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Fall Homecoming.

Author: December 10, 2024 0 Comments

Even when I was very little I didn’t like the ladybug nursery rhyme—the one that says, “Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home, your house is on fire and your children will burn.” That’s the variation I was most familiar with. I was told that allowing ladybugs to fly away would bring good luck, but they never seemed to need any encouragement to leave. They’d land on my hand or arm and then fly away even without the threat of family tragedy.

I was reminded of all this when, on my way to work, I passed a small cluster of ladybugs on a wall. They were too spread out to get a picture of the group, but it’s a place where I’ve seen swarms of them before. There’s a large sugar maple next to the wall. Maybe ladybugs are drawn to sugar maples because the aphids and other bugs they like to eat are drawn to sugar maples or maybe it’s just a coincidence that my parents planted a sugar maple in the front yard of the house where I spent most of my childhood and it was regularly covered with swarms of ladybugs.

Based on Google Maps that sugar maple is still there, though my parents moved out more than twenty years ago, and it hasn’t gotten a lot bigger than it was when I was young. The magnolia tree they planted a few years later is there too. I remember the first time I found ladybugs on it and their funny little larvae, and their funnier accordion-like chrysalises. The chrysalises were fastened to the tree at one end and if I tapped them with my finger they’d bounce up and down as though saying, “Get lost, I’m pupatin’ here!”

I collected some of the larvae and put them in a jar with leaves and twigs and took them to my room so I could watch them build their chrysalises. Within a few days fully grown ladybugs emerged and I felt guilty. I had to release them in the cold and I was afraid keeping them in my warm room had accelerated their development. Watching the ones on the tree, though, assured me that this was normal. Some ladybugs lay eggs in the spring or summer then the eggs hatch and they form swarms in the late fall or early winter. They don’t worry about fire because they’re used to the cold.

Here’s Google’s view of my childhood home:

Source: Google Street View

Adventures In Busing., Nature Talks.

The Love Of Dog.

Author: December 6, 2024 6 Comments

Everybody loved Teller.

Dalmatians have been described as “aloof” and “polite but reserved with strangers”. Teller never met a stranger and thought reservations were for snobby restaurants. My wife called him “the social butterfly” because he loved being in big groups of people and going around saying hello to everyone and telling them how happy they were to see him. It’s why people were happy to see him, though it helped that most of the people he was around were dog people. We had a neighbor who was indifferent to dogs. He didn’t dislike dogs but he wasn’t interested in them either. Teller would stand at the fence and stare at him and wait to be acknowledged and after a few minutes of being ignored Teller would give a disgusted snort and wander away to do other things. On the other hand when we took him to the vet’s office people in the back would literally come running when they heard Teller was in the building. He was just as happy to see them. If they had treats that was a bonus but if they just wanted to pet him and tell him what a good dog he was that made him happy. He was that way right up until the very end, which made it hard to say goodbye.

Early in October we took Teller for a routine check-up and one of the veterinary assistants greeted him with, “Hey, old man!” Because Teller was, mostly, still his funny, outgoing self, I had managed to ignore the toll the years had taken. I knew he slept a lot more. I knew he’d lost weight. He’d always been slender but as he got older he lost muscle, as most of us do, though he always had a healthy appetite. I knew getting up in the bed wasn’t as easy for him as it had been even just a few years ago. Sometimes laying down wasn’t easy for him either; arthritis splayed out his hips and going out into the yard he didn’t always run so much as bumble along. He was still a mighty pursuer of squirrels, though, and always a clown who’d go around and mark several trees and wait for me to say, “Are you finished?” before he’d give me a wry smile and stand in one spot and pee for what seemed like half an hour. I’ll always believe he did it because it made me laugh. Teller loved laughter.

He was also an intense dreamer. Most dogs twitch, shake, and even occasionally bark in their sleep. Teller, especially as he got older and his sleep got deeper, would lie on his side, usually taking up half the couch, and go at a full gallop, maybe chasing imaginary squirrels. Fortunately I’m a heavy sleeper so if he did it in the bed he rarely woke me up. When I did wake up he was right there next to me. Sometimes what woke me up was that he’d pulled all the covers off of me to build himself a nest. And his head would be on the pillow next to mine. Half my body would be cold. The other half would be warm, Teller pressed up against me.

