Mutterings Mighty, Minor and Mini Mincing Much of Matters Minimal

On a recent visit to Lewes, Delaware, I met in person a friend of my friend Ron, whose name is Pat. In the photo on the left the two look-a-likes to my right are Pat and Ron. I realize they could easily pass for brothers, but they aren't. Pat is from Canada and planning to move down to Sussex County sometime this year.

There are several interesting things about Pat, but one that has brought him some notice and fame up in Toronto is his house.

He has been written up in articles; in fact, has written an article to two himself, concerning this structure. He has even been featured on a TV show about unique homes. Click here for the TV visit. Pat's home follows one made of straw.

Unique looking it certainly is. It has this ski-jump little roof and those three elongated windows down the front. It is certainly far from the many McMansions that appeared all over the landscape around my parts during the former housing boom. It is compact, simple, yet pleasing and has a fashionably slim figure.

But it isn't really the look of the building that is the story here. It is the stuff inside or lack thereof.

Here is Pat's entry, Living, dining and kitchen area. This must be a somewhat older photograph because it is far less cluttered than when visited by the host of that TV show I mentioned. That bulking desk is gone. Now there is a sort of fold out desk built into the side wall, looking a bit like the deposit and withdrawal slip containers by a bank entrance. It slides open to reveal his trusty laptop computer and other useful tools.

The kitchen, which you see on the right, contains an oven/range, sink and refrigerator. The stove and sink each disappear under cover to become simply a long counter, the faucet sliding down flush. The refrigerator is also under the counter and about the size of the frat-boy beer cooler I have in my office here. (No beer, I fear, just chocolate milk, ice tea and a variety of "sody-pop". I guess one simplification in my life is being a teetotaler.)

His bedroom is basically a balcony up an open staircase. And yes, the bed folds out of sight into the wall. The footprint of this home if 566 square feet.

You see among other things, Pat is a minimalist. (He is also a Vegan, but no one is perfect.)

My middle child, daughter Number 2, is also a minimalist and probably pretty good competition. (She is a Vegetarian.) This is her apartment pictured on the right. It would not be so full of stuff if not for the toys and things for her two cats.

So what is a minimalist? Is it someone suffering from claustrophobia?

Well, one definition is "one who favors restricting the functions and powers of a political organization or government."  By that definition I am a minimalist. 

Another definition is "a person who favors a moderate approach to the achievement of a set of goals or who holds minimal expectations for the success of a program." I am not that and I know my daughter isn't and I doubt Pat is either. I favor a realistic approach to achievement, but I hold optimistic expectations of high success. I think it is better to sometimes fall a bit short than to start out with a goal of underachievement.

The applicable term for minimalist here is restricting our possessions to what is necessary. What we might feel is necessary to a pleasant life might vary, of course. I am, to tell the truth, a minimalist at heart. I would not go so far to say I would like to pack all my belongings into a backpack like Andrew

Hyde, but I have been working to reduce the clutter of my life.

"Yeah," you say, " it don't look so empty behind you in those photos that pop up now and again!"

True, but what is in this little 9 x 11 room is most of what are my personal belongings, and some of them may go. I'd be rid of the racks of CDs since I have all my music in iTunes now, except my wife prefers the CDs. Yes, there are other rooms and they have furniture and pictures on the walls and knickknacks and stuff, but remember I'm not a singular man. My wife and daughter live with me and they aren't necessarily of a minimalist mind. Most of what is in this place I consider theirs. I have tossed most of what was mine away.

What you see mostly in this room are books. Maybe one of these days I'll donate these to the library, as I did many of my other books. A few years ago my personal library contained over 5,000 volumes and the downstairs was lined along every wall with shelves to hold them.  Those shelves and the contents are all gone now along with most everything that was in the area with them.

My bed isn't in here, but it could be if my wife and I ever choose not to sleep in the same room. She has the real bed, I sleep on a futon, which folds up.

You can see I minimized my hair.

