Satan’s Garden

We had to put one of our cats down yesterday. I won’t attempt to disguise or soften the event with terms, like “put her to sleep”. She’s dead and it hurts and no amount of flowery language is going to soften that.

Up until a couple of weeks ago, Alaska had been just fine. Active, healthy and playful - she gave no indication that anything was wrong. Then one morning she didn’t come to the ritual feast of canned food and Karen finally found her in her hiding place when we got home that afternoon, unable to walk or even stand. She was shaky and moaning. We called and made an emergency appointment.

The vet couldn’t figure out exactly what was wrong at first. He could tell from the blood work that she had a liver infection, possibly from an auto-immune deficiency. He prescribed cortisone, an anti-biotic and vitamins, which we dutifully administered, along with a vitamin rich food. The first couple of days showed almost no improvement. We had isolated her underneath a baby crib, so that the other cats and the dog wouldn’t mess with her. She had a bed, her food, water and a litter box inside her fabric woven cage, not that her confinement disturbed her. She could barely stand and wasn’t eating. We had to feed her Pedialyte with a blunt-nosed plastic syringe.

By the third day she showed signs of improvement. She ate. She could stand and move around, though a little shaky in her steps. By the end of a week, she was restless and wanted out, which we allowed. She was playful, running, acting like her old self again.

She was fine for almost a full week, when yesterday morning we found her in the same shape she had been when it all started. It was so sudden. We hadn’t even finished the last of her medicine yet. The day before she had been fine - acting like nothing had ever happened.

We re-assembled the pen and made an appointment with the vet again. My heart started to sink. Whether it was the inordinate amount of attention she had asked from me the day before, or the suddenness of her downturn, the signs seemed ominous and I honestly didn’t know if she was going to be alive when we came home that afternoon to take her to the vet.

When we got home we found her wedged in tight between the litter box and the playpen wall. She wasn’t moving. Karen said that she thought she was dead, but when we moved the pen aside, she moaned. Karen picked her up and she started howling. She was in pain.

We wrapped her in a towel and with Karen holding her, we left early for the vet, getting there about twenty minutes ahead of schedule. When we got into the examination room, the vet looked her over and the prognosis was bad. Her gums were white, meaning anemia had set in. She was suffering hypothermia and shivering. Her claws were extended and she made no effort to retract them. She kept mewing in pain.

He went over the options. We could give her a massive does of cortisone and a B-12 shot to try to boast red blood cell production, but the facts facing us were grim. Even if she recovered this time, she would crash again - and again - until she finally wouldn’t be able to recover anymore. Her own immune system was attacking her body and there was nothing we could do, but prolong her suffering.

In some ways, it was easier to handle than Gabrielle’s death. That cat and I had grown closer than I can put to words. I had let her out one morning, only to have her disappear for a full two days. The night after I had let her wander, I roamed all over the neighborhood looking for her. It wasn’t like her not to return home. She’d never done that before. The following morning I found her dead at the back door. I never knew what had happened to her, why she had died. All I knew is that she had tried to get home and while I slept soundly three rooms down the hall, she had been at the door and died alone during the night.

My mind went over the first day Alaska was with us. A friend of Karen’s had given her to us, when she had moved into a place which didn’t accommodate having a cat. She was an adult cat, but still adolescent. She had long, white, silky fur, with a patch of brown around one eye and a tail like a raccoon. It was that dirty-snowball look which made me think of the state for which she was named.

I was in the bathroom downstairs, when Alaska threw her weight into the mostly closed door, burst into the room and made a straight line shot for the lower drawer of the vanity. She grabbed it with both front paws and yanked backward, opening the drawer instantly. Without pause, she dove in. There were about three or four seconds of scrambling and the top drawer suddenly popped open. A bit more rustling, then a little white head appeared, followed by the rest of the cat in a fluid leap to the floor. I questioned whether I had just seen what I had seen or not, but the evidence was still hanging open to prove it. Within three weeks, the little bugger even managed to teach the other cats how to open drawers and cupboard doors. We had to put child-safety locks on everything because of her.

