Caution: Thar be unhinged rants. I promise next post will have more to do with books or headboards or lagers.
You may have noticed that you don't exist.
Well, that's probably not true. Thanks, Descartes. But the number of people who are reading this has surely dropped dramatically because my Facebook went the way of the triceratops, Blockbuster, and the season of autumn, and that was more or less the only avenue by which I got the blog out.
Frankly, I didn't like it. I may have thought I liked it, in some senses. I may have seen things that made me laugh, felt the fuzzies that the baby pictures should bring, and the misted eyes that come with HoNY posts, and awe and wonder at all the scenery porn from accounts like Nat Geo and the like.
Of course, I saw things that I didn't like. In satisfied disbelief, we bombard one another with details of the child-president's latest bullshit, or the injustices institutionalized by the dusty lichs in the Capitol building, and that's to say nothing of the garden-variety, anonymous misery peddled by news outlets, vying for the most exciting atrocity that will generate the highest traffic to their site.
And there I would be, at least once a day ("at most once a day" I told myself, an edict of self-restraint and custodianship that lasted four solid days), posting some outrage with a pithy caption of judgment and derision, spurring my outrage toward you in the indignant hope that...
That what?
I still don't know. That I would spur you into some action that I was unwilling to take? That I would strike up some life-changing epiphany in a previously stubborn mind, and the truth would strike their new perception like lightning on the Chrysler Building? Just what the hell are we doing when we launch our perceptions around to an audience held captive by their need to feel engaged?
That engagement, I think, has always drawn me back into the fold. Because I do come back, or have the last three times. Twice I deactivated it, and once I just didn't log on for a month or so. Full deletion is tempting, but the clever bastards integrated Messenger into the fold and I've met a lot of people in a lot of places with whom Messenger is my only means of communication.
We are, after all, social creatures, and engagement in the tribe is hardwired into our DNA. Participation in the group meant physical survival. Now, though, that group has grown like a psychosocial tumor, and it's riding at our hips all day and charging by our beds all night. What's more, everyone's wearing very lovely masks. Some of us project our greatest hits--showing only our hottest photos, framing each day as a triumphant step in the pursuit towards higher status and broader wealth. Some of us showcase our trials and tribulations, framing ourselves as tragically/comically aware protagonists at the center of a tailored maelstrom of Heller-esque nonsense--the whole world is crazy, and we're just weathering it in our own perfectly human way.
I'm not down with this behavior. It infuriates me because I embody it when I'm on social media. And I pay equal service to both sides, too. I feel pride when my timeline is a crisp representation of who I want to be--the pictures depicting an exciting life of travel and activity, the posts a catalog of a rising star in dynamic and esoteric disciplines. And yet the canny observations and detached snark streaks through, presenting what I like to think is a sharp jab at the pageantry of civilization.
It's all self-aggrandizing, though. We just do it to feed the ego, or else we wouldn't give a crap how many people liked it. And we're all doing it on there. And we scroll and scroll and scroll, looking for something to amaze and inspire and commiserate and resonate. I think I'm done with that for a while. There are other ways to find wonder than reaching the bottom of Facebook.
And the notion that a blog is the ultimate expression of self-aggrandizement has crossed my mind. In fact, the notion that writing is inherently an act of self-aggrandizement plagues me night and day. It makes my fingers trip over my thumbs, and may have a lot to do with why I get paid to thump chests instead of keys.
My defense is that you have to click a few extra things to read the blog. I'm not exactly shoving this down your throat.
Unless you subscribed by email. In which case, open up wide. But that's on you.
Reading: Zoe's Tale by John Scalzi
Listening to: Tek Basina by Taksim Trio
Monday, April 27, 2020
Monday, April 13, 2020
4/13: The Drink of the Gods
I also brew alcohol. See previous woodworking post regarding amateur efforts, happy accidents, etc.
Today I bottled 2.1 gallons of the mead that had sat, patiently winking at me under the fluorescent tube lights by the washing machine, since last August. If that seems like a long time, winemaking may frustrate you.
Look at it in contrast to beer. If you do it right, making beer is a quaint afternoon of minding a propane burner as it simmers and bubbles away grain starches like a thermochemical sculptor, leaving you with the sweet, sugary must (must, n.: beer before it's beered). Left with a week or two in the cool and dark, a packet of yeast will whip it into shape, presumably running some kind of micro-organic Rocky IV training montage until that syrupy sugar water emerges from the basement corner a craggy ale, a smooth lager, or a feisty farmhouse, ready to go twelve rounds with your clarity of thought and sense of equilibrium.
