Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
I am grateful for others who have observed the human condition and commented with such insight as to serve as ‘sophisticated insight by proxy’ for those of us less skilled and/or talented. to wit:
‘The only constant is change’ and ‘Youth is wasted on the young’. (See below)
(Before I get too far afield, This is the Ten Things of Thankful bloghop. It is hosted by Kristi. It encourages participants to link their posts that describe, list or otherwise elucidate those people, places, things and occurrences in their (respective) lives that make them feel grateful (or believe that their state of mind is that which is commonly referred to as ‘gratitude’).
For me, for this week’s post, I will say I’m grateful for:
1) Phyllis
2) Una
3) ‘The only constant is change.’ Heraclitus of Ephesus (537 BC – 475 BC) Well, no kidding! Back then, how many things were there in the world to begin with?! I mean, hard not to change when your world consists of: a mate, as many children as calenderistically possible, a culture grounded in weather and natural disaster and the need to wake up the next day in order to a) fight to the death for strangers or 2) build monuments to people you will never ever be in the same room with… yeah, not surprising that Heraclitus was into change. Totally a fan of this guy. Imagine not only getting credit for the ‘change quote’ but also (and my personal favorite) ‘You can’t step in the same river twice.’ Dude!
4) ‘Youth is wasted on the young.’ George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950) Note: I misattributed this wonderful expression of ‘the view from far up ahead’ last week in a comment over at ‘Thankful Me’. I said it was Oscar Wilde. Seems like the kind of thing he might have said. I should have spent more research time before committing to electrons-on-phosphor. Ah well, live and learn. Not that George was any kind of slacker, his-ownself. This guy also came up with: “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” Ayiiee! (and Item 7 will be something about ‘Almira’. Maybe I do have the ego to see this thing through! lol)
5) The whole house generator that just started its weekly exercise cycle. Which is, in and of itself, pretty cool. I mean, of the things in life that we study, exercise or otherwise expend time or money in order to acquire, most are pretty non-noticeable. Either the new thing is immediately incorporated into daily life (adding and subtracting, driving a stick shift, reading and digging a hole with a shovel) and therefore no longer special or it sits in the back of the closet in our heads (bread makers, ice skates and an enthusiasm for swimming) and fades into semi-nonexistence. Not so our whole house generator. Every Sunday morning, at 8:00 am (Eastern Standard Time) it roars into life and I feel good about our investment. Hey, that totally sounds like some kind of lesson of life or something. Anyone? I know, I’ll leave Item Six blank.
6) Anyone care to express ‘The Lesson of the Whole House Generator’ heres your opportunity.
“…if you test something regularly that is meant to help you out in an emergency, you won’t be unpleasantly surprised when said emergency comes and the something doesn’t work.”
Thank you, Mimi!
7) ‘Almira’. Work continues. Near the end of the first ‘excessive passive voice scrubbing’. Not that there’s anything wrong with passive voice. But, after this is done, I believe I need to write each chapter over again as if it were a Six Sentence Story. I was talking to Phyllis about the job of braider tender, which is the job Almira Ristani has when we first meet her. She works in a textile mill. In any event, I mentioned it to Phyllis because my writing was based on experience. I had a job as a braider tender, back, way back in the day. Hey! Know how I put an excerpt into my TToT last week? It really helped me see it differently. Lets continue the soon-to-be-a-feature of my TToT, ‘the Almira Excerpt of the Week’. in Item 9
8) THIS SPACE AVAILABLE
9) something, something is being preempted so that we can bring you this excerpt:
The noon whistle cut through the roar of the braiding machines that filled the 3rd floor of Building 6 of Everett Mill. There were 2 Braider Tenders for each row of machines. All the braider tenders were women. Smaller hands and greater manual dexterity being more necessary than upper body strength. Reaching in among the spinning and whirling machine parts, belts and pulleys, they replaced empty spools and tied broken threads. Only the Floor Supervisor had the ability, (and the authority), to slow down or stop the machinery. Almira and the other women moved up and down their rows as connected to the machinery as the bobbins and carriers.
The evenings of her first three weeks working at the mill, Almira’s hands and fingers were knots of fear-stressed muscle and tendons. Being trained to tend the braiding machines required, well, it required tending the braiding machines.
Almira’s first steps down the narrow space between rows of braiders were within a millimeter of dead-center, as she followed Mrs. Ypres, who trained all new Braider Tenders. Almira watched as the woman took a full bobbin from a cart, and standing in front of a braiding machine still running at full speed, tied it to an early depleted spool, cut and pulled it to throw in the cart with the other empty cylinders. She made it look simple. What she could not make it look was safe. Speaking directly into the older woman’s ear, Almira asked her if it wouldn’t be easier and safer to turn the machine off first. Without ever taking her eyes off the machinery, Mrs. Ypres shook her head and said, ‘No’.
10) Secret Rule 1.3 (“…completing Item 9 is something to be thankful for, therefore can totally serve as Number 10!” (ibid. op. cit. of course))
vid
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Very good TToT.
Amen to #5.
