A Decade of Lessons

Here we are, standing at the end of another decade.  I have learned some stuff over the last ten years.  Following is a list of things I figured out in these last ten years:

  1. The age of 60 is not the new 40.  It’s more like the new 58½.

  2. Common sense (literally) needs constant technological upgrades nowadays.

  3. Caulking.

  4. There is no reasonable psychological substitute for hand-feeding chickadees.

  5. Applying the same logic that created my problems to repair them never works but sometimes it can be surprisingly entertaining just trying.

  6. Flawed people make for the best friends.

  7. You cannot have too many gallon-size Ziploc bags.

  8. Crazy never goes out of style.

—Mitchell Hegman

The Festina Lente

On my last full day in San Francisco I was fortunate enough to experience the San Francisco Bay aboard the Festina Lente, the sailboat owned by Helen’s friends.  The invitation was contingent upon our arrival at the boat slip by 5:15 in the morning.  Timing was important.  The idea was to push the sailboat out into ebbing tide waters and, more or less, allow the boat to be carried out beyond Golden Gate Bridge by the strong outrushing current.

Though leaving in the dark of a late December morning required layers of clothing, the views proved fantastic.  The city of San Francisco seemed as if constructed entirely of streaming automobiles and light as we slipped away in the dark water and slowly skirted below the tall towers and bridges.

I have a fairly small and very specific list of events that have lived up to my full expectations.  For example, driving over Going to the Sun Highway in Glacier National Park, Montana makes my list.  Walking amid the giant redwoods makes my list.

Near dawn, just as the skyline blushed with the first hints of pink and red, we skimmed below the Golden Gate Bridge on the Festina Lente.

This has been added to my list.

After anchoring beyond the bridge, crab pots were tossed out.  We sat on the boat and chatted as the sun cleared the Golden Gate Bridge and waves broke against some nearby sea cliffs.  After a soaking for a while, the pots and a few rock crabs were hauled in from forty feet of water.

We returned to the city and a warming sun.

The city now constructed of blue sky and glass.

San Francisco at Night

Crossing Back Under the Golden Gate

Sun on the City

The Festina Lente

—Mitchell Hegman

Dogs of the Sea

Night before last, Helen took me down to the piers at the San Francisco Bay to have dinner with a group of her friends on the Festina Lente, a sailboat owned by a married couple she counts among her friends.

Though a bit cool, the night could not have been calmer.  More importantly, the group of Helen’s friends gathered there—a mix of people from Poland, Italy, India, and here in America—could not have been more accommodating. 

We ate our dinner and sipped at drinks on deck of the boat as the city of San Francisco slowly darkened and the tall buildings began to sparkle with light.  The reflections of the buildings flexed gently in the water all around us.

An unusual and striking quiet pervaded on the water there just below the city on the hills.  That is…until someone or something disturbed some sea lions lounging on the docks near the slip where the sailboat was moored.

A Sea lion, when agitated, can sound more like a dog barking than an actual dog sounds like a dog barking.  If that is a possible thing.

Just after we had finished our dinner, a ruckus that sounded like a hound dog treeing a raccoon erupted against the calm.

I honestly thought something had disturbed a dog near a boat in one of the slips near us.

“Sea lions,” one of the dinner guests said.

“Let’s get flashlights and check them out,” someone else suggested.

With that, a half dozen of us slinked off the sailboat and walked down to the end of the dock, probing all the while at the darkness with flashlights and smartphones.  Sure enough, there at the very end of the docks we found three dogs the sea.

Posted are a couple photographs I managed with my smarter-than-me-phone.

Boats along the Docks

Our Sea Lion Neighbors

—Mitchell Hegman

7:30 in San Francisco

I overslept last night and woke greatly confused.

Had I been transported to an alien planet?

Captured in a half-dream?

Slowly, recognition seeped into me.

I was on the sofa in my daughter’s San Francisco apartment.  Sunlight was already exploding against the blinds covering the bay windows overlooking the narrow street two stories below.

When I checked my smarter-than-me-phone, I was shocked to see I had slept in until 7:30 AM.  Something near 8½ hours of sleep.  Much more than normal.  After rubbing cobwebs from my eyes, I dragged over to the bench seat at the bay window and drew up a blind.

Now I sit slouched back against the seat…feeling like a slug struck helpless in exacting sunlight.  City sounds murmur in my ears.

—Mitchell Hegman

Wrong Side of the Street

My daughter lives on a hill in the Castro District of San Francisco.  She shares her life with a boxer/pug mix dog named Mookie.

Mookie has, shall we say, certain steadfast habits.

