Second Week of the Ninth Month

Thanks for stopping by. The WFB is my 'whatever I happen to be in to at the moment' corner of the web. I have two other Blogger sites which are far more interesting.  

The Lost Canyon Project is the chronicle of my work photographing and cataloging the life's work of my late friend, artist Pete Hampton (1940-2018) 

 

The Lost Era Transcripts is the fruit of the Lost Canyon Project. It is a re-creation in book form of Pete's unfinished master work, The Lost Era. This is a good candidate for the finest work I have ever done.

 

 

 

Here's the latest progress on the latest stone. More pics lower down:

 

Our monthly cycling event, The So Cal RatRod Ride fell on the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 attack on America. 

The OBC custom bicycle convention is going on in Las Vegas, so a good many of our friends were out there. Our turnout was small, but our guests were  some of our favorite folks to ride with. I expected to see some rally, some demonstration at Huntington Beach pier, but no. There was some sort of marathon event being held at the beach. Coast Highway was closed to traffic. Both the highway and the bike path were full of runners. Some of the weekend motor home campers had "Never Forget" 9/11 displays, and American flags. There was some vocal group or other singing in the little amphitheater near the pier. That was it.

People used to talk about knowing exactly where they were, and what they were doing in 1963,  when they heard that John Kennedy had been assassinated. I do. 

September 11 is the same. 

Right here, I'm close to broaching a serious topic, and I generally try to avoid doing that. I'm not going to jump into politics and war. But I'm going to go ahead, and get serious.

I sometimes mention Faith and prayer, but only in the general sense of trying to lean on Faith, and being in the habit of prayer.

Many years back, I took the third of a dozen steps with all the sincerity, and honesty that I had to offer, and I placed my life, and my will in the care of God. As I understood God, then, anyway. This was the seed. It most certainly was not the beginning of a pious life. I still felt free to detest religion in general, and Jesus freaks in particular. But that was a long time ago, and the seed grew slowly. Now, nearly forty years later, half of the over sixty bookmarked websites, and blogs on my computer are religiously oriented. And all but a few of those are Catholic. Each day, in prayer, I open my heart to Jesus Christ.

I never set out to become a Christian. I do know that  Faith has taken root, and caused this seismic change in me. I have become a believer, almost despite myself. Go figure.  Does this qualify me for membership in the club? I'll leave that for God to decide.

 

How did this happen?

Evil.

On September 10, 2001 I believed that I had evil pretty well defined. Evil was guys like Charles Manson, or Ted Bundy. In its greater form it was guys like Hitler, Stalin, or Mao.

But the phone rang early while Mary and I were up in Possum Flats having our coffee. My mother told me to turn on the television, because a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I was thinking an accident with a private plane.

I went down to the main house, and turned on the tube just in time to see the second plane hit the tower. That hideous ball of flame and smoke. What I had just seen was impossible to believe.

There used to be a tabloid paper called The Weekly World News. It always had bizarre headlines about aliens, or bigfoot. They had a trick photo, in black and white,  that they'd put on the front page from time to time. The photo depicted Satan's face: horns, goatee, and all, being formed in a giant black cloud.

 

When I saw that plane hit, my innermost eye opened. I had the weird feeling of being able to see into a different dimension, or perceive some heretofore invisible wavelength of light. Now, don't get me wrong. I did not experience a hallucination. There was no a cartoon devil in the smoke. But I saw the face.   It was serene, almost child-like. It was immensely pleased at what had been done.

Remember, I said I thought I had Evil all figured out.  This was so many orders of magnitude above what I had conceived as Evil, that it undid everything I thought I believed in.
I got dressed quickly, and drove over to my mother's house. The news was all over the radio.  I got to my mother's house in time to see both towers collapse live on TV.

I had been there. I sat on the observation deck of The World Trade Center when I visited Manhattan in 1987.  I got out of the elevator, walked over, and took a front row seat looking over the edge.  That breath taking view. I remembered the words that popped into my head: "Airship altitude."

Like a lot of folks, my worldview collapsed with those two buildings. 

 

In the aftermath, the only person I could think of to listen to was Dennis Prager. I had been a fan for years. He always seemed to be the sanest voice on the radio. Perhaps Dennis could make some sense of this. I bought a cheap transistor radio, and listened to his show while I worked on the stones. One day, Prager interviewed Charles Johnson, whose web site, Little Green Footballs, was the hottest thing on the internet. I had just hooked up my first dial-up desktop. (Remember the long squeedleebeep sound?)

