Today's work-gig

I have a few rules on this blog.

I don't show pictures of minors. 

I don't list their real, searchable-on-the-internet names.

If I am working for somebody, my time belonged to them and I don't share any details that might prove embarrassing in the future.

I can share that I did help the young guy out today.

I was able to be productive for about three hours.

No money changed hands.

His two dogs liked me. 

He invited me back if I ever want to burn calories outside of a gymnasium. 

One of the joys of being an old-geezer

One of the joys of being an old-geezer is that I can pop-in to a situation, do-my-thing and then pop out. Nobody expects me to work 60 hours a week.

My mental image is of a sprite who flits about with an oil-can. An axle that squeaks calls the sprite who administers a drop or two of oil. Then a hinge that moans when the door is opened. Then a motor that screams under load...

The amount of work and the volume of oil that is applied is microscopic. The benefits are enormous.

Sometimes simply having another set of eyes to watch the bubble in the level's sight-glass and hands to hold two-by-fours in-place while the young-dude shoots the screws is priceless.

Or to have somebody at the electric fence energizer to turn it on-and-off while somebody else walks the fence clearing trash that is shorting it out can save miles-and-miles of walking. God bless cellphones!

Rust, rot and depreciation never sleep. There is always work that needs to be done. Piles of lumber to be restacked. Pallets to be moved. Brush to be cut. Weeds to be sprayed. Items to be cleaned. The tops of tall furniture to be dusted. Trash to be picked up. Items to be picked up at the grocery store or pharmacy. Dogs to be walked. Drywall to be patched. Chickens to be let-out in the morning and locked up at night. Older people in need of company to make going for a walk doable.

Most of that work does not require the stamina of a marathon runner or the strength of a weight-lifter. An accountant has a hard time putting a value on the benefits of that kind of work, consequently much of it goes undone for want for somebody to do it.

We all have our special gifts. There are many tasks that are not-my-thing but you will be hard pressed to find a better person to walk a fence-row and graft the volunteer apple and pear seedlings to more desirable varieties. I am also fair hand at listening to somebody who needs a sympathetic ear and digging holes in the ground.

There are others who are gifted at organizing and cleaning. Some have the gift-of-gab or who have instant rapport with children and animals. There is plenty of work for all of us.

I have been on the receiving end of the generous old-geezer network. Mrs ERJ flew down to visit her sister during peak-Covid. There were absolutely no rental cars to be had. I reached out to another old-geezer who owed me absolutely nothing and he drove to the airport and transported her to her sister's house. That doesn't sound like much except for the fact that it was a 180 mile round trip. There are some things that cannot be purchased with money.

For the record, I have a gig lined up for tomorrow. I will be helping a young guy get his farm in apple-pie order for winter. Even though I am old and feeble, I still have more upper-body strength than his petite wife. Also, if he hits his thumb with a hammer and a bad word slips out...I am hard of hearing when that sort of thing happens.

In return I will get the satisfaction of knowing that I am still useful. And if I find myself needing a "real" job I can always list him as a reference. 

Rebuke and discipline

 

He (Jesus) said to his disciples, “Things that cause sin will inevitably occur, but woe to the person through whom they occur. It would be better for him if a millstone were put around his neck and he be thrown into the sea than for him to cause one of these little ones (children) to sin. 

 

Be on your guard! If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him.  And if he wrongs you seven times in one day and returns to you seven times saying, ‘I am sorry,’ you should forgive him.”   -Luke 17:1-4

 

A random story

I used to work with a woman named Carol Grove and one of her jobs was to screen applicants who wanted to work in the factory.

 

One part of her screening process involved the assembly of a "clock". The directions were printed out and handed to the applicant. Carol read the directions to the applicant and the table-top was an enlarged, laminated copy of the instructions. Then Carol demonstrated how to assemble the clock while giving a running commentary.

 

The "clock" consisted of a case that snapped together and three "gear sets". Each gear-set consisted of two gears, one large and one small and the hole through the gears was sized so it could only slide down the proper shaft. Each gear was color coded: One might have the large gear green and the small gear white. The next gear-set might have the large gear white (to mesh with the previous small gear) and its small gear might be yellow.

