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Spring 2021: Perks You Up Like A Wooden Hairbrush To Your Bottom

Yeah! It’s spring folks.

20 March 2121, will be the first day of spring, but the season of renewal has already arrived for me.

On the second day of spring, I will receive my second covid-19 vaccine injection. Two weeks from then, the CDC says I can safely visit with small groups of other vaccinated people without a mask, indoors, no social distancing required. That’s the CDC rule, but my mood began to change a week after the first injection of the Moderna vaccine.

Yet to be verified but plausible reports say a single vaccination confers substantial protection. I’m sure those reports are in the back of my mind, but we have also had long sun breaks for the last few weeks in Whatcom County, and they too have touched my mood. With the sunshine, I’ve ridden over a hundred miles on my bicycle so far in March, which has done a lot to relieve the crotchets in my arthritic joints and equally age damaged psyche.

When I was a kid, we called this February Spring. It’s a comic act the climate pulls in the Northwest towards the end of February or the beginning of March. The rain stops, the skies clear, a little warm air blows in from Hawaii, dusk quits cramping the afternoon down to not much more than a coffee break, and we get a few days’ reprieve from sullen clouds and soaking drizzle. The baseball mitts come out for playing catch, and maybe an hour or two of workup baseball, or scrub, if that’s what you call it.

One year, to my mother’s chagrin, I grabbed a pair of her sewing shears and converted my jeans to cut-offs on the second or third day of February Spring. My mother and mother nature both pulled the skids out from under that. The next day was the first day of forty days of continuous showers, rain, and drizzle: all the cold damp magic that a marine climate can cast over the land. If it hadn’t been for a few whacks to my bottom with the backside of my mother’s wooden hair brush warming me up, it would have been uncomfortably cold.

But, somehow, I think this spring is different. I know. Nature has fooled me many times before and she sure can fool me again, but I don’t recall a February Spring lasting past the Ides of March like this year. The Indian Plum is blooming, the hazelnut trees have yellow catkins, the tiny pink and blue violets my grandmother planted a hundred or so years ago are popping up in the lawn, the forsythias are flashing their bright yellows, cherry blossoms are peeking out, and I see early rhododendron blooms in front of the covid-vacant school down the road.

Indian Plum
Forsythia

If I weren’t so stinking old this week, I’d have cut the bottoms off my pant legs, dug out a mitt, ball, and bat and found a game of workup this afternoon. Will nature bust me again for over optimism? Maybe. But I have to say, today, I’d give anything today to have my mother take a hairbrush to my bottom for cutting off my jeans.

We’re breaking free of the pandemic. The Whatcom County Library System has opened its branches at twenty-five percent capacity. I think I will wait until after my second shot before I venture inside, but the day is coming. In a month, planning a haircut will no longer be a soul-shuddering existential calculation.

Covid-19 had me spooked.

I’ve studied the risk calculations with all the engineering and mathematics on my resume. I have enough going against me that the odds look about fifty-fifty that I would go to the hospital if I contracted covid, and one in ten that I would not come out alive. I’m not brave, not likely to venture a round of Russian Roulette, which is close to my odds if I ever “catch the covid,” as I heard somebody say.

A few months back, I seriously doubted that I would see next Christmas, and was awed and grateful when I saw my fourth grandson, Charlie, back in November when the death count was climbing.

But today, I’m contemplating that I might just see Charlie as a young man, looking to find himself in the world. See our eighteen year old twin grandsons as established adults, and six year old Dario perhaps starting a family.

Yeah! It’s spring folks.

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Northeaster! Frasier Arctic Outflow

When I was a kid, Northeasters were exciting. If we were lucky enough to have a real rip-snorter, school closed and the kids would have a day or two to slide on the ice, sled, build snow forts, snow men, and throw snowballs.

If we were really lucky, when the thaw came, the county engineer would close most roads to heavy vehicles. No school buses! Another day off or at least a chance to walk a mile to heavy duty pavement.

Adults don’t understand the pleasure of a few days of disruption. They shake their heads. It’s cold. Brruuhhh! The wind is a danger: trees blow down, power goes out. Water pipes freeze.

But for a kid, it’s fun. Our grandson, Dario, came over to visit this afternoon, wound up like a top, excited by the Northeaster, delighted to be knocked over and blown away by the wind, and exulted to experience a day unlike any other.

This morning, I was up at five. Good thing I was. The northeast wind was howling and the windchill readout from our backyard weather station was only five degrees. I can’t count the number of mornings I have got up to the roar of the Northeaster to discover frozen pipes or and frozen pumps.

First thing, I turned on the water in the kitchen sink. All I got was a trickle. But I kept the valve open. Within ten minutes, the ice dam dissolved, and the water ran freely. Crisis averted. For a while.

I don’t know why, but one of my cherished moments was a Northeaster in the 1980s. Rebecca and I were living in a house that shared a well and pump with my cousin Steve.

I woke up around five, the usual for me, discovered that we had no water, and went out to the pumphouse: a damp, half underground chamber. Sure enough. The pump had froze up tight. I took a minute to figure out what to do.

Before half an idea hatched, my cousin Steve came down the steps and entered the pump chamber. My cousin was a big man, both in spirit and girth. He was puffing on his pipe and he brought a propane torch.

