The pack recently took a road trip to New Mexico. The reason for the trip was sad, but the outcome for Stripes was excellent. We quickly learned that our current foster pup is a road trip pro; content to snooze in his little chair-box as the miles went by, excited and eager to sniff and explore when we stopped.
Good times out there!
When surrounded by all the strangeness and new things (including a Very Big Dog that desperately wanted to be his friend), the pack bonds were reinforced. Suddenly I could carry him, and put his harness on, and be generally trusted in non-couch situations.
I almost didn’t realize what a big deal it was the first time I scooped him up, and he probably didn’t either. It was just natural. Easy. And there we were.
I believe that whoever adopts this awesome little guy will have to spend a little time earning his trust. But the reward for their patience will be tremendous. This little guy is the best.
On a slightly heavier note, when we are out walking we meet many dog people who say they would be fosters but they know they will fall in love with the dog and it will be too painful to let go. Others just ask, does it hurt when they leave?
I love Stripes. He is awesome. I would happily keep him as our second dog. We are pals now! But… There are hundreds of great dogs who need to find homes right in this area. There is another home where Stripes will be given a better name and unconditional love, and he will return the joy. He can’t help it.
And that is what it means to be a foster. I will cry when he leaves, but the tears will mostly be happy ones. Another little dog will take his place here, and there will be uncertainty and frustration as we learn who this new dog is, and I will fall in love all over again.
As I type this Stripes is doing the chase-base game with Kenny. That’s new too. Kenny doesn’t understand the crisis that has put so many dogs at risk; he would vote to keep Stripes in the pack as well. But Kenny’s superpower is making friends, and we will be leaning on that superpower for a long time.
In the dog world, the phrase “foster fail” is considered a happy thing. “We took in little Ajax and we just couldn’t let go.” I would love to be a foster fail, but that ignores all the other dogs that need homes. I will do my best to remain a foster-fail failure.
But just look at this guy! He’s the best! Make me cry already!
Philip Anthony Seeger — scientist, showman, musician, astronomer, and traveler — took his last breath this morning. That’s the way with Parkinson’s. But he retained his dignity, his humor, and his heart to the very end. He went down singing.
Dad was clever, kind, and eternally curious. He could cock his eyebrow when he was telling a joke in a way I did not inherit, and that eyebrow was cocked as he was telling jokes long past the time he could form a sentence. Immobile, in bed, he still had sauce.
Dad loved music, loved song. When there was nothing left, no way out, no way even to move his unresponding limbs, there was still song. I don’t know what he was singing, and I have no proof that the songs I sang to him were any comfort, but I like to imagine they were.
Parkinson’s had stolen everything else. As a kid he was the Texas state champion of mental arithmetic. He could make the digits dance. When Parkinson’s took the numbers away, it broke my heart. It was, for him, like hearing someone speak in a language you have always known, but somehow now the words are cryptic.
The stories are cluttered now, from how our house was built so he could put an observatory on the roof of the garage, to the observatory he built in the back yard (a much better choice), to how he cut a patient in half playing Walter Mitty at Don Juan Playhouse. “We’re going through!”
There are too many stories, so I will stop trying now. It was humbling and a little scary measuring myself against an intellect like his, and a level of craft like his, and a wit like his, but he never measured me that way. He gave me science fiction and hope for the world. He gave me the questions, but not the answers.
The failure of our nation to take care of the people living here leads to an inevitable crisis for animals. Around here shelters are overwhelmed, and people who have lost their homes sometimes have no choice but to turn the animals loose on the streets.
Even if a family manages to retain their home, they can’t afford the cost of spaying and neutering their fuzzy companions, and suddenly they have a litter of puppies to deal with.
The solution to this problem is a fundamental shift in the way wealth is distributed in our society. In the meantime, there are wonderful dogs that need homes.
I wrote here about Winston, a pup we were fostering (and marketing) who has found his forever home. That road was bumpier than we thought it would be, but he is in a good place now.