 LGF was the wild west of the internet, a total anonymous shit slinging free-for-all, and I recognized that it wouldn't last long. I made my first on-line 'friends' in those discussion threads. I also found myself "hanging out" with the people of Faith, especially a Christ believing Jewish woman who called herself BabbaZee, and a lightning witted punster, and free range theologian, Gagdad Bob Godwin. In those conversations I recognized my own spiritual hunger. BabbaZee often referred to being part of the Feral Remnant. Gagdad would refine his own take as the Raccoon Way. 

I asked BabbaZee for some advice. She told me to read the Book of Job. I did. And-  I,  "got it", is the closest I can put it. My resistance to religion broke.

Soon Charles Johnson discovered he didn't want to host a bunch of "right-wingers" on LGF, and purged almost everyone from the site. 

 

Gagdad started his own blog, One Cosmos, and I became a daily reader. I credit Bob Godwin  for being the most powerful influence, and the single greatest teacher in my growth in the Spirit. 

But it has been a slow process. I cannot pick a moment when some magical change happened. But the day came when I addressed my morning prayers to Christ, and not the vague higher power. Over time I noticed the proliferation of religious sites, and bloggers on my side bar. First one, then another, and another.  It wasn't that I sought out Christian, or especially Catholic venues. I bookmarked sites, and writers because they were superb writers, and clear thinkers who just plain made sense. None of them was trying to sell their faith.  So I read their stuff. I read scripture, too. 

It is the will of God that Life should flourish. There is a Holy Spirit. It will draw those who have eyes to open, and ears to hear. It may come to those who have a hunger for it, even if they do not recognize that inner grumbling as a hunger. So it was with me. God will use whatever medium he has available as a vector. Even the internet.

Just ask. 

 

So here we are, twenty years down the pike. And look. Just look. No further comment.

So where do we go from here?

Back to work.

The visit up to Ventura had some unexpected consequences. Maybe I should say benefits. I picked up a few hints talking to a couple of the sculptors there at Art City, and also a link to a Kansas based organization called 2-Sculpt.

Here comes the hard part. I am completely self-taught, which means my instructor didn't know shit. It didn't take much reading and study to learn that I've been just plain "doin' it wrong" as the good ol' boys say. I've done some good work, but I have only two seldom used chisels in my tool kit. I've been relying almost exclusively on the rifflers and rasps to do excavation and shaping that could have been done much faster with hammer and chisel, and without wearing out the very expensive tools. 

Your hammer and chisel-Fu is weak, Grasshopper.

 

I shall learn, Sensei.

 

 

 

So I bought a real hammer, and a set of basic carving chisels. I'm spending some time watching beginner videos on boob-toob.   I'm working on technique, and learning fast. Still a long ways to go.

 

Thanks for stopping by. The WFB is my 'whatever I happen to be in to at the moment' corner of the web. I have two other Blogger sites which are far more interesting.  

The Lost Canyon Project is the chronicle of my work photographing and cataloging the life's work of my late friend, artist Pete Hampton (1940-2018) 

 

The Lost Era Transcripts is the fruit of the Lost Canyon Project. It is a re-creation in book form of Pete's unfinished master work, The Lost Era. This is a good candidate for the finest work I have ever done.

 

Travels and Tribulations

9/6/21 Labor day-

doesn't mean a lot when you're retired. We're not doing a party, but we are having a couple of friends over for ribs, and beer. So, anyway... 

Mon, 8/30

Mary had errands and appointments all day, so I had the grounds to myself. I took a re-heated cup of coffee out to the gazebo sometime around 8:30, and took my usual seat at the table. Buddy the Cat came out to join me, and The Most Mysterious Skinamalink followed. The morning was clear and warm, the sunlight taking on the deeper tones of fall, just three weeks away. And the air had a hint of that back to school smell. Summer is over. There is always a sweet melancholy about it. I spent my working years in the school systems, so I have never grown away from the heart rhythm of a year that  begins in September, and breaks in June. The sunshine, the cloud scattered morning sky, the end-of-summer whisper in the quiet. It's easy to forget how beautiful So Cal is. The seasons abide, indifferent to our affairs.

