Assabet Lumber: early September, 1980

An installment in a spiritual autobiography. For other installments, search tags for “assabet lumber“. Cast of characters here. Names have been changed, and some identifying characteristics and events have been fictionalized, to protect privacy. These are early drafts and may be a little rough; bear with me….

The coffee shack was a sort of shed tacked on the back of the main building of Assabet Lumber. The coffee shack was pretty small, all of twelve by sixteen feet, and divided into two rooms. The back room had a shelf with the coffee pot under two windows looking out at the main entrance to the yard, and the rest of the room was mostly filled up with a picnic table. The front room had the time clock, a shelf where we put the yard tickets when the orders were filled, various odds and ends of equipment and junk, and a the window that looked out on the yard. On one wall of the front room, there was huge map of eastern Massachusetts, maybe three feet by four feet, showing all the main highways and most of the smaller through roads.

We got a fifteen minute coffee break every morning. I usually wound up taking mine at the same time as Frances Blood. He was the shipper, or dispatcher, a slight, calm, quiet man with a quizzical smile. He’d always have exactly the same thing for his coffee break: a small container of milk that he brought from home. He was pretty friendly to me, in a non-committal way, and we’d chat idly about this and that.

One day, Sam Gagnon, one of the truck drivers, happened to come in for his coffee break as I was sitting there, and just as Frances was leaving.

“Ever notice how Franny always has milk for his coffee break?” Sam said to me, after Frances was out of earshot.

I nodded.

“He has ulcers,” Sam announced. “He’s so quiet, you wouldn’t think so, but he’s got ulcers.”

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Most of the yard crew got to punch out and go home at five o’clock, but the yard stayed open until five-thirty, so two men had to work an extra half hour. One evening, Ed Fox, one of the truck drivers, and I were the two who wound up working from five to five-thirty. Ed and I watched the other guys punch out, and after they had left, Ed said something about wishing he didn’t have to work late.

I didn’t mind working late because I had to hitch a ride to and from work with my dad, and because of his work schedule he couldn’t arrive to pick me up until twenty after five at the earliest, so I might as well be paid for that time. But I didn’t say that to Ed. “I’ll work late every day,” I said. “I need the money.”

Ed looked at me seriously. “You wait until you’ve worked here a while first,” he said. “Then you tell Carolina that, and unless someone else wants to work, you’ll probably get to work late every day.” He paused. “Except when Sam wants some extra money and decides to work late, but he needs money he usually arranges with Frances to change the oil on the trucks. He does as much of the maintenance as he can. But if he decides he wants to work late, he has the most seniority, so he gets to bump all of us.”

A customer came out of the store just then, and since I was low man on the totem pole, I had to walk out to him — “Can I help you?” — while Ed stayed in the coffee shack staring at the nearly empty yard.

That evening, when I got in the car to drive home, I told dad there was a pretty good chance that I’d be able to work until five-thirty every day. We both knew that I needed all the money I could earn to help pay for college, and we both knew that the last half hour was overtime pay for me — an extra two dollars and thirty-six cents for that last half hour. Dad nodded, and said something about how it was good that I’d be able to make some extra money.

Friday video: I’m still alive

(1:51)

Conceptual artist On Kawara did a long-running art piece where every day he sent a postcard (or sometimes a telegram) to various friends, giving the date, and saying “I’m still alive.” For all I know, he’s still doing it. I’ve just compressed the concept, and translated it to new media….

I think conceptual art and progressive religion are vaguely related. Worship in the progressive church looks more like conceptual art or a happening or performance art, whereas more traditional worship in the Western tradition looks more like sacred theatre.

Note: video host blip.tv is defunct, so this video no longer exists.

Excuses, excuses

I’ve been meaning to implement “tags” on this blog — tags are a kind of keyword that allow for improved searching within the blog. I wanted to add tags to provide a kind of index, to allow me (and you, or any other reader) to find worthwhile things quickly among the all the junk that has accumulated in the 1000+ posts here.

It proved to be more time-consuming than I had envisioned. I spent three hours yesterday making a false start, and then figuring out how to fix the mess I’d made. I spent another two hours today implementing the fix, and then beginning to add tags to the earliest posts on the blog. That used up all the spare time I have had for the past two days, and so I haven’t had any time to write a real post. Excuses, excuses.

You’ll find a “tag cloud” at the bottom of the sidebar on the main page. Click on any phrase or keyword there, and you will get all the posts that I have tagged with that phrase or keyword. As of now, I’ve only added tags to posts dated February-December, 2005 — eventually, all posts will be tagged.

Assabet Lumber: late August, 1980

An installment in a spiritual autobiography. For other installments, search tags for “assabet lumber“. Cast of characters here. Names have been changed, and some identifying characteristics and events have been fictionalized, to protect privacy. These are early drafts and may be a little rough; bear with me….

That first week, Carolina had to show me how to do nearly everything.