After that we started working with a local rescue, Adopt My Block. Dan, the frontman for the operation, is a tireless lover of dogs who genuinely understands that helping your neighbors is a good thing. He spends his days delivering help to people who need a boost to care for their beloved pet, and to providing financial support for getting the dogs fixed. It started on his block in San Jose, and has grown to be a terrific force for animal welfare.
They are a rescue, as well, and they pull at-risk dogs from the local shelters, and help bring dogs into a safe place before they even reach the shelters. If you want to support boots-on-the-ground animal welfare, you can’t do much better than Adopt My Block (503(c)).
Riding shotgun with Dan right now is a chihuahua-pug named Billy. He lived chez Muddle for a while and I have no idea why he hasn’t been adopted yet. He is lanky and tan, with glam eyeliner and a curly tail.
His energy and love cannot be reproduced by science. He loves children, he loves other dogs. There’s a ten-year-old kid out there who will love this guy so hard it hurts. And he will pay it back double.
We hosted Billy for a couple of months, and while we did not get to experience the final hand-off to his new home, we got to see him develop from a dog who is afraid of the sky (long story) into a fine and happy pup, ready for anything.
That transitional period may be our role, and I’m down with that, Giving stressed-out dogs with behavioral issues a place to just relax and learn to trust agin. Probably when they are ready, like Billy, they go back into the focus and promotion that Adopt My Block provides.
I’m telling you right now — Billy (you don’t have to retain the name) is an exceptional dog. Just adopt him already!
But now we turn to Stripes. (You really don’t have to keep the name.)
He comes from the same overwhelmed home Billy did. He is smaller; he tips the scales at about 8.5 pounds.
What a handsome fellow! It’s been a month and the little guy doesn’t trust me fully yet. On the couch after dinner, he will flop over me and wriggle in delight to the scritchens and rubbins. At pretty much any other time, I am not allowed to touch him. This is an ongoing thing, and it’s how we can help him.
One thing in my favor: I can throw a ball. This guy loves fetch. Chasing down the ball, maybe catching it in the air(!), and bringing it back for another throw is what life is all about. Some dogs are coy when they get back with the ball, playing possession games, but Stripes just drops it in the location he would prefer the next throw to come from and leaves the rest to me. He is the most pure fetch machine I’ve ever met.
We rented a space through SniffSpot to give him more room to chase, and let me tell you, that little guy can motor.
Today we took Stripes to a local park and there were many people and many other dogs and he was great! He’s still cagey about people getting too close (except for Francisco), but that is OK. You could adopt him today if you are all right with the gradual trust process. Honestly, that might always be a thing with this guy. But when you have that trust, you have a little buddy who will be by your side through thick and thin.
Sometimes a dog who is a problem in the shelter just needs a little time and space to remember what it means to be a dog, and how awesome that is. I think, for now, that is our role. Giving pups protection and love until they are ready to meet their forever family.
If you want to follow the dogs we foster, on instagram it’s Gilfoyle’s pack. Tune in, root for the dogs, and help spread their message. Especially the latter part – anything you do to expand the reach of the channel will put you squarely in the running for sainthood. If you’re into that kind of thing. Either way, it’s for the good dogs.
In this age of constant noise, I’m giving you permission to be a little bit louder about something that matters. Be a little louder for the creatures (and people!) who can’t be loud for themselves.
And adopt one of these great guys. The link again: Adopt My Block. If you don’t have room right now for a new dog, you can still slide them a few bucks to acknowledge that what they do goes far beyond an ordinary rescue. They are on the streets supporting families so their canine pals are secure and fed.
Animal welfare begins with human welfare. If you don’t feel inclined to support a dog-related cause, maybe find one that helps humans directly. There are plenty! For the love of Jesus, for the love of Buddha, for the love of the capitalist illusion that a rising tide that floats all boats, find a way to be good.
Be good. And adopt one of these fine fellows, already.
It’s my birthday today! I’m 62. Just look at the awesome Dino-age volcano cake the Official Sweetie made!
There was a while where birthdays didn’t mean so much. Another day older and closer to death, as the kids say. A wise friend of mine refuted that idea a long time ago; he reframed the idea not as getting closer to death, but to chalking up another day of life.
