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Wheel slippage in the time of Pandemic

One of my dearest friends, Paco, we’ll call him, is a bit of a worrier. He is quick to see the down side of a situation and also he is just plain quick. Once in conversation about some contest I asked him who he was backing and he said, “Oh I sort of like to root for the underdog.”

And I said, “Paco, that’s just because you’re contrarian.”

“I am not,” he shot back.

I love Paco and his humor and I admire the way he finds such joy in flying a little two-place back-country airplane north in the summer to get out of the California heat and east on occasion to visit a friend in Ohio. His “tiny little airplane” my wife calls it and Paco grits his teeth.

In our last conversation we quickly turned from flying and sailing to the dire present circumstances. He is truly suffering the Black Dog due to what’s going on…in the States, across the world…things like the seeming death of democracy as we in America have known it, a crashing, shrieking economy that seems in free fall with no adults in the room and this pandemic that is much like the plot of a bio-thriller except that it is real; it is among us. It is killing us. Even so, I chided him for sounding so dour, saying that surely we would find our way, but the last few day’s headlines from the scientific community as well as the chant of daily deaths and new spikes of contagion bear out his concern and fears. Add to this economic horror and desperate world-disease the complete absence of cogent thought from our nation’s political leadership and the perfect storm is upon us. Upon us with both feet or however many feet it has.

Perhaps it is textbook denial, but I have turned to the things I can do and away from the things on which I can have no bearing. On the Can Do side are my woodshop, the beautiful dory my son and I have under construction, some handsome pieces of furniture I’ve built, a splendid Portuguese coffee with my wife outside a favorite ocean-side restaurant, letters to my friends, chatting with my seven thriving Jasmine Vines that will soon provide fragrant jungle-like privacy for us and our neighbor, and of course, watching industrial films from the 1930s-50s. I’ve just cued up “Top Fifteen Extinct American Locomotives”. I’ve learned that one such mastodon had a wheel arrangement of six/four/four/six and at 147 feet long was, believe it or not, nicknamed The Big Engine”. I didn’t know that and now I do. And now you do as well and neither of us, nor probably Paco, has thought about death counts or infection spikes for several minutes (this is valuable stuff). The narrator went on to share that unfortunately this giant was susceptible to wheel slip.

Ah, God, not wheel-slip…I was stunned, gutted nearly, but there are also happy steam engine stories out of Great Britain. They are all narrated by somebody named Nigel or Cryil Broughamly Goodwin-Chatsworth and Nigel often lets go a ‘Rawhter Keen, or a ‘Fine that, what!’. And what magnificent machines these engines were and how they can still take me away from fear and worry for an hour or more…without slipping at all.

Try it; wash your hands. Talk to your Jasmines.

Into the Past

For the last several days I have been staging my shop to take on the major fiberglassing project on the dory…it is all laid out, cleaned up and ready for cloth and epoxy, which will be applied all day tomorrow…so today Linda, Trixie and I took a break and had a walk through the most lovely vineyards and farm-plots here in our valley. It was glorious; so fecund, fragrant and quiet, we could have been the only people on the planet.

Then, while walking down the track through a cornfield, near a thick wall of immense oak and eucalyptus trees and a big brook, I heard a rhythmic clack-clack sound that grew louder and louder and suddenly a brilliant yellow and white passenger train ripped through the trees on a track I could not see, blasted into the past and disappeared like it never happened! It was stunning!!…two long cars in the Art Deco mode, taxicab-yellow and going at least 150 kilometers an hour. The event was so unexpected, brief and dichotomous, it turned my head around…thrilled me. Made me feel like a kid.

Tractor Race at St. Hendon’s Cathedral

The sun is bright, the breeze is gentle, the doves are howling. The sparrows approve of my new feeder and from here (our bedroom, facing the red tiled roofs and white chimneys, our forested valley and far hill-side) the world appears to be just fine. Of course it isn’t even sort of fine…the world is in dire circumstances with the only news being the death count and which place to blame for starting these dreadful times. But I can only think about contagion for a very limited length of time before I become upset, start getting depressed.

