Aluminum Beer Can Melting Guild Meeting, January 29, 2022 (Part Two)

We encounter some long and occasionally brutal winters here in Montana.  If you live here year-round, you need to embrace winter in some fashion.  Forming your own aluminum beer can melting guild is certainly an option for doing so.

If you are not a beer drinker, you can just as easily melt-down soda cans.

If melting cans is not your thing, you can adopt the campfire and sledding portions of our guild activities.  A campfire is always welcome.  And sledding is good stuff.

Some impressive sledding runs took place at our last meeting.  Best of all, no animals or humans were injured along the way.

I have posted a couple videos featuring memorable runs down the hill.

Em Making Her First Big Run

Tad Making a Distance Run onto the Lake Ice

—Mitchell Hegman

Aluminum Beer Can Melting Guild Meeting, January 29, 2022 (Part One)

Yesterday, we mustered a quorum for another official meeting of the Aluminum Beer Can Melting Guild.  The day proved sunny and the temperature comfortable.  Perfect for a meeting.

Early in the gathering, however, Randy experienced a wardrobe malfunction.  The zipper on his bibs would not pull down.  Considering how beer goes in at the mouth end and must be expelled at the zipper end, having a functioning zipper is a pretty big deal.

Randy tried his best to tug the zipper with a pair of pliers, but failed to get the job done.  Eventually, a couple of the girls took control of the pliers and repaired the zipper.  “I think it was one zip off,” Randy explained once the zipper was functioning properly.

We also managed plenty of sledding, a dinner cooked over the campfire, and a clean pour of aluminum not long before sunset.

I am sharing a few photographs and a video of the aluminum pour.

I will post a bit more tomorrow.

 

Randy Working on His Zipper

One of the Girls Helping Randy

Another Attempt at the Zipper

The Aluminum Crucible in the Fire

Tad Making the Pour

—Mitchell Hegman

Safety Sandals

Desiree is undertaking a minor remodel at her house in Manila.  She enlisted the help of a carpenter she has used previously.  He lives under a nearby bridge, which is considerably better than it sounds.

The carpenter knows his stuff and is reliable.  I would go so far as to call him a craftsman.  Just the same, I am always amazed by the attire of the carpenter and his come-and-go helpers when Desiree sends me photographic progress reports.

While working, everyone wears shorts and sandals.  One worker from a previous project was often barefoot.  After seeing the barefoot worker, I started referring sandals as “safety sandals.”

Better than barefoot. 

This is not my first exposure to safety sandals.  For many years, I have been using a photograph of some “electrical safety sandals” in my safety training courses. 

Posted today are photographs of safety sandals at work.

Construction Safety Sandals

Electrical Safety Sandals

—Mitchell Hegman

What Desiree Wants

Desiree and I have discussed everything.

She wants to live where sun showers sweep rain across big country.  She wants five-alarm sunrises and perfectly symmetrical snowflakes melting against the palm of her hand.  She wants to give names to deer bedded down in her yard.  She wants to see the places where queen’s cup and huckleberries share the crosshatch light of conifer forest understories.

As good fortune has it, my corner of the Rocky Mountains is just the place for all of that.

We filed our first paperwork to bring Desiree here on a visa in December of 2019.  Covid-19 froze the process solidly.  Only now, in the early days of 2022, are visas once again getting pushed through the U.S. Embassy in Manila.  We think Desiree’s visa packet may see daylight within a few weeks.

If this is so, she will be here before the first tufted phlox blossoms outside my door.  And then sunrise and all the rest.

—Mitchell Hegman

Self-Observations

• An object doesn’t need to be shiny to distract me. 
• I live by the rule: “you can’t have too many Phillips screwdrivers in your junk drawer.”
• Yes, to mispronouncing words.
• I am perfectly normal (for me).
• Still working on making the worst mistake of my life.
• My go-to answer: “barbecue potato chips”.
• I suffer without a hands-on project before me.
• Charles Bukowski is immediately adjacent to William Shakespeare on my bookshelf.

