adventures of a canoelover

While the transition from Summer to Autumn is fairly gradual (at least here in God’s Country), Spring seems to hammer us.  One day (yesterday) it’s snowing; today, rivulets are flowing down the valleys of the roof and the snow from yesterday is gone except where there is shade.  This is the Thaw season.

Maple leaves that have fallen on the snow are creating beautiful prints of decomposition, and they operate as little solar collectors that melt the snow around them faster than the surrounding ice.

The beech (genus Fagus) is one of my favorite Thaw trees.  Beeches keep their leaves until the new leaves push them off the tree in the Spring.  The result is a beautiful stand-alone tree scattered throughout the forests.  In the shade of the majestic red and white oaks and huge maples, these beeches tremble in the slightest breeze and if you get close enough you hear the cracking and rustling of the leaves kissing off each other.

The dogwoods are turning red now, and the willows turning a lovely greenish-yellow.  The Thaw is here, and it’s irreversible. Nothing can stop the sun from giving us a few extra minutes a day of its warmth and light.  Despite Winter’s desperate and ultimately futile attempts at asserting its power, Winter must admit its reign is over.  It’s a Mubarek, a Qaddafi.  Game over.

All praise be yours, my Lord, through all that you have made,
And first my lord Brother Sun,
Who brings the day; and light you give to us through him.
How beautiful is he, how radiant in all his splendor!
Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness.

If Saint Francis lived in Wisconsin, he may have written:

How white and beautiful are you, Cousin Snow,
Who cover the earth while She sleeps
Until Brother Sun lifts your blanket to make way for New Life.

Or something like that.

Thaw is here.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

Dear March, come in!
How glad I am!
I looked for you before.
Put down your hat–
You must have walked–
How out of breath you are!
Dear March, how are you?
And the rest?
Did you leave Nature well?
Oh, March, come right upstairs with me,
I have so much to tell!

I got your letter, and the birds’;
The maples never knew
That you were coming,–I declare,
How red their faces grew!
But, March, forgive me–
And all those hills
You left for me to hue;
There was no purple suitable,
You took it all with you.

Who knocks? That April!
Lock the door!
I will not be pursued!
He stayed away a year, to call
When I am occupied.
But trifles look so trivial
As soon as you have come,
That blame is just as dear as praise
And praise as mere as blame.

Nothing more need be said.

Respectfuly submitted,

Canoelover

I just spent a day in Easley, South Carolina at Confluence Watersports, a canoe and kayak manufacturer.  It has been a good year or so since I’ve spent any time with a few of these folks and it’s nice to see what’s in the works, and to have some feedback received.  Received is a deliberate word.  Most people who ask for feedback want to have their ideas confirmed.

Isn’t my child gorgeous?

How do you feel about the AMC Pacer I’m restoring?

What do you think about my project to raise wolverines in my basement?

I think your baby is breathtaking.  That is certainly a unique automobile. I love the film Red Dawn.

The difference is these people listen.  Not that every idea the twenty some-odd* retailers said was Gospel Truth, but we certainly spoke with one voice on several issues that are important to all of us, irrespective of region. The management team were scribbling furiously as different vendors from around North America spoke on issues that matter to them.  Distribution issues (none of us want $199 garbage in Costco).  E-commerce drafting (look at it at our place, maybe even paddle it, then buy it online for 10% off).  The materials quagmire (single supplier for an important material used in some canoes).

And that’s about as much as I can say without violating my NDA.   Rest assured, paddlers.  There is leadership here, not management.  There is channeled and deliberate creativity, not random free-lancers designing boats for themselves and hoping they sell.

One thing I can say: the workers there are happy. During the factory tour, I didn’t stick with the group: I’ve seen this all before many times. I hung back a little and chatted with some of the factory workers.  This is not an easy job; it’s hard, repetitive work with a lot of skill needed to make good product.   I spoke with five assemblers, three molders, three tool maintenance folks and a couple of random guys wheeling stuff around on shuttles.

I said two things to them:

“Thank you for making boats for me.  Your work makes a lot of people happy, and you don’t get to see them enjoy it. They do.”