I can’t wait to read Almira once it has gone through final edit! I guess for now, I’ll have to be satisfied with the “tease” excerpts, lol
“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”
No truer words were spoken. Good reminder for us all.
Always good TToTs here. :) Say, what’s with the generator doing a weekly cycle precisely at 8am on a Sunday? Just curious. Do YOU test it? Or does the town designate a “non-electrical” hour for contemplation to make the generator come on? Hehe.
And of course, nicely done making headway with Almira. Where does the “Ypres” name come from? It looks like a combo of something “Yves” and something French. Haha.
And “ego” is a funny thing. I at once am trying to diminish it while trying to embrace it all in the name of enlightenment. But enlightenment is fleeting, as is the idea of dis-attaching from ego. And so the saga continues.
Part of it’s programming. It turns itself on once a week and you know what rogers machines can be! lol (The idea of the whole house generator is that it is wired into the electrical system. If it detects an interruption of the electricity coming into the house (from the utility) it automatically turns on and supplies the house. When it detects that the power ‘from the street’ has returned, it shuts itself off. Be kinda boring to spend weeks, if not months, waiting for something to happen and so, once a week it exercises. (No! Serially, the manual refers to it as ‘exercise’. The Borg will feel right at home here…lol)
Mrs Ypres! A walk-on. Only that scene.
The actual historical story of Lawrence Massachusetts is one of immigrants. Mostly European, but on the order of more than 50% of the population, at the time of the ‘Bread and Roses Strike’. Very interesting period in history.
In the nothing new under the sun category: the strike was totally unanticipated by the owners of the mills. They were sure that given half of the workers were from different European countries and… and most of them were women, well, they’d never get themselves organized. Totally wrong. But the part that makes you think, ‘ayiiee’: once the strike was suppressed and production returned to the mills, the local businessmen organized a parade: “America First’ kind of thing… just to remind everyone that the only reason the mills were shut down was because of foreign anarchists, trouble makers and people that don’t really appreciate what they’re given.
So thats why Almira (the future Almira Gulch) was so concerned with the rights of the working poor, both in the industrial East and the rural west.
Now that I think of it…. another interesting element. The workers were from countries in which workers were relatively more organized than here. So as soon as the strike got under way, the workers put their kids on trains to go like with relatives and sympathetic workers in other states. The mill owners went nuts. They were counting on the children being leverage. So they did the only reasonable thing, sent the militia to the train stations…
I didn’t question at all the (mis-) attribution. Whoever said it, it rings true.
I have the same question about the generator. I guess I never realized that people use them on a regular basis, as opposed to just whenever the power goes out.
Actually, while it has the capacity to ‘run the house’ it is, in fact, meant to provide power when the utility is down. Around here it (electricity) has been quite un-reliable. Last year we spent at least four weeks without power (4 days to a week at a time). A lot has to do with the trees over hanging the power lines. We live in a town without a municipal water system. When the power is off so is the water (and other ….essential household systems) lol
“knots of fear-stressed muscle and tendons” got me in the ohs! Like your concise style.
thank you, Lisa
I’m glad you have that generator, sounds like a wise investment.
The things in the back of your mind’s closet are hitting so cloae to mine! Mine is much more cluttered w junk haha and probably some useful stuff too?
“This space available” one suggestion:
Our country is not in a world war? Not right now anyway? It’s bad but could always be worse. As kuch adms qe hate to focus on the worse, the worse may make us more thankful???
Hey, Joy!
Yeah, peace of mind, if nothing else. It’s there.
Surely ain’t no shortage of alternative scenario-induced gratitude opportunities in the world today, no?
It is very nice to hear the purr of the generator engine – like any good Sunday drive, one has to warm the car first.
I agree!
Life lesson — if you test something regularly that is meant to help you out in an emergency, you won’t be unpleasantly surprised when said emergency comes and the something doesn’t work.
‘cellent! Will post.
Thanks
so happy for the generator. a good TToT.
:-)
Thank you, Wendy
‘Sophisticated insight by proxy’ made my day! Enjoyed reading your TToT. Have a great week!
You too, V
Heraclitus of Ephesus statement about change and always planning for and being ready for change is a tiring aspect of life, and the older I get the more it seems that way, and yet it is still necessary.
Making sure your whole house generator works on a regular basis sounds like an excellent idea. I’m guessing that is your generator in the first photo.
A braider tender – what an interesting job! Funny how our own experiences work their way into our writings. Almira’s first three weeks of work sound so painful.
It is nice to read your TToT post each week, because I invariably learn something new.
(imo) it is of primary importance to be aware of, as opposed to necessarily doing… the fact of novelty is way more powerful than any particular new thing (in our lives).
Yep, part of the hardware to turn itself on… leaving it to sit for months on end, not such a good thing.
err… interesting perhaps if you’re planning to incorporate the experience in a late life novel. lol And there was no way I would have believed you. Alas, most jobs that are ‘serving the machine’ are rarely interesting beyond the first week. (Actually, in real life, it wasn’t so much the physical aches and pains in the first weeks, it was the dreams of being among the machines that filled my nights…. now that I think of it, it was a third shift. even better to build a normal life upon)
lol
Thank you, Pat… same here.