Category: Random Thoughts

Tooley Pond Road

In September 2018 I installed a new heating system at the farm having discovered a crack in the combustion chamber of the old one that was installed in 1993. I would walk into town for a 2-1/2 mile loop every night, as I have done for years when I visit the Farm. I customarily stopped for a draft beer at a local bar to break up my walk. As such I became acquainted with a young lady who was bartending there during the quiet weekday nights. I told her I had taken my motorcycle for a scenic ride in he area and she suggested trying Tooley Pond Road, which I had never heard of. I told her I was going to check it out.

One thing led to another and I didn’t have time then, nor the next summer of 2019 when a charging problem developed with the motorcycle that could leave you with a dead battery miles from anywhere. Now it is the summer of 2020 and I’ve finally fixed the charging problem, and with the leaves at their peak colors I took a ride into the mountains and back. Then I recalled her suggestion of Tooley Pond Road. So, I mapped out a route and printed directions that I taped to the motorcycle fuel tank and started on about a 100 mile circuit that traversed Tooley Pond Road from start to end in Cranberry Lake, New York. The scenery was magnificent and at points like a prehistoric forest. At one point on a ridge The St. Lawrence Valley lay out before me, the river threading through it in the distance. As much as anything, there was a sense of peace and satisfaction that I had finally done what I said I was going to. I wish I could thank LeAnn, wherever she now is.  

The Saint Lawrence River Valley in its autumn splendor

I also learned that the directions taped to the gas tank are too hard to focus on while riding. So, I used my phone app with verbal directions. The problem is I couldn’t hear them well enough over the rush of the wind… only some garbled something at crucial junctures, forcing me to stop repeatedly to see where I was. (One of these stops resulted in dropping the motorcycle on its side in the deep loose sand concealed on the road side). I have learned that a phone GPS with verbal directions and a bluetooth helmet is probably the answer. I intend to order one.

The autumn farm country

Musing

Someone once remarked that a steam locomotive is about as close as we’ll ever get to creating artificial life. There certainly is truth to that. Some years ago my friend Frank Arcuri and I were on an adventure in Flemington, New Jersey when we chanced upon a steam locomotive from the Black River and Western Railroad preparing to leave Flemington Turntable Junction for Ringoes, New Jersey. Here is a video of that day

April 2, 2020

The ancient earth slowly spins its face towards the sun, its staggering angular momentum inexorably following Newton’s laws through Einstein’s space, and the green laciness of spring smiles once again upon the land.

The Individual and the Collective

Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Recently I was reading the comments after a notice about the FCC streamlining the process for obtaining a ham radio license. Several people were enthusiastically relating that they had just gotten their license and others were looking forward to getting one. Then come the comment, “The airwaves belong to all of us. Fuck the FCC”. I couldn’t help but laugh. The thing is, he’s right. They do. The problem is that without a protocol for using the radio spectrum they would be useless to all of us with frequencies overlapping, impossible interference, gargled communications, etc. It’s just the nature of the beast. A protocol for shared use must be established and that is the function of the FCC. I believe that’s the nature of a number of things in the world. The world is a complex, multi-faceted place and sometimes in order for us to share it we have to establish protocols.

Pandemic 2020

Day N of the pandemic. I don’t know what N is but it’s less than 90 and greater than 30, I would guess. I’m walking down Union Road on my morning walk. I’ve just passed the bridge over the Lockatong Creek and I’m starting to go up the hill. I have never heard it so quiet on a Monday morning in New Jersey in my life.

Reflections on a Sunday morning walk

Numerically today is  the one year anniversary since my lifelong acquaintance John died. However, since it was a leap year it’s more accurately about a year since the earth has been in the same place in space relative to the sun, so it was sometime between yesterday and today. That is especially significant to me because I knew him longer than pretty much everybody on earth. We bonded in Mrs. Babcock’s second grade class during a socialization period where we were telling tall tales about sliding our sleds down the hills and all sorts of made up adventures while doing so. We laughed and we laughed. 

We weren’t close but we were comfortable in one another’s presence for our entire lives. We did have interactions over the years and you could say he was a lifelong friend of sorts. I reflect on these things because I think a lot about death I think a lot about life and what it’s about. I think a lot about this world and what the significance of all of this. I think a lot about the ontology of it and about God and about naturalistic explanations and understanding and comprehension of it  I think about all of these things and I have for all of my life. I wish I could understand before I die. Every little piece of the puzzle I put together makes my understanding a little more complete but it’s never done. It’s never finished.

Anyway it’s appropriate that it is a Sunday and I’m walking over to the pond even though I realize, now that I’ve started down the road, that  I can’t get through the path by the bridge because there will be a puddle of water there and all I have is my sneakers. I could get my feet wet but, I don’t want to do that so I’ll just walk down to the pond, to reflect for a bit, then turn and retrace my steps back to Union Road. It’ll be my Sunday morning commune with God. Then I shall walk back home.

Monday, March 23, 2020

It’s a rainy, gloomy, chilling, dreary day. The Covid 19 pandemic is just getting into worldwide full swing. I have been staying at home constantly, except for morning walks and bicycle rides and an occasional trip to the market. I hope I can avoid this virus, since I am in a high risk group for severe illness and further lung damage due to a lifelong smoking habit that I finally left behind ten years ago. Of course, it depends I guess on innumerable factors including my own previous exposure to viruses of every which shape and form throughout my life. Who knows? What I do know is that nothing is given and we have to make plans and go ahead anyway as if they were.

