Today is the Summer Solstice - at least in this 'top' end of the world.
The First Day of Summer - it is all down hill from here for the rest of the year - as far as length of the days go. Well, if you ignore the antithesis (Winter Solstice) that will occur 6 months from now when we'll get the days growing longer again for 10 days or so.
Thinking of those annual events, it occurred to me that - at least in the past (very nearly) 48 * years - that certain of life's events are - well, in short, Predictable - and so we take them all for granted.
Every day, the sun comes up in the East and every day the sun goes down in the West
Every week has its hump-day - unless you live in France and have just a 4-day work week
Every month has at least 28 days in it - some (8 - not this one) excessively so, one barely squeaks by
Every year - well, we just discussed the solstices - and:
Every four years, England takes an early exit from the World Cup !
Ain't life so damned . . . Predictable
* Lest some forget (certainly German people would like to), there was that glorious day in July,1966 - it is possible that there may have been no solstices that year, that there may have been 32 days in that month, that every day was a hump-day in that closing week, that there was no East nor West.(not even in Germany!) - and I'm sure the sun shone all day long on that most unpredictable of days,
I'm glad I witnessed that celestial event - shown here in glorious black and white, though I'm almost certain I saw it color - on TV in a pub, in Ireland, with an Englishman.
Yesterday, I finally undertook a task that I had been
avoiding for about two months. It was a ‘phobia’ that had caused the deferment.
Not ‘claustrophobia’ – though that, as you will later see, could easily be
understood.
No, it was ‘unpretzelphobia’
– the fear of having contorted oneself into a pretzel-like shape, that cramping
– or providence, like when you were a kid poking out your tongue or making some
weird facial expression causing your parents to say, ‘If you keep pulling that
face, you’ll stay like that’ – would prevent you ever reverting to your
‘normal’ posture. At my age, it is difficult to make the contortions I once was
more able to effect. Bending down is difficult enough; getting back up is close
to impossible. You can’t believe who many quarters and dimes I have had to bide
farewell to because of it.
I have met many, have often been accused of being one
myself, and was also fearful of developing one – a pain in the neck, that is!
So, what was it that was causing all of this angst and turmoil? Did I succeed?
Did I survive? Would I do it again? The answers are: ‘Yes - amazingly’,
‘Obviously; I am here writing about it’ and ‘Never again! I’ll make sure to
pester my handy-man son more frequently next time’.
I undertook the (for me) Herculean task of replacing the
faucet and soap dispenser in the kitchen sink. “That’s it? That’s what all this
fuss is about?” you ask. Well, in a word – YES! I had to crawl through the 15
by 20 inch aperture concealed behind the cherry-wood under-sink cabinet doors.
Once there, the confines of the space that was not occupied the garbage
disposal unit, the flexible piping of the existing fixtures, the hot and cold
copper pipes and their shut-off valves, made the bodily ‘pretzel-making’
maneuvers exceedingly difficult – especially when each hand held wrenches, my
forehead head a less-than-adequate light source (and an increasing amount of
sweat) and my bi-focal spectacles were optimally aligned with the focal length
of the distance from my eyes to the objects that I needed to focus on! Did I
mention about a pain the neck? My mouth,
as my wife will attest, was also full – but rapidly emptying itself of a host
of expletives!
It was, we each concurred, well worth it. Not the cussing,
but to once again have the sight and use of a functioning, chrome-finished,
pull-down-self-retracting-two-stream-and-pause-action-spray-head with a single-control-handle-for-hot-and-cold-water-delivery
- and attendant soap dispenser!
Here is the fruit of my labor:
Earlier, I had mentioned claustrophobia. My 'under-the-sink’ experience was devoid of that – because I was only half under
it and so had readily available escape route to the spaciousness of the
kitchen. But, while I was under there, in that confined space, I did think of
my earlier days in the coal-mining industry. Fortunately, in that long career,
I was only required to venture into an underground mine on two occasions. One
was in Eastern Kentucky, where I did the 'duck-waddle’ in a mine where the coal seam was about 42” thick. The other
instance was in Southern Illinois where I
drove into the mine in a pick-up truck – the coal seam being about 6 feet
thick. Neither of those experiences came close to conditions that many colliers (that is the real name for coal miners) experienced in ‘days gone by’ when miners lay on their sides hacking at coal
seams only a little more than 12” thick!
Can you imagine the claustrophobia – not to mention the
‘what do you do if you get a leg or shoulder cramp’ in there? I'm reminded of the tale of Evan Evans, a not-too-bright Welsh collier, responding to his boss as he crawled a 1,000 feet or more
back out from the coalface – having only just crawled in to it 30 minutes earlier
with his 15” wide coal shovel. Some of them (shovels - and colliers) looked like these:
“Why are back out
here so soon?” said his boss. “I had to come back out” said Evans, “My bloody
shovel was upside down!” [Think it
through – you’ll get it]
MY ‘sink ordeal’ was not nearly so arduous as that of those men (and boys) - the colliers.
I’ll leave you with thoughts (and claustrophobic images - at
2:14 and 2:19 into this video) of that tough occupation:
Sometimes, you just have do without - but not here; even in Winter there should be some color on the palette!
Fortunately, there is ALWAYS color in my garden.
Turning the corner, to look from the north-west, we start to see the first glimpses of the front of the house
Location 9 – The north-west corner – looking
east
Just watch the transformation on those 'Burning Bush' shrubs (center and right) - also on the Flowering Cherry Tree (left) - the Japanese Beetles just love its leaves in late June!
Late March (2014)
Late April
Late May
Mid June
A lot of bird chattering from that Cherry Tree lately and the flowers around the small lilacs are blooming
Mid July
Looks like its time to turn on the water hose - things are drying out.
