The Benefit of a Single Malt Scotch

Nobody likes free radicals.

Free radicals, you may recall, are unstable molecules that can damage cells in your body. They form when atoms or molecules gain or lose electrons. They may occur as a result of normal metabolic processes in our body or they may be generated from external sources such as exposure to industrial chemicals, X-rays, ozone, cigarette smoking, and air pollutants.

Free radicals are to blame for aging and a host of illnesses, including cancer.

Now, enter stage left, single malt Scotch.

Finally, I found what I have long sought: a benefit to drinking a modest glass of Scotch in the evening.  As stated in an article I read at wideopencountry.com:  

“Another great health benefit of whiskey is its high concentration of ellagic acid, a powerful antioxidant that can neutralize cancer-causing free radicals in the human body. Single malt whiskey is said to contain more antioxidants than red wine.”

Nightly, then, my pledge is to do battle with and neutralize the free radicals.

—Mitchell Hegman

Sources:  www.wideopencountry.com, www.verywellfit.com, www.medicalnewstoday.com

The Spider Thing

I think my brother-in-law, Terry, and I have the same (somewhat unique) problem.  We don’t appreciate spiders much.

That’s not the problem entirely.  More like the beginning of the problem.

The problem is trying to describe spiders we have seen in our house to someone else so they might help us identify what kind of spider we saw.  Such a conversation might go something like this:

Other Person: “How big was the spider?”

Me or Terry: “Big!”

Other Person: “Yes, but how big?”

Me or Terry: “Huge big!  Unexpectedly big!”  

Other Person: “Okay. Let’s try something else.  Was the spider hairy?”

Me or Terry: “I don’t know.  I was busy screaming.” 

Other Person: “Did it look like a crab or was it more like something from Star Wars?”

Me or Terry: “It had a lot of legs and it was coming after me fast.  That’s what I noticed.  Horror movie stuff”

Other Person: “Color?”

Me or Terry: “Creepy spider color.”

Other Person: “You really need to man up on the spider thing.  I think you might be over-reacting.”

 Me or Terry: “You weren’t there.  I was only milliseconds from injury or possible death.  I threw my shoe at the spider and went back an hour later to see if it was there.  It was gone.”

Other Person: “Maybe you wounded the spider and it limped off to its lair to die.”

Me or Terry: “Or its growing bigger and plotting revenge.”

—Mitchell Hegman

Distance

Distance is nothing.

Distance is only as wide or deep as we imagine it.     

I hear your voice in dozens of songs every day.  All I need is close my eyes to see you.  And, strangely, each time I open my freezer, the scent of last summer’s frozen huckleberry harvest surrounds me, and that is you.

Someone named Margaret Atwood said the exact words I wish I would have said about our time apart.  She said this: “I exist in two places, here and where you are.”

—Mitchell Hegman

For Desiree

A Chair

Something I read long ago came to mind.  I can’t remember the author.  Emerson?  Thoreau?  I may not have this exactly correct, but the snippet went something like this: “If you lack the materials to build a table but have enough to build a chair, by all means build a chair.”

I like that.

If you have the means to accomplish a little, but cannot accomplish a lot, why not accomplish a little?

—Mitchell Hegman

The Certainty of Fire

This much I know…fire keeps nothing it holds.  In the hands of fire, a sturdy length of oak is no greater than the thinnest ply of tissue paper.

I sat alone near the lake yesterday, feeding rakings of leaves and branches shed from the golden willows into a fire.

The fire grasped everything I offered without hesitation.  Orange and yellow flames first entwined, and then danced all around each stick I poked into the red jaws of the fire.  Eventually, the flames reduced the thickest branches and thinnest leaves to the same small mound of fragile white ashes.

Strangely satisfying, all of it.

There is no set requirement to think of anything other than the fire when you are tending one.  For this reason, I remember nothing else.

—Mitchell Hegman

Morning Report (April 25, 2020)

I woke a bit after 4:00 this morning—exiting directly from a dream in which I was parading around in terribly unmatched socks looking for a bathroom.  After shaking the dream from my head, I fed the cat and brewed coffee.

I sat on the sofa to sip at my first cup of coffee.

My mistake was watching an episode of The Monkees (first aired in December of 1967) instead of the news.

Now, I am stuck on stupid.

Up next: The partridge Family, circa 1971.

—Mitchell Hegman

Names

These are the names of paint colors:

Fawn Brindle

Quixotic Plum

Paper Heart

These are the names of constellations:

Southern Fish (Piscis Austrinis)

Arrow (Sagitta)

Little Dog (Canis Minor)

These are the names of flowers:

Firewheel

Fairy Slipper

Forget-Me-Not

These are the names of what matters:

Love

Light

Laughter

—Mitchell Hegman

A Measure of Place

Since first moving into my house nearly thirty years ago, I have kept a pen and notepad in the drawer of my nightstand.  Whenever I wake in the middle of the night, suddenly blessed with the solution to a problem I have been grappling with, or gifted with a grand inspiration of some sort, I quickly grab the pad and pen and jot down what I am thinking so it does not escape me.

Here is where I am now.

I have not reached in the drawer for at least five years.