The pumphouse filled with the sweet Cherry Blend pipe tobacco smoke Steve favored as he lit his torch and began to play the blue flame over the pump. It wasn’t long before the pump started up and we could return to our respective houses and resume normal lives before our wives woke.

What am I supposed to say about that moment? Steve and I faced the Northeaster and brought our families back to their accustomed normal. Spontaneously, each driven by our responsibilities, we worked together.

Why this makes me profoundly happy, I do not know. But I shake my head and hold back tears when I think of it. Steve died a few years ago.

In my dad’s day, keeping the dairy herd supplied with water was paramount. Milk is mostly water. Dairy cows who can’t drink their fill, don’t give their full share of milk, and milk in the tank kept the farm solvent.

Dairy farmers get to know their water supply. When the Northeaster hits the water pipes, a farmer soon learns what has to be done to keep the water flowing. I well remember holding a flashlight for Dad as he warmed the pipes with a propane torch to get the water moving into the drinking cups in the milking barn before the cows noticed they were getting thirsty.

Tedious stuff, holding a flashlight. Not a bit of romance or excitement in it for me. But I’ll bet that was not what my dad thought. My dad was not one to be scared or threatened by anything, but I think those early morning struggles against the Northeaster were for him, high drama, not tedium.

Back to reality. Never mind the drama. I neglected to keep a trickle of water flowing and somewhere between ten and twelve in the morning, while the sun shined and the Northeaster blew, our water line froze solid.

I’m working on it. Our son is working on it. Dario is having fun with it.

 

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Outrageous: How To Sharpen a Kitchen Knife

Outrageous. I am outraged by well-intended advice. Twice.

outrageous-lenticular-sunrise
Outrageous lenticular clouds over Mount Baker at sunrise.

Yesterday I read a well meaning but outrageous bit of advice on blogging: have a theme and stick to it. None of this some nostalgia, some book discussion, some social commentary stuff. Choose a theme and stick to it. Anyone who knows me well, knows I wander all over the map. I never stick to routines for long. If you are as old as I am, you might remember a plastic surgeon back in the 1960’s who claimed all you had to do was repeat something 20 times and it became a habit. What rot! If I do the same thing 20 times in a row, it’s time for a change.

Good advice, this sticking to theme. I’m sure many readers want blogs to be predictable, but for me, no thanks. I’m not following it. Can’t follow it. I can’t even stick to bad habits. Hence, this post.

This weekend, I read an item in the New York Times, Improve Your Life With These Tiny Chores. Very sensible. Wash your sheets, throw out expired prescription opioids, unclog your sink. Yeah. Sure. Fine. I do these things whenever I am forced to. Who doesn’t?

One outrageous task sent me into low earth spitting orbit: sharpen your knives.

I know something about sharpening. I got my first jack knife from my grandpa when I six. And my first sharpening stone. The NYT article mentioned that a sharp knife is safer than a dull one. My left hand is covered with scars from dull knives that skipped off of the piece of wood I was whittling on and into my hand. These are old scars. I’ve learned to sharpen knives.

Dull knives are dangerous

The article starts with a modern nod to the counter-intuitive danger of dull knives. Good start, I said to myself, glancing at my scarred hand.

The rest was drivel

The rest of the item was drivel. It suggests sharpening knives once a year. Once a year? Piffle. Sharpen your knives the instant they loose their bite. It depends on the knife and how you use it.

How I do it

I sharpen my knives every time I use them, once or twice a day for my chef’s knife. Treat your knives with the care they deserve. Sharp edges are delicate and fragile. Don’t throw a good knife in the dishwasher to get rattled around, dented, and nicked.

After I use a knife, I clean it, and sharpen it on a steel, a dozen or more strokes on each side of the edge. Sharpening on a steel removes little or no material from the blade. Instead, it reshapes the metal into a sharp edge. A steel can’t get rid of a nick in an edge or remove a blunt spot, but it will return an undamaged edge to keen slicing form. The duller the edge, the less effective the steel.

You can’t reshape forever. Eventually, you have to grind the edge, which might amount to once a year, although once every few months is more realistic for knives you use daily.

You must be judicious in grinding, which removes metal from the edge. Grind too often and your knife disappears or morphs into an unusable shape. But if you don’t grind often enough, you have a dull and dangerous knife.

Trial and error

I won’t get into tools, angles, and techniques here. My best advice reflects my experience. Trial and error, grasshopper. Trial and error. There are many techniques and they all work, but not necessarily for you.

The blunter the angle of a blade, the less keen the edge, but the longer it stays sharp when cutting is tough. My perfect edge is not your perfect edge, but when an edge is not perfect, sharpen it. Use the steel often, a grinding stone only when needed. Power grinders are fast, but require expensive guides or great skill. Hard stainless steel blades are bears to sharpen, but stay sharp longer. Good carbon steel requires frequent maintenance, but with proper attention, it cuts like a dream. I have a cheap Chinese cleaver that looks like a mess, but cuts cleaner than its much more expensive German stainless brethren.

As an aside, most kitchens have too many knives. Learn to use and treat a few good knives well. Give an impoverished homicidal maniac a break and send the clutter to goodwill. Your life will be better. Ask Marie Kondo.