—Mitchell Hegman

Exercise Made Easy

About a week ago, I pulled a folding chair out from my sunroom and placed it on my treadmill just outside the sunroom door.  While visiting me the other day, my neighbor, Kevin, noticed the chair and pointed at it.  “That,” he pronounced, “is my kind of exercise.”

My Treadmill and Chair

—Mitchell Hegman

Huckleberry Jam

Yesterday a small group of folks gathered at my house to make huckleberry jam with berries we have harvested over the last two years.  Our style of processing to make jam involves frozen huckleberries, canning jars, pots, sugar, lemons, a few adult beverages, and the telling of tall tales from the huckleberry patch and beyond.

This year’s jam session included plenty of stories about grizzly bears and mountain encounters with confused out-of-staters.  Most impressively, we managed to produce 67 eight-ounce jars of jam. No small feat, that.

After finishing with the jam, we enjoyed a Montana-style lunch consisting of an elk roast and grouse pot pie.

Both were delicious. 

All of this while snow occasionally sifted down around my house.  A perfect way to spend a winter day.

My Kitchen Before Making Jam

Jars of Jam Cooling in my Den

—Mitchell Hegman

United

I am troubled by our current state of political division.  I am especially distressed by the profanity often used to express disagreement.  Civil discourse has always been the railing that kept us together.

Having various camps of thought is not only normal, it is necessary.  The trick is finding consensus where two or more camps meet.  My first question is always: “What do we have in common?”

For one thing, and most importantly, we have the United States of America in common.

I thought about the last time we, as a nation, were unfalteringly united.  That, only twenty years ago, immediately following the attacks of 9/11.  You could sense unity in everything you saw and feel it everywhere you went.

I recall a particular shopping trip about a month after the towers fell.  My wife and chanced upon a tiny girl sharing space in a shopping cart with a puppy.  Naturally, we stopped and patted the puppy on his head.

“I named him America,” the little girl informed us.

—Mitchell Hegman

A Winning Carrot

Perhaps you recall Aesop’s famous fable about the race between the tortoise and the hare and the surprising winner.  But have you heard about the recent footrace in which a carrot broke a world record?

Allow me to tell you the story.

First, you need to understand that nothing is too crazy to qualify for a Guinness World Record.  Take for example, Mac, a parrot who presently holds the world record for opening the most soda cans in one minute.  Mac managed 35 cans using only his beak.

In this case, we are talking about the Guinness World Record for running the fastest marathon while dressed as a fruit.  I realize carrots are a vegetable, but apparently the Guinness folks don’t drill down all the way on some matters.

The hero (carrot) in our story is Jordan Maddocks, 35, from Draper, Utah.  On January 16, while participating in the Rock 'n' Roll Arizona Marathon in Phoenix, he clocked a time of 2:44:12.  This beat the previous record of 2:45:08, which was set by carrot-suited runner Andrew Lawrence at London's Virgin Money London Marathon in 2017.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Mr. Maddocks admits to having struggled with substance abuse in my past.  Running helped him beat his addictions.  His efforts in the record-winning race raised funds for the substance abuse charity Release Recovery Foundation.

Good stuff right there.

As an extra bonus, Britain's World Carrot Museum took note of Maddocks' record-breaking run and offered high praise by way of Twitter.

—Mitchell Hegman

Temperature and Age

Daily temperatures have been logged in Helena, Montana, for over one-hundred years.  You know you’re getting old when, on a regular basis, the high and low record for the date were recorded in years in which you were alive.

—Mitchell Hegman

Montana (Some Important Details)

• If you ask people in Montana about the Unabomber (Ted Kaczynski), you’ll soon discover everyone in the entire state lived “just down the road” from him.    
• Key word: huckleberries.
• In Montana, you don’t need to say “I’m heading to the Big Hole Valley” or “I’m going to the Seeley-Swan Valley.”  You can simply say “I’m heading to the Big Hole” or “I’m going to the Seeley-Swan.”
• A pickup isn’t fully equipped until Forest Service section maps and at least one wildflower identification guide has been stuffed in the glove box.
• In Montana, determining who you know in common from every little town is serious business.
• You don’t qualify as living “remote” in Montana if you can reach the nearest grocery store within an hour’s drive.
• You are either a Bobcat fan or a Grizzlies fan.  You can’t be both.

