Outside the window

 

.
 

Invisible child
 

Dawdles in the swing again;
 

Bored, this winter morn.
 

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Toon River: Not Dead Yet

 THOMAS WAYNE

What shall I do tonight? Shall I write a novel?
Shall I create and manage a business, a fortune?
Shall I raise a son who will thirst for justice?
Shall I enjoy the peace I've earned with the love of my life?
Ah. I have it! I shall take my wife and son to the theater.
Yes, and we'll enjoy a simple story of right and wrong,
And then we'll step out into the night and be killed.
Pretty much like every night. 

It's a full life,
Being an inspiration to the family you love.

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WARD OF THE WINGS - the untold story

The climax of the Warner Brothers version of "Lord of the Rings." Frodo is played by a wabbit:

[Frodo sidesteps the last Orc and dashes to the top of a vertiginous peak off of some 50's classical album.]

Sauwon: Oh no! Oh no! I didn't KILL THE HOBBIT!
Frodo: Aha! Aha! He didn't kill the hobbit!
And now I'm at the top
And now it will be gone--
On second thought, I'll wait
And try the darn thing on.

[Just then, the miserable little black duck runs in]

Gollum: No! You can't have it! It's ours! It's ours! [Grabs the ring; teeters on the edge. Frodo offers a hand, but he slaps it away, sending himself plunging.] OH NO YOU DON'T! HAHAHAHA! [He hits the lava.] We win! We're rich! We're powerful! We're a happy miser! [Lava closes over him.] Happy birthday to us! Happy birthday to us...

Sam: Well, he's g-g-g-... he's g-g-g-... that's all, folks!
Frodo: Actually, Sam, we have to trek our way back home for another 45 minutes.
Merry: Thufferin' Thnaketh!
Frodo: Well, whaddaya expect from a trilogy? An ending?

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originally written around 2004 for rec.arts.sf.fandom
"Bill Lava" joke regretfully removed April 6, 2025

 

Fifteen-Seven

Just fifteen minutes a day can do you a world of good in a number of ways. If you spend just fifteen minutes looking at the outside of your home and fixing small things, you'll have a nicer home and yard soon. Spend fifteen minutes a day in the kitchen cleaning surfaces, and see how quickly your kitchen starts to look better to you. Spend fifteen minutes on a selected room each day. Spend fifteen minutes working to eliminate boxes full of junk in the room next door. I mean, for instance. Fifteen minutes might be the right amount of time for this activity. I know that I can work fairly well for about that long, or perhaps longer, making a 'keep' pile and being coolly unsentimental about the 'discard' pile. At a certain point, my brain becomes fogged; filled up with floating particles of styrofoam. This point can be recognized by me starting to justify keeping things, like 'Well, it's the only X I have. I should keep it as an example." At this time, I must stop sorting or trying to sort, because the next phase is removing discard items and putting them in with the keepers.

Fifteen minutes a day at your musical instrument will begin noticeable improvements in your abilities. Devote fifteen minutes to technique and sight-reading, work some scales, and read pieces of music you would't be interested in otherwise just to build your skills. Spend fifteen minutes diving through old books of music you brought home, thinking you'd play them one day. Spend time digging through big collections of songs and see how many unrecognizable titles went with familiar tunes whose names you never knew. (Caveat: You still might not know them, since those old collections have weird features like taking well-known bits of classical pieces and concocting a bogus 'song' from it--usually on some anodyne and vaguely indoctrinal topic.)

Fifteen minutes of exercise, taken regularly, will ease some of your physical shortcomings. Fifteen minutes a day of walking comes to less than two hours, and my doctor said 150 minutes a week was recommended, but hey! An hour and forty-five minutes might be an improvement. Be sure to plan your walk so that you have time to walk back, unless you plan on calling for help wherever you end up.

Spend fifteen minutes with your eyes closed. It's like a nap, but it doesn't matter if you fall asleep or not--you're just retiring your visual cortex for a while, and maybe listening to stuff. Set an alarm so you can wake up.

Spend fifteen minutes outside your four walls. Sit on your lawn furniture. Circumnavigate your block. Spend fifteen minutes taking photos. Or spend fifteen minutes deleting your worst old photos.

