TubaOrNotTuba

During our recent transit through the north part of Maine, one detail stood out. There is a lot of construction in this area, and it is all based upon buildings with storage units hundreds and hundreds of them. I know we all need places to keep our stuff, but this seemed to be over the top. As if people had two sets of furniture for each house they swapped in and out on a regular basis Is. Or the largest collection of junk that you ever dreamt of. Not going to fault the people there for what they do with their time and money, but it is not like at home. Where I live the storage unit is rare. Most people just put everything into the garage or the extra barn and are done with it. Of course, that might be what is going on here; this may be a place where people have not got into building barns and now need places to keep all the stuff they have been accumulating. Sales, auctions, whatever. I know we keep too much stuff and like  to have things around.

Today was a Family Day in the broadest sense we spent time visiting and catching up on what it happened since our last time together period. Like you do with family. And then we went for a drive out to the drive to the graveyard oh I have no idea where it is. The road seemed much longer than I remembered. After that we did a little shopping and then headed back to our campsite. A place where the Wi-Fi is fast and the temperature is warm and we can simply let the evening go its own way. I do not know what tomorrow will bring nor the day after. Certainly going to see other people in the area and talk about other things and catch up on stuff since we were last together. All in all content for a good home movie but not much else. And then when that is all over we will head back towards home. The only detail that really marked me was a trip to the washrooms. Now I know I do like things to be where I can expect to be but this was a little different. The building had huge wide stone steps. Made from polished river stone. With no handrail. And the whole time I was coming up and down I kept imagining what would happen when I suddenly lost my step if you excuse the pond and found myself in full flight. Not a calming feeling. I sometimes wonder if the people that create search wonderful systems actually try their own. Maybe and maybe not. Perhaps the stones were just there and they decided these were the ones they wanted to use in this front part of a public building. I really should have gone there late at night so that I would have no excuse. It is up to me to bring my own lights and my own caution. And so I shall knowing that the steps are still there and I might need to return period.

I placed my personal safety among my most prized habits. I am unlikely to find myself anywhere where death is an ongoing option. Of course most of the places that a tourist can visit have already been taken and sanitized. The really nasty stuff has been removed from the equation. Earlier today I re-watched a video of some people exploring a former military installation. Something from the last century which involved coastal guns. And I said to myself that I have been there and at no point did I feel that my life was at risk. If I been in the area half century before I might have found myself in the middle of a battle but not anymore all we have left are the large reminders I imagine that removing a multi ton cannon was more trouble than it would be worth. Easier for the authorities to remove the dangerous bits and place some safety railings which they have done there was little chance of my dying in a spectacular way. All I could do was to go into the vault look around turn around and leave. As I think about it almost everything I have visited as a tourist fits in that category. The cool bits are gone. We just have a chance to imagine what a place was like when life was going on there. Probably for the better because some of us do not watch what we’re doing as well as we should. But it would have been interesting to hear those large cannons fired and to watch the method of the soldiers getting things ready for the next big moment. Old photos and movie clips do not give the whole story. We have some movies but because we cannot compare them in the then and now way, we have to imagine how the film people did their job. And when we as tourists visit old installations we have to remember that the people in charge of the site have already been over it carefully looking for all the things that could hurt the stupid people. There are a lot of them.

Apparently there’s something going on there. Anyhow I just watched an interview with a top name from Hollywood. Not going to say her name but it generally requires a pronunciation course for those who are going to speak with her. Going on. I also rarely see new movies. Given that I rarely go to the cinema I also rarely see new movies. There may be a correlation here. Her latest film is set in the Orkney Islands which is one of those areas they really want to know more about. The crew of her film stayed in local homes because there were no accommodation means readily available. My own skills in animal husbandry are minimal so I was interested to learn about the birth of a lamb. You have to purely shake it alive. You also have to use a piece of straw to aspirate the mucus. This is supposed to be in the movie so now I am truly interested because where else would I learn about the kind of things that would have been commonplace for my ancestors. Most families kept sheep because it provided a ready source of wool from which all good clothing comes. I can only wonder if I will ever see the film since I’m not going to make a special trip to a big city to find it in a cinema. Maybe it will come across my timeline in a few months. I give credit to people who get involved in their craft. Being an actor should go beyond just parroting lines. Her role required learning some skills that go beyond the normal run of acting. She had to deliver baby lambs. Bring them to life in the open air through a lot of shaking and removing mucus from their noses. Let us be fair this is not something you learn to do in acting school. It requires that you get advice from people in the area on skills that may no longer be common. I know that we kept sheep in this area because in the old days getting wool for clothes was a requirement. Long winters and no catalog sales. I can only imagine that my grand father would have had to deliver his baby lambs and he would have done it with the confidence that he took to his other jobs. Knocking down trees and making iron into something useful. He could probably dig a well if you had to. All jobs that I can only read about. In the situation where I would have to bring a lamb back to life I would probably fail miserably. As the actress said she also had no urge to kill little lambs because of her lack of skill. And so she managed. Believe me that is more than learning to ride a bicycle. We need people in the film industry who will show us the realities of life, especially on a farm. No green screen fakery. Put the real stuff out there so that the rest of us can imagine how life would be if we were in the same situation.