Wines, though. Fucking wines. Wines will ferment more or less as quickly as a beer. The difference is if you drink the wine in those same two weeks that you do the beer, you'll wonder from which organ came the raunchy swill you just swallowed. The liver, or perhaps the spleen?
That's because wine takes its time to grow. It yawns, stretches out, breathes a little. For a month or six you'd do well to let it sit, settle out, allow the suspended sediment to sink like little stones to the bottom. Then, doing your best impression of a cardiothoracic surgeon, you so very gently slip a siphon into the surface and drain it away into a new, sanitized vessel without disturbing the silty bottom. Then do that a few more times, and inside of a year later, you're ready to distribute it into bottles.
What does wine have to do with mead, you ask? Isn't mead basically Viking bourbon, distilled from dragon's blood or the tears of coastal French peasants or something?
To the surprise of many, mead is just wine, but instead of squishing grapes, the vintner (vintner, n.: one who brews wine but is too cool to call it brewing) combines honey, water, and whatever else their heart desires to make the must. It's great, really. It demands less labor as honey is pre-squished by nature. Local apiaries--bee farms--abound, and supporting them means supporting a vital and threatened pillar of our food system as we know it.
And the drink itself...oh, my friends, pop the cork and breathe deep the musk of life. Mead offers a world of variety: crisp, airy, enigmatic, evocative of a dry white wine but with a floral lilt that rewards those who collect dust on the bottle. A sip of good mead is the sound of a boot atop a crunchy leaf, the crunch of the first tortilla chip out of the bag, the resonant thunderclap of a perfect high-five. It is--and this is neither hyperbole nor, frankly, metaphor--the bee's knees. Or maybe its feet. You've probably noticed that I have a glut of dubious hobbies but bee anatomy is not (yet) one of them.
Many moons ago I worked 11.5 pounds of Fruitwood Orchards' delicious wildflower honey into fourish gallons of must and pitched into its amber depths a French yeast. Today I bottled half of it and racked (rack, v.: to siphon your must into another container and pray to the gods of asepsis that you sanitized it well) the other half into another container over half an ounce of dried orange peels, which is a common enough additive for beer (particularly hefeweizens and other Teutonic shenanigans) but relatively novel for this sort of thing. Which brings us back to the amateurish bent to this pursuit. I have no idea how this will work, but maybe I'll stumble on to something very cool and very delicious.
I plan to crack one of the bottles on New Year's Eve and the next one once the letters "RN" follow my name. In the meantime, there they lay, supine on the shelf in my basement, and every mote of dust that lands on their deep green shells teases of another subtle kiss on the tongue, hundreds of sunrises from now.
Reading: Civilized to Death by Chris Ryan
Listening to: The Humbling River by Puscifer
Today I bottled 2.1 gallons of the mead that had sat, patiently winking at me under the fluorescent tube lights by the washing machine, since last August. If that seems like a long time, winemaking may frustrate you.
 |
| Pictured: Not pee, I promise. |
Look at it in contrast to beer. If you do it right, making beer is a quaint afternoon of minding a propane burner as it simmers and bubbles away grain starches like a thermochemical sculptor, leaving you with the sweet, sugary must (must, n.: beer before it's beered). Left with a week or two in the cool and dark, a packet of yeast will whip it into shape, presumably running some kind of micro-organic Rocky IV training montage until that syrupy sugar water emerges from the basement corner a craggy ale, a smooth lager, or a feisty farmhouse, ready to go twelve rounds with your clarity of thought and sense of equilibrium.
Wines, though. Fucking wines. Wines will ferment more or less as quickly as a beer. The difference is if you drink the wine in those same two weeks that you do the beer, you'll wonder from which organ came the raunchy swill you just swallowed. The liver, or perhaps the spleen?
That's because wine takes its time to grow. It yawns, stretches out, breathes a little. For a month or six you'd do well to let it sit, settle out, allow the suspended sediment to sink like little stones to the bottom. Then, doing your best impression of a cardiothoracic surgeon, you so very gently slip a siphon into the surface and drain it away into a new, sanitized vessel without disturbing the silty bottom. Then do that a few more times, and inside of a year later, you're ready to distribute it into bottles.
What does wine have to do with mead, you ask? Isn't mead basically Viking bourbon, distilled from dragon's blood or the tears of coastal French peasants or something?
To the surprise of many, mead is just wine, but instead of squishing grapes, the vintner (vintner, n.: one who brews wine but is too cool to call it brewing) combines honey, water, and whatever else their heart desires to make the must. It's great, really. It demands less labor as honey is pre-squished by nature. Local apiaries--bee farms--abound, and supporting them means supporting a vital and threatened pillar of our food system as we know it.