“Do they treat you okay here?”

I got a lot of surprise from the first sentence.  It’s like they’d never heard of the people who use these boats.  They assemblers were especially surprised.  They often thanked me.

To a person I had a positive response to the second question.  Everyone was happy, or at least content.  Decent pay, health insurance, 401K if they want it.  They were gracious.  They were proud.  They were happy.

I asked the tool guys if they like the management team. One of the guys had been there fifteen years, and when I asked him if the old managers ever came out to the factory floor, he said “Yeah…to yell at us.”  Brilliant.  Luckily the Shar Pei (his nickname) is long gone and is poisoning some other well.

Synopsis: it was fun, engaging, and ultimately exhausting.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

—-

*Actually, they’re all odd.  Nature of the beast.

So I can make stuff like this.

It has been way too long.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

A few weeks ago I was at a trade show in Salt Lake City.  I heard a presentation from the Director of Sustainability for Walmart.  Yep, you heard right.

I’m glad they’re doing something.  Given their gargantuan size, they can have a significant impact on the environment.  They’re building stores with better efficiency and lighting.  They’re buying land and putting it into conservation.  They’re working on logistics to improve the efficiency of their 7,ooo truck fleet to get to a goal of 13 mpg by 2015 (which experts say is impossible, but at least they’re trying).

The problem is their definition of sustainability is focused on resources, not on people.  It’s half-baked, so the center collapses.

There was no Q&A after the speech.

That brings me to my hero, Wendell.

Wendell Berry wrote these rules delineating how we ought to make decisions about changes, especially when it comes to the culture of our communities,  towns, cities, and indeed, our whole country-as-community.  I also believe they’re good guidelines to consider when making family decisions.

Let’s take a look.  Please try to apply these questions honestly to yourself, your family and community.  We are all hypocrites  in one way or another.  No judgement or self-flagellation; just think about it.

1. Always ask of any proposed change or innovation: What will this do to our community? How will this affect our common wealth.

2. Always include local nature – the land, the water, the air, the native creatures – within the membership of the community.

3. Always ask how local needs might be supplied from local sources, including the mutual help of neighbors.

4. Always supply local needs first (and only then think of exporting products – first to nearby cities, then to others).

5. Understand the ultimate unsoundness of the industrial doctrine of ‘labor saving’ if that implies poor work, unemployment, or any kind of pollution or contamination.

6. Develop properly scaled value-adding industries for local products to ensure that the community does not become merely a colony of national or global economy.

7. Develop small-scale industries and businesses to support the local farm and/or forest economy.

8. Strive to supply as much of the community’s own energy as possible.

9. Strive to increase earnings (in whatever form) within the community for as long as possible before they are paid out.

10. Make sure that money paid into the local economy circulates within the community and decrease expenditures outside the community.

11. Make the community able to invest in itself by maintaining its properties, keeping itself clean (without dirtying some other place), caring for its old people, and teaching its children.

12. See that the old and young take care of one another. The young must learn from the old, not necessarily, and not always in school. There must be no institutionalised childcare and no homes for the aged. The community knows and remembers itself by the association of old and young.

13. Account for costs now conventionally hidden or externalised. Whenever possible, these must be debited against monetary income.

14. Look into the possible uses of local currency, community-funded loan programs, systems of barter, and the like.

15. Always be aware of the economic value of neighborly acts. In our time, the costs of living are greatly increased by the loss of neighborhood, which leaves people to face their calamities alone.

16. A rural community should always be acquainted and interconnected with community-minded people in nearby towns and cities.

17. A sustainable rural economy will depend on urban consumers loyal to local products. Therefore, we are talking about an economy that will always be more cooperative than competitive.

So, how did you do?

I didn’t do so well.  I have work to do.  The most important thing that stuck out was my need to focus on how my buying patterns affect the whole community.

68 cents on the dollar spent in a local business stays in the community.  A back of the envelope calculation of my own business says that this is pretty close to accurate.  42 cents on the dollar remain in the local community if you purchase at a chain store.  That gap is the cash that flows to “the home office” like the one in Bentonville, Arkansas.

