Mondaugen's Woodworker

Ziggy and Jiggles: the Shop Dogs

Until I can make up my mind about which wood (understanding that you'll just make it out of whatever you want), I should introduce you to some of the other, non-wood characters:

Ziggy and Jiggles are the family dogs. And when the kids are at school and my wife's at work, they become the shop dogs. They don't help much, don't know how to sand and largely they get underfoot; but they're part of the deal, and they're much loved.

ZIggy is a standard poodle. Characteristically, he is highly neurotic, even psychotic. Uncharacteristically, he is something of an idiot.

Ziggy was the first and only dog we've ever bought. They don't shed, our kids were giving us the big eyes, and we had heard good things. Our enthusiasm was dampened substantially when I inquired (you don't "ask" in Connecticut) with a local breeder how much a poodle puppy cost. During the call, I had the vague feeling it was rude to ask the price. But I got an answer. I think I could have paid for several human child adoptions for what the local breeder was asking, but I didn't call the local adoption agency to confirm.

With some further reseach, I found a breeder in Georgia who had a runt at 50% off her normal price because he looked "funny." Including shipping, this deal was pennies compared to the local cost. I had the check in the mail within minutes.

They say you get what you pay for, but I've fought that my whole life. Sometimes I win, and sometimes I lose. While endearing at times, Ziggy has deep psychological problems and a few physical ones. I have become his codependent.

Ziggy must eat toilet paper at least once a day or he gets nervous. Just a few sheets will do. He gently chews each sheetfor some time to get full enjoyment of the texture or taste, or perhaps both. Ziggy also requires a deep back scratch once a day, usually after dinner. Every muscle in his body responds to the scratching, so his skin literally creeps up and down his body. He then literally contorts into pretzel shapes, legs around one another, pushed against table legs, neck arched until his nose nearly touches his back. If he doesn't get scratched, he gets nervous.

What happens when Ziggy gets nervous? He bites people. Just a little snap, a lightning-fast tag on your hand or leg, drawing just a little blood. He doesn't mean it badly. He wags his tail when he does it. he just has to bite something, then he feels much better and isn't so nervous anymore.

He also enjoys dirty socks, underwear, and handkerchiefs--whatever small clothing is left on the floor--not just to chew, but to eat, digest, then leave on our lawn, oddly extruded textiles. If I don't catch them before guests arrive, they invariably attract attention--"what is that?" They are very difficult to explain. "You see, our dog...."

ZIggy also steals toast out of the toaster with greater silence and stealth than SEAL Team Six operative. In fact, the last time I caught him stealing toast out of the toaster was when he was a puppy  seven years ago. But our toast consumption is still too high to be solely me the kids poaching each other. The same happens to dinners, breakfast sweet buns and the occasional Thanksgiving turkey.

Ziggy also then finds dead animal carcases in the woods and eats them, later to throw up fur and gray bits of rotted somethings on our living room floor.

Ocassionally, I find Ziggy has feathers stuck to his mouth. When I stare at him, wondering what he has been up to, he gives me a look that says "What? What I do? I didn't do anything. Nothing you could possibly know about, anyway." I am thankful our neighbors do not raise chickens. But I think he's mainly interested in carrion, so poaching isn't a concern.

While stealthy, Ziggy is not that bright. He is a good guard dog. Someone knocking at our front door will start a chorus of barking. But knock on the kitchen table in front of him, and he will run to the front door barking.

Ziggy will occasionally fart, then turn in alarm and begin barking at the strange sound that came from behind him.

Chasing squirrels is very difficult for Ziggy, as he has only a very dim concept of three dimensions. The squirrel runs up a tree. Ziggy runs to the tree and around it several times, sniffing furiously, but without ever looking up.

Ziggy is a loving, family dog, great with kids, and available for adoption.

 

Then there' Jiggles.

We got Jiggles while living in India and brought her back. That in itself is a tale.

Jiggles is an exceptionally intelligent and bossy little girl, a mutt mix of Indian street dog and, we think, Lhasa Apso. She requires daily trummy rubs.

Apologies for the inaccuracy--hourly tummy rubs.

Perhaps more like tummy rubs on demand, every few minutes and also as necessary.

And there is nowhere that a tummy rub is not completely acceptable.

This tummy rub thing is part of her genetic heritage. Indian street dogs make their living by being really, really cute and extorting food and shelter from people who don't have much to begin with. Rich foreigners are particularly juicy targets. We never met cuter dogs than in India, especially on the beaches.

Jiggles hates birds and will chase them across the yard, no matter how high they're flying. I've seen her jump at geese flying in V formation so high up you can barely make them out.

Squirrels are Jiggle's passion. She can run faster than them, but not up trees. Sorrowfully for her, our yard is filled with trees so she has not caught one yet. She stares into the local field, praying to spy a squirrel caught in the middle with no tree nearby.

Jiggles and Ziggy get along quite well, as long as Ziggy obeys her completely. She is the undisputed boss in the couple, even going so far as to regulate access to me for his back scratching. If she needs a tummy rub first, she growls to send Ziggy to the back of the line.

