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 |  "Putting on the Game Face" |
  This blog is a doorway into the mind of Percy Goodfellow. Don't be shocked at the lost boys of Namby-Pamby Land and the women they cavort with. Watch as his caricatures blunder about the space between audacious hope and the wake-up calls of tomorrow. Behold their scrawl on the CRT, like graffitti on a subway wall. Examine it through your own lens...Step up my friends, and separate the pepper from the rat poop. Welcome to my abode...the armpit of yesterday, the blinking of an eye and a plank to the edge of Eternity. Note: This blog is my journal. I've no interest in persuading anyone to adopt my views. What I write is whatever happens to interest me when I start pounding the keys. |
| Hole in the Firewall I have been off Blog the past couple of days. I have been working on my ‘46 Studebaker. Since that has been about all I have been focused on let me share how things are coming. When I put the Stude on the chassis of an S-10 (Small Chevy Pickup) the fire wall had to be cut out on the Stude in order to get the cab to fit over the engine. This resulted in the engine sitting between the drivers side of the cab and the passengers. For those of you that are not aware, engines emit vapors, some of which are toxic. The toxic ones come from the exhaust manifold and flow down the exhaust system and out the back of the vehicle. There are however other fumes some of which are the burn off of crud from a vehicle sitting around too long and some are more serious. When I bought the S-10 it had a 6 cylinder motor with a lot of mile….about one hundred and fifty thousand and as a consequence the valves had some burn and when it started up there was an emission of white smoke from the exhaust pipe. I got the valves fixed and should have had new rings put on the pistons….duh! But passed on that. It would have been a much easier repair to have done it while the cab and chassis were separated. When the cab was back on the frame and I started driving it the valves seated better but caused blow-back through the worn rings and that blow back flowed….you guessed it right in through that big hole in the fire wall and was bad enough to gag a maggot. There was another hole almost under where the valve cover aspirates and the smoke of partially burned oil was particularly bad coming up through the floorboard. I patched these holes and that went a long way towards making the cab more habitable even though the real problem was the rings that must be fixed somewhere down the road. There remained however the huge hole in the firewall and not a whole lot of room to work, under the dash in that particular area. As a matter of fact doing any work under the dashboard of a car all crunched up with a light and wires running every which where can only be described in two words….“It Sucks!” To accomplish the repair I decided to proceed in the following manner. I cut some one inch strips from sheet metal using the basket making technique….You know how baskets are made using strips of thin wood. Well that was my basic strategy. Now the shroud under construction had to be removable so I started at the bottom, drilled three hole in the base strip and using these as guides drilled into the where the floor slopes up to the firewall. Into these hole I inserted threaded rivets with my fandango threaded rivet squeezer. This tool requires a lot of practice to use well because if you don’t apply enough torque it doesn’t set and if you apply too much it shears the rivet and the tool arbor gets stuck and half an hour job to clear the mangled rivet. This I did about half a dozen times until I began to get the hang of the process. The advantage of a threaded rivet is that it is much easier than just drilling a hole and trying to put the bolt in through the floor and then tighten it from underneath the truck. Anyway once the base strip was in place I was able to do the same to the sides and framed the hole. From outside under the hood I attached more strips and bent these over the protruding distributor in the rear of the engine and attached them to the base strip. In this manner I put a cowl basket framework over the hole and the engine. Tomorrow I intend to pop rivet some fiberglass cloth to the framework and this weekend apply the epoxy resin and hopefully soon have the cab sealed off from the engine. I know my army of readers finds this blog extremely interesting but this has been my life the past couple of days and what I do is what you get. |
| Progress on the Stude When I am not thinking WDC I have an automotive hobby and I spend a lot of time in the shop. My current project is the 1946 Studebaker on a Chevrolet S-10 frame. Envision this…. A pickup truck almost as old as I am on the chassis of a more modern truck built fifty years later. As I sit in the Roadster seat I now have installed I can see the original instrument cluster still in place. The cluster is on a narrow strip and includes an AMP meter, a speedometer, an oil pressure gauge and a temperature gauge. That was all there was and everything but the AMP meter was mechanical. Heck they don’t even use AMP meters any more, now days they use VOLT meters, and everything is totally electric. The Windshield wipers ran off vacuum if you can believe that. When I get tired of doing body work, I work on the electrical system. My first major milestone when I tackle an automotive project is to mock the vehicle up and drive it for awhile. The reason I do this is to decided if I really like it. I restored a 1953 Ford F-6 and when I finished I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the way it drove, steered, the fuel it consumed or much else beyond the way it looked. Who wants to drive an old truck that is hard to steer, rattles along