It may seem self-serving for a small, local, family-owned and operated business to promote buying local, but it goes far beyond that.  A dollar kept in the community bounces around a lot…to the local co-op, where it is distributed as wages to their staff, who spend it at the local coffee shop, who use it to buy coffee from a local roaster, whose employees go back to buy food at the co-op.  Yes, some bleeds out to external sources, but if we can keep just a few more bucks hanging around, what a difference it can make.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

P.S. Spring is coming. so the posts on canoes and paddling stuff should appear more regularly.  It’s hard to write about canoeing when there’s eight inches of snow on the ground, although it’s time for a winter paddle.

Last week I mentioned I wanted to do some unnecessary ornamentation to my sassafras Racine paddle.  Sunday was lovely,  but with temps in the 40s, the world was turning into a Slurpee. Given the lack of snowshoeable surfaces, we punted.  I spread out on the dining room table.  I’m not sure of how many spouses would allow their spouses to paint paddles on the dining room. Wife 1.2 indulges me, and I’m grateful.

So out came the 1-Shot.  I decided on dark brown just for yucks.  The black would seem harsh in this case,with so much surface area covered.  I got out the small pinstriping brush and got busy.  I didn’t transfer the pattern to the paddle, as I wanted it to be pretty free-flowing, even if it were non-symmetrical or a little clunky.  I sorta like the “clearly I’m not an artist” look.

It has been a while.  I think my hand is shaking a little more than it did the last time I did this.  I’m pretty sure I don’t have Parkinson’s or anything, but a little tremor was noticeable.  I’m not panicking, but it is another reminder that tempus is fugiting.

I probably spent an hour, maybe an hour and a half painting.   It’s interesting how time passes when you’re involved in an activity that can engrossing.  In retrospect, I probably should have waited until I had a day alone, as I was worthless to Wife 1.2 in any sort of conversation.  In my defense, I’m sure I grunted several times in her direction, probably admitting to some sort of larceny.

“Sweetpea, did you remember tomorrow is trash day?”

Grunt.

“Did you find the charger to your cell phone?”

Grunt.

“Did you remember to knock off that bank and get some cash to fund your drug habit? You’re running low on several opiates.”

Grunt.

Not proud if it.  Sorry, Wife 1.2.

It’s not a great job.  I wandered over the centerline of the paddle a bit here and there, and the line thickness isn’t as consistent as I would have liked it, but I wanted it to look hand-painted, not look like I stenciled it, even if it is imperfect.  I feel it does a decent job of approximating a Passamaquoddy design with some custom changes that just sorta happened.  My guess is that “just sorta happened” quite often when a Passamaquoddy artist was painting his own paddle. That’s why they’re like snowflakes: no two are alike.

My birchbark canoe is hibernating and hasn’t been down from the cradles in two years.  I was waiting for a canoe paddle that would be worthy of the bark boat.  I think I have one now.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

There’s a tiny little cheese factory in Mineral Point, Wisconsin.  It has limited capacity, and they like it that way.  Rather than focusing on the strip-mined blocks of orange stuff you find in your supermarket, the make really, really good cheese.  World class cheese.  World championship-winning cheese.

It’s humble-looking exterior belays a spotless interior; two giant stainless steel troughs fill up most of the big room, and when you stop by in the afternoon on Friday, a couple in big rubber boats and lab coats are sterilizing everything.

Hook’s Cheese is one of the many things I love about Wisconsin.  I love it that an artisan cheesemaker can make a living in the land of the giants.  While Altadena Dairy in California is worrying about Milk Crate Abuse (seriously), Tony and Julie Hook quietly make some of the best cheese in the world in an old sandstone building in a town of about 2,400 people.

Hook’s cheddar is razor sharp.  The patience to wait five…seven….ten years is amazing.  But twelve year…and now fifteen year…that’s dedication.  At forty-five bucks a pound, the fifteen year is purchased in tiny little pieces, four to five ounces.  We don’t use that to make grilled cheese…that’s three year.  It’s eaten in tiny little slivers, just a few molecules that dissolve on your tongue, pass through your soft palate and up into your medial forebrain where happy things happen.