The end was also full of surprises. Teller had a heart condition that we’d managed for years, but the last check-up revealed a tumor on one of his kidneys. If it stayed it could rupture and cause a massive hemorrhage at any time, so of course, in spite of his age, it had to go. Things seemed fine for a couple of days after that, then he started panting heavily after we’d gone to bed. My wife took him to the pet emergency clinic where he, of course, was a favorite of all the staff. And things seemed fine after that. He didn’t seem to mind wearing a canine onesie to keep him from chewing or licking his stitches. It was better than the big plastic cone of shame. When my wife took it off he had bruises on his chest that were initially diagnosed as a clotting issue that could cause internal bleeding. We were told he had a matter of days, maybe hours. That was early November. He seemed fine so we took him to a dog agility event where a couple of vets said any dog with the clotting issue would be lethargic, but Teller was his usual self, wagging his tail as he made the rounds, saying hello to everyone. After a few more days the bruises disappeared and he was still a happy dog.

As long as he was happy and able to get around everything was fine. Well, not fine, really. He refused food more and more and he spent more and more time asleep. He had to be helped off the couch, and onto the bed. As long as he was able to amble around the yard, as long as he still ate string cheese out of my hand, as long as he wagged his tail and smiled at us, we let him be. Keeping a dog in pain alive is a selfish act but it would be just as selfish to deprive Teller of one happy day, even one happy hour. And then came the day when it was obvious he wasn’t happy. Teller, named for the silent half of the magic duo Penn & Teller, told us when he was ready. From the moment my wife brought him home as a puppy, when he popped out of the pet carrier and licked my face, I knew we’d have to face this point eventually, but there was no way to know when. There was no way to know we’d be lucky enough to have him for thirteen years.

Even though I’ve dealt with it before every loss is different because every dog, every cat, and, for that matter, every person is different. There are some things I’ve learned are true in every case, though. I know this is going to hurt for a long time. I know it’s going to still hurt even after I stop looking for him, even after I see things that remind me he’s really gone, after those reminders send me into a breakdown. I know that every loss leaves a scar.

I also know that, even though I’m dwelling on the end now, it’s going to be the first thing I forget. A year from now, maybe, his last few days won’t be as clear in my mind as they are now. What I’ll remember are all the things he did that made me laugh: the time he pulled out a dog toy he’d ignored for years and destroyed it, how he’d paw at the quilt on the couch to make a cozy spot then curling up on the opposite side, how he leaned sideways to listen when my wife talked in the other room. I’ll remember how happy he made us. That’s what Teller would want. That’s what Teller deserves because he loved us.

Hail & Farewell., The Weekly Essay

Here Comes The Sun.

Author: December 3, 2024 2 Comments

A wave of bitter cold swept through, well, everywhere, apparently. I hadn’t been watching the news because I’ve been on vacation, so I’ve missed the weather forecasts. Being on vacation also meant I didn’t get dressed until well after the sun was up, and even then I could just pull on a sweatshirt and jeans. Coming back to work I have to put on a button-down shirt and jeans because there’s at least some flexibility in the office dress code. It’s better than when I was a customer service agent for the trucking industry. The dress code there required slacks, a dress shirt, and a tie so I’d at least look nice while I sat at a desk and answered the phone all day.

The cold weather outside was made even worse by the fact that the building maintenance staff turned off the heat over Thanksgiving. The person in charge of maintenance believes it’s cheaper and more efficient to turn off the heat on holidays and weekends, and since the maintenance office has a separate heating system they don’t have to come into an office that’s fifty degrees Fahrenheit—that’s ten degrees Celsius—first thing on Monday morning.

At least I feel lucky that where I am the bitter cold held off until December, with the days only now getting noticeably shorter. I left for work in the dark, after scraping flowers of frost from the windshield, and was greeted by the sun through the buildings. And then, in the evening, when I came home in the dark, I was greeted by snow.

Adventures In Busing., Quick Takes.

Conspicuous Consumption.

Author: November 30, 2024 2 Comments

 

Source: Wikipedia

I saw a kit for a gingerbread house in the store. It reminded me that I still don’t understand the point of gingerbread houses. When I was a kid I’d see them in stores, maybe in displays at the mall, and sometimes at school. Sometimes classmates made them and brought them in to show off. All that left me wondering, hey, when do we get to eat the gingerbread house? If anyone did I wasn’t around to get a piece. And I wanted a piece. I loved, and still love, gingerbread, and also ginger ale, ginger beer, ginger snaps. When it came to Gilligan’s Island I wanted to hang out with the Professor, but that’s another story. A friend of my parents who loved to throw dinner parties made homemade gingerbread, and it’s still the best I ever had. It was thick and soft, more like cake than bread, and she’d lightly drizzle it with a lemon sauce. Such intense flavors shouldn’t work together but they did; the lemon heightened the spiciness of the ginger.