—Mitchell Hegman

A Scotch Alert and Good Neighbors

I have been operating under a “Scotch Alert” for a couple days.

I have three levels of indication regarding my supply of Scotch:

Scotch Alert:  Less than a half-bottle remaining.

Scotch Warning:  Only two small glasses of Scotch remaining.

Scotch Emergency:  Completely out of Scotch.

It’s a fine line between a Scotch Alert and a Scotch Emergency.  Until 8:00 last night, I entertained thoughts of making a trip into Helena to fetch a few essentials (read Scotch here) today.

But at 8:00 last night, a side-by-side pulled up onto the concrete apron in front of my garage.  A moment later, my doorbell rang.  Upon opening my door, I found two of my “down-lake” neighbors standing there at proper social distance. 

“We have something for you,” one of the men said.  He removed a box containing a bottle of Glenlivet 15-year, single malt Scotch from a paper sack.  He placed the box on the step below me and then wiped it down with disinfectant. “We just wanted to thank you for allowing the tower for internet service to be placed on your property last fall.”

“I have been working at home for the last month, thanks to the service,” the other gentleman added.

My neighbors are in something of a hole.  Without the tower, they really had only satellite service as an option, which remains perpetually sketchy and expensive.  Last fall, my internet provider approached me with a proposal to place a ten-foot tall tower on my property so service might be extended.

I stood talking with my neighbors for quite a while.  I thanked them several times for the Scotch.

Here is something true: Good neighbors and Scotch will find a way.

—Mitchell Hegman

Human Sawdust

Sawdust can be a hazard at construction sites.   For starters, blowing sawdust might get into the eyes of any workers present.  Additionally, sawdust can make certain floors and surfaces extremely slippery.

The mantra “a clean jobsite is a safe jobsite” applies here.

Apparently, sawdust can be problematic at a murder scene as well.

The other night, I watched an episode of Forensic Files II in which a woman murdered her husband and then used a reciprocating saw to dismember his body for disposal.  Her lack of proper housekeeping (a clean jobsite) turned out to be her downfall.  Following the murder and dismemberment, she tracked “human” sawdust into an automobile.  Forensic investigators later vacuumed up some of the sawdust and used it as evidence to convict the woman.

And then that nagging little “safety-first” person appeared inside me, wondering if she wore her safety glasses as she operated her power saw.

—Mitchell Hegman

Worry

I think my grandmother truly enjoyed worrying.

My grandmother, after we (her grandchildren) had grown up securely and her bank accounts were drawing steady interest, needed something to worry about.

The weather worked nicely as a source of worry.  But when the long-term forecast promised only good weather for the next week, she might invent things over which she might fret.  Grandmother might take up worrying about a neighborhood dog if nothing weightier emerged in a timely fashion.  She might stew about a lot of cars coming and going at the rented rooms across the street.

Upcoming televised baseball games were something of a pleasurable worry for Grandmother.

The older I get, the more I notice that I am similarly saddled with a mind that flies around looking for vexatious places upon which to land.  What about ozone deletion?  Who will take up worrying about that, if not me?  What will be the final outcome with knapweed on the whole of our continent?  Is my bear spray out-of-date for the coming huckleberry season?  Is something nefarious causing all my ink pens to run out of ink at once?  

Sometimes I reach out in my worry.

What about all the debris—the bolts and booster rocket parts and satellite gizmos we have left belted in a zero G junk stream high above our blue planet?  What if my neighbor has grandkid who becomes an astronaut?  What if NASA decides to shoot him up through all that crap on his way to Mars?

—Mitchell Hegman

The Birds

The birds are going nutty.  I am not sure what is afoot (awing?), but the birds are, literally, at my door.

A few evenings ago, I opened my front door to “feel” the weather.  I had no sooner poked my head out the open door when a chickadee shot out from the Mayday tree, about twenty feet away, and arrowed straight over to my face.  The chickadee hovered there, about a foot from my nose, flapping its wings like crazy for a second, before both of us made surprised retreats.

“What are you doing?” I yelled out to the bird as it fluttered away up and over the roof of my house.

Last evening, a far more bizarre event occurred.  While video-chatting with Desiree in Manila on my smarter-than-me-phone, I heard a weird noise at my front door.  Not quite scratching and far less than a knock.

“I’m hearing a weird noise?” I told Desiree.  “Come with me.”  Holding my phone in hand, I tramped to the front entry and cautiously pulled open the door.

With the door only partially open, a pigeon exploded into motion above me.  Flapping its wings like crazy, the pigeon attempted to fly inside over the top of the door.  “Noooo.”  Raising both hands (Desiree included), I tried to shoo the bird back out.  Confronted by me, the bird tried to flap around to the open side of the door.  The loss of lift soon saw the pigeon plopped on my floor just inside the door.

Some twenty years ago, my cat, Denver, deposited a live starling inside my house.  Between me and the cat chasing the bird around the inside of the house, we made quite a mess of things.  Determined not to allow the pigeon the same opportunity, I bent down, holding the phone so Desiree could see the bird, and scooped the bird back out the door.  After doing so, I opened the door and watched the bird fly off past my solar array.