And the drink itself...oh, my friends, pop the cork and breathe deep the musk of life. Mead offers a world of variety: crisp, airy, enigmatic, evocative of a dry white wine but with a floral lilt that rewards those who collect dust on the bottle. A sip of good mead is the sound of a boot atop a crunchy leaf, the crunch of the first tortilla chip out of the bag, the resonant thunderclap of a perfect high-five. It is--and this is neither hyperbole nor, frankly, metaphor--the bee's knees. Or maybe its feet. You've probably noticed that I have a glut of dubious hobbies but bee anatomy is not (yet) one of them.
Many moons ago I worked 11.5 pounds of Fruitwood Orchards' delicious wildflower honey into fourish gallons of must and pitched into its amber depths a French yeast. Today I bottled half of it and racked (rack, v.: to siphon your must into another container and pray to the gods of asepsis that you sanitized it well) the other half into another container over half an ounce of dried orange peels, which is a common enough additive for beer (particularly hefeweizens and other Teutonic shenanigans) but relatively novel for this sort of thing. Which brings us back to the amateurish bent to this pursuit. I have no idea how this will work, but maybe I'll stumble on to something very cool and very delicious.
I plan to crack one of the bottles on New Year's Eve and the next one once the letters "RN" follow my name. In the meantime, there they lay, supine on the shelf in my basement, and every mote of dust that lands on their deep green shells teases of another subtle kiss on the tongue, hundreds of sunrises from now.
 |
| Look at those fickle bastards. |
Reading: Civilized to Death by Chris Ryan
Listening to: The Humbling River by Puscifer
Monday, April 6, 2020
4/6: I Built a Desk
In my ongoing crusade to convince people that I have interests that don't involve amputations and insurance claims, you may hear me say that I'm "into woodworking". I feel there's a critical distinction between that and calling myself a "woodworker".
Woodworkers sketch up plans with intricate measurements and angles. Guys who are into woodworking cut the first leg of a table and that's how they decide how tall the table's going to be. Woodworkers pick their stock based on board straightness, knot placement, grain quality. Guys who are into woodworking scoop up the least dilapidated pallet from behind the hardscaping wholesaler and go to town with a crowbar. Woodworkers whip out square pencils and sliding rules like eleventh fingers. Guys who are into woodworking discover dynamic new combinations of profanity while spending twenty minutes sifting through an undersized basement full of sawdust looking for the ballpoint pen they put down four months ago.
Nick Offerman is a woodworker. Sam Rapine is into woodworking.
With that disclaimer out of the way, I built a desk.
I'd like to tell you that building this was a flight of quarantined inspiration, but that would discount the six or so weeks in which this sat, half finished, staring balefully at me from the corner of the basement as I chipped away at the dozen other projects that lurk down there (ranging from a jiu-jitsu belt rack to a fermenting 300 year old Finnish beer recipe). However, the sudden and indefinite virtualization of my academic career may have forced my hand to some degree, as I tried to cram four class days onto a 14"x 24" desk surface.
My sense of morality and my wallet are both happy to report that every piece of material in this desk is upcycled. The legs, frame boards, and shelf are from a skid that transported bricks to a landscaping company headquartered about a quarter mile from my house. The desktop is actually the long side of a crate that transported one of the first laser printers to the TV Guide printing facility in Radnor when I was about three years old. My dad, enterprising soul that he is, snagged the perfectly level frames and beat them into a workbench. A quarter century later, while dismantling them in preparation of selling the house, he offered them up to me. Circle of life and all that.
I had a few goals in mind for this piece. First, I wanted a whole hell of a lot more desk space than I had on the old desk, a curb-alerted Ikea piece the likes of which was probably first assembled in one of Franz Kafka's more tormented fever dreams. Tangential to that, I wanted to mount the monitor to maximize desktop surface, and because my brother has a similar setup and it just looks damn cool. I ended up mounting a cleat on the back of the lower frame and using that to anchor a pallet stalk that places the monitor about eight inches above the desk, about at eye level.
Lastly, I wanted to get the PC unit itself ticked away out of sight. I measured its height, tacked on an inch for access, and mounted a straight board anchoring to the lower frame on three sides:
Regarding the wood itself, the stain/sealant is just two coats of pecan.I gave every surface a thorough sanding with 120 grit. The surface received two runs at 120, two at 220, and one at 400 after the second coat. I'm going to see how it settles out and possibly give it a few runs with Butcher's wax that I found in the basement. Trusty as it comes.
