Feeling Peckish

By my own rules, I should have gone to town, because it's still February and the driveway was solid, but I didn't feel up to it. Reconditioned a cast iron skillet, ate oatmeal, and drank tea. No fire, no carrying wood, it's sixty degrees outside, sixty-five tomorrow and I make plans for a sponge bath and hair wash. Scrubbing my neck and back would be good. Thinking about compaction, load and attachment, because a friend (an acquaintance from the past) called about a structural problem. We talked about the Loretto Chapel staircase, the way a helix might bond. My own experience is that if the load is carried perfectly, or close to perfectly, since most of the components are under compression, you don't need a lot of additional structure. The last couple of staircases I built, the treads carried the load down to a point. I made sure that point was well anchored. Injected concrete, pile-driven steel, anchor bolts in bedrock, whatever solution. I had a post-it note with two words, separate and underlined, Truss and Wheel. I was reading about the sweet potato, which seems to be of west African origin, and how it was being grown on the west coast of South America (Peru) 2800 BC, and I was having trouble with the geography. Of course it's true that you don't know who to believe. I trusted my teachers until I was in high school, then not so much. My American History teacher, 10th grade, was completely full of shit, I knew more about American History than he did, and it bothered him, so he failed me. The only course I ever failed in high school. I quit athletics that same year because he was the baseball coach. I was a pretty good utility infielder, but I couldn't hit a curve ball. Which might well describe my current status, not seeing the break. Ted Williams describing the seams of a fastball. In that fraction of time making a decision. Swing or not swing. The first recorded use of the truss, a famous bridge across the Danube, is shown, clearly on one of those Trajan columns: a diagonal load-bearing member. Buttresses allowed for thin walls and windows, queen posts and hammer trusses allowed open views. The mention of 'wheel' was just a reference to how you moved large heavy things, which is a subject that's always interested me. A log round soon falls apart, what you need is a rimmed spoke thing, a wheel. 2500 BC there's a bronze bushing lubricated with oil and a spoked wheel. Right on.