Time's Arrow Gets Edited

     So, I'm laying in a tub of hot, Epsom-salted water, reading -- which you would do, too if you were as old and achy as me -- when I stubbed my toe on a common mistake.

     Naturally, just as anyone would do, I called out for a pencil.  (Read Tam's recounting at the link, then come back.)

     I've been digging through Larry Brooks' Story Engineering, which has been informative so far.  He uses a teaching technique I recognize, going after the same point from different angles, sneaking up on it, dropping back, paraphrasing, using multiple examples and expanding to an extent that makes me a little impatient.  But he's trying to make the lesson sink in and if you play along, it does.

     One of his examples was from The Da Vinci Code, a listing of the possible "What Ifs?" that might have informed the initial plotting.  Third on the list was, in part, "What if [the child of Jesus] survived and the lineage continues to this day, meaning the ancestors of Christ are walking among us?"

     Theology aside, and granting that the Old Testament lists remarkable lifespans for some of those ancestors, they do have one other thing in common: they're all dead.  On the other hand and at least for the purposes of fiction, any hypothetical descendant might indeed be walking among us.

     The arrow of time runs in only one direction.  Ancestors are not descendants. Descendants are not ancestors. 

     So I crossed out the wrong word and penciled in the correct one.

     While in the bathtub.  It was good enough for Archimedes, after all.

He's A Fighter

     Huck the cat went to the dentist -- well, to the vet, for a dental procedure -- this morning. 

     He's back home now, with clean teeth and a clean bill of health (mostly -- he's missing three tiny incisors, possibly as a result of his habit of chewing on things.  This is not a big problem for a housecat, since they don't use those teeth to chew their food).  But he's, well, stoned.

     He's still wobbly from the anesthetic but he will not lay down and sleep it off.  He's pacing through the house, smoothing on everything he can reach and looking for something, anything, to eat.  His back end is not quite keeping up with his front, but you see, Huck didn't have any breakfast this morning, and in Huck's world, that is an emergency that trumps everything else, even recovery from general anesthesia.

     Holden is trailing after him, murmuring comforting or worried-sounding purrpps and blerts, which Huck ignores.

     I've shut myself in the back of the house with a small snack, in the hopes that he'll find a quiet corner to relax in.  Speaking as someone who has come out from anesthesia struggling to get off the gurney and away from the nurses on multiple occasions, I think I know how he feels. 

Sausage Stroganoff?

     To make dinner last night, I had a pound of "sweet" Italian sausage, half an onion, a can of mushrooms and a couple of different-brand cans of mushroom soup, Amy's Mushroom Bisque (good stuff!) and Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup.  Plus three-quarters of a bag of rotini, spiral pasta.

     So why not see how all that would work together?  I fried the sausage loose with black pepper, a generous amount of shichimi togarashi (a mildly-hot Japanese spice mix) and a dash -- well, a few dashes -- of paprika, adding half the onion, diced, before draining the fat.

     Added the rest of the onion, stirred it in well, and added the mushroom bisque, canned mushrooms (poured the liquid into the bisque can) and Condensed Cream of Mushroom soup.  I used the mushroom liquid to get the rest of the soups from their cans and stirred everything together. 

     You could add some milk or water if needed.  I had put the pan dripping in a grease separator and got about four tablespoons of broth.

     Sprinkled some parsley, basil, and a little more shichimi togarashi and paprika on top and covered the pan to simmer while I cooked the rotini.

     The rotini water was already boiling, so I added it, returned it to boiling, and tuned the heat to let it simmer for seven minutes -- this varies to taste and with the kind of pasta, so check the label.

     The end result was darned good. Unconventional, somewhere between sausage gravy and stroganoff, but plenty tasty.  Tam added some of her Flatiron Pepper mix to give her bowl a little more zing.

Shelves, Interrupted

     Woke with a terrible headache Tuesday.  Weather was coming in and this time of year is not the kindest to my sinuses.

     But there was sunshine and a project already begun, so I got up, took OTC pain meds, had coffee and a little breakfast, and got to work.

     Set up the compound sliding miter saw (I have come to really like it -- I used table saws for years, starting back when we ran them without any guards, and the sliding compound miter is easier to use and much easier to set up for large pieces) and a support, knocked out a couple of brace sections, then rigged to cut the sides, 95" tall.

     "Eight-foot" boards vary a little in length and over the years, I have settled on trimming them an inch short of nominal.  It has been a good compromise.  The ceilings at Roseholme Cottage are an inch or two over eight feet, which allows good clearance.  The shelves I'm working on now are 11"  deep and I may end up having to trim corners to stand them up. 