My surfing career took up only a few sweet years in the 70's with a brief reprise in '82/'83. Nonetheless, I caught the nostalgia in the smell of the morning. Back on swing shift at last! Grab the wetsuit, and a bar of that grape-scented wax. Strap the 7' 4" diamond tail to the racks, and fire up the Volkswagen.

But that was... Don't even think about it. The daydream vanished, and the  chatter, and madness of the world rushed in.

This shit ain't gonna' stop.

 The endless roller coaster of my mental health is taking a nose dive again. 

 Every day I sit down at the desktop, and run through the long list of bookmarked sites. Some sites are just lists of links, each one leading to a new outrage. Other writers remind me that the world continues to go to hell. I haven't found anything that remotely resembles good news in a very long time. I don't have to add any details. You know.  

The best hope that I have right now is the hope that I'm wrong about our prospects for the time we have remaining to us. I'm not optimistic.

 It's one point on which the Catholics, and the free-range theologians seem to agree: the greatest, and deepest Hope also lies outside the boundaries of the time we have remaining to us. But that's how it always has been, and always will be.

The question remains, though: What to do? Right here. Right now. Sitting in the middle of the railroad tracks, worrying about the oncoming train is not a good plan.  I never thought I'd be the one to say this, but I'm leaning on prayer, morning, night, and much of the vagrant brain-time in between.

 Coffee was getting cold. Ol' Buddy jumped up on the table, and popped the bubble. I gave my  bestest old pal a pet and scratch, and got up to look at the stone.  My attention dropped in on the project, and reclaimed the morning from the troubles.

I  did some excavation in the places I plan on drilling.  The shorter the distance to drill, the better. 

 
Drilling a long hole in an odd shaped piece of rock is tricky. It's not too hard to get the drill started in the right spot. 

 

Hitting the target on the exit is the hard part. Of course, this isn't machine shop work. There's a generous margin for error on a piece like this one. I've done better, but these are both well within the excavation zone. They're close enough. Actually, they were just far enough off target to give ol' Carp a chance to have at it. "You're losing it. Too old, yep. Lost your touch for sure. This job gets a "D+"

 
 

Sometimes I take pleasure in telling Carp to piss off, and die. He never does, though.

(thu, 9/2): The drive from heck

 The town of Ojai is about fifteen miles inland from Ventura Beach, a little over a hundred miles north of here. Mary and I finished a great lunch at a Mexican restaurant there, and headed for home at about a quarter after two in the afternoon. Bad, bad timing. 

 It had been over twenty five years since I  last made the crawl in afternoon rush hour traffic through Los Angeles. There is nothing to recommend the experience. Traffic on the southbound 101 jammed up miles outside the city. We could have walked faster.

It took a couple of eternities, but we finally made it into, and out of downtown, and jumped off the freeway on Whittier Blvd. in East Los Angeles. I used to do this when I worked teaching school in Highland Park. The cruise through East LA was slow, but far less unpleasant than the crawl down the bleak eastbound 60.   

But that was back in the nineties. And instead of sliding down the off-ramp, and making a quick right on the boulevard, we joined a line of a dozen or so cars  dripping one by one into the equally jammed up boulevard traffic.

Back in the day, cruising Whittier Boulevard on Saturday night was a So Cal rite of passage. Even in the nineties, going through East LA was an entertaining drive.  The atmosphere was what my grandmother would have called, "gay", meaning bright, cheery, and colorful. Back then it seemed like every  group of store fronts housed a bridal and quinceanera shop, the windows crowded with mannequins in huge gaudy dresses. Other storefronts had windows full of stereo stuff, or cheap furniture. There were botanicas selling herbal cures, and party stores with pinatas hanging from hooks. Not to mention great little restaurants everywhere.

Now most of the store fronts are empty. The bridal shops are gone. The remaining stores are selling made-in-China shit. Instead of restaurants, the streets are lined with catering trucks. Eat a taco on a paper plate while seated at a folding chair on the sidewalk. The whole place looked third-world dingy, dirty, and dull. Everyone on the street was slouching along, masked up like a plague zombie. You couldn't see a human face anywhere. Instead of an easy cruise, traffic was  a creeping, bumper to bumper crawl.  This was no better than the freeway, and my truck is a five-speed. These are the very worst conditions for a stick shift, just a little too fast for first, but not quite fast enough for second. Third gear? Never got there.  We left Ojai, at about two-fifteen. It was after six thirty when we made it home.