“These here are lally columns,” he said, on the first day of work. I had no idea what a lally column was, but at least I knew where to find the rack where they were kept. One morning later that week, I got a ticket that read something like this:

   1 — 6’6″ lally
   1 — cut to 6’2-1/2″
   2 — plates

I had to go find Carolina, because I didn’t know how to cut lally columns. He was in the middle of making up a load of lumber when I found him. He pulled the fork lift off to one side of the yard, set the load down, turned off the engine, and stalked down the warehouse to where the lally columns were kept. Continue reading →

Another kind of church choir

I’ve got all kinds of music swirling through my head right now. We’ve organized a “folk choir” here in our church — not a formal classical choir, not a gospel choir, but a folk choir. In other words, there may be printed music but not every singer will know how to read music. The primary way the tunes are passed on is by ear; and each singer might put their own little twist on a song.

I have to admit that I’m not particularly interested in singing in a traditional choir. I admire people who can sing in carefully structured four-part harmony, but I’d rather sing in a more improvisatory style. I like the texture that arise from each singer putting a slightly different spin on a song: different signers changing the melody slightly, someone singing the first note of a phrase a little before the beat while everyone else is on the beat, one singer altering the rhythm, another signer adding her or his own little ornaments — in other words, a folk choir can tend towards heterophony (and sometimes even more full-blown polyphony) rather than the homophony more typical of a traditional choir.

And a folk choir can use some interesting musical forms that involve the rest of the congregation: call-and-response songs, partner songs, chants and rounds, songs with verses sung by a soloist and choruses sung by all, etc. That means that a folk choir is more likely to involve the whole congregation, rather than just singing as performers within the worship service. A folk choir can also draw in those who don’t read music, and those who don’t read at all (children, for example), because they can teach songs to the congregation by ear.

We’ll be singing in the worship service for the first time this Sunday, and then singing in nearly every service from now through Christmas. It will be interesting to see how it goes. I’m betting that our folk choir will improve our congregational singing another notch; liven up worship services; and I’m betting that those of us singing in the folk choir are going to have a blast. I’ll keep you posted….

Now I’m really curious to know if there are any other churches out there which have some sort of folk choir, as opposed to a more traditional choir. If so, how has it worked out for you?…

Farewell party

Carol has rented an office space on Fish Island here in New Bedford, so she has a place to show the composting toilets she imports from Sweden. The office is in a small building that sits just a few feet from the water, so Carol has a phenomenal view of the working waterfront: barges, tugboats, and other boats are often moored right outside her windows, and she has an amazing view of the waterfront from Kelley’s boatyard on the Fairhaven side, to Palmer Island lighthouse, to the ferry terminal on the New Bedford side. Because of the fantastic view, we’ve taken to calling the office the Fish Island Yacht Club.

Tonight, the Fish Island Yacht Club (FIYC) hosted the farewell party for Tugboat Captain John, who will be heading back to Haiti on Tuesday at the helm of the tugboat Chicopee. As the official chaplain of FIYC, I blessed Captain John’s journey, calling for smooth waters and fair winds all the way through the Caribbean. There were toasts, of course — another member of the Chicopee’s crew offered a toast, and one or two of John’s landlocked friends in New Bedford offered toasts.

After the toasts, John said in his singsong cadence, “I’ve been here four — no! four and a half months. I walked up today into New Bedford, and looked at how beautiful it was — the trees, all yellow.” Conrad from the salvage yard, who moved up here from the islands twenty years ago, said, “If you stayed for winter, mon, you wouldn’t think it was so pretty!” We all told John that he was leaving at the best time of year, when New England is at its prettiest, before it gets cold and miserable. “No,” he said, “I wish I came up here now, and stayed for four and a half months over the winter.” We all got kind of quiet at that; we’re going to miss Captain John.

Anyway, Annie, who owns the building up the street from us, gave John a big hug. Davison cooked up grilled vegetables and salmon and sausages on the grill. Mystic, who works on a swordfish boat, said he wished he had brought over some swordfish, but there was too much food as it was. John got in a long conversation with Dave, who works at the sewage treatment plant, while the rest of us stood outside on the deck watching the harbor change color as the sun set and the sky grew dark.

Farewell, Captain John; and I mean it about the smooth waters and fair winds.

Hurricane season

The weather wasn’t nearly as wild as it could have been. The National Weather Service had warned that Hurricane Noel could bring winds gusting up to 70 miles per hour, but here in New Bedford the wind gusts never got above 39 miles per hour — enough to bring down small branches and tear some flags to shreds, but really not all that bad. And the National Weather Service had warned of the possibility of thunderstorms with heavy rains and a total accumulation of two to four inches, but so far we haven’t even gotten an inch of rain since yesterday.

I stayed in most of the day because of the severe weather warnings. I didn’t take my usual hour-long walk. The barometer kept dropping, down to 992 millibars, and my bones ached. By the end of the day I was feeling so cranky and antsy that this evening I actually lifted weights. I hate lifting weights, but after I was done I felt much better. But oh, how I wished I had taken a walk this afternoon, instead of believing the weather forecasters and their dire predictions.

