So let’s say you’re going through Montaigne’s Essays, essentially cherry-picking quotes for a magazine piece you’re working on, and you come to this passage:
Like birds who fly abroad to forage for grain, and bring it home in the beak, without tasting it themselves, to feed their young; so our pedants go picking knowledge here and there, out of books, and hold it at tongue’s end, only to spit it out and distribute it abroad.
…is not perfected yet, but it will be based on a sliding scale in which your intelligence quotient is inversely proportional to the number of times you push the button on the coffee grinder before you realize it isn’t plugged in. Also, in stage two of development, the coffee grinder will be fitted with a pressure sensor to record how much harder you jab the button with each subsequent attempt.
Was struck recently by how distinctly different “Big White Cloud” sounds from the rest of J.J. Cale’s work, then a couple weeks in figured out it was John, not J.J.
…was a good day. Up at 6 a.m. to write for a while, then chores. Tried to start tractor but it wouldn’t. Got a little cranky. Wiggled things, lifted hood, pulled mouse nest from beneath air cleaner, wiggled more things. Tried battery charger. Nothing. Stared futilely. Decided to call mechanic. Called mother-in-law first (she owns tractor). She said check that you don’t have the emergency brake on or something. Yah, right, I thought. Tried tractor one more time, realized I had PTO engaged, which locks ignition. Got tractor started. Moved both chicken coops. Moved fence. Took a timeout to speak with editor about how, um, new book was coming along. Finished moving chickens. Fed pigs. Took car in for service. Worked on new book for three hours while car being serviced. Home and loaded 1951 International pickup with wheat, moved wheat to granary, gave a couple forkfuls to voracious chickens. Split a pile of wood the size of a smallish igloo. Then kissed wife, daughters, ate homegrown greens and homegrown pork chop. Then back to work on book until late. Sometimes you simply can’t explain your good luck so when you finally shut the chickens in* you stand there and look up at a billion stars and whisper, thanks.
*To be absolutely accurate and in the interest of harmony at home, let it be known that last night my wife shut the chickens in.
Because I burned fifteen minutes fruitlessly searching through nine years of archived emails in search of a friend’s snail mail address before I thought to look in my ADDRESS BOOK, where there it was.
Big thank you to Sheboygan folks…a warm way to wind up the mini-tour. We are very grateful to everyone who joined us. Now we’re back home, and finally, it’s snowing…wait…it’s snowing?!?!?
Lost my laptop power cord somewhere along the line, so I’m posting this while the battery lasts, then it’s gonna be radio silence for a while…
On page 225 of Coop, I refer to my father’s Massey-Ferguson 132. It was actually a 135. I am at a loss to explain this error, as I knew very well it was a 135, and have even referred to it as such in a video I did a long time before I wrote the book.
Anyway. Thanks to Dennis, who noted this.
Reading the responses to yesterday’s post I am reminded of the time I was doing some spring plowing for my brother. The tire on the plow’s trailing wheel went flat, so I pulled out at the end of the row and headed home, not noticing that the combination of the flat tire and the uphill access to the county road affected the hypotenuse of the plow’s relationship to the earth in such a manner that the first plowshare slipped neatly beneath the asphalt and rolled up a patch the size and thickness of a 100-pound brownie. There followed a rather desperate display in which I performed a hyperkinetic two-footed stomp-dance, trying to get the brownie back in the pan, as it were, before someone in an orange truck happened by…
Just got back from a first responder run. Enroute, I heard the following radio traffic, which made me smile and may give you an indication of the territory around here:
DISPATCH: Sheriff Deputy #123, please respond to XXX Blank Road, make contact regarding a report of stolen chickens.
DEPUTY #345: Dispatch, be advised, Deputy #123 is unavailable, he’s out chasing cows.
Unrelated, but perhaps of interest, while responding to this call I was also reminded that the reason they put that little “ON/OFF” switch on the controller for your snowplow is to prevent the possibility of your rescue kit tipping off the kid’s car seat and landing on the controller, at which you suddenly find yourself plowing bare asphalt at, oh, too-many-miles-per-hour.
Just got an email from a reader who writes:
i just finished Truck. i came across it accidentally at the library while looking for books on anti-lock brakes. go figure, huh. but what a grand stroke of luck.
And a grand stroke a luck for me as well. Because as I wrote here, it’s not the first time my Truck has been stuck where you might least expect it.
from $8.99
from $13.50
from $13.50