Blue and Black; Thanks Tigers

Tried to get this up yesteday...Blogger was blocking me out!

Saturday afternoon, while working here at my computer, I heard a house-shaking ZUUUUUT, and then the lights went off. Momentary power failures, following a loud thump from the junction box in front of our house, happen 3 or 4 times a year, and I figured this was one them. The power usually comes back on in minutes, or less than a minute, and it came back on almost instantly this time. I resumed work, but as soon as my eyes had relocated the passage I was reading, the ZUUUUUUT! thundered out and left me in the dark again. This repeated a few more times, so I went outside to take a look around. I smelled something burning, and saw smoke coming from the woods across the road. Then came the noise one more time, along with a searing flash from behind the tops of my blue spruces. I moved to where I could see the woods unobstracted, and then I saw it head-on: with the next ZUUUUUT, a blinding, blue-orange fireball burst from the top of a power pole, stretcthing like a balloon toward the road below. Pine branches blazed again after its retreat.

This was scary stuff, happening about 100 ft, from my living room. I did have the impulse to get my camera to see if I could capture the fireball, but then thought perhaps moving in for a close-up of it might not be the wisest thing I could do. My neighbors were on their lawn with their phone out, calling the power company and the fire dept. They told me this had happened a few years ago. That probably explains why I looked across the road one day to see a pine tree that had always looked healthy to me appear scorched at the top--must have happened while we were away for a day, or a weekend.

The firemen arrived first, saw that the flames in the trees were dying out, and moved on. The power must have been turned off pretty quickly, since the jolts and fireballs stopped, but we didn't see any power company trucks come around until much later at night. And we had a very quiet night-my wife stayed home and sewed her halloween costume (Mrs. Butterworth) by candlelight, I went to a coffeehouse to grade some papers, joining, to judge from a few snips of conversations I overheard, other blackout refugees who had come there to read, play boardgames, or surf the net.

So by the end, the event was just a routine blackout, but it started with a bang I'll be seeing in my memory for some time. Among things things accessible by natural sight, few could provide a better referent for the term "phantasm." Detroit Edison--next time you want to stage a Halloween pageant, do it on someone else's street.

And speaking of hot things that fizzle out...how about those Tigers?

I actually did see and hear much of the game Friday...my nephews went to the bar of the restaurant where my Dad's birthday was held regularly to bring back updates from the TV. And on the way home, Kristine and I listened on the radio. By the the last innings, a sense of doom set in. The lead was never really out of reach, but it didn't seem like the Tigers had the stuff to close the small gap there was. As soon as the last out came, we switched off the radio.

Maybe I'm projecting, but I thought I sensed a little gloom in the air most everwhere I went, yesterday. A bit like after the 04 election (at least in the places I was spending time then). A series win would have been great, but I'm still proud of the boys for the season they had. According to the post-mortems I read yesterday in the Free Press, the players were taking the loss well, and voicing an eagerness to get back into the hunt next year. Given their overall youth, and the performance they put in this season, they have every reason to look for great things down the line. I'll be looking for them too. See you in April, fellas.

And it's a good thing...

We'll be going out for my dad's party tonight. It'll spare me the pain of watching the Tigers. I'm still sick from last night's game.

Happy Birthday, Dad

Tonight, Kristine and I will go to Kalamazoo to celebrate my father's 80th birthday. One of my sisters asked each of us to write something in tribute to our dad. She emphasized to me that it not be a dissertation length work. I wonder why.

I'm not a poet by any means, but these lines came to my head after our recent trip to Manistee several years ago. I hope they're concise enough.



Anchored in a current that has brushed our boats
for more than twenty years,
my father, eighty, and I, forty,
sit in silence and expectation, casting for salmon
in a cloud-smothered dawn.

Drizzle falling this September morning prickles us
under the force of a December wind,
yet we fish all but impervious to the bluster,
my father, in his parka, I, in overalls of stiff duck
underlain with pillowy quilting.

This strong but giving shell is my father's.
Before we launched, knowing I had shivered the day before
in thin layers of cotton and nylon
he dug the overalls from among the bundles in his car.
When I pulled them on, the wind faltered against me.

Bobbing in the darkness as this day begins,
I see into the darkness of some day’s ending
more than thirty years ago, my father,
standing above me, singing, after he pulled the blankets
over my child’s frame, I, drifting into sleep,
all but impervious to passing nighttime fears.

Afield At Last

Nothing flared up to wipe out my free Friday yesterday, so well before dawn I was on the road, enroute one of my favorite hunting grounds. Grouse season has been on for more than a month, but between work and family obligations, I haven't ventured out. Oddly, I can't say I was raring to go. I wanted to go, I prepared to go, but I was preoccupied and stressed. While I was scrambling to get my gear together Thursday night, the trip seemed like just another chore to accomplish.

But when the alarm rang at 4 on Friday, I didn't hesitate to rise. At my destination, once I stepped out of my car and inhaled the marshy-sweet air of the creek bottom, I knew I was where I needed to be, and all the irritations and demands of the past weeks were left behind with the dust of the road.

The pleasure of the trip came mainly from the immersion in the sights and smells of the woods. The actual hunting was fairly difficult, though it got off to a fast start. Along the trail where I entered the woods, I noticed some woodcock droppings, which gave me hope that there would soon be some woodcock dropping. I did put one up, but he flew away safely, despite giving me the clearest shot I would have that day. Two hours later, at least two grouse thundered away from behind a jumble of mature alders, though I never saw a feather.

