October 25-- Here’s a new Chet story…

Chet G. is a friend from Colorado. He’s the guy I’ve been trying to get old girl friends interested in for years. Lucky for them, they all back away. He’s just a wild man. He’s attractive and absolutely untamable.

I won’t even begin to discuss the mess that is Chet’s house, brought about when an RTD bus slid out of control one icy morning three years ago. His house interior and exterior resembles a crazy cat lady place, only he’s a guy and only owns one cat.

While in Denver last week, I noted a new local beverage, Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey. Chet raved about it and I went out to Applejack’s to pick a bottle up, thinking of dropping it at Chet’s and not bringing it home.

This is a three-year-old whiskey with a bit of fire in it. It’s a blue collar or working man’s whiskey. But it comes at the price of single malts in the 12 – 16 year range. I’ll keep it around for the crazy story of how Chet and I ended up inside the distillery at midnight, not for the taste.

I’ve told many of my friends how Chet and I would sometimes just head out into the mountains, camping just off of public roads, or opening a fence and throwing our sleeping bags down on someone’s private land without permission. Chet’s continued to do this stuff, heading down to Mexico and Central America to sleep on the beach, taking breakfast in the open market. It’s a Bohemian lifestyle that is romantic and possibly nuts.

Tuesday, after meeting up with the war game geeks I knew when I lived in Colorado, and feeling run-down by the cold that had hit me in the West, I met Chet at McCormick’s. He was looking for late night fun and I was interested in going to bed. About 11:30 PM we decided that my last adventure in Denver would be a tour of the Stranahan’s distillery. We didn’t know the hours of the tours, and decided that since it was just a few blocks away, we’d just drive over and look at the door.

McCormick’s is on one side of Coors Field, and Stranahan’s is about the same easy walking distance on the other side. Still, with all the new streets and work in Denver since I left, 22 years ago, I was glad to be driving. Too, it was starting to snow!

Stranahan’s is located in an area of small warehouses, just off of Broadway, about ½ mile from Coors Field and about 1 ½ mile from downtown. As we drove up we could see several people inside the warehouse. The door said we needed an appointment to take a tour, and tomorrow, being my last day the hopes, if they were strict, seemed long.

So, Chet says, let’s ask if we can get in now. Okay. But in my experience the answer is usually no. But, what the hell, nothing ventured…

The still master, Rob, said sure, we could have a tour right then and there. Rob signed my bottle of Stranahan’s and then gave us a personal tour of the facility. I’m really delighted. Not only was this a real behind the scenes tour, it happened at midnight. I cannot imagine this happening in many places.


Chet, as usual, took great pride in his ability to talk his way into a memorable situation, and he chided me for not doing it myself. (Excuse me!).

The next morning we received an official tour. There were just three of us on the official tour, which covered pretty much the same ground as the midnight tour. The pictures below are of Boyd L., a native of Belfast currently living in Southern California. He purchased a bottle of the single cask whiskey sold by the distillery. I promised to make these available to him.

Cheers Boyd.

October 25-- Mystery of Bridget


I’m still trying to catch-up on the trip West for the wedding of my niece, Cathy. I’ve been hoping to post this one for days, it is a picture of the 1’ x 1’ x 1” Indiana limestone tile I carved for Cathy in honor of her wedding to Mike B.

Limestone is a very soft rock, so much so that before it is sealed there is considerable dust apparent. It weathers and wears over time. Here in Chicago it was used as a stepper for schools and homes. Over the years the pounding of children’s feet have made grooves in the thick blocks used for steps. It is so cool to walk past a school and see the grooves made (left and right) of the feet of generations of children.

Locally I’ve been rescuing the stone from building that are about to be demolished, when I have the chance. There’s lovely carvings in some buildings, though they are sold to collectors. I usually pick-up a window sill or a door sill. The garden has several hundred pounds of stones littered about, waiting to be worked.

I learned the work from Eadhmonn Ua Cuinn at the Augusta Heritage Center and later polished (that’s a stone carving joke) the technique working with Laura Travis of AS202.

The design followed a discussion with Cathy’s mom, Winnie. Winnie had told me that Cathy had a deep Christian faith and was also proud of her Irish heritage. Thankfully, this was an area I had looked into previously. I talked to some friends who also identified themselves as Christian about an idea for representing the cross and the Trinity on the stone. They said that shouldn’t upset anyone. I think they were shocked that I proposed carving the stone myself.

I guess I was apprehensive about this as my own Christian faith is considered “out there.”

So, the initial idea was three tiles, a fish, much like you see on those car bumperstickers, a Bridget’s cross and a Triskel. The first tile was to be the Bridget’s cross.

Bridget the saint shares a history with a mythical person, a Celtic goddess. It is difficult to separate the two. I have doubt whether Bridget actually existed. But the spirit of Bridget is important. In Christian lore, she was a key evangelist in Ireland, bringing Christianity to the island. According to the lore, she prepared crosses like the one that is pictured, out of reeds, to hand to the people.

People still make them and use them in homes. Our home has several, above doorways of the home and the bedrooms.

In addition, she prepared three legged crosses that demonstrated the idea of the Trinity to the rural Irish. Patrick is better known for plucking three-leafed shamrocks to demonstrate the same idea. But this cross is a symbol of Irish Christianity that is not associated with drunkenness and green beer.