An unexplored possibility is to simply hoard the time. Save fifteen minutes every day by picking a time and skipping all activities that you'd have participated in during that time. Move everything after it up fifteen minutes, including going to sleep and getting up the next day. Do this enough times, and you'll have saved a whole day! 24 hours of "advantage: YOU!" It requires a certain amount of discipline, amounting to monomania, however, once you've mastered it, you'll have free time coming out your elbow.

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Well, I Meant To

I was tired.
My finger hurt.
The sun was in my eyes the whole time.
I plumb forgot it. I fell asleep.
I thought it was supposed to happen next week.
Nobody told me about it.
We've always done it on this day.
It's how I was raised.
You have to admit, my way makes more sense.
A little cooperation would be nice once in a while.
You were supposed to be there for it.
I expected a call.

It wasn't what had been described to me.
I got there and nobody else was there.
I've been having a tough time.
I was sick for a while.
The last two times, it was canceled.
I just went by the last thing I'd heard.
The GPS sent me to the wrong place.
The car had to be gassed up before I could do anything else.
You never gave me enough time for it.
The phone rang as I was starting out, and I had to take it.
There was road construction every way I went.
It said CLOSED.

I was depressed.
I couldn't do it by myself.
Everything in my life changed right then.
It had stopped being rewarding.
I wasn't going to do everything myself.
There was no reward.
I still thought things could return to normal.
They were all looking at me.

I didn't know how.
Nobody told me what to do.
I was set up to fail.
After the explanation, I realized it was a load of garbage.
I got a better offer.
I discovered a plot.
I was following orders.
I learned the truth about all this.
The Sun's in a bad sign for me.
Those two are against me.
I saw this incredible cloud.
They gave me the wrong tool.
They said they didn't need me after all.
I was too popular.

A guy took it from me.
When I didn't see you, I assumed it was off.
Nobody else could be bothered, so why me?
It was raining.
There was nowhere to park.
I got lost.
Wait, that was today?
The light was off, so I didn't come in.

I didn't want to.

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2 Nov 2021

 Leaves crack discreetly
One by one, as I listen
To the dog, walking.

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FIFTEEN MINUTES

 I've had fifteen minutes of fame. In fact, more. I reckon I had some fame when I was in community theatre, and someone recognized me at a gas station, as having been in that play, so that's a couple of minutes right there. I got a bit of additional fame when Gordon Garb took out a dignified ad in the Westercon program book in 1985, stating that "West Coast fandom welcomes Kip Williams, President and Founder of the New Pals Club, and President of the Kip Williams Clean Plate Club."

 

[image: Steve Purcell color drawing of Sam & Max, with plates. Martin "Bucky Starr" Cameron was feeling like he should do something about a thing, so he bought Purcell some pizza and directed him to create this gorgeous Prismacolor opus in my honor.]

I got some more fame when Dave Sim, Pal #6 of the New Pals Club, saw me for the second time, the first having been when we'd lived in Houston (where I signed him up for New Pals with a hearty "Hi! Let's be Pals!"). This time it was in Virginia, and I was able to give him another mailing in person, and because of that, he used a pair of photos from the event on the back of an issue of Cerebus, which I keep thinking was somewhere near #111. He thoughtfully ID'd me in a caption: "Say, isn't that the famous Kip Williams, founder of the famous New Pals Club?" or something very similar.

Another jolt of fame came via by good friend Harry McCracken, some time in the 90s, when my visage was included to help pad an article on eBay users who collect stuff. I held up a laser disk of NIGHT OF THE HUNTER and moved microscopically this way and that at the behest of the professional photographer Harry engaged, long-distance, to get the pic for PC WORLD, where Harry worked. There's a somewhat famous issue of NEWSWEEK from this time where an American athlete did a victory move in her sports bra. Brandi Chastain, as I have verified, looking good. Anyway, they wanted an advertising supplement for it, and used the PC WORLD article, trimmed down a bit--but still including the memorable pic of me holding the disk, utterly oblivious to the perfect reflection the photographer got me to pose with.

So that's some more fame, there. There was one other time when Harry, by then at TIME, used me for an article he'd written on people quitting Facebook. It was around 2015, and the story was typeset on pages with ads and all, then something big happened in the world that required that exact amount of space, as things will do, and now all that remains is some PDF images of those set and unpublished pages, real in some ways, and in others amounting to little more than a MAD parody of the thing.

