Security Measures

When I think of a "shed," I think of a ramshackle building with no frills, used for housing items that don't care about comfort or convenience. I think of a building that freezes in the winter, becomes a hot-box in the summer, and never breathes until you open the door.

I want my shed to stay pretty minimal, but I also wanted my shed to breathe. So I cut two holes in the walls, to let a little air in and out:

But I also don't want my shed to be a haven for birds, squirrels, and insects. Not that I have anything against these woodland critters, but I figure that's why we have woodlands. (One caveat: I do have something against red squirrels. But I'm cool with most of the others.) Thus if I want the shed to breathe, I also need something to keep the critters out. To this end, I installed screening and trim. It worked for our attic; I hope it works for my shed.

Just a little frill for my little shed.

~emrys

Honeysuckle Bloom

Sara decided to go with a third color for our bedroom: an off-white tint that will accent the green and beige of Venice, called Honeysuckle Bloom. The new shelves in the corner bear this color, and Sara wanted the baseboard registers, formerly a sickly grey hue, to do the same. So I primed them,

put on two coats of honeysuckle, and popped the metal panels back on. Here are the three colors together in the bedroom:

Only a few more details to finish, and we can call the bedroom done! I hope we can do that before we hit the one year anniversary of beginning renovation.

~emrys

Raising the Roof

With four walls up, the shed was ready for rafters, exterior sheeting, and a roof. With the help of Sharon and Jay (whose brawn went equally to moving wood, hammering nails, and running interference with Gwendolyn), that all went up in a day and a half.

Next up: windows and a door!

~emrys

An Angel with a Hammer

By the end of my first week of vacation this August, the floor of the garden shed was complete. The next step was to frame the walls and put up rafters for the roof. That Friday morning, at about eleven o'clock, Sara and I pulled out my sawhorses and circular saw, then hauled out a load of 2x4s (true, actually 2" by 4", milled by yours truly) into the back yard. As I searched for my safety glasses, a car pulled up to the side of the road next to our yard. Out came a man and his wife, who introduced themselves as Gus and Ann-Marie.

Last year the property across the road sold to a group of four brothers, all born in Greece but now all living in the Five Boroughs with children and grand-children. They bought the house across from us to use as a family getaway; every time another brother came up from the City for the first time, he would see one of us in the yard and come over and introduce himself. Gus and Ann-Marie were in-laws of the four brothers, but were just as enthusiastic about introducing themselves to us.

Early in the conversation, Gus pointed to the lumber and sawhorses. "What are you building?"

I motioned proudly to my garden shed foundation. "Today we're going to start framing my new garden shed."

Gus smiled. "Do you want some help? I'd be glad to help."

My internal monologue listed several reasons why I should decline his generous offer. First, I was on vacation, which means cherishing alone time or family time. Energy spent getting to know someone new--not high on the priority list. Second, Gus was clearly past middle age. I recognize that it's prejudiced, but my assumption was that his good-natured offer would produce more delay than help. Third, Gus had mentioned that this was their first visit to the new house; how could I take him away from his wife on their getaway weekend? What actually came out was, "No, thank you. Not today. But if you're around for a couple of days, maybe I could use you Saturday or Monday?"

Gus seemed genuinely disappointed. But our conversation moved on. Later, as Ann-Marie and Sara played with Gwendolyn in the swing, I asked Gus what he did for a living.

"I'm a framer. I've been framing houses in New York City for thirty-five years." Then he offered again to help.

I almost laughed out loud at the irony, and certainly appreciated his offer, but the last thing I wanted Gus to do was work on his weekend getaway. I declined again. We chatted some more, then Ann-Marie came back, they got in the car, and Gus offered his help again. I thanked him again, did my best to decline politely, and waved good-bye as they drove up their driveway. Sara and I walked into the house to get Gwendolyn a snack.

"He seemed really eager to help," said Sara. "You know, if he helps you I could get work done in the house while Gwendolyn naps. Maybe you should take him up on his offer."