—Mitchell Hegman

NOTE: My cabin is less than ten miles from where the Unabomber lived in his little shack.

Flights

From a mile off, I hear flights of geese approaching.  Over the years, my house has become a guiding landmark for the geese.  Raucous, barely clearing the treetops, shape-shifting in configuration, they aim for my house. 

I wave at the geese as they fly over me.  Directly above me, they sound like British soccer hooligans rioting after a bitter loss in Manchester.  But this is just another day here on the prairie above the lake at the edge of the Big Belt Mountains.   

—Mitchell Hegman

Snowflakes

The world’s largest recorded snowflake fell on January 28 of 1887 at Fort Keogh, Montana.   Matt Coleman, a rancher who witnessed the flake falling, measured the snowflake at 15 inches wide and 8 inches thick.

Really, the giant flake was—as big flakes are—a collection of many ice crystals and flakes clustered together.  Such monster flakes are somewhat fragile and assemble in unusually calm conditions.

Snow is a fascinating phenomenon as a starting point.  Snowflakes form when water molecules caught up in clouds transform directly from water vapor gas to solid ice, bypassing the liquid phase.  If unmolested by wind and wrestling matches with liquid water, flakes will form stunningly complex and symmetrical crystals.

While video chatting with Desiree, I noticed some gorgeous flakes landing on the brick ledge outside my sunroom windows.  “I have something to show you,” I told her.  I trotted outside and trained the camera on a few of the flakes.

“Oh.  Wow!” Desiree gushed.  She captured a few screen shots.  “I thought the drawings I saw of snowflakes were just…artwork.”

“Nope.  They really are beautiful little sculptures.”

Desiree and Snowflake

Single Snowflake

—Mitchell Hegman

More Observations

• One person cannot wear paisley print often enough to keep it in style.
• If you think learning is fun, you’ll love forgetting.
• Living in a big city has its advantages, but living in a big city is not one of them.
• It’s okay to love somebody and not like their shoes.
• Cats show love by ignoring you.  Deal with it.
• First thing in order: find something you like.
• There is a reason plumbing soil pipes slant downhill at all times.
• You can trust what your goldfish tells you.

—Mitchell Hegman

NOTE:  As a kid, I tried wearing paisley print often enough to keep it in style.

Earth Science

The rock comprising the summit of Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth, is neither igneous nor metamorphic.  Tipped upright at 29,000 feet above our present sea level, the peak is marine limestone originating from organic deposits on an ancient sea bed.  Time and tectonic convulsions have thrust the ancient ocean floor over five miles into the sky.  

—Mitchell Hegman

Shrinkage

Well, boys, this one might hurt a little.  We need to talk about Covid and your little manly extension.

I chanced upon an article about a young man who caught Covid-19 last summer and ended up hospitalized before beating the bug.  He recovered, more or less, but he is not the same man now.

He claims that as a result of his infection his penis shrunk by 1½ inches.

I am going to call 1½ inches a critical loss.

The frightening part?  Such a thing is plausible.  Last year, researchers studied the possibility of coronavirus impacting penile function.  They had already discovered former patients with evidence of blood vessel damage in their appendages.

Vascular damage in erectile tissue is not so far off track.  Furthermore, the loss may be permanent.

There will be no photographs for today’s blog.  

—Mitchell Hegman

Part Two (I am an Idiot)

The day before yesterday, I could “feel” the cold from outside trying to access me.  This is not uncommon in the winter.  Often, a change in humidity will make me feel colder.  In response, I pulled on a long-sleeved shirt and carried on.

I felt a little chill again as I prepped for crawling into bed.  When I checked the bedroom thermostat, I noticed the temperature was a couple degrees off what I prefer, so I tweaked the thermostat and flopped down into my nest of blankets.

I woke yesterday feeling righteously cold.  When I glanced at the room temperature reading on the thermostat, I found the reading five degree below the setting I selected on the thermostat.

Well, that’s ungood, as my buddy Rod would say.  I immediately trotted out to the utility room to check on my boiler.