When you tell him it is time for a walk—no matter where you are in the house—he must run out into the kitchen and loop around the island counter there.  Only after he has accomplished this are you allowed to calmly put on his harness and attach the leash. 

While staying with my daughter, I have been taking Mookie for walks on the street.   His everyday walk takes him down the inclined sidewalks to Market Street and then back up again on the same route. 

What this actually means is Mookie zigzagging all over the sidewalk.  He needs to check out all of his favorite spots to mark with his maleness.  A certain planter by the big steps.  Three big trees and one little one.  The ratty old telephone pole as you approach Market Street.  The retaining wall with flowering plants weeping down.

The idea is to let Mookie stop at all these places.  Maybe let him circle a little before he hoists his leg.  After walking him a couple times, I got the hang of it and turned into a pretty good human for him.

On a more recent walk, however, I made a mistake.  On the way back up the hill, upon making the final turn onto Helen’s street, I turned up the opposite side of the street.  I was thinking I might enjoy a different view for the last leg of our walk.

Mookie froze solid as a block of lake ice.

He anchored there.

“You don’t want to try something new?” I asked.

I tugged a little.

Mookie would not have it.

Shrugging, I stepped off the curb to cross back over to our normal path.  Mookie unfroze and began pulling me toward his number one sidewalk planter.

Good human.

—Mitchell Hegman

Armstrong Redwoods

On the way home to the city (San Francisco), Helen routed us back to Highway 101 on a narrow mountain drive that took us through Guerneville.  There, we diverted to visit Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Reserve.

The reserve is 805 acres in size, with only two miles of road looping through the forest from the entrance.  Access to the Park is free if you walk in.

In spite of a temperature of only 38 degrees, Helen, I, and her dog, Mookie, did walk in.

We hiked nearly all of the roadway in the park

If there are words to adequately describe what walking through a redwood forest feel like, I have not yet found them.  The words I know are not big enough.  Not descriptive enough.

I am struck with awe when I walk through the giant, upright trees.

Roadway into the reserve

1,400-year-old Colonel Armstrong Tree

Helen walking between ancient giants

—Mitchell Hegman

Point Arena Lighthouse

Posted today are photographs from Point Arena Lighthouse.  Work on the original station started in September of 1869.  The light was exhibited for the first time in May of 1870.  Inside the lens room atop the tower was a first order Fresnel lens shipped to the California coastline from Paris.

The Fresnel lens is over six feet in diameter and weighs 4,700 pounds.  The lens is comprised of 258 hand-ground glass prisms fashioned into three sets of double bulls eyes.  Before being supplied with electricity and an electric light, an oil lamp was used to provide light for the lens.

In June of 1977 an automated aircraft beacon was set on the tower balcony and the first order Fresnel lens fell out of use.  The lens was later dismantled, dropped down to ground level by crane, and reassembled in the museum below the tower.

First Order Fresnel Lens

Point Arena Lighthouse

Point Arena Coastline

Coastal Mountains from atop the Lighthouse

Looking Downcoast from the Lighthouse Balcony

—Mitchell Hegman

A Cocktail, a Puzzle, and Cellphone Light

Shortly after my Arrival in San Francisco yesterday morning, my daughter, Helen, drove us up the California coast.  She opted for Highway 1.  Highway 1 attempts, best as it can, to follow along the rugged coastline.  This makes for a narrow and winding way.

We overnighted at Timber Cove Resorts.  Our rooms perch atop a windswept point overlooking the ocean.  The sea water below is constantly convulsing against the rocky coast. 

Last night, we watched the sun fall into the Pacific and then ate a light dinner in the resort lounge.  On the table next to us, some other guests had recently completed a jigsaw puzzle.  The puzzle is a community project left in the lounge for perpetuity.

“I think I am going to tear that apart,” Helen remarked while looking over at the puzzle.

“Okay,” I said. 

Helen ordered a couple cocktails and then the two of us went to work busting apart the puzzle.  Following that, we sorted out the edge pieces and began to rebuild the frame of the puzzle we’d just dismantled.  Something akin to Sisyphus in Hades—rolling his huge rock up the hill only to have it escape him and roll back down every single time he reaches the top, forcing him to start over again.

Light in the dining room dimmed considerably as the sunlight faded into Wedgewood and then black sky.  Before long, Helen had her smartphone propped against her cocktail with the flashlight switched on so she could better distinguish colors on the puzzle pieces.  There seems a certain oddity in that…using a device at the cutting edge of technology for the simple purpose of providing light once provided by a candle flame.

—Mitchell Hegman

Hope

Without hope in our lives, all we have left is family, friends, love, laughter, our own generosity, and the generosity of strangers.