So what were Mary and I doing in Ojai that left us crawling through East LA during the worst traffic of the day?

We drove up to Ojai for lunch, after a stop in Ventura beach. We went up to Ventura to visit a place called Art City Studios.

I spent the morning shopping in this pile:

 And came home with these:

It's just a little over four hundred pounds of alabaster. These five chunks range from  fifty, to about a hundred twenty pounds. They were quarried in the Anza Borrego Desert, right here in So Cal. I love the idea of working native stone. This stuff is just full of color: red, white, purple, gold, black. 

 

There's some pearly translucence in a couple of the pieces. This should keep me busy for over a year.

Snapshots

 

Thanks for stopping by. The WFB is my 'whatever I happen to be in to at the moment' corner of the web. I have two other Blogger sites which are far more interesting.  

The Lost Canyon Project is the chronicle of my work photographing and cataloging the life's work of my late friend, artist Pete Hampton (1940-2018) 

 

The Lost Era Transcripts is the fruit of the Lost Canyon Project. It is a re-creation in book form of Pete's unfinished master work, The Lost Era. This is a good candidate for the finest work I have ever done.

 

 

 Snapshots

I've been procrastinating on the task of setting up a photo session. Been putting it off for a while. How long? The last time I bought a camera for the project it used emulsion film. Shoot a roll of thirty six, and hope you get a handful of keepers. Now I have the Canon digital SLR. It's the bottom of the line basic instrument, but it's still more camera than I need.

I've spent the day taking care of miscellaneous tasks, and never did get to work on the stone. But I did some point-and-shoot pics around the house.

With exception of the three new pieces, this stuff was all done in the late 1990's. I think the last date is in '03.

Here's where I left off on the new project. I probably won't get back to it until Friday or Saturday. 

 

 

But there should be some cool stuff coming up on next Monday's exciting adventure

  Skipping Over the Hard Stuff

Thanks for stopping by. The WFB is my 'whatever I happen to be in to at the moment' corner of the web. I have two other Blogger sites which are far more interesting.  

The Lost Canyon Project is the chronicle of my work photographing and cataloging the life's work of my late friend, artist Pete Hampton (1940-2018) 

 

The Lost Era Transcripts is the fruit of the Lost Canyon Project. It is a re-creation in book form of Pete's unfinished master work, The Lost Era. This is a good candidate for the finest work I have ever done.

 

The most mysterious Skinamalink
 

 

So, it's Monday  again. I haven't even looked at the morning tour of internet bookmarks. What do you want to bet that it's still all bad news and bullshit? Imagine that.

I've taken to posting every Monday morning, the same way I did when I was at work on The Lost Canyon Project. That means, of course, that the stuff I'm posting happened a week ago.  The shitstorm of current events makes "a week ago" sound almost nostalgic, like a blast from the past.

 I've spent the week drifting back and forth from the work table to the computer. I've been going through the bookmarks, reading blog posts, and comments. The mood across the boards runs from outrage, and anger, to cynicism, resignation, and despair.  Even the faith based writers, most of whom are Catholic, seem resigned to placing Hope outside the boundaries of the time we have remaining to us. I sometimes drop a note over at American Digest, or some other blog from the dozens on the list. There are times when I want to just dump all the rage into one huge shit flinging temper tantrum, and curse all the bastards to death and hell.   But more and more, I find I have less and less that I want to say. Everyone else is already saying it, anyway.

I just now tossed out a whole bunch of stuff that I wrote last week. All of it has been said.

Right now, about the only thing I have to offer is the progress on these stone projects. It isn't as interesting as the collapse of Western Civilization, but it isn't particularly stress inducing either. The newness of being back to work has worn off, replaced by the comfort of keeping to a daily routine. Now, I don't feel an urgent need to chart and record my progress everyday. I've been slack about taking pictures as well.  

Last week I jumped the gun, and posted on Saturday, the 21st right before getting to work on the party stuff. So, let's jump back  nine days ago, when the world and all of us were young and beautiful. This was the day of our summer party, and birthday thang.

 

 Our circle of friends takes in about a dozen people, and they all came over for the party. I did the two kettle BBQ act with mezquite wood charcoal, and big load of chicken thighs. It's easier to spread the meat on two grills than it is to crowd too much on one. Besides, doing two kettles looks all cool like you're a total pro, and stuff. 