I donated most of my clothes a couple years ago as well. I don't have much of a wardrobe. I wear these gray workout pants most the winter. They are nice and warm. My other winter wear consists of a couple of sweatshirts, a couple hoodies and a couple coats. I have a pair of black jeans, a pair of kakis and a pair of black slacks. I have a number of T-shirts, which I wear all year. In summer I trade the workout pants for shorts. I don't own a suit anymore and very few shoes. (Left, with Pat in Rehoboth.) Oh, I do own a hat because I can't see outside in sunlight without it because of an eye condition.

I saw in 2012 that life was not things when I had to clean out my parents home. Ninety plus years of gathering objects and in the end you know what was left of their possessions? Nothing but the photographs.

I have in this room what I use, my computer, my Bibles, my little refrigerator and those records we all must keep. The white binders in the background of my photograph are the books I've written over time, though I still have a dozen more to bind up. I'll keep those.

 I agree, Pat, things are shackles on our freedom and living. I really am of a minimalist mind.

But I ain't goin' Vegan!

Dark House

Thomas Wolfe wrote a novel, "You Can't Go Home Again", and the title became part of our language.

You can go back to that place once called "home", but you can't go back home.

I've been back in that place lately--a lot, and every time I can't wait to flee. I grew up there; now I can't stand visiting.

The house is dark inside, dim and close. It was then, too, but I didn't seem to notice. It was even worse then, actually, because the walls were painted a dark green that absorbed what light they were exposed to. Since those years the walls have been painted a light neutral color. But yet it remains a dark house.

And it is too cluttered.

The top photo is my old bedroom. The bed I bought when I got my first real job after high school is still the centerpiece. A cherry wood single bed with a bookcase headboard. I took the other furniture I had bought when I moved out, but left behind this bed. I bought a new one when I left, because I married out of my parents home and needed a two person bed. It had a bookcase headboard as well because I was a veracious reader.

My old room looks like a scene from "Hoarders: Buried Alive" now. It is the "Cat's Room", but it is also the "catch-all" room from the looks of it.

The whole of the house is cluttered. Some rooms may be arranged and neater than my old bedroom, but they are still too stuffed with furniture. This is one side of the living room. The photograph is deceptive because it looks light and bright. In reality the room is dark and gloomy. I enhanced my picture so things were visible. The big brown chair is my dad's. It is where he spends most his waking hours now. It is a chair with a control panel. You push a button and the chair raises up to help you stand.

Dad doesn't walk well anymore. He uses a walker to shuffle from place to place, which is why it is bad this house is so overstuffed. The passage ways between furnishings are narrow alleys. It is awkward for me to pass through some of the pathways; which must be a virtual obstacle course for him.

To the right of his chair is another large chair and two tables with lamps, lamps almost never on. The narrow alcove behind is the passage to his bedroom to the rear and mother's room to the front.

To get to the bathroom, he must maneuver between a coffee table, that other large chair, a table, a display unit and the TV into another narrow hall. That passageway is barely wider than his walker. And he is a man prone to falling easily and when he falls he can't get up.

This is the view from the very cluttered dining room into the living room toward his chair. I would get rid of much of these obstacles as the path of good sense, but dad would have a cow if I moved something. "Mother wouldn't like it," he'd most likely say.

But mother isn't there right now and chances are high she won't be back to this place. If she should return, these will be obstacles to her as well.

(Again I mention the deception of the photos giving an appearance of light to these rooms that are not light at all.)

So why am I back here in these rooms after so many decades. That's is the tale I am beginning to tell.

We All Must Do Our Part to Save the Sinking Ship

There I am at the helm of a compactor. One of my everyday duties at the two places I worked over the last five-and-a-half years was taking out the trash. It's honest work and someone must do it. Remember the saying about acting? "There are no small parts, only small actors."

Same with work. If my life was a movie there would be a scene, two people smartly dressed sipping morning cups in a nearby overpriced coffee boutique.

"See him," says one over the rim of his Frappe  a Beaucoup d'argent Cafe Mocha.

The other, bent over his MacBook Pro desperately seeking to finish a report for this morning's meeting with the Audit Committee, glances over. "Yeah, so?"

"Sad case," says the Frappe-boy with a grimace as the bitter under taste of expresso hits his tongue. "Used to be a Bank Officer, now he empties garbage."