     It takes a little while to set up to trim longer lengths of wood.  I work outdoors, and the back sidewalk is my longest level area with a hard surface.  When I do woodwork, getting everything measured, lined up and clamped down takes ten or twenty times as long as the cutting.  I spent years growing up with parents who could do this sort of thing by eye and a few casual measurements (and who were honestly puzzled that other people could not*), but I don't have that knack; if I'm concentrating on cutting a straight line, it inevitably turns out to be at the wrong angle, in the wrong place, or I will have cut clean through something else as well (most infamously, a tabletop).  Doing it the way that works for me, there are long intervals of silence and then a quick "Bzzzzzzp-zing!" as I run the saw, not needing to focus on anything but making a clean cut.

     It's slow.  By the time I had both sides cut to length, the skies were darkening, and by the time I had unclamped and stowed away the saw, the wood blocks to prop the long ends of the boards at saw-table height and all the small tools, the wind was rising and it was obvious we were in for a storm.  To make matters worse, my head was aching with ever-greater intensity.

     Once I had gathered up the remaining tools and supplies -- with no little haste -- and had put them away, the pain in my ears was so bad, I could barely keep my eyes focused.  I took more acetaminophen and aspirin, and went back to my bedroom where I crawled under the covers and kind of collapsed.  The tomcats joined me and we dozed away most of the afternoon, me hurting and the cats purring.

     I'll finish the shelves another day.
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* My parents were extraordinary people, each of them among the youngest of large families of extraordinary people, and for them, that was "ordinary."  Both were highly successful in their careers despite never attending college.  I don't know if they ever really grasped just how far out on the edge of the curve they were, even when we all -- for fun! -- took the IQ test that accompanied a Reader's Digest article about Mensa and every single family member qualified to apply, most by a quite comfortable margin.  Both of my parents had picked up basic skills like cooking, carpentry, gardening and raising small animals so early in life that they were honestly mystified that other people, including their own children, didn't "just know" them or could not quickly work them out from first principles.
     I have gathered that their own parents did not want their children feeling superior or "putting on airs;" neither family was well-to-do or especially well-connected.  But just a little more self-awareness of their giftedness probably would have helped them cope better with people who struggled to keep up with them.

Got Some Junk Hauled Away Today

     It wasn't much, but it was in the way.  The first place I called quoted a price that I could live with, and said they could schedule the pickup Thursday.

     The second place just had a recording, asked for my number and brief description, and promised to call back automatically.  Never did.

     The third place was 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, an outfit with a slick, amusing TV commercial (not always a positive, in my opinion).  Their number answered with a slightly distorted jingle followed by a brief spiel from the founder, and I thought, "Oh, boy, here we go."  But it handed me over to a call-center operator who took the particulars in a businesslike manner, promptly gave me a quote about seventy-five percent of the first junk-remover's price, and then said, "But let me put you on hold and check with our local guys.  Since this is small and already at the curb, we can probably give you a better deal."

     I was happy to hold.  Before very long, the operator came back and said, "If you will be home between four and six this afternoon, we can do the job for fifty dollars."  Less than half of the first quote!

     It was 3:30 p.m.  I assured her I would most certainly be home, she confirmed my address and we said goodbye.

     The big, brightly-painted truck stopped by around 5:00 p.m. and with no fuss and bother, picked up the junk and we did an arms-length credit-card transaction for payment.

     Easiest professional trash removal I ever had, and the least expensive one this century.  They will be my first call next time.

An Expedition

     I went to the big-box building-suppply store today.  First big store I have been in since the coronavirus stuff started.

     It was....different.  The parking lot looked pretty full and I almost turned around and went back home.  On closer sight, the parking lot was much smaller; the garden department has been moved outdoors, and it was surrounded by closely-parked cars.  That's where most of the people were.

     It was lumber I was after, at the other end of the building.  The lot was not even half full over there. 

     Inside, people were keeping their distance, but pleasantly enough.  Nearly everyone was masked.  A couple of African-American men -- father and adult son, for a guess, and busy working modifying their project to suit the available materials -- and I were the only people in the aisle where all the plain boards are kept, and we kind of danced around each other, keeping our distance.  I was gloved up, work gloves, lumber not being very hand friendly, and so were they.  When the older man asked to borrow my tape measure (don't visit the lumber department without one!), I was happy to help.  Arms-length to arm's-lengths and returned the same way, with what I think we both hoped were readable as smiles despite our masks.

     Life goes on.  Most people want to get along the those around them.  Nobody was swapping stink-eye or making comments, not even between the masked and the maskless.

     Tomorrow, I've got a project to start.  I hope it goes well.  

Stopping To Think

     I didn't post this yesterday (though I will backdate it), because I wanted to stop and think things over.  I wanted to develop a timeline.

     The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department did some very good work in the past week.  And they did some things that didn't work out -- the initial response to protesters downtown last weekend was extremely adversarial and appeared to increase tensions.