I'm not counting every time I've been on a stage as fame, though maybe I should at least count those very gratifying times when circumstances made me into a figure that audiences looked at for their entertainment, and received value for their choice. If I think of any more times I was getting famed, I'll add it in here, but I think I'm up over forty minutes by now.

I wrote, in New Pals, about my first fifteen minutes of fame. The first five were incredible! A thrill ride! The five after that were still okay, though it was starting to be stressful, and I learned too much about a very good friend. I really clung to the last five, but they ticked inexorably away. A minute before it was all over, I found Jesus, who offered me some very sage advice which I don't have time for at the moment. I'd allowed fifteen minutes to write this, and it's about gone.

I once thought it would be grand to have a curtained glass window with a money slot next to it. You put in $5 or whatever, and the curtain would part, and Andy Warhol would be there, just standing. He might glance at you. After fifteen seconds, the curtains would close again. Andy's gone now, but someone could impersonate him, or it could be someone else who has had or is having their fifteen minutes. Manning the booth for a shift would be part of the price you pay for that fame.

Redrafted slightly, and could well be redrafted again, from a promising fruit of the 'fifteen minutes each day' writing exercise with sis Kathryn Morski during a wonderful visit.

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I was driving east on I-90 through Massachusetts, and I saw a concatenation of clouds that made me think "This is what the recently departed Ed Asner would have looked like if they'd designed a Muppet to use his voice. I snapped several photos (the terrain wasn't as easy looking as in the illustration) and none of them did it justice before it drifted apart into its constituents, so I am printing the legend. Just before heading off to bedtime, I turned the light back on and drew this on the back of a card I'd drawn on the front of, and just now I've photographed it (with my laptop's built-in) and Photoshopped it to a state of seemliness.

And that, I believe, is how he'd look, all right. Well done, brain, Well done, fingers. Well done, art tools. Let's all go have lunch, that eat lunches.

 .

 

Early Adopter

 Author photo.

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Mowing

 Thanks for our neighbors 

Who cultivated milkweed 

That brought us Monarchs.

 

Recent photo by the author does not depict our yard, but someone else's in the neighborhood.

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PREQUEL

Farewell, Master; Master, meow.
No more flies I'll chase for sport
Nor do mousing in thy housing
Nor flee thy dogs who snap and snort!
Ban, Ban, Pa-
Pangur Ban
Has a new master!
The Monk's his new man!
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Andouille for breakfast

 I used up the Andouille sausage this morning, and I declare success. I've been seeing what I could do with it, along with potato, egg, onion, cheese, plus oil and such. Some ingredients were already chopped up: The onion was chopped up and frozen in a jar in the fridge. The potato is the remaining half of one I cubed up yesterday (I've also tried this with grated potato.). I cut the sausage up into equally small pieces. I prefer small pieces, it seems, whether it's potato, onion, Andouille, or what have you.

I start with the onion, frying it up in a glass pan that will be used for everything. When it's acquired enough color, I add the Andouille, more oil, and the potato, and maybe season it a little with salt, pepper, and an exotic little thing I call "garlic salt," because that's what it says on the label. I let them get acquainted with one another until the potatoes have arrived at "the way I like 'em," much of the time with a lid on, then making sure to get things unstuck from the bottom when I stir. You know, the stuff everybody does.

When everything's just about perfect, I pour the egg over the top. I was expecting it to form a cushion under the perfectly arranged hash mound (shaped with a #3 confectioner's "fork"). Next time I'll know to lift it here and there to let more egg flow under it. Looks great, though, doesn't it? 

If this wasn't in Blur-O-Vision, you'd be able to make out the potato cubes, almost browned, and the carmelized onions among the eggs and sausage. It didn't look blurry on my phone screen, and there's no way to go back, but I think we can all agree that it was really smart to take a picture of it before I tried to put it deftly onto the plate where I'd already artistically arranged a healthy pinch of shredded cheese.

Another pinch went on top, and just like that, it was Breakfast, with a capital B, because it was a capital breakfast. As I say, this uses up my Andouille for now. What have I learned? I learned that I like it just fine. I learned there's 25g of fat in each link, so now I use half a link for a meal. I like it cut up, but not totally reground. 

