Form and Function

  The other day my daughter called and spoke about her non functioning dishwasher. I immediately suggested she call a repairman to look into the situation. He gave her the heads up that the "house call" would cost her one hundred dollars. He came he saw and he left. The 4 year old dishwasher had a faulty control panel and it would cost five hundred dollars to replace. He then suggested that she just buy another machine.

  Last year our 2003 GM Tracker (really a Suziki with an American name) had a rattle in the engine. The mechanics at several auto repair shops told me that the offending noisy timing belt was no longer available and much too costly to change at any rate. The solution they suggested was to buy a new car.

  Last fall on one of our last motor boat cruises I noticed a slipping jerking motion when the engine ran at full speed. Full speed being relative in that it is only a six horsepower engine. Before I winterized the motor I ask a mechanic about the problem. He said. "they have now changed the propeller design so instead of a sheer-pin to stop a tangled propeller they now use a rubber bushing that wears out and requires a whole new prop every few years".

  I remember back in my teaching years. I rode my bicycle to school for much of the year. I began to notice "fallen" bikes. They seemed to be abandoned everywhere. Leaning against garages, and trees, fences and bushes,  bikes were starting to litter the neighborhood. So I asked my class one day to collect the discarded bikes, bring them to school, and we would see what could be done. Such a variety we collected. From small dirt to full sized racers in colours and genders. I was shocked to see that,  all but a few of them had nothing more disabling than a flat tire or  rusted chain. I was further shocked to realize that no one in a sixth grade class could tell me how to pump up a tire, let alone how to change one. It seemed that it was much easier to just buy a new one. My work was cut out for me.

  I started in an effort to sway popular opinion that "dirty work is stupid",( as one student bluntly described our efforts).  Actually she was not far off. Parents want their children to work at a desk in these days of the information economy. The cognitive richness of manual work has been suppressed by quick returns and seductive wages. White collar good , blue collar bad. Students are encouraged that universities will lead to rich financial security. Shop, and Home Economics classes are a thing of the past as we seem to let our direct experience of the world slip away.

  All this changed when the resurrected machines began to roll off the line. We repaired cleaned oiled and polished until we had turned old into new. Pride in a job well done is such a valuable commodity. Attention deepened, discipline unnecessary, skill competence grew, and I witnessed valued and enthusiastic conversations as groups determined certain courses of action. We were all transformed.

  With all these thoughts I was delighted to see the old garage at the crossroads of our village re-open as a business refurbishing old 1960's Airstreem Caravans. The built in endurance of these trailers make their style attractive to our disposable culture. These trailers represent a design of function over form, a design that feels strong durable and secure. Strengthen the things that remain.

The Artist Life.

The Artist Life.

   I think it is good to find places, however small, that have not been "developed" by people. I'm discovering natural patches here and there, and exploring their unkempt beauty. Wilderness is still all around us and her lovely chaotic sculptures draw me in. Katura is a small Muskoka island that has remained untouched. It was never logged or  tilled, no shacks or development of any kind. Her mosses are thick and the trees are tall. There was an old native fellow in the 1950s who we use to see   camped there to fish during the summers. Ed Snake was there for years and he left no trace. The natural beauty of the island captured my afternoon.

   The varieties of mosses on Katura, Bea and I have known well, but during this visit I was attracted to the rocky outcrops and specifically its clinging lichen. I was interested to find out that Lichen is actually two organisms living in a symbiotic relationship... all twenty thousand species of them.  The lichen make rocks come alive with color and texture and seem to blend sharp edges. The way light strikes natural material is art. Plants are made of light so it is no surprise the wonder I found on this close inspection.

   I was led to remember our trip to the Great Barrier Reef which is just off the eastern coast of Australia. Twelve hundred miles of coral which is also a symbiosis somewhat like lichen. Coral is a colony and when we were given masks to swim with the fish  I underwent another transformation. However hard man struggles to design shape color and line in pleasing combinations  he will never duplicate the beautiful medley of coral fish. We try to grab one here and there and put them in fish tanks but the results are pitiful. The most beautiful fish you can imagine...(existing in the wild) there are hundreds everywhere, all different and in complete artistic harmony with each other. .

  It is a transformational experience to see flora and fauna as artistic composition. I think of the brush strokes and palette required to capture even a square inch.  Move a few feet and a whole new story is told. Art can elevate people to their highest good. You begin to reach deeper into yourself  as you see art. I don’t think it requires an analysis of the work. Too much thought slows the process. We find it difficult  to express the art we recognize inside us,  but that challenge is part of the enjoyable process as we react to life around us. We seem to feel the delight in our senses. If we can shut down our brains a little it opens a gateway for art. It seems to be very healthy stuff.

  On a side note the words "The Artist Life " was the name of a Toronto band. Jake, my friend's son was their amazing drummer. For years I wanted to say the name  as the artist's life, using an apostrophe for easier more familiar understanding. Life is an artist, and the more this is accepted as truth, the more art becomes part of my life. I look at sunset pictures with renewed vision, and I am much slower at processing pictures of flowers.