I thought about her daily routines, her likes and dislikes. How she would scold you verbally with a string of varied meow’s if you took something away from her that she insisted was hers to play with. How gracefully she’d move, with her long silky fur flowing like fluid. It didn’t seem fair. She was only seven years old and to see her lying there, ragged and disheveled…

The vet gave us a few minutes alone. We didn’t need to talk it over, we had already covered the possibility. Choking on tears, both of us were stroking Alaska’s fur, unable to fully convey to her what it was we were feeling.  The vet returned to the room and asked me to sign the consent form.  I filled in our address first and stared for a moment at the line for my signature. I pulled the trigger.

The vet had trouble with the injection, as Alaska’s veins were collapsing. When it came, it was so quick. It took only seconds. One moment she was lying there, breathing hard - the next she was still. We were both still stroking her. The vet asked us if we wanted to take her home, or if we wanted them to take care of her. It seemed so callous to leave the task to others - so irresponsible. Before I had a chance to say anything, Karen said that we needed to take her home.

We buried her in the backyard and put an artificial stone over the site, which we had lying around and never found a home for. It’s carved with the inscription, “Cat crossing” and has footprints in a trail across the length of it. Before filling in the grave, we stood there quietly for a bit. I kept waiting for her or our youngest son to say something, but words failed them. I finally said, “You were a stinker. Feel free to haunt the place if you want.” It was meant as a playful comment, because she had been such a little goofball terrorist in the house, but I was so morose at the time I don’t know what it really sounded like.

Sleep has been restless tonight. I’m so thankful on the one hand that I’m not burdened again with the unknown, as in Gabrielle’s death. I know why Alaska was dying and I won’t wake up without previous provocation in the middle of the night, wondering what it was that had happened. I’m saddened that we had to do what we did, but I’m thankful that she spent her last moments knowing that she was loved.  That was something I had failed in with Gabrielle.  She had died alone and probably afraid.  I still can’t forgive myself for not being there.

I don’t know what more to write. What I’ve written seems so antiseptic and sterile. It doesn’t begin to cover the depth of my thoughts or feelings - the myriad memories dancing through my skull. It’s so clinical.

I guess I write it just to get it out.

There are those who will not understand why the death of a pet could cause grief. They’re just animals, after all. To those I offer my humblest regrets. I’m sorry that you don’t know what it is my wife and I are feeling. I’m sorry that you can’t experience that with your animal companions. I’m sorry that you can’t understand how an animal can become a part of your family.

Is it worth it? Why do we continue to adopt our furry little companions anew, if the death of the last was so painful? Perhaps it’s because the reason why it is painful to begin with, is due to the weight of the joy you had when you were together.

On another board I got into an argument with a group of Christians who claim that there is no problem with mixing science and religion. The Big Bang could have happened by the instigation of God and science should not have issue with this. Furthermore, it is counterproductive to invoke argument between science and religion, as it may have the effect of turning away the more dogmatically religious, further widening the gap between religion and science.

After reading the various arguments to this extent, I felt myself slipping into the Twilight Zone, unable to understand how it was that a naturalistic system (science) could even begin to add on a supernatural system (God), without corrupting the very nature of science itself. No political persuasion should change this dynamic, as far as I’m concerned.

For this, I was labeled a confrontational “New Atheist”, as if it was somehow worse than being an “Old Atheist”.

Frankly, I wasn’t familiar with the term, I had to look it up. I still haven’t figured out who coined the phrase, but it is a label for those like Richard Dawkins, who feel that not only should science be separated from religion completely, but science should challenge religion for the superstitious nonsense that it is. At first being labeled a “New Atheist” left me feeling confused over the implications, but now that I understand the meaning behind it: I accept the label and thank all you deluded Christians for it! I’m quite happy to be thrown into this new class.

