On Loss, Regret, and Being Grateful

A year ago in June I learned of the passing of one of my chemistry professors in January, a brilliant organic chemist.  His classes were so well-taught I still have the notebooks from 1996.  I still contend that his notes were the best textbook I have ever had.  He would come into class with a 3" x 5" note card with a few lines written on it, pull it out of his pocket, look at it, and back into the pocket the card would go, never to be seen again.  This is the professor who taught me to take notes in color, who once mathematically proved there is such a thing as a no-brainer.  

Just this past week, I learned of the death of another of my chemistry professors.  This one I didn't care for as much, but I liked him as an individual.  His office was across from my research lab, and I grew to appreciate him though I had a hard time understanding his lectures.  He died three weeks after I learned of my organic chem professor's death.  This professor's death hit me rather hard.   Perhaps it was because of the other recent deaths in my family.  Perhaps it was because it was a year before I heard.  Perhaps the fact he was on hospice with the same group as my aunt didn't help, either.  

I realize it has been twenty-one years since I graduated with a BS in Chemistry, but it still hit hard to hear of their deaths.  It also brought to mind an event from some twenty-two years ago.  I was in my physical chemistry professor's office trying to understand something and failing miserably, and in frustration I muttered, "I'm just too dumb to understand this."  I received a several minute lecture from him about how I was only too tired, not dumb, and I shouldn't have to work so hard while a student.  I still remember that tirade today, and it still inspires me today.  Yet I neither thanked him nor told him how that speech has followed me through some dark times.  Until now.  This past week, I wrote to him and thanked him for that speech all those years ago.  Shock of shocks he remembered me, called me an "excellent student", and reiterated that he still felt the same as he did back then.  

Do not wait to tell someone how much they mean to you, or thank someone who has influenced you in your life.  You may not get the chance.

Oakland University's motto is "Seguir virtute e canoscenza", 'seek virtue and knowledge'.  It is from Dante's Inferno.  No matter the degree, it is an apt motto for higher education.  Life will throw many obstacles in one's way.  I could write a book about mine, about those individuals, even at Oakland University, who told me I "wouldn't be hireable".  Today, twenty-one years later, I use my degree every day.  I use classes I never thought I would use, which were not related to my degree.   I am not paid one red cent for using my degree, but I have retained my honor.  In my research in my garden, I answer to myself and not a corporation.  I have no reason to lie to myself.  I also continue to seek knowledge.  I have continued to read, my current book being Crime and Punishment until John Coykendall's book Preserving Our Roots: My Journey to Save Seeds and Stories is released this fall.   Higher education isn't about how much money one makes;  It is about improving oneself.   And honestly, I do not know if I would be where I am today, if a physical chemistry distinguished professor hadn't snapped when I called myself dumb.  

Crazy House part 1

In order to forget about the impending demise of several of my sewing machines, I am focusing on my crazy kitchen.  As a little background, I live in a 1976 stick-built trailer with hurricane strapping.  I call it a "trailer" after my neighbor's run-in with the mortgage company who refused to believe it was a real house because it was "too small" to be considered a house.  I was called in to attest to the structure and ended up offering to contact the nephew of the builder before the company would believe me.  Yes, really, a thousand square foot -- 1,000 sq ft -- house is automatically considered to be a trailer by some mortgage companies.  Even my 1460 sq ft house (including the garage which was turned into a room) is considered a trailer on a crawlspace.  Sheesh.

So when Mr. C bought this place in 1999 (with me failing to talk him out of it),  he got a house that he was excited about because "it didn't need any work."  I really shouldn't harass him about saying that, but you really had to be there to see him say it.  I still laugh when I think of how excited he was.  (In interest of full disclosure, the other houses in his price range were worse, with one in particular having 1940s wiring hanging out of the walls in the closets.)

This is what he got:

~over $6,000 (in 2001 money) for a roof (half of roof was rotten with 3 layers of shingles to stop the leaks and not enough roof vents or ventilation);

~ 3 types of siding that leaked in the Fall 2001 winds and rainstorm, and soaked all the drywall on the south wall around the windows;

~ "newer" windows that were neither properly put in nor square, which the siding guys discovered when the siding wouldn't line up right;

~a big gaping hole in the foundation where someone "installed" air conditioning by using a sledge hammer (and yes, the house inspector missed that), and the joist there not only not supported but rotted from inside water damage;

~indoor/outdoor carpet glued to the kitchen and laundry room floors (see water damage);

~washer and dryer and stove and fridge sitting on said joist with no support and rotted from water damage;

~a front door that wouldn't keep the snow out (not square, held by two nails);

~no insulation in most of the outside walls, and only Celotex with holes on it under the siding.  The story is that a tornado came through and damaged the house right after it was built.