Now that we’ve got a whole series that asks the question Is It Cake? a gingerbread house might seem, at best, retro—and maybe that’s part of the appeal. There’s a nostalgia factor. The history of gingerbread in Europe goes back over a thousand years; in the Middle East and beyond it goes back even further since it was brought to Europe by returning Crusaders. In the 17th century guilds controlled the production of gingerbread for most of the year, but at Christmas and Easter anyone could bake it—anyone who could afford it, anyway. Ginger was a very expensive import then, though by the 19th century it was easier to get. Charles Baudelaire sent gingerbread as a gift to friends, and recommended “English gingerbread, very thick, very black, so close that it has neither holes nor pores…”

And I also found this from The Country of Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett:

[T]he most renowned essay in cookery on the tables was a model of the old Bowden house made of durable gingerbread, with all the windows and doors in the right places, and sprigs of genuine lilac set at the front. It must have been baked in sections, in one of the last of the great brick ovens, and fastened together on the morning of the day. There was a general sigh when this fell into ruin at the feast’s end, and it was shared by a great part of the assembly, not without seriousness, and as if it were a pledge and token of loyalty. I met the maker of the gingerbread house, which had called up lively remembrances of a childish story. She had the gleaming eye of an enthusiast and a look of high ideals.
“I could just as well have made it all of frosted cake,” she said, “but ‘twouldn’t have been the right shade; the old house, as you observe, was never painted, and I concluded that plain gingerbread would represent it best. It wasn’t all I expected it would be,” she said sadly, as many an artist had said before her of his work.

It sounds wonderful but she still doesn’t answer the question, did they eat the gingerbread house?

American Graffiti.

Giving Thanks For 2024.

Author: November 28, 2024 2 Comments

This is one of my annual traditions, celebrating a time when turkeys aren’t the only thing that gets stuffed. Happy Thanksgiving to all those who celebrate it, and a very special belated happy Thanksgiving to Canadians who celebrate it before Halloween.

It has been celebrated as a federal holiday every year since 1863, when, during the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of “Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens,” to be celebrated on the last Thursday in November.
–Wikipedia

November 25th, 1864

It was even worse than last year. I know every time my family gets together we fall into certain patterns, but that never makes it easier. This time it was even worse because just getting to my parents’ house was such a pain. I thought I’d carriagepool with my younger brother and his wife, but they went up early so that fell through. Then I thought I’d beat the traffic by setting out at dawn, which was such a great idea everybody else in Richmond had it at the same time and the horses were nose to tail, stop and trot, for miles. Finally I got there a little after ten in the morning and my older sister came out already holding a glass of blackberry wine and when she hugged me I could tell it wasn’t her first one. She asked me how things were going and then didn’t wait for an answer and ran back into the house to tell everyone I was there.

I should have known I’d be walking into an argument in the foyer, the way my family is. It’s just what it was about that threw me. My kid brother had this crazy idea for a new way to cook a turkey, leaving the feathers still on and roasting it in the coals of a fire. Well, it sounded pretty stupid to me, and I wasn’t surprised to learn that the neighbors tried the same thing last year and burned down their stable. But I didn’t want to side with my father either. So I said it had been a long trip and I needed to visit the outhouse and slipped out. Well, there was a line at the outhouse: two of my nieces, three cousins, all four of my brothers, and my sister was already in there getting rid of some of that blackberry wine. So I went back inside to see what was going on.

In the parlor my mother was putting together some kind of monstrosity with dead leaves and dried berries that she said she was going to put in the middle of the table.

“Where’s the food going to go?” I asked.

“Well, we’ll move it before we eat.”

I was going to ask why she’d bother to put it in the middle of the table if she was just going to move it again but decided against having that discussion, so instead I sat down and leafed through a broadsheet that was handy.

“The other men are organizing a game,” she said. “It’s some new sport called foot-ball. You should go and join them.”

Well, she knows I’ve never been athletic, but when I protested she got put out with me and said, “It’s your Uncle Wilkes’s idea. You know you’ve always been his favorite. You really should go and do it just to please him.”