Trash, my friend, trash, garbage usually contains discarded or wasted food product. And taking out the trash (or garbage) is a very important job. The main difference between Frappe-boy and myself is I may buy a good morning coffee at McDonalds and he fritters away his money on, well, that thing for the appearance of it.

Speaking of garbage, I have discovered something about restaurants and the discarding of their leavings. They are very sloppy about it. I know this because in both my recent positions we shared the compactor with nearby eateries. At first I though it was just this one that was inconsiderate in this matter. I would tote my bags of debris to the hopper and find it filled to overflowing. It is important for you to know that in a mall community each depositor of trash is supposed to compress it after dumping. You are also expected to breakdown any cardboard cartons to flats. I was always very conscientious about these rules, not so my culinary neighbors. Boxes and bottles were heaved with mutual disregard to space or consequence, thus unbroken cartons and broken glass. And spaced in-between were plastic hulks containing all the garbage of the day, often untied or punctured so sauces and other slops flowed about the mess.

At my first site where I emptied trash the compacter had a large open hopper, similar to a dumpster. This would sometimes be filled to above the compactor top with the smelly, smeary mix from the restaurant and I would have to attempt compacting this before I could even get my own in, all the while fearful some leaky unfastened bag of garbage would tumble upon my head.

At my second site the compactor was all enclosed. You open a door and shove your refuse in. Save for that, the restaurant we shared with was no different. The hopper upon opening would contain what had been stuffed within and left unsmushed and only the door prevented a falling rain of slop from hitting me, but the sill of the opening and often the very door would be smeared with old melted cheese, pasta sauces and I dread to think what else. On my last day of trash discarding I had to stand in a pool of such a mixture to reach the hopper. Spillage did not seem high on the list of the restaurant's concerns when it car to garbage disposal.

Despite the sins of the restaurants, you meet a lot of interesting and friendly people in the narrow confinds behind the store rows. I always thought of us as the back alley people, the members of a society most store patrons never see. I was very proud of my career amongst the back alley folk. I'd rather chat with the back alley guys and gals any day then spend my mornings with the Frappe crowd at Starbucks. The people who clean our spaces, haul away our junk, mow our lawns, sweep our streets and in general pick up after us are doing some of the most important jobs around. If you don't think so, then get rid of we back alley people and see how you like eating surrounded by un-bused tables or working at a desk littered with all your past debris. And you don't even want to imagine ever again using a Porte-Potty.

Which brings us at last, by a rather circuitous route, to my subject of the day. It really has nothing to do with trash disposal, that was just something I felt like getting off my chest. No, you need go back a couple paragraphs to the statement, "On my last day..." I was relieved from the ranks of the back alley people last week, my last day being as it were the 27th.

Why did this happen, you ask, did I spill too much trash in that alley? Not at all, not at all, it has more to do with my former employer corporation announcing their second quarter earnings on the 31st. Oops, did I say earnings? Slip of the tongue because you can't really think of a $27 million dollar loss as earning anything, except perhaps pity. Chucking overboard me and people of my low station is part of the grand design to save the sinking ship or the last grasp at a bailing bucket. But in such emergencies we must all do our part.

I was quite impressed then when I read this headline from "The Idaho Statesman" in Boise as reprinted in "Businessweek Online" September 2.

"CEO of Idaho [company] won't get a salary."

The article went on: "Sept. 01--The chairman and CEO of [an Idaho]-based Corporation is giving up his salary as the company struggles to regain its footing in the women's retail market.

On Tuesday, a day before the company announced lower quarterly earnings, the board of directors approved [the CEO's] request for no salary. [He] will still get employee benefits."

Well, way to sacrifice, sir, for the good of the group. Don't we wish all CEOs would take such measures when the companies they guide run into the shoals? 

And then I read the next sentence in the article.

"[The CEO] earned a $1 salary in fiscal 2009 and 2010."

Maybe it is a misprint. Perhaps the paper or the website accidentally dropped a few zeros behind that $1. If not, maybe the CEO should also give up those employee benefits like I did...oh wait, I didn't have any employee benefits.

But as men we must do what we must do. I am certain the dropping of my hourly wages and his $1 will save the company. Don'tcha think?

