Washing Dishes

As a kid, I was a TV remote, telephone answering machine, and a dishwasher. I must admit, I rather resented performing these tasks at times, and I found myself both impressed and relieved when the new technology of TV remotes and telephone answering machines replaced me.

Dishwashers were another thing. They appeared in only a few new houses or were installed during a rare kitchen remodel. When we built our house in 1991, we purchased a new answering machine, a new TV with a remote, and installed a fancy new dishwasher.

Funny thing, I never took to using the dishwasher that much. I quickly realized the “pre-rinsing” we did might as well be a full-on washing. And all my years of washing dishes had rather programmed me into doing so. I didn’t resent it anymore. In fact, I came to like some aspects of it. The tactile experience, at times, was genuinely pleasant. The warm water felt good on a chilly day. I found myself enjoying the small puzzle of stacking plates and bowls and pots and pans to dry in gravity-defying constructs.

Yes, because I am Mitch, I sponsored a few crashing failures.

These days, washing dishes feels less like a chore and more like a quiet favor. Something simple I do for the house, or maybe for myself. It gives my hands something useful to do when my mind is idling. There’s a satisfaction in leaving the sink empty and the counter clear.

Decent stuff.

But if you want my TV remote, you’ll still need to pry it from my hands.

—Mitchell Hegman

The Assemblage

While driving into town evening last, I could not help but notice a stadium-sizes cloud above Lake Helena. The lone cloud was drifting slowly eastward and was loosely collected. The lake is not frozen at present, and the cloud, by the tattered look of it, appeared to be an assemblage of mist only recently swept up from a chill breeze across the lake, following an abnormally warm December week.

Whatever the case, I found myself compelled to stop long enough to capture a single image of the fleeting scene.

The Assemblage

—Mitchell Hegman

Embracing the Tilt

This coming Sunday at exactly 8:03 a.m. Mountain Standard Time, the Northern Hemisphere’s astronomical winter officially begins with the winter solstice. This will produce the shortest day and the longest night of the year.

The thing is, all of this winter, spring, summer, and autumn nonsense exists because the blue planet we are affixed to rotates on an axis about 23.5 degrees off perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic. Or, as I might explain it to my drinking buddies in East Helena, Montana: “The Earth is tilted in its wonky orbit, Dude.”

You are going to have to take my word on the tilt thing because you won’t feel it.

Counterintuitively, the Earth is not farther from the sun during winter. In fact, we are actually a little closer in our orbit than we are in summer. The cold has nothing to do with distance and everything to do with angle. Our hemisphere is tilted away from the sun, spreading its light thin and low across the landscape, shortening our days and weakening the warmth that reaches us. You won’t feel the difference in distance either way, but you certainly feel the loss of direct sunlight. And don’t forget the snow.

You may already know all this, but you might not know that the placement of our house on the plateau above the lake was predicated on the tilt of the Earth. Specifically, the house was positioned to take advantage of how that tilt alters the track of the sun across our sky from season to season. The year before we built, we drove stakes into the ground where we planned to build and watched how the sun arched overhead. Based on that, we repositioned the house so the sun passes directly overhead in summer. As the sun’s path shifts toward winter, our orientation invites warming sunlight deep into the house through our front windows. It is our small, deliberate agreement with a tilted planet to let the light in when it matters most.

The House in 1993

The House in 2024

—Mitchell Hegman

My Whistling House

My house has developed a new habit. It whistles while it works.

To be clear, a house’s job is not particularly difficult; it just needs to stand there and stay in one piece. Yesterday, when confronted by heavy gusts of wind, it whistled at the back door, rattled at the front, and huffed all around. But my house, thankfully, did its job.

The fact is, the entirety of Western Montana suffered through a raucous day of high winds. Locally, the winds were dangerous enough that schools shut down as a safety measure.