Then there’s the gorgonzola, a wonderful version of the Italian formaggio. It’s like crack, but more addictive.  Pasta with walnuts and gorgonzola is my favorite pasta dish in the world.  Yeah, it’s that good.

And then there’s my favorite: a stinky blue called Tilston Point. Named for a town in Cheshire, this is a really strong, grainy cheese, pretty crumbly when sliced and amazing with apples or pears.

What does this have to do with canoes?  A lot, actually.

You can find a mass-produced canoe, stamped out of polyethylene and held together with chunks of conduit and cheap rivets, paddling it when a pair of $9.95 paddles that double as barbells, and a $7.95 horse-collar life jacket. The experience you have will be exactly what you’d expect; uncomfortable, unsatisfying, and ultimately disappointing.  You might think this is what canoeing is all about.

There’s cheese, and there are edible processed cheese products. Velveeta.  Kraft Singles.  American cheese.  If an alien landed on Earth and we gave them Velveeta, they’d wonder why some people are obese.  This stuff tastes like nothing.

Ultimately you vote with your dollars.  You can get ten pounds of stuff that costs $2.00 a pound, or two pounds of stuff that costs $10.00 a pound.  You can get a 1500 square foot house or a 3500 square foot house for the same money.  It all depends on what you value; quality or quantity.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

Normally I would say “litter upon which one could sit” but that’s just wrong.  One should not be a prisoner to language.  Anyway…

I got thinking about One-Shot after my posting about paddles and painting them, and realized where I learned about that wonderful substance.  It’s all because a decade ago I worked with an artist who used to paint bus benches.

Back then (he says in a crotchety old voice, punching the tip of his cane into the air in front of him for emphasis), a bus bench was made of wood or some wood-like substance, not out of recycled milk jugs, so painting them was an option, even if it meant someone would often obliterate your logo with their ample backside and a bag of groceries.

People do still advertise on bus benches, even if they are plastic and designed so that a homeless person can’t get comfortable laying on one.  One could argue this is a monstrosity on a number of levels: aesthetically, it’s repugnant; morally it’s callous.  The guy who designed this probably sleeps on one of those memory foam mattresses.

I can see someone saying that I wouldn’t want homeless people sleeping on a bench in front of my shop.  They’d be right; I have a nice little spot behind that shop that is in the sun and much more comfortable.

Today is, apparently, Digression Day.  Apologies.

According to benchguys.com, you should advertise on benches because:

1. The most cost effective way to advertise your business.
2. Your advertisement is placed at eye-level, roadside locations.
3. Your advertisement is seen by many thousands of people, each and every day.
4. Exposure 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year.
5. Create brand awareness and name recognition.
6. Direct your customers to your business.

Let us analyse and apply logic to the above statements:

1. An inductive argument without cogency. That supposes the argument has been researched thoroughly and no cheaper advertising method was discovered.  Well,  for a buck a day I’ll draw your logo on the foreheads of fifty kids in a kindergarten class.  Q.E.D.  Strike one.
2. As measured in 2009, the average height of a person in the United States (ages 20-29) is about 5’5″ (including all ethnicities and genders).  Bus benches are at least two feet shorter, so even when accounting for the eyes sitting four to five inches below the top of the cranium, I’d say it’s more like crotch level. I’m give this statement Pants-On-Fire status.  Strike two.
3. Seen by, maybe, depending on how much of the time the bench is covered by someone’s lipid-enhanced glutes.  Even so, thousands?  Doesn’t sound like a quantified statement.  Presumed to be false.  Strike three.
4. Exposure?  To the elements, maybe.  Strike four.
5. Another inductive argument with no teeth.  “Because I say so” is not effective persuasion.  Strike five.
6. Ibid.  Strike six, you’re out.  Twice.

Yet…people still do advertise on benches.

Mostly realtors.  And personal injury lawyers.