Toss Away, Toss Away, Wait A Minute -- Stop

Here is something you don't think about when you start off young. Over the course of your life you will gather all kinds of junk like a magnet. It will begin to overflow drawers, clutter up closets and if not whipped back with a super strength of will, wipe out whole rooms. One day you wake up old and you say what in the world am I gonna do with all this stuff?

There is a general rule of thumb, so I have heard, that if you ain't used it in the last six months, toss it out.

Yeah, easy for you with a non-hoarder heart to say.

Dang, I got stuff I ain't seen in six years. In fact, as I just discovered, stuff I ain't seen in six decades.

(That's about how long ago it was someone told me I ain't supposed to use the word "ain't". And as you can see its still cluttering up my grammar.)

Ain't that a shame.

Anyway, the Little Woman and I decided a few weeks ago we ought to get rid of all this claptrap of life. It is a hard thing to do for me. I don't know why. I know it is silly to hang on to things I'll never use.

For instance, I use to have four thousand books. That was just the start in the picture on the right. Bookshelves lined the walls of the family room and we have a large family room.  I had even more, but we had a leak one year and several hundred got ruined.

A couple years ago I gave away about 1,000 books to a local library and I tossed quiet a few more that were damaged or simply obsolete (there are some books that become obsolete, such as computer manuals).

Despite this, I still have way too many books and I should give more to the library, especially the novels. I know full well I am not going to re-read all the novels I own; I couldn't, I won't live that long. But to box them up and haul them away is very difficult for me.

I fight this pack rat urge all the time. The other day I pulled everything out of a big storage closet we have. Among the Christmas decorations, four bowling balls (like we haven't bowled in twenty-five years), 78 RPM records and other miscellaneous antiquities were two cartons of Plasticville buildings. These use to be on my model train layouts when I was a boy; WHEN I WAS A BOY!  Do you understand that my model trains were steam engines when I was a boy? This is how long I have held on to these objects.

I know I am not going to be putting up train platforms anytime again on God's green earth, so I steeled myself and decided they go out with the trash. So I mention this to the Little Woman and what does she say? "Oh, if they don't take up much space maybe we should keep those."

Woman, you aren't helping!

One carton is about three and a half feet high by two feet by two feet. The other carton is four foot long by two feet by one foot. They take up a bit of space and that is all they will ever do now.

Sigh!

Anyway, I pulled a large plastic tub out a few days ago and inside I found a stack of original copies of stories and poems I wrote. In the middle of the stack were some old sketches I did as a teenager, so I pulled these out and scanned them into the computer.  I was going to post them in my  "Tatters" Blog. But this morning I found in another old plastic tub a scrapbook and when I opened it I found a lot more old drawings, going back to when I was 7 years old. With so many old pieces, I decided to give them a separate blog called "Charcoal and Pen Lines".

One of the old drawings I found is the one at the top of this post, a sketch I did of my friend Ronald, known today as Retired in Delaware.  It was drawn in September of 1960.

I took a detail from a charcoal drawing, "Awakening", that I did in 1956 at the age of 15 to use as my banner on the new Blog.  Sometimes even things you haven't seen in six decades you still want to keep.

Ms Drill Instructor

There I sat in this corral of lambs for the slaughter. The line was still encircling the room like a giant python about to constrict us foolish sheep engulfed by it. It writhed slowly about the outer edges of the room, some never-ending body with no head and no tail.

I had chosen a seat at the very rear corner of this captive audience. It had been relatively easy to get to and I was not entrapped in the middle of a row where people would be crawling over me to come and go nor would I be climbing over them. It didn't take me long to realize this was a mistake.

It was getting rather warm in the room, so there was a small advantage being on the outer fringe. I had a teeny pocket of space rather than total engulfment by bodies all giving off heat, but it wasn't much comfort. It was still hot and I was beginning to sweat. Where was the air conditioning?

My real difficulty was hearing.

A woman's voice suddenly came out of somewhere to the front right of the room, the furtherest point from where I sat, and was saying something to we of the mob. I strained forward to hear. Now I know when I came in there was a podium with a microphone attached front and center , but for some reason she chose to stand to the far side of it and speak without amplification.  She was reading a list of names. Here and about the room someone would get up and go forward toward her direction. I couldn't see her because of the continuing line snaking through between her and I. I could barely hear her because as soon as she began calling her list odd cliques in the line just behind me began chatting about the minutia of their daily life in raised, giggling voices. Also at that moment I found the air condition as it suddenly snapped to life above my head with a constant hiss.

