Tag Archives: nkw

Adventures

SCA

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For those of you who don’t know, that stands for Society for Creative Anachronism.  Put simply, they play medieval, but without the cholera epidemics.  It is on my mind today because I am shortly taking some friends to lunch after they finish up a local SCA event.  I was invited, very kindly, but declined partly due to feeling so out of place.  I am not sure how often I can say ‘forsooth’, and I’m always nervous if I don’t know the social etiquette of any situation.  Nonetheless, they seem like a group of the sort of people I nearly always like.  My friends are good examples, using many of the skills in real life agriculture and householding.  I find them hardworking, energetic, cheery and intelligent.

Is it silliness? I play Dungeons & Dragons, so if roleplay is silliness, then I guess I’m silly myself.  Sure, anyone can go overboard on pretending to be a brave knight.  One can go overboard on golf, too, or crocheting or cat ownership.  SCA seems like a very crafts(wo)manly way to have a good time roleplaying and understanding how people lived back when, thus teaching history.

You’ll get real bored and real old standing around waiting for me to utter the sentence “Teaching history isn’t worth while.”

Married life

Learning manhood

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My nephew lives with us while he plays juco baseball.  Naturally he has high hopes of playing at the next level, and just as naturally, I remind him unceasingly that while baseball isn’t a sure thing, academics are–and that there is no reasonable excuse for him not to hang a 3.5 on the scholastic side of things.  He is also here, in part, so that his aunt and uncle can help him acclimate to adult life:  teach him to refrain from doing really unwise things, and what will be expected of him in life.  (I think my brother-in-law should have interviewed me far more carefully for my track record in such matters, personally, but I appreciate his confidence nonetheless.)

His girlfriend, a pleasant and athletic young first basewoman on the softball team, took a ball to the face today.  Broke her nose, just about swelled her eye shut, broke a bone in her eye orbital, and filled up her nasal cavity with blood.  Ended her season, sadly, just before the playoffs.  Our nephew advised us that he wouldn’t be home tonight–he intends to look after her.

I see he’s learning.

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Business accountability

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Why do we hold mom & pop businesses more accountable than Dow 30 corporations? If a local mom & pop sent us deceptive advertising personally created for us, we’d be outraged.  Yet a major corporation may do the same, impersonally, to millions–and people just accept that as normal.

How are mom & pop more culpable? Or, for that matter, why are the largest companies not culpable at all? If mom & pop don’t return our call, they get a black mark.  If the largest companies don’t return our call, it’s “what did you expect?” If mom & pop said, “sorry, that’s our policy,” we’d hold a stupid policy against them.  If a huge company has a stupid policy, we accept that same answer in ovine fashion.

Why?

Married life

Fugitive from the menu police

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Is anyone else in this boat? It’s almost foreordained.  Any time I decide I like a menu item at a restaurant, within weeks (sometimes days) the item comes off the menu.  Discontinued.  It almost never fails.  It is as though the menu police tail me from restaurant to restaurant, carefully noting any dish I seem to enjoy–the Dining Volkspolizei.

Someone else please assuage my paranoia and tell me it’s not the Dining Vopos, that it happens to them too?

Homeownership, Married life, Technology

TV shopping

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Our TV just lays there twitching like a sarin casualty.   We need a new one.  Thank you, Samsung, for a product that only lasted six years of relatively light usage.  Of course, I wouldn’t do anything so cold as to post that fact on the Internet or anything.

We kind of have a choice between going to Worst Buy (always feel sort of sullied afterward, like having taken a dip in the Great Salt Lake, or picked up after the dog in the yard) or the local Old School Appliance/Electronics Store.  Normally that would be my top preference, but we live in the Tri-Cities, and experience has taught me that many old time local businesses really don’t earn their keeps here.  Like most of local government, they are more habits than going concerns.  This is one of the downsides of not living in a Seattle or Portland:  because consumers have fewer options, businesses can get by with greater mediocrity.  I keep telling myself that it’s better than living in constant worry of petty property crime, which is comparatively rare here.

Not sure what brand we’ll get, other than that if AT&T makes one, that’s out, and Samsung’s outside consideration.