Trees were knocked down throughout the valley and in the mountains all around us. Power outages covered vast swathes of the region. Big trucks were tipped over on the highways. In some areas, wind gusts approached 100 mph.

In an update posted to social media mid-morning, the National Weather Service’s Missoula office reported that gusts had clocked in between 59 and 73 mph in Butte, Plains, Missoula, and Kalispell. The outlier on that list was a 96-mph gust at Mount Aeneas in the Flathead National Forest.

Scary stuff. Still, there’s something reassuring about a house that can sigh and whistle its way through such violence. Hopefully, your house managed the same.

Damage in Butte, Montana (Photo by: MTN News)

—Mitchell Hegman

Lessons on Aging

I’m what is politely referred to as a senior citizen. In theory, I was supposed to be filled with wisdom and grace by now.

Well, let’s just say both attributes are subjective. But I do have a few things I can share about occupying space as a senior:

• You’re never too old to find a new way to mash your thumb.
• Not being able to hear the oven’s timer sounding off can lead to secondary problems.
• One day, you will start marching around the house turning off lights while carping about the power bill, just as your grandfather did.
• You will buy dirt.
• Being generous makes actual sense.
• As far as heating your house in the winter goes, 80 is the new 70.
• You’ll finally have time to figure out why you have both salad forks and dinner forks.

—Mitchell Hegman

The Center Piece

Desiree and I just finished another 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle. This particular puzzle was a Boardwalk brand from Costco, titled Dog Surfing. This puzzle pieced together in a fairly methodical fashion, meaning we assembled the border and then pieced together certain features inside as islands and then gradually joined them together.

As we neared the end of assembling the puzzle, we noticed something unusual: the puzzle had a center and pieces forming concentric circles around it. A rather charming surprise.

I’ve posted two photographs of the puzzle so you can see the patterns for yourself.

The Center Piece

Concentric Circles Formed Around the Center Piece

—Mitchell Hegman

Plain and Simple

I’ve been running the numbers, my dear. I believe we’ve finally made this life our own. A warming fire twirls and curtsies in the woodstove beside us. We have our pet names, several flower arrangements, and Christmas lights winking at us.

That’s enough for any romance.

—Mitchell Hegman

Plumbing Leaks

Normally, it’s the pressurized stuff you have to worry about when plumbing. You know the issues: water spraying from a loose brass fitting, a righteous leak from a valve that failed to seat properly, or a flexible hose that gives up the ghost.

Well, I don’t do normal.

My problems tend to live on the PVC connections on the gravity-operated drain side of the equation. True to form, when I ran water down the drain of the new sink I plumbed for our new vanity, the plastic P-trap I’d just twisted into place leaked.

Not a little. More like runoff from a metal roof during a heavy rain. I gave the connections one more careful wrench crank and tried again.

Still a steady leak.

When I tore everything apart for a second time, I found that one of the pipes had a slight manufacturing defect at the connection joint.

Out with the new, back in with the old. We now have a new sink, with seasoned plumbing back on the job.

I knew I had a firm reason for becoming an electrician.

Plumbing Stuff

—Mitchell Hegman

The Small Vanity

The new vanity for the small bathroom is finally in place. Its style matches the one we installed in the bathroom adjoining our bedroom, right down to the sink and Corian countertop.

Corian is interesting stuff. It’s a composite material made from acrylic polymer and reconstituted, pulverized natural minerals, in a ratio of about one-third resin to two-thirds mineral compound. Building a Corian countertop takes some effort. In my case, the top began as a half-inch-thick sheet, cut to accommodate the sink. That sheet, along with edge strips and the sink itself, was then laminated together to form a single solid piece.

It’s a pretty thing, and it’s durable. Best of all, it requires very little caulking from me.

Bathroom With No Vanity

Vanity Before the Sink

The Top Being Laminated at the Cabinet Shop

Finished Vanity

—Mitchell Hegman

A Tilted Conversation

The man leaned in. “Consider the English.”