You cannot mix science and religion. The reason is a very simple one (one that those I was in argument with refused to accept as even a possibility) that once you apply any supernatural entity, no matter how petty or large, into a naturalistic system - you have corrupted the system. Science is ruled by evidence and there is no evidence for gods, pixies, unicorns, flying spaghetti monsters, or honest politicians. Once you open the door to that without evidence, you have thrown out science and taken on philosophy. The scientific method starts with observation of the empirical, not mental musings of the ethereal.

Until it can be shown that the interjection of the supernatural into a naturalist system can occur, without corrupting the naturalistic system, there simply is no room for it.  Inserting supernatural answers into a naturalistic system is far more than just being counterproductive - it destroys the system.

I have had many tell me that my “love” of science is my largest downfall - that it leaves me overly skeptical and ignorant of the good that religion has brought to the world.  I counter with this simple test: compare what science has done for humanity in the last 200 years, with the entire history of religion on this planet.  Which has produced more, created more, improved more, furthered knowledge?  Which has ultimately done more for mankind?

Pray all you want, but science landed us on the moon.

As I’ve posted before, I’m doing some home remodeling. This has required tearing out the old to make way for the new.

In the process I spent about $12 and purchased a tool that simply amazes me in how well thought out it is and how well it works. I’m referring to the Stanley 55-525 15-inch Super Wonder Bar Pry Bar.

You wouldn’t think of a pry bar as being a wonder in engineering, but this baby struts its stuff at first glance. Ingenious use of bends in the metal produce both safety and power through provision of a built in fulcrum which does not exist on other pry bars.

In actual use it has been nothing short of amazing.  The yellow end (with the 90 degree bend) works like any standard pry bar, but the normally “flat” end is where the beauty of the design shines.  With a built in fulcrum you can apply amazing amounts of power through the lever and not risk hand injury, because the 90 degree bend at the other end hits before your knuckles do.

Simple.  Elegant.  Damn effective.

It’s nice to know that some engineers out there are paying attention to true functional improvments on the old.

A dear friend of mine is going through some dark times at work and home these days, which has him questioning a lot of the reasoning of how things are done by his colleagues and even family. We’ve talked on the phone about his thoughts and misgivings, but his first text message to my cell phone in this conversation, got me thinking the hardest.

“It just finally sank in that you and I take for granted or as rote, what others consider forbidden, evil or sick…”

At first glance one might take this statement the wrong way, but the meaning was clear to me. He was talking about the thin veneer of “normalcy” that people in our society like to present, sticking their heads in the proverbial sand when something rears its ugly head to prove their little preconceptions of reality to be false. He was referring to the bulk of humanity in the “first world” which staggers around in their special, imaginary “harm free zones”, pretending that somehow, someway, they are immune to injury or ill - as if some guardian angel is watching over them.

Neither my friend or I suffer from this kind of delusion. Cynical as it might be, we take for granted that there are people out there who have no kind feelings toward us or our loved ones. People who at a moment’s notice, would actively cause harm - with even a sense of glee. We know they’re all around us, hiding behind that veneer, trying their best to fit in, until they can’t stand against their impulses anymore and they strike out at someone.

We also know that nature throws things at us which are dangerous and upsetting - that we can’t possibly control. Animals who decide to know what we taste like, lightning that happens to follow the charge potential to where you’re sitting, storm winds which happen to rip the roof off the house; all striking with complete dispassion.

When these things happen to those who hide behind that veneer of normalcy, the reaction is typically out of control shock and hurt surprise. When these things happen to my friend or I, the response has always been a subdued acceptance and analysis of what steps need to be taken to correct or deal with the situation - and a rapid enactment of that decision follows. The process of thought is as cold and emotionless as that of a computer, but has the advantage of remaining clear and concise.

My thoughts turned to ask why this was? How was it we had developed this sense of acceptance that many others seem incapable of facing? Was it that we had suffered too many tragedies that cynicism set in? Or was it just part of our wiring?

Frankly, I can’t remember living behind the veneer of normalcy since I was very young. I don’t recall any tragedies happening to push my mind toward cynical acceptance of the world’s horrors. I had a good childhood. No, the attitude set in the more I read history. The patterns became apparent and constant tales of woe showed nature for its unpredictability and man for his constant expression of what can only be called, evil.

