The Wind

Not a day you'd want to go outside. The noise for one thing, it sounds like a train station; and the air is filled with blowing detritus. The ridge in a full gale. The trees blowing around at different frequencies depending on their height and girth so there is a loud scraping of branches, and snapping, like gunshots, when something breaks off. A wild and wooly ride. I'm engaged all day by a book on machicolation. There's a lot of hokum, but it does support my thoughts about Phoenician travels. There's quite a bit of physical evidence from South America. Also connects (as I had, from different sources) an early Indus Valley script with that of Easter Island. And those pesky Olmec heads that clearly depict a different race. I should have published that essay, "Some Thoughts On The Phoenician Diaspora" but I left the only copy of it in a Doctor's waiting room. He'd agreed to have lunch with me to talk about tropical diseases. I pulled this same stunt with Gordon Wasson, the only time I ever had lunch at the Harvard Club (we ended up spending several hours talking about the Amanita family of mushrooms) and one of the best conversations I've ever had. Thinking about The Laws Of Form today, and I can't find my copy. I hope to god that I didn't lend it out. I don't think I would, but I might have. Call and recall. I have a condition whereby my neck oil rots collars. It's been explained to me as either poor personal hygiene, or a genetic disorder. My Mom, an excellent seamstress, used to turn the collars of my shirts when they were worn through, now I buy one new denim shirt a year, and the rest fall into rotation. Just when I think the roar of the wind has reached a maximum it blows stronger. Sometime after dark it starts whistling. Warm enough that I don't need a fire, which is a good thing because even the stove-pipe is singing, which it almost never does. When the wind blows like this the house moves little, breathes in and out. The load is perfectly carried, but you can see the stress work through the posts and beams. A little flex is a good thing. Viking longboats took full advantage of this, moving like a porpoise. In the course of an hour I trap three mice and a fourth one knocks the spatula out of a skillet on the stove, and I have to laugh at myself, what serves as my entertainment. I listened to some great blues guitar, Dwayne Allman backing up Boz Skaggs. Made a great casserole, noodles, ground lamb, onion, tomatoes, several cheeses. This is four or five meals, with garlic toast and a salad, and tasty to boot, and it ends up costing $1.36 a serving, which saves enough money to buy this week's oysters. I'm on top of this. I track the economics because I need to, it's interesting, and I'm really good with simple arithmetic. Anything up through geometry, figuring the angle of a roof; I'd never actually needed algebra, figuring for the unknown, until Marilyn wanted a divorce. This casserole is so good, and it's supposed to be cold tomorrow night, I want to bake it with another layer of cheese on top, and eat an avocado. Then maybe a key-lime pie. The oven was hot so I cooked a corn-pone. The house was warm enough to take a sponge bath and wash my hair. Snow showers forecast for Saturday night so I'll make a run to town tomorrow, spend a longer time at the library and get a few extra books. I was reading about some artifacts found in the last couple of decades, now that a metal alloy can be specifically sited. Copper from the UP in Michigan turns up in Asia, tin from South America turns up in the Indus Valley. I need to read this guy, Jared Diamond (a Geographer, of course) because his name keeps coming up. Guns, Germs, And Steel is referenced in several different fields. B can probably get it through the university library system. And I need some light fiction, to take the edge off a cold day. A big biography of someone I don't know much about, another Greenblatt book, another Petroski, the history of something. I think I have a history of glass in the Goodwill pile. The mice are driving me crazy and the traps have all died, so I make the famous walking-the-plank trap, over near where all of the skillets are piled up, two-deep, nine skillets. I used the five gallon bucket, with a couple inches of water, taped a shingle-shim over the top, and baited it with peanut butter. Backed it against a shelf and turned off the light. Three mice by midnight. When we old trappers get together, we talk about nights like this. I'm working on a trap that'll fling the mouse against a backboard, which will light up, and drop it into a basket. I'm using a rat trap, which is sprung by a mouse trap, I've hurt myself several times, and I'm having some difficulty with accuracy. Dead mouse, feet per second, x number of foot pounds, blunderbuss, 147 pigeons at a single blast, all of that, but I wanted to tell you, the wind has died down, and I feel pretty good.