11-11-11

There was a lot of talk today on the news about various people who had an 11-11-11 birthday or got married in large numbers at 11:11 AM on 11-11-11 since this date won't appear for another century.  I thought it would be fun to take a picture of our digital alarm clock showing 11:11 AM and also our clock with weights so I did.  I see by the clock just now that it is 10:38 soon to be 11:11 again.  I don't know that there is any special significance to the date except it's once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.  Next year there will be a 12-12-12 and that will be the last of those kind of dates until 2112. 

We had the flag out today for Veterans Day and just now I went out to take it in as it just occurred to me that we had forgotten to take it down after dark.  I remember once when we lived in Chadron, NE, that we had a renter who was a veteran who called up from the bar downtown quite drunk and told us in a slurred voice that he noticed that we had not taken our flag down yet and that it was dark already.  It was a bit humbling to be told by an old drunk that we weren't following flag etiquette!   We had a lot of strange incidents with our renters at Motel 666 (AKA Family Court).  Sometime we should write a book on eleven years of strange incidents.  

Duane had the day off from bus driving today due to Veteran's Day.  This afternoon we framed and hung a large picture about 34 in. wide and 20 in. high hung horizontally above the computer desk.   There needed to be two metal hangers on the back as it was quite heavy.   It is a limited edition of a watercolor print commissioned by the Northern Lights Council of the Boy Scouts for a gift to those who contributed $300 or more to the Scouts during their annual fundraising campaign.  There are two pheasants in the foreground with what looks like snow and a farmstead in the distance and it is named, "Looking for Refuge."  After what seemed like an hour of measuring and leveling and fooling around we finally succeeded in hanging it after having it sit around for a year or two.  Looks great!

Finally, it is 11:11 PM.  Good night!

 

Three Sheets to the Wind?

                     Mom by her wringer washing machine by cottage with a basket of laundry

                     Mom posing sawing birch wood at the lake  with clothesline in background
Recently I was thinking about the demise of clotheslines and some pleasant memories connected with them. It has been quite a few years since I have had an outdoor clothesline and asked my husband if he could put a single line out behind the garage. I do have a couple of clotheslines in the basement to use when some heavy towels or jeans don't quite get dry in the dryer. So far he hasn't installed one outside, not that it is so terribly important to me, but I suppose I had nostalgically imagined how nice it would be to occasionally hang out a quilt or some sheets. After all, I would have to haul the wet laundry up from the basement to hang them outside—probably more trouble than it would be worth.

When I was growing up, we spent the summers at Lake Beltrami near Bemidji, MN. Mom had a wringer washer outside. Water had to be heated on a stove so washing wasn't so easy. Sometimes we rinsed the clothes in the lake and we used a hand-cranked wringer mounted on the dock. We kids would wade out a ways and do the rinsing. Clothes couldn't be rinsed on a windy day because debris from the bottom would be churned up in the water near the shore but on calmer days the water was clear enough. Mom would look forward to “a good wash day,” sunny and not too windy. Clothes were hung from a long rope that was strung between the cabin and a tree near the lake. If there was a lot of wash, the clothesline would sag too close to the ground, so Mom used a long pole with a Y at the top to prop it up in the center. One time I recall that she and my grandmother hung out clothes on a very windy day and center pole and the line fell down three times. It was surely a struggle but they got quite a laugh out of it.

When I was a small child the clothesline with a blanket over it made such a cozy play tent.  Also I recall a time as a ten or twelve year-old when I ran full speed ahead and ran into the clothesline which made a stinging wound across my nose. Ouch!

My husband Duane recalls that his mother hung out clothes in the winter on the farm and they would freeze. Pairs of jeans and long underwear would be stiff as if rigor mortis had set in.  She would take them in and let the water sublime (evaporate from solid to gas) to dry in the house. The thought of this his makes one truly thankful for a modern clothes dryer!

I understand that in cities where people live in communities that have those homeowner's agreements, contracts usually prohibit painting one's home other than certain agreed-upon colors, hanging clothes out on a clothesline, etc. I suppose clotheslines could be could be an eyesore or cause a decrease in property values but Mom told me that in the old days there was a sort of etiquette to hanging out clothes. One would hang “unmentionables” (underwear—oops, sorry I mentioned them!) on the inner clothes lines and the sheets on the outside ones. Also the wash was supposed to be hung with all towels, shirts, etc. hung together in an orderly manner.

In Chadron, Nebraska, at one house in which we lived we had a fine clothesline with four or five lines held up by sturdy metal posts. I remember hanging sheets out in 90-100 degree heat in a stiff breeze and they would whip and snap violently in the wind. Summers were HOT there. The first sheets I had hung out would usually be DRY by the time the last ones were hung. Oh, what a clean ozone smell they had!