 

Due to the sizing of the gears, there was no way to mis-assemble the gears and still be able to snap the cover on the clock when they were done.

 

The final instruction was to turn the clock over and spin the arm on the back and watch the top gear (which had clock-arms painted on it) spin.

 

90% of the applicants failed to perform the last step because Carol had told them it was impossible to mis-assemble the clock. They could see with their own eyes that it was impossible to mis-assemble the clock.

 

The applicant failed if they did not perform the last step.

 

The reasoning was that we might assume a reason for doing something but it is often a partial reason. For example, cycling the gears might distribute lubrication or it might identify extreme variation that can add-up to lock the mechanism. The company wanted employees who performed the job as they had been instructed and to not make judgments like "I can leave out that step because I don't think it is needed." 

 

Back to the snip from the Bible

It is inevitable that people who are living and working in close proximity will do things that cause friction. They will infringe on you.

 

When that happens, we have an obligation to "rebuke them". That is, tell them what they did. Tell them what they should have done. Tell them what the difference was.

 

Their role, if they want a harmonious "family" is to either agree with you or explain how your perceptions are inaccurate or incomplete.

 

Likely, they were unaware of how their actions were inflicting pain. They "repent" and ask for forgiveness and vow to do better.

 

At that point, we "forgive" them.

 

Nearly everybody get hung up on the "seven times" or "seven times seventy" and we space the language about the place of discipline and that forgiveness comes with conditions.

 

Love is discipline

A larger issue is that Biblical love is not what many people think it is.

 

In today's culture, "Love" is the feeling of basking in self-admiration as we tell ourselves, "I am an awesome specimen of altruism as I protect others from all discomfort".  Yes, that is one kind of love: Self-love.

 

Both the Old and the New Testament repeatedly point out that the father who loves his son DISCIPLINES him (link). The father who loves his son programs him to be successful. He programs his son by feeding him challenges that stretch him. The son will fail some of the challenges but learning how to overcome failure is one of the skills the son needs to master to be successful in the larger sense.

 

When John wrote "God is Love", he didn't mean the Hallmark Card kind of love. He meant the kind of love that includes discipline. 

 

Enabling a son or daughter is programming him/her to crash-and-burn when you (the parent) are no longer there. It is a cruel thing to do to somebody. 

If you look at the four verses listed above, they seem kind of disjoint and hodge-podge. If you look at them through the lens of "discipline" and "instruction" and "rebuke", then the verse about leading children astray becomes crystal-clear.

 

Our children are not just our children. Nor are our coworkers and fellow church-goers just NPC in our own personal story. They are brothers-in-arms against Satan, the stumbling-block.

 

A shout-out to the Veterans

To every veteran and to every NCO out there, thanks for what you did.

 

Whether you know it or not, you provided the discipline that helped many unfortunately mis-parented people grow up. 

 

Fine Art Tuesday

Not your typical English flower. Biographical details are lacking but he may have traveled to Italy or Spain as many British artists did

John Dawson Watson was a British painter born in 1832 and died in 1892 of a respiratory infection.

His "business model" was to produce very large numbers of small paintings that he could produce quickly. The large number provided a fairly even stream of income. The downside is that the format does not scale up well; the enlarged images either lack detail or the positions of the human bodies seem "off". 

 

 

Tryst

At the cottage

Gathering winkles (small, edible sea-snails)

Intuition and coffee cake

Intuition

Pay attention to your intuitions.

One of the downsides of the Feminization of our culture (for lack of a better term) is that ideas that resist analysis by verbalizing are dismissed as unimportant or result in endless argument. For example, I was showing somebody how to prune a tree and told them how to hold the by-pass cutters to reduce the effort to cut the limbs. I was demonstrating this as I told them.

To my consternation they insisted that I use words to explain why that worked. I said "It works. Just try it." No go. They refused to do it "my way" unless I could use words to describe friction and vectors and bending moments and the distribution of compressive stresses in a beam. Some concepts resist verbal explanation.