This is only a partial list.  No one can say we haven't learned about fixing others' mistakes.  (Main beam, anyone? Or the never-ending mice issues? The alcohol bottle collection under the house?)  We've learned that lesson to the tune of $40,000, and we're not done yet. 

So here we are, 20 years later, having lived with stuff most people never would (like original carpeting), and now we can do some more much-needed work because he doesn't want to move after the "Event."  Now it is time for the kitchen and laundry room to be dealt with.  That story will be the next post.  

More Natural Gas

In my previous post, I wrote this:

However, after almost 19 years of living in the shadow of the natural gas industry, and after the night of August 10, 2016, downplaying the fear is no longer an option.  Either I leave and get far away, or I stay and fight.  If I stay and remain silent, then I lose all rights to redress when something happens.  (Not "if" something happens, "when.") 

"When" became a reality on January 30, 2019.

That fire was approximately 1500 ft from my house, and the explosion from the second vent stack lighting on fire damaged the picture window (yes, really, this one), put cracks in the drywall, and oh, the structural inspector found a cracked joist.  We are working with Consumers to get things fixed, though at first they tried to pawn us off on our insurance company.  Consumers wants things fixed sooner than can be, as this is not the weather to replace a window in.  Besides that, it is difficult to find someone to do the job, as there is a shortage of contractors, etc.  (God help you if you need a plumber, as we found out the hard way!)  

Since this incident, which affected the entire state of Michigan, multiple people have expressed to me the hope that Consumers would buy us out.  (Most of these people don't know about the new station behind us, courtesy Bluewater Gas aka WEC Energy.)  Imagine their surprise when I explain we live what is considered a "safe distance" from the plant, and they will not buy us out.  Natural gas wells only have to be off a residence about 300 ft, and in Washington Township, there are houses that sit on top of the wells, and yes, folks, that is considered safe.

Lesson #1 about the Natural Gas Industry :  If you live around natural gas, you are expendable.

Lesson #2 about the Natural Gas Industry : If you find politicians willing to help you, support them.  They are extremely rare.

I mentioned in an earlier post about the Gas War revving up again.  Eleven days before January 30th, I wrote and sent a letter to my representative and both senators in Congress about the concerns with Bluewater Gas.  The gist of it was my findings that twice Bluewater built new places, and within 5-6 years both suffered major incidents.  They are too quick to throw a place up and then *BOOM* --something happens.  Both times, it was relatively simple causes involving cut corners, if you catch my drift.

So I sent my letters off to one Republican and two Democrats, and waited.  I thought I knew who would answer and who wouldn't -- and I was utterly and completely wrong.  Representative Mitchell, to this point, is the only one who has called back and has offered any kind of support.   Neither Senator Stabenow or Senator Peters can be bothered, apparently.  I suppose I should have seen that coming after Kelo vs. City of New London, Connecticut, 2005 (US Supreme Court).   Basically, anything deemed "public good" trumps homeowner rights.  That is not exactly the way the case reads, but that is what it has become.  (Thank you, Justices Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer.  I can only hope that one day your ruling comes home to roost in your backyards.)

This is where things stand right now.  Still gone 4 days a week; Still dealing with my aunt and other issues.  Since the explosion my wonderful Mr. Claraspet is finally on board for fixing up and redoing the kitchen (yes, you will all get treated to my crazy kitchen with the 1976 cupboards.)  Still working on finding a few more machines homes.  Still hoping I will have a garden this year.  Still hoping that the Bluewater nightmare goes away.  As Padre Pio used to say, "Pray, hope, and don't worry."  I am trying.
   

Defending the important things...

My backyard view, December 28, 2017

There is a story about the karate master, Matsumura Sokon, who was challenged once and won a match simply by looking at his opponent.  It wasn't that the opponent had no skill;  Matsumura himself acknowledged that he might easily have lost the match to the skilled engraver, who continued to argue that Matsumura was the greater.  Matsumura explained it this way to his opponent:  “But I know this: you were determined to win and I was just as determined to die if I lost. That was the difference between us.”  (Karate-do, My way of Life by Gichin Funakoshi)

Those words come back to me now as I face another challenge in my life.  "You were determined to win and I was just as determined to die if I lost."  I recall the words one of my sensei used in class one night, the saying of the samurai, who each day would say, "Today is a good day to die."  It wasn't that they were suicidal, as our society assumes immediately.  It meant that if they should go into battle they would fight as if each battle was to the death.  In other words, one was fighting to win, the other was fighting for his life.

Today is a good day to die.  

Gas War 2018 has begun.  It isn't my old friends across the road this time, but the one that blew up 3 miles south of us 4 years ago along the Vector Pipeline (just to mention one incident.)  It hit our house hard, from 3 miles away.  It cracked plaster next door (we don't have plaster).  Now this company wants to build a compressor station 1/2 mile south of my house.  Already the downplaying begins:  "oh, it only blew up because of the pipeline getting hit a few days before..."  "oh, it was only compressed air, not gas...."  It is funny to me how a bunch of people, who have never done a FOIA request on an incident involving natural gas, know so much about the safety of gas.  

Fear has that effect on people.  When we are afraid, we downplay the seriousness of whatever it is so that we feel like we are in control of the fear.  We all do it at times.  I'm guilty of it myself, and I've done it with some pretty stupid and silly things (yoko geri -- side kick -- still gets me.) However, after almost 19 years of living in the shadow of the natural gas industry, and after the night of August 10, 2016, downplaying the fear is no longer an option.  Either I leave and get far away, or I stay and fight.  If I stay and remain silent, then I lose all rights to redress when something happens.  (Not "if" something happens, "when.")  

Leaving is an option we have looked at, but forces outside of our control have pretty well taken that away from us.  (Insert rant about the housing market being destroyed, Macomb Twp and their warped politics, and side rant about agribusiness vs agriculture and who is turning Macomb County into Wayne County Junior.)  Yes, the option of leaving has been taken away when it will mean between $70,000 and $100,000 mortgage, with selling a house without a mortgage on it, for one not any better than what we have.

The fight has already begun on my end.  I will be honest.  I do not know if it is possible to stop another compressor station from going in.  (Kelo v. City of New London, perhaps?)  However, I do know this:  Said company is fighting for money; I am fighting for my home.  

Today is a good day to die.

Indian Hannah Beans 2018 Growing report

(Apologies for some of the pictures.  I did the best I could.)

  A little history... Back in 2014 I ordered some Indian Hannah beans. My son thought they sounded cool, and I wanted to get him into gardening. His interest waned pretty quickly, but they were different beans than I was used to seeing, so of course I saved seed... and promptly tucked them away and didn’t grow them the next year. At the time I was losing sunlight in my garden due to the treeline behind us, and there wasn’t any more room to spread out. When our neighbor sold us the lot next door last fall, my garden moved and grew, and so I pulled the Indian Hannah beans out during the winter. I found three variants:

The color was close enough to the original beans that at first I thought I might have variation based on soil differences. (Jacob’s Cattle bean appears to lose its white mottling in some soils. When we grew it on the farm in heavy clay, it turned solid red as did some other white and red spotted beans.) I went back and read the listing from the SSE Yearbook, and the original source of the seed was listed as Eastern Nature Conservancy (Ea4), which is, of course, out of business. Thanks to Internet Archive, I was able to find their website as it was years ago, and in the listing for this bean it mentioned "Not completely stabilized."  

Armed with that info (and more space), I planted it this year to see what happened. (Spoiler alert -- if you have ever seen Russ Crow’s A Bean Collector’s Window website, you know where this is going. If you haven’t seen it, it’s awesome.  You'll never look at beans the same way again.)

I planted Type 1 (T1) and Type 2 (T2) in my back garden (the old one, losing the sun), and the “looks like original” (hereafter "Original") seed went up front in the new garden. T1 and T2 were in first and sprouted quickly, then slowed down in growth. The beans from both T1 and T2 were more of a Roma-style pod, both about 5”-6” in length. T1 tasted good as a green bean. T2 was not so good-tasting, and some pods had red streaking like a horticultural bean. Both plants had white flowers that turned cream-colored as they died.

"Original" took longer to sprout, but once they were up they grew quickly. They were a later bean than both T1 and T2, which is consistent with what I remember about the first time I grew them. "Original", however, had both white flowers and white flowers with pink blush. Pods were mixed, with some wider (not quite like a Roma bean.) Some of the wider pods had a horticultural bean marking (red streaks).

As for the beans....

  T1 produced pretty consistent beans of markings mottled with white, though there is color variation between tan and a more greyish brown. Some large, some smaller, some more cutshort than others. I suppose I could separate these into even more different types, but I’d go out of my flaming mind doing so. It was hard enough for me to separate the others with the light in my house. (Thank you, CNV.)

Type 2 gave 5 different types. Clockwise from bottom left: light tan with reddish-brown markings, dark tan with reddish-brown markings, dark and light tan with reddish markings and small patches of white, light tank with large patch of white, and medium tan and reddish markings with tiny splotch of white.

As for "Original".... hold your hat and enjoy the ride!

I separated 5 types out of "Original" (or 8, depending on how you look at it):

~those most like I started with

~ those patterned with white, of which there were 3 types: dark brown (one dark brown was half tan, another was solid brown with tan markings), tan with brownish markings, and greyish brown with brownish markings.

~ slightly larger and more rounded version of the original.

~Fawn-colored (or Gurnsey-colored, for those of us cow-minded) with no markings (one bean pod supplied beans with a white spot)

~And the biggest surprise of all -- purple and purplish! All the “solid” purple are in this picture, the patterned beans are purple-tinted.

So, are all of these from crossing, sports, or what? I’d have to say these are outcrosses.

In the first grow out of beans, where I had T1, T2, and “most like originals”, I know that any outcrossing wasn’t from my garden. In fact, Russ Crow on his site, in his “Outcrosses” page, shows similar beans to T1 and T2 (No Working Title - 40 and 43) . He had received Chocolate from the same source I received Indian Hannah from, around the same time.

I went through my records of what I grew that year for beans. Good records are a must when growing beans, and mine could be better, believe me, but in 2014 I grew a test group of Navy beans (from the Armada elevator), Lafayette, Indian Hannah, Odawa Indian, Blue Jay, and Great Lakes Special. All I can suspect is that the purple variant comes from Blue Jay; However, I had Blue Jay caged, trying to protect it from the critters that liked it so well they ate them all up on me! How that cross happened is beyond me, but I there isn’t another purplish blue bean which I have grown.  (On a side note, I grew out the rest of my original Great Lakes Special, and got a few dark purplish blue beans out of them.)

So where do I go from here? Since receiving these beans, Baker Creek has come up with the “true” Indian Hannah bean, which comes from William Woys Weaver’s collection (his grandfather collected it from the owners of the property that Hannah lived on).  So which bean is the bean?  Well, I'm not sure Eastern Nature Conservancy had it, especially with the "not completely stabilized" note from the defunct website.  That said, anything is possible (if you know the story of the "Unknown Pea of Washington Parish", you know what I mean.)

So where do I go from here?  Well, I rather like the small, cutshort, tan-marked, white, spotted beans (4 pictures above.) Then there are the purple ones. I’m curious to see what the solid purple give me if grown out. What fun is life if not some surprises thrown in?  Might be fun to grow some of them out, just to see what shows up.  We'll see.  That said, I will be carefully selecting any Indian Hannah (Ea4) I grow in order to try to settle down the variation.

edit on 25 November 2018:  I looked up some of the beans available from Eastern Nature Conservancy, and found that some of the markings/beans resemble Kahnawake Pole #2.  http://www.annapolisseeds.com/product-p/142.htm 

A Year Ago Today

     A year ago today, we walked out of the vet with Danny and got into the truck.  WWJ was on, and  they ran the announcement of the death of Gord Downie.  We were still in the parking lot.  I knew he had glioblastoma, but as for anyone with the disease, I had hoped he'd be the one to beat it.  My brother didn't, so many haven't, but maybe Gord... 
     In a way, though, he did beat it.  In spite of the disease, the Hip did the Man Machine Poem tour.  He got up there, and while ill, still performed a heck of a show.  My brother couldn't do a fraction  of what Gord did after the same treatment.
     I find myself thinking more about that while taking care of my aunt.  We are almost a year out, depending on how you want to mark time.  I'm there 3 days a week so my cousin can still work, because she can't do family leave act or anything like that.  We could just stick her into a facility again, but she's been nearly killed off multiple times in multiple places because she is oxygen dependent, and the supposedly trained staff doesn't pay attention to whether or not her oxygen is attached.  Awful expensive, too.
     This far in, I'm tired, sick of everything, and ticked at the world (but not my aunt.  It's not her fault.)  I don't see my family to know what is going on.   I don't get to pick the kids up from school.  I had to give up my paid job so my husband could keep his, but I can't do the work I need to do at home, because I'm not home enough.  Then I have to listen to some know-it-all tell me I can't do it.