FINE.

Well, when I came back in my sister just cackled and toasted me with another glass of blackberry wine. All my mother could say was “Don’t get any blood on the carpet,” and my older brother kept telling me to stop being a sissy and just put some salve on it. Then Aunt Gerda said pinch the back of my neck and tilt my head forward and Uncle Wilkes said no, put pressure between the eyes and lean back, and then my cousins got into it so there had to be a family brawl about that. A day later and I’m still bleeding. So much for the salve. I’ll have to make an appointment with Dr. Samuel Mudd when I get back.

 Then Uncle Aloysius had to start in Daniel about supporting the Whigs and Elizabeth about Suffragettes, just trying to start an argument. Fortunately they didn’t rise to the bait.

Then I tried to head off another argument about who’d have to chaperone the kids’ table by volunteering, but my father cut that off.

“No, no, I want John seated here on my left. After I sent him to that fancy and very expensive school so he could waste his time studying the dramatic arts and oratory he should be well-equipped to deliver the traditional Booth family prayer of thanks.”

Traditional since last year, he means. Then my kid brother who was sitting over there grinning at me kicked me in the shins which I know was his way of saying “Don’t start anything”. I kicked him twice as hard in the shins which was my way of saying, “I wasn’t going to,” and then kicked him again to say, “Hurts, don’t it?”

All this might have been a little more bearable if my sister had let me have some of the blackberry wine.

I swear I’m going to get that Lincoln for making us do this.

Happy Birthday., Not Non-Fiction, Submitted For Your Approval., The Vault, The Weekly Essay

Life On Mars.

Author: November 25, 2024 2 Comments

Source: SkyView app

Mars was rising. It’s famous for being the red planet, harbinger of war, home of countless science fiction monsters and villains as well as a few hapless and sometimes stranded Earthlings, but its color varies from red to pale yellow. The object I saw in the eastern sky was red and so bright I thought at first it must be some plane’s navigation light, but it wasn’t moving, and there were no other lights around it. I had to pull up one of my astronomy apps to confirm that, yes, it was Mars, which right now happens to be just under 78.7 million miles away from us. That’s slightly over half its average distance of 140 million miles. So Mars isn’t as close as it could get—our two planets will come within roughly 34 million miles of each other, but that won’t happen for over two hundred years.

I first spotted it through the trees. The red line in the picture is the horizon and, as you can see, it’s in the constellation Cancer. There was a satellite underneath it, drifting. We used to have a thick wall of trees behind our house but then the houses on the street that runs parallel to ours were sold. The houses were knocked down and most of the trees were cleared to make space for bigger, taller houses. It’s the way things are going. All around us older houses are being sold, knocked down, new ones are going up. An hour or so later I went back outside and Mars, still red, still bright, had risen above the trees.

Because Thanksgiving is this Thursday it’s a short week for me. The office is quiet, most people having already left regardless of whether they’re staying close to home or not. The holiday will be, I know, a flurry of activity, but at least for now everything’s quiet. There are a few work-related matters to wrap up but most of the real work will be at home, making asparagus casserole and cinnamon peaches—that’s two different dishes, though I’m sure there’s some nouvelle cuisine somewhere that’s combined asparagus, peaches, and probably even cinnamon.

Mars, the blood-red planet, was so peaceful and still in the night sky when I went out to look at it. A great horned owl hooted in the distance. And then there was a barred owl, calling out, “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you?”

With Thanksgiving coming we’re all cooking.

Adventures In Busing.

Mix It Up.

Author: November 23, 2024 4 Comments

When I heard that cassettes are making a comeback my first thought was, Talkin’ ‘bout my generation! And then I thought there are so many reasons that makes sense. Cassette tapes are, like vinyl, or, for that matter, CDs or even the much maligned 8-track, a way to have the songs you love without worrying they’ll disappear due to copyright or other issues. Back when I had my first iPod songs would disappear from my iTunes library, or would still be listed but would be unplayable for reasons no one in Apple’s customer service could explain. With cassettes as long as you’ve got a player—and there’s a new generation of cassette players which are fueling the comeback—you can listen to your songs and you also don’t have to worry about an outside company collecting your listening and feeding it into an algorithm to spit targeted advertising at you right in the middle of a song.