So I am grateful to my wife who observed and heard two big tractors, pulling carts, thunder up the road in front of our house, and offered, “It’s a good day to be a farmer.” She’s so right. The farmers work largely alone, but certainly spaced out socially, rarely in a clump. And although they don’t appear to bathe often, they are among the first to benefit from the breeze, the rain, the sun, the whatever’s happening. While the rest of us sleep, shelter, hide, they tinker with equipment, till their soil, tend their vines, feed their animals, take stock of their crops, and they roar joyfully around the villages in their big tractors, which probably is the best part of farming in these parts. Any parts.

There must be supreme satisfaction in blasting along at 18 kilometers per hour with a two kilometer bumper-to-bumper string of busy, important people stacked up behind….They are like great, unwashed drum majors.

Now, those two tractors have just come back down the hill, swept past the round-about by Saint Hendon’s Cathedral and disappeared. Their carts were empty on the road up and empty on the way back too. I suspect they were joy riding. I so hope so.

BirdWirks

It is 0745 locally, but I’ve been up since oh five hundred…as for so many, sleep is desultory at best. Checked with Norwegie to make sure she didn’t want one and then slipped downstairs quietly and made myself an Early Cappuccino. Her response to my question, “Would you enjoy an early morning coffee, Bebe Bebe?” was, “What the Hell are you doing up in the middle of the night?” and she rolled over. Trixie joined me though and we eased out into the garden and dashed about in the dark looking for cats and then she had breakfast kibble and clomped back upstairs to sleep it off. Don’t know how she does it, but it sounds like there’s a horse loose in the house when she’s traveling…Gurlfren is noisy I’m sayin.

After looking up today’s horrific tally…which, I’m ashamed to admit, has numbed me to the point that it is an abstraction, a routine, and checking on the criminal gibberish from the White House, I read the day’s news of Portugal (we’re OK by comparison) and went into my shop. Our boat is coming along nicely, although I’ve made a couple of sloppy epoxy joints that look much like someone blew their nose inside the bow. Looks like boogers, but is hard as a diamond, seemingly. This stuff cures to an incredible strength and hardness, making just the simplest mistake or sloppiness represent a week of painstaking cleanup. And all the while, my son, Sheffield is keeping my WhatsApp jangling with advice on the most minute details…the lad has plenty of opinions, it seems, but I’m listening.

For the last few days, perhaps in response to the absurdity of world circumstances, I’ve built birdhouses…a tiny one for finches, a bigger one for whomever and a larger, two storey one for Mrs, Bucket. Gonna give my neighbors birdhouses; gonna give my friends birdhouses. Don’t care if they don’t want them. Gonna put a couple on trees in the waterfront promenade in Viana near one of our favorite coffee shops for the times ahead when we can actually go sit and drink coffee. Will do it guerilla style some night once we’re allowed to roam unchecked although I can see how this sort of thing could lead to stencil/spray-paint graffiti if I’m not careful. And such are the high points of life in Portugal these days.

And it’s not only me; just noticed these headlines from the Life Science Essentials site, 4,200-year-old burial of Bronze Age chieftain discovered under UK skate park. Not only is this chieftain left with his bronze dagger, four cows, a bead and “an older man in a seated position,” this poor dude is stuck under a skate park. Gotta piss him off. But even in the face of that outrage, the world kept spinning. Maybe he would take it as heartening that another old man is building birdhouses in a time of fear, a feeble response, true, but nearly as good as any other.

Washyourhands

Over The Wall

As you know, Linda and I emigrated to Portugal 18 months ago, seeking a handsome, mild and friendly setting where our modest funds would be adequate. Well, not only have we accomplished all that but we have been folded into the lives of several Portuguese and into the culture of our village. These people are extraordinary; in this troubled world, even in isolation, the Portuguese are a brilliant light.