And so it went. The line limped along and a distant voice called forth bodies and I leaned further and further over listening for my own name. 

And then, finally, the line ended, its tail wiggled by and around and everyone coming had come. Every seat was filled and bodies stood or sat against the walls all about, with some small globs standing in the middle of the center aisle and another cluster of souls grouped near the entryway. Perhaps with the movement of feet done or just having grown use to this environment, I could hear the woman better. She was not calling names at that moment, she was saying she saw women standing and gentlemen should give their seat to the ladies.

Hey, what happened to the demand for equal treatment between the sexes? I though women had fought hard for the right to stand uncomfortably in a crowded room? Should they be forced to give up what they earned now for the sake of a seat?

Actually, because I'm an old guy from a different time when gentlemen did do such things for the fairer sex, I had just been about to give my seat to a woman standing by the wall opposite me. For one thing, I stand all day on my job so felt I am used to being on my feet for long periods, but with that announcement I was caught between gallantry and shame. Getting up now wouldn't appear a polite gesture, it would simply look like I was goaded into it. Maybe that is how all the men felt. Perhaps they had all been on the verge of sacrificing their hard plastic chair to some dainty lady along the wall and now they felt chided and reluctant. I saw no movement among the seated to change positions.

But I did. I left my chair and walked down along the left wall and squeezed in between a surly looking young man and a young woman seated on the floor.

I admit it wasn't all altruism. From this vantage point I could see the speaker and more importantly, hear her better.

 As I stood there I noticed the pretty young woman at my feet wore a very low cut top, one very revealing from my height above. Obviously I must be a sex pervert for it took me no time at all to notice this. Oh come on, I may be an old man, but I'm not a dead one.

The distant woman, who was obviously our caretaker for the day,  continued to call names. I saw those who came forth go to her one by one. She handed them a sheet of paper, whispered something in their ear and each then went to a table where a pail of pencils sat. They wrote something on the paper and brought it back to the woman, then returned to their seat. Rats, I though she was calling people to go to courtrooms. No one was going anywhere. The crowd was becoming a bit overbearing as time passed. I was waiting for my name so I could find out what this ritual was about, but before I was called she shifted gears.

And now finally, she moved to the podium with the microphone. Apparently she could not get to this microphone earlier because of that python snaking around the room. Now what she said was loud and clear.  She ordered everyone to listen up as free parking was about to be awarded.

"Take out your parking stub," she said, "and hold it up."

"Its like the lottery, isn't it?" I said to the surly looking guy. He just nodded, but surlily and gazed disdainfully at his parking stub. I, of course, had no stub.

"Look at the number below the name of the lot," the woman said. "If you see a number 43 below that name, then you have free parking. When you are dismissed for the day you will go to the garage. You will find your car. You will then start your car and you will drive to the gate. You will put your stub in the slot and the gate will rise, and you will go home."

My Surly did not have a 43 on his stub.

"If you do not have a 43 on your stub," said the woman, "look below the name of the lot. If you have a 44, you have reduced parking. When you are dismissed for the day you will go to the garage. You will go to the walkup pay window and you will pay $7.00. You will now have ten minutes to find your car and get to the gate. If you do not get to the gate in ten minutes, the reduced rate will go up to the regular fee and you will pay $10.00.

"Therefore, people, I suggest you find your car before you go to the walkup pay window."

She then called roll for those in jury type Capital Murder.

Ouch! Capital Murder, don't want on that jury, oh, no, no, that isn't going to be over in a day for sure. She called out the names and each person was to answer if they were present. We got some "here"s, some "yes"s and an occasional "present". Then we got someone who corrected the pronunciation of their name. 

Oops!

The woman in charge looked at this person. "Folks," she said, "I am going to mispronounce some of your last names. I am going to mispronounce some of your first names. This list is in alphabetical order. You should know about where you will be. If I call something near close to your name, just answer here."