I took that as two signs that I should repent. So I turned around and walked up to Gus' house. He was on the porch. "I've changed my mind. I could use your help today after all."

You'd think he was a kid just given a blank check in a candy store. He jogged into the garage to get a hammer (with a signature complaint, "it's not as heavy as I want, but . . .") and walked down to our yard. I realized in short order that when I asked Gus to "help" frame the garden shed, I had actually relinquished control of the project.

He took the saw, pencil, tape, and my framing hammer ("ah, this is a much better hammer") and went to work, consulting me only about measurements. When his hands picked up a 2x4 ("no one has used true 2x4s since 1940"), he was in the zone. Before I knew what happened, we (I use the term loosely) already had one wall up:

As he bent over the beginnings of the second wall, bending over to hammer nails below his feet without a grunt, I realized that I had not hit a single nail yet. Middle age had not impaired this guy in the least. If there was anyone who was holding up this project now, it was me. Humbled by the realization, I grabbed a hammer and nails and followed Gus' lead.

I had planned three days for the framing of the shed. Gus (with me in tow) started at noon. By two o'clock we had all four walls up and were putting in the cripples for the windows:

I learned a new trick for every step of the process: how to mark where the studs go on the plates; how to keep a finished wall level; how to frame a doorway. Every five minutes, I thought to myself, "Man, I would have screwed that up," and realized it would have taken me an extra hour to correct each mistake. I became quite thankful that Gus had stopped by.

Most wonderful of all was the joy that Gus took in his work. Far from confirming my fear that Gus would chaff at having to do work while on vacation, his zeal for the task of framing came out. I can only imagine that he is an excellent framer, because he takes such pleasure from the labor.

Of course, having an expert framer on site did not daunt Gwendolyn from her self-appointed supervisory role:

At three o'clock I told Gus we had to stop. He wanted to keep going, to put up the rafters and roof ("they won't take long"); but Sara and I had an evening engagement for which I needed to look respectable. So Gus trundled off home, back to his wife (whom he said was napping, and he could never nap anyway), and I was left with the peculiar sensation that God had sent me a strange and worldly blessing: an angel with a hammer to teach, to lead, and to save me three days' work.

Many thanks to Gus, and to the Lord of Framing Angels!

~emrys

Good Things Come on Rubber Scrapers

G knows that when the mixer turns on, usually good stuff's coming. I've caught her going after the paddle when I've left it in her reach. Now she's come to recognize that good things also come on rubber spatulas. She has been caught licking off a spatula that was in the silverware tray of the dishwasher. This one she swiped off the counter while I was making cookies: snagged it from behind my back. At least she kept it in the kitchen.

She's been working on her Karate Kid moves. Just wait until that cast comes off (3 more days!) and she'll be faster than the speed of - well faster than the focus on my camera. (And yes, she managed to wiggle her leg out with the tray in place and her other leg firmly stuck.)

She's also enjoyed playing in a backpack that we're borrowing from a friend. Again, that pesky cast keeps getting in the way!

~sjt

Postponing Adulthood

Don't get me wrong. I'm on board with the ideal that in a nation as wealthy as the United States, everyone should have access to adequate health care. That's not my concern. But, perhaps inspired by the folks at Freakonomics Radio, I'm looking at unintended consequences.

The most recent iteration of health care law made it necessary for insurance companies to allow parents to carry their children on a family plan until the child reaches age 26. In theory, therefore--and I posit that it will be quite likely in practice--a significant chunk of us won't be seeing the real cost of our own health care until age 27.

Just before I had the coordination to operate a stick shift, my home state raised the age for an unrestricted driver's license to 18. Sometime before I knew how to say "beer" in Australian, most states raised their drinking ages to 21. I don't know when Atlantic City will allow you onto the floor, but the Dow Jones and NASDAQ won't let you gamble on their screens until 21. And in university my friends and I, as we planned a road trip, discovered that certain rental car companies wouldn't give us a vehicle until we were 25.

