These Days

An old friend, who owns a cornfield, raked cobs off her land after the harvest, dried them, and bagged them up.  Another friend who lives close by hauled them to town and brought them to the shack where I found them, delivered while I was away, stacked neatly on my shack porch ten feet from the little stove where I will burn them.  It’s extraordinary really, the kindness of others.

As the weather cools I’ve been heating the shack the lazy way, first with a little electric heater under my writing desk to take the chill off in the morning.  Then as the days shorten, and stay colder longer, I’ve been burning pine scraps supplied by my brother Denny, torn up hardwood flooring from a remodel at the church, bits of oak, and now these local cobs.  When I think of all the cobs we burned on the farm, a mountain of cobs as big as the shack left abandoned each time we shelled out the crib, later lit on fire and reduced to a fragile mound of embers so hot you couldn’t stand within twenty feet of it, I lament the waste.  All those BTU’s, up in smoke. 

Cobs burn fast and hot.  They’re nice to start a fire with, or add to a dying fire to create a little more warmth at the end of the day before the story ends.  I’ll get into the oak soon enough.  It’s been drying for two years, this batch I have split and under the woodshed roof.  To fit it into my stove I must cut it once more into 5 inch lengths with the chainsaw.  I’ll do that in batches as I need it, then split them again on my stump in the shack to a manageable size.  You can burn a lot of wood on a cold winter day, and we have plenty of those ahead of us I’m afraid.  There was that big moon though before the cold set in.  But Leonard Cohen did not live to see it.  We go on, all of us, without him.

I can feel myself shifting gears again a week after the election.  I was in the polling place working as an election judge just seven days ago.  So much has changed in a week.  I was sad, and then angry.  I’m still angry.  Yesterday I watched CNN for the first time since election night, but only for a short while.  I really don’t want to see or hear from the President elect yet.  The trouble is I don’t do anger well at all. Just ask my wife.  Its best I lay low until I can somehow turn it into action.  I feel I need to be more politically active for the sake of my kids and those around me, the people at church, the people in the homeless shelter, minorities, the LGBTQ community, immigrants and refugees, the people that will suffer most from what will happen if we do not stand up as Americans and stop this.  It pisses me off that I have to continue to do it at all.  It feels like I’ve been doing it all my life.  But it is very apparent that I must.

In the meantime I’ve withdrawn to the shack.  I loaded my five disc CD changer with four Miles Davis CD’s and a Phillip Glass.  Not a lyric to be found.  I thought Miles would pick me up most but in this mood I’m in I most appreciate Phillip Glass.  One CD, six songs, all around 6 minutes long, with mysterious one word titles: Opening, Floe, Island, Rubric, Facades, Closing.

Philip Glass, now 79, is the son of Jewish Lithuanian parents who came to America to escape German oppression and helped other Jews escape.  His father ran a record store and promoted new music, often sending customers who entered his store wanting to buy Beethoven home with Bartok instead, with an offer to buy back the albums if they didn’t like them.  Philip developed a keen ear, studied flute at the Peabody Institute, mathematics and philosophy at the University of Chicago before going to the Julliard School of Music and concentrating on the keyboard.  He earned a Fulbright scholarship in 1964 and went to Paris where he studied composition with someone famous named Nadia Boulanger.  His early music was described as minimal, a label he moved away from.  Here’s how Philip Glass describes his music.

"I had worked for eight or nine years inventing a system, and now I'd written through it and come out the other end."  He now describes himself as a composer of "music with repetitive structures."

Despite his musical genius, he found it impossible to make a living from it. Apart from his music career, Glass operated a moving company with his cousin, sculptor Jene Highstein, and also worked as a plumber and a cab driver from 1973 to 1978.  On top of all that he is a first cousin once removed of Ira Glass, the NPR hero of "This American Life."

Philip Glass is the best composer you've heard and don't know.  He's won three academy awards for film scores, written operas, chamber music, symphonies, collaborated with countless artists (including Leonard Cohen) and has a body of work that extends to nearly form and genre.  One single CD, "Glassworks", recorded in Tokyo in 1982 made its way into the weird musical collection of this dairy farmer/social worker holed up in a cedar sided shack alongside a Midwestern ravine.  I don't know diddly about music.  But I knew immediately when first hearing Philip Glass' music it was like the ocean; open, forgiving, honest and beautiful.  When I heard it again this week I knew why I randomly picked it from among my jazz CD's.  It brings me in and calms me down.

Not that I wanted to calm down.  When I get angry like this I mostly want those around me to just shut up.  Unfortunately what I want is usually counter to what they need, which is to have someone listen.  When bad things happened at work I would feel this way and search for some way to ward off staff who wanted to come in and discuss or “process” problems.  I grew sick and tired of process.  I abhorred process.  I literally thought I would puke if I had to involve myself in one more discussion to “process” some past problem or event.  If there is a hell, which I doubt, and it is personal mine would be an eternity of meetings where I sit and listen to others process problems.  I would nod endlessly and go insane for the rest of time.

I took a stab at curbing such work discussions with the parking meter.  The city was removing its parking meters and selling them for $10. I bought one and my brother Darwin mounted it on a pole for me.  I put it near the door in my office.  When my staff came in and said

“Do you have a minute?”

I answered in the affirmative, always, handed them a penny, telling them that in fact, I had twelve minutes.  In downtown Ottawa, a penny would allow you to park for twelve minutes.  I would then tell them to put the coin in the meter and twist the crank.  Then we would talk.  When their time elapsed a little red flag on the meter would noisily pop up, which was my cue to smile and politely tell them their time was up.  Twelve minutes seems like a long time but rarely did anyone end their conversation within twelve minutes and even more rarely were they satisfied with the outcome. I gave up on the meter.  It only made people mad.  

I fantasized about other control measures.  I kept my door open on principle but desperately wanted to close it and on it place a sign that would ward off all those who wanted my attention.  As a government funded private agency we lived in a sea of acronyms.  My sign, as an acronym, would say

G.T.F.A.F.M.

and

S.T.F.A.F.M.

You figure it out.

After I retired and was free to do anything I wanted, with no regard for tact, I considered making that same sign for my shack door, using my wood burning pencil and a piece of nice cedar, but now with the word “Welcome” on the other side for cheerier days, which I hoped would be more numerous.  But so few people visited the shack I concluded it would serve no purpose.  Good thing.  Though I no longer have cause to be overtly obnoxious, I still want to be at times.  Some would tell you I still am.  I find my feeling of wanting everyone to shut up persists, even when no one is talking.

Those bad moods can make for awkward and even painful days though my life now is largely solitary.  Take pity on my good and patient wife, who now bears the brunt of my private funks.  And thank you Philip Glass.  It was nice being with you for a time.  I needed that.  Listen a while.  Maybe Phil will calm you down as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Stu7h7Qup8 (skip the Zappos ad)

You might also consider building a fire.  Click below