Boats Boats Boats

Boats have a long history. Where there were large bodies of water, there were boats.  All kinds of floating matter was initially lashed together, but the first boats were mostly wooden dugouts.  At any rate for the next tens of thousands of years, wood was the primary material for a huge variety of water faring vessels.

My earliest memories are of cedar strip canoes, and run-a-bouts, and clear pine , skiffs and punts. I remember following my Dad along a shady wooded path to the dry land boat shed. In it were stacked nine punts which provided water access for our rental cottages.  I had a bucket of green paint and a 4 inch brush.  Prep work was optional  and I can remember scraping off loose bits of old paint with the brush handle.  A smearing of solid lead and oil based green enamel, filled small holes and cracks and made the watercraft worthy of another cottage season.

What I feel was my first boat was a cedar  lap strake or clinker built, double ended skiff.  With twin oar locks, and a friend, the skiff was the fastest human powered craft on the lake. (Although at the annual Bala Regatta, in those days, this fact was easily challenged.) At one point I chopped a hole in the seat and erected a cedar pole to act as a mast to hold a bed sheet sail.  With no centre board keel, sailing was a down wind affair and a long row home.  One morning I came down to the beach to find that the skiff had drifted away in the night.  My love of boats was cemented by a love lost.

Our family boat was a wood and glue, moulded plywood run-a-bout we called Shrimp Boat. It had a centre deck and a Mercury outboard motor.  At eighteen horses, it truly was the fastest boat on the lake in the mid 1950's.  In the early 60's it won races three years in a row at the Foot's Bay Regatta.  A local boat mechanic, lightened the prop, set the carburator to run on airplane gas, and drove the "Shrimp Boat" to  victory.  By the mid 60's, the wear and tear caught up with her and the last effort to keep her afloat was canvas, unsuccessfully glued over the dry-rot.

Fibreglass began to drift into the boating market as a repair solution for wood boats. Adding a very hard patch on a flexible wooden hull does seem like a good idea.  Eventually, however,  the separation is completed and the leak continues worse than ever.  Wood is sealed with natural fibres like cord or canvas.

 The first fiberglass boats began to show up on Lake Muskoka in the late fifties.  The molds could be made to any shape so automobile culture slipped into the designs.  Some of the first models had wood decks and accents, but soon, 'the all fiberglass maintenance free', boating style began in earnest.  The fiberglass canoe I had was certainly dry, and could battle with rocks, but I began to feel its irregular paddling rhythms.  The water on plastic sounds, seemed hollow.  It scratched onto a beach rather than eased.

 I find it hard not to love an old wooden boat.  Not only do they sound in harmony with water but they move with the rhythms of nature.  My friend Bob gave me his Mothers 1937 Peterborough Prospecter Cedar strip canoe that floated like an feather.  My Uncle Bill gave me his 1957 Peterborough Comet cedar strip,  run-a-bout. It was  powered by a 55hp Chrysler outboard, which in deed made it fly like a comet. A 1964 Lightning sailboat that could bend and moan in a fresh breeze and cross the lake on a fairies fart, sealed my love affair with wood crafts.

Every Spring I ponder these thoughts as I scrape, sand and paint my way to the future slow wonderful Summer cruises. Last year we launched a new, old woody, and for the first time ever, there were no leaks.  A wood boat with no leaks is boating heaven.  A small electric motor for quiet thrust, and nothing but time.

I saw these old 'fibers' sitting on the beach in Portugal. The bumps and scratches attested to their rugged life on the ocean.  Their sides were thick and solid, and although they were small they were very strong. I could feel the trust the sailors would need while miles from shore. I began to realize that my love extended beyond material preferences  to a deeper relationship of boat to man. The way a boat can alter the reality of solid footing. How a boat can offer secure trespass on a mixture of two gasses. How a boat can offer a tight balance between smooth sunset cruising and white knuckle survival, the humble meets the thankful. The relationship is in the experiences and as soon as you leave the dock they begin to work their way into your heart. Whether in a dugout or a houseboat, whether of wood or plywood, fiberglass or aluminum, kevlar or epoxy, foams, resins, or carbon fibers, whether day or night, on ocean, river or lake, the stories seep into your nature. They steady your gait, become part of your smile, add a glint to your eye and become part of the love you have for life.

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Contentment

My working life began in a  neighbour's drugstore where each day after school I would sweep and stock shelves for forty cents an hour.  I earned four dollars a week. In 1972 my yearly salary as a first-year teacher was seventy two hundred dollars which allowed me to save six hundred dollars towards my retirement. At the time that deduction seemed like a lot of money for a benefit that was thirty years in the future. I sat and wondered whether such an expense would be of real value when I reached those retirement years. Retirement seemed to be a distant dream where I could be free to contemplate the passing of time. Where I could sit down and take it easy.

