by Peter Rodman
But anyone could make beer. I'd drunk homemade beer, it was good; nutritious too. I got 40 or 50 empty champagne bottles after one New Year's tour of dumpsters and cleaned them out. The book said you could buy the yeast and malt syrup at any supermarket and the crocks and hydrometer at any hardware store. You couldn't, it was an old book. There are brewery supply houses in town and I wrote down the addresses a dozen times, but I never got there before I lost the addresses. A few months ago, I took the bottles to the dump. It's just as well for several reasons.
Depending upon your point of view, I either drink very well indeed or not very well at all; it probably isn't a good idea for me to both make and drink the stuff.
Also, there seems to be a chronic problem with home brew: it explodes. With my luck, I would have ended up with beer all over my eggshell white paper, my boatbuilding books, my darkroom equipment, my pump (if you're going to drill your own well, you need a pump), my boxes of electronics parts, my lumber, my lawnmower parts, and my tools. My garage would be a mess.
Cosmic Fudge Factors
Leap years astounded me as a kid. I was amazed that every four years people just jammed another day into the year and it always turned out to be February 29th.
Why not January 32nd?--instead of making an odd month like February look a little more normal, why not make a normal month like January look odd?
Why every four years? How did they get everyone in the world to agree to an extra day on that one day out of the three hundred sixty-some-odd days they had to choose from? Certainly not through the United Nations. Did anyone abstain from leap years--Benin perhaps? or Paraguay?
And how did they possibly work things out with the sun? A year is the time it takes the earth to make one orbit around the sun; how did the folks in charge of this scheme manage to get the earth to spend an extra day in its orbit around the sun on leap years?
Being incalculably wiser--not to mention taller--these days, I now realize that a leap year isn't some ego-driven scam by humanity trying to pull something over on a universe that can't or won't defend itself. Rather, it's an adjustment by man to a universe that refuses to conform to his 365 day calendar. As such, it's kind of neat. It shows that in the face of incontrovertible facts and with the full weight of the earth, sun, stars, and of the four seasons pressing on him, that man will indeed humbly acquiesce to the inevitable and change. Assuming of course that there's something in it for him--like having all his appointments come out on the right day.
Which brings up poor George Washington and the Natomases.
George Washington was actually born on February 11, 1732--at least that's what the calendar said when he was born. But the calendar was wrong, it was 11 days "slow" because of missed leap years, and when those extra days were added during his lifetime, Washington's birthday moved to February 22nd.
Washington's birthday stayed at February 22nd until the energy crisis, when Congress moved a whole bunch of national holidays to various Mondays to conserve fuel. The thinking was that if the holidays fell in the middle of the week, people would drive (to have fun) for their midweek holiday as well as for their standard weekend fun-having. But if these holidays fell on Mondays, people would drive only during the weekends, thereby conserving fuel. Besides, more people die in traffic accidents during three day weekends than two day weekends and more deaths means fewer drivers, and ultimately less fuel used.
Which I'm sure would make George Washington happy (assuming one could explain the concept of gasoline to him,) except for one thing. George's birthday is now celebrated on the third Monday in February. This means that it's impossible for George Washington's birthday ever to be celebrated on February 22nd. The 21st is the closest we can ever get.
So now George's birthday is kicked loose on the calendar to wander from date to date in early February, but never to fall on George's birthday. Not because of a leap year or even an eclipse, but just because someone thought folks drove too much.
And the poor Natomases sprawling out across the floodplain north of Sacramento, what about them? After all the investment, all the political wheedling, just as development was about to take off, the federal government steps in and declares the whole area to be the floodplain of the Sacramento River. Construction will be complicated because fill will have to be trucked in to raise the grade, or levees built, or huge flood insurance bonds paid, and all this trouble is caused by what? By nature getting in the way again.
It's just another case of nature butting its nose in where it doesn't belong. The developers certainly never asked for the land they own to sit below the flood level of the Sacramento River, and they certainly were never consulted about water tending to run downhill. So who is to blame for noticing these peculiarities and forcing the developers to face facts of nature?
Obviously: the federal government. The Feds could have held off a little longer. There was no reason to call the area floodplain. Construction could have gone on cheaply and at a high profit for years. Then, after the checks cleared the bank, and the river water was flowing in over the windowsills, the Feds could have mentioned it.
And maybe that's the answer to the question I was wondering about earlier: "Is there anyone who abstains from leap year?" Perhaps a group of people who refuse to face facts of nature when those facts prove inconvenient would abstain. Does anyone know if real estate developers have February 29th on their calendars this year?
Cute Anomalies
I know a woman, I'll call her Elaine, though that's not her real name (her real name is Diana), who likes dolls and teddy bears. She likes buying them, making them, owning them, and even likes pictures of dolls and teddy bears.
Elaine has six or eight bears in her office at work, not counting seasonal bears (Santa bears, Pilgrim bears, Irish bears), along with a couple of bear pictures. She also sews ragdolls and replicas of Victorian porcelain- headed dolls. She puts long hours of work and more than a little love in her sewing.
