Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction

These two posts were next to each other in my morning FB feed. One is from Dissent Pins and the other is from the National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force. Other than the fact that my FB feed is a bit schizophrenic, the other takeaway here is that maybe sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction.

 

Truth Stranger Than Fiction
Elon Musk, George Soros, and secret avocado toast? This looks like it could be a lotta fun!

 

Truth Stranger Than Fiction - Audrey Hepburn

WWII RESISTANCE FIGHTER WHO HELPED DOWNED ALLIED PILOTS….AUDREY HEPBURN…

Most people know her as a film actress, but she worked with the resistance groups during the war to defeat the Nazis. The 15-year-old Hepburn delivered a resistance newspaper. “I stuffed them in my woolen socks in my wooden shoes, got on my bike and delivered them,” she said. Paper was in short supply, you see, so each edition was printed on paper smaller than a napkin. Hepburn’s age and ability to speak English made her uniquely qualified to avoid suspicion. If that wasn’t enough, she would also walk through the woods, giving secret messages to paratroopers and guidance to those in need of shelter since she spoke English. In one instance she was almost caught by a German soldier but was able to play to her “innocence” and began picking wildflowers that she handed to him, and he sent her on her way. WE SALUTE THE BRAVERY OF AUDREY HEPBURN.

 

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Which is truth and which is fiction?

You make the call!

Gutter Guy

The gutter guy was named was Oleksander Shuprudko. I’m sure of the spelling because I had to write it on his check, so he gave it to me letter by letter. But he went by “Alex,” and he came after a downpour where nothing came out the bottom of my rain spout, instead running down my stucco and over my windows.

 

Gutter Guy - Oleksander

I sure was glad Alex was the one climbing up there.

All I can say is, better him than me.

 

Gutter Guy - Effective
Need an Effective gutter guy? Call Alex!

 

As both his accent and the impossible angularity of his cheekbones suggested, he was some sort of Slav, hailing from the Eastern Orthodox enclave in Bryte that’s just west of us here in Yolo county. I can’t tell you where his family came from originally, but his business name was “Effective.” And I do have to say, I heartily agree with that. See below for the before-and-after proof in the pudding.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a good 5 gallons of something green growing up there that made life impossible for my gutters. Who knew? Not me that’s for sure.

 

****Last but not least****

 

A fitting end to another perfect Yolo county day, looking west toward Bryte.

Lost Lustre Of Youth

I’m a sucker for a good obit.  Especially when it’s not one of my nearest and dearest who has passed. That’s why I love the Afterword column in the New Yorker. You can read their latest remembrance, for “Tree 103,” here, Or read a previous one I posted, about the lone wolf “OR-93,” here. Because, after all, haven’t we all lost the lustre of our youth? I know I have.

 

Lost Lustre Of Youth
The author, still vertical, in front of St. John’s Lutheran, Sacramento.

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In 1675, Mary Walcott, one of the accusers at the Salem witch trials, was born. Domenico II Contarini, the Doge of Venice, died.  And, as best as forestry experts can determine, a bunch of gossamer-winged pine seeds landed on a forest clearing in the Adirondack Mountains of what would eventually be designated as the State of New York. Sun, rain, soil, good luck, and (probably) a property-line muddle combined to make this an auspicious landing.

Pine trees hate shade, but this was a clearing in the dense Adirondack forest, most likely created by a hearty gust of wind that had toppled the previous overstory, so it was pine-friendly. The Mohawk and Oneida people who lived in the area left them alone. European farmers, who favored a clean-shaven pasture, wouldn’t arrive in the area for another century.

By the late eighteen-hundreds when the region was being farmed and logged, this lucky bunch of trees had grown so big and thick that they were too large for most sawmills to cut.  So they were left unmolested, while the smaller, more manageable trees nearby were made into dining-room tables and hope chests. As it happened, the land where the trees stood was near a newly drawn property line.  So, most likely, when loggers began clearing the forest, they weren’t quite sure who owned the stand, and decided to leave it alone rather than get in a pickle over it.