It holds my setup, it doesn't wobble, and it's got enough space to land a plane on. And y'know, it doesn't look half bad for the materials used. I didn't so much buff out the imperfections as harass them a bit with sandpaper and then immortalize them with sealant. The result is a frame with some definitive asymmetry and a desktop that's definitely got some terrain to it.
Really though, what would I do with a nice desk? Beat the crap out of it with chair legs, boots, and guitar parts, and eat away at the stain with a thousand coffee cup rings. It's the same reason I drive a car that's old enough to drink and I have the same phone as your grandmother and your drug dealer. Strip away the bells and whistles, ditch the distractions, and let the form follow function. You just might find some character hiding in the grain.
Listening to: Bob Dylan-"Mozambique"
Reading: Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
Woodworkers sketch up plans with intricate measurements and angles. Guys who are into woodworking cut the first leg of a table and that's how they decide how tall the table's going to be. Woodworkers pick their stock based on board straightness, knot placement, grain quality. Guys who are into woodworking scoop up the least dilapidated pallet from behind the hardscaping wholesaler and go to town with a crowbar. Woodworkers whip out square pencils and sliding rules like eleventh fingers. Guys who are into woodworking discover dynamic new combinations of profanity while spending twenty minutes sifting through an undersized basement full of sawdust looking for the ballpoint pen they put down four months ago.
Nick Offerman is a woodworker. Sam Rapine is into woodworking.
With that disclaimer out of the way, I built a desk.
 |
| Any closer and you can see the problems. |
My sense of morality and my wallet are both happy to report that every piece of material in this desk is upcycled. The legs, frame boards, and shelf are from a skid that transported bricks to a landscaping company headquartered about a quarter mile from my house. The desktop is actually the long side of a crate that transported one of the first laser printers to the TV Guide printing facility in Radnor when I was about three years old. My dad, enterprising soul that he is, snagged the perfectly level frames and beat them into a workbench. A quarter century later, while dismantling them in preparation of selling the house, he offered them up to me. Circle of life and all that.
 |
| I used this one's twin, but it wasn't much cleaner. |
Lastly, I wanted to get the PC unit itself ticked away out of sight. I measured its height, tacked on an inch for access, and mounted a straight board anchoring to the lower frame on three sides:
 |
| Cable management will come, I tell myself, and for a moment I almost believe it. |
 |
| It does have a certain shine to it. |
Really though, what would I do with a nice desk? Beat the crap out of it with chair legs, boots, and guitar parts, and eat away at the stain with a thousand coffee cup rings. It's the same reason I drive a car that's old enough to drink and I have the same phone as your grandmother and your drug dealer. Strip away the bells and whistles, ditch the distractions, and let the form follow function. You just might find some character hiding in the grain.
Listening to: Bob Dylan-"Mozambique"
Reading: Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
Friday, April 3, 2020
4/3-Same Shit, Different Disaster
It took me a little while to realize how the people I work with are holding it together. The answer turned out to be simple: we've had a lot of practice.
COVID-19 is big, and it's new, and it's scary, and it's going to kill a lot of people. And here in healthcare, that's our specialty.
They tell us that healthcare workers and first responders are "the frontline", and while I appreciate that, we didn't arrive here when Governor Wolf shut down the liquor stores. We got here at different times; some of us years ago, some of us relatively recently, some of us before others were even born. Lots of us tasted the line for what it was after getting smacked to the ground by our first twelve hours in fluorescent scrubs or black leather boots. You start this job hoping to make a difference, but some days--or weeks, or months--it feels like a race to see if the burnout or the sciatica will put you down first.
Then, on the tail end of a mild winter, along comes a strange new disease, and people start dying. Stores shut down, Tom Hanks is quarantined, Italy is a horror show, and it's starting to look like the world might end.
Take a stroll through your local ER or ICU (although I would pick a different month) and you'll see the world end every day--maybe every hour on a Friday night. Pick your way past the crash cart with drawers ripped asunder, duck under the jungle of lead wires and IV tubing, and watch your feet on the visceral cocktail staining the floor by the stretcher, and you'll see the end of the world. It's not The World, mind you. The MI or the stroke or the car wreck or the gunshot wound may not even make KYW, much less CNN, but I promise you that somebody's world has come apart. You'll hear it in their mother's screams, their brother's anger, or maybe just the steady beep of a now useless monitor when you realize that the compressions you've pounded into their chest for the last twenty minutes may have been the only kind act they'd seen in a very long time.