Days in the shop are tough on them. Neither likes work much so they lie around and look mournfully at me. If I let them out, they're off in the woods to chew on some carrion. Then when I let them back in the shop, they stink up the place. If I put them in the house, Ziggy will eat the kids' underwear. So they stay bored with me in the shop, except for the tummy rubs, back scratches and bird sightings through the windows.

 

Dithering over Wood

I haven't been able to get to the lumber yard yet, in part because I've busy with other work, and in part because I don't yet know which wood the bookcase should be made of.

White oak is an old favorite, but is a hard wood to work for a beginner. Sanding it well takes more time than most woods as coarse grit scratches can really show up after finishing. On the positive side, it tends to be stable, so it doesn't warp much while you work it. I might well make the bookcase out of white oak, but wouldn't recommend it as a wood for a first project.

Then there's cherry: always lovely, a perennial favorite in the woodworking world. If white oak is like a well-dressed country squire, cherry is like an ill-tempered but beautiful mistress. The wood has a warm glow and all, but it's expensive. It also warps when you work it and it's a pain to finish. "Blotching" is an ugly term for an ugly habit of soaking up finishes and stains unevenly, producing a disaster that's nearly impossible to remedy without paint. In the 18th century, cherry was considered a secondary wood, and for good reason.

Poplar is like a boring midwestern cousin, and is by far the best beginner's wood from the standpoint of ease of use. It's cheap and a joy to work. It doesn't warp while you're building things and it sands to a smooth finish easily. The problem is it's plain to look at: a sort of a dirty white with green streaks. With light and time, though, the green turns a lovely brown and the dirty white a more noble dirty white. In my basement that might be twenty years before it begins to look good, so I will probably stick with white oak.

Then there's hard  or sugar maple, a bit like an uncooperative adolescent. It has a lovely glow when finished, but it's harder than oak and moves like the hokey pokey. You mill the left side flat, you mill the right side flat, you mill the left side flat and then it shakes itself about. No matter how much you mill maple, it just goes and warps when you're done. That's what it's all about. While there are tricks to get maple to behave, you shouldn't have to deal with them when starting out.

Red oak is not quite as hard as white, doesn't warp like maple and has a nice rustic feel. The problem is that you find red oak in every restaurant, every bedroom set, every dining table and every bathroom shelf. Red oak is like a live-in aunt with nothing to say. Every dining table conversation yields a "yep," nope" or "dunno," but not much more. When I think of red oak, my thoughts somehow drift towards inviting cherry to the party. 

Pine is a perennial favorite among beginners.I think this is for two main reasons--familiarity and the American shop program. Like red oak, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting something made from pine. It's everywhere. My entire house is paneled in pine, including pine shelves and pine doors. And beginners think of it because every middle and high school shop had a pile of pine for those bird houses, derby cars and step stools.

The attraction is that pine is super soft, so it's really easy to work with hand tools no matter your age or ability. But pine is not so easy to cut cleanly (pine tears out under dull tools), so making a finished product that looks nice is much harder than if you use a harder wood. Pine also dents very easily (use a basllpoint pen on a pine table top and you'll see what I mean) and wears away with use. If you like the worn, rustic look that comes from this, then pine's your wood.

There are a ton of less-common and other great woods to consider, (soft maple, birch, alder, walnut and all the non-North American woods, etc.)--a whole family of colorful characters each with their unique personalities. But at this point considering them is really over-complicating things. In fact, that seems to be the whole point of this post.

 

Choosing wood is not as simple as it might seem at first, as there are a number of considerations, not just finished look, but workability, cost, and appropriateness for the job.

So, I dither, wondering who to introduce you to first (and then live with in my basement)...

Basement Bookcase, part 1

My house suffers from a basic problem: too much stuff and nowhere to put it. The problem largely stems from a double infestation of teenage children that we have been unable to manage for several years. To drive them away, my wife and I try to feed them nutritious and healthy food, require them to do the dishes and even insist that they be polite to guests and family. I even set out a copy of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, but none of this has worked, and they remain--eating in the house, sleeping in the house, even lounging about in the house, but most especially leaving their stuff everywhere it shouldn’t be around the house.

The messes have mounted in size over the years in both scale and complexity, involving not just their art projects, model rockets, homework, library books, Call of Duty Black Ops disc, broken pencils, forgotten lego and Playmobil, Chia pets, and comic books, but also my receipts, glasses, thumb drive and can of bag balm, all of which I can never find when needed in a hurry.

“Clean up your messes Especially the one in the basement!” I shout with authority, “Put your stuff away!”

“But dad, it IS cleaned up. The stuff in the basement we put in the corner as there’s nowhere else to put it!” comes the too-rapid, and sadly all-too accurate reply.

"Well, couldn't you stack it more neatly?"

"With the chia pet on top? I don't think so."

And indeed, the mess is cleaned up, sort of, so I can't lay blame on the kids. 