My Portuguese friends frequently enquire about our health and well-being and every one of them has offered to shop for us so we can stay isolated and safe. And by friends, I include not only those with whom we travel, play, dine and discuss the world, but our language coach, our dog-sitter, our housekeeper, our favorite banker and now her sister too, nurses we’ve met through falling on our heads, pharmacists who have taken us under their wings and those who simply happen to live near us. Two days ago I got an email from the daughter of a neighbor with whom we share a garden wall saying that we should call her if we need anything at all. Then yesterday, after a month’s total confinement, she and her family escaped their apartment in Barcelos so their three small children could come frolic, race and hoot in their grandmother’s gardens. The woman who offered us kindness came to the wall and we talked at a cautious distance for a few minutes while the kids whipped around the yard like beings possessed, short but possessed. They had room to run and there was joy in the air. A bit later it occurred to me that there was no better home for a few of the windup toys I’d become enamored of and had collected over a few decades. I got out the sanitizer, sprayed the toys well, placed them on the wall and asked the matriarch of the household to pass them along to her grandchildren. It felt good to recall my own little-bitty days when a neighbor gave me the occasional toy just because she liked kids. And then I went about my day’s chores and pleasures.

This morning I discovered that one of the kids had kicked an old soccer ball over the wall for my dog, Trixie. A perfect gesture and from Trixie’s point of view the most elegant and tastiest football of her career. A Portuguese gesture…the next generation of kindness, manners and generosity. If it all works out, maybe next year I’ll help these kids build a potato cannon.

May be some time . . .

By circumstances we are unable to alter, separated from my son by continents, oceans and contagion, I work every day building our boat, this graceful little dory that turns my focus from the macabre. In times past I have counted personal challenges and adversity, even sorrow, as “thick slices of life”, but this one is far too thick, too steep and way too dark to characterize as mere experience, much less life. This is Hell for most of the world.

We are riding the whip-saw of emotions one would expect. At one moment by the side of my magnificent wife and in the presence of songbirds, a fig tree bursting with fruit, abundant ripe lemons and a small craft growing each day in my shop, my dog who is dizzy-in-love with me, and so far good health. The backstroke of course, is the surreal media coverage of death and despair and the knowledge that our quiet village on this beautiful river and ocean is not languid, but is mortified and quivering in silence behind shuttered windows.

Being an American, a guest as it were here in Portugal, I feel shame and fury at the feckless and rat-like scurrying of our political figures, the pronouncements of self-serving untruths based on specious logic that will never fits our needs, the mindless adherence to dogma simply to win, the turning away from desperate triage toward re-election once the world returns. If you detect disgust, well…

If our political system is torn and wounded, there is also a world-light in this struggle…it comes from the incredibly brave and selfless men and women who are in the trenches of the hospitals, clinics, ambulances, pharmacies, assisted living facilities, fire houses and even grocery stores and pet shops on every continent. Bless their hearts. Bless their hearts….may they all find some small “dory project” to help turn from the horror. May their dogs love-them-silly. May you remain healthy.

It is not yet time to step outside.

In the same boat

My son and I are building a boat. It is a lovely dory about 19 feet long and just over five feet wide. Its sheer is graceful and its strength, abilities and potential for pleasure are impressive.

The Southwester Dory. Photos courtesy Chesapeake Light Craft.

This entry was to have been a joyous accounting of receiving the kit, unpacking it and commencing our build in my big lovely shop. Instead, it is 0344 Saturday morning, my son, Sheffield cannot travel to Portugal from the US and I have lain in bed wondering about too many friends and too many complications until I could no longer stand it and am now sitting at my wife’s desk in the still morning contemplating events that three months ago would have been the plot for a cable TV thriller, and this morning are just statistics to which we are becoming jaded as the world locks down long after the time when that would have been effective, or just dithers without a strategy in dim hope that something will save us.

There is a monster among us that will have its due, no matter how many masks one may have, nor how many emergency cans of tuna. These are terrifying times that are testing the humanity of the US political leadership (not doing well there…”This is the fault of the Obama administration”) and the strength of the world’s social fabric (not so good here either…”The US brought the Coronavirus to Wuhan”). One can only hope that this contagion’s lust will be slaked quickly and it will subside, or that a vaccine will be developed in a magically short time, or that it will mutate into something much less dire….but there seems only hope left to rely on.

Linda and I have cocooned in place with our puppy and our garden and we’re washing our hands every third breath, but who knows if that will suffice to protect us? I am still building this boat, but the joy of doing so is damped, muted.

