Four more weeks

And now, the end is near, and now I face, the final curtain.

On this curling season anyhow.

The Detroit Curling Club is teasing me with a possible four game season after the end of the 2016-2017 curling season. They tell me that even I can play in such a proposed season. I tell them that I could play in two.

Let's do this. Let's play into April, as Saskatchewan plays.

Let's play. Though it will delay my golf season, let's play. That's curling.

Let's play.

Characters at the Old Barn

We've had our share of characters come through the Old Barn. I've described some in detail and a few in passing but I haven't really mentioned the bulk of them. Here are a few glimpses of other notables who have stepped through the door. They'll be more later I promise.

There was California. I never did learn his actual name nor why he was nicknamed for the state. What I do remember is that he sounded exactly like Huckleberry Hound. You could hear him singing My Darling Clementine like he owned it. If you heard his voice from behind a screen you'd swear it was the guy who voiced that bluish Hanna-Barbera hound dog.

Speaking of voices, there was a guy who sounded exactly like Eeyore, the woeful donkey from Winnie the Pooh. Eeyore's main complaint was that he could never get a girlfriend. "Who'd want to date a guy who does what I do (clean sewers) for a living?" he often lamented in that dullish monotone. Then he found a girlfriend. He told us about it one day, in exactly the manner Eeyore would have. "I got me a girlfriend. Now I have to paint her kitchen."

Grandpa Joe christened one guy 'Cash' Adams. Mr. Adams would walk into the door and Joe would say, "There's Cash Adams. He gets cash and pays cash." Grandpa explained to me that he wasn't sure he could trust the guy so he came up with the moniker to embarrass him from asking for credit. Apparently it worked.

I'll end today with Mr. Clean. I don't know that anyone called him that to his face as he was a muscular, mountain of a man. But he always wore a white t-shirt and had a big gold earring in his ear. Yes, he looked just like the guy on the bottle of cleaning fluid.

There's many more believe me. This is simply to peak your interest.

The book cover lie

They say you can't judge a book by its cover. Then why bother to put a cover on one?

Well, to entice folks to buy it. That's why there will be photos or a painting or fancy script on a book's cover. Writers and editors and publishers want the cover to sway your judgment.

So, then, the axiom actually means nothing useful. Why employ it?

So that you might feel guilty when you judge something on appearance. I'll go out on a limb and say this usually involves something that would generally bring contempt upon itself.

Think about the next time you are blithely told that you can't judge.

Indianapolis

Life has been kinda weird lately.

Well, it's not life, it's me. I'm dealing with a wave of sentimentality which has, quite frankly, left me wondering.

I see my children moving beyond my sphere of influence. It leaves me with an odd mix of pride and loss. They're supposed to move on. That's the goal; that's how it works. I knew that going in to the family game. And I do not regret it. Still, it is genuinely absurd, in a fashion, as I find it actually happening. They're still my kids. In some part of me, they'll always be the small people I had a catch with, read stories to.

I'm at a trade show in Indianapolis. I first came to this show with my father years ago. I go now on my own. I can't help feel but that I'm stepping on his toes. He did this, not me. This was what he did, not what I do. The friends I have here are, and they are very good friends to me all of whom I cherish, all great and wonderful people I say with no little honor, his friends. They are mine I feel almost by default, because they were his. They are mine too, I say with emphasis, because we share a bond and know each other on our own, for myriad reasons. Maybe I feel that I inherited them. That's okay. If that connection, Pops to me to them, makes them my friends, I like it. They're still my friends.

I see, as shallow as this is going to sound, my curling career slowing to a close. I've throw a lot of stones in the last thirty five years. I've played with great folks in two great curling clubs. This year I've felt physically the best ever when thrownin' them stones. The legs, they hold me up. Yet I see the end, the light at the end of the tunnel. I'm not going to play for too many more years. You gotta know when to fold. That time ain't too far off for me. I know this.

If I could enunciate my feelings best right this minute, they are that I can't escape the thought that I am opening the last door to my future. I have turned the page to the last chapter of my life. I am staring at the autumn of my years. Don't worry: I have had no premonitions of doom, no insights that I am soon done. I think I have some time left. Still, the page has been turned.