The siren song of the Shakers calls out to me when I look at such piles: “A place for everything and everything in its place.”

More organized storage is the obvious solution and this is a problem only a woodworker can solve.

It is time to don my bionic shop apron and get to work.

The tactic of a lesser mortal would be a trip to Ikea. But This Is The House Of A Proud Woodworker. We will MAKE a bookshelf, and it will be beautiful, useful and enduring. It will be such an amazing bookcase, all our guests will stop and stare at it, their jaws dropped in awe and say “WOW, what an awesome bookcase! Did you get it at Ikea?” And I will say, “No, I made it myself.” And then they’ll want me to make one for them at the price they would pay at Ikea and by the time I get done lecturing them about the Value of the Hand of the Craftsman, they’re no longer such good friends. So it’s probably better to say you didn’t make it, that you found it at a tag sale for $5. It will produce the equivalent amount of envy and admiration.

1.The first step to making an awesome bookcase in your house is to find space in the mess to put a bookcase. Generally walls with bookcases or cabinets are not good places to put new bookcases, but I have thought of it (the outer bookcase just needs casters so you can move it to one side to get at the bookcase behind). This plan, however, has been consistently vetoed by family vote. So I recommend you also find a wall without a bookcase.

I happen to have such a wall in my basement, right above one of the smaller piles. It also looks pretty horrible, after yeasrs of abuse. There are holes from pictures and scribblings from kids, a popped drywall seam, as well as a good stain from a coke float that was dropped while someone (who shall remain nameless) was coming down the stairs. This wall will benefit greatll by being hidden from view with a lovely bookcase.

2. Measure the area you have to work with. It’s mistake number one to make something that won’t fit where you want to put it, though I've only ever heard of people making this mistake and have absolutely no personal experience. In my basement, I have a protruding thingy 72 and 1/4 in. from the floor, where I think there are some pipes. My goal here is to make a bookcase that is not taller than the protruding thingy. And the protruding thingy sticks out about 7 3/4 in. so that’s a good depth to work with for a bookcase. Also, never make a bookcase so big that it won’t fit through a door. I know someone who did just that, a big 9 ft. tall bookcase that was 8 ft. wide. Guess how many 3 ft. by 7 ft. doorways that can fit through? it might take you a few minutes to double check for yourself, but the answer is none.

You see, there’s a lot to think about as a woodworker. Making things is an endless process of problemsolving, even before you start making them. Measure twice and then double check you're measuring the right thing.

Also measure the width of the wall AND the baseboard details. It is a constant problem, to make a bookshelf that fits around a baseboard. You'll see what a nuisance they create later on in the process.

 

3. Now, sit down with pencil and paper and write down all these measurements. It's no use taking them if you forget them. Do little drawings to keep your bearings. I don't label mine, but that's a bad idea. All too often I come back to a drawing a few weeks later and wonder what on earth it shows.

 

4. Figure out what you’re going to build. The more you precisely you draw it, the better. I know a fair number of Google Sketchup Jockeys—CAD programs big and small can be very useful and enjoyable. But they’re not crucial. There is no crucial tool in woodworking. This is one of the key joys and frustrations in woodworking. For every job there are at least ten ways you can do it, none better or worse than any other, just some are faster, easier and more expensive.

I prefer the old note pad, with distracting lines. As this is a basic bookcase, and I really need to get this project done, I've kept the details to a minimum. Rectangular sides, though, are depressing. Yes, they have their place in high-end modernist design, but in my basement they'll just look depressing. So a little curve along the edge of the sides. One to the floor will look better than a triangle, but one ends before the floor will look better. Or at least I think so.

Beautiful furniture is both in the eye of the beholder and also learned. No matter what you say, I cannot be convinced that a polluted river, dark brown with garbage floating in it is beautiful. It just isn't. But if you find great beauty in the artwork of Damien Hirst, well, I won't contradict you, just agree to disagree with you. But to avoid a huge digression into aesthetics, just make your bookcase the way you like, and I'll do the same with mine.

Spend some time thinking through other possibilities. I considered for a few minutes making a bookshelf that went around the corner towards the stairs. The trouble is that it greatly complicates the construction, and you end up with dead space in the corner that’s hard to manage without further complication.

 

So I bagged that idea.

 

5. Figure out how you're going to build it. At this point, I decide how big the bookcase will be, what dimensions, construction techniques (what type of joinery), the length of the shelves, what wood to use and maybe even the finish. Or I try to. Some decisions get put off until later.

More than a 3 ft. span for a bookshelf is too much, and the shelves will end up sagging. I may make them shorter, but not longer. As I've got over 8 ft. of wall space, I could make three shelves, but that's too much effort. So I'll make two shelves 3 ft wide. At least that's the plan. You'll see how other factors will influence those decisions.

Dados and screws are the simplest construction for a bookcase and perfectly strong when attached to the wall. I'll also make the shelves adjustable.

 

It's also a good idea to sketch out the bookcase best you can to see what it will look like. This is a great time to realize a problem not eaily imagined. And I can't imagine an example.

