Listening to Wisdom

The pull cord on our weed whacker broke a couple of weeks ago. Figuring that it would be a quick fix, I dismantled the beast far enough to find the hole for the string, rethreaded and reknotted the cord, then put it back together. I tried to pull-start it, only to discover that the cord had too much slack to make the engine turn over.

However, I graduated high school with a four-point-something GPA, made it through college, and finished a masters degree. I'm smart enough to fix a weed whacker, right? So I dismantled the beast even further and sought a solution to the problem. Examine, fiddle, and twist as I might, I couldn't get the thing to work. Nothing looked irreparably broken, but I couldn't figure out the fix.

I took the beast over to our local hardware store--which has a small machine shop attached--and asked them if they thought they could fix it.

"How much did you pay for it?" the guy behind the counter asked.

It's never good when that's the first question.

"A hundred bucks," I said.

He shook his head as if over a dog that would be better off put down. "By the time we get it open and find the problem, that'll be an hour of labor, which is going to be 52 dollars. And we will still have to order a part (or parts) to fix it."

Sigh. I carted the whacker back home to see when there might be money in the budget to purchase a new trimmer.

Enter my father-in-law. He's got a couple of decades more experience than I, and I know he's put in his time with motors and motorized equipment. Plus, he was over for a visit during my yard tool dilemma. We opened it up again, and he had a look. He thought what I was thinking: the spring that winds the cord would need to be replaced, but doing so would take professional equipment. I told him the cost-of-repair story, and he offered a bit of wisdom: since we've already got it apart, it will cost less for a repair guy to look it over, diagnose, and give a price. Brilliant.

I took the disassembled housing and cord pulley to another shop (closer to home), and asked one of their guys to have a look. He turned it over in his hands, gave the cord a yank or two, and said, "Yeah, getting this washer off is going to be hard; we'll have to order a new housing."

That's what we thought.

"But the spring looks OK," he said, fingering the red plastic like a troy-bilt rosary. "Wait just a second." He pulled out an awl, drew out some slack cord, and wound the cord another time around the pulley. He gave two pulls on the handle, and it snapped back to full tension.

"How'd you do that?" I asked, astonished. He showed me what he did (maybe I'll be able to do it again the next time I break the cord), and handed the piece back to me, fixed in less than three minutes by a lifetime of accumulated wisdom.

Let's hear it for the tinkerers whose hands can find the problem that a college degree can't analyze to solution. Let's hear it for wisdom, which saved me the cost of a new weed whacker when just brains couldn't. (Let's hear it for Oliver's shop down East Windsor Road.)

~ emrys

Lowering the Energy State

When we first moved into our home, friends from the Church gave us an old chest freezer. We put it into our garage (the only place it would fit at the time), and discovered what a God-send it was. Sara especially appreciated the opportunity to freeze all sorts of foods, from prepared meals to garden-fresh veggies. She is a pro at saving money by planning ahead, which gift the chest freezer greatly augmented. Here she is in our garage:

Over the last couple of years, Sara's astute money-saving eye has ascertained that this old chest freezer, while effective in its appointed task, was sucking inordinate amounts of electricity through our meter. It was the equivalent of a military humvee: heavy, powerful, effective, and a drain on the pocketbook.

In accordance with her giftedness, Sara discovered that Lowe's had chest freezers on sale, and that the NY state government offered cash rebates to homeowners who upgraded to Energy Star appliances. She found a freezer that (with a little squirreling of cash) was affordable, would hold the requisite amount of food, and would likely cost us under 75$ per year to feed.

Plus, Lowe's would pick up our old chest freezer and recycle it for us.

So after her three-year tour of distinguished service, we kicked the old chest freezer to the curb:

And purchased a home-delivered Frigidaire chest freezer:

Extra bonus: the new freezer lives inside, which means we don't have to put on shoes and go out to the garage to get victuals. We'll be saving energy in so many new ways!

Thank God for my wife, and for her gift of household management!

(Additional thanks to Lowe's, the Energy Star program, the VanDerHeides, and whomever invented refrigeration.)

~emrys

Even Uglier

In my last entry, I quoted a speaker I recently heard who offered an aesthetic principle:

"Ugly can be beautiful; but pretty, never."

I've received a couple of queries from confused readers, so I think I ought to offer what clarification I can. If we were to grammatically expand the assertion, it would read like this:

"Ugly can be beautiful; but pretty can never be beautiful."

This is to say that what does not follow the popular conventions of enjoyable appearance (ugly) can still possess something deeper beneath the surface which speaks to the soul (beauty). That whose purpose is to convince the viewer that its function is in its appearance (pretty) cannot have the deeper possession of beauty.

That's about as far as I can get without tripping over the fact that the expression itself has a certain inexplicable aesthetic. If the poetry is ruined in the expansion, then I'm sure there will be another unrelated post following soon.