The thing that made cassettes even better than vinyl, CDs, or those much maligned 8-tracks, though, was that you could record your own at home, and usually for not much money. I had a portable cassette player/recorder from when I was a kid, and as a teen got a two-deck boom box which meant I could copy songs from one cassette to another.

Here’s a question I wish I’d thought to put on social media somewhere and probably still will: what was your first mixtape? What was special about it?

I still have several mixtapes friends made for me even though I don’t have a cassette player anymore. I keep them partly for sentimental reasons but also for the playlists. The first mixtape I ever got, which, unfortunately, I’ve lost, wasn’t even given to me by a friend. A guy in my high school history class overheard me say I’d never heard Stairway To Heaven. A couple of days later he came in with a mixtape. He was also the first person I knew who had a CD player which made building mixtapes a breeze for him. In addition to Stairway it had a good dollop of other Zeppelin songs, some Pink Floyd, and The Who.

Every song on it was older than I was but still new to me. Mixtapes were a great way to find new music. I discovered Lou Reed, The Cocteau Twins, and Bauhaus through mixtapes friends gave me. I was listening to Tracy Chapman before Fast Car exploded all over the airwaves because someone gave me a mixtape with a couple of her songs. More recently the first Guardians Of The Galaxy movie well ahead of the comeback with its Awesome Mix Vol. 1 which sold about eleven thousand cassettes.

Friendships, and romantic relationships, were formed, or strengthened, over mixtapes. Even adults I knew made mixtapes for each other. An older woman I knew went through a really awful divorce. A few months later she made a mixtape for her ex-husband and mailed it to him. It was songs they’d loved together. It was a heartfelt way of saying goodbye to their marriage and to him.

Among the mixtapes I I still have was given to me by one of my oldest friends. He titled Hey! Nice Hat! That’s an inside joke, as are the liner notes he wrote. Like our friendship it’s an eclectic mix: Beethoven’s Ode To Joy from the 9th symphony, Monty Python’s Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life, the original theme from M*A*S*H, Falco’s Rock Me Amadeus, R.E.M.’s Orange Crush, and about twenty seconds of MC Hammer’s She’s Soft And Wet. That’s another inside joke.

Yes, cassettes are also limited—mostly to an hour, but that just made the selection of songs on a mixtape even more special. Cassettes are coming back. I hope mixtapes are too. And I’d still like to know: what was

American Graffiti.

Jagged Little Pill.

Author: November 22, 2024 2 Comments

Cold weather has finally settled in, signaling the arrival of winter. At least that’s the way it is for now. Next week we may be back up to summer, or at least late spring, temperatures, but at the moment it feels like winter outside. That prompted me to do a thorough review of my daily regimen of pills. Because for most of my life I didn’t have any major health issues and got lulled into a false sense of complacency, I never got into the habit of taking any drug regularly. Every once in a while I’d buy a bottle of multivitamins and take one a day for a week or two I’d miss a day. Usually it seemed like I’d remember on my way to work that I’d forgotten to take my morning pill and I’d figure the effects, whatever they were, would last another twenty-four hours, and that I could return to the routine the next day. Of course by the time the next day rolled around the routine had been broken, my mind was already on other things, and the bottle would languish in its spot in the corner of the kitchen counter. Sometimes I’d remember it and pick up the habit again, but I couldn’t stick to it and a ninety-day supply of vitamins would sometimes last more than a year.

Now that I’m older and even though cancer is a good decade behind me—hopefully I’m not tempting fate by saying that—I can’t afford to be so casual about my pill-taking. On the bright side I still don’t have to take a lot of medications. Not currently, anyway. I’m getting older all the time and my pill intake may have to rise at some point so it was good that, following my time in treatment, I forced myself to develop a drug habit. After cancer I developed high blood pressure. Actually during cancer I had high blood pressure and I remember one nurse commenting on it and asking me, “Do you have anything that’s making you feel stressed right now?” And I asked, “You mean other than cancer?”

After chemotherapy I had to have major surgery and the high blood pressure continued for months after that so I got to see a cardiologist who explained that it was likely that during that surgery part of one of my kidneys might have been damaged and that it was dying. She added, “It’s not quite dead,” and, you know, when a doctor quotes Monty Python at you it either means the situation isn’t anything to worry about and we can joke about it or it’s so bad that we have to joke about it to relieve some of the tension. In this case it was the former, as she went on to explain that while it was likely only a small part of the kidney it was probably stimulating the adrenal gland. She prescribed some blood pressure medication and it worked.