Next week: Chorizo!

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Calendric Concerns

The paper calendar I've used since the 90s is elegant: a spiral ring across three pages that hang down. Week day, date, month. It's self-standing, and each piece of paper in it is a sample of a different elegant, subdued stock from the manufacturer.

What makes it work so well for me isn't just the simple reminder (which I often forget to update) of the exact monthdateday is that its cyclical nature and paper construction have made it ideal for cyclical reminders. First it was sticky notes on the day, so I'd remember trash, class, or the Irish jam. It has expanded to small pencil notes in the month page to remind me of family birthdays and anniversaries in that month. If I had something on the Ides of each month, I could indicate that on the date pages.

From the side, it's like a triangle, but the bottom side is two sides, tented for stability. Each sheet bears the name by which it can be ordered. Copyright 1994 by the International Paper Company, so I've been using it for twenty-five to thirty years.

All this points me to an ideal calendar, which would be very much like this one, only the pages would be designed to accomodate the items associated with each, and maybe allow one big one in red for whatever's really important to you.

And there should be a fourth leaf, position to be determined, with a nice picture or whatever in it. For logistical reasons, you don't want much more than twelve of those. Something to figure out later. I'd like it to hang on a wall, and have arbitrarily chosen a clipboard as the model for how that would work. There could be designs on the backs that work together in random ways, so the part that is above the hanging daydatemonth letternumbers would be pretty and mutable. Or that can be the part where you write your stuffs, and the calendar info can be more decorative.

Unsure of my description, I added a photo. I have two of these, and one is still in its plastic flat pack. I figured I'd break it out if I ever needed a new one, and this one is going to last forever. The sticky note up there is loose at the top because they changed our trash day again.

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A Post-Legalization Guide to Reasonable Restrictions Upon Your Liberty

GOPS ON HOP

I am a Gop
And I hate hop.

If you won't stop,
I'll close your shop.

You may not smoke it in a house.
You may not share it with a mouse.
You may not toke it with a fox.
You may not keep it in a box.

You may not toot it at a bar.
You may not zoot it in a car.
You may not smoke it here or there
Our influence is everywhere.

Some speak about the voters' will,
But we cling to our power still--
We'll give our donor base a thrill
And keep their dollars in the till.

You may not toke and play a tune
You may not smoke beneath the moon
You may not puff in parks and caves
Or vipe upon the open waves.

You look for freedom. So do we.
Freedom's good, we all agree
But unless your lot gives in to me,
By god above, I'm just not free!

So do not use it on a plane
No subway tokin', bus or train
Don't puff near the Eternal Flame
Don't rock it at a Rangers game

Freedom's a flop.
It's gotta stop
Cause I'm a Gop
And I hate hop.
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Life, And The Sweetness Thereof

In March of 2020, I'd been playing in a local Irish slow jam for three years or so, in which time my ability to find chords had improved remarkably, along with other skills. Every now and then, I'd see if anyone there wanted to play other stuff away from the group, with some sporadic successes. So there we were, planning the St. Patrick's Day party, and I was thinking I wouldn't bring in a dish or participate in the potluck part, when suddenly it was all off. The college shut down outside groups, and most of the jam was from off campus. As luck would have it, though, I had found a violinist who was interested in more playing.

In the initial wariness of the time, it started with me sending recorded accompaniments, and Karen would send them back with the violin part added in. We carefully moved up to playing outside (masked, distanced) or in a garage. We've been doing it now for more than a year, and it's very close to Making My Dreams Come True territory. We play classical and pop. We each bring pieces in. We worked on the Bach Double Concerto (with me playing Violin 2 and the bass line of the orchestra), which made Karen's dream come true--she'd been trying to get someone else to play it with her for years. Sound familiar?

Meanwhile, Tony, who I'd played with outside the group but who seems to be in great demand (And why not? Fluent accordionist!), has started coming to join us in trio sessions. Tony has had the dream of playing Bach's "Little" fugue in G, and I recently found an arrangement that looks like it has something in it for each of us.