     They also did things that were wrong.  Pepper-spraying a protester who doused an officer with the contents of a water bottle looked excessive; and then a video emerged of IMPD arresting a couple of young women, ostensibly protesters, for being out after curfew.  It wasn't a calm encounter on either side; but one side was lightly dressed and unarmed, while the other was armored and had -- and used -- greater numbers, pepperballs, nightsticks, hands, knees and handcuffs.

     The video made the social-media rounds without much context.  It finally emerged that it happened last Sunday, before the march to the Governor's residence, before the IMPD changed their approach from confrontation to co-mingling and low-key situation management, and hard on the heels of nights of rioting, dumpster fires and looting. 

     Our local paper has a timeline of events.  The incident is being investigated and I guess we'll see how it is handled.  This shouldn't be swept under a rug.  Emotions were high, there's no question about that, but when one group of emoters has qualified immunity, deadly weapons and less-leathal weapons, I think they also have a lot more responsibility to be the "adults in the room."

     It probably should have been a teachable moment -- but if so, it still took a Deputy Mayor to explain the lesson and help apply it, last Monday.  It has been sticking so far and I hope IMPD will build on it.

Protip

     If you are going to station yourself in a prominent and somewhat difficult to access public location, vowing to stay there until social conditions improve, you might want to at least bring along a bottle of water and a box lunch.  This world is full of rotten types who would be happy to watch you starve.

     Luckily, our local police force isn't among them.

     Early TV news reported that a small number of protesters climbed up above the doors of the Soldier and Sailors Monument in downtown Indianapolis and swore they'd stay there until things got better.  IMPD spent considerable time talking them down.  Okay, points for putting your money -- or at least your person -- where your mouth is, but points off for lack of planning.

     I can't find the story at any local TV station's website.  So more points off if the stunt is being downplayed to discourage copycats.  If that's the case, the message didn't get amplified.  They'd've been better off putting the effort into a bigger sign.

So....

     Can you pop popcorn over the fire as the the world burns?  Asking for a friend.

Not The Police

     One of my online friends who lives in a major metropolitan area was stopped on his commute home by the forces of law and order, and shaken by the experience.  And by them.

     They weren't the police.

     As he tells it, he was driving along a multi-lane street next to a National Guard truck or personnel carrier, when someone up ahead of them ran a red light and made a left turn onto the street, close enough that he and the Guard vehicle had to brake abruptly.  (The coronavirus shut-downs have made for some terrible driving and several days of civil unrest has made drivers even more heedless, at least here and where he lives.  Probably where you live, too.)

     The police might've blipped their siren and flashed their lights to pull the careless driver over for a warning or a ticket.  The National Guard didn't have those, but whoever was in charge decided a response was needed.  They sped up, whipped around the offending vehicle, got a little ahead, slewed to block traffic and stopped everyone.  Including my friend.  Guardsmen (Guardspeople?) came piling out, ordered everybody out of their vehicles, and with a pair of them to every driver and passenger, were not nearly as gentle or nice about it as police would have been.

     His state government has officially called out the Guard to assist police.  I have no idea if the stop was authorized or justified.  My friend is a pretty enthusiastic goth or cybergoth, who (other than possibly being a little overdressed) wouldn't look out of place in a Mad Max film, and while that shouldn't complicate interaction with the forces of public safety, it often does.  But he got shoved around like a ragdoll while things got sorted out and then sent on his way without any social niceties.

     He's not (quite) furious.  But he's upset.  Who wouldn't be?

     The National Guard are not, generally, police officers.  They're Kevin the bartender and Joe the auto mechanic and Jill who hasn't decided what she wants to do with her life yet.  Even if a particular unit has received training in crowd control, they do not get the same kind of training police do, nor do they have the experience of dealing with the entire spectrum of the public that police officers accumulate.  They're not going to interact with you in the same way.  Even a "bad cop" understands the dance in a way that a truckload of part-time soldiers do not.  It's easy to say, "comply and everything will be all right."  Heck, it's even true, 99 times out of a hundred.  But understand ahead of time: if you encounter troops in a law enforcement situation, you're not dealing with Officer Friendly (or Not-So-Friendly), who has done hundreds of traffic stops or Terry stops.  It's not going to be the usual thing.

     Be smart.  Be like my friend.  He didn't debate Constitutionality with them.  He didn't ask if traffic enforcement was covered in their orders.  He didn't enjoy the experience -- way not! -- but he got through it and got home.

Managing The Mindspace

     Yesterday, after tough talk from the President to state Governors encouraging harsh response to civil unrest, and after violent incidents all across the country, a large group of protestors on Monument Circle in downtown Indianapolis decided to march to our Governor's residence.