at 30 MPH like a relic? Anyway I decided after that to do a quick mock up to see if I liked where the project was heading. Let me say that the Studebaker on the S-10 has exceeded all my expectation and it is a Pickup with a classic look and on the more modern chassis a joy to drive. Plus it has been the most affordable of my projects, however the body work and the electrical system have been a challenge. For me to do electrical work I have to get in a certain mindset. I have to look at the wiring diagrams and talk my way through them and the whole process has to percolate in my mind for awhile. It’s almost as if the minions in my mind have to sort things out before I will have much success making the actual wiring a successful enterprise. For example when the Cab of the S-10 was removed there were bundles of wires some constituting the main harness, the operating system, the Lighting system, directional system, radio, speakers and plenty more that escapes me at the moment. To make it drivable the functions that had been in the cab of the S-10 had to be transferred into the Studebaker cab. That “Stick” on the column had to be adapted to the cab and bed of a new vehicle. The wires that once fed the instrument counsel of the Chevy had to be adapted to the instrument panel of the Stude… That meant a lot of head scratching with the diagrams, wire colors and poking around with the test lights and then new connectors on the wires to new switches and lights on the dashboard. Hey the turn signals now work as do the break lights, tail lights an dash board indicator. Holes in the fire wall have been patched even though the biggie is yet to be accomplished. Progress is being made. |
| Rainy Days and Sundays This is the kind of days that my Dad used to love. He called it a “Soaking Rain.” Last night my Black Lab woke me up. At first I thought it was one of the lights on my C-Pap machine flashing but nope! A couple minutes later I saw a flash that heralded a storm coming our way. It’s been a slow steady misting rain ever since. Good sleeping weather is what it is. I have bad dreams, often about things I have never been guilty of. Not that I haven’t been guilty of plenty but you would think it would be those that come back to torment me. NOPE! The ones I find most troubling are out of left field. I am accused of something I never did. In the Book Pappion this is perhaps explained when the central character discusses the fact that he was sent to Devil’s Island for a crime he didn’t commit. That he was a petty criminal the authorities got tired of dealing with and they framed him to get him out of circulation. He accepted this with certain stoicism, remarking that there were indeed many criminal activities he had been involved in and got away with. This is sort of the way that I look at these dreams. Often they involve being caught naked in a compromising situation. This has never happened to me, nor have I ever imagined it happening or been compelled to expose myself in public…. Still I dream of it happening and my being subjected to ridicule like Anthony Wiener….They say thought proceeds action and I have never thought about such a behavior nor does some deep dark force inside move me to want to act in that manner…. UGH! Thank goodness. Still when I start feeling indignant about the actions of famous people like Wiener and Lance Rentzel (The Dallas Cowboy who was once married to Jody Hetherington) I say a prayer thanking my creator that I was not given to such propensities. In my latest dream I am called onto the carpet while attending a military school and accused of not taking the class seriously and that I am going to be the object of special scrutiny and the whole weight of the system is going to be brought to bear to see me severely punished. “Whoa!” I cry out in my defense… “Aren’t we overreacting a bit here?” And the dream goes on to show my detractors are quite serious about the retribution they are planning. Now I know I have my detractors and in some cases I have done ill to them however it was usually not intentional. Nor am I a paragon of virtue or honor. Like Pappion I have done things I regret and gotten away with it but I can count the bad ones on one hand. There have however been other instances where I escaped wrongdoing more as a consequence of the actions of others than through any remarkable virtue of my own. I am going to have some accounting to do when the great judgment day comes but there are acts of kindness and compassion as well on the positive side of my leger. As a matter of fact they considerably outweigh those actions I would rather not think about, so why is it that I don’t have more happy dreams about what a good fellow I am. (Get it, Goodfellow?) I suppose it is just as wrong to imagine illicit behavior as to practice it. Often I sit in Wal-Mart waiting for my wife and see people and imagine what their lives might have been like by the way they look and carry themselves. Sometimes I even wonder, when I see a particularly mature and attractive female, what it would be like to share an intimate moment….but taking that step from thought to action is never a serious consideration… still it is a thought and I suppose those dark thoughts will be weighed on the scale, come the final analysis of our lives. Actually I am proud for the most part with the life I led, the woman I married and the children I raised. My daughters made good marriages and gave me five (5) grandsons. I suppose I can take some credit in that as I would accept some responsibility if it turned out otherwise. Still I am bothered at times by bad dreams and when they come I find myself awakening in the middle of the night and the dogs looking at me and wondering what is going on. Well they have bad dreams too… I suspect because I often see the being