Let’s call this “Part Two” of the blog.  In this installment, I prove, one more time, I am an idiot.

Upon reaching the boiler, I found the boiler and the array of pipes connected to it cold.  Only then did I recall shutting down the boiler early in the morning the day before.

My boiler makes a fair level of racket when a zone calls for heat.  I had disabled the boiler while filming a few segments for an online continuing education class.  I have done this many times before.  Usually I write myself a “boiler!” sticky-note and affix it to my computer to remind me the heat is off.

As I switched off my boiler’s power the boiler the other day, I thought to myself: “I don’t need to write myself a note this time.  I’ll remember.”

—Mitchell Hegman

Three Generations

My house is not quite 31 years old.  That’s not terribly old so far as houses go.  But in that time, lighting technology has evolved so rapidly, I have installed three generations of light sources in a valance I incorporated into a wall separating the living room from the den. 

The den, just so you know, is where I keep my rock collection. 

The original light I installed was a 4-foot, 2-lamp fluorescent fixture powered by a magnetic ballast.  Somewhere after our turn into the new century, I swapped out the magnetic ballast for an electronic ballast.  Yesterday, I converted the light to an LED source.  Following are some details:

• Gen 1: 40-watt, T12 fluorescent lamps with magnetic ballast (2475 lumen output)
• Gen 2: 32-watt, T8 fluorescent lamps with electronic ballast (2800 lumen output)
• Gen 3: 24 -watt LED retrofit lamps with onboard LED driver (3120 lumen output)

Overall, the generational changes in lighting sources have yielded a 40% drop in power consumed while, at the same time, providing a 26% increase in light output.  As an added bonus, the light output for LEDs does not rapidly decay as do fluorescent lamps.  Furthermore, LEDs may function adequately for 30 years.

I have posted “before” and “after” photographs I captured yesterday with my smarter-than-me-phone.

The photographs will reveal a difference in color temperature.  The new LED lamps deliver a cooler color of light.

BEFORE (T8 Fluorescent)

AFTER (LED Lamps) 

—Mitchell Hegman

 

Beer for Beer

Yesterday would have been my father’s 93rd birthday.  He has been gone for 27 years.

I thought about him while sitting in the sunroom.   

I cannot imagine what he would be doing had he made it to this birthday.  He was, by the time of his passing, headlong into another of his many bouts with alcohol.

Given his track record, my father would likely be involved in his 7^th or 8^th marriage by now.

And I thought about the time, in the early 1980s, when I hauled my friend Kevin to Plains, Montana, to visit my father along with me.  Back then, my father was beginning his day with a glass of brandy and sustaining for the rest of the day with beer.

Our visit included a trip to my father’s cabin.  That’s when Kevin made a day-long mistake.  He and my father popped open beers as soon as we left Plains for the mountains in the morning.  “I’m going to match your dad beer for beer today,” he told me.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Kev.  Dad is a pro.”

Kevin offered one of his best crooked smiles and shrugged.  He was all in.

Kevin gave his best.  But by mid-afternoon, he was, as we say in East Helena, Montana, “hammered” and barely upright.  He pinballed against everything upright as he walked and he tracked our conversations poorly.

I thought about that because I have spent my entire life trying not to match my father beer for beer.

—Mitchell Hegman

Fever

When I was seven or eight years old, I watched Peggy Lee sing her song “Fever” on television.  Her performance left me awe-struck and more.  I didn’t quite understand the “more” part of what I experienced at the time, but within a few more years I grasped it.

The more was sexual on some level.

In my estimation, Fever is perfectly crafted.  It’s slick and simple.  Now that YouTube is a thing, I find myself punching-up Fever every so often so I can watch Peggy Lee.

I have posted my favorite version of Fever.  The drummer in this performance, a jazz artist named Jack Sperling, is singularly impressive.

—Mitchell Hegman

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYxoAJ3Boyc

Cranky

Today, I want to introduce you one of my Christmas gifts.  The gift goes by the name Cranky.  I am not trying to be mean, but Cranky rather overshoots his purpose.

Cranky is a wind-up memo holder.