The baseboard will be a problem, but I'll figure out a solution. Maybe the baseboard just goes away. I have a friend with a sawzall.

So we're off and running. The next step is to find wood. I'll take you to a lumber yard in the next post and show you what to look for when buying lumber in general: "caveat emptor," to coin a phase.

If you’re looking for more specific directions on how to build a bookcase, I recommend Niall Barrett’s book Bookcases. It’s a good project book written by a good friend who had a good editor (me). It’s readily available through the Taunton Press and internet book retailers of every stripe.

 

Welcome to my Shop

To the unaccustomed eye, this room looks like the terminal phase of a highly destructive addiction. Somewhere in the background, Gollum-like, I should be crouched over a new tool, or a particularly beautiful piece of wood muttering “I likes it, my precious, oh yes I likes it.” But no, I assure you I am a normal human being and this is a normal woodshop.

But so much stuff! So much clutter! Woodworking looks like an overwhelming hobby!

This is the trouble with woodworking—to make furniture from soup to nuts, you need a lot of tools and a lot of space to put them.  You’ll hear many woodworkers assure beginners that you don’t need much space to make furniture, nor do you need many tools. This is perfectly true--at first. The trouble begins when you fall in love with making things. That’s when you need more tools, more space, more wood, then better tools, better space and better wood. And after a lifetime of untreated addiction, the above is what your shop will look like.

Currently, I’m working on a kitchen cabinet in white oak.  This one has a cookie sheet slot on the left, a shallow drawer on the top and a slide out trash bin. Maybe in another post I’ll pull it apart and show you the details, or perhaps build a companion, as plywood carcase construction is a core woodworking skill.

 

Another project I’ve been pecking at is a cutting board with my high school’s motto incised around the edge. It’s for a fundraiser.

Incised letters are great fun to create, but I find them a whole lot harder to cut now than I did twenty years ago. I think my eyesight is the issue. I’ve tried spot lighting, but somehow I always need to see where there’s a shadow. I think I might look into one of those laser printers, or larger breadboards with bigger letters.

 

About a week ago, a friend asked me to fix a chair for him. I insisted no, but he insisted back and eventually won. So it sits in my shop. If I could make an honest business fixing chairs, I’d be a millionaire by now. Everyone has a squeaky chair they’d like to fix permanently. The trouble is, once a chair begins to squeak, there’s not too much you can do that’s simple, easy and cheap. Cheap fixes work just fine until someone sits in the chair. All the miracle cures for loose chair joints remain subject to doubt until the Pope beatifies the inventor. Better fixes exist, but putting ten hours of shop time into a $70 chair just doesn’t make sense unless it’s a family treasure. But I digress into one of those rants of frustration. I’ll clean up the finish and hopefully make him happy.

 

Then there’s this pile of spalted maple, behind the firewood.  I began to make something with it a few years back, but got sidetracked. I’m not even sure what I was making any more. It’s lovely wood and I should deal with it soon. In every woodworker’s shop are half-completed projects. They give one purpose in life. You have to get out of bed in the morning, if just to tie up those loose ends.

 

Next week, I’ll begin making a bookcase for my basement. I really need one (the clutter around the house needs a place to go), and there are few project as simple and useful as bookshelves. Next post, I’ll show you a simple sketch of the case and some thoughts on how I’ll make it and why.

Then next post after that I’ll take you on a tour of a local lumber yard or two where I’ll show you how to buy wood. First, I may have to discuss matters with the manager, to make sure it’s all right to take pictures. But if there’s a blackout at one lumberyard, we’ll go somewhere else.

Eventually, I hope to move to a mix of still pics and video, depending on what works best for each topic.

And as always, please visit my professional website at www.strotherpurdy.com

A Transition, of Sorts

It's about time.

I formally apologize for all the crummy mumblings for the last little while, perhaps years now. I've gotten rid of the worst offending blogs and will comb through the rest. Hopefully what's left is a pleasand archive of travel adventures and assorted interesting mumblings.

The trouble is I haven't been anywhere that has captured my imagination, or rather my imagination has been dull to the places I've been, or responded dully to dull places. We all go through flat spots in life, in which the landscape neither inspires us, nor can we inspire the landscape to be more than it deserves.

So from now on, I'll apply Mondaugen's Law to the woodworking I do, and the time I spend in my shop. This is certainly my now, though what kind of bandwidth I've attained I can't rightly say.

Whether you're just curious to see how furniture gets put together, or if you're thinking of learning the craft, I hope you'll find something in each post. If not, complain and I promise to be gracious about it. 

So, for an interim image, here's a plywood kayak I made a while back--the woodworking that travels.

A grandfather's pocketknife (Previously "Careening")

We all know we can’t bring knives, explosives or other weapons on airplanes. Even if we don’t intend to use them, other passengers might become alarmed. But how many of us have arrived at airport security to discover we have neglected to leave all our weapons at home? Too many of us. After 9/11, I remember the huge bins filled with confiscated toenail clippers. I lost a pair myself that way. Nowadays it’s large bottles of water, hair gel and creamy cheeses that cause passenger alarm, so they’re banned too. But I digress.