I left the first spot a little after noon, opting to spend the rest of the day scouting out covers in nearby areas. The first area seemed unpromising, covered by seemingly endless stands of tall pines with a scattering of oaks. The second looked much better, with large tracts of mid-aged aspens, broken by the occasional pine and muddy pockets full of alders. By the time I found an access point in the area, it was 4:00, but I figured I could still have a solid hour or so to look things over. I put up three grouse in that hour, and shot at two, albeit while they were barely visible behind a curtain of limbs. They're still there, and hopefully will be by the next time I go...maybe in December?

I drove home feeling more at ease than I have in weeks, and the glow is still on. While I may not depend on hunting to survive (thank God), it's not going to far to say that sometimes, it is a necessity of life. At least of my life.

Tags: Hunting; Outdoors

Wood, not the Woods; Alaskan Salutations

I'm in the midst of my university's annual fall break. Usually, Kristine and I head up north for these days to do some hiking among flaring maples; this year were at home wrestling with 2x4s. We decided to go ahead with another remodeling project we've been talking about for a while. Friday, the demolition which we expected would take 2 hours took a day; Saturday afternoon we went to get our building supplies and didn't get home until well into the evening; yesterday we began our framing and finished half of it. We're keeping to our usual form.

Normally I'm not a big fan of the fall salmon run, but casting to a few rotting-on-the-fin chinooks sounds like a pleasant diversion about now.

At least I can read about the fun stuff. I came across a cool fishing blog from Alaska called The Mad Fishicist. I almost hesitate to reccomend this one, since the blogger makes me look like an illiterate. But I'm here to serve my readers.

Tags: Fishing; Life; Blogs

Roar

22 years ago, I was an avid Tigers fan, as was almost everyone in Michigan. The team got off to a 35-5 start and eventually won the World Series in 5 games. They were easy to love, though I'd rooted for them for a long time before then, through good seasons and (usually) bad ones.

I'm a Tigers fan now, as is almost everyone in Michigan, yet I really hadn't followed them since the magical season of 84. After I got to college, I drifted into other interests. I'd never been much of a spectator sports fan anyway, and for the most part I'm not one now. I wasn't watching the Tigers at the beginning of the season, but sometime around the beginning of June, I heard they'd racked up the best record in baseball, so I tuned into a few games to investigate. Even with my very rusty sense of the game, I could tell they were playing some amazing baseball. So during the rest of the summer I kept tabs on them, watching the occasional game on TV, and always following the scores and game synopses in the Free Press. I almost gave up on them during their late season slump, but since they've gone on their post-season tear, ripping the Yankees apart in the division title series, and sweeping the A's to win the AL pennant last night, I'm fixated again, infused with a 1984-esque Tiger mania.

Yes, I'm a fair weather fan. The point is, I am a fan. And I'm enjoying it to a degree that suprises me.

Watching the Tiges this year, has returned me to a part of my past, one that reaches back well beyond 1984. I used to become engrossed by baseball games. Baseball (and sometimes, hockey) is the only spectator sport that reliably claimed my attention. People write off the game as slow, and while the game has its pauses, they are rarely empty ones. And at times, as in both sides of the 9th inning of last night's game, they are positively gravid, with chaos, with reversal, with elation and despair. In the space of one swing, or one throw, the universe of a game can turn on its head. Or implode. Baseball is a game of subtle drama. Some games do drag, and I will turn off a few well before the end, even if they are going well for the Tigers. But there are times when I count the hours until a game begins.

So the 2006 Tigers have hung, or restored, some fine furnishings in my mental living space. These nicely complement the images of leaping brook trout and flushing grouse, and the dusty rows of books. They bring a new but familiar energy into that room, very welcome when most of my other passions are on hold. I guess it's fitting to say, for the first time in more than two decads, "Bless you, Boys."

Tags: Life; Detroit Tigers; Baseball

Just Popping In...

The workload situation hasn't improved, though the car situation has. We signed the papers on an 07 Honda Civic last night, and should have the car by next Monday. I'm confident we got the best car for us, and the deal wasn't bad either. Last week, most dealers were telling us they really couldn't move down from sticker just because the cars were selling so fast. Yesterday, one was willing to shave $1000 dollars off sticker on a Civic arriving this Friday. Funny how that works. I highly, highly reccomend internet shopping for cars. A decent quote from one dealer can be forwarded to others, touching off a mini price war.

As far as I can tell, this is a great time to be a Honda, VW, or Mazda dealer--we would have had to wait two weeks to a month for the Mazda model we wanted,or 60 days for the VW, since ones arriving sooner were sold in advance.

I don't know how soon I'll undertake any outdoor ventures--dates for my first grouse hunt of the year keep getting pushed back. I'm going to plan for October 20, though I wouldn't be surprised if something else comes up in the meantime to cancel that.

Take care, everybody.

Gasping for Breath

About all I have time to say is that I don't have time. Between work, car shopping (which should yield some interesting stories), and my salmon trip with my dad (we caught nothing), blogging has gone from the back burner to the back yard. But I'll be back, perhaps with some fishing fiction.

In the meantime, get away from your computer and out into October.