A Work of Art

As I was stripping the bathroom door today, I stepped back to rest for a second, and I realized that I had created a work of art.

I call it Retrospective on a Door

I was determined to remove the paint from the bathroom door, the nearly 100 years of paint, and now I know the history: yellow first, then mustard, green, plum, and white. One layer on top of another.

Memories and some questionable color choices.

So I'm not sure what to do now; finish the job or take this to an art gallery.

By way of comparison, above is an actual exhibit from the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Jack Plane, Part 2

Journalism school gives you the notion that people care about your writing. Working as a technical writer takes that notion away, as I soon learned after getting the job at that aerospace company.

I had just moved from Arkansas to Arizona, and in Arkansas I lived a hermit's existence way out in the country. Wood heat, no air conditioning. I had a few hand tools--my favorite was a little jack plane.

Because my brother worked at a big aerospace company in Tucson, I had a good chance of getting hired in the technical editing/writing department with him. I still remember that day, sitting in a small office at a table, writing on the back page of a job application with a pencil, free to describe anything at all, as long as it was technical.

Something about the jack plane interested me. I would sometimes just stare at it, not really knowing why. It was perfectly flat on the bottom except for the protruding steel blade sticking through a slot, so it really didn't sit down flat except when pushed along a piece of lumber, when the blade pulled off a ribbon of wood.

But even then the wood is never really flat. The front of the plane is always riding on wood that is about to be sliced, and the tail end of the plane is lower, dropped into the space where the ribbon used to be. Then when you get to the end of the wood, the front end of the plane flies off into space. It is never level. And yet it creates a level surface.

I understand sandpaper because it is flat. A drill bit is a nice cylinder. But a plane is not normal; it's never what it appears to be.

Fortunately my brother worked at the place.

Fast forward, and I've got my second coat of finish on the office floor and hallways.

Also, the cactus in our side yard is really blooming...

The Jack Plane

More than 20 years ago I packed up my stuff and moved to Arizona with the notion that I'd become a newspaper person, except the newspaper didn't want me, so I applied for a job as a technical writer for an aerospace company. On the last page of the application I was instructed to write a few paragraphs on a technical subject--anything at all.

As my subject I chose the jack plane, my very favorite carpentry tool, and one that has been around for thousands of years. Today, they are made completely of steel, but years ago they were all wood except for the metal cutting blade that sticks out from the bottom and that shaves wood into transparent ribbons.

I'm using one now because the replacement boards in my office are a bit thicker than the floor. The jack plane is the perfect tool for this problem, though people tend to use sandpaper instead.

The idea is simple--a little tongue of steel sticks out the bottom just a bit and scrapes away the wood, turning an uneven edge into a smooth one.

The concept is both simple and impossible, and there are profound philosophical issues to consider, and years ago, sitting in a room and filling out my job application, I knew that the company did not care to hear about the existential nature of a carpenter's plane. No, they just wanted to see if I could write clearly. By getting cute, I could very well lose the job.

More later.

The Office Floor

For the past several years I've been sitting in my office chair and staring at a piece of termite-eaten flooring. Someone made a half-hearted attempt at repairing it, but anyone could see the ugly truth. So, part of the hallway project is to fix the floor in my office.

That board is really long and only the end is damaged, so I picked a spot in the middle and began to chisel it in two. I love chiseling wood. Clean and sharp downward cuts, then shave off the side. I even bought a grinding wheel so I could sharpen my chisels super sharp. How much fun is a person allowed to have?

After I cut my way through the board, I chiseled out the inside portion of the piece to be removed. Otherwise, the tongue and groove on the sides would prevent it from being budged.

OMG, I love this!

Clean as a whistle. More later...

Mozart K576

Every year or so I make a complete cycle through my music books, one piece after another while working on mostly on sight-reading, which has always been my weakness. I was so bad at it in college that I would memorize every piece of music as soon as possible so that I never had to depend on the sheet music.

I'm sure it is a type of dyslexia. Even after memorizing a piece and learning to play it fairly well, if I then try to play it while reading the notes, it usually becomes a tangled mess.

In any case, every year or so I come to a piece that put a final end to my music lessons: Mozart Sonata in D major, K576. I was in my final year at college, and my piano teacher asked me to pick a Mozart sonata to play for the upcoming semester. I picked K576. He said, "No, you will never be able to play that sonata. Pick another."

But that was his style of teaching--he could be very direct, known for making his students cry sometimes. But I insisted that I could learn the piece. So I went to work trying to memorize it, hours and hours of work, until I realized that he was right. After several embarrasing lessons he threatened to give me an F for the semester, so I quit.

Every year or so, I try to prove him wrong. I actually am getting better every year, at a snail's pace, so I'm not quite ready to give up. But I've already given up on K576 this year.

Whatever happened to my piano teacher? He committed suicide years ago, on a matter totally unconnected to my playing.

Mozart's K576

Fish and Frog Eggs

I have long suspected that the fish in our pond feasted on frog eggs and small tadpoles but I never had any proof, not until this week. After our rainstorms this weekend we had an orgy of frogs cavorting in the upper pond. Nothing new. This year they all gathered at the base of the leather-leaf fern, a six-foot tall plant with roots that extend several feet into the water.

These roots are very think, and the frogs are laying long strings of black eggs, like small black pearl necklaces, all tangled into the rubbery root spindles. If I were a fish, these would look very nice to me. Except I've never seen the koi interested in the frog eggs before.

But this year the fish went crazy; they rolled and splashed and jumped, and they fought their way through the roots, and not just for a few minutes. This craziness went on for a whole afternoon. Now the koi are fat and lazy and much less interesting in frog eggs.

If they were smart, they'd let the eggs hatch and wait for the tadpoles. But maybe they are smart. Maybe there are plenty eggs left (though I can see them). I am watching them...