And for some reason, people who think they know something the rest of us somehow missed…

I am approached by media reps almost daily, offering a way to get the name of my business in front of thousands of people for just pennies a day, etc. etc.  One of them wants to me purchase advertising that markets to people in the process of urination. They, of course, have a nice euphemism for it (“indoor advertising”), because there’s no way to say “put your logo above a urinal” in an appealing way.  And there’s a nice typo on one of the ads on their website…

Sorry, but there should be a few places one can go without receiving a sales pitch.  I believe bathrooms are one of such places.

The aesthetics of advertising has reached a new low.  As I look for ways to market my business, I have sworn off billboards, and, of course, bus benches, the things over gas station pumps, and see while you pee.  I’m always looking for ways to get the word out, so I’m sticking with things that don’t make your eyeballs scream Enough Already!  I am not alone here.

What does this have to do with canoeloving?  Plenty.

Our world has a lot of beauty in it, but it also has plenty of aesthetic challenges*. Noticing the ugly will help you appreciate the beautiful.  It will also inform your behavior when choosing a Realtor or P.I. Attorney.  As far as predicting the return of Christ to the earth…I’d seek better sources of information than a bus bench.

I put this picture here so the last thing you saw would be pretty.  I like corn.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

*Diplomatic at best; disingenuous at worst.

I have this beautiful guide paddle I bought last year. It’s Sassafras.  It’s gorgeous.

And I sorta want to paint all over it.  So it looks like this:

So I’m starting with this:

I am applying this with a pinstripe brush:

Bear in mind that 1-Shot sign paint is as toxic as Lindsay Lohan’s liver after a weekend of clubbing (and probably about as flammable).  It’s nasty when wet, but when dry it’s pretty neutral and looks great.  And it flows…oh my goodness…it is the most gorgeous paint ever.  It’s opaque, and flows off the brush like warm honey.  It’s called 1-Shot for a reason.  It only takes one shot.

Dry in fifteen, cured in an hour, ready for a coat of varnish over the pattern.

Wish me luck.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoe(paddle)lover

I am a visual person, which means if I can’t see it, it doesn’t exist.  Filing cabinets are black holes.  Opaque Tupperwares or Rubbermaids might as well be stone sarcophagi.  I have gear I didn’t know about because it was inside some other gear.

Organization is hard when you organize yourself visually.  Gear must necessarily be containerized or we get chaos.  It’s hard enough to pack for a trip without digging through every piece of gear.  I decided to take on a project to make it work.  What I needed was a visual cue.  Not labels for containers, which also don’t work for me.  What I need is a list of what goes in what and where that goes, on the outside of the container, pack or duffle bag.

Thank goodness for InDesign.

InDesign (for those not familiar) is a desktop publishing program that allows the user to lay out graphics for anything from a simple pamphlet or flyer to a full-on book or magazine.  It’s a powerful program and allows for great manipulation of text and objects.

I have some familiarity with the program from having to do occasional desktop publishing, from floor plans to ads for magazines and newspapers.  I decided I needed lists.  Not just for reference, but to make the inside things visible to my visually-organized brain.

What I’m doing is making a card for each piece of gear I take on my solo trips.  I have accumulated enough gear duplicates so I can create bags that are never unpacked and never different.  I have a few headlamps.  I don’t need to forget a headlamp anymore.  It’s on the card, and it’s in the thwart bag, period.

The text for the cards is being compiled as I actually sort the gear.  When the sort and the cards are done, I’ll print them, laminate them, and attach them to the outside of each piece of gear.  If I want to see what’s in the gear, I just have to reference the tag.

The last sheet I’m making is the “add right before” list.  Things like a digital camera (and spare batteries) are easy to forget in the mad rush to prepare for a trip, especially when it’s a last-minute deal.

Order from chaos indeed.

So far, the paddle clothing duffel, the bailout bag and the kitchen box are all done.  Working on the day pack and the big portage pack for the big stuff (tent, sleeping bag, dry bag of clothes, big first aid kit, etc.)

It feels good to get a handle on things.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover