Injustice

 People wonder sometimes if I really mean what I say about injustice in Michigan.  Michigan is the land of injustice.  Criminals walk away free, allowed to continue with their crimes.  Today was set a precedent that it was acceptable for a police chief to ADMIT he misused the law enforcement information network (LEIN) on someone he didn't know, without a valid reason.  Before today, people were FIRED for looking their own family members up, which is also improper LEIN use.  But today a jury decided it is perfectly acceptable.

To say I'm sick is an understatement.

So let me talk about injustice in Michigan.  Here's what it looks like:

Aaron was a classmate of mine in high school.  He had an absolutely amazing ability to imitate SNL, and some of my fondest memories of high school are of sitting next to him in math class on Monday mornings as he relived the best skits.  Somehow I always ended up in math class with him and ended up sitting next to him despite assigned seats.  At the time of his death he was working on some pop art/comic/ mix of crazy.  I found it after his death, and it took me back to high school math class.  Once in a while I still go look at it at Internet Archive, just to remember his unique sense of humor...

Lots of stories later, graduation, then I remember the last time I saw him at the grocery store in Richmond, ca 1997.  Fast forward to 2006, and a mutual friend from high school (best man at my wedding), who had NO idea Aaron and I had been friends in high school, said that he'd mentioned  my name to Aaron.  By then I had a husband and two kids who kept me busy, but I finally was able to type an email to him as our mutual friend's wedding came closer.  Aaron was supposed to be best man.

The morning I wrote my email, Aaron was sitting at a traffic light, waiting for it to turn so he could turn left and go to work.  A 17 year old kid, who was on drugs and drunk, on a suspended license, drove into his car at over 70 MPH.  Aaron's car started on fire.....  Look it up.  The article is still online.

The kid who did that, whose dad was in for dealing meth at the time, got 4 years of schooling on the state dime, and got to walk away. 

I still miss my friend.

EDIT 8/16/2024:  Looking up the person responsible today, I discovered he died suddenly on July 16, 2024 at the age of 34, leaving 6 children.  Every so often I used to check and see if he was out or in jail.   I don't need to anymore.

I'm a (Sheaffer) girl...

 Anyone else remember the song Barbie Girl by Aqua?  (There I go, dating myself.)  I can't stand the song.  That's what makes it so funny it's in my head right now.

Anyone remember Sheaffer Pen Company of Fort Madison, Iowa?

I'm a Sheaffer girl... in a Sheaffer world.....

My first fountain pen was a Sheaffer No Nonsense, bought at M&R Drugs.  I still remember that day.  I was 12, it was 1987, and I still don't know why I knew what a fountain pen was or why I wanted one.  I had a choice of two -- red or green translucent, and I chose red.  I also remember there being jars of ink, but I didn't bring one home.  Wish I had, now.

That pen didn't survive the move to Richmond 4 years later.  I'm not sure why.   Neither did my two No Nonsense ballpoints, pale yellow and the Christmas one.   But by then, I had gotten a Parker Vector calligraphy set from Arbor Drugs.  Those were the days when little towns had real drug stores where all sorts of things could be purchased without needing to travel to large centers.  

In 1996, I  remember drooling over the ads for the Christmas pen Sheaffer put out.  That was way too expensive for my pocketbook at that point.  And then..... nothing.  No more pen ads.  I was in college and busy and no longer came across fountain pens anywhere.

When my grandpa died in 2012, I had a little break from the dying people in my family.  I started writing again and listening to music, and memories of the fountain pen came back to me.  For fun I started looking them up just to see if they still existed, and I found that there was a world beyond my dreams... 

Not long after I rediscovered there were still fountain pens, I found a pen that reminded me of that first red one.  But the memories of the first one haunted me... but what was it?  A lot of leg work and hours and I found something similar thanks to PenHero.  I was sure that the picture he had up wasn't quite right for what I remembered.  However, it gave me a place to start and I haunted used pens until I found it.....

Exactly as I remembered.  It even had a dried cartridge of Sheaffer Jet Black in it.

And then the rabbit hole appeared, as everyone knows in the sewing machine world.  At least these are smaller than sewing machines.  I am NOT trying to collect all the colors.  (I am NOT going to collect all the colors....I am not going to.... oh, that Bicentennial No Nonsense looks cool... )  Some of those have fine nibs, which I had no idea they came with.  And the blue one is the latest variant of the No Nonsense, meaning ca 2000.  That one has an italic nib.

I just recently added the two ballpoints, in memory of the Christmas ballpoint No Nonsense and the pale yellow one I wish I still had (it had the lanyard, not the clip.)

This is my whole Sheaffer family of pens.  

Top Row, L to R:  2 Sheaffer Imperial II Deluxe, Sheaffer 440, Sheaffer Stylist 444, Sheaffer Craftsman (non-working but cool), Sheaffer Vailiant Touchdown, Sheaffer Cartridge pen early 1960s.  

Bottom Row: 9 No Nonsense fountain pens, 2 No Nonsense ballpoints, and the rest are Sheaffer cartridge pens (aka unofficially "school" pens).  

 

The red and black No Nonsense pens belong to this kit:

Parker makes good pens, and I'm very fond of my Edisons .... but I keep coming back to my Sheaffers.

House drama, part 2 -- success

 My life lately seems to feel like it is one failure after another, which is anything but the truth.  Life can be like that.  One is on a beautiful road, but you only see the potholes which threaten to eat your tires.

That said, it has been long enough I can post about this success.  I'm going right to the best picture first:

Look at that!!!  I don't think it has ever looked that nice, not in the 23+ years I have lived here.  It was a process.  For anyone who comes across this and wants to know what I did, here are the gory details:

Mix peroxide and baking soda into a paste.  I wish I had learned this years ago.  It works well to take iron off of tile and tub.  You just use your hand and fingers to rub it.  No other tools necessary, and it washes off with water.  I will say, after a while you have to just walk away.  I don't know if the peroxide continues to work or if the brain holds the old memory.  When I think it doesn't look like it's working, I walk away for an hour and come back.  Peroxide and baking soda got me to this point below.  Did I mention that there was no finish left on the tub in places?

So I slept on it.  Something triggered in my memory, and I mixed up some iron out and made my own spray.  If you do that, WAIT to put in in the spray bottle until it is done foaming.  I killed a spray bottle by not waiting.  Another word of warning here: DO NOT MIX ANYTHING WITH IRON OUT.  I sprayed and walked away a few times.  

Once that was finished, then it was time for Porc-a-fix.  If one is a perfectionist, trying to match color is the difficult step.  I didn't care enough to try harder, because seriously, a 1976 bathtub is going to be hard to match.  I suppose had I really wanted to get creative, I could have picked another color and made polka dots.   Husband and I tag-teamed the patching.  He'd see a spot I missed.  I found one he missed.  I decided that since there was no finish at all around the drain I was just going to paint it like crazy.  

After the Porc-a-fix was set, then we used a tile and grout sealer (smallest bottle I could get from Home Depot) to seal it.  Bill did that part.  Two coats, and water actually *beads* now.  That has never happened in 23 years.  

It's not a new bathroom, but it sure looks better.  I hope this inspires someone.
   

Growing up in Richmond

 I have been going through my mom's things, cleaning things out because my dad can't and won't try.  While going through some of the stuff that miraculously survived my half sister and her two -- ahem! -- kids, I have found a treasure trove of high school memorabilia from my mom's times at RHS from 1962-1965.  The class prophesy, which has my mom 10 years later married to Alfred E. Newman and working like MAD on their March edition.  You know, the good stuff.  Like her pins, the GAA letter and certificate, and reading all the stuff people wrote in her yearbook.

Is this the point where I mention that only ONE of her classmates finally commented on her death on "Memories of Growing up in Richmond Michigan" facebook page?  And only after I posted through my mom's account in the thread discussing the members of 1965 who had died.

Yup.  Good Old Richmond, Michigan.  You can spend your whole life there, and generations of your family as well, and, "Who are you?"

As Emily Dickenson put it so eloquently, in what I call "The RHS poem":

I'm Nobody, who are you? 

Are you -- Nobody -- too? 

Then there's a pair of us -- don't tell! 

They'd banish us, you know.

Here's a picture of nobody.  My mom is in the last row, second from far right

House Drama for a change

 So, for the couple of people who might actually check this out... I know it's been a while.   More drama than I'm ready to discuss.  (TLDR, my mom died, battle and court case with their adopted grandkids with State of Michigan, dealing with Dad who has dementia, and Mom did everything until she literally dropped dead walking into the house.)

Back to the house of a thousand stories.....

The biggest gripe I have had over the years are the people who say, always with that snide tone, "Oh, it's so nice your husband makes enough money so you don't need to work."

Well, they say a picture is worth a thousand words.  Here are two thousand:

This, dear reader, is our bathtub.  Original to the house, I might add, so from 1976.  Yes, I have been working on the iron stains (there is no finish left in part of the tub), but if you look closer you will see the chips in the porcelain.  I spared you several others.  We have patched some of them for years.  This poor beast isn't getting better with age, but replacement isn't in the near future.

There is white tile around the tub (of course, with all the iron in the water) which I'm also working on.  I'm trying to get the tile clean so we can actually seal it.  😏

In case you wondered, the floor in the bathroom is peel-and-stick tile.  When we had to redo it a few years ago, we found remains of the burgundy carpeting that was original.  Did I mention our house was built in 1976?

This is how we have made it on his salary for so long.  Cheap furniture.  I've re-upholstered, used sheets for furniture covers, and mended and patched until I am sick of doing so.  We still have original carpet in the house, too.   I had to fight for insulation and got it when I proved the wind was blowing through the house.

And now I'm learning how to try to save a dead bathtub.  

Useful hint, which I wish someone had told me about sooner -- making a paste with baking soda and peroxide is the best iron remover.  Unfortunately, the finish was already off the tub when we bought the house.

The Stupid Things I Save...

While clearing out some files tonight, I found this. I forgot I wrote it, much less saved it. I never received a reply. Of course not. Those who write about "rural" issues and live in large cities prefer to not discuss matters with those who live "in ground zero," if you will pardon the phrase.

Three years have gone by.  I have only one correction to make.  We are now "Detroit" up in Macomb County, and medical marijuana is what is driving up the housing market.  Those from the city are buying up housing and setting LARGE operations then financially destroying the rural townships who have ordinances regulating operations.  This is Michigan, after all.   Take your beating, residents, because that's what the Michigan state government is for, to destroy its residents.

That said, here's a laugh for everyone:

In your article “Getting Real about Rural America”, you wrote, “I’m sure that some rural readers will be angered by everything I’ve just said, seeing it as typical big-city condescension. But that’s neither my intention nor the point. I’m simply trying to get real. We can’t help rural America without understanding that the role it used to play in our nation is being undermined by powerful economic forces that nobody knows how to stop.”

Yes, I am angry; No, not at you. Perhaps I am more tired and annoyed than angry. I live in Southeast Michigan, an area that constantly is tossed in with Detroit though it is not Detroit yet. While health care, child care and infrastructure are problems that we all can agree exist, the real issues facing the rural areas here are greedy real estate moguls, the change of agriculture to agri-business, and the mafia. More localized are the natural gas issues and increasing crime as the gangs travel north.

I am 43 years old. I do not want to bombard you with my experiences, because in my experience those who write for newspapers are only interested in something that gets him or her 5 minutes of glory, not actually dealing with the issues at hand. No one wants to talk about the “immigrant families” who five and six generations down still have to work twice as hard as others to get an education. No one wants to talk about how small farmers have been destroyed so that a few could take over that which Thomas Jefferson lauded as the basis of freedom. No one wants to talk about how one person’s reality is so very different from another’s. If you care to read about some of my experiences, you will find them here: 

Don’t take my word for it; come and see for yourself. However, NO ONE wants to come up here and see. Half the battle of fighting stereotypes is to come and see, and it is easier for Michigan if no one notices what has been going on for generations. Should you come to Michigan to see, look me up and I’ll show you the forgotten areas and what life is really like for some of us Americans.

Elvis has left the building.... Maybe

If you go back in time on this blog,  There is a post about something called "Triangle Island."  Triangle Island was a quilt along run by Captain Dick of Treadle On, when Treadle On was still Treadle On.

Two posts are here http://claraspet.blogspot.com/2009/11/triangle-island.html  and http://claraspet.blogspot.com/2011/02/im-off-island.html

(Great Howe, the link to the TO site in the post still works!!!)

Then there was the mystery quilt, Survivor - Rectangle Island from 2009.  For that one, you will have to visit Internet Archive. 

But I'm sorry to report, folks, Elvis has left the building.... maybe. 

The man, the mystery, the slightly goofy Captain Dick hasn't been around much due to advancing age.  Recently, he made a comeback until the Bobbits forced him into a semi-exile.  Then came the injury with a table saw -- and his internet presence is gone now.  All that remains are the memories of the good times and rumors of the Evil Twin -- not the one that looks like Tom Selleck -- and dremls -- dragons --- bears -- remember Romance in the Afternoon (aka Lust in the Rust)?   The soap opera of sewing machines.... that went where no one dared go.  

But folks, this isn't like when I was 15 and had to walk away from my cats and home, go live in town and work in a nursing home kitchen.  (Yes, at 15.)  Treadleonia -- the mythical land some want to forget -- can still live on in us.   Shame on us, those of us left, if we let Olde Treadleonia die.

Like Vincent Starrett wrote in his poem 221B: 

Here dwell together still two men of note

Who never lived and so can never die:

How very near they seem, yet how remote

That age before the world went all awry.

But still the game’s afoot for those with ears

Attuned to catch the distant view-halloo:

England is England yet, for all our fears–

Only those things the heart believes are true.

A yellow fog swirls past the window-pane

As night descends upon this fabled street:

A lonely hansom splashes through the rain,

The ghostly gas lamps fail at twenty feet.

Here, though the world explode, these two survive,

And it is always eighteen ninety-five.

Olde Treadleonia is still west of Inspiration and north of Reality.  It never existed and so cannot die.

LONG LIVE TREADLEONIA!!!!!

Links to the old days:

https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.dickwightman.com

https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.treadleon.net

Note 1:  I wrote a research paper on Sherlock Holmes in 1994.  Pre-internet days meant I had to pay research services because all my newspaper articles were from the 1910s-20s.  There is serious research out there about a man who never lived.

Note 2: Bobbits.  In the spirit of Captain Dick, I created them while recording the latest saga..... maybe I'll get brave and post it some day.  I will mention that I moonlight as a writer for The Underground Richmond Press News (URP News, cf. Foxtrot strip August 6, 1997.)

Note 3:  I've still got it.  Treadleonia AND Sherlock Holmes AND Foxtrot references in one post.  That one's for you, Bill Amend.