Let’s face it, for all the advances mankind achieved in the twentieth century, it was also our most violent and vicious period. The tens of millions of our own kind that we killed through war and genocide are almost too staggering a number to imagine. The weapons we’ve developed to kill each other in greater numbers are almost too efficient to believe. The more I read and the more I understood what we had done through two world wars and beyond, all painted a picture I couldn’t ignore. Mankind is less noble than he would like to believe. In fact, true nobility is few and far between. I know I can’t claim it, though I have tried to be so.

The twentieth century is why I have a hard time believing we will make it as a species past the twenty first. As we dabble with genetic engineering, nano-technology and new energies - we will turn them to ill. It’s pretty much inevitable. We’ve showed none of the needed maturity to handle our technology over the last century, so we will show the same deficiencies with the new technologies we’re now pushing.

In my own mind, it is a simple acceptance of our nature. We are apes bound by selfish instincts and jealousy, not social evolved enough to handle our inventions. Worse, the ugliest of human personalities, who crave power over others, not just their property - are drawn to the rolls of our “leaders” in society, where they scheme and play with human lives, as if playing with toy soldiers.

Many are going to read such and recoil, unable to understand how anyone could function on a day to day basis with this cold attitude about mankind. Yet, I can’t understand how anyone looking at the evidence could come to a different conclusion.

I will admit that it breeds a sense of futility. It becomes hard to motivate yourself for the common good, when you know that the impact will be fleeting at best. It’s difficult to bring yourself to contribute, when you’re pretty much convinced that it will do nothing in the larger picture.

Instead, I find myself concentrating on the care of myself and loved ones. I can do good for them which will last. I can make a difference in their lives, even if it is small in the grand scheme of things. I can do this without hurting anyone else in the process, which allows me to at least try to reach some level of nobility.

For when the world around you is filled with hatred and prejudice, you can either give in and follow suit, or hold yourself to a higher standard. Though I cannot change the world, I can change myself - and in the process bring good to at least a few around me.

It’s been about a month since I last wrote anything here, but there are times when the creative veins are all dried due to the press of prosaic garbage in your life. This is one of those times.

Aside from the usual work hassles and dealing with the daily Utard parade on the commute, my wife and I decided to spend a rather large chunk of money getting new windows put in the house, before we spend the other half of our vast fortune on fixing up the long neglected stucco on the outside walls. What should have been a two day job, has turned into a pissant circus of the irritating - as the contractors brought in squandered away my good will with their laziness.

The story is a boring one, let’s just resolve to saying that beyond all the screw ups on the job itself, when a contractor promises on Friday to call back the next Monday, but never picks up the phone - there are going to be problems. Worse yet the guy actually tried to claim that he did attempt to call to no answer, but my cellphone has never failed to notify me of a missed call before, so I have my doubts.

The result is that a week went by from the start of the job, with the windows unsealed and the threat of wet weather looming. Thankfully it remained dry and by the time my complaints got through to the right ears at the place where we bought the windows (who arranged the contractors for us) some ears were chewed on. Finally, the contractors returned and cheerfully finished most of the job.

That’s right, most of the job. There is still the issue of one window which was measured incorrectly (by the same contractors on the initial specs, of course,) where they displaced the X and Y measurements, leaving us with a window with the weep holes on the side. He kindly offered to cut new weep holes into the existing frame, but when I’m paying this kind of money, I expect to get the right thing, not a hack. Funny too, that a “professional” contractor would install a window with improper weep holes and not even notice it.

Overall, I’m underwhelmed. If there is but the slightest problem with weather or what have you, I think I’ll be spending the stucco money on a lawyer instead.

Which leads me to my general topic of angst for the week; what ever happened to taking pride in your work?

It’s not that I’m mechanically or construction inclined, but I’ve reached a point where I’m ready to give up on “professionals” and to do it myself instead. It will take longer, I’ll hate every minute of it - but it will be done correctly.