More information about the boat, including many examples afloat, are available on the manufacturer’s website. Here are some pictures of the materials as they arrived:

Styx

Got up early this morning to enjoy a cappuccino and get a good seat for the concert, just now our neighborhood choir is warming up. Starting about four in the morning they clear their throats or craws or whatever crowing equipment they have, and by six AM, the first shift has opened the act and gone back to roost. The sunrise philharmonic takes it from there and at first light they all seem to join in for one immense Hosanna and then quieten for the day. I really like them. Depend on them. They range from tenors to rich baritones, none of them are shy and they all plan to live forever. Our bedroom is situated facing one of the biggest, boldest and earliest and if it isn’t raining he really lets loose. Apparently his contract does not require him to crow in dampness and if it is howling and blowing rain, he stays tucked in with the string section.

This ritual makes me conscious every morning of the rich and fortunate circumstances of our lives, living in a snug village just one hundred meters from a chapel, a tavern and a good pastelaria, five kilometers from a storied and meandering river and only twice that distance from the magnificent North Atlantic. So maybe I’ll never learn enough Portuguese to discuss string theory or Wittgenstein, or perhaps even to ask which apples are sweeter, but these morning concerts are stirring and reaffirming and the light, filtered as it is through the volatilized oils of the Eucalyptus forest, is like no other. It seems as pure as the light of memory and I appreciate it in the face of being mortal.

As I count my present good fortune, tentatively and with the understanding that it may only be for today, two of my dearest friends are contemplating the end of life. One of them has stepped back from the Styx, almost miraculously, defying the medicos who, only two weeks ago, had told him they could do no more for him. He frightened us badly, but he’s given us a respite and is thriving. The other one will gather with his friends and family this afternoon to celebrate the glory of his wife’s life, to remember the years she shared her light and brought such brightness to others. Later in the day I will stand on a headland overlooking the ocean and throw my arms out to both friends in joy and sorrow, and to you as well.

Galicia

Just home from the fifth or sixth trip into Spain and this smokey, misty province of Galicia continues to grow on me. Galicia, the province of Spain abutting Northwestern Portugal, has mystery about it and is geographically well suited for its history of smuggling and intrigue. There are extensive estuarine inlets that stack northward from the Minho River all the way to the shoulder of Spain where the Bay of Biscay commences; they are perfect for puttering about in a small boat and if one wants to glam-cruise it would be easy to sail from good hotel to good hotel. These estuaries are ideal for aquaculture too and in every inlet huge rafts of mussel frames lie in rows that recede into the distance like a flotilla.

Galacia is a world-hub of pelagic fishing also and the fishing fleets serve as ready-made cover for the fish boats that go out with the fleet, but come back laden with untaxed cigarettes, as well as cocaine and hashish and other dire party favors. Smuggling seems to have been encouraged by difficult economic conditions over various decades and the fact that it was not just the domain of the under-fringes of society kept it alive. There were surely the brutish in this endeavor, but the local mayors, civic and business leaders were also “working in the night.” Galacia, cut off from the rest of Spain by a rugged mountain range, seems to have been self-ruling most of its history. Further, in support of various kinds of adventuring, up until 1987 Galacia’s smuggling culture was just barely criminalized, the smuggling of anything being a misdemeanor punishable only by a fine. So getting busted with a couple of tons of cocaine was viewed much like double parking or littering. In the last half of the twentieth century though they’ve ‘grown up’ as criminal gangs and established ties with the South American cartels, which inevitably turned an almost quaint social custom into one of fear and darkness. There are at least 10 identifiable thriving clans and enterprises, most of which have gone beyond political guidance, illegal cigarettes, local squabbling and feuding to a spot of murder here and there.

The buccaneering communities reach back much further and to darker places than mere drug and tobacco smuggling, however. From the fifteenth century through the end of the nineteenth century wreckers plagued this coast. Wreckers are land-pirates who put up false lights to lure ships ashore and when they came ashore, murder the crews and make off with the ship’s cargo. There are nearly one thousand known shipwrecks on this coast…so many under suspicious circumstances that the Galician coast came to be known as Costa de la Muerte. In Galacia as well as in many other coasts of the world, including America, wrecking was once a way of life and many seacoast villages counted on wrecking as part of their economies. Harsh stuff if you ask me and harsh for the Galatians as well who seemed to have turned away from their dimmer history toward tourism for instance, although if you’ve ever watched a thousand Nebraskans dumped off a cruise ship into a little fishing village, tourism seems to dim as well.