“English?” the woman asked. “Are we talking about the language or the people?”

“Both. They arrive as a pair.”

“And what, precisely, are we considering?”

“Well,” he said, “they have tilted things a little. Apartments are flats, big trucks are lorries, and girls are birds.”

“I have no quarrel with being a bird. There are worse fates.”

“You’re a fine one, too, my little chickadee, my sweet kinglet.”

“Kinglet carries a hint of boy about it.”

“My dove?”

“Acceptable.”

“My tufted titmouse?”

The woman blinked. “Good grief, no. That sounds a bit brassy.”

“As I said, the English bend words in curious directions.”

—Mitchell Hegman

The Worst Thing

I can juggle fairly well. I’m not ready to do so with knives or running chainsaws, but I’m a firm go with apples or oranges. While thinking about this, I suddenly switched to considering things I am not very good at. As you might have already guessed, that’s a pretty robust list.

Let’s look at a few examples.

We can start with the fact that I’m not especially skilled at dressing myself appropriately. I’m not good at stacking the pots and pans away. Things get a little tippy within my haphazard heaps. Also, in a general sense, the “unable to walk and chew gum at the same time” applies to me. Twisting wrenches on cars has always been a dark shadow.

Then I tried to drill down to the thing I’m absolutely the worst at. Well, that’s pretty easy. I came up with caulking around bathroom fixtures with white silicone. I’m no good. Invariably, I begin by applying too little caulk, which is immediately followed by applying way too much. Then I bring out the snowplow to try to remove the excess caulk. By the time I’m done, my hands, clothes, and the entire bathroom are smeared with sticky caulking.

And, no, I’m not good at cleaning caulking up.

—Mitchell Hegman

Locked Out

I see that the government in Australia has decided to ban children under the age of 16 from most social media platforms. Hard to argue that unlimited scrolling can scramble a young brain, but enforcing a full ban might prove tricky.

Thinking about all this brought back a memory from years ago, when my buddy Bill’s teenage daughter managed to lock him out of the Weather Channel with a “parental” control she’d set on their television. It took him a while to catch on, but once he did, let’s just say he applied a bit of barometric pressure to quickly negotiate his way back to his channel.

—Mitchell Hegman

Six Minutes

Researchers at the University of Michigan have concluded that drinking Coke might be shortening your life. Taking into consideration things like additives, fats, calories, and sugar content, they estimate each can you drink may shave a full twelve minutes off your life. And you have to wonder, what if those are the best twelve minutes you had coming?

A sobering thought there.

Well, I’ve devised a workaround where I don’t need to worry about that. I now drink the little half-sized cans of Coke. Therefore, I am only losing six minutes. I figure not much can happen in six minutes. Most days, I can’t even decide what to watch on Netflix in that amount of time.

Mini-Cans of Coke in My Refrigerator

—Mitchell Hegman

Sunroom Privileges

Filipino pork siomai (pronounced shu mai) started life as a Chinese dumpling, but the Philippines grabbed the ball at some point and has been running with it ever since. Siomai has become one of my favorite island dishes. To make hers, Desiree seasons ground pork appropriately, tucks little scoops into wonton wrappers, and steams them into soft, savory perfection.

But that’s barely opening the curtain on this act.

The real magic arrives when you dip the bundles into soy sauce brightened with freshly squeezed calamansi juice. For those of you hoisting a beer at a bar in East Helena, calamansi are tiny Filipino limes. They are small, but fierce and full of attitude. And this is where sunroom privileges come into play. We happen to have a modest but wildly productive calamansi tree living its best life in our sunroom.

Limes in Hand

Steaming Siomai

Siomai with Soy/Calamansi Sauce

—Mitchell Hegman

A Quick Recap of Our Conditions

We are sentient beings trapped inside leaky bags of salt that will eventually fail us. At the same time, we are presently trapped on a big rock hurtling through mostly empty space at 67,000 miles per hour. Our quest, simply enough, is to change at least one of these conditions.