Sorry woodworkers and construction craftsmen, but I don’t share your love of house renovations. Just tearing the old carpeting out of the master bedroom the other week was enough to make me want to crawl into a cave and give up on houses altogether. I don’t enjoy it.  I’d rather pay someone who does enjoy it to do the job - but I’m finding that either I have the worst luck in the world with contractors, or there are no good contractors left in the world - or at least in Utah.

So, I’m faced with the do-it-yourself route and a house full of projects to do: Tearing out all the carpeting and laying down hardwood floors in the living spaces and tile in the bathrooms, re-building the entire upstairs kitchen, replacing at least one bathroom shower, replacing the same bathroom’s basin, etc, etc. Just the floors are going to be a job and half, tearing out the old and simply disgusting sub-flooring, putting new sub-floor in place and then hoping I can put down the wood flooring without building the kind of structure straight from Little Bill Daggett in “Unforgiven”.

I’m probably going to need anesthesia to make it through sane. Can you successfully do this kind of job drunk?

My wife and I went out last weekend, roaming the north west of Utah in search of various ghost towns. This is the region in and around where the Golden Spike was driven, on the completion of the first intercontinental railway. The expedition was more for the plain fun of it, rather than anything serious, with the goal of having something to waste memory card space with by our digital cameras. A couple of Websites we visited talked of various buildings which could still be found, etc.

I was hoping to see a crumbling building or two, but our search for structures ended up being quite a disappointment. We only found one partially standing structure, in five towns searched - a collapsing fruit cellar.

It would appear that among the many hobbies of the resident Utards, destroying ghost towns is among them. I can’t blame outside tourists, because no one in their right mind from out of state would travel these dusty, barely maintained, mostly unmarked gravel roads, with only a handful of gunshot wounded road signs along the way. Some of the passages we took were pretty challenging, with most resorting to ATV’s to traverse them, rather than a 4×4 like we use.

A couple of piles of brick. One intact trestle. Some pottery shards. A few railroad ties. That’s all we found in roughly 400 miles of travel. Oh, I forgot to mention the piles of discarded modern beer cans, bottles and various trash, which amounted to more mass than the remnants of the towns themselves - their numbers would require scientific notation for manageable summation. Apparently the husks of dead alcohol containers are the only spirits of these once thriving little towns.

In spite of this, we did have a very good time just being out and about and our dog, Kipling, was excited most of the way. He’s a Yorkshire Terrier, but we refer to him as a “2x Yorkie”, as he’s no tea cup variety at 15 pounds and similar length in inches. (We knew he wasn’t a “show quality” dog when we got him, which was just fine by us.) He’s a smart little dog as well. Perhaps too smart at times, as he tries to circumvent the rules any chance he thinks he can get away with. The picture here is of his smiling mug, hanging off his car seat before we took to the trail again.

In any case, the trip itself was fun for the sense of exploration, with the highlight being the discovery of a coyote den under a trestle. Bones littered the surrounding ground, telling the menu of rodents, antelope and other unknown mammals.

Hopefully we’ll find more remote areas in our next search, which haven’t been ravaged by morons with sophomoric, destructive agendas.

I’m currently appearing as a witness for the defense in a case here in Utah, which for obvious reasons I won’t go into any detail about, until it’s all over and the hearings, trial and verdict have passed.

As this is my first time acting in such a capacity in a court of law, I honestly felt that I was in a completely alien environment. I don’t know all the rules, having to observe or ask. For example, I had no idea what the wording was for the oath when sworn in and had to ask, being reassured by fortune of being one of the last on the stand in the hearing procedure, that there was no oath to what I view as a fictional deity. Surprisingly to me, there was no wording involving supernatural entities at all, which I would assume to be in place in a state like Utah.