One of Mary's friends (the woke one) showed up wearing a black face mask. She sat at the table in the gazebo with Mary and a couple other gals. I walked over, and told her to take it off. She said, "No." Wouldn't take it off.

 My temper spiked. 

So, I walked away for a moment, and took a deep breath. But I returned to the table, and told her, very firmly: "Nobody is sick here. You take off the mask, or leave. Right now. No third option."

She complied with the mandate.

And the gathering was a success. We don't do background music at our parties. All us ol' bastards are so hard of hearing that we can't keep up a conversation when the radio is on, anyway. Parties are for eating, drinking, smoking, talk, and laughter. 

But Holly brought her guitar. My old pal Jeff brought a list of songs. Bill showed up with his guitar. Mick, whom we haven't seen for years, came over, too, and he played as well.

Holly is brilliant. She's both singer, and song writer. She played a couple of her original pieces, and astonished everyone. I'm not kidding, I got all misty.

Ol' Jeff did a few traditional numbers for us. He likes the big band sound, and singers like Sinatra, or  Bobby Darin. Those aren't guitar songs, but Jeff pulled them off quite well. He sang, "That's Life", and knocked it out of the park.

And then...

  I like to sing, but only when no one's lookin'.  I know the words to zillions of songs, and I sing them when I'm alone on the bike path, or driving. I used to keep myself entertained working the night shift, alone. I never really sang in front of anyone.

Until Saturday night. Holly, and Mick were just poking around with old melodies, and Mick started playing "I'll Never Find Another You", by The Seekers. It's one of my all-time favorites, and it's my very special song for Mary and me. I had thought I'd like to sing it for her, one day, but, you know...

Next thing I knew I was singing it for her, right there in front of everyone. It was that kind of an evening.

...

Monday morning, 8/23, I got back to work on the gray stone. I didn't get far. I mentioned that I wasn't entirely sure that this piece was, indeed, soapstone. It is very hard, and the crunch didn't feel quite right when I cut it with a tool. The dust wasn't slippery like talc. 

 

It wasn't easy to get the wedge shaped chunk secured on the table, and I spent the better part of the morning sawing away, trying to get the base cut. Hack saw, bow saw, masonry saw: nothing was making much progress. Two hours of hacking away, and I was barely an inch into the stone. Uh-oh. This was just like the anhydrite. I wasn't getting anywhere.

  So, I stopped,  went into the garage, and got out a chunk of marble.  I tested both the marble, and the gray stone with a chisel, then tested one stone against the other. Whatever the gray stuff is, it's  harder than the marble, and it doesn't feel like soapstone under the the tool. Then I remembered  the pipe I made from this gray stuff a long time ago. The best I could do was to come up with a very simple shape. I seem to remember burning up a drill bit, too.

 So I looked up soapstone on line. The hardness of soapstone depends on the talc content. Talc equals soft. Low talc content soapstone is called steatite, which can be harder than marble. What I have is probably a chunk of steatite.  Without power tools, that means a very long, very slow project, and serious wear on the very expensive tool kit. I'd love to do the fender bomb shape, but not as a six-month project. Hmmm...

So here's where my old pal Carp makes his appearance, and as Julie noted a while back: Carp is asshoe. Carp always says shit like: "You're gonna' chicken out, 'cuz it was a hard project, not a hard stone. The real guys would go for it. You're just too lazy. And, of course, "NOT GOOD ENOUGH!"

(Tue.8/24)

 But I'm too old, and too cranky to take Carp seriously. (Well, maybe a little.) I'll do the fender bomb later, with some other stone. In the mean time I went ahead and got started on this.

It's the last big piece of rock that I have.

I'm pretty sure this chunk came from the same bed as the last one did. It has the same clear surface layer, and the same peach colored streaks. And, like the last stone, it may be irregular in hardness and texture. We'll see. The best alabasters of any color have a ring to them if tapped. The chalkier stuff has a thud. I'll have a better idea once I've shaved off the oxidized outer stone. Depending on the material I'll probably take a similar approach to this one as I did to the last one. I'll start with the shapes in the stone, and work out the design at it develops. That's a fancy way of saying, "Make it up as I go along again." Nonetheless, this will be a pretty piece of rock when it's all carved.

(thu, 8/26)

By the end of the day yesterday I wasn't happy with the start I'd made on this stone. There were two points of balance that looked good, and I went with the one that seemed to present me with the best opportunity to maximize the surface area, and bring out the colors in the material. I was thinking of a bowl-like form. But that left too much mass leaned out too far from the base. Remove material in the wrong place and the whole thing could become tippy, and off balance. 