Much of what we call "intuition" falls into this "resistant to verbal explanation" category. 

A hunch or gut-feel might be triggered by an unusual swirling of a crowd that avoids a certain vehicle idling beside the road or maybe pedestrians giving one particular doorway and extra 3' of distance. It might be a smell that is out of place or a conversation switching to a foreign language or a high-pitched whistle and heat felt on your cheek. Only after-the-fact can those cues be teased out of the deluge of information we operate within.

While you are in the maelstrom, get off the X. Don't stop and analyze. Move to safety. Drag those who depend upon your wisdom with you. If others follow, that is fine.  

Coffee cake 

 

Sylvester McMonkey McBean 

Quicksilver is busy reading about Sylvester McMonkey McBean and Thing One and Thing Two giving me  a minute to throw together this quick post. 

I am willing to do my part

You know, if the government shutdown inconvenienced the IRS, I will cheerfully support moving tax-day from April 15, 2026 to November 1, 2026.

Grab-bag

I went to our quarterly "high-school buddies" lunch yesterday.

I sat next to one of the men who was in the same Boy Scout troop that I was in. In fact, he was one of the kids who twisted my arm to join. Consequently, I owe him a debt of gratitude.

Tim always thought before he spoke and is invariably economical with his words. His observations are incisive and cut to the heart of the matter.

I asked him what he did that gave him satisfaction or a sense of fulfillment.

He shared that he is very active in the Knights of Columbus (a fraternal organization) and that he delivers a two or three minute lecture or "fable" once a month. The content is highly variable but his goal is to connect-the-dots in a way that makes baffling events snap into focus.

Part of the secret-sauce of his talks is that he seldom gives them new information. He paints the background by reminding them of seemingly unrelated items that every member of the audience has at least some degree of awareness of. The climax of his speech is when he skewers the tidbits on a kebab-stick and creates a focal-plane that makes everything clear, sort of like a cut-away drawing showing the innards of a mechanical watch. 

I joked that he didn't deliver TED Talks, he deliveres TIM Talks.

He agreed that was more-or-less true. He also shared that it takes a huge amount of time to compress that degree of information into less than 180 seconds. It isn't just the amount of information, but creating the flow that makes it seamless and easy for the listener to absorb.

That is an interesting ministry.

Kentucky and West Virginia to tax Pepsi Corporation profits

When Mamdani was asked about the risks of companies headquartered in NYC leaving due to higher taxation rates, he blew-off the concern with an interesting legal solution. "If they continue to do any business in New York, we will continue to tax them."

I am sure that legislators in Charleston and Frankfort took notice. Consumption of soda-pop causes a great deal of damage to the health of people in Appalachia. It directly impacts oral health, diabetes and obesity. All of those are huge drains on the financial coffers of those states.

Also up for grabs are the profits of any network that broadcast content in Kentucky or West Virginia, advertising firms whose work is carried by those broadcasters, profits of banks that finance any activity in either of those two states, law firms that ever filed a brief in either of those two states...

Yessirree, that Mamdani fellow is bringing joy to Appalachia with his profound insights on capitalism and taxation. 

Weather

It will be cold on Monday with a low of 21F. That is not cold by January standards.

The mid-West has a "Continental climate". That means large excursions in temperature are to be expected.

Seed collecting

Seed collecting is in process. I-115 persimmon seeds, Goosepond and Kanza pecans are packed away. Bald cypress seeds are being hydrated before being packed in sand and stored. I still need to pick Lehman's Delight persimmons and process them for seeds. I purchased some Red Oak acorns from a vendor on eBay but they haven't arrived yet.

I also have about 70 Red Haven peach pits that my sister saved for me.  

My focus has shifted over the last few years from "Collect lots of seeds" to "Plant the seeds I collected". I am very good at running from twenty-yard-line to twenty-yard-line. I struggle to punch the ball into the end-zone.

Continuing to pilfer from Midwest Chick's hoard