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The term “three sheets to the wind” comes to mind, but it has nothing to do with hanging the wash, I'm sure.

Phrase Finder says:
To understand this phrase we need to enter the arcane world of nautical terminology. Sailors' language is, unsurprisingly, all at sea and many supposed derivations have to go by the board. Don't be taken aback to hear that sheets aren't sails, as landlubbers might expect, but ropes (or occasionally, chains). These are fixed to the lower corners of sails, to hold them in place. If three sheets are loose and blowing about in the wind then the sails will flap and the boat will lurch about like a drunken sailor.
The phrase is these days more often given as 'three sheets to the wind', rather than the original 'three sheets in the wind'. The earliest printed citation that I can find is in Pierce Egan's Real Life in London, 1821:

"Old Wax and Bristles is about three sheets in the wind."

Sailors at that time had a sliding scale of drunkenness; three sheets was the falling over stage; tipsy was just 'one sheet in the wind', or 'a sheet in the wind's eye'.

Sold on the Old

The nostalgia craze...It's all the rage

In this marvelous, modern, high-tech age!

Flashbacks to the past few risks will unfold,

Perhaps why we're so romantically sold on the old?

Cherished inner recordings let us spotlight the best,

As we relish past glories and fast-forward the rest.

They aid in escaping from our cares and distress

If briefly we visit but the present caress.

Such a Fine Day!

Winter chokes its way into Spring, spitting and coughing,

Making up its mind, as if for breath it is gasping.

Should it concede and let Spring win this round?

Or should it execute one final blasting?

The dawn's pale saffron glow

Hangs like a curtain above the horizon so low.

Stark silhouettes of trees shatter the peaceful sky.

While smoke from chimneys does scarcely blow.

An early spring day begins calm until

Punctuated by the honking of geese so shrill.

In V-formation they swarm from the south

Descending to open water, farm ponds, and rills.

In town it's the time of the mud and slush

As busy streets awake from the hush.

Water in rivulets sparkles in ditches

While traffic flies by in its usual rush.

It's the first warm day and a jogger in shorts

Puffs his way up a slope with his many cohorts.

Teen joyriders' music of high decibel beat

Greets joy-walkers with their dogs of all sorts.

When the weather is perfect as upon request,

Dad used to say of a day so richly blessed,

“Such a fine day...just like I would have made it myself!”

In flawless Norwegian was his comment expressed!

Mud Fight

The farmer and his wife got along with very little strife.

Until one day he came home and sensed her anger rife.

She cried, "Across my Oriental carpet are your tracks of grimy mud."

"This means war, the line is drawn. You'd better stop it, Bud!"

He said, of her complaint, "If I were you I'd drop it!"

"Well, sobbed she, it's hard to clean. You see, I can't just mop it!"

He stomped out, defiant, and let the screen door slam.

"That woman!" he stammered, "I'll show her exactly how riled I am!

On second thought, perhaps, upon a dozen roses I should splurge."

But nixed the urge...

And brought for her instead, a bouquet of leafy spurge!

Lost!

Here's a photo of you at the age of two.

You're a-walking and wobbling in mommy's shoes.

Playing peek-a-boo under a big straw hat.

Any wonder you stumbled--ka-boom--and sat?

But you shuffled unruffled across the floor,

As if making a beeline straight for the door.

Like a shadow you vanished as I turned by back.

Had you wandered far down by the railroad track?

As I summoned the neighbors and called your name,

And we searched the back yard and the police came,

I returned to the house, my heart filled with dread,

And I found you asleep there... in your own bed!

Book I am reading.

I have been reading a book, The World's Last Mysteries.  It tells of various ancient civilizations and what may have caused their rise and fall.  Atlantis may be only fiction but others like the ruins of Stonehenge, Easter Island, Aztec and Mayan ruins are amazing in that primitive people were able to find ways to quarry and move enormous stones to distant places without even the benefit of the wheel.  Archaeologists believe that large slave labor, was necessary although they did make use of levers and ropes, rocking motions, and wood scaffolding to aid them.  I believe also that it was a way to control people through concocting a religion that kept people busy erecting these monuments (and therefore less likely to revolt) so the heads of governments, often shamans, could keep them under submission.  The people of the Indus Valley (from near eastern Iran, Pakistan, and part of northern India) may not have been as influenced by religion but a powerful central government controlled the building of homes of monotonous similarity with almost no decoration.  People probably did not have much freedom or ownership of property except for personal things.  The central government was able to plan cities based on a grid street system with courtyards, covered sewer systems, canals from the river, etc.  But at some point, perhaps because of political instability at the top or a possibly revolt, it all came to a halt.  Also flooding might have been a factor.