There no immediate need for a wind-up memo holder.  Surely, a regular, just-stand-there-and-hold-the-memo type holder works effectively.  But Cranky impresses me.

Sometimes, useless is good.

Posted is a video of Cranky set free on my sunroom floor.

—Mitchell Hegman

Tangerine Peels

Living out in the country, as I do, I have developed a habit of pitching apple cores, fruit peelings, and trimmings from vegetables out my back door.  All manner of creatures will snack on them: birds, chipmunks, deer, fox, and unnamed visitors in the night.  Mind you, I would never do this at my cabin.  My cabin is bear country.  I have no desire to attract bears.

Last week, I purchased a bag of tangerines.  I have been eating three each morning, after peeling them and pitching the peelings out into the snow. 

Yesterday, three mule deer nosed through my back yard and scarfed up the peels.

The deer suffered a pretty miserable summer in preparation for this winter.  Montana, according to our local newspaper, endured the fourth driest year on record.  My tiny corner of Montana did worse than that.  We had exactly two rain storms reach us over the entire year.  I watched storms swab at the mountains and valley all around me, but they never quite reached here.

By early summer, the earth around my house turned to powder.  Most telling was what happened with the needle-and-thread grass.  Let me amend that.  What didn’t happen is important.  The needle-and-thread grass did not produce seeds this year.

Not one seed.

We called needle-and-thread grass “spear grass” as kids.  In late summer, a walk through grassy fields would require a session of removing spear grass seeds from your socks and clothing afterwards.  They stick to everything.

Nothing this year.

I know feeding the deer is a bad idea, but I have had far worse.

—Mitchell Hegman

Rhiannon

Sometimes, Rhiannon, used the wrong words.  Instead of saying “Let’s bake a cake,” she might say, “Let’s bike a cake.”  Or she might say, “insistent” where “incident” should be phrased.

Rhiannon had a secret, too.

Her secret?  She said the wrong words on purpose.  And she loved people who never corrected her for using the wrong words.

She kept a list of their names.

Rhiannon was named after a song.  Every year, on Rhiannon’s birthday, her mother played the song on an old stereo.  Strangely, another girl in Rhiannon’s small town was named after the same song.  Rhiannon always wondered if the other Rhiannon’s mother played the song.

And some people called Rhiannon by the correct name, but she knew she was the wrong Rhiannon.

—Mitchell Hegman

Fickle Weather

Montana is famous for vacillating and extreme temperatures. 

Montana lays claim to the coldest temperature recorded in the contiguous United States.  On January 20, 1954, the temperature fell to -70 °F at Roger’s Pass.  The pass is only an hour drive from my house.

The hottest temperature ever recorded in Montana is 117 °F.   This occurred twice.  Once in Glendive on July 20, 1893, and then again at Medicine Lake on July 5, 1937.

The most dramatic swing in temperature over a 24-hour period in the United Sates occurred on January 15, 1972, in Loma, Montana, when the temperature rose from −54 °F to 49 °F.  That’s a 103 °F change in readings.

On January 11, 1980, a warm chinook impulse at the Great Falls International Airport promoted a 47 °F rise in temperature in only 7 minutes.

Yesterday, I happened to find myself driving across our valley floor as a mass of warm air swept through.  In a matter of three miles, my car registered a change from 19 °F to 42 °F.  The rapid rise in temperature triggered snow to slide from the metal roof of a building as I sat in a parking lot watching.  The change in weather also brought forth a beautiful sky.  I took the opportunity to capture an image of my house under the big Montana sky once I arrived back home.

 

—Mitchell Hegman

A World Without

I sometimes engage in a thought game where I imagine how different the world would be without one thing.  I’m not talking about missing big and abstract stuff—like a world without war or a world without any form of religion.

I mean something more elemental.

At one time, I tried to bring others into my game.  If an inordinately long silence developed between me and another person while driving down the highway, I would blurt out: “Hey, what do you think the world would be like if glass had never been invented?”

The stock response was something like: “Why do you have these thoughts, Mitch?” 

The other day, I started thinking about what the world would be like if beer was never invented.