Last weekend on my way back home to Connecticut, I arrived at airport security convinced I was clean of all possible causes of passenger alarm. Ready to suffer mild irradiation to provide evidence I was clean, and calm my fellow passengers, I began undressing in line— belt off , jacket off, shoes off (I’m really not looking forward to the first “underwear bomber”), laptop out of bag, change out of pockets… and there it was. Instant recognition of the object and situation left my stomach queasy. I had forgotten to leave my grandfather’s pocketknife at home.

Now, it’s a special knife. I never met my grandfather, who died 11 years before I was born. Family stories about him are few and far between. So it’s through a few objects I keep him in mind, mainly this knife that I was given as a teenager. It’s a 1930’s stainless steel fishing knife made by Abercrombie and Fitch. It has always been a little rusty at the joints (steel pins hold it together), but it takes a keen edge and has proven handy on many occasions. It’s lovely design and connection with my grandfather made it a special object.  I was not going to let it go without a fight—though not at any great cost, since I’ve got too much Scottish blood.

The security people would toss it (or take it) without a qualm. I couldn’t risk trying to hide it in my bag (or toss it above the metal detector as I walked through, catching it on the other side a la Kevin Kline in A Fish Called Wanda), since I figured the odds were towards losing it. But what to do?

I had a good hour before my flight, so I put my shoes, belt and jacket back on and retreated from security to explore options. I presented my dilemma to a Department of Homeland Defense fellow. While sympathetic, he had no solutions except to ask at my airlines. Armed with the knowledge that I could not possibly be the first, I approached the Southwest Airlines ticket counter attendant. She listened to me cooly then replied absent-mindedly in monotone legalese that they could not take responsibility for objects left at the airport blah blah blah. How could she not feel my pain? My only consolation was that she had to live with her own dead eyes.

The airport has no lockers to keep the knife. No post office to send the knife. Nothing. For a moment, I considered paying a taxi to drive my knife back to my place of work where a friend could get it, but the Scottish blood kicked in.

With half an hour before my flight, I came to terms that the knife was a goner. It wasn’t so hard: it’s just a thing, an object ultimately meaningless in itself. Its value was really in the family associations, which I had with or without the knife. A replacement knife would do the same job—reminding me of the knife that used to remind me of my grandfather.

And then it dawned on me. Hide it in the airport. If I hid it in the airport, I had a chance of recovering it. I could pick it up on my way back three days later. Sure, someone else could find it, but hiding it offered better odds than throwing it away. With 25 minutes before my flight, I started to look about for a good hiding place.

Airports are rather intentionally public places. There aren’t a lot of good nooks and crannies at Midway. I went outside to look there and found cops and maintenance workers standing around. It seemed a bad idea to obviously place something in a nook or cranny in front of a cop, so I went back inside and kept looking. Where could I put it? It grew into a complex problem. I couldn’t draw attention to myself when I placed it. I couldn’t put it somewhere that it would be found over several days. I would probably be watched on a security camera wherever it was.

Then I found the place. A ladder against a wall with a ledge up top.  It seemed perfect. I looked left and right suspiciously to see if anyone was watching. Then climbed the ladder and tucked the knife out of sight. Then I climbed back down, looked left and right suspiciously again to see if anyone had seen me, just like in the movies. I knew how to act like a suspicious character.

At security, I undressed without a qualm, walked through without a beep, and dressed on the other side without a worry. I made the plane in good time.

It was on the plane that I thought back to the ladder. If someone had placed it there, they might use it there, and thereby find the knife. And when I got back, would the ladder still be there? My perfect plan began to unravel.

And the security camera footage would reveal a tall, 40-year-old white male, short blond hair climbing a ladder and putting something on top of a ledge, looking around suspiciously the whole time. Any dolt of a security guard, except in Hollywood, would investigate.  The plan came undone. So I resigned myself to losing the knife and put thoughts towards getting home.

Three days later back in Midway airport, I had to check the spot. The ladder was gone, of course. So I put my bag down, looked suspiciously to the left and the right, then I clambered noisily up the wall. There, right where I left it, was my knife. I jumped back down with a broad grin on my face, stuffed the dangerous memento in my pocket and made my way to the taxi stand before a security guard watching the video footage waddled after me to ask tough questions.

Safe in the taxi, I fancied a career in the CIA. Surely I have the right stuff.

It was only a few days later that I considered another option. What if I had picked a random stranger leaving the airport, told him the story and given him the knife? Whether the stranger would keep the knife or send it to me was of less importance than creating an odd and beautiful connection. Instead of throwing it away and ending it, the gift would certainly have created an unusual memory for that person, whether he kept it or not. I enjoy telling peculiar stories. Such a moment would have created one for the stranger to tell.

Well, maybe I’ll forget the knife in my pocket again next weekend.

