 30-miler with Scott Joplin’s Pineapple Rag in my head; 10 am, have eggs for breakfast and read the Band Festival tabloid with a feature about my poster art; 11 am, worship with Marty at the Salvation Army and hear my friend Zach preach; 12:30 pm, tear up old blacktop with Marty and empty first Ned-load of driveway debris; 2:30 pm, eat Dana’s turkey panini lunch on the front porch with Marty; 3 pm, tear up old blacktop with Marty and empty second Ned-load of driveway debris; 5 pm, go to Marty’s place to shower and play video games, 7 pm, watch “Scarface” and enjoy a lasagna dinner with Marty and Terie; 9:30 pm, head home to check email and read a bit before bed… If all my remaining Sundays were like this, I believe I could, to use a phrase attributed to the Marquis de Lafayette, “die ’appy.”

— Seth had his graduation celebration at Greystone on Saturday and it “marks the end of an era,” according to James. Mombo made an appearance, to everyone’s enormous satisfaction. Mike R brought his mom down from Ohio for the event, and he said he wants to commission a house portrait from me. Kyle D was there, and Seth passed the torch to a new student leader for the Red Kettle campaign in Liberty. Kyle said Captain Zach reported a $1700 total from our effort last season. We discussed ways to boost that in 2007. I got a bit of inside news about the new girls’ b-ball coach at Boyle. Cliff teased me about my Band Festival pin, but got my commitment to bring him a poster. Does that mean I get a new t-shirt in trade? When it was time to kick back with a beer, I had a good talk with Nic, and he shared a vision of married life in the Valley, and how he’s sure he can resist the professional pressures to value income over becoming a family man. I hope he’s right! Afterwards we stopped at the Hall and spent more time with Mombo, plus I had a chance to grumble to Joan about how the TV networks had squandered a massive line-up of talent over the past months (Haggis, Liotta, Madsen, Diggs, Daly, Hutton, Delany, Sorkin, Busfield, Goldblum, Stowe, Minear, Fillion—I can’t go on!).

— Seeing Jeannette at Greystone reminded me of last Friday at Rotary Club, when I was asked to “unveil” my poster art and make remarks. I did something I don’t remember having ever done so explicitly, and that was pay tribute to the divine source of all creativity. I wasn’t sure it had been the proper thing to do in that context, until Jeannette told me how much she was touched by it. That, combined with seeing two similar but different kinds of youthful self-assurance in both Seth and Nic, makes me realize I need to trust my instincts more, even though I might think I’ve made progress in that area. Drop the reticence and push it further. There’s no other way. The previous day I’d successfully shrugged off the inner wimp to address the Governor in public when he visited Centre for the “Get Healthy Kentucky” initiative. My comments met with applause. Come on, what is there to lose except self-doubt?

V & S

Various & Sundry, part thirty-seven

Monday, May 1st, 2006

— Month of April workout totals: Swim-4; Bike-6; Run-3; Lift-6; Yoga-7

— We stopped out at the park to watch some of Hayley’s varsity softball game, but she wasn’t having a very good night on the field or at the plate. Cliff and I talked about business. Dana and I needed to leave after a few innings, and Hayley’s team was winning, but it was my hope she’d have a much better j-v game.

— I had to do my utmost to tactfully resist the mushrooming of my Brass Band Festival involvement. It was necessary to remind others why donating creative time is worthwhile to our studio—an opportunity to represent our best ideas to the community. One shouldn’t need to explain that we volunteer for reasons that go beyond the goodness of our hearts, and that the mutual benefit doesn’t work if we end up executing production services for the featured artist.

— Seems like my old chum Scott V and I only touch base this time of year, during our shared birthday season, but nothing wrong with that. A life-long athlete, he’s recovering from disc surgery on his neck and is eager to be back to normal. His goal is to return to the ball diamond as soon as he can. In a month he plans to go fishing in Canada with his Dad and four of his brothers. Sounds like a great getaway—no phones, no TV, with just cold water in the cabins. Dadbo always talked about taking the Dixon brothers on a trip to the “North Woods,” but it never happened. I’m happy to learn Scott is getting to do it, although it makes me sad at the same time.

V & S

Blood and Fire

Friday, April 28th, 2006

There are flaws in all events, and the time will come soon enough for our annual “post-mortem” evaluation, but overall, The Salvation Army Appreciation Dinner was a great success. I can’t describe the sense of relief and satisfaction that today brings, other than to state that those are the feelings dominating my mood. I sense perfect timing for the new cycle that arrives tomorrow—a cycle of change and new projects.

It was good to see my sister Jeanne at the dinner, representing the 10th Planet, one of the new “Business Partners in HOPE.” Cliff was torn between being there and attending Hayley’s Boyle-Danville softball matchup, and he decided to wear the Dad cap. That’s just fine—there will be more Salvation Army goings-on for the rest of our lives, but children have fleeting intervals that are quickly gone forever.

I missed my chance to personally invite Seth at Easter, but there he was with his mentor, Mr. Durham! A superb opportunity for him to learn more about the Army and solidify his sense of achievement in Liberty last Christmas season. I also heard the good news that he’ll be attending the Governor’s Scholars Program this summer.

David and Lee were there, plus all the great friends of the Army’s mission in our five-county area. Divisional Commander Major Howell was a fantastic guest speaker and his address was a tough act for me to follow, since, as Vice Chair of the Advisory Board, I was to give the closing remarks and prayer. The Spirit was right there to boost my delivery, and I did as well as I think I’ve ever done in front of a large group. I’d gone with my intuition when I developed my speech, but wasn’t entirely confident of its appropriateness until Major Howell spoke, and then I knew that everything dovetailed with precision. Divine design? Amazing…

Various & Sundry, part thirty

Friday, January 13th, 2006

— You asked for them…
BIG JimThe BIG Guy HimselfThe BIG ValleyThe Other BIG Guy Himself

— The BIG news of the week in Danville was the corporate restructuring of Ephraim McDowell Health, with the president of the medical center being ousted in the process. When I chatted with him today I suggested he run for County Judge Executive, just to see his reaction. He didn’t dismiss the idea at all and said, “John, I’ve thought about a lot of things this week, but that wasn’t one of them.” It was almost as if I could hear that familiar Lalo Schifrin tune, and felt like I was finally stepping into the shoes of YOU KNOW WHO.

What’s up, Docs?

— We just got home from the BIG Danville-vs-Boyle-County basketball double header. As Cliff predicted, the boy’s game was intense, given the deep local rivalry. I haven’t felt that kind of energy near a basketball court since my high school days, when a Northmont or Vandalia-Butler showndown brought the student body to fever pitch. Both Boyle County teams won, and I agreed with Marty that the girls’ game was more satisfying to watch. If I counted correctly, Hayley’s point total made it to double digits again. She’s a real playmaker and had a number of significant assists. She also continues to be prone to mistakes that accompany her inexperience with sustaining game focus. It’s scary to think how good she’ll be when she stops making them.

— After the ball games, while taking Marty home, we learned that Bruce was being admitted back into Methodist Hospital. It has to do with replacing some of his dang “pipelines and spigots.” I guess BIG problems could result if this kind of thing were ignored or downplayed during his steady recovery.

V & S