Risk, along with the necessary opportunity and responsibility, is being pushed out of our hands until a later and later age.

In the 1930s and '40s a new phase of human development was discovered in Europe and North America: adolescence. Folks who paid attention to this kind of thing noticed that, socially and behaviorally, individuals did not develop stability, responsibility, and maturity as early as once expected. Children took until age 17, 18, or even later to become "adults." This was a shift from the generations that told of having to take on a job at age 13. My own experience of working with college students at the turn of the millennium shows that children were not becoming responsible adults--capable of weighing risk and enduring negative outcomes from conscious choices--until age 21 or 22. As college staff, we had frequent discussions about how to "teach responsibility" or "encourage accountability," precisely because the students under our care didn't have those adult attributes.

Of course, they drove after midnight for the first time just before they came to college. They weren't allowed to drink before they showed up on campus--and we know how that works out! They'd never handled significant amounts of money on their own, or been responsible for paying bills. All the things that teach us about risk, responsibility, great failure and great success had been pushed off for them.

It's been postponed for a good cause: education. A child who must work full time at 13 can't get a full-time education. The collegiate expectations in our nation prohibit starting a career until the Bachelor's (or even Master's) is complete. But there has been a trade-off. And our nation has just instituted another trade-off: access to health care for un- or under-employed youth (under age 26) in a job market that's weak at best. Health care is good. Let's pay attention to the unintended consequences.

Now our "children" may not see the true weight of their financial responsibility for health care until after 26. I predict that this move will push development of financial responsibility and fiscal adulthood further into the future. The next generation will become adults not between 13 and 16, not between 18 and 21, not even between 23 and 25, but between 27 and 30. They won't think as wisely about their saving habits, about health care decisions, or about voting for their leaders until their fourth decade of life. Unless . . .

If we are parents who are blessed enough to have the wherewithal to provide health insurance for our adult (I use the term hopefully) children, we ought to make our children pay for it. Show them the bill, have them pay their share of the premiums (let alone the co-pays!), and let them understand that living with the perks of a developed nation comes with responsibility.

They'll be getting health care on the cheap, it's true; paying for one's own plan rather than being a member of a family plan is significantly more expensive. But just because their names are under ours on the benefits card, let's not deprive them of the chance to learn how to live on their own. After all, they're going to be the parents of our grand-children some day. Before that happens, I want them to be responsible adults.

~emrys

Finally

I just watched a CNN web video clip from an interview with Chris Coons, the Delaware senatorial candidate who will run against Christine O'Donnell (posted September 21st).

Jessica Yellin, the CNN person leading the interview, for three minutes baited Mr. Coons, trying to get him to cast negative judgments on Ms. O'Donnell or her abilities to serve as senator.

Mr. Coons never took the bait.

With graceful effort that was visible on his face, he redirected every response so that instead of defaming his opponent, he stood in his own position and beliefs about the senatorial task and his fit for it. The closest he came to assessing his opponent was to say that the Delaware voters would decide who was more fit for the job.

It was a very poor showing for CNN, and an excellent showing for Mr. Coons. If all of our senators could gracefully refrain from pointing fingers at their colleagues (even when prompted by the media) and stand firmly in their own positions, we'd be better off. For that alone I'd vote for Mr. Coons.

But I'm not from Delaware.

~ emrys

Good Foundations

With much of my August vacation I worked on the garden shed. In an earlier entry I described the first steps of the shed's construction. With the first corner post in, the other three holes could be dug. Of course, no workman goes to his job site without an expert supervisor. Gwendolyn volunteered for that job, checking to make sure all was well, even before the second post had been fully tamped in:

I think that red Crocs and yellow fishing hats are now standard issue for construction supervisors.

Here's the super again, checking all the string lines for the third and fourth posts (note she's still in her jammies--a good supervisor gets up early in the morning):

Even with all that measuring, the posts turned out to be one-half inch off square. Sigh. I hope the shed doesn't collapse as a result.