A bridge over...oh I can't do this any more

The Penobscot Narrows Bridge in Bucksport, Maine is the first place I've visited that does not offer a coherent, understandable experience. You arrive expecting not-quite-sure-what, you experience a jumble of things that do not make much sense, and you leave uncertain what you were supposed to have felt or learned. And they charge out-of-staters $8 for it.

I've wanted to take up the Bridge's clear lack of emotional focus with the Maine Tourism Board, but then I'd have to fight my way through the non-rhotic accent to understand anything.

"Mayne Tou-ism Bawd. Yawr ques-chun?"

"What?"

"Eye ass, whut whus yawr ques-chun?"

"What?"

"Suh, if yoo dawnt have uh ques-chun, cahwl back laaa-tuh."

"What?"

So I didn't bother.

My visit to the bridge, or I should say bridges, has been a personal Waterloo. It's the first time I have not been able to write a coherent blog about a location, and I squarely place the blame on the location not me. Consider that I can find pretentious delight in the little things on a lake in Bridgewater without breaking a sweat. On a beach in Maine, over-wrought soul searching comes to mind without any effort. Even my desk offers itself up to a geeky fascination with odd words with a flick of the keyboard. What could be so hard about a bridge?

I've thought the problem might be an inherent mixed metaphor, that the bridge is a synthesis of two conflicting  emotional foci. This can lead to problems, though often humorous ones. If I were to discuss the word "spiffy" (an odd word) while on a beach in Maine (the proper place for over-wrought soul-searching), the results would be ridiculous. I'm not sure I could even think of the word while skipping a stone in stony (haha) silence. Even attempting it would probably induce a mild stroke.

However, you might parry, I am always capable of overwrought soul-searching, whether on a beach or at a desk. And I concede your point. There is a certain universality to overwrought soul-searching. It can even be done at the mall, in the Abercrombie and Fitch for example, in spite of the raw buff lust coursing through the place. There are fundamental differences between overwrought Maine-beach soul-searching and overwrought-desktop or mall-Abercrombie-and-Fitch soul-searching, but I won't offer a digression into them as I'm not currently seeking tenure.

You nay-sayers are insisting that I've just missed the true mood of the bridge. It's there--just too subtle for my coarse understanding. But let's see if you can figure out the proper locale-focus, the inherent mood of the Penobscot Narrows Bridge. I dare you to name it.

Let's begin at the beginning of the experience.

From a distance you see two bridges over the Penobscot River (I apologize that I have no such image, but look here for one, and some less biased history of the two bridges). They're right along side each other, not more than a hundred yards apart. The first was completed in 1931 and the other in 2006. While you can only drive on the new one, the other one is still there. They cheat each other of attention and beg to be compared and contrasted. So you stop the car, get out and look and try to understand.

The old bridge is a big, all-metal suspension bridge. From a distance, it looks frail, even cobweb sparse. Up close, it still does. Only two lanes wide, there isn't much of a guard rail on either side. There's a distinct sense that you want more bridge than offered both under and around you to get to the other side. Driving over it is a close as most of us will get to an Evel Knievel stunt, soaring across nothingness to reach the other size of a canyon. And it looks uncharacteristically beefy in my photos since they added extra cables and a walkway in 2003.

The new one is not just big, but huge. I mean really huge. It's twice the height of the old one (though about the same length). Instead of lacework arches holding gossamer cables, gargantuan stone obelisks hold sewer-pipe-width cables. As if to exaggerate the proportions, the new bridge is still only two lanes wide. At a distance, it looks close. It's a jaw-dropper by scale.

One is Modernist Egypt and the other a Bandaged Erector Set. Who could write anything coherent about such an ill-matched pair? You might as well build a Louvre in the Middle East or put a pyramid in the center of Paris.

Now add to your growing impression of the bridges that the new one has "the tallest public bridge observatory" in the whole wide world. Stunned? I was.

You might think that honor would belong to one of those upstart Asian countries such as Indonesia, Dubai or France where they're always in a frenzy of one-upmanship with America. Even the Chinese can't compete with the plucky Bucksportians, and only hold the title to the "next-tallest public bridge observatory in the world." We may have lost first place in manufacturing and humans rights abuses to the Chinese, but we stand strong in the construction of super-tall public bridge observatories. Some patriotic applause is appropriate here.

So of course I had to go to the top of the tallest public bridge observatory and observe. One more thing off my bucket list. Once set with this goal, however, further confusion ensues.

As you drive over the bridge from the North, you note the clean bases of both obelisk pillars. There are no doors, no signs, nothing. You drive completely over the bridge and wonder if you missed anything, though you haven't. How does one gain access to this world-famous observatory, you might wonder, as you drive by a big sign indicating the direction of Fort Knox (isn't that in Kentucky?), a mile or so North of the bridge. If you're really perceptive, you'll note a small indication on the Fort Knox sign that the observatory is also located in the direction of Fort Knox. To get to the observatory, it seems you have to go to Fort Knox first.

At the entrance to the Fort Knox parking lot, you have the option of visiting Fort Knox for $3, or visiting both Fort Knox and the observatory for $8 for out-of-state residents. Slick flatlander that I am, I did some simple mental math.

"How about $5 for the observatory only?"
 
"Naaaaawwwwwwh" said with a big smile. The drawled response was friendly but betrayed full penetration of the ruse I was attempting. I paid my $8.

"Go awn down he-ah, and then ovuh th-ea," the lot attendant told me, indicating a road that headed back towards the bridges but down by the shoreline.

There we found another parking lot and a doorway in the very base of the Southern obelisk of the new bridge. Eureka! Access from below, where nobody can see it.

Walking under the two bridges makes you look up. Bright sunshine makes you squint. It's hard to see much of anything on a sunny day, but what you do come away with the sense that 420 vertical feet is a long way up. You also realize that these bridges have nothing to do with one another and look really awkward set so close.

The elevator is smooth and efficient, a marvel of modern engineering. The door opens at the top and looking out you see nothing but blue sky and horizon. I takes a moment to realize the windows are floor-to ceiling and only about 4 ft. from the elevator door.

"Oh lordy" an older woman in the elevator exclaimed. We ventured out of the elevator and up a small stairwell right up against the glass to get to the top level of the observatory. The glass panes don't give you much reassurance and the railing is thankfully on the concrete interior of the stairwell.

Once in the observatory, you have an unbroken, 360 degree view of the land all around. This is surprisingly boring. It's an unbroken and mildly hilly forest of green in every direction all the way to the knobby horizon. The river is not much more interesting, a muddy calm thing that gets thinner to the north North and wider to the South. Bucksport is a tiny town with not much to look at, though there is a factory of some kind on the riverfront. After a minute or two, you realize it's a really boring view on a clear day and the 1931 bridge below is the most interesting thing to look at, though for about 45 seconds before you realize you could see it better from below. One last thrill--press your nose up against the glass and look down for a frisson of vertigo. Then it's time to go.

The tallest public bridge observatory in the world, fully 420 feet off the shore of the Penobscot river gives you the most spectacular view of nearly nothing: an unrelenting uniformly green canopy of leaves too small to distinguish 420 ft. up. They built a super-tall public bridge observatory to observe exactly what? Why bother? Then I recalled my $8 and wondered if I'd fallen for a 420 ft. tall tourist trap. My daughter, who is usually unimpressed by these things, was unimpressed.

As I climbed into my car, after looking up once again at the underbellies of the two bridges, the only thought that came into my mind was "huh?" and "I want my money back."

Perhaps they really did built it thinking there was a great view. Perhaps I'm insensitive to the loveliness of unbroken green canopy and a riverside factory. Perhaps there's delight in being able to look down on one bridge from the top of another bridge. Perhaps there's charm in not being able to get to the bridge without going to Fort Knox first. But all I come away with is a huh.

Some Time on the Beach

There are places on the seacoast of Maine that make you glad to be alive. A field of blueberries. A view over a saltwater bay. Low-lying fog in the morning that dissipates as you drink your coffee. Given the time to look, the peacefulness of the views can saturate your soul. All sense of time and responsibility fade into an endless desire just to be, and perhaps to contemplate. The smell of the sea, the salt tinged with the decay of vegetable growth and former sea creatures, is responsible for the contemplative nature of the coast. It seems to add sincerity to the beauty all around.

Everyone loves the seashore. Fully half the world's population lives near it. However, some are more pleasing than others. The Maine coast is inhospitable, wild, rugged, even mildly frightening. It offers sharp rocks instead of sand. Black flies, horseflies, deerflies and mosquitoes patrol the rocky beaches and utterly infest the swamps and forests nearby. Swimming in the cold water is for the hardy or inebriated. Yet Maine's attraction is equal to the languid beaches of Southeast Asia.

Seashores are neither solid land nor uncertain sea but the line between. The shore is a place to wait, a transition on a journey. The land falls into the sea. The sea claws at the land. While we can be distracted by local color, we eventually peer at the distant horizon and boats between, examine the flotsam by our feet, and walk their length in silence. The features of a particular beach are often irrelevant to the state of mind they put us in. We think to the future and the past, losing our sense of the present.

In a bid to avoid going to war, Odysseus tilled the sand on the beach of Ithaca to convince King Agamemnon he was insane. Agamemnon placed Odysseus' infant son in front of the plow. Outwitted, Odysseus stopped, revealing that he was sane enough to go to war. Afterwards, he spent ten long years trying to get home, prevented by an angry Poseidon. Odysseus visited many islands; but whenever on land that wasn't home, he tried to get back to sea. And when at sea, he sought land. The beach was the beginning of Odysseus' voyage to war. While his journey didn't cost him his life, it cost him 20 years away from his family.

While I've never tried to till a beach, I oddly feel at home on them. I enjoy walking the shore line, between land and sea, on the property of neither. It's the rocks that catch my eye. The textures and features of the larger ones are fascinating. I pick up hundreds of the smaller stones for closer inspection. If they're round and flat, I skip them. If they're less than met the eye, they go back on the beach. And if they're curious, I keep them. And of course they make me think of time.

Each rock began its history somewhere at some time. The one I hold in my hand might have started on a beach, where mud and sand collected in layers over centuries, compressed and pushed slowly down into the earth, thousands of feet down, heat and pressure building, compressing, melting, reshaping it into new rock as other pressures push the old seabed up above the water into a new mountain chain, the topmost parts crumbling away over the millennia, finally this one piece breaks free from the rest to lie on a beach, rolled in the water where I find it, still sharp if recently freed, rounded by waves otherwise.

Nothing much human matters in geologic time. In each rock's history is more time than humanity could ever contemplate. These rocks have all been to hell and back, so to speak, over many millions of years. What they could say, could they speak.

Staring at a stone takes a certain amount of madness. Wanting it to speak requires more, though that's a fair metaphor for the science of geology. But I'm not after rocks that tell me their composition. I'm not sure what I'm after. But I keep picking up stones and thinking about them. Perhaps this impulse is a natural version of a Quaker service, a silent meditation, a waiting for a response from the silence that isn't you.


The intersecting lines suggest a natural Mondrian

A millefeuille pastry set in stone

A most perfect shade of slate in a very smooth pebble.

A natural plimsoll mark

Red, green and purple

Such ponderous thoughts are hard to avoid on the Maine coast, though I'm sure I bring them there. As evening falls, with a gin-and-tonic in hand and a pile of stones on the bench next, it's hard not to feel a happiness that dispels heavy thoughts about time travels and death. But the best antidote is to take the kids to the beach. There you can smile as they pickup every last damn rock, shell and bit of driftwood and run back to you with them for safe keeping. Heck, they're not lost in contemplation. They're just picking up stuff because it looks cool. Maybe there's a lesson here.

A short explanation

I should explain something that has puzzled some readers of this blog.

They've asked "where's your wife and kids?" They were hoping for more of a family story about what we all did in India. Instead they get insane tales of climbing up to waterfalls and island lumberyards with no cute kids in sight.

I've kept our family adventures largely off the blog for many reasons. The main one is that this blog is fully open. Anyone--friend, acquaintance or total stranger--can read these stories (and I encourage every last one of them). I just think it's unfair to share too much family life with such a wide audience. I'd rather that my daughter didn't have to ask "You told a perfect stranger WHAT?" or "You broadcast THAT over the internet?"

House guests are not so lucky. We have hundreds of hours of video and millions of photos that we freely share with guests, often until they fall asleep on the couch or leave the room muttering. You've been warned.

Some more travels

Travelers are wretched by nature. They leave the community in which they have a place, to visit ones in which they do not. In these unfamiliar communities, they rely on traditions that respect the stranger, and guard against the traditions that don't. Rest is only ever partial and trust more often built on hope than knowledge. The traveler's joys are solitary emotions, impossible to share fully in spite of tales and pictures. They are strangers moving among strangers. Return to the original community to be known again is never possible, for communities thrive on shared experience. While away, the traveler changes in different directions than the community. The traveler brings only the uncanny back with him: interesting at arm's length, but ever threatening to those who remained. Travelers are wretched by nature.

And yet travelers are the happiest of people. They leave the burdens of community for the freedom of the road. Every step is new and fresh. As the traveler moves from place to place, every problem can be left behind and forgotten and every joy recorded and remembered in some way. Every new place offers unexpected excitement and challenges without the weight of any responsibility except the personal. Traveler are unburdened while seeking hidden joys, and so they are the happiest of people.

There is no synthesis of the happiness and sadness of traveling. Traveling is a coin, not a Moebius strip. But there can be resolution for the traveler. While there is no return home, there are new homes only among other stopped travelers. There is community among people who no longer belong to their origins. Travelers form a third culture, neither the one they left, nor the one they visited, but something between composed of portions equal to the time spent in each place.

How few of us live in stable, unchanging single community? How few of us remain untraveled? How few of us have not visited much of the world virtually through films and books? How many of us consider the traveler to be suspicious instead of a curious new person to visit? So we are all travelers, awkward to some degree in defining just what community in which we're a member. With our doors and windows open to the rest of the world, our houses are losing definition, breaking into fragments of communities. We belong to a church, a club, have a job, know our neighbors, and have our friends and each defines a totally separate micro-community. When switch jobs, we lose one work community and move to a new one. We are all travelers, whether physically mobile or not, wretched and happy to the extent we can feel comfortable in our current set of communities. I always hate it when I find opposites are really much the same thing.

And when I spin too much of this thoughtful and pretentious nonsense in an attempt to bring sense and humility to my mind, I engage my feet in a good long walk out of the house, down the driveway and past the people who know me for better or worse.

And so I shall start telling travel stories again: some actual, some imagined, good ripping yarns, ponderous self-indulgent sludge, amusing fluff and the occasionally plain-spoken tale. I promise to post at least once a month. And I hope you tune in again.