A few months later I went back to her for a follow-up and asked if there would be a point when the damaged part of my kidney would stop affecting the adrenal gland. She said yes and, thinking about how I am with pills, I asked if I could stop taking the medication.

“At your age,” she said, “anything that keeps your blood pressure low is a good thing.”

Thanks, doc, for reminding me I’m constantly getting older—my age and my blood pressure both went up while I was thinking about that but, thanks to the pills, one of them came down.

Fun With Cancer, The Weekly Essay

Dis Card.

Author: November 19, 2024 6 Comments

I’m not sure why I keep finding hotel key cards. There are several hotels around where I work and I guess finding one or two a week isn’t that many considering the number of people who are guests. Mostly they’re on the sidewalk and try to put them in a prominent spot near where I find them to make it as easy as I can in case whoever dropped them retraces their steps searching for their card. I know they’re easily replaced, though, which can sometimes be a security issue, but at least they’re easier to replace than keys.

This one really got my attention though because it wants to be thrown away and replaced with an app. I don’t want to sound like a grumpy old guy but does everything have to be an app now? Most restaurants, even small, local ones where I get takeout push me to use their app for easier ordering. It’s a little easier than a standard phone call, or, for that matter, going to the restaurant itself, which I’m going to have to do anyway to pick up my order, but do I really need, or even want, an app for every single restaurant I order from? The answer is both no and also I should stop getting so much takeout food.

In addition I don’t want to sound like a grumpy, paranoid old guy but using an app on your phone as your hotel key seems like an even bigger security risk than a key card. Your phone can potentially be hacked. For that matter the app itself could be hacked, allowing someone access to every hotel room. Or private information about every guest without ever having to step inside the hotel. Someone who breaks into your hotel room isn’t likely to get into your email, your bank account, and who knows what else, but they will show up on the security cameras. An app connected to the credit card you used to pay for your hotel room could be a gateway for someone anywhere in the world access to a lot more than just your underwear and the Cokes you’ve got chilling in the ice bucket.

And finally I’ve seen more than one guitar player on stage fumble around for a pick then pull out a pocket knife and cut one out of their hotel key card. There are even multiple pick punches made just for that purpose—though I think the idea with a pick punch is to use old, discarded cards, not the one your hotel just gave you. Still that’s something you can’t do with an app.

Adventures In Busing.

Resistance.

Author: November 16, 2024 6 Comments

The dryer stopped drying. Specifically the heating element, which I can sometimes see glowing like the Eye of Sauron if I open the dryer when it’s still running, though it immediately shuts off and fades away once the door is opened, died. I try to use the dryer as little as possible anyway. We have a much more environmentally friendly and energy-efficient dryer called sunlight, but it’s not always reliable.

The guy who did the repair job left me the old burned out heating element which was an interesting thing. It’s not exactly aesthetically pleasing but then it’s never meant to be seen, hidden away at the back, though it’s incredibly important. Looking at it reminded me of when I was a kid and I’d find old electronics that people had thrown out—alarm clocks, mostly, some radios—and take them apart. I tinkered with an orphaned toy walkee talkee until it picked up audio from a local TV station. I have no clue what I did because I really didn’t know anything about electronics and most of the time I took the discarded equipment I found and built imaginary robots. They were imaginary because they couldn’t really do anything on their own, but that doesn’t make them much different from the robots in most science fiction movies and TV shows that are really just people in suits.

The heating element also reminded me of the coils inside the kiln one of my aunts who had a whole ceramic studio in the basement of my grandparents’ house. She made various pieces, including an R2-D2 that I used as a nightlight. Upstairs, in the bathroom, there was also a wall heater that had similar metal coils. I don’t remember when I figured out how these things worked but because I was always interested in science it seems like I understood pretty early on that, when turned on, electrons flowed into coils but because the coils weren’t very conductive the electrons would get slowed down, putting pressure on each other. This pressure would then turn into heat. I know that’s greatly oversimplified but that’s the basic principle, and that’s where all understanding starts. Resistance is a powerful thing; if something went wrong with the kiln or the wall heater they could easily start a fire, burn the whole house down. But the heater provided warmth, and the kiln could turn wet clay and liquid glaze into something glossy and hard.

It just made me think about the power of resistance and how it can be harnessed, either in destructive or useful ways.

American Graffiti.