“That’s a big bird!” Desiree announced. 

I held the phone so we could see each other again.  “You saw that, right?”

“Yes.”

“Weird.  I have no idea what that was all about.”

Posted today are the feathers I picked up from tile of my entry after the bird made a panicky exit.

—Mitchell Hegman

Checkers

I often use disparaging terms when talking about my 20 pounds of housecat.  But at this point, he is the only one left for me to play checkers with.  He is not good at checkers.  His whole thing is pretty much “king me!” and then he bats most of the pieces off the board.

The other day, I tried his strategy.

Surprisingly satisfying. 

—Mitchell Hegman

Collateral Cleaning

You have likely heard the term “collateral damage.”  The term is used to describe death, injury, or other damage inflicted as an unintended consequence of military operations.

Well, in my household, the weeks of sheltering in place has led to “collateral cleaning.”  In recent days, I have been cleaning out closets, drawers, and a few corners I had forgotten existed in my home.

This type of deep cleaning is very illuminating.

Following is a list of items I have discovered buried away under the surface of my daily living:

Half of a tee shirt draped over a hanger

Several unmatched socks

Approximately 1/8^th of a cat (in hair only)

An authentic arrowhead knapped from flint

Dust

Two Sylvania DHN slide projector lamps for a Kodak model 550 carousel slide projector

A book of MC Escher artwork

Three bricks of .22 long rifle cartridges

One Kodak model 550 carousel slide projector (manufactured in the early 1960s)

Two remotes for unknown electronic devices

A bundle of paid bills from 2008

A “movie director” Halloween costume

NOTE: About the tee shirt…I found this item hanging in the closet just inside the entry from my garage.  I am guessing I converted the other half into a rag.

—Mitchell Hegman

Quirks of Snow

Montana being Montana, you should expect snow during any given month of the year.  You should also expect some old rancher to call your new pickup “a nice outfit” and, if you’re lucky, the old rancher might invite you try to catch trout in his “crick.”   But I will save our quirks of language for another blog.  This blog is about quirks of snow.

Before I move on to my main point, I have another snow story.  In July of 1985, I and my friend Kevin St Clair, shared a few drinks with two elderly brothers from Sweden at a hotel bar in Beijing, China.  At some point, one of the Swedish gentlemen proclaimed this: “We have two vinters in Sveden, a green one and a vite one!”   

Back here in Montana, we are in the spring of the year—something other folks might refer to as “late winter.”  I rather like to think of this time of year as the season of wet snow (as opposed to the much colder season of dry snow extending from December through February).

Knowing my place in the seasons, I was not particularly surprised when I looked outside yesterday at midday and saw huge flakes of snow jostling about in the air.   The nature of the snowfall at the back of my house was noteworthy, however.  Big flakes streamed straight toward my house from the north, propelled by a rather gentle wind.  But the falling snow turned weird upon reaching my deck.  Instead of falling down, the flakes fell up, shooting skyward again.

My house totally rejected the snow.

Good boy, house!    

—Mitchell Hegman

Puzzled

I am working a new jigsaw puzzle.  A round one.  This is my first attempt at a round puzzle.  I have had a couple weird experiences while working on the puzzle. 

I really struggled with the edge.  On a rectangular puzzle, I sometimes make measurements if I think I am missing a piece, or simply to check progress.  Measuring a round puzzle is not practical.

The edge got a little ugly on me.  Especially, when I completed the entire edge (carefully comparing my work to an illustration provided in the box) and discovered I had an extra piece.  After careful study, I found the exact same piece on the edge of my puzzle.  Well, almost exact.  The piece did not fit precisely when I tried, but it was the same pattern of color and shape.

Stranger yet, when I continued on with the puzzle, the inside pieces fit together perfectly without the extra piece in place.  I still have the piece in a small plastic bag.

Extra Piece

The second experience merely illustrates my cognitive limitations.  Ignoring the colors and design patterns, I tried to force into place the piece pictured below on several occasions.  The only thing that finally got me to stop trying was a wee dram of Scotch. 

  

Not Even Close

Finally, I will say this: Putting together a circular puzzle is very different than assembling one with squared edges.  On a squared puzzle I will work on features within the “field” of the puzzle after completing the edge.  The round puzzle only made sense to me by working “rings” of pieces toward the center.

I enjoyed the process.

Nearly Complete

—Mitchell Hegman

Birthday

Yesterday was my birthday.   I did the math on that.  I am now 64 years old and stuck in self-isolation some 16 miles from the capital city of Montana.  Most significantly, I am a party of one.

In spite of all that, I had quite a birthday.  First thing in the morning, three beautiful girls from Manila sang “Happy Birthday” to me by means of smartphone video.  I received birthday wishes from friends and family spread from coast to coast—including a few more renditions of “Happy Birthday “over the phone.  Facebook lit up with birthday wishes.  At the end of the day, Tad, Stacie, Cooper, and Sawyer St. Clair sent me a video of their “Happy Birthday.”

Before ending my day entirely, I found a song of my own, cranked up my stereo, and pranced a little.

Happy birthday to me!

—Mitchell Hegman

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erG5rgNYSdk