We're used to the end of the world. Frankly, we're used to all of this shit. A new, highly contagious disease, ravaging the community, transmitting through uncertain means? Perhaps you've heard of HIV. An inept government response with unrealistic goals and uncertain means? Sounds like how we've been dealing with narcotic addiction for the last fifteen years. An untenable economic strain in which people's needs and market conditions pass like two ships in the night? That's America on any other Tuesday, let alone under COVID. Anxiety about bringing home something horrible to the people I love? Bites, scratches, and sticks aren't picky. Fear for my safety and that of my coworkers? There are restraints in the supply closet for a reason, and they aren't gathering dust.
I don't mean to downplay the coronavirus. This has been bad. This will get much worse. The global loss of life that April 2020 is about to see belongs in the pages of Boccaccio, not on Facebook Live. But every one of us had a moment when the idealism shattered and the reality of working in healthcare hit us, immersed us and filled us, like falling through ice into frigid black waters with a wide open mouth. Every nurse, doctor, PCA, technician, technologist, respiratory therapist, radiographer, EMT, paramedic, and firefighter you've ever met once realized that the challenges we'd chosen to confront were implacable, and uncaring, and would never end even if we spent the next forty years fighting the good fight. And every one of us squared with that moment, said "fuck it," and took up the fight anyway.
This is new territory for all of us, and the stakes are colossal. But we didn't get this far without thriving on that, in a strange, paradoxical, beautiful, vital way. Listening to coverage of this pandemic seems to imply that equipment shortages, unseen dangers, considerable personal risk, and extreme emotional strain are new enemies, when in fact they feel more like old friends.
Listening to: "Ten Thousand Mornings" by Peter Mulvey
COVID-19 is big, and it's new, and it's scary, and it's going to kill a lot of people. And here in healthcare, that's our specialty.
They tell us that healthcare workers and first responders are "the frontline", and while I appreciate that, we didn't arrive here when Governor Wolf shut down the liquor stores. We got here at different times; some of us years ago, some of us relatively recently, some of us before others were even born. Lots of us tasted the line for what it was after getting smacked to the ground by our first twelve hours in fluorescent scrubs or black leather boots. You start this job hoping to make a difference, but some days--or weeks, or months--it feels like a race to see if the burnout or the sciatica will put you down first.
Then, on the tail end of a mild winter, along comes a strange new disease, and people start dying. Stores shut down, Tom Hanks is quarantined, Italy is a horror show, and it's starting to look like the world might end.
Take a stroll through your local ER or ICU (although I would pick a different month) and you'll see the world end every day--maybe every hour on a Friday night. Pick your way past the crash cart with drawers ripped asunder, duck under the jungle of lead wires and IV tubing, and watch your feet on the visceral cocktail staining the floor by the stretcher, and you'll see the end of the world. It's not The World, mind you. The MI or the stroke or the car wreck or the gunshot wound may not even make KYW, much less CNN, but I promise you that somebody's world has come apart. You'll hear it in their mother's screams, their brother's anger, or maybe just the steady beep of a now useless monitor when you realize that the compressions you've pounded into their chest for the last twenty minutes may have been the only kind act they'd seen in a very long time.
We're used to the end of the world. Frankly, we're used to all of this shit. A new, highly contagious disease, ravaging the community, transmitting through uncertain means? Perhaps you've heard of HIV. An inept government response with unrealistic goals and uncertain means? Sounds like how we've been dealing with narcotic addiction for the last fifteen years. An untenable economic strain in which people's needs and market conditions pass like two ships in the night? That's America on any other Tuesday, let alone under COVID. Anxiety about bringing home something horrible to the people I love? Bites, scratches, and sticks aren't picky. Fear for my safety and that of my coworkers? There are restraints in the supply closet for a reason, and they aren't gathering dust.
I don't mean to downplay the coronavirus. This has been bad. This will get much worse. The global loss of life that April 2020 is about to see belongs in the pages of Boccaccio, not on Facebook Live. But every one of us had a moment when the idealism shattered and the reality of working in healthcare hit us, immersed us and filled us, like falling through ice into frigid black waters with a wide open mouth. Every nurse, doctor, PCA, technician, technologist, respiratory therapist, radiographer, EMT, paramedic, and firefighter you've ever met once realized that the challenges we'd chosen to confront were implacable, and uncaring, and would never end even if we spent the next forty years fighting the good fight. And every one of us squared with that moment, said "fuck it," and took up the fight anyway.
This is new territory for all of us, and the stakes are colossal. But we didn't get this far without thriving on that, in a strange, paradoxical, beautiful, vital way. Listening to coverage of this pandemic seems to imply that equipment shortages, unseen dangers, considerable personal risk, and extreme emotional strain are new enemies, when in fact they feel more like old friends.
Listening to: "Ten Thousand Mornings" by Peter Mulvey
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