I look forward to living that last chapter.

I need new wire cutters

Customers, they are the most important part of any sales business. They can be (they ordinarily are) the best thing about sales, and at times the worst. At other times they can be downright odd and unusual, and even slightly disgusting. Disturbing, really.

I remember one guy who sat down while I was welding an end on his drain snake cable. He asked for a pair of wire cutters. So I gave him one, and commenced upon the repair.

He began unlacing his boots. I didn't think much about that; I really only barely noticed it and dismissed it immediately, almost without thought. He was probably just tightening or adjusting the boots, right?

Pulling enough steel cable out of his machine so as to be able to work with it, I ground the end flat and secured it in my bench vice. After screwing in a fitting and tacking a weld to ensure it would stay, I shut off my torch and turned to tell him his repair was done. But my voice caught in my throat. He had his boots off and was trimming his toenails with my wire cutters. Talk about being a little too comfortable in your surroundings.

I said nothing. I turned back to my workbench and began tinkering with another repair. Eventually the man said, "Well, what do I owe you?"

'A new set of wire cutters', I should have said. Instead I just stammered something like, uh, ten bucks.

It was surely overreaction, for they were only wire cutters and had been used to cut far dirtier things than someone's toenails. In fact, that idea by itself added to my disgust at what he had done. But after the man left I picked the tool up with a pair of pliers and threw it away. I replaced them with a new pair that afternoon. I simply didn't want to use them after that incident, and boiling work tools (if you're not a surgeon) seems stupid.

To this day I cringe at the idea of someone arbitrarily trimming his toenails with my tools in my workshop. I mean, really? Why would it even occur to anyone to do that?

Check this out Pops

Hey Pops, how are you today?

I'm here in Indianapolis for the WWETT trade show and let me tell you, the thing which would most impress you is not the show.

I rented a van to bring the machines and what all, and get this: it has a rear camera which displays a picture right in the rearview mirror! It's cool. It looks you have nothing but a regular old rearview. Then you go to back up and there's a picture of what's behind you. It has lines to help guide you too. Wow!

Not that us Cosgriffs need it of course. We've backed our share of welders into place with perfection without fancy technology. But it's pretty neat just the same. I think you'd like it.

Anyway, I'm going to meet the guys for breakfast and then the show starts at 9. Wish us luck!

Until next time,

Marty

We've found more worlds where there might be life!

NASA is today supposed to make a jarring announcement about other worlds and the possibility of life on them. Okay, I suppose. But I am not terribly impressed at the idea.

I will go on the record as saying that I don't believe that there is other intelligent life, indeed that there is not any life at all, elsewhere in the galaxy. That is not etched in stone, for if the universe is huge and expanding as we're told then other life is admittedly not out of the question. Still, that old saw, what with the sprawling and expanding nature of the universe there must be intelligent life besides our own, isn't really a convincing argument. Space and time do not automatically mean that other life forms can or must have developed.

For starters, our immediately experience is that nothing else is there. We've found no hard and fast evidence of life in the local planets and solar systems, nor have we discovered anything notable in what other worlds have been identified elsewhere. It would be more logical at this point to assume that the more worlds without life, the less likely that there are in fact worlds with it. Further, why is it so outlandish to think that maybe, just maybe, we were touched by the Divine for a very singular purpose? Perhaps, only perhaps, I will allow, the rest of creation is here simply for our marvel, to appreciate the immensity of the Supreme Being? There is certainly no law of physics which states there must be life out there somewhere.

Yet if there is, it isn't as though such a find would alter what should be our proper view of things. If there are intelligent aliens, they would have been created by the same God. They would face the same issues which we do: seeing to their needs, their daily bread, and considering their responsibilities to their fellow creatures and to whomever else exists. In short, postulating alien life is interesting as an academic device. But would any such discoveries be, dare I say (I do so love puns), Earth shattering?

Of course not. So keep looking, if that's you life's work, and I will readily concede the error if proved wrong. But don't make it too much of a mission. There's an awful lot here on our world which could be as rewarding. Indeed, if you want to get to know others and make lives better, there's plenty of them around here for your entertainment.