     They started about a half-hour prior to the city's 8:00 p.m. curfew.  Monument Circle, the zero point for addresses and street numbers, is right on Meridian.  The official residence of the Governor of Indiana is on Merdian, too, a deceptively-small-looking and notably unfenced home at 46th Street.  It's just about a five-mile walk.

     With only a half-hour, there was no way a large and assorted group of people was going to complete that walk before the curfew began, especially walking up the single major north-south thoroughfare through Indianapolis.

     The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Force mobilized.  They showed up in full battle-rattle, helmets with face shields, armor, gloves, and armed with every modern crowd-control tool, from batons to tear gas along with their normal sidearms.  They formed a deep line across Meridian and when the marchers neared the Governor's residence at 8:30, the police stopped the marchers cold.

     IMPD ordered them to disperse within the next ten minutes.  The marchers stood fast and chanted slogans.  There was some yelling back and forth.  The police were much better armed -- and enormously outnumbered.

     It looked bad.  Someone -- a lot of someones -- was going to get hurt.

     Deputy Mayor Dr. David Hampton, a man I had never heard of before today, stepped in as a negotiator.  What did the marchers actually want?  There was a brief huddle between the Deputy Mayor, high-ranking police officers, and the people at the forefront of the marchers.

     And then something happened.  I'm not sure who started it, but the chanting changed, coalescing on one slogan, over and over, spreading through the crowd:

     "Walk with us!  Walk with us!"

     The huddle of police and marchers dissolved into fist-bumps and shoulder slaps; the line of contact between police and marchers broke out in handshakes and even hugs, social distancing notwithstanding.*  You could see the strain easing in expressions and postures.  The police were still wary and the marchers were still upset, but they appeared to be seeing one another as people instead of symbols or threats.

     The police and protestors marched the rest of the way to the Governors house intermingled.  The protestors agreed to disperse afterward, and police walked with them back downtown to their cars.

     No one got hurt.  There were no riots in Indianapolis last night.  There was no looting.

     I'm proud of the people of my city.

     Sure, nothing big got solved last night; but everyone made room to move forward.  It's a start.
________________________________
* We may see a second wave of infections as a result of the protests and especially the riots.  If so, I'd rather have people spread it by hugging than by getting tear gassed, fighting with police and being thrown into a crowded lockup.  YMMV, but the only choices are between "bad" and "much worse."

Still Horrified

     About the only people who haven't managed to horrify me over the last three days are the people who stayed home, the people who showed up in daylight with signs and songs and chant to peacefully protest and then went home, and the news media who are getting roughed up by both rioters and police.  (Everybody from Vice reporters to CNN fieldpeople to local TV talent, all of them either where police had told them to be or well away from the battle-lines.)

     The rest of you disgust and frighten me, from multiple big-city mayors claiming the people arrested for rioting or looting are mostly from elsewhere (a TV station at the epicenter dug through public records to check: nope, wrong, it's local talent) to the rioters and looters themselves and on to  the smallest online pipsqueak who conflates protesters, rioters and looters while opining that a touch of the lash -- whoops, make that harsh response by law enforcement and National Guardsmen -- would settle matters in a trice.

     Never mind that "harsh response" is how we ended up here.  Passing a fake twenty-dollar bill and getting arrested for it should not result in the bill-passer's death in the interval between getting caught and being thrown into a squad car for a night in the lockup.  If that's how police work is done where you live, there's a problem with your police force.  (Undoubtedly there will be quibbling argument on this score; but once a suspect is handcuffed and there are three or four officers on the scene, there is no reason that individual shouldn't arrive for processing in as good a condition as they were when handcuffed.)

     This kind of widespread protest -- and the vandalism, rioting and looting that has followed -- doesn't happen unless the spark falls on ready fuel.  At the very lowest level, most looters are just in it for what they can grab.  Many of the rioters and vandals fall into the "I don't believe in anything, I'm just here for the violence" category and I don't mean they're wearing a cute little Banksy-inspired patch.  The sense of hopelessness and immediate gratification that feeds their actions doesn't just happen and it's not the result of "outside agitation."  It's the water they swim in.  A big mass protest, with plenty of anger directed at police -- no matter how well justified -- creates congenial cover for people who set dumpster fires, smash shop windows, scrawl spray-paint slogans and generate chaos, but don't confuse them with the painfully sincere groups of ministers and priests and the sign-waving folks who line up in public places; it's not that simple.  There's not much in the way of direct crossover between them: the protesters at least think things can be made better.  The violent types are happy to make things worse.

     You cannot "contain it," you'd only be making a time bomb.  And we've all just seen what even a little explosion can do.  It's got to be fixed at the source.

     Given what I am hearing from civic leaders and police departments, I'm not feeling very hopeful.  "De-policing" is more likely than better training, better use-of-force polices, better pay, an end to "thin blue line" coverup for bad officers and a creating a less-adversarial police culture.