Day 80 Post 79

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The gardens at Springfields

Neither figure in the title is particularly significant, but together they tell me I am one post behind my target. This is, to be fair, the story of my life. My approach to life can be summed up by the phrases “good enough” or “that’ll do” so it’s no surprise that I’m hovering around my target. Around, but not above.

The title is also a sneaky time-saving device. Next time I want to check on progress I have a place to start and can avoid the time spent in counting the first 79 posts and 80 days. Is that, I wonder, a sign that I am well-organised, or a sign that I am lazy?

Whatever it is, it is definitely a sign that I need to write an extra post to get back on target.

It’s also a sign that the year is nearly quarter of the way through. It’s my favourite bit. The magnolias are coming out, even though they will soon be a mass of decaying petals. The lilacs and the laburnums will soon be out and, before you know it, the year will be on the downward slope to autumn. It’s definitely a bitter-sweet time of year.

Meanwhile, looking up magnolias I went on a journey through the Southern states of the USA and a history of lynching via Strange Fruit.

Looking forward to Spring

I’ll just link to a text article, you will have to sort out your favourite version of the song. I wasn’t sure whether to link to Billie Holiday or Nina Simone in the first place. Then I discovered that Siouxsie Sioux covered it. It’s not, I feel, a great version, but it does add a bit of variety. It’s amazing where blogging takes you.

Spring in the Mencap Garden

 

Time Passes . . .

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Sandsend – river and bridge

Despite resorting to the questionable tactic of dropping a numismatic article into the day before yesterday’s post, I still managed to miss posting yesterday. There are 24 hours in a day, how do I mange to miss  out on finding 20 minutes to write a blog post?

I also managed to avoid doing anything else of much use. I took Julia to the nurse for her shingles booster. She then mowed the lawn and spent the rest of the day telling me how much her arm ached. Well, as i said, shingles vaccine  is well known for being likely to ache, so would it not have been better to have rested than to cut the lawn? She, of course, disagreed, despite the evidence.

Beach at Sandsend

I caught up on some correspondence with people I owed emails to. I would like to be an old-fashioned letter writer but emails are so much simpler. Even so, it’s possible to let months pass by without replying.

Here’s a question. I have a lot of redundant email addresses in my system. Some are people I can’t even remember, some are dead. I occasionally delete a few (mainly parents of kids who played for teams I managed) but I find that I can’t bring myself to delete the addresses of friends who have died. Is this normal? Or am I exhibiting signs of an unhealthy attachment to the past?

Microlight over Sandsend

Is there room for a modern ghost story where someone uses such an address and gets a reply? Or has it already been done? I won’t do it, as I don’t read ghost stories.

We are about to have an early lunch – Julia has to go to the tea room and I have to go to the doctor.  Retirement is not quite as relaxing as I had planned. I am going to have to start using a diary again.

Whitby Church. Ideal place for a ghost story

Whitby Abbey – is that creaking the opening of a coffin lid?

Sandsend pictures are a lovely clear day in March 2017.

 

The Pioneer Wagon Works of the West

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A story about a medallion. It seemed better than a rant about politics.

It seemed interesting and had plenty of information on it – a factory, a slogan, some dates, a picture of a wagon and the name of an agent in Salt Lake City. Surely, I thought, there will be something about this medallion I can research.

And, as it turned out, a simple search was rewarded with a flood of information. It seems that Mr Schuttler and his company were famous, and the wagons are still sought after by collectors of such things. There is plenty of information, including a three part article on his life, his family and his wagons, accounts of his haunted house and auction reports showing a continuing interest in his products.

Peter Schuttler (1812 – 1865) moved from Germany to the USA in 1834, and worked building wagons. After several changes of job and town, he ended up in Chicago and, in 1843, opened his own workshop. Helped by the California Gold Rush of 1849 and the Mormon Migration of 1855, the business expanded and by the mid-1850s, his works employed 100 people and built around 1,800 wagons a year. The brand soon developed a reputation for being well built and well designed, with every part, even the nuts and bolts, being made in the factory.

He was one of the richest men in Chicago at the time of his death in 1865, and was in the final stages of building his famous mansion, which cost $500,000 ($9.6 million in today’s values) and included architectural features imported from Germany. It had the reputation of being both cursed and haunted. Schuttler’s death was attributed to blood poisoning caught when he cut himself on a protruding nail, after which he cursed it from his death bed. It declined, and, after an unhappy history, was eventually demolished in 1911.

The company rebuilt the factory after the Chicago Fire of 1871 and by 1904 was producing 20,000 wagons a year. However, technology was changing and the company did not change with the times. They produced a fine quality wagon in an age that was turning to cars. It was like claiming to produce the best abacus in a world of personal computers. They sold their carriage works and equipment in 1921 and the rest of their business in the 1940s. The last wagons bearing the Schuttler name were produced by the new owners in the 1950s.

The medallion is 33mm in diameter and made from white metal. The last dated award mentioned is 1876. They won an award at the Columbian Exhibition in 1893, which was commemorated by a medallion, so this suggests a date of between 1876 and 1893 for this medallion. There are similar Schuttler medallions in a variety of metals and sizes, some similar to this example, but with different agent’s names,

The obverse, with a depiction of the post-1871 factory has the wording “THE PIONEER WAGON WORKS/OF THE WEST./ESTABLISHED 1843/PETER SCHUTTLER CHICAGO.”

The maker’s name – J. S. Weber is just visible on the edge of the factory base. The reverse, which is in coin orientation, shows a wagon with the following text “MFR.OF FARM FREIGHT & SPRING WAGONS/FIRST/PREMIUM” around the top and “PARIS 1867/PHILADELPHIA/1876/GEO. A. LOWE. AGT. SALT LAKE CITY.” on the lower part.

George A. Lowe (1836-1903), according to information on Facebook, was born in Massachusetts, married in 1866, when his profession was given as “Dealer in farm machinery” and by 1880 was living in Salt Lake City and listed as a “Wagon Agent”. He died unexpectedly of heart failure in 1903, having been well known in Business, Political and Social Affairs in the area.

A Bad Start

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Razorbill

Oh dear. Another day and another stack of projects piling up. Big news of the day is that we are having a man out to look at reasons for the non-functioning nature of our gas boiler. So far he has quoted us £99 for the call out and first hour, and arranged an appointment for 10.00 this morning. It’s 11.32 and he has not, so far, shown up or rung to tell us he is going to be late. This is not the 5 Star service promised by the feedback on his site.

This house hates me.

Puffins at Bempton

Last night we were cold. There’s a nasty cold wind about and we have no supplementary heating unless we turn the oven on. The gas fire is a mystery and we couldn’t even start to guess how to use it and we had nothing else apart from candles and hot water bottles.

I say “had” because I ordered a heater last night and it arrived this morning. I’m hoping we won’t need it, but I’d rather waste money on a heater we don’t need than freeze.

Anyway, even if the gas man turns up, there’s no guarantee he will be able to fix it so why take the risk?

Gannets

Apart from the gas, the bathroom light switch is giving trouble (we have already had two switches replaced) and the lights in the hallway are playing up. There are three different light switches to control them and sometimes hey don’t work. Julia is convinced that there is a loose wire and disaster is imminent. Julia, apart from her talent as a destroyer of electrical equipment (sometimes a single glance will incapacitate an appliance), could also double as Cassandra, if the Ancient Greeks ever need a replacement. Me, I think they have been wired so that they sometimes get out of phase. I’m prepared to be wrong but everything I’ve learned about the builder of this place indicates that shortcuts were taken and he probably didn’t ue the right switches to do the job. Watch this space.

Kittiwakes

Photos are from one of our Bempton trips.

Disjointed Notes

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I had a rejection yesterday afternoon. I’m currently at 5 and 3 with two more to go. The worst it can now be is 5 and 5, and 50% isn’t too bad. I’ve written enough on that subject recently so I will pass on to other subjects.

How about a Flying Saucer? We ate there several times when going to see Julia’s family as it used to be at the point where we turned off the A1. I was sure it was there for longer than the time frame reported in the article, but my mind plays tricks these days. I found an article about it while browsing the internet but this link is better.

I then went on to read a list of amusing rude names for British towns and villages. However, I’m trying to portray the image of a clean-living, serious-minded poet here, so I won’t provide the link as it’s not for the fainthearted and I wouldn’t want to upset anyone.

This one, on the other hand, is quite interesting. The trophy, which is even more interesting, cost £125 when it was made, which was a lot of money at the time.

We had steak for tea. Julia received two boxes of gifts for Mothering Sunday via Amazon, so I thought the least I could do was produce a decent meal. I did oven chips, as they always seem better than wedges, and I found, as usual, that onion rings at home are never as good as onion rings when eating out. We also had peas with garlic and mushrooms, so I kept the veg level reasonable. My vision didn’t extend as far as a fancy pudding so we had fresh fruit.

You need very finely chopped garlic when making the peas (a new recipe for me, if you can call it that), every time I peel  garlic clove I remember an incident with a teacher. I was demonstrating on the farm and had trouble peeling one. He told me, in front of the whole class, it wasn’t even worth trying to peel cloves as it wasn’t possible.  Several teachers did that sort of thing o me. I doubt they would have appreciated me walking into class and correcting them in front of their pupils.

I needed three more and prepared each of them in seconds. It’s normally that easy, and he looked like an idiot.

Whenever I peel a clove of garlic these days I think of him and regret the incident. I shouldn’t have continued to peel the cloves, but I needed them and couldn’t think of a tactful way to do it and let him save face. Having said that, much as I regret it, he brought it on himself. A true dilemma, and not really my fault, even though I do feel bad about it.

I’ll post some pizza photos from my great days as a baking instructor, such as they were.

 

 

Porridge, Poetry and Procrastination

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We have woken, eaten porridge, drunk excessive tea, watched birds on the feeders and I have answered comments and made comments. I have seen peregrines in Australia, Battersea power station in London and the tops of several Lake District hills. I have also exchanged comments with a proper poet and expressed an intention to steal from his blog to write a haibun. It is two weeks before submissions end  for this month and I have several options open to me.

There are three reasonable journals closing at the end of the month, or I could wait a couple of months, give myself time to mull it over, and submit to another one. April is a slow month for submissions and a bit of a lottery as that journal asks for just one poem and uses a guest editor. I don’t want to waste it. Decisions . . .

People generally say that you should write a poem and let it mature. It does help at times, I admit. But sometimes I have written  a poem, decided it was ready, sent it and had it accepted within a very short span. This is not the norm, but i has happened. Some, as you know, have gone out three or four times before being accepted. Some never make it. I could fill a book with the poems that never made it into print, but it would be a dreadful  read. My bad poems are just dull and fall far short of McGonigal’s epic awfulness.

The other factor pushing me towards using the idea and sending the poem is that once I get this idea on paper I can have another idea. They don’t come along with the regularity of buses, or sausages, but it does seem easier to have another idea once one is safely down on paper. I used to be terrible at his, saving ideas for the right moment, afraid that I might squander them on unworthy poems, and, eventually over-thinking and strangling them.

Anyway, can’t sit about chatting about poetry all day, I have to go and write some. I also have to make sandwiches for noon, as Julia needs to get off to the tea room.

11.17 – need a title, photos and tags then I can get some writing done and start making tomato sandwiches.

Porridge for breakfast then tomato sandwiches. You can see why my writing tends to be dull rather than Bacchanalian, can’t you?

 

Finally, a photograph that appeals to my fondness for history and rhubarb – old-fashioned terracotta rhubarb forcers.

All pictures from the RHS Gardens at Harlow Carr in March 2019.

 

11.35 – must get on with sandwiches. (I’m not slowing down, I merely diverted to reading a special off er on extra large shirts. It’s procrastination rather than writer’s block that holds me back.

 

 

Breakfast Thoughts

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Saturday morning, just after 8am and I am starving. It is a dilemma. Julia is having a lie in so if I start making breakfast I will probably disturb her with all the clattering in the kitchen. I will also be selecting a time for her to wake up, which is not really the point of a lie in. The whole concept really demands that you are allowed to wake when you want and ease yourself out from under the covers at a time you feel is suitable.

On the other hand, someone making breakfast for you is always a bonus.

As a compromise, although I’m hungry enough for a cooked breakfast, I may settle for a sensible, and quiet, meal of cereal and fruit.

It’s partly about consideration, but also partly about self-preservation. After 37 years I have learned not only to be sensitive to my wife’s welfare, but to wake her gently. She has a tendency to imitate the fabled bear with a sore head when woken suddenly, as I have found to my cost more than once.

Healthy Breakfast

No, I’m still feeling too peckish for cereal. Looks like I’m going to go for a cooked breakfast and risk the consequences, though a few harsh words are hardly a deterrent when compared to the more likely scenario of a heart attack. I just looked up heart attack and found myself smiling at the risk factors, which are very close to being a biography in my case. I note that one of the factors, which I had never seen before, is psoriatic arthritis, which is one of the two sorts I have.

I was half-expecting to read that using a keyboard with a missing “t” was a factor. It doesn’t seem to be on the list but “hostility” does, and I confess to feeling fairly hostile towards my keyboard a the moment.

As a finale, I managed to publish before the photos and title, so I can now mention “senior moment” too.

A Tale of Two Results

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My Orange Parker Pen

I have just had another poem accepted, a haiku. It is 8 words long and scarcely seems long enough to be a poem but i is, and you wouldn’t believe how hard they are to write. I don’t normally have haiku accepted, and I sometimes have them mentioned as the reason for rejecting haibun, so I am quite pleased with this. Perhaps I’m starting to get the hang of this, though I’ve thought that before and been wrong.

A little later, I had a rejection. My poetry does not “fit the shape of the issue”.  All sorts of replies spring to mind. I could offer to write round poems perhaps . . .

In the end, I won’t. There’s no real etiquette for thanking someone for turning down your poetry for years on end that doesn’t risk being seen as sarcastic. Anyway, rejection rarely bothers me these days and in this case I sent my submissions expecting a rejection so it’s attracting my attention only because I need something to write about. Submitting to this particular periodical is actually more like an inoculation than a submission: I do it to ensure I keep my level of immunity topped up.

I have a submission window closing on the 15th, which is quite soon. It’s for haiku and I am going to polish up the rejects from this month and send them out again. Obviously, looking at them a second time will reveal a few with faults, but over half, maybe with the odd tweak, will be going out again. As I’ve said before, it’s surprising how many make it after two or three attempts.

Julia went to Nottingham by train earlier this week and passed this sign on he way. It commemorates Mallard’s world speed record.

Ten Minutes

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Ten minutes? That’s cutting it fine even by my standards.

Balfour Declaration Medal 1967 (Obverse) It is a big medallion – 59mm in diameter.

Much of today’s writing was about a bronze medal commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration (1917). It’s often taken as an important step in the founding of the modern state of Israel.

Of course, by another interpretation, it’s also one of the steps in producing the events we now see in Gaza and the Middle East.

Balfour Declaration Medal 1967 (Reverse)

The trick in writing an article about this (it was part of the material in my postponed presentation “The Dark Side of the Medal”) is not in writing about the ramifications, or the political deals that were done, but in writing about it in a suitably neutral tone so nobody is offended by what I say.

My subject is not the rights and wrongs of Middle Eastern politics, but the man who designed the medal, the design and the fact that it is made in tombac. In numismatics we call a lot of medallions “bronze” when they aren’t. It’s a natural progression – gold, silver, bronze. Bronze is a mixture of copper and tin. Tombac is a mixture of copper and zinc. It’s cheaper, it can be made to look like bronze, or even gold, depending on the mix, but it is actually a type of brass.

The Balfour Declaration – well-meaning but, in hindsight, flawed

The campaign stars of the Second World War were made from tombac, as were some Canadian wartime coins. 

Designer’s name

The designer of the Balfour medal is Paul Vincze, (1907– 94) a Jewish-Hungarian sculptor who moved to the UK in 1938 to avoid Nazi persecution. He had a distinctive style and is probably best known for his series of 1964 Shakespeare medallions celebrating the 400th anniversary of the playwright’s birth. He also designed coins for Ghana, Guinea, Libya, Malawi and Nigeria.

Shakespeare Medallion by Paul Vincze

Yes, I cheated. I published then went back to add the photos as I got to 11.59 and only 230 words.

 

The Dull Daily Post

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Mute Swan Carsington Water

After last night’s close shave (I pressed the button with a minute to spare) I thought I’d write the daily post in plenty of time. It’s 8.45, I’ve scuffled through a bit of poetry in my files and established tha I have about 16 poems that are either finished or close to being finished. That should do me for this month as I need between six and nine.

Some of them have been “close to being finished” for several months now, as it’s quite a general category.

Apart from that, looking a my emails (nothing of interest) and answering three comments, there is little to report. I’m just wondering what to do for breakfast, then I’m going to get ready for the doctor and, after that is over, I will take Julia on an expedition to find someone to alter her wedding suit.

It’s nice to get out and about and be useful, but less satisfactory to be used as a taxi service.

That’s the trouble with early blogging. I’ve done nothing to report. If I leave it late, however, I’ve forgotten most of the events of the day, and sometimes, as last night, run out of time.

World events continue to be farcical when viewed from afar. However, I feel guilty for saying that, as I’m sure they are less funny close up.

I’m still not clear why countries can’t just leave each other alone. You don’t need to agree with your neighbour, but you don’t need to invade it either.

Mute Swan