Sitting on a bench is much more than just sitting on a bench. I've recently spent some time sitting on benches and found the experience to be quite enlightening. I've noticed the communal state that all bench-dwellers share. A presence at peace. An assurance in the knowledge that we are in the right place at the right time. "This is where I should be" is a wonderful place to be.

 Talking on a bench is good but you can just as easily not talk. Spend time in your dreams and feel the walkers drift by. Everyone has a walk. Everyone has a style, and we are an interesting bunch. Sometimes you can find little scenes unfolding here and there. Everyone has a story and benches seem to nourish our interest in the human drama. The bench is a common ground where we're free to be like everyone or be completely different. The rich sit with the poor, the happy with the sad, the strong with the weak.

The reasons we sit on public benches are as varied as snowflakes. People arrive at a bench to eat, sleep,  or drink, disregard or think. To sit and take a stone out of a shoe, or to ease a sore knee. I like to take a camera and fiddle with the movement all around me. Find picture stories.... I recently attended a Photography show at a studio in Vancouver. The display underwhelmed me but I did become involved with the photographer's general idea of storefronts as a meeting place. A bench at a storefront is my dream photography project. Set up the tripod and use a remote release to record the scene.

There are a lot of different kinds of benches in a wide variety of locations.  There are sidewalk benches, park benches, playground benches, beach benches, bus station benches, mall and gallery benches. So many choices and all the time in the world. A white iron bench in a little green space in the centre of a busy town in La Paz, Mexico, remains my favourite. That is where I found my retired self.

My retired self. The person that lived way in the future when I started my working life. The person I imagined I would be. The retired self. The guy who would spend those retirement savings.  Suddenly I had arrived.  I was here and  eager to look around. I found these retired men on a bench in Lagos, Portugal. They are benchers who attend the bench ritual most sunny days. They congregate  to display contented retirement. They represent an example of an accomplished life to the young workers and students . A bench is the meeting place of human endeavour. Dreamers meet folks just living the dreams. We're all here.

The young boy stocking shelves fifty-five years ago had no concept of retirement. The fullness of life and the dreams fulfilled clarify my contentment. I sit on a bench and smile.

Old and New

 "Modernity is the shared predicament of all who discover, or are discovered, by new values and technologies, and a description of the pleasure and pain that follows". We are in a state of change that can not be slowed or stopped just as we cannot stop imagination. We see the world in new ways as we see new sunrises. We observe the changing colors of mountains and oceans and  know we are in a changing world.
  Recent dinner discussions revolved around a nostalgic look at these cultural shifts and I could feel within the group a longing for days gone by. A pining for what was perceived as “the good old days”. Simpler times when there was more freedom and innocence. I began thinking that I had heard this “good old days “ thinking before,  I supposed that it is likely that all generations have love for their past, and a reverence. Playing outside till the lights come on, riding a bike through a ditch of burning leaves, chestnut wars, hockey cards in bicycle spokes, don’t-touch-the-floor house tag, skating on the frozen creek.

The wonder I had at this point was that all these sorts of things haven’t really changed at all." They are, in a phrase from Neitzsche that expresses a kaleidoscopic weirdness of perspective 'a fateful simultaneity of spring and autumn'. We look back at our cherished springs as we peer out at our present autumns. And they can both be identified. Everything is in the present. I began to see the ‘spring' everywhere or as a simultaneity  with the present.  I looked for hints that all the "good old days' are just under my nose. Alive and well and just over there.

I am living a holiday life now in Brother Brent’s Collingwood condo. A holiday is finding a new path, new routines, new bed, new food, new sun, yes new sunrises. It’s the coldest area of North America but nothing can stop a holiday. Nothing can hide  spring.

With these thoughts I headed out to the wind swept Georgian Bay where there was a lonely soul in silhouette on his knees bent over a cold cold water pump that as much as he would pull the starter cord, it just wouldn't start. A hose running to a hole in the ice defined his purpose, to flood the rink. Later in the week teenaged couples were rounding and rounding the surface as if flying, and the weekend multi-aged, hockey tournament with a small warming fire captured the timelessness. Yes there are multiple high energy arenas everywhere but spring is alive and well in the human spirit. He could just have easily  been flooding the rink with a bucket his results were so rewarding.


At the ski hills one dark clear night I discovered the Blue Mountain skating rink. Sparsely populated, the skaters braved the dark and cold with joy. Children gathered around helpful orange skating cones, checking their balance and then buzzing out for another shaky turn. No one noticed the tripod. The scene harkened a Dickens novel.  European architecture with mountain high roof peeks added slope to the already steepness. The gliding skiers along cotton falls gave a feeling that simple snow is wonderful stuff. Creating dazzling icicles along roof edges is a significant adornment. All in all the scene was the good old days.

So I guess new ways of looking at the world enter cultures with difficulty. The fear sometimes blind us. We use ever increasing safety measures as a way to resist novelty. We over protect, but look over there we have acknowledged and celebrated freedom and innocence in snow and ice.