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Thinking about Dixie

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I’ve long had a fair bit of affection for the South and its people, which is odd because I doubt I could ever live in the South in comfort except in carefully selected areas, maybe not even then.  It’s nothing by any means common to most Southerners; rather, its vocal minority is simply more vocal than would enable me to live in peace, me being not particularly prone to withstand certain things in silence.  It’s a rough situation for the vast majority, whom I find a diverse, thoughtful, friendly and self-honest bunch.  They are sick of being caught up in broad generalizations, and I completely get that because I’m a Kansas boy.  I get the same sort of crap, and by and large, Southerners seem to deal with those broad generalizations based on minority viewpoints better than I do those about Kansas.  I guess they’ve had long practice.

Thus, there’s more than one reason a son of Kansas roots watching twisters tear the living hell out of Dixie can feel pretty badly for them.  Hang tough, folks.  My condolences for your losses, which are appallingly grave.  You have a lot of good people, a lot of tough people, and you’ll rebuild.

Human relations, Social comment

Do you promise not to put my tires on someone else’s car?

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We had that conversation today down at Les Schwab.  Last fall I had to buy new studs for my wife’s car.  Les Schwab put my tires on the car of a mediocre local news anchor.  The only credit they earned occurred when the supervisor came out to the waiting area and enumerated this event to me.  Too stunned to speak at first, I just stared at him with the you could not possibly be this stupid look.  Moreover, I was in no way compensated for the extra hour and a half I had to sit around waiting for them to fetch her car back, get my tires, put them on Deb’s car, etc.  Sorry.  You’re screwed.  You will be delayed another hour and a half; no, it is not your fault; no, you will not get that time back, nor anything for it; yes, we really do expect you to just meekly accept this.

I don’t do ‘meek’ too well.  I am resolved not to let them forget it soon.  If that’s the only compensation I get, besides sinking this particular banderilla, very well.

This led to today’s odd conversation as I had the studs swapped out for the regulars (required soon by law).  I went to the counter, and asked how long it would be.  I explained what had happened last time, and asked if she could promise they would not give someone else my tires.  If she would promise, I would dare go eat some guilty pleasure lunch across the street.  Otherwise I would stand there and never take my eyes off my tires.  This was the part where she was supposed to show shocked disappointment and wonder what could be done to restore my confidence.  I didn’t think very much of her attitude, quite frankly; she acted almost as if I were making it up.  She didn’t quite eyeroll, but Les Schwab got another black mark for that.

Guess they’ll just have to wear it.  It’s not like I would tell the story on the Internet or something.

Adventures

Maryhill

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We have something unique and rather cool out near my part of the world:  a serious art museum, about two hours away.  Maryhill is the former residence of transportation magnate Sam Hill, a post-Gilded Age chap with good connections but odd ideas.  He left his mansion (overlooking the Columbia, a bit east of Wishram) as a museum.   It’s nice as well as scenic.  It displays:

  • A significant and diverse collection of Native American artifacts.
  • A sizable collection of Rodins.  No, I’m not joking.  Yes, I mean what I just said.
  • Lots of Queen Marie of Romania and other eastern European stuff, including some very impressive ikons.
  • Of course, some stuff about Sam himself, though the museum doesn’t overdo his worship.
  • An exhibit on Loïe Fuller, a dancer who used gossamer drapery as a prop.
  • Some fairly dull stuff upstairs.
  • A gorgeous chess set collection.
  • Temporary exhibits that may vary.
  • Nearby, another oddity:  a full-size war memorial in the shape of Stonehenge, overlooking the river.

What makes Maryhill interesting and unique is the combination of middle-of-nowhereness (as I leave the freeway to go there, I see a sign: NO SERVICES 88 MILES), marvelous Columbia Gorge scenery, and truly historic artifacts.  That’s a lot of Rodins, essentially an education in his methods and life.  You can see his fingerprints on some of his sculptures.  Roman coins.  Dresses fit for royalty.  Cyrillic on ikons, in a typeface that I can barely read.

And above all, a very compelling portrait of Tsar Nikolai II (it is not ‘czar’) made more unique by vandalism.  Some angry intruder slashed the canvas where it hung in Belgrade, and while it has been repaired quite well, the evidence hasn’t gone away.  I’m not even much of an art buff and its significance leaps out and grabs even me:  the elegant portrait of the last Tsar in his military finery, crudely marred in an overflow of pent-up resentment.  What better metaphor for the chaotic, iconoclastic times of later World War I?