It was interesting to see the two legal teams present their cases. Both were struggling to understand the computer technology involved in the case, concerning Email and how it works (I can say this much, as it’s been covered in the local papers already) and watching them attempt to grasp the information “on the fly” as it were and make a logical argument from it was quiet fascinating to witness. (Sorry, I won’t hand out grades yet.) It was like watching a chess game in process, each trying to react to the other’s questioning of witnesses on the stand. It wasn’t a pretty chess game, with strict rules of movement in place, but it was certainly an exercise in adaptive strategy. At one point during the cross examination of me, the prosecution stopped questioning technical aspects and instead went to attempted character assassination. One can’t get angry with the lawyer for doing so, it’s their job, but it reminded me of how much of this grand drama relies on swaying opinions of people emotionally, rather than following logical process alone. I don’t fall for such ploys and I think that those like myself, who value logic over emotion in decision making, might be the lawyer’s worst nightmare if our kind were to end up on a jury.

The little fits that erupted during breaks were even more interesting to see. A couple of supposed victims in this case refused to shake the hand of the defense attorney during introductions before the hearing started, as if doing so they would be touching evil itself. At one point during the break just after I had testified, one of the prosecution’s team made a disparaging comment over the quality of the witnesses the defense was calling. Since I was the only witness specifically for the defense, it didn’t take any guesswork to figure out who she was talking about, in a loud enough voice to ensure I heard It from across the room. I just smiled at her. Sorry girl, but you’re going to have to try a lot harder than that. I worked for years in telephone technical support. I’d suggest hanging around street gangs and drunkard perverts to get a good grasp of ugly language, couple that with intense study of Dennis Miller’s barbing wit, and aim the vicious diatribe at my wife - then you might get a dirty look from me.

I was shocked during the whole process on just how exacting and attentive the judge involved was. To say that I was impressed would be an understatement. While others in the court were trying hard not to fall asleep, she was on top of every point with utmost tenacity. I don’t know if this is normal among judges, having seen few of them in action, but she seemed much more attuned than the few other judges I’ve witnessed.

I also came to have a greater respect for the poor bailiff. I say “poor” here not to disparage him, but in light of what that man (in this case) has to endure. With very little to do during the course of the proceedings, he had to somehow keep his sanity and attention on the court during over 8 hours of this dry and grueling process. I don’t know how these people do it. I think I’d loose my mind about day three.

Overall, I find the legal process to be one of long, extracted misery. It is vitally important to the structure of our government and society, but I can’t claim to enjoy any of it in action. Much like the old saying that those who enjoy politics and sausage should not watch either being made, I wouldn’t recommend viewing the court process if you are currently enamored with it. It’s not pretty, elegant or concise. It’s unattractive, slow and dreadfully boring. If you have romantic notions of the courts, I’d suggest sticking with nighttime court drama television.

It’s time once again for my favorite holiday. I’m not sure what hit me about Halloween that simply stirred my blood as a child. It certainly wasn’t the candy and treats. I really didn’t care. Where my younger brother would end up with a stomach ache on day one, that he wouldn’t let go of for the three days his stash would last, I would sometimes have tidbits left over around Christmas. I certainly did enjoy role playing, which extended into a hobby of D&D, Call of Cthulhu, and various other role playing games in my teens and early twenties. (A pleasure I abandoned for some time, until my teen aged boys took an interest in D&D and wanted me to run a campaign for them and their friends.) Not even that was the main draw for me. I think I simply liked having an excuse to scare people.

Probably the most fun I had on any Halloween was the year I was 12, where I certainly had no interest in walking door to door, but instead had our next door neighbor help dress me up as a rather stereotypical movie vampire, complete with white face makeup, cape and slicked down hair. I spent the entire evening hiding behind bushes, up in trees to drop down on unsuspecting munchkins and adults alike, spreading the cape and hissing. I’m pleased to report that I even startled a few adults.

I’ve done my share of Halloween acting for the kids who come to the door every year, but I’m saddened to say that things simply aren’t the same. I can’t work up the energy anymore, when the turnout is so dull.