     "Use it up, use it all up/ Don't save a thing for later."  ("Use it Up", In Violet Light by the Hip)

The things we do for love...

In Search of ..... myself? Part 3

In search of myself...Part 3... or "why I quit 'doing' genealogy."

Sometime before my grandma died in 2009, a post showed up on the old MI-Macomb list about Spallers.  I asked my grandma about them, discovered she had known them from church in Mt. Clemens, and she was able to give information to report back to the person who was stumped looking for her family.  I got chewed out by another member of the list.  "Your grandparents don't know what they are talking about.  That is only hearsay." So on and so forth.   That was the final straw for me.  I deleted everything off of Rootsweb.

Over the years as I have tried to learn more about my family, I have been chastised time and time again by so-called "real" genealogists.  Floating around out there is the wrong birth date for my great-grandma Hummel.  Grandma Hummel and Aunt Annie (whom I remember!) were born Dec 11 and Dec 27, respectively.  When the clerk came around and recorded the births, a few years after the fact, he wrote the dates down wrong (got the years correct).  My grandpa could, and my mother can testify to the trouble that Grandma H and Aunt Annie had straightening that out.  It was fixed before Grandma H died in 1973 but apparently not noted in the early records.  So when I contacted someone who had that info incorrect, I was chewed out because that was hearsay.  Really?  I have her baptism certificate.  She is my great-grandma.  "That isn't really family," I was told and I was supposed to supply some stranger, who never did explain how he was connected to my family, my great-grandma's baptism certificate.

Then I understood.

My grandparents were apprehensive about sharing information much outside of the family.  They told me stories about their grandparents, Grandpa and Grandma Rohrbeck, Grandma Hurttgam, Grandpa and Grandma Saal.  I even heard stories from my grandma about her great-grandparents, Christ and Matilda Ahrens, and even Uncle Alfred's parents and grandparents (that would be the Daus and Schuett families.)  No one -- and I mean NO ONE -- will ever tell me that I am not really related to these people.  So I never got to meet some of them here.  Whatever.  I take care of their graves, yes, even my great-great grandparents' graves are checked, as I learned from my own grandparents.  They are all family.  On July 28, 2018, four out of five of Grandpa and Grandma Saal's children were represented at a family gathering for my great-uncle's 95 birthday.  Because Grandma's aunt married Grandpa's cousin, I had double family there.  There were other parts of the family there, too.

Don't get me started about the warped sense of family in today's society.  I have known too large a family to allow myself to say that my grandparents' cousins aren't really family.

So what am I?  I don't "really" live in my township, as I was told by elected township officials.(Because I live on the border in a cheap house, I'm not really a resident.)  I am neither a Mayflower descendant nor English, nor do I have family that fought in the Civil War, War of 1812, or Revolutionary War, so I'm not "really" an American, in the same sense on not "really" living in my township.  (Yes, I have been told that, too.  Plenty of family in WWI and WWII, however, and even a KIA in WWII.)  On my father's side I am part Moravian (Czech), Irish and the mysterious "German."  I never really grew up knowing that, so is that really part of my identity?  On my mother's side, I am part French, the mysterious "German," sometimes "Prussian"  was written down, and in one case, "Pomerania" was used.  At this point, all I have left is my religion as an identity.  I feel like Philip Nolan, "The Man Without a Country."

In Part 1, I wrote: I suspect that those of Polish descent will be able to sympathize with his story in a way that I cannot, but more about that later.    

I have yet to meet Polish Americans who are lackadaisical about their identities.  There seems to remain a pride in the descendants.  They know they are Polish, and the identity is carried through the generations with the food and customs.  I assume that comes from 200 years of keeping the identity alive when the country wasn't on the maps.  I don't have that.  One great-great-grandfather became an American citizen as soon as he could, the other did not until 1918.  However, I get the "identity crisis," if you will, in A Polish Son.  I understand what drove the writer to go to Poland and search for family.  I would do the same, if I had a distinct country and identity to search.  It is a brave person who opens himself to the criticism of the so-called "real genealogists," and Leonard Kniffel gets my respect for doing so.  

So check out those books.  They're worth the read.  Anything that makes me stop and think this hard is good.  Then again, An Old Fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott makes me think this hard.  I like to think.  Even my husband read them, and he's the first one to say he doesn't read books.

I might not know what I am, but I know WHO I am.

http://claraspet.blogspot.com/2009/12/trip-down-quilt-memory-lane.html