Now, I know that a lot of sculptors like to work the whole stone. They do fully rounded pieces mounted all balanced up on tip toe, and fastened to a base with a pin. Something in me says, "no". Stone doesn't fly. It's supposed to sit with its roots in the earth, not hang suspended in the air. This is just how I see it. Others think otherwise, and they're right, too.

So today's session is going to start with re-cutting the base a little. The figure may reach up, but first it has to be grounded in the earth.

(fri, 8/27)

We've had a fairly cool summer up until now. But September is dropping in fast, and September always brings the heat. So it was, yesterday. Hot, and dry. 

I got a new base line scribed around the bottom, strapped the rock down to the table and stared in with the bow saw. Unfortunately, trying to cut through the harder stones left the blade all dull. I was a sweaty, dusty mess in no time. Do I want go out to the  hardware store and buy a couple new blades? No. So push on with the dull saw.

It took a couple hours to saw through the base, and a couple more hours dragging the stone across the sanding board to get the cut perfectly flat. It was a good decision to do so. The rock sits solid on the table. The material is firm, slightly translucent, milky white, with gold clouds running through. It has some ring to it when put it to the tool. I can have some fun with this one. So today will begin with the part where nothing happens. Part of the job is just staring at the stone.

 

(sat,8/28)

      So here's the plan.

 (Sun, 8/29)

Sunday was take-in day for the September show at the Art Association. The big white stone, and the color stone are newly finished, and ready to go on display. They're both staying put.

If I wanted to display the stones, and enter into the juried show I'd have to go down to the gallery and put up with their mask bullshit. When I entered the last show, the state-wide mandate had just been lifted. Even so, I had to assertively refuse to wear the rag. Now, there's a county order. 

So I was faced with two questions. First: Do I  submit to being masked, or aggressively refuse, and stir up some shit?

And that raised the second question: How important is it to put my work on display?

The first question was just a matter of temperament, and I'm just enough of an asshole to enjoy being a jerk about things. But, my wife is on the board of directors. If it were just for my sake alone, I wouldn't care all that much. I do care about Mary, though. I don't want to cultivate a reputation for being a jerk with these folks.

The second question raises other issues. 

I've written more than once about fending off the darkness by creating a little beauty in the world. Yet once I finish a stone I get the dragon sickness, and want to hoard it here in my private stash. It's like these are hard-to-get collectibles, and I'm the only guy I can get them from. Sorta' like Gollum, and the precious, I guess. I worked hard to complete there carvings. Should I not, at least, look forward to putting them on public display for a month?

I'm strangely indifferent. It could be a symptom of the Bleakness creeping in. (Carp says I'm being an asshole.) So I talked it over with Mary. She reminded me that there was only one man on the board who works hanging the shows, and he wouldn't be there. None of the women would be able to hoist up a sixty pound chunk of rock, and lug it around. One slip, and that carving would break like a pot. 

There will be other shows. 

I did not want to work Sunday, but I got restless, and started refining the sketch on the stone. 

The most helpfullest Skinamalink  hopped up to give me some pointers.

Considering the possibilities

 

Let me show you how it's done.

There. much better!

onward!

 

 

Between Ends and Beginnings

Thanks for stopping by. The WFB is my 'whatever I happen to be in to at the moment' corner of the web. I have two other Blogger sites which are far more interesting.  

The Lost Canyon Project is the chronicle of my work photographing and cataloging the life's work of my late friend, artist Pete Hampton (1940-2018) 

 

The Lost Era Transcripts is the fruit of the Lost Canyon Project. It is a re-creation in book form of Pete's unfinished master work, The Lost Era. This is a good candidate for the finest work I have ever done.

 

Between Ends and Beginnings

Monday, 8/16

Gray Soapstone

 

Mostly I avoid politics, and current affairs here on the WFB. I spend altogether too much time on the internet reading about the aforementioned topics.  Sometimes I'll drop a comment at Fran Porretto's Liberty's Torch, or trade remarks with the regular visitors at Gerard Van der Leun's American Digest, but I leave the editorializing to bloggers who are smarter, and better informed than I am. I try to keep my focus close to home.