Would the absence of beer mean God doesn’t love us?  Benjamin Franklin famously said, “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”

How would my father have hydrated without beer?   What would all the smelter workers in my hometown of East Helena, Montana, have done after work if they couldn’t stop at one of the local bars for a beer after putting in a shift?  Could we survive without beer butt chicken?  What kind of cans would we be melting at our Aluminum Beer Can Melting Guild functions?

And consider what Frank Zappa wrote in his memoir: “You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. “It helps if you have some kind of football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.”

—Mitchell Hegman

Squiggles Completed

I finished installing my sunroom squiggles.

Though I originally intended to mount LED puck lights on the octagon junction boxes I used to fabricate the squiggles, I never found a size or style of puck that entirely pleased me.  After much consideration, I opted to use LED Edison light bulbs instead.

I am controlling the lights with a dimmer and will be able to soften down the light as desired.

The bulbs are a decorative feature in their own right. 

  

Squiggles by Day

Squiggles by Night

—Mitchell Hegman

A Beetle in the Sunroom

There is little satisfaction in catching a beetle.  They are slow.  Hapless, really.  But I caught one in my sunroom—a tiny beetle—maybe half the size of a grain of rice. 

All creatures have some kind of defenses method.  Some defenses are odd.  Take, for example, goats that faint and tip-over when frightened.  And consider how some lizards will sacrifice their tail so the critically important rest of them can escape. 

The beetle I caught had a fascinating defense.  He sucked his legs up against his little body and played dead.  Naturally, I found the nearest ballpoint pen and used it to roll the little fella around on the palm of my hand as he remained inert.

Here is the really curious thing: Whether by design or not, the beetle looked just like a mouse dropping once his legs were tucked away.

That impressed me a little.  Not a lot of critters are going to scoop up and eat a pellet expelled by a mouse (me included).

After nudging at the beetle for enough time, I scooted him of onto piece paper and watched until he popped out his legs again.  “Good luck on your little beetle career,” I told him.  I then walked to my bay window and dropped the beetle into my Christmas cactus planter.

Maybe he can find something good to eat there.

Hopefully, not the cactus.

—Mitchell Hegman

Something Charles Bukowski Said

—    If you want to know who your friends are, get yourself a jail sentence.

—    Some people never go crazy, what truly horrible lives they must live.

—    An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.

Strange Snow

A trip to my cabin delivered me into full-on winter.  A recent series of storms has buried the meadow and creek under layers of white.  I found myself in knee-deep snow when I stepped off the main road after parking my truck.

To reach my cabin, I waded through the snow slowly.  I stopped every so often to admire the way winter’s white blanket smoothed-over summer’s rough and tumble inclines.  The quiet was also notable.  I have always appreciated the way winter softens the sounds around you.  I could almost hear my own thoughts as I broke trail under a bluebird sky.

The snow at my cabin was strange.  By strange I mean the last layer of it (maybe six inches) has stuck to everything—including the roof of my cabin and the face of my retaining walls.  I have never seen a build-up of more than a couple inches on my cabin roof.  Given the slope of the metal, snow will not stick.   But this snow clung to every finger-hold possible.

Pretty, yes.

 

My Tracks

The Cabin

Strange Snow

Picnic Table

—Mitchell Hegman

You Know It’s Cold When You Need to Warm Your Beer

Even though yesterday’s high temperature did not elevate above single digits, we convened a hasty meeting of the Aluminum Beer Can Melting Guild at the lake.  The frigid temperatures called for a big, flame-gnashing campfire.  The cold proved deep enough to require nudging twelve-packs of beer near the fire to keep them from freezing.

In spite of the cold weather, Tad managed to melt down enough cans for the first official aluminum pour of 2022.

Though the ice started developing on the lake only two weeks ago, our recent frigid weather impulses have now produced ten inches of ice.  Toward the end of the day, several guild members wandered out on the ice to check some set lines.  Emelia, age two, pulled the first of several ling up through holes in the ice.

First Fire of 2022

Pouring Molten Aluminum

Aluminum Ingot

Pulling a Ling Through the Ice

—Mitchell Hegman