Cello Suites

A couple of hours before I could turn on Black Dell, so I laid out on the floor with my camping pad and listened all the way through the Cello Suites. Rostropovich. Nearly two-and-a-half hours. Yo Yo Ma plays them faster. Didn't go to town for the AC because I had some reading going on and I needed to keep after it, before I forgot what I was looking up. Making notes in longhand that I'd have to decipher later. Subject of the moment is the plow. I was reading about the John Deere Company, they made the steel turning plows that broke the prairie. Then tractors to pull the plows, and all those feed-caps so common in farm country. Their colors, as are the colors for other brands of equipage, are patented or copyrighted and you have to buy from them, which is why my 8N was purple (left-over paint at Rip Raper's Body Shop, Duck Hill, Mississippi). I was at a tractor show in Iowa and actually touched a Minneapolis-Moline UDLX Comfortractor. It was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen; a sedan model, with windshield wipers. And that great golden yellow paint. There were only 150 of these ever built. Too comfortable for comfort, you needed shit in your face and metal seating, to know that you were working. What is that crap that accumulates? Swarf. The grit worn away from grinding stones, later it becomes metal shavings. A squintard is one who squints. A staithe is a wharf, a stent is an allotted portion of work, I knew that; many a stent I've worked for other people, when they needed to be with family for one reason or another. A stent is a unit of work, you can trade it for a carton of cigarettes. A clear problem with looking something up in many reference books is getting side-tracker by neighboring words. I usually post a small note on the upper left corner of the screen. The current one says Plow (Plough) and has already proven of use several times. At some point I was reading about yoking yak in Tibet. Which led to a brief study of various harness. Which leads to an early drink, and a consideration of what book I might write that would be titled It's All In The Rigging, thinking about the title for B's collected poems, coming out maybe next year. I eat another of the Angus Patties smothered under chilled tomato, mozzarella, and a good balsamic, then clean the plate with several of these wonderful and simple garlic toast/crotons. These are usually quarter slices of bread, smeared with butter, sprinkled with garlic salt and run through the toaster oven; any kind of bread, but B's French loaf is particularly absorbent. The pre-washing aspects of this are important, as water is always an issue; it's a strong argument for keeping a dog but I'd rather the crotons. Plough, of course, in the Britannica, and that side-bars me into 'ough' as an ending. A location, certainly, borough, slough (usually pronounced 'slew' in the south); and I finally look up, from a dictionary of Americanisms, where slew can mean a mess, and remember that wasn't what I was trying to find out about. There are Egyptian depictions of plows, but then the ground being plowed was all alluvial silt and a fire-hardened stump crotch could last a couple of years. There must be a bronze-edged plow in a tomb somewhere, iron held a better edge, but steel, that was the thing. I have to read about making steel, forcing carbon into the mix under higher temps, coal into coke to provide the extra push. I've only ever made small quantities of charcoal, but I'd like too make a large serious pile, one I could walk on and poke with a stick. All Universities with a ceramic program have an accumulation of dead clay. I could cover a charcoal mound with clay and have tight control on the burn. It's fair to say, that if I put my mind to it, I could make very good charcoal. Which would allow me, with a bellows, to make bronze. Four or five to one with tin. Bells again. The sixth seems to be written for a different stringed instrument, a cello with five strings. Go figure.