 

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Decades passed. The First World War came and went. The most convincing of the five best-known Anastasia pretenders appeared. Scotch tape was invented. The first Mr. Potato Head was manufactured. Electricity was generated by a nuclear reactor. People danced the Loco-Motion. In nearby Lake Placid, the Winter Olympics were held in 1932 and again in 1980.

All the while, the trees on this eight-acre tract kept growing, surpassing fifty, then a hundred feet, and beyond. No other trees in the immediate area matched them in height. No one knows how tall the very tallest of them got, now that many in the grove have fallen.  But Tree 103 (1675-2021) topped out at a hundred and sixty feet and nearly five inches, making it likely the tallest tree in New York State at the time of its death, in December.

 

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The pine got its designation as Tree 103 in 2006 when a forestry expert measured the trees in the grove and tagged them in the order in which he measured them. Tree 103 was a mighty beanpole.  And yet, by the rules of big-tree classification, it was not the state’s biggest.

Champion trees are scored by combining their height in feet, their circumference in inches, and a quarter of the spread of their crowns. White pines are pointy.  Their crowns will never challenge the umbrella-like spread of a buckeye or a maple. Most of New York’s registered biggest trees are species with lush crowns. Moreover, most live pampered lives, getting fat in the luxury of a suburban lawn or a wide-open pasture, with no competition for sun or water.

Yes, we see you, red oak of Monroe County! And you, Eastern cottonwood of Clinton, and sycamore of Dutchess! Yeah, well, Tree 103 had a harder life than you, a more rugged North Country life, doing its damnedest in its wilderness thicket of forty or so trees, achieving staggering height without regular visits from TreeDocsRUs and without any sort of nice commemorative plaque and without a historical society attending to it and giving luncheons in its honor. Tree 103 was scarred and scabby.  It creaked in the wind and it sagged in the rain. It had lost the dewy glow that it had back in 1675.  But haven’t we all lost the lustre of our youth?

 

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Last July, one of Tree 103’s neighbors snapped and toppled. Tree 103 broke its fall. The weight was much to bear, and then the autumn winds slapped it around. Hikers who went to visit the tree on December 11th found instead a raggedy broken trunk and a fallen warrior. No one had been around to hear it fall.  But, given its size and height, it would have released a huge amount of energy, equivalent to several sticks of dynamite.  And it knocked over a number of smaller trees when it went down.

Justin Waskiewicz, a forestry professor at Paul Smith’s College, which borders the land where Tree 103 stood, says that pine trees rarely live past three hundred and fifty years, so its demise wasn’t a surprise. Given the math, the whole grove of these giant pines will probably be gone sometime in the next fifty years. Do not despair: Tree 103 is no longer thrusting into the sky, but it lives on as forest debris, making fungi and bugs happy. “It’s dead, yes,” Waskiewicz said, “but I prefer to think that it’s just not vertical anymore.”

 

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Afterword is an obituary column that pays homage to people, places, and things we’ve lost.

 

****Bonus Pictorial Content from the 1980s****

 

Lost Lustre Of Youth - Logs II

Lost Lustre Of Youth - Logs

Back in the 80’s my dad and I cut down oaks and pines and poplars on our family’s PA property. We air-dried the lumber for several years before building a retirement home on a parcel carved out of the original 169-acre farm.

 

 

I helped plane and stack the planks. And I helped with construction during the year I took off between college and med school.  See the final product, below.

 

Lost Lustre Of Youth - 1555 County Line Road

 

1555 County Line Road, back before time supplanted the lost lustre of youth.

Calm Down Or Else

Two investigators at crime scene after monkey mauled a man.

“His final Internet search was ‘insane monkey how make calm down.’ ”

 

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Calm Down Or Else

 

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Man hires hit men.

“Make it look like the free market.”

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It was a good week for dark humor at the New Yorker.

You may now return to whatever it is you were doing before.

That is all.

She Said He Said

Take some pictures, she said. Okay I will, he said.