The Triskel in the center came about as I completed the legs. The initial plan was to continue to build the legs of the cross inward. However, it was clear that the space could be used for the Triskel too. That would break from tradition and make a unique interpretation of the Bridget's cross.

Triskel’s have existed long before there was a Christian faith. I would assign them to the LaTene period of Celtic art. Correct me if I’m mistaken. However, they have taken on the symbolism of the Trinity since the dawn of Celtic Christianity. So that was a nice way to finish the piece off.

The piece, which I call the Mystery of Bridget, weighes about 20 pounds and is unsigned. There isn’t an up or down on the piece, although I perceive one of the edges as being down. The photo was taken before the rock was sealed. The sealant was Butcher’s Boston Polish. The sealant gives the piece a darker color and a smell, which I hope goes away, of a just- polished shoe. It took about 20-30 hours to complete.

October 23-- Good news from Ireland

There’s lots of news and it all seems great. So, I’ll move from the political to the private here. I’m just back from about a week in the West, visiting friends in Colorado and attending the wedding of my niece Cathy Charley in Oregon.

But I’ll start with some fresh news, I called my cousin Peggy T. in Ireland this morning and the word is that the cysts in her neck and head that were so worrisome are “clear.” She may not have to go in for surgery at all.

Peggy and I have been corresponding now since I think 1971. I began saving the letters sometime in the early 1980’s. I found a stack of them recently. The computer and lower cost telephone calls has cut into our written correspondence in the last years. But it is still a remarkable thing to think that we’ve been corresponding all this time.

Her daughter Helen married in Ireland in June. That was the reason we flew there. Helen’s wedding was a great country wedding complete with the bride wearing Wellington boots for the removal of the garter.

Vincie and Peggy have owned and operated the family farm in the years since they married, coincidentally on the same weekend as the death of Elvis Presley. From a subsistence farm, it grew. Patsy, Vincie’s brother and partner combined his operations with Vincie’s some time ago. The farm, at first a dairy operation, now produces dry cattle.

The news, briefly told to me by Patsy, was great to hear. The blog, of course started when Jane had a cancer scare in August. So, the health of the family has always been at its heart.

The other interesting part of this is that we discuss health care around the table. Jane, the RN, is always concerned about increasing coverage for people. And, the loss of my employment in August put the issue of Ceili and my health care on the table for discussion. How could we afford medical coverage of Ceili and I?

I’m not sure what the system of health care is in Ireland. I thought at one time that it was a single-payer (socialized or national) system. However, I’ve been told that it is not completely single-payer. Apparently there is an element of national health in the system, but that the private insurance industry is still important.

I suspect that Peggy was not covered for this procedure by any private insurance, as she was aware of the issue of her cysts in June. It took four months to make a determination of her health. That sounds like a national system to me. However, friends there tell me they purchase levels of private insurance for coverage. We could discuss how this system worked and didn’t work going forward, but it is instructive that Peggy had to wait at least four months to be told her cyst was not threatening.

Anyway, great news from Ireland this morning.

October 1-- Rural values and gross incompetence


Jane and I have sat listening to the presidential debates and wondered about the effect of the economic crisis on our own financial futures. It was already shelled by the downsizing I suffered in August.

We are fortunate that we are both relatively healthy and do not plan to retire soon. Still, it would also be nice to have that option. Watching The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart describe President George Bush as the frat boy who is three months from graduation and suddenly realizes he has a big test, I was reminded of my own thoughts, watching him stumble through news conferences in the past two weeks: he has the deer in the headlights look of Dan Qualyle.

If it weren’t for the fact that his mismanagement of the economy and of nearly everything else, has cost us more than a year’s household income in lost value, I could feel sorry for him. No, I guess despite that, I do feel sorry for him. He is so clearly out of his league. Here is one of the few men who can discuss the experience of being President of the US, and he is just beginning to realize how deep the water is.

Now I realize that the GOP likes to portray itself as the party of rural values. But I’d like to know the answer to a simple question: The Clinton Administration left a $127 billion budget surplus in 2000. The White House projects a $482 billion budget deficit in 2009, before the effects of the $700 billion bailout. In total, in the last seven years, not including 2009, the total budget deficit, including the last year of the Clinton administration is now $1.549 trillion, before the bailout and the effects of the stimulus and previous bailouts this year of Fannie and Fredie.

That’s about $5,000 for every man, woman and child. I don’t feel as though I received an additional $5,000 of federal services in the past seven years, six years actually. And the $2,500 of annual tax benefits the average taxpayer received due to the Bush tax cuts? That’s a combined $15,000 plus present value. (And that isn’t per person, but per taxpayer. The average for a person is lower because most minors and many low-income households don’t pay taxes.) Look, I just lost more than a $15,000 in home value and portfolio value this month alone. That doesn’t include Janes’ losses. This month just washed out all those years of tax cuts: Good management of the economy trumps tax Band-Aids.

I’d like to know what happened to that money.

(About $4 billion was put on pallets and shipped to Iraq. That’s about $13 per person, about 2 ½ percent of the $1.549 trillion. That amazing story of incompetence and mismanagement is reproduced here: http://www.truthout.org/article/us-sent-billions-cash-pallets-baghdad).