Let me explain. The Mormons, among other things, have simply ruined the holiday. Theses days they hold Trunk or Treats. A few years ago the concerned parents of the Mormon church out here in the Salt Lake valley (which seems like most of the population), where almost nothing bad ever happens, decided that the safest way to hold the holiday was to gather in the local ward parking lot and have the little tykes be bussed in via their parent’s cars, to walk around from vehicle to vehicle through the parking lot to collect candy from each parked car. If you think that sounds lame, it is. It’s the K-Mart blue light special of Halloween activities.

There still are some hold-outs who go house to house, but the numbers seem to dwindle every year. So it just doesn’t pay to put on a show around here. Hopefully, the rest of America is not following this pathetic trend of laziness dressed in Safety-Nazi attire.

We decorate a little outside the house and do our yearly Jack O’Lantern carving, but we don’t do the kinds of things we used to. I guess the holiday geared around the day where the boundary between the living and the dead is supposed to be the thinnest, fell through that thin barrier and died.

Oh, well. At least I still get to carve up some Jack O’Lanterns.

I’ve managed to make my way through forty two years of life without ever visiting a hospital emergency ward. As you have probably guessed, my record has been broken. The cause? The British Infantry of the 18th Century. To be fair, I’m exaggerating, it was but one of their muskets.

Let me back up a little. I have friends with the hobby or business, depending on your point of view, of reinacting the Seven Years War period, known quaintly in the North American theater as the French and Indian War. This group of friends attend various events in proper attire and kit for the period, particular to the cavalry unit they represent and demonstrate various bits of day to day life in the army of the King’s command. I’ve been handling the group’s IT needs for some time now, so attending an actual event, even as tiny as this one was, looked to be a fun way to see the reinacting portion in real life, as a participant no less. Well, not so much a participant, as a jackass in black BDU pants and matching polo shirt, rolling cartridges, inflating target balloons and loading black powder handguns and muskets for demonstrations. This was not your typical reinactment event, it was just a small demo for a town fair in north central Indiana, but it was a chance nonetheless to mix things up in a small and friendly environment and have a nice change of pace to take during my vacation.

One of the duties I took to, was to work on muskets and pistols which did not fire properly and at the least, discharge the load. Mind you, we were not using bullets, just black powder and the cartridge paper wadding, but you don’t want to keep a charge loaded, even if it is just a blank. I was working on one particularly stubborn carbine when the record breaking event occurred. The hammer was giving me a bit of trouble, resisting being cocked like a horse pulling tight on the reigns. I was attempting to pull back the hammer with the two smaller fingers of my right hand, when I decided to rotate my hand and push back with the palm of my hand instead, to work with extra leverage. For those of you who don’t know the moral of this story already, this is where our good soldier, yours truly, really screwed up. This is not the proper thing to do, and my palm promptly slipped.

On a modern firearm, slipping on a hammer like this may hurt you a bit, if you managed to catch the webbing between your thumb and hand in the hammer’s arch of movement. It might sting a little, but you’d be intact. On a flintlock musket, beneath the hammer’s top, is a piece of flint. The flint is used to strike against a metal plate called the frisson, which produces a spark that ignites the powder in a small pan under the hammer, proceeding through a small touch hole into the breach, setting off the final charge in the barrel and launching the bullet. Worst case scenario with a hammer slip would be an accidental discharge, but I hadn’t even opened the frisson to put powder in the pan yet. No, my problem was not with the base issues of fire, but with a rock. You see, flint works in part due to its shape. In a process called napping, which breaks off the rock in sheets, the flint is shaped into a fine edge. A very sharp edge. A razor sharp edge, which primitive man used to make arrow heads, axes and knives. An edge of which a corner thereof cut a beautiful arch across the meat at the base of my thumb, like a surgeon had cut me with a scalpel.

It took but a split second to notice that the tissue was cut well through the skin and into the muscle itself, but had not hit an artery or vein, as the blood loss was minimal. We cleaned it, put gauze on it and taped it up. Nevertheless, it was deep enough to cause concern, so my closest friend in the group and I drove off to the local hospital to get it examined by someone smarter in medicine than us.