Here you go, he said. Gorgeous, she said.

Yer welcome dear, he said.

 Very funny, she said.

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Better Late Than Never: That’s our motto for Christmas decorations here at 392 Midstream Lane.
She Said He Said - Jacks Urban Eats
What’s for dinner in Midtown Sacramento? Jack’s Urban Eats, of course.  Mmmm-good.
She Said He Said - last embers
Last embers of the day along the levee.
Hella Palm She Said He Said
The caption for this one in the Real Estate brochure says “Hella Palm Tree, comes complete with Mediteranean-style house.”
And the caption for this one? “Perched cat, comes complete with…” Well, you know.
She Said He Said - Everything Growing
What grows in California this time of year? Absolutely everything!
Even the volunteer cycads are taking over the sidewalk.
Call Sam if interested, but note: This lot sits on atop the levee, so it costs 3X what the other ones do.
“The Cove” sits next to “The Rivers.” Am I starting to sense an aquatic theme here?
Even the traffic warnings around this neighborhood sound like “Make Love, Not War.”  I kid you not.
Know what’s one thing I love about California? Kindred spirits. Yup.

Last Drink Before The Storm

This morning we went for a canyon hike before the latest front rolled through. We saw this little herd of bighorns getting their last drink before the storm.

Last Drink

 

On our way back downstream, the herd was already high-tailing it uphill to hunker down on higher ground.

 

Anne captured this striking image of the cold front from our back yard.

 

Although it may not end up amounting to much snow, I’m staying inside by the fire for the rest of the day. All due respect to my phone’s weather app, but can a herd of bighorns getting their last drink be far wrong? Nope, I think not.

US and UK

For those of you outside the FB/Instagram metaverse, this post will be something new. For those of you still enslaved under the evil purview of Lord Zuckerberg, you’ve likely seen it already. In any event, it occurs to me that over the holidays we had most of the family together, but precious few photos of the whole gang assembled. Here are a couple from both the US and the UK.

 

US and UK - Chatfield
US fam atop Chatfield dam on a very cold day in January. Or was it December? Either way, it’s a notoriously windy spot and I think maybe my brain froze. Luckily I’m California-bound, so I can thaw out soon.
US and UK - Scotland
UK branch of the fam in Scotland, not sure which castle. Who knows which side of the pond they’ll be on come New Years 2023…?

Wait… WHAT?

You all have been good so far this year.  So, as a reward, you get more humor. Just know that if you’re bad, you’re getting more exegesis.

Wait… WHAT?

 

Wait... WHAT? - Wile E Coyote Wait... WHAT? No rinse! You Been Good - Betty White Wait... WHAT? - Serial Killer

 

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The “shoes in sink” one maybe requires a small bit of explanation. This photo was taken by my wife in the women’s restroom at the Roxborough State Park visitors center. And I am here to tell you, I used the men’s room, and no such sign appears there.  Why? You make the call.

Oh, and also…

God Bless Betty White!

Exegesis

Today’s Word of the Day (WOTD) is “exegesis.”

It’s a noun, defined by Merriam Webster as:

ex·​e·​ge·​sis | \ ˌek-sə-ˈjē-səs

: exposition or explanation, especially

: an explanation or critical interpretation of a text.

 

Here’s the etymology:  English speakers have used the word exegesis — a descendant of the Greek term exēgeisthai, meaning “to explain” or “to interpret” — to refer to explanations of Scripture since the early 17th century.

Below is a fine example of exegesis from Rachel Held Evans. I’ve written about her before.  If you’re so inclined, you can find my previous post here.

 

Exegesis

 

Whoever has ears, let him hear.” 

– Matthew 11:15

 

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What, you thought 2022 was going to be all fun and games?

Well, think again, dog-breath.

 

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Last but not least, here’s something I stole from one of my relatives.

Think of it as my little contribution to the grand endeavor of exegesis.

 

Randy and Ralphie saying “Merry Christmas.”
Exegesis of Dog
Hey, it ain’t Rachel Held Evans, but it’ll have to do.