—Mitchell Hegman

A Few Pluses

Here are a few pluses in my life at present:

• I’ve had a woodstove in the house for over a year now and have not burned myself.
• Last time I checked, both of my feet still reach the ground.
• We have enough caramel popcorn to last at least another week.
• The coffee maker has not staged an uprising in well over a month.
• I opened the fridge, forgot what I wanted, and still found something snack-worthy.
• I’ve learned to accept phrases like “limited lifetime warranty” and “free with purchase.”
• I’ve finally lost enough hair that I no longer need to worry about where to part it.

—Mitchell Hegman

In the Abstract

Photography, at its heart, is nothing more and nothing less than painting with light. An extremely tight focus, tipping the lens at a weird angle, extending the exposure, using a soft focus, or playing in the shadows: a multitude of tricks can reshape familiar things. Before long, the camera turns honest scenes into soft mysteries and outright abstractions.

Today, I’m posting one of my favorite abstractions. It’s a tight shot of water beading on the cover of my hot tub, captured in directional light.

—Mitchell Hegman

When Playing the Accordion Is Cool

The accordion is something of a latecomer as far as woodwind musical instruments go. It originated in Germany in the early 1800s, but was quickly adopted throughout both Europe and the Americas. When growing up, I knew a few kids who (usually pressed by their parents) learned to play the instrument.

But most kids in my era drifted toward guitars and rock and roll. Let’s be honest, nobody thought you could rock an accordion.

Well, we were wrong about that. To prove it, I’ve posted a short video of Vivaldi expressed on the accordion.

—Mitchell Hegman

Video Link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRWuEnjfYTE&list=RDkRWuEnjfYTE&start_radio=1

Something Herbert Hoover Said

Herbert Hoover served as the 31st President of the United States (1929–1933). He entered office with a reputation as a humanitarian and skilled administrator, but his presidency was defined by the onset of the Great Depression just months after he took office. Though often portrayed as inactive, Hoover did pursue relief measures: public works projects, loans to banks and businesses, and other forms of federal intervention. At the same time, his deep belief in limited government, balanced budgets, and voluntary cooperation kept him from embracing large-scale, direct aid. His policies, combined with poor public communication, made him appear out of touch with widespread suffering. Today he’s viewed not as uncaring, but as a capable and principled man whose philosophy proved mismatched to an economic catastrophe of unprecedented scale.

Following are three of Hoover’s quotes:

—"All men are equal before fish.”

—"About the time we can make the ends meet, somebody moves the ends.”

—"I'm the only person of distinction who has ever had a depression named for him.”

—Mitchell Hegman

Notes to Self

• Find more than one way home.
• Add something sweet.
• Don’t feed the monsters on Sunday nights.
• Use respect as your starting point.
• Don’t dress yourself so you look like a bee.
• Take more sunrise pictures.
• Borrow an old muscle car and spin a doughnut.
• Use smaller nails on trim.
• Own the days when you do everything and own the days when you do nothing.
• Use your words as thoughtfully as you would use permanent ink.

—Mitchell Hegman

The Quilters

Desiree and I watched a short Netflix documentary about a unique quilting club of sorts. Titled The Quilters, the thirty-some-minute movie reveals the operation of a quilting club within a Missouri maximum-security prison. The prisoners in the club design and sew beautiful, personalized quilts and give them to foster children and charities.

All the materials are donated, and inmates can participate in the program only if they have no prison infractions on record. Several of the inmates in the club are convicted murderers serving life sentences. Most have been incarcerated for several years. No matter the path that led them to the quilting club, they are, to a man, dedicated to doing their best work when producing the complex and often quite stunning quilts.

The work done by this quilting club is impressive and worth replication, and the film offers a brief but meaningful look at what such a project can accomplish.

I’ve posted a short trailer from the movie.

—Mitchell Hegman

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1j8RoIiMi8