You need more than good supervision--you need good help to put together a garden shed. So David, an ever-present source of help in our village, volunteered to help set the 2x4 beams under the floor. These, by the way, are the true (and rough-cut) 2x4s that I milled last summer from our own hemlock trees.

We went with an 8x8 footprint because we think it will be enough for our needs, and will be cheaper than the pre-packaged 8x12 sheds we were thinking of buying. (Lowe's sells sheds whose components are all pre-cut and wrapped in a pallet that their truck drops in your yard. No sawing, measuring, or cursing when you've cut something too short. Just drill, hammer, and snap, and voila: garden shed. But they cost about $1,000; we're projecting the final cost of this shed to be under $800.)

When it came time to put the floor sheeting on, our supervisor succumbed to the temptation common to all humanity: the power tool. She watched for about ten minutes as Sara and I drove screws through the chipboard, then she had to get in on the action herself. (Supers wear red Crocs and workers purple Crocs, I guess.)

The floor was on, feeling stable, ready to accept four walls and a roof. But the Framing of the Shed turned out to be a whole other story in itself . . .

~ emrys

Two Minutes

They told us to be at the Binghamton Forum Theater at 10:30am to register, even though the meeting didn't start until 12:00. Perhaps they wanted to be ready for long lines. When I got there at 10:35, I walked through an empty foyer to the registration table and picked up my armbands: a red one for admission and a yellow one with my speaker number on it. They gave me an instruction sheet for speakers and directed me to the theater. With and hour and a half to wait.

I left the theater and walked toward Court Street, past the barricades empty of protesters. Police officers stood in small clumps, dressed up with no one to warn, talking about the weather. I found a favorite coffee shop and did an hour's worth of work before walking back to the Forum at noon.

As I passed through the foyer this time I picked up the three information sheets about this public meeting. I figured I needed something to skim during the forty minutes of opening remarks before the open speaking session.

The US EPA had set today as one of two dates for "stakeholders" (people affected by the potential gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale under our neck of the woods) to offer their opinions and viewpoints to EPA officials. Having a flexible work schedule allowed me to be present for one of these meetings, so I had registered for one of the two-minute speaking slots by which I might personally address the EPA. I had prepared my remarks, rehearsed them until they came to one minute and forty-five seconds (better not to get cut off), and brought them folded neatly in the books I carry with me everywhere. I was ready to offer my thoughts on whether the EPA should allow the harvesting of natural gas by hydrofracturing ("fracking") in New York.

As I stood in the foyer scanning the documents prepared for the speakers, I realized that the EPA had not come to hear our positions on fracking. Their purpose here was not to hear "for" and "against" positions on fracking. Instead, the EPA was soliciting comments, concerns, and suggestions about the methodology of an imminent study on the relationship between fracking and drinking water. The comments I had prepared totally missed the mark. (So did ninety percent of the speakers' comments. Consciously or unconsciously, the vast majority of the two-minute tirades urged the EPA toward or away from hydrofracking, but did not address the question the EPA had asked.)

I stood in the foyer in a crisis. Did I have anything useful to say to the EPA? What did I know about methodologies for studying fracking and drinking water? Why shouldn't I just go home now and get other stuff done?

Having made the thirty-minute drive into town (and found a sweet parking space), I didn't surrender the opportunity immediately. While the opening remarks of the EPA officials and the moderator droned through the theater, I meditated on the EPA info sheets. They sought input on methodology, research design, and testing sites. Testing sites.

We're in the "stewardship season" for most Christian congregations. "Stewardship" to most pew-sitting Christians means "how much money should I give to the Church?" or "how much money do I have to give back to God?" But a broader understanding includes the question of how I can use all the gifts I have been given to serve God and neighbor. Whenever we find something within our "possession," Christians ask, "How can this be used to bless someone else?"