Seems like something I'd write more about. Maybe I'm afraid to jinx it. Nonetheless, it's a very positive thing, and I'm happy to pass it along. I wrote and said I might need to quarantine when I got home, and Karen suggested I could get a COVID test at Walgreen's and play right away.

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A Holiday Service From Your Friends At New Pals!

 Parents! Sometimes it's hard to afford all the presents your child deserves. Let's not get into the reasons--really, we all know how it is. Just to give you all a bit of slack for when you really need it, here's an actual reprint from the December 25, 1985 New Jersey Record that could be useful, though be cautioned that your child might still react poorly. (Click to enlarge.)

But your youngster will probably see reason and understand why there's no pony or race car this year. Might as well give it a try. What's the worst that could happen?

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Some Light Reading

 One of the last things I did on the recent trip to the Upper Peninsula (UP) of Michigan was to hop in the car with my sis and pop down the road that runs up and down the peninsula (small p) that she and her husband live on.

At the end of the road, which has already forsaken pavement and a second lane, we find the old Stonington Point lighthouse, now preserved as a tower you can walk up, if the skinny spiral stairs don't put you off. The day we went, it was windy, and starting to lean toward getting dark soon. Kathryn stayed by the car, having seen this all before and not having a fondness for those steps, while I dashed along the old sidewalks that remained around the keeper's house's former location, before it all burned down.

I headed up the steps, thankful they weren't wet, and got more and more cautious as I came to the top. I tried to keep to the wall, where the pie-slice steps were their widest: none too wide. I made liberal use of the handrail. It was only three stories tall, but I took them all very seriously, particularly with the insistent wind whipping at me. 

There were nice window views along the way. No glass in the windows, so they were immersive views that engaged all the senses. 

There's my view from the top. Kathryn's in the car at that moment, trying to get a picture of me up at the top, but I didn't hold still for very long. There's the sidewalk. Going off to the right a ways must have been the outhouse or garbage dump or something. 

They bought their place on that peninsula in the 1970s. It was in the last couple of years that they learned a bit of family lore that had escaped them somehow--for a year or two (and I don't remember if it was late 19th or early 20th century, but maybe the former), the lighthouse was manned by an ancestor of my brother-in-law, Steve. He'd been lighthouse keeper up in the Copper Country, and we had known for some time that he'd held that prestigious position. What we didn't know was that he'd been summoned to come and man this one. And it turns out to have been a very isolated spot, far from any other people--an unpleasant contrast to his earlier posting, where he was a community leader. The Stonington location was only reachable by boat then, and his family didn't like the isolation either. I'll bet the road we were on wasn't there then, not to mention the Stonington community, small as it is (well, it's been bigger).

I paused for a rather successful selfie (if I do say so), which shows how much the wind had to have been blowing, because otherwise I'd have to be a real slob to let my hair get that frazzed. Darn wind. Next morning, I hit the road again, driving from rest stop to rest stop, tiptoeing from state to state to evade the ever-present virus that was out to get me. 

I think I made it.

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 About 1983, I recorded accompaniments to a couple Spanish hymns, and became fond of one of them. I hadn't copied it out of the hymnal when I returned it, and in the decades since, I've looked for it. I found it last year. "Yo solo espero ese dia." It's as nice as I remembered.

I found a YouTube of a congregation singing and playing it with accordions, guitars, and more intricate rhythms than the score suggests. It was an ear-opener, though I may still play it as before, with sweet intent.


The weird thing, though, is that while I was watching that, I suddenly clicked on the beat-for-beat similarity between this hymn and a French song "The River Seine," which I first heard happily murdered by Jonathan and Darlene Edwards (Jo Stafford and Paul Weston).

So sorry I can't give you Darlene ("video not available"--I got that close), but here's an instrumental version on a sweeeet 1950s-looking portable wind-up phonograph (similar to the one I first heard "Carmen Boogie" by The Crew-Cuts on):

Copyright? The version of the hymn I found has an earliest (c) of 1954 on it, but that's for an arrangement. No telling how old the anonymous melody there is. The song was first recorded in 1948, in French. I can't tell who swiped from who, but SOMEBODY SWIPED FROM SOMEBODY.

That's all. No resolution from me at this time, but if I ever find out, you can just bet I'll tell you about it.

 

originally a series of tweets. still is.