I appreciated that outlook, and I mostly lived it, but having incurable (but under control) cancer makes me appreciate each day, each week (as Official Sweetie and I reload my meds) and especially each year as gifts to be celebrated.
I am here. The barbarians are far from the gates right now, but they are out in the woods somewhere. My outcome from the cancer therapy puts me way out on the good end of things. I’m busting the curve. Just yesterday I saw that my PSA remains undetectable. One of my doctors said he hadn’t seen numbers like mine before, when the cancer was in the bones.
Birthdays mean a little more now. The medications I take guarantee that life will never be what it was before. But this morning I said “Elevator Ocelot Rutabaga” and welcomed another muddled year.
Thank you all who have wished me well. I hope the new muddled year brings you happiness. Your support, from near and far, means the world to me.
To say that the Apollo missions were formative to who I am now is an understatement. Of course the visceral response to a mighty rocket taking off was cool, but the tension of the first landing, imperfectly conveyed over the television, taught me lessons about technology, engineering, and bravery.
I had One Small Step pajamas; I had a banner with Snoopy on the moon, arms stretched wide, declaring “The Moon is Made of American Cheese.” I was stupid to the jingoism in the banner; I was super-stoked by the idea of my favorite cartoon dog being on the moon.
I watched today’s launch with similar wonder and anticipation. There was a shot, at roughly T minus 2:00, where they showed the nozzles of the four engines pivoting, that my preteen-space-geek and my jaded-engineer self met in a moment of wonder. They can adjust the trajectory! It would be like steering with the rear wheels of a car. Can you imagine how that moving mount can operate while under eleventy-billion meganewtons of thrust? The friction must be insane! Can you imagine software needed to control it?
I remember that same shot, back in 1969, of the engine nozzles, ready for 120 seconds of glory (don’t quote that number). I was almost vibrating with the anticipation of those mighty rockets blasting off the pad. I’m older now, but apparently I have not lost that joy.
Honestly, compared to the space shuttle, this was pretty simple. But the countdown was frozen at ten minutes when I tuned in, I think by design. I listened as each lead said “go”. I felt the excitement build in the control room. That excitement can be toxic; it will make people who want to say no say yes instead.
All the team heads said go, and the clock began ticking down. At about 33 seconds before launch the commentator said, (something like) “control has been passed to the vehicle.” The rocket was now in charge of launching itself.
It did.
Just as when I was a child, I watched the massive rocket ride a pillar of fire into the sky, and when it was a mere fiery dot, I wished for better cameras. Cameras on the rocket itself, sending data back to Earth in a way not possible last time, helped to fill that hole.
Thousands of rockets have launched since back then. Probably over a hundred with people on them. But this one is going to the moon. It’s different. Apparently the moon is not interesting enough for intrepid robot explorers like the ones we set loose on Mars. It a place for people to go, for humans to leave footprints that will outlive humanity itself.
I love all dogs. I’ve been blessed in my life to share a home with many of them, from the very gentle 80-plus-pound pittie Chiquita, the kindest and gentlest soul to walk the Earth, to the 5 pounds of nervous chihuahua energy that was Spike. They were all the best dogs, and I mourned their passing.
But Byng was different. She chose me. The Official Sweetie and I were at the shelter, and she was in a cage at the end of the row. I stuck my fingers through the bars to scritch her head, and she pressed up hard against the metal to make it as easy as possible for me. But I couldn’t stay all day there. When I stopped, she looked up at me and put her little paw through the bars, and put her hook through my heart. You can’t possibly be done. She was right. We brought her home.
At the shelter they called her Beyoncé, but that was not who this little girl was. We named her Lady Byng, after the hockey award for a player with high skill who doesn’t get penalties. NHL’s Miss Congeniality. Sometimes it seemed the name didn’t fit: while she was always graceful, and a fierce competitor, I think she might have spent some time in the penalty box for teaching puppies how things work in this league.
She chose me, and I was hers. And only hers. At the dog park, I was popular among the canine population. Always ready to play chase, or throw a ball, or just to give some good, solid, lovin’. A few other dogs would rush to greet me when we arrived. But if Byng felt like I might like another dog a little too much, intervention was called for. If I threw a ball and another dog chased it, she would head that dog off on their return path with teeth bared to prevent them from bringing the ball back so I could throw it again.