In bright contrast to the Coast of Death is the astonishingly good seafood, seemingly of endless variety. Thinking I already had found the best of the best…grilled limpet scallops…on the last trip to O Grove I discovered Galacian Mariscos Sopa.

It seems to vary from restaurant to restaurant, with one place offering more mussels and the next, more crab or monk fish, but the seasonings orbiting around garlic, parsley, basil, peppers and smoked paprika are a constant in this soup. It is heavenly; rich, savory, complex, all the descriptors you can imagine for the best seafood stew on the planet. But then there are the Scissor-hand Cigali Lobsters…smallish for lobsters, they seem to be wearing pruning shears and they are huge in taste and texture. The trick is to settle on an immense platter of many different kinds of delights and I will long remember sitting with Linda in a waterfront restaurant in O Grove with our dog sleeping at our feet, the fishing fleet bobbing in the inner harbor and this platter of pure goodness in front of us, a little wood burning stove in the corner, the rain pounding down in the courtyard and the wonderful scene of neighbors and friends drifting in to sit around one big table to while away the afternoon, to be Galician. Everyone spoke to us as they arrived and the whole effect was cinematic, as if it might be part of an adventure and a bigger story, part of living in Iberia for instance.

As always, I am intrigued by work boat design, particularly fish boats as they tend to be small and therefore must have excellent sea-keeping characteristics. And a good sea boat is almost always a handsome boat. The fishing fleets in the Galacan ports still show their saling heritage and in fact many of them still have steadying sails. The larger vessels tend to be double ended and burdensome with full bilges and great carrying capacity. There are also pure sailing craft with markedly raked spars and long bow sprits.

The most delightful to me, though, are the small day boats which are transom sterned and gracefully plumb bowed with long straight keels. Most have now had little outboard motors hung off the transom, but all seem to have retained their sailing rigs and their odd, massive two-piece oars.

They are fitted with crutches on each beam that allow them to sit upright in the sand when the tide recedes and they are little poems to see sitting upright and perky on the hard. The best among them no longer fish and are now obviously toys, and toys to make a boy yearn for one. But I hardly ever have any fun.

October Cure

Last year October was mild, largely sunny and by comparison to this October, a fraud. This October is the real deal with ice cold rain sheeting down for a solid week at a time and water sluicing down the streets so that they look like streams.

It is so winter-like that “Coach,” as we know him, is in hiding, waiting for better game days, perhaps. Coach is a large, eccentric older man who walks very slowly through our village dressed in his blue and white track suit and looking neither left nor right. He defies traffic if there is an opportunity for confrontation. Although he seems as determined as a bulldozer when he walks his routes, he does stop at every intersection, slowly and carefully looks around and then gives a long blast on his whistle. Even to my failing ears, it seems to have about a two block range. We think he means to announce his intentions, even though no one other than Coach knows what they are. Over the nine months we’ve lived in Barroselas, Coach has become a fixture, an icon, a constant in our lives, but now he’s found it too inclement to make his rounds.

Recently we took Coach’s cue and skated out of here. We traveled the Croatian Coast for eleven days with friends and I’m saying it is a very fine October Cure. I had not been to Dubrovnik in 40 years and in that time it has been shelled and has suffered the outrages of civil and religious wars, but now, though one can clearly see the scars of the repaired stone work and roofs in the old city, Dubrovnik seems recovered. Recovered so well, in fact that it is now a magnet for the hideous 5000-passenger cruise ships that arrive daily, sometimes four or five of them at once…like a blight, like a selfie-plague in Bermuda shorts and flip flops.

It took us no time at all to get out of Dubrovnik and onto a roomy and weatherly sloop with our friends, Tracy and Bill…and Tean, the vigorous young skipper who knew every rock and cove and all ancient and modern history with an hilarious Croatian bias. And always sounding exactly like Borat.