I was still cursing myself for being stupid enough to listen to the weather forecasts when I checked the weather observations for Nantucket, just fifty miles east of here. The weather station on Nantucket recorded wind gusts of over 70 miles per hour (that’s hurricane force) with steady winds above 50 miles per hour, and they’ve had over three inches of rain so far. It wouldn’t have taken much — just a little twitch in the hurricane’s track — for that wind and rain to have hit here.

Friday video: Peace rally

Last Saturday (27 October), I went to the New England Mobilization To End the War in Iraq. It felt — strange. Very 1960’s, and not necessarily in a good way. Ranting through megaphones, hippies, people curiously dressed. Blah.

There was at least one speaker who inspired me, however…. (2:32)

The fellow who inspired me, who is featured at the end of the videoblog post above, is actually from the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. Unfortunately, I didn’t catch his name. His positive, humane vision stood out among all the shrill-voiced “We’ve got to stop the killing now!” and “No more blood for oil!”

And I don’t want to trash the entire peace movement. Last year’s Christian Peace Witness for Iraq felt meaningful (and they’re already planning another one for March 8th, assuming that the United States is still in Iraq). I like some of what the Quakers are doing. But the old-fashioned 1960’s-style peace rallies have got to go.

(Happy birthdays,Abs!)

Note: video host blip.tv is defunct, so this video no longer exists.

Autumn watch

I had to go to the gum doctor again today for another check-up, and on the way back I stopped at Verrill Farm, the farmstand Carol and I used to shop at when we lived down the street from it. They still have lots of fresh local fruits and vegetables: butternut squash, Hubbard squash (big and blue and warty), acorn squash; bags of curly spinach, and bunches of lacinto kale and curly-leaf kale; a few last tomatoes; parsnips (creamy white gnarled roots tied in neat bunches with the greens still attached), carrots (long gloriously orange blunt-tipped ones, and crookedy pointed yellow ones); Jerusalem artichokes; Brussels sprouts; bright bunches of red radishes and red-and-white radishes with rounded green leaves; Yukon gold potatoes, little wooden boxes of expensive German fingerling potatoes, Green Mountain potatoes (oddly-shaped with deep eyes), red potatoes, big long Russet potatoes; big yellow rutabagas, and this year they’re growing the white Macomber turnips that originated down here in Westport; and of course there are the native apples: McIntoshes, Spencers, Empires, Macouns, and Cortlands (although they had none of the older varieties that keep better and cook better).

As I picked up a box of Jerusalem artichokes, a woman asked me if you had to peel them before she cooked them, adding, “They look like they would be difficult to peel, they’re so small.” I said that I peeled them and ate them raw, but I knew some people ate them with the skins on. “What do they taste like?” I said they tasted nutty and, well, good. She was about to ask me something else when one of the cashiers who has worked there for years overheard our conversation, ignored me, bustled up to her and said, “You’ll love them, one of my customers doesn’t peel them, she just gently scrubs them and cooks them.” “Gently scrubs — you mean like mushrooms?” “Yes, just like that,” said the officious cashier, who obviously knew nothing about Jerusalem artichokes. Jerusalem artichokes are nothing at all like mushrooms: you do not wash them like mushrooms, you do not prepare them like mushrooms, and they do not taste like mushrooms. Under the cashier’s onslaught, the other woman put the box of Jerusalem artichokes in her shopping basket, and slunk away.

That officious cashier made the sale, but I wonder how happy that woman will be with her purchase. Scrub them gently? If she doesn’t want to peel them, she’d be better off scrubbing the hell out of them, then trimming off the unappetizing bits. Mostly, we North Americans eat a very limited number of foodstuffs these days, and most of the food we eat comes out of plastic containers or cardboard boxes. It’s hard to change the habits embedded in us by all that prepared food. You can’t change those habits by telling someone Jerusalem artichokes are “like mushrooms.” Tell them that Jerusalem artichokes are a gustatory adventure, like nothing they’ve ever tried before: nutty, sweet, with a lovely crunchy texture when you eat them raw. Tell them the truth about the food they’ve never eaten, and maybe they’ll be too intimidated to buy it this time, but you will have planted a seed in their imaginations, and they will realize that there’s a whole world of food out there that they haven’t tried — a whole world of local food that they have been shut out of because, for all the immense floor space, supermarkets actually have very little variety.

As for me, I bought a big bag of Cortland apples, ten pounds of orange carrots (which taste nothing like the California carrots you get in the supermarket), Brussels sprouts, ten pounds of Green Mountain potatoes (which are firmer, whiter, and taste different than the limp potatoes you get in the supermarket), lacinto kale, and some of that late-fall spinach (which tastes different from the plastic-wrapped spinach you get in the supermarket because of the soil and the weather, and because it’s much fresher). I also got some Jerusalem artichokes. I think I’ll go eat one right now: peel it, and bite into it raw.