She had no patience for amateur dogs. Puppies and whatnot. At the park she was the schoolmarm and would brook no impertinence, no matter the size of the other dog. Great Dane? Sit your ass down, kid. Other people there would laugh and thank Lady Byng for educating their dogs. “Respect the lady, Diesel.”
At home, there were other dogs, and she was fine with them as long as she was closer to me than they were. I was hers, and she shared only grudgingly.
She had been living on the streets before she was captured and brought to the shelter. Having been hungry, she was world-class at figuring out how to get food. We started teaching her tricks, and she could jump, run, weave, or dance her way to a treat. Always at breakneck speed — and I mean that literally; we had to take “roll over” off the trick sheet because she would throw herself over so violently while keeping an eye on the reward that she would injure herself.
But the best times were the quiet ones, when my restless hands scritched her noggin, and her back, and then she would use her paw to guide my hand to her belly. The belly! Belly rubs were the best of all rubs. A good rubbin’ on a full belly was all she asked for out of life, and what she worked her whole life to achieve, and in return she gave joy and (in her mind) protection. She was Daddy’s Little Girl, no doubt about that. I thought sometimes I was going to rub the fur off her belly.
When I go to work tomorrow, I will not ask Lady Byng to take care of mommy, the way I have for the last twelve years.
I don’t want to talk here about the last weeks. There were ups and downs, and then it was over. I hope, but I can never know, that she knew it was me holding her and scritching her at the end. “She’s gone,” the vet said.
But she’s not gone. She is everywhere in this house, though that will slowly fade. Right now, reminders are everywhere. I cried when I poured out her water bowl this morning. But she won’t really be gone until I am gone, and all the other humans she has charmed are gone.
It is simpler when you are a dog; there is no urge to Be Remembered. No need to erect a monument with your name and a couple of numbers on it, to be sniffed at by other dogs. Our pack has done miles in the nearby cemetery, and while the humans read the monuments and consider their mortality, the canines just sniff, and march, and pee, and have a good ol’ time.
She would dance when we opened the fireplace, and the moment her red velvet pillow was ready she would settle in (as fast as possible) to quietly enjoy the radiant heat of the fire. I think, now, that wherever I see a hearth, I will also see a red velvet pillow.
The official Sweetie of Muddled Ramblings and Half-Baked Ideas has a heart the size of a planet. She monitors the web site of the shelter across the street to see if there is a neglected dog with special needs, that no one would ever adopt. She bonds with those dogs, sight unseen, because she is empathetic and she wants all living things to be happy.
Winston, honestly, sounded pretty dire. Half of his legs didn’t work. His mobility was forever impaired (spoiler… I just took a break from typing this to have a very kinetic funtime with that poor immobile guy), and he had other issues as well. His weight was listed at 10 pounds, which made him an ideal subordinate for Lady Byng, our dog in residence.
It has not worked out that way, but for the best of reasons. Winston has put on some weight, he can run (if you ignore the occasional face-plant as effortlessly as he does), and he loves people. Big dogs, not so much.
He is a people-pleasin’ bundle of fun, and it breaks my heart that he and Lady Byng don’t get along. But that’s the way in the canine world.
Can you seriously say no to this guy? No, you cannot.
He has some special needs: he has seizures, but Official Sources to Muddled Ramblings and Half-Baked Ideas assert that while they are really effin’ scary for the humans who love him, that he should be OK.
He also hates big dogs. I blame the other dogs for being too big.
Winston loves to play, and in that photo you see Rope. He has Rope. You do not. You want to tug about it? He is ready to tug.
Someone out there needs Winston in their life. Please, for the sake of everyone, help us find that person.
Oh, dang! I forgot to tell y’all how to meet and/or adopt the little guy. To spread the word to your friends, https://www.instagram.com/whataboutwinston_sj/ is his very own instagram account filled with more amazing pics of Winston, along with the contact details with the shelter. Spread this far and wide!
Seriously, whatever you are doing now, stop that and share that link wherever you do social stuff.
If you’re all fired up and ready to meet him yourself, this link will get you to Winston, with all his details.
I love a good chile relleno. But even in New Mexico, the experience of a truly great relleno is rare. Much of the time it’s all cheese and fryer-grease and does not celebrate the magic of the chile itself. What you want to taste is the chile, with a supporting cast. Not just some greasy cheese bomb.
I have been thinking about this for a long time. Thinking that I could put a little grace note on a few hundred years of tradition. I thought (and actually still think) that I can make the best relleno ever.
Where I grew up, the chile relleno was the measure of the restaurant. Easy to make a good one, brutally difficult to make a great one. I worked in the pizza biz.
Recently I found myself at a farmers market and there on a table presided over by a friendly family were some big, fat poblano peppers, gentle and capacious, just begging to be stuffed. Suddenly I declared, “I will make chile rellenos.” I chose two poblanos and found soft cheese at another stall, and my fate was sealed. I would be cooking beyond my ability.
I started with a definition of goals:
lighter: the outer coating can’t be heavy with oil; the stuffing must be more dynamic than just a chunk of cheese.
Huh. Sometimes you start making a list only to realize there is only one thing on it. For a long time I have imagined the perfect relleno: a magnificent pepper, stuffed with cheese and whatnot, and fried in a light, crackly, tempura batter.
Then came the air fryer, and the hope of a newer, even more awesome relleno was born. I am not a chef. I am not someone you should take food advice from, unless it’s about over-easy eggs, but I have some things to say about chile rellenos.
I made air-fried chile rellenos with a fun (not)-meat and cheese stuffing, in a tempura batter. It was an adventure, and mistakes were made. Lessons learned, and whatnot. The result was not the best relleno I ever ate (not even close!), but it carried with it the promise of being the best.
First step: roast and peel the peppers. The classic method is to roast them over open flame until the skin blackens, then peel. There’s no open flame in our kitchen, but the air fryer (or a convection oven) is an excellent tool for this job. After a few minutes on maximum heat, I pulled them out and put them in a bowl sealed with cling film to let them sweat for fifteen minutes. The outer peel was ready to jump right off!
Two fat poblanos, one peeled, the other ready.
While they were sweating, so was I. I didn’t just want cheese in the stuffing. I loves me some cheese, but good food needs balance. My support crew set me up with some Impossible meat — it acts a lot like beef, but is made from plants. I browned that up and seasoned it gently with paprika and a little cayenne. I accidentally nailed the seasoning; the spice was subtle and slow.
The soft cheese we got at the farmer’s market was also excellent. It was time to stuff some peppers!
Looking promising! Immediately after I took this pic I added more cheese. Man, that was some good cheese.
I probably should not have cut the peppers all the way open like that, even though I saw instructions online that did it that way. Or maybe I just put in too much filling. Is that a thing? Anyway, some big ol’ chunks of cheese and the seasoned meat and it was time to (air) fry.
I had also read that you don’t mix up tempura batter until right before you are ready to use it.
Mis en place for the batter
The thing about tempura, apparently, is keeping the gluten from getting all worked up. There are a lot of strategies for this: use flour with less gluten, keep the water cold, and substitute vodka for some of the water.
This is where I made my biggest mistake. The instructions clearly said to whip the egg in the bowl before adding all the other stuff. I did not do that. My sources also said that I should make sure not to overbeat the mixture after the flour was added. Gluten again. I was too shy about getting in there and whipping the egg into the mix after the fact of my mistake, so my “batter” was runny and the egg was not fully integrated.
I dipped my peppers into the mix and not much stuck. A bit did, though, so I laid them incision-up in the air fryer. Meanwhile, my coach went to work on the batter and got it closer to the proper consistency. There was no getting the peppers out and re-dipping, though, so I periodically spooned more batter on top of the peppers as they cooked.
You could argue, I suppose, that my “special recipe” is supposed to look like that…
Spanish rice, chile relleno, and cooling cantaloupe.