So…I guess we always have hope.

—Mitchell Hegman

Toast versus Quantum Physics

Over the years, miracles have occurred in the form of images burned into toast.

Countless visions of Jesus have appeared on toast.  Elvis has made a few appearances.  Mother Mary, too.  A few years ago, a piece of toast with the image of “Virgin Mary” sold at auction for $28,000.

Images of holy figures on toast are seen, by some, as proof of existence.

Armed with that knowledge, we need to talk about black holes.

Black holes, though theoretical, are widely held by astronomers as a real presentation found within quantum physics.  In simple terms, a black hole results when a super-dense mass exerts such strong forces of gravity, nothing can escape its grasp.  Everything—including particles and light—are hopelessly sucked in by inconceivable forces.  The mass actually deforms spacetime.

The strangest part of black hole theory resides in the fact light cannot escape and temperatures are thought to be inversely proportional to mass.  Put in terms we can firmly grasp in my hometown of East Helena, Montana, this means black holes cannot be detected directly from afar.  Nothing escapes to tell us they are there.  Our best hope for proof is to detect stuff being sucked in.

All of the theoretical stuff came to an abrupt end in my kitchen yesterday morning at 11:16 AM.  That’s when the toast popped up in my toaster.

No, not Jesus.

Not Elvis.

A black hole popped out of my toaster,

Proof at last!

—Mitchell Hegman

Christmas Carols in the Tropics

I mentioned in a previous blog how Christmas is big deal in the Philippines.  As a nation, they start celebrating Christmas in September.  The celebrations carry on until early January in various forms.

Several weeks ago, as Desiree and I were video chatting, she said: “Ina is excited about being able to sing Christmas carols.  She and her friends have been practicing songs, but they can’t sing them until the sixteenth of December.”

Two things:

1.  Ina (Shanaia) is Desiree’s nine-year-old daughter.

2.  I never thought to ask why Ina could not sing Christmas carols until the sixteenth.

The other night, Desiree mentioned that Ina and several of her friends had been going door to door on the street where they live singing Christmas carols.

“Oh, yeah,” I said, “It’s past the sixteenth.”

“Yep.  And they can only do their singing until the twenty-fourth.”

One thing:

1.  I never thought to ask why Ina needed to stop singing on the twenty-fourth.

Desiree and I chatted a bit more before the subject of the girls singing carols arose again.  That’s when she mentioned something about Ina being pleased with the money she made singing carols.

“Wait,” I said.  Lights were coming on in the empty rooms of my brain.  “The kids make money singing carols?”

“Yep.  Most people will give them a little money when the girls sing at their door.”

“Oh…that explains why they have to wait until the sixteenth and stop on the twenty-fourth.”

“Yep.”

“I told her, if they go to the same places too many times, the people may not give them money.”

“So…it’s like a tradition.”

“Yep.”

“I’ll be darned.  I learned something.  Good for Ina.”

I am, as the saying goes, a little slow on the draw.  But I get it now.  I rather like the idea of kids running about door to door in the tropics singing Jingle Bells.  If giving them loose change promotes that—no problem. 

—Mitchell Hegman

Something Leonardo da Vince Said

—“Learning never exhausts the mind.”

—“Time abides long enough for those who make use of it.”

—“Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it.”

—Mitchell Hegman

Good Fortune and Whoopee Cushions

Last evening, I thought about the good fortune that brought into my life so many decent people.  There are a lot of them.  I am lucky in that.

Then I thought about all the human whoopee cushions standing alongside the decent people.

And that’s sort of how I ended up accidentally drinking two glasses of Scotch last night.

—Mitchell Hegman

Romance Dies

X: “You’re the best.”

Y: “No, you’re the best.”

X: “I’m serious, you are totally the best, ever.”

Y: “I love you more now than I did two minutes ago.”

X: “I love you like ugly on an ape.”

—Mitchell Hegman

Pigeons Wearing Cowboy Hats

When you go to Las Vegas, you expect to drop a few dollars in a slot machine.  You might expect to see an Elvis impersonator.  You might expect to see a person flying overtop you on Freemont Street.   Las Vegas does not, however, bring to mind the thought of pigeons wearing little cowboy hats strutting along the streets or flying about.

Not expecting to see pigeons in little cowboy hats may not stop you from seeing them.

Early this month, pigeons wearing cowboy hats began appearing on the streets of Las Vegas not far from McCarran International Airport.

Nobody knows for sure how the birds came to be wearing cowboy hats.  And “wearing” may not be an accurate term.  According to Mariah Hillman, who runs Lofty Hopes, a pigeon rescue and advocacy group, the hats seem to be glued in place.  She has been trying to catch one of the bird to assess.