Even so, the news as of late has been horribly depressing. The idiots and mad men in charge seem hell-bent on the destruction of this nation, and indeed, all of Western Civilization as we know it. I take the measure of my daily life. It is hard to believe how fast we've fallen in such a short time. And the decline into totalitarianism continues at an ever-increasing pace. Where does it hit me next?

At times it seems petty and selfish to worry about our own small affairs when we’re looking at the collapse of Western Civilization. But how many small, precious things that we cherish will be corrupted or lost? How staggering is the loss of liberty already. Note the insanity in France, Scotland, Australia, New Zealand.  This is global. There is no escape. In the short term we’re already learning to live like the Russians in the old USSR.

We use code speech when discussing certain topics on line, lest the algorithms detect an improper sequence of keystrokes. We’re learning which small businesses won’t enforce the mask rule. We’re even having to find work-arounds to escape the totalitarians messing with our recreation and hobbies. I recently learned that my favorite polishing compound has been banned in California. Luckily, I found a vendor who would put  the stuff in a plain brown wrap, and UPS it  to me from Texas. Every day items are becoming scarce, gray-market, and even black-market trade. I won’t even go into guns. You know.

I’ve retreated to my back yard hermitage.  I go off grounds maybe once or twice a week at most. My only real outing is getting together with the bike gang to cruise the beach. I cannot stand the sight of the faceless. It brings up that “Invasion of the Body-Snatchers” horror in me. 

I have enough stone left for three major projects. That should carry me into the winter. The stone work is a gift from God. It’s a primitive, dirty task, as primal as any human activity gets. But gives me a sense of purpose. What do you do in the face of all this? 

Make like a cave-man, and pound on a rock. Anyone got a better answer? Grab a picket sign and stand on the street corner? Make an angry comment on a blog?

I have a stone, and a new project all ready to go. In the mean time I'm just taking a couple of days away from the table. Tomorrow's my birthday, so I have a good excuse to just fart around, and...

Oh wait, I don't have a good excuse. We're doing a party Saturday, and I have to get the grounds straightened up, do some of the shopping, and all that.
So I spent the morning raking out the bushes, and cleaning up my work area. The table is just the right height for everyone to use as a bar, perfect for leaning on your elbows, and nursing a drink.
But my heart wasn't in it. It's always this way before hosting a gathering, even a small one. 

Do I really want to do this? Maybe just cancel. No, can't do that. Yes I can. It'll suck. No, just shut up, and keep working...

 
And the work went much faster than I expected. By ten in the morning, I had the perimeter all raked out, and the greenwaste dumpster filled.



I messed with the stone a little. This wedge of rock was supposed to be soapstone. It probably is. Soapstone (talc), like alabaster, can vary in hardness from too mushy to work, to only slightly softer than marble. This chunk is hard. Soapstone has a very distinctive "crunch" when put to the tool. There is something strangely addictive in that tiny vibration between the steel and the stone. Once you feel it in your fingertips you want to do it over, and over again, and it's hard to stop. It's like nibbling at a handful of pistachios. The dust is fine and slippery. No surprise, ground up soapstone is talcum powder. 

This gray rock is hard, but not unworkable. I carved a pipe out of it for a friend many years ago. It doesn't take a glassy sheen like the alabaster. Wet sanding up to 2000 grit, plus a lot of rubbing with Simichrome gives it a satin, yet almost metallic finish. The polished rock is deep gunmetal gray, but if you look close you see it's shot through with flecks of rusty orange. This will suit my purpose perfectly for this project.



This won't be a free-carving exercise. It won't be a swoopy, biomorphic composition, either. I planned this for the anhydrite, but this gray soapstone is actually better suited for what I want to do.
So, what is it? Don't keep everyone hanging on the edge of their seats.

OK. I'm gonna' make me one of these:

 

Uh... cool. I guess. But, just what is that?

That, my friends, is the fender bomb from a 1950's vintage Schwinn/Whizzer motorized bicycle.
I love retro-futuristic. And this project is going to present me with a real challenge. There will be no Pee Wee Herman, "I meant to do that" excuse, if a chunk of the carving breaks off. No making it up as I go along. Round has to be round, not sorta' rounded. Both sides have to match, and all that.
I'll have to take measurements, draw up a sketch on graph paper, cut the stone into a rough blank, use a compass or something to mark out the round part, and work the whole thing as methodically as I can to get the symmetry and proportions right.
 

But difficult is more fun than easy. I need all the fun I can get.