They were… not the greatest chile rellinos ever. The first disappointment was the pepper itself — too sweet! Not much spice at all. They were tasty, but not the vehicles for a savory dish. The blobs of cheese didn’t get as melty as I would have liked. That is probably due to the very large volume of the peppers; it takes a long time to get up to temperature in the middle. The batter… well, you see it up there. I’ll get that better next time.
They were also, by a long, long way, not the worst chile rellinos I have ever had, and quite possibly they were the healthiest. I got close enough to my ideal to validate it, even if I wasn’t actually that close.
The Official Sweetie of Muddled Ramblings and Half-Baked Ideas declared them the best she had ever had. They were also the first she had ever had. My top ranking has held up, however, in comparison to rellinos we got at a restaurant, though our criticism of the professional food diverged.
Tases diverge, and that’s awesome. I once postulated opening a chile-rellino-focussed restaurant that would allow the patron to choose the pepper (hot to mild, different flavors), the filling, and the batter from lists of options. I would choose a hotter pepper than OSMRHBI, but we would both choose a filling with seasoned not-meat to accompany the cheese. BRAIN FLASH! JUST RIGHT NOW AS I WAS TYPING! Use those lovely sweet poblanos for dessert rellinos!
After all these years it still seems like an excellent way to get poor quickly. Even better if someone else runs it and I just get to eat there.
Flags are at half-mast today, recognizing the passing of the greatest former president this country has known.
He was a politician from the South, and he was not perfect. His wife Rosalyn snapped him back to the path of righteousness, and he never forgot that.
His presidency was marred by his desire to do what was best for the little guy. He wanted working people to have good lives. A doomed enterprise from the start. But when his presidency was torpedoed by Ronald Reagan illegally negotiating with the Iranians (seriously, it was a flagrant disregard of our laws), he was forced from the presidency and in that moment he found true greatness.
It is probably not possible to count the number of homes people live in now that he personally helped build. It is not possible to measure the effect Jimmy Carter had on democracy in other nations as an election observer.
Jimmy Carter deserves his rest now. There will not be another like him in US Politics, and more’s the shame, even if he proved why someone like him should not be president.
Back when I was studying Physics at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (they have since simplified the name), I took more than one class led by Albert Petschek. The school’s physics program was well-respected back then, in part because more than one McCarthy refugee found their way to the faculty.
Albert, it seemed to me, spent most of his time in his barren little office with the lights turned off, just thinking. Then he would publish a paper. That is obviously an oversimplification, but there is no denying that Albert was a really smart guy.
Early on I noticed that during his lectures, he would pause sometimes, maybe after describing the math of heat flux, and scan the class while holding an inscrutable face.
Then one time, perhaps in my junior year, he paused and I laughed. I was the only one, and Albert beamed at me. I had got his joke. This whole time the dude had been doing stand-up, but you needed to understand thermodynamics or quantum electrodynamics to get the joke.
Later I heard him say, “My brother is the smart one, but I am the witty one.” He said it with a smile, like that itself was a joke.
Recently I have fallen into a disturbing pattern: work harder than I should, get fried, and play computer games for a couple of days to recover. Fall behind at work, and repeat.
In this cycle you will not find “exercise”, “write”, or “be otherwise creative”. It’s a bad cycle.
Meanwhile, if it weren’t for a massive back spasm I had a year ago and the ensuing tests, I’d be in a very bad place now, mortality-wise.
I’m alive; the barbarians will return to the gate someday, but right now they are deep in the woods. But they will be back, and in the meantime I can’t be spending my life staring at a computer screen clicking on beautiful graphics to the benefit of no one.
I’ve been on the bike a few times since chemo; 15 miles is (usually) not too bad. And hey, that’s how far I have to ride to get to work! If I can’t consistently carve out time to ride, I can repurpose time I already spend commuting. (I still don’t go into the office very often, but that is going to have to change.)
I’m not ready to do TWO fifteen-mile trips on the same day, but that’s what the bus is for.
But still there’s that burnout lost time to Civilization VI and Stellaris and Nethack. playing those games is really just wallowing in the burnout. All those games are decision-intensive, just without real consequences. I decided last week that when I felt the urge to fire up one of those distractions, I would Do Something Different.