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SEPTEMBER, 2020 [Michigan Seems Like a Dream to Me Now] pt 1

Yes. It happened. There was a September this year. It haddeth 30 days. I ventured up to the great state of Michigan, via Pennsylvania and Ohio. Even via the great state of Michigan, since I was going all the way up to the other state of Michigan, the Upper Peninsula, where it had been established I should be able to see Dad at his present lodging in a rest home.

For a while--since March, of course--Dad's been inaccessible, and we've been sending stuff in to him and writing notes and letters with very large print. Then someone told Kathryn (my sister nearby who's been handling all this) that since he's in hospice, the rules are different, and she and I could have been seeing him in person any old time in there. I made my plans, fussed a lot, worried more, then drove up in two days; somewhat nervously, what with the plague and all. 

I had a smooth and uneventful two days going up, though, and my rest between drives was pretty solid. Check out this cool not-an-Airstream-at-all trailer I saw on the way! A few years back, I saw dozens of Airstreams heading for the same place I was going, and didn't take a picture of the shiny gaggles of them on the highway. They all parked together near the fairgrounds, and I may not have even gotten a shot of them then. Whoopsy.

I managed to stop at both my White Castles that are up there. Ann Arbor, and Flint (above), though I couldn't go inside this time. The ones in northern Ohio all closed one year. 

I mostly kept going, but I took breaks as needed--timed catnaps in rest stops, and even went out a scenic overlook to check for good blog photos.

Well, a view's a view. They can't all be Silver Streaks. I kept an open mind, and most trailers or RVs I saw, I lived in for about a mile while the owner never suspected a thing. Pulling those boxes on wheels, or even just driving one, is work. 

I got to the cabin of my sister and brother-in-law out on the little peninsula they're on. After a settling-in period, I started taking a walk now and then. Four or five times, I went out to the end of the driveway (actually a state road, but it connects them with their mailbox on the larger gravel road their address is on). The first two times I just went to the mailbox and back, but after that I doubled the walk by going a mile on the larger road, once to the left and twice to the right. I can tell this was taken in the half mile closer to the mailbox because of the major sedge action on the forest floor there. Closer to the house, the ground looks like someone--a wise, wise politician perhaps--has raked them all out.

I also took a couple of remote walks that I was driven to and then picked up, giving Kathryn a chance to run an errand or three each time. I started my first walk involving the nearby town of Gladstone by this city park (this water adjoins Lake Michigan). I told this duck I'd race it, and it took off like a shot. Never saw it again.

I was trying photos of this and that. I love what the sun does on the water, and here's a snap of that from somewhere on the trail in Gladstone. I followed it till it seemed fully played out, then retraced my steps and got in a decent walk. The pack I take on walks was much fuller than usual because I was on this trip, so I was often aware of what great exercise I must be getting.

My second Lake Michigan walk involved some of the same trail, but this part of it started a handful of miles closer to Escanaba, so the walk was this lovely paved path with cars streaming by on one side and the lake stretching off endlessly on the other. There are three or four of these little sit-downs with convenient trash and recycling bin at hand. I sat down on the last one I got to, as it had nothing obstructing the lake view (like the obtrusive shrub that this one has). I put on ear buds to muffle the wave front of the car noise and took what may have been the best such walk on the trip.

Each time I turned my head to the right, I could watch the clouds lollygagging across the sky over the water. I'd be happy to take that walk now, but distance prevents. I hear they're having a really nice day today.

Considerately, there is an overlook that seems eminently accessible for a variety of people.

This task has expanded and mutated. I was at first going to simply acknowledge that September had, indeed, taken place in spite of my failure to blog anything. Now that I've opted for an illustrated trip report (as a "lazy" way of adding content!), I find myself editing all the photos. Besides, I can milk this for at least another entry here, and maybe even two! So I'm going for it. I can procrastinate this! YES!!

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Picture Post, August 2020

 I like this shot I got on August 19, from under the Main Street bridge, looking toward the State Street bridge at the Erie Canal at Schoen Place in Pittsford. Library building visible on the right, two canal boats are parked in the shot, one of which Sarah steered for about a mile, close to ten years ago.

 I'm about to walk that way again. I hope it looks this nice today. Nice to see Flocky again, too.

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