“Leetle known, but thees very place where Ulysses made first beach during Odyssey. Croatia not Croatia yet, but Ulysses made beach here. High Fiiiiive!”

And when the boat heeled slightly in a breeze, Tean would put his fingers over his mouth in mock horror and shout out, shrilly “Oh My Gaaawd!” Soon we were all doing it, all except Tracy who believed the heeling motion was a certain precursor to doom. Her best sailing conditions occurred after the anchor was down.

When the anchor was down, or when we tied up stern-to at the stone quays, magnificent food was always close at hand. And not just great food, but surroundings to match. The first night we tied up in the miniscule fishing village of Sudjuradz on the island Sipan. The restaurant was in a 700 year old building and our table was beside an immense and ancient olive press. It was as romantic and satisfying as any dinner in memory and spirits were high…let it rain in Viana!

The next day in Parmena on Mljet Island, we stern-tied just five feet from our restaurant, which was convenient, but the food was forgettable and the harbor was filled with 100-passenger tour boats rafted up to each other to disgorge their charges, which sadly seems about the only means of revenue for all of the Croatian coast.

On day three, after a rousing sail, we found Korcula, a picture-perfect walled city that fits its description of a miniature Dubrovnik. The water lapping at the city walls is unbelievably clear and clean, the facilities in the yacht basin are top-drawer and the city is so ancient, beckoning, gentle and adagio in spirit, it immediately felt as though we’d reached the Croatia we sought. We stayed in Korcula two nights and got a feel for the rhythm of the island traffic. There are several small scheduled ferries, accommodating perhaps 50 people and there was one remnant from the 1960s, a graceful fast, island packet, of about 200 feet in length, the likes of which plied the coasts of the world in the time when aesthetics were critical to ship design, when a delicious curving sheer and a raked bow complemented the fantail stern and made one turn one’s head in appreciation and joy. I felt so fortunate to get to see one of the last packets still working.

We worked our way northward and then in a loop back to Dubrovnik, sailing every day close ashore past the limestone caves and intensely green cedar groves. We made many stops to swim, go ashore for coffee or lunch, walk the quays and village streets and feel the internal rpm slow and become just about perfect. On every south facing patch of soil, and poor soil it is, the land is terraced into what look like cliff-vineyards or olive groves.

As Captain Tean said, “Thees very famous ancient wine area. Wine ees best in all Croatia and Croatian wine is growing very very famous. Very good. My great great grandfather make terraces. Olive oil also best in all Croatia. Very very famous, this olive oil.”

During our time aboard with Tean we learned that he had a two week old daughter and that his mother had come to stay with his wife or girlfriend while Tean was at sea…I thought there were two of them for awhile, but they were the same person. And now Mom would not leave and the wife/girlfriend was going “mental” according to Tean. He worried about this situation every day and declared that only he could convince Mom to go home, but that he was not sure his wife/girlfriend would survive until he returned, so we made one of our ports of call Cavtat, where Tean, Girlfriend/Wife, Mother and Grandfather live. He stood on the quay awaiting their arrival and said to me proudly, “Always can spot Mom; she is very tall for Croatian woman.” When they got to the boat, I judged his mom very determined, but no more than five feet tall.

The Croatian archipelago between Dubrovnik and Split consists of 1244 islands, 78 of which are considered ‘big’, and 424 are ‘small’. I have no idea how to feel about the other 742….middling, perhaps, but all of them are beautiful and offer as close to paradise as I can conjure. The next time I go there it will be directly to Split and then southward on the ubiquitous inter-island ferries and with any luck, at least one leg on the old and gorgeous coastal packet….If you stay just out of the main tourist haunts the Croatia of simpler times is still available.

Franjo Tudjman Bridge, near the port of Gruz

Now back in Barroselas, we have tuned the furnace on for the first time since early April, but my shop is just the right temperature to finish the Cherry and Brazilian Walnut desk I am making for Linda, we have family and friends en route to visit and we are starting to plan our next trip, a smaller affair, maybe a long weekend in Barcelona or Corsica. Life is good.