You never know what you will find in Vegas.  This story just goes to show that.

I was really shocked to find a pigeon advocacy group there.

—Mitchell Hegman

Source: Huffpost.com (Josephine Harvey)

A Mating Call

Okay.  We need to talk about mating and the National Electrical Code.  We are most likely talking about mating on the rooftop of a building near you.

Maybe your neighbor’s house.

That’s correct, we need to have a discussion about Code Section 690.33 Mating.

We have a problem.  Our solar PV cables are not mating properly.  Specifically, we need to address the somewhat delicate matter of “intermatablity.”

In simple terms, we have boy parts that are not fitting together properly with associated girl parts on some cable connectors used to connect the wires between the PV modules on arrays.

Cable mating.

These are current-carrying electrical connections.  Additionally, they are in outdoor locations—subjecting them to radical temperature changes and varying levels of moisture.  Poor connections have led to arcing and, ultimately, fires.  The problem arises when, say, a female end from one manufacturer is coupled with what is supposed to be a matching male connector from another manufacturer.

The idea here is to get manufacturers to standardize a bit better so these connections between different manufacturers will successfully mate together.  Intermatability in Code-speak.

Section 690.33 in the 2020 version of the National Electrical Code is the standard to initiate manufacturers to focus on intermatability.

A mating call, if you will.

—Mitchell Hegman

Note: the spelling “intermatability,” as found in the National Electrical Code, may be found as “intermateablity” elsewhere.

Waking Tired

I slept for my normal allotted time last night, but woke this morning feeling tired.   My left arm was numb from sleeping wrong.  Even now, while sitting on my sofa, I feel as though I am pinned under a big rock.  I just don’t have the energy or desire to free myself.

That, and a moment ago I picked up my smartphone and tried to use it to turn down my television.

—Mitchell Hegman

S-M-I-T-H

Sometimes, you can confound people just by over-explaining the simplest of things.

My favorite example of this comes from a friend of mine with the last name of Smith.  A well-known name for sure.   The surname Smith is, in fact, the most common last name in Great Britain, the United States, and Australia.

According to Ancestry.com, the business of surnames largely came about in the Middle Ages, when people identified themselves by their trade.  Back then, nearly every village in had a smith, usually a blacksmith, who made horseshoes, weapons, and all the tools needed for their version of modern living.  Some names were more specific, with people called Combsmith or Smithson.  These were all later shortened to Smith.  This explains why we have so many Smiths today.

My friend with the name of Smith made a habit of purposely overplaying his hand whenever he checked into a hotel or whenever someone needed to write down his name.

“My name is Tim Smith,” he would say.  And then he would quickly spell out his last name: “That’s S-M-I-T-H.”

More often than not, the person taking down his name would suddenly register confusion.  All forward motion would stop.  “I’m sorry…could you spell that for me again?”

—Mitchell Hegman

Stemless Wine Glasses

I have entered scary new territory.

Over the last week—for whatever reason—three of my remaining stemless wine glasses have broken.  One simply shattered when I attempted to lift it (while empty) from the sink by the brim.

The loss of my glasses has actually created something along the lines of a full-blown “Scotch Emergency.”  I wrote about these in a 2014 blog.  Below is a quick recap of my levels of Scotch notifications:

Scotch Alert:  Less than a half-bottle remaining.  Notes are written to remind me to purchase a bottle on my next trip to town.

Scotch Warning:  Maybe only two glasses of Scotch remaining.  I might need to make trip to town for the express reason of running into the liquor store.  I may call my brother-in-law to see if he has Scotch in the event I cannot re-supply due to liquor store closure.

Scotch Emergency:  Holy hell!  I am out of Scotch!  How did this happen?

My problem now?  I like my Scotch in a stemless wine glass.  As of this morning, I now have only one stemless wine glass remaining.  If someone were to stop by for a sip, either I or they would be required to drink from the next best thing.  For all practical purposes, the next best thing is a red solo cup.

I will be heading to town to purchase glasses sometime after first light.

—Mitchell Hegman

The Sky is My Garden (Part III)

The sky is my garden.

Though I have neither planted nor tended the horizons,

all my colors grow there.

I give some of these colors my own names.

The deep yellow I call “yesterday’s child.”

A red I have named “root of flame.”

I am comforted because the sky is always pressed against me.

At night, either clouds pull over me like a blanket

or stars slowly swirl above, glittering.

Posted today are photographs captured of the sky immediately surrounding my house.

July 13, 2019

July 28, 2019 (North Hills Fire)

November 9, 2019

November 11, 2019

—Mitchell Hegman