As a result of her collecting and sewing, every room in Elaine's house is now packed with dolls and stuffed animals-- which on the surface has absolutely nothing to do with what comes next.
Last week, Elaine's husband Al, which is not his real name, his real name is Richard, but everyone calls him Dick, was at home one evening playing a computer video game. In the next room the hamster decided to run in his cage wheel for some exercise. The hamster's wheel has a squeak, and the squeak is just the right frequency to trip the remote control on the family television. The hamster changed the television channel six times while Al was trying to play his video game.
So what? What's the point? What's the connection?
So this: it's a cute thing to have happen; is it a coincidence? I don't think it is.
The hamster incident didn't happen among the street drunks at the Bannon Street Men's Shelter and it didn't happen in a divorce lawyer's office; it happened in a place packed full of cute teddy bears and dolls. A cute thing happened in a cute place, and that's ominous.
Astronomers tell us there exist anomalies called black holes. These places contain huge quantities of matter-- often as much as a million suns--in a very small, possibly nonexistent, space. There is so much matter in so small a space and the gravitational field is so fierce that not even light can escape the gravity, and all matter from far away is swept in and lost forever. It is a black hole in space.
And now we have a cute anomaly: a very small area with an accumulation of cute things which seems to feed itself and produce cute incidents. Is it an accident Elaine and Al have a hamster? and tropical fish? and a cute kid? The question is, how far do the cute incidents extend around the anomaly? Are the neighbors affected?
We're lucky that something more serious isn't at work here. Suppose, for instance, that putting a large quantity of quaint in a small area caused more quaint to be produced. Why, in a short time Old Sacramento, Oldtown Folsom and Historic Old Auburn would grow into each other to form a historic megalopolis. Virtual
ly anywhere you went in this part of Northern California you would be able to buy kites and frozen yogurt, just like the old sourdoughs did 140 years ago.
Luckily, quaint anomalies seem to attract not-very-quaint overweight men in plaid bermuda shorts and Lithuanian Dixieland Jazz bands. Quaint is ultimately destructive of itself; we need not fear being rustic-ed to death.
It's hard to know whether this black hole of cute should alarm us. People have lived long, cute lives, so there's no danger to public health or safety, and it probably isn't even necessary to regulate the amount of cuteness in an area with zoning laws.
But there should be some kind of research done on containing and directing cute with carefully placed alarming or upsetting items. A couple of possibilities for such items are harsh, garish, violent paintings of the German Expressionistic school, and softball league grand prize trophies.
A Fresh Diaper
I've begun laughing suddenly and for no apparent reason. I didn't make a decision to, I just notice more and more things that amuse or delight me and the laughing just burbles out.
Granted, some people find it alarming, especially when they don't see any joke, but it's probably better than my bursting into tears without warning. Occasionally people actually ask, "What's so funny?" in an effort to get in on the laughing. (Most people enjoy laughing.) I usually explain if I can, but they often persist in not seeing anything funny.
Here are some things I laugh at these days:
--Rain soaks my hair, and just as I'm about to get seriously angry at this particular low pressure area from the Gulf of Alaska, a cold trickle of water runs from my hair down the back of my neck, under my shirt collar and down my back. The shock starts me laughing; I forget to be angry.
--Almost anything legislative. Most of it is pretty silly stuff.
--Sitting at my desk adding up the column and crossfoot totals on a complicated spreadsheet after several weeks of work. I enter the final number and hit the equal key. The total of the rows matches the total of the columns to the penny. Everything is correct the first time; I don't have to find any mistakes; I don't have to redo anything. I bust a gut laughing.
--A week after my peach tree began blossoming I go back and look at a graft that looked dead last week. Leaves are pushing out of three buds and one bud has blown out into a flower, which is being molested by a bee.
One explanation has to be that I'm going crazy. While that possibility shouldn't be ignored, another one I like better is that it's becoming simpler for me to laugh. Simpler in the sense of less involved, less complicated, less at stake. Simple: like a baby laughs.
A very small baby will laugh at almost anything surprising. Peek-a-boo is always good, birdsongs work well, as do puppies. This stuff works on babies but not much on adults. This is because babies are still new. Which is not to say babies haven't seen it before. Babies laugh at peek-a-boo time after time. It's funny regardless of how many times they see it.
Babies are still new as long as they haven't learned persistence of misery. So long as a baby can't connect this moment's playing with his dirty diaper ten minutes ago, or even more important, with his dirty diaper an hour from now, he can laugh at anything. But the moment a baby can put together a history of the world and pile up fears about tomorrow high enough to suffocate today, he has lost peek-a- boo.
I learned fear quickly. Even by the first grade enough things had gone wrong that I wasn't surprised to learn that my careful printing on Big Chief newsprint pads with lincoln-log-sized pencils wasn't really anything special. There was a kid who knew about "real writing" where all the letters connect up. I knew early that it's all a trick, that there is no now, that we only do things now to get to the promised "later."
By the time we carry attaché cases we are such planners that the present means nothing. And the very best planners are the bosses. Stick your head, unannounced, in your boss's office door. Say "peek-a-boo!" Did he laugh? Are you fired? Is this person's reaction healthy or does it smell of dirty diapers?
Some people think days have names or even are numbered; that what they do with their life on Tuesday the 6th or a thousand years after they die is less important that what they will be doing with their life now.
I find that I need a calendar to remind me of future obligations, but that I miss less of my own life when I drop the future and let yesterday take care of yesterday. Quite a lot of what I used to look past or walk by is actually pretty funny, but only if I notice it.
Teachers' Aid
Mickle wroth at the quality of our children's education, over violence and drug use in our schools, about declining test scores, overcrowded classrooms and underpaid teachers, I resolved to do something about it--all of it. And to do it now, today.
I would play Lotto 6/49. Our schools win too.
The $9 million jackpot had nothing to do with it, though naturally I had a chance to win. A chance in 14 million to win. Having studied probability and statistics in college, I know better than most people just how slim one chance in 14 million is. So I couldn't be doing it for the money. It had to be our schools.
Of course our schools also win if people play the scratch-and-sniff "Match Scents For Dollars" game, but I've always been morally opposed to gambling based on odors, so I will not play that game.
Until I finally decided to play lotto I didn't realize the extent to which our society has rallied to combat the crisis in our schools. People can help our schools win (too) in supermarkets, bars, liquor stores, bait shops, restaurants--just about anywhere. And they do line up to help--just about anywhere.
I helped in a supermarket. It's easy to play. You take your playslip and mark it by blacking in the bubbles with your numbers--just like you did taking the SAT test, the IQ test, and all the other machine-scored tests with initials for names you had to take in high school. A person can play up to five sets of six numbers, and if you suffer math anxiety and can't even come up with six numbers (but still have the money and want to help our schools) you can black in the "quick pick" bubble and the machine will pick the numbers for you.
But probably the most amazing thing about the whole procedure is that you can mark the bubbles with anything as long as the mark isn't red. Anything--pencil, pen, magic marker--they all work. I can remember when I was required to buy a Machine Scoring Pencil to mark my test answer sheets when I was in school. This pencil was so special and so important that they capitalized it in the memos. It made the only marks the machine could "read."
Even years later, taking civil service exams I had to use a soft lead pencil to mark my answers. But science is also behind the movement to help our schools win (too), and bubble-filling technology has been refined to the point where computers can now read marks made in earwax.
The machine that records the playslip is a wonder. It sucks the slip in and immediately spits it out, along with the lotto ticket printed with the numbers you picked or the machine quick-picked for you. It takes less than a second.
When I played at the supermarket, a rather long line of educational philanthropists waited for someone to show up to process their donations. Suddenly a teacher's aide closed her checkstand, dashed across the supermarket, grabbed slips and money and handed out tickets, and was back at her checkstand within a minute.
Education technology has surpassed even supermarket laser technology. A person's money can be deposited (and no doubt immediately helping our schools) in seconds. It takes much longer to buy a pack of gum with cash at a supermarket checkstand. It's good to know our schools have such sophisticated equipment.
This advanced technology is encouraging; I remember the equipment we had when I was in high school. The film projector sprocket slipped during a showing of "LSD-25," tore the sprocket holes on the film so it couldn't feed, and Sonny Bono--a man we all identified with--was trapped on the screen twitching and jerking until he twisted, blistered and curled out of existence when the bulb's heat burned the film through. Even the guys wit
h four pens in the pockets of their plaid short-sleeved shirts (I was one of these) murmured a reverential "psychedelic!".
So, yes, I did help our schools win. But what about me, you ask, did I win too?
Unfortunately, Sheila was in the hospital the night the numbers were picked, and I went with my wife to visit her. I was resigned to missing the drawing, but it was more important for me to be with my sick friend than to know the outcome of the lottery, which would be in the next day's paper anyway. Sheila was drifting in and out of consciousness--watching Jeopardy, but only momentarily returning to reality to groan the question to an answer called for three plays back. Then Jeopardy ended, Sheila slipped into a troubled sleep, and the lotto drawing came on the television.
I really have only two complaints about Lotto 6/49. The first is that no one under 18 can play, meaning school children cannot participate in helping their schools win while at the same time sharpening their bubble-filling skills.
And secondly, there aren't enough prizes. Do you realize you don't win anything if you only pick one right number and they won't even give you your money back?
Pig Poop Problem
The news is in from Holland, and it's pretty grim.
People like Dutch pork, so the Dutch have been raising more and more pigs. Currently Holland's human-to-hog ratio is one to one: 14 million of each. Or, if you prefer, 1000 of each per square mile.
Naturally there are other Dutch livestock, but by volume, most of the 93 million tons of animal manure Holland produces each year comes from its pigs.
Which would be okay, except Dutch farmers can only absorb 79 million tons of manure each year. Actually, the farmers don't absorb it, the ground does. I daresay Dutch farmers are not much different from American farmers in their personal relations with manure: enthusiastic, yet formal.