There’s not a lot to tell about the event from that point on. I was lectured about my blood pressure, given a tetanus shot, prescribed an anti-biotic and had a sterile version of super glue used on the cut instead of old fashioned stitches. Though from a medical point of view I prefer the glue method, part of me is a little disappointed that the wound won’t show the typical marks of stitches, making it more in line with the period piece which caused the wound. Still, a wound is a wound and like every other wound, will be a faintly discolored reminder of why stupidity hurts.

However, in many ways it can be said that the worst casualty out of this weekend’s adventure was not the cut, but the mental damage. I’ve caught another disease, you see; like motorcycling or sailing. I’ve come to really like black powder muskets and can see one in my near future. Reinacting? I’m not so sure about that, but the smell of burnt powder, the challenge of all the physics involved in every shot and the simple fun of shooting: I’m sure about that. I’m also sure that I’m going to be giving flint a lot more respect than I have up until now.

Note to self: be smarter than the rock.

I’ve had individuals at times accuse me of being a little paranoid. I wouldn’t go so far in description, I’d be more apt to describe my general state of mind as distrustful. I don’t believe anyone in particular is out to get me, but I don’t believe that most people have any beneficial intentions either.

A long time ago, in a gentry far, far away, I was actually quite optimistic and trusting. After several notable kicks in the proverbial groin left me with three Adam’s apples, I’ve collapsed to a different station in life.

So, when a bearded stranger shows up at my door at dinner time, wearing the thin blue pajamas that they pass as medical wear these days, you can imagine my general preconceptions: I’m either dealing with a loony, or they think I’m a loony and we’re going to hold a little ultra-violence therapy. Neither struck me as appealing.

I don’t remember the particulars of the conversation very well, because I was running on empty that day, having had but three hours sleep the night before, but it eventually boiled down to this gentleman wanting to harvest some prickly poppy seeds, from our lone prickly poppy growing out by the sidewalk.

As it turns out, the man in medical blue enjoys gardening and working with wildflowers and stated that prickly poppy’s are rather hard to find and difficult to grow. Not that I’d know the difference. I kill plastic plants and have even seen flowers on wallpaper wilt when I’ve leaned against the wall too long, so I’m not qualified to know more than the thing is a plant. I’ve deduced that, because it isn’t walking around eating other things and doesn’t make any noise. That sums up my horticultural knowledge.

He explained that he believed the plant was an annual, requiring new seeds every year and that he had never managed to get the seeds he had acquired in the past to grow. My wife quickly explained that, not only is the plant perennial - this one is going on five years now - but that she did nothing to prompt its growth. It just showed up, looked nice enough, so we left it in place. It has since flourished and grown to bush proportions. A savage bush at that, as it lives up to the title “prickly” with zeal. Without the blossoms, its rather scary looking, actually. If it starts walking around eating other things, I’ll dig out the kerosene.

I should take a moment to explain that we’ve been in a long, drawn out process of “zero-scaping” our yard. I don’t find it particularly intelligent to be watering Kentucky blue grass in a desert, so we’ve been very slowly transforming an once errant lawn into a drought tolerant garden of native species. My lack of horticultural experience has not helped. I have to ask at every turn whether it is a good plant, or a weed. As far as I can tell, gardening is the process of killing all of the hearty and evolutionarily successful plants and replacing them with weak, inferior plants (requiring constant maintenance) which are inexplicably declared to be more aesthetic, either by color or some other nebulous merit. This prickly poppy appears to be on the edge of the rule. It’s a “weed”, but its flower is aesthetic enough to spare its life.

I don’t get it.

In any case, with luck the front yard will be done this year and the back yard will be done before the sun turns into a red giant.

The wildflower gardener quickly made a deal with my wife to return with a medley of wildflower seeds, in exchange for a harvest of prickly poppy pods. (Say that ten times quickly.) She was all for it and at some point we’ll do the transaction and we’ll start planting things that I will be confused over for many years to come.

No worries, however, as I have plenty of kerosene if things get out of hand.