I live on an island this island is serviced by a certain number of ferry boats. At least, it was until a week or two ago. Right now two of them are tide up for repairs. Getting another boat in on short notice is not possible. And so we make do with other methods. Apparently one of the boats or ships collided with the wharf. The other one has motors that simply stopped working. I had not realized how risky it could be to take that way of getting around. I mean, when we had a major fire about a year or two ago I said to myself that would not be a good place to be then, the government was able to find a loan boat. Loan as in on loan from another company. But there is a limited possibility to borrow a big boat. I keep imagining a scenario where you load your car on the ferry and then the ferry sinks. I never used to think in those terms. I have a suspicion that maintenance is more of an issue than the companies want to let on. Should I switch to an airplane? No they also follow this guy period. We do have a bridge that we can take when the wind is not blowing too hard. All of this points Two reasons There have been fairies involved in our local transportation system for my whole life. However the idea of both boats being out of service for more than a few hours at a time was not considered to be a possibility. I am surprised to find that our whole method is based on something as easy to stop as running into the wharf. It must have been quite a collision. And I imagine that the wharf is barely bruised. It is a good thing that I do not need to get to the other side of the water anytime soon. I guess that travel is now something optional rather than always possible. I did mention a bridge but even there we can be locked in the house if the wind blows too hard and this is a windy place. Maybe I should just surround myself with nice things and leave the rest of the world to do what it does. There used to be a standing joke about how the rest of the nation was cut off from us. Less of a joke and more of a realistic statement of fact.

Out of knowledge comes strength. Not sure of the origins of that model. Perhaps it was something I over heard. Or found in a book. Or over heard while going through a book. It doesn’t really matter much. Lately the world is coming alive to the idea of AI. Which from what I have learned is a fancy way of saying that with enough data and the right analysis tools you increase your net worth. Still waiting to find an application. Lately we have been considering the idea of getting a dish for the roof of the van. Something to allow us access to data while away from home. Here is the point of the exercise. We want to make a decision that will not leave us filled with buyer’s remorse. And if we can get a tool such as AI to analyze our possibilities we might choose the right solution. Things like which dish to buy or which data service to subscribe. Too much information for a tiny human brain. However the whole idea of letting an app analyze our needs and spit back  a response seems worthwhile. Yes I know that garbage in gives garbage out but I can do a pre-analysis. I can look at what we have already done and what is available to us in our local market. I know how much we can afford and whether or not we are willing to make the plunge. We will. Perhaps not today or tomorrow but soon. I think that came from a movie I saw once. Anyhow we have been studying the solutions that are currently available to mount a dish on a van. All of them require some DIY. At least we do not want to use the dish while moving which reduces the engineering skills we would need. It could be that something as simple as a junk of PVC pipe and the trailer hitch would give us a solution. We probably have the winter to draw up a solution to a problem that isn’t really there. And we will. We have the time. And the idea of being cut off from the world because we left the house is too much to pay period. At least we have YouTube. There are others that are trying to solve the same problem. And if we can consolidate all of those answers we will have a personal version of AI to get us over the bump.

My first tour in uniform happened when I was still quite young, able to show my age using the digits of my fingers. The polite ones of course. I had done like so many others before me enrolled in the local scout movement. Without really understanding the implications. The idea of clothing with insignia and badges and the ability to progress through my merit seemed very alluring. I was able to count my age using my fingers an I had little understanding of what was really involved here. This was the gateway drug to the military hand signs and special language. Our town was large enough to have a specialty store just for things that a Boy Scout might need. Better caps and better jerseys and camping gear. Owning my own cutlery which had been stamped out of metal and nested together seemed like a real treasure. And realistically that knife and fork and spoon were designed to last forever. As long as you didn’t lose them in the woods. I imagine that if you searched around the homes of my friends you would still find a last spoon, or fork. Depending on the meal. What we learned was that you did not need silver to eat called slap. In fact as long as it resembled a sandwich. I do not believe that my own children ever had such treasures in their kit but anything is possible. We do not learn all life skills from our care parents. I think that the little scouting store is gone although I do not know what took its place. Perhaps the decline in enrolment in the movement was enough to make people look for better quality tools. Contrary to popular belief you need more than a pocket knife to get through life. Also you do not measure a man by the quality of his tools. We just did not know any better. I keep wondering what I would buy now. Something involving rare metals probably. Plastic is not good for the environment. But in retrospect we learned the camping did not require a whole knapsack full of gear. We were not actually out there long enough and most camping was done in some kind of large military surplus canvas structure. Leftovers from bygone war. I think as for my uniform I would love to believe that it is folded away carefully in a drawer but that would too much to hope for.