The Spirit gave me a flash of insight as I stood in the back of the Forum. I could not offer scientifically informed input on the design of the fracking and water study. But I could offer them my land.

I sat in the theatre seat and hastily rewrote my two-minute speech. I described our parcel of land, its unique hydrological qualities, and its proximity to likely gas drilling sites. I told this EPA panel that if that sounded like a good place to study, they could come and use our property. I even offered to make them coffee and a strawberry rhubarb pie when they showed up. And I was done with more than thirty seconds left on the clock.

I went to the coat check to pick up my bag (security is everything, now), and before I could step out the door a young lady by the name of Shelley introduced herself to me.

"I'm a science writer from Fortune 500," she said. "I'm interested in what you said back there, can we talk more?"

Her evening would be taken up by these meetings, so we would have to talk the next morning. I remembered that I had agreed to cook breakfast at home the next morning, so scheduling a meeting with a journalist in Binghamton would endanger domestic tranquility. In another fit of Spirit-led insight, I offered Shelley to join us for breakfast.

She accepted, and we set breakfast for nine-thirty, late enough that our household would have a chance to advance its appearance at least a little above our normal pajama-and-slippers late breakfast attire. Thus it was that on Thursday of last week we entertained a Fortune 500 journalist from Manhattan with scrambled eggs, homemade biscuits, bacon, and coffee. It was another chance to offer what we have to others, by food, fellowship, and an opportunity to see the landscape that will be most impacted by whatever gas drilling happens.

All because I stuck around for two minutes and offered what I had.

The EPA hasn't called yet, but it's a federal-level government agency. We need to give them time.

~emrys

Tough Chick

A week and a half ago Gwendolyn broke her leg. The ropes on her swing frayed and snapped, one then the other, dropping her in such a way as to cause an incomplete fracture of the distal end of her right tibia. I was at work at the time, so only came to know of the accident by cell phone. Since the fracture was not displaced, it was not immediately apparent that any bones were broken. But based on Gwendolyn's level of agitation, we decided to take her to the emergency room.

I met Sara and Gwendolyn at the ER, and examined my daughter's legs. Sara had told me that she couldn't walk on her right leg. No bruising presented itself, and both legs looked the same. As long as she was in my or Sara's arms, Gwendolyn didn't even seem agitated. She spotted the water cooler, decided she wanted to go for it, and took only one step before her right foot buckled under her.



Sure enough, the x-ray revealed the fracture; the ER doc splinted her, and the next day we went to an orthopedist for a cast. Mid-thigh to toes on the right side, Gwendolyn is now wrapped in fiberglass, reminding me of my middle-school injury that kept me in a similar getup from thigh to ankle for six weeks.

"Toddlers can't use crutches," the orthopedist told us, "and this is not a walking cast."

Yeah, right.

Once the bone was immobilized, Gwendolyn seemed unfazed by her injury. The first two days in a cast saw her scooting around on her bum and crawling at full velocity, dragging her fiberglass anchor along. Only at night did she have problems; and I am uncertain whether she woke up at night because of pain or because cuddling up next to a scratchy log is never comfortable. All in all, Gwendolyn adapted to her new millstone with greater speed--and less whining--than most adults, including myself, can manage. I suppose that when life is still a long series of discoveries, with little expectation of permanence, new challenges are just little adjustments along the way.

The doc designed the cast to be a hindrance to walking. The ankle and knee are both bent at thirty degrees, which makes it both in the way and too long for easy ambulation. However, of the many concepts my daughter does not yet grasp, "can't" is on top of the list. So on Day Three she had figured out how to walk in the cast.

She's not as fast as she used to be (though she gets quicker every day), but she manages to balance on her left foot with the cast as a kick-stand or crutch, depending on whether she's still or moving. She doesn't complain about it, doesn't wince when she moves, and shows no sign that she's frustrated at having to move a little more slowly toward her ball.

She is even kicking the soccer ball to me in the kitchen--with her casted foot.

My daughter's a tough chick.


~emrys