Saturday, March 7 , 2020

I walked down the path through the park during my walkabout in this morning in New Jersey. I was thinking again about the solar machine I am building and two prototype versions which I want to begin installing at the farm this summer. The notion of farm machinery with cast iron parts and a 100 year lifespan and my grandfather sitting on the stump next to the 6 Volt battery powered electric fence unit he had installed at the farm all crossed my mind. I think it was the self sustained remoteness of it that led him to sit on a wood stump next to it as it thunked next to him, clicking like a clock and with each pulse kicking the pendulum away for anther swing and sending a high voltage pulse through the thousands of feet of a bare single wire strung on fenceposts and insulators to the far meadows and trees, keeping the cattle safely in the night pasture and saving hundreds of hours of fencing labor keeping the pasture fenced in the old fashioned way. He must have sat there sometimes unbeknownst to everyone in the moonlight, thinking of his grown children, his grandchildren, his long departed wife Rosa, the past, life itself, and that remote, independent beating machine next to him, out in the field powered by a lantern battery. I thought of that and how all of that drives me to invent and design this modest, rugged machine that runs by itself on sunlight and will capture and transform over 400,000 Kilowatt hours of solar energy into hot water and electricity over the next 100 years.

At that moment the whole world suddenly brightened as the morning overcast parted for a few seconds in the wind and the light of the sun burst though. “I help you someday, Butch”, his long ago words bubbled to mind in the same moment and I knew with little doubt I had just been contacted by my grandfather. Life is never easy even when we know where we must go and what we must do, but I feel ever more confident that my grandfather would be pleased with starting the solar installation at the farm.

Purpose

4-8-05

I read this morning a yellowed piece of paper, an ancient clipping that my Aunt Helen had long ago saved, that she must have thought was inspirational. It was a poem titled, “God’s Purpose”. The first line began, “What are we here for, you and I”. The unquestioned assumption of the poem was that God has a purpose for our existence in this world. I wonder if the world can be said to have purpose? I think that it is more likely that the world has a reason for being. I think that our reality has simply emerged out of a complete and utter void simply because it could, given no laws or prohibitions against such a thing, and because it must, given no prohibition against the inevitable invention of a state of affairs that realizes its own existence. How can we find any purpose in that? Still…

4-16-05

I just returned from LaVigne’s Hotel in the heart of East Norfolk. It was a warm day, warmer than in New Jersey even though we are 400 miles to the North here. I decided, with some trepidation given the rushing traffic on Rt. 56, to walk, given that it is only about 1/4 mile to the sidewalks and streetlights. Then, I had only to walk the other 3/4 mile on the streets of the little town where it all began. I used to walk late in the night all over the town, musing about the little grade school that I had attended so many years before, not that many from my perspective now!, and old friends and events long since faded into the mists of time. Tonight I was restless. I have been working on the computer for days, composing music and writing and checking fruitlessly my e-mail for a note from Sally. Annita has been wonderful. She barraged me with up to five e-mails a day… “check this out”, “I want this”, “Here’s what I plan to do”, and so on. Suddenly, however, she stopped. I haven’t gotten an e-mail from her in three days. The emptiness has begun to set in once again. So… I decided to go and have a beer. I didn’t know what to expect. How out of place would I seem, would I feel? It wasn’t too bad. The bar was quiet, with just a few young people sitting there. The young girls were looking me over discreetly. I would like very much to be a fool and think that I was attractive to them, but I am too old and wise for that. I was someone new, someone out of place, someone who brought at least a small sense of adventure into their everyday lives.

I watched half in pretense a basketball game on the television. I looked around. There were young female waitresses as well in the dining area. I wished I was much younger, I must admit. I wondered how I should act, what my role in this place was. Was I just getting out of the house for awhile? Was I supposed to be a mystery man in the lives of the few young people and bartender at the bar? I listened to the conversation around me. A young girl, obviously over 21, sat several stools away from me next to a young man. I deduced that he worked there at other hours, perhaps her too. I liked her. I liked him. She was looking me over for the reasons I just named above, and being quite discreet about it. I would notice her glance falling upon me as her eyes swept from one person she was talking with to another. At one point she was discussing an upcoming trip to Florida. She and the young man were talking about airports, and which ones are hard to navigate and which ones are easy. You cannot get out of here by air to much of anywhere without making a connecting flight somewhere. At one point she had a mental block. “That airport in Boston… what’s the name of that airport in Boston?” She queried to the people working at the bar, coworkers I presume as I have said. One waitress answered brightly, “I don’t know, Boston airport?” There was no answer in the next moments as “Logan” drifted across my mind. Without really thinking I said aloud, “Logan”. “Yes!”, she said, “Logan… that’s it. Thank you!” The conversation went on. I left shortly thereafter, again wishing I were younger. I walked further into town. An object came into view on the sidewalk along the river in the glare of the streetlight. It was a frog. “Now what in the world is this supposed to mean?” I thought, again thinking of Sally and her one time comment about how much she liked frogs. But, I cannot allow myself to believe in such things as signs and omens, so I said firmly to myself, “It’s just a coincidence, we’re right next to a river, frogs do live on the earth!” I walked onto the bridge, thinking again of the young girl and how much I would have liked to share her company for awhile. “I need to be exposed to estrogen’s point of view”, I thought. I reflected on the young girl and all of the young people I saw whizzing past me on their way to parties, bars, friends homes. “They’re in their mating years. I’m old and beyond that”. I turned to walk home again, thinking of Sally, omens, my aloneness, young girls, phases of life, purpose, and many other things. Was there any purpose or meaning to events, to what happened to us and when it happened? Just as I arrived to unlock the door to the farmhouse, it struck me. My whole two mile walk at that time, my restlessness leading up to it, had been for one reason. I had walked two miles, sat down alone and out of place at a bar with strange young people only to utter one word. “Logan”. Then I had left, vanishing into the night as mysteriously as I had arrived.