I liked this woman. She had a sense of humor, she made us laugh sometimes, she made the day bearable, but she had the look of a former drill sergeant. I remember when my daughter got through Basic training and came home. She told us the first thing she learned was when the DI said something you don't roll your eyes. She had and the next thing she knew she was doing pushups in a mud puddle with a fifty pound pack on her back. This woman calling roll looked like if she said, "Get down and give me twenty" you would get down and give her twenty and throw in an extra five just to be on the safe side.

She must have called over a hundred names before she asked, "Anyone here jury type Capital Murder whose name I did not call."

A man in the back raised his hand.

"What's your name?"

He gave it.

"You jury type Capital Murder?"

"I don't know," he says, "what's a jury type."

"Okay people. Pull out your summons. Look in the upper right hand corner. You will see the words 'Jury Type'. Sir, do you see the words Jury Type?"

"Yes."

"Do the words, 'Capital Murder' appear next to jury Type?"

"No."

"Then that is why I did not call your name, sir."

As I stood there, still waiting to hear my own name called for something, for anything, a young white man walked by a couple times.  He wore a Phillies T-shirt, satiny white basketball style shorts with a red stripe down the side and a Phillies baseball cap turned backward upon his head. Blast, I guess I could have worn my plain black hat, right way around, after all. And to think I was worried about courtroom decorum!

Someone in a uniform came in and handed our Drill Instructor lady a paper.

"Quite down out there, people," she said. "I'm going to get some of your out of here. I call your name you come up and form a line at the door. Your bailiff is Jeffrey. He will instruct you as to where to do. The paper you are handed, do not read it, it will only confuse you."

She now read off a batch of names and people filed out the entryway.  She turned and looked at them.

"What I tell you? I told you, do not read it, it will only confuse you. See now, you're reading it and now you are confused." She turned back to the rest of us. "When I tell you to do something, do it. I'm trying to help you people up here. Listen to me. I tell you, 'Don't read it'; then don't read it! It will only confuse you."

She called another batch, who marched out, then another and another. These were the prospective jurors for the capital murder case. There must have been well over a hundred of them. Yeah, that trial isn't going to be over in a day or two. It'll probably take them two weeks to impanel a jury.

Of all the people there this day, I only heard one familiar name, William S. It wasn't a common last name like Smith. It was a fairly uncommon one, so I wonder is it was the Bill S. I once worked for 13 years ago. He was called in one of these batches and sure enough as he walked down the aisle I could see it was him, looking 13 years older (as if I didn't). Poor fellow, he was on the capital murder list.

Once the capital murder unfortunates had left the room, she called everyone from the four corners of this world who were left into the main room. Those back in the little vending machine cafe adjoining the room were ordered forth. We were all told to find a seat and sit. Now she said she was going to call the petit jury type roll call.

Some guy in the back raised his hand.

"Yes?"

"What's petit mean," he asked?

She raised an eyebrow and answered, "Small."

I am meanwhile trying to determine the time on the watch of a man across from me. I could not quite get the angle of the hands. It looked to be perhaps a bit before 10:00 or a bit after 10:00 or it could have been about 11:00.

She was calling roll. Again the "yeses", "heres" and "presents" until she came to a man seated to the front of me. She called his name.

"Shake 'n' bake," he answered.

She sternly repeated his name.

"Here, " he humbly replied.

When she called my name I gave a stout "here" in return.

Darn, I wish I could figure out the guy's watch. How long have we been here and then I heard my name called again.  She was back to calling little groups to her. I was going to find out what the mysterious paper was. I went forward and was handed the questionnaire I had filled out and sent back right after I received my summons. Two areas were highlighted in green. She whispered in my ear I must fill these space in. One was for my work number, which I had left blank because at the time I had no idea what my work number was. The other was Race. I had deliberately left that blank on principle. (It is too long to explain my stand on race here, that will take some future post.)

I went and filled in the spaces, hoping the number on the little folded yellow Post-it I fumbled from my wallet really was my work number, and returned it to her. I wasn't about to argue my theory on race with the sergeant. I had no intention of doing pushups in a mud puddle. I handed in my completed form and returned to my seat.

When, I wondered, will we ever be called to a jury if at all?

If not at all, when would we be dismissed?

And what was the time on that guy's watch?

The answers lay ahead.