Like play guitar. I bought a nice Gibson 40 years ago, and I’ve never gotten good at playing it. I have no illusions that This Time Will be Different, but doing finger drills or playing random blues licks seems like a much better use of time than deciding whether to build a battleship or a temple in Memphis.
Also (I profess) doing something creative, and different, will allow me to recover my analytical mind more quickly as well. Let that part of me rest while I do the spider drill or play along with any pop song based on 12-bar blues. Physical skills, creative challenges.
The guitar sits now within easy reach of my workstation. I spent a few bucks on a little headphone amp, but no more investment will be forthcoming until I prove I will be sticking with the plan.
Look at that beauty! I am so excited right now. Today I started what I hope will be a long-term relationship with a Local Guitar Shop (and the small dog that protects it). I love the shop already, with its focus on community.
It’s easy to be enthusiastic out of the gate. The only time I ever got even remotely competent playing this things was when I lived in a beautiful house with terrible people (I should probably tell that story here someday). I would close the door to my room and play. Playing was shelter then, a way to turn my mind to a better place. While I don’t need shelter in the same way anymore, The ability to turn to something completely different is (almost) always a good thing.
I’m working to break free of habits that have their roots in laziness and, honestly, depression. Finding a new challenge that is not like the old challenge. Looking up at the observatory at the top of Mt. Hamilton and saying, “I’ll get there.” Playing shitty chords that never seem to include the A string. That is a better life.
I know I told you last time that I couldn’t wait to tell you about what is downstairs, but I want to take a brief side trip first. We came in through the garden on the south side of the house (there’s probably a small cemetery tucked behind some trees; that’s where you’ll find me soon enough), and I’ve shown you how a home built of earth embraces the sun.
This is at its very core a home that celebrates craft, and the hands that built it. The first thing you saw on your visit was ironwork made by a human being. The signs of humanity are all around you now, and everywhere, if you look closely, you will see the personal marks of the people who built this home, whether by stacking adobe bricks or programming the elevator. The tiles in the bathrooms reflect the minds of the people who created them.
I hope, of course, that this will inspire the residents of the home to create their own art. This home is inspirational, or at least aspires to be. On the north side of the home is the less glamorous, less cozy space where actual magic happens.
I imagine it is a large space, perhaps physically separated from the main building. The floor is open and the light is from the north, coming in through large windows that can be blacked when necessary.
This might be the first structure built, to provide the space and means for the artisans and craftspeople to build the main home.
It smells like clay in here, like paint, like sawdust. The kiln, in its corner, is perhaps the only tool with a fixed location. One day the wood shop might be deployed, the tools needed for that day rolled out and carefully leveled, while on other days it might be the potters wheel or the bench for the glass blowers.
OK, the kiln, the glass furnace, and the forge for iron work are probably all fixed. But on any particular Tuesday this might be a photo studio, or a robotics lab. I delight in the fantasy that we, the residents of this home, will ultimately decide that we need two studio spaces.
There is also, on this side of the house, a very large vegetable garden. Unlike the sanctuary enclosed within the walls on the south, this garden grows food and is based on two principles: 1) we are obligated to make the most of the waste water from the house, and 2) tomatoes are best when eaten within minutes of harvest. That goes for other vegetables as well, but tomatoes are the poster child of “better fresh-picked”.
Space allowing, a modest orchard seems like a good idea as well.
In a previous episode I flew past the kitchen, which is essentially a studio with tools devoted to the medium of food. I am flying past it once again, because I have nothing to offer in that place except vibes. Kitchen science is real, and while I embrace it, I am not going to extend it, except for the hand-crafted cabinets.
The home — our home — is not just filled with the work of artists and artisans, it is where those people live. Where we live. Writers, painters, architects, musicians, and on and on. This is where we celebrate the accomplishments of our peers while we challenge one another. The studio here is never empty, there’s always something going on in the kitchen, and the garden is well-loved.
That last sentence reveals the depth of this fantasy, but understand: I believe it.