~emrys

Why We Should Be Ugly

I attended a workshop yesterday on using projected images in worship. Most of the session had to do with mechanics, details, and the decisions that go into using images in this way. I found it very helpful in clarifying my own thinking about this medium in service to the people of God.

What helped me more, I think, dropped like crumbs from the table of detail to the floor of creativity. The pastor leading this workshop does everything she can to use multiple forms of art in her worship space, reflecting her and her husband's deep interest in aesthetic. (Step into their world here.)

One morsel I have held, even after a full night's sleep, is a quote she offered us from her husband's reflection on the ceramic arts:

"Ugly can be beautiful; but pretty, never."

I could explain what chords this phrase struck in me, but I imagine it might be wiser to let the words do what they have done for me. Steep the soul.

Ugly can be beautiful; but pretty, never.

~ emrys

The Face of Liberalism

This week I'm attending a conference for preachers in Nashville, Tennessee. It began on Monday evening with worship and concerts in its principal venue, the First Baptist Church of Nashville. That evening, and into Tuesday, I looked around at my fellow participants: one thousand to twelve hundred of us filling up the massive sanctuary. Of this vast number of pastors and ministers, only a handful--that is, to be counted on two hands--are people of color. Take away the presenters who are people of color, folks who receive some sort of honorarium to be here, and the number may be countable on one hand. That is, about half a percent of us have non-white skin tone.

During a break yesterday I was chewing the fat with a couple of colleagues, and made my observation aloud.

"Hey, did y'all notice that we're all white?"

One of them nodded. "Oh, yeah. This event is the liberals' event."

That wasn't quite what I asked. "You mean all liberals are white?"

"Yep," he said, without missing a beat.

Funny: the conference organizers didn't put this on their website.

~emrys

Gardener In Training

GBaby is getting her Gardening 101 course this summer. She began by making sure she had the proper tools:

And then observed those more experienced:



She also was good at asking for help and assistance when necessary:

After an adequate time of observation, it was time to get busy!






And after a full day out in the garden playing in the dirt and water, it was really no surprise that she couldn't hold her head up by the time dinner was over:

Re-each...

The other morning I was making frosting. I had finished mixing it and was getting ready to transfer it to a bowl for storage. I took the paddle out to the KitchenAid, scraped it off and placed it in the spot where I'll lay it down to wait so I can get one last finger-full of gooey yumminess before I wash it. Apparently the Little Person in the household has been observing this practice. As I turned away from the mixer back towards the sink, this is what I saw:

Followed by little finger covered in frosting going into the mouth, and reaching up again. By then, I had the camera and was really glad the camera was on top of the fridge at that moment! She still wasn't sure if she was in trouble or not, but she sure liked the frosting.

15 Months going on 15 Years?

I've said this last week that my daughter has the appetite of a teenage boy with the crazy amounts of food she can pack away (thank you Emrys, for giving her your metabolism!). Now, it seems, she's working on the facial expressions that teenage girls perfect:

Oy vey!

Evidenciary Post

I just realized that in my postings about the progress of the bedroom closet, not many pictures of me--working--have made it in. I am suddenly aware of the danger that my first-person-plural pronouns might be interpreted to mean that I've been paying someone to build this closet, while I sit back, sip on a Shirley Temple, and snap photos. Well, cynical audience members, here's the proof.

Here I am on a ladder, cutting the interior with primer (wearing my t-shirt from Geo's 2005 IronMan competition: go Team Geo!):

Here's my wicked downstroke with the cutting brush:

And here's my lightning-fast reload of primer:

You didn't see it, did you? That's how fast I am. No Shirley Temples here, man.

~ emrys

Finally coming together

and when I write, "finally coming together," I mean that I can finally take away much of the debris and tools that have made our bedroom a construction zone for four months.

The last step in getting the structural work of the closet cabinetry done was cutting and fitting the shelves. Above the five drawers (yes, only five) are five shelves. The bottom shelf (the same depth as the drawers) is permanent. The four above sit on pegs which can be moved to change the size of the space on them. I didn't quite go as drill-happy as an IKEA engineer--who would have put in enough holes to host 4^25 possible configurations. The four shelves have six possible mounting locations. You do the math.

With the shelves ready, I slapped on a couple of layers of polyurethane. I really like clear urethane. Not only does it leave the natural color of the wood unmolested (here, white birch), but it lifts the contrast of the grain, produces a quiet sheen, and makes a smooth surface. Plus it won't stain if we spill anything on it--which is a danger when the guests at our raging house parties bring their Shirley Temples upstairs.

At long last, the closet is ready to host clothes! It's not completed yet by any means--notice the lack of trim, doors, et cetera. But the rest of the work does not require evacuating the contents of the closet, which milestone was a major marker for me.

We've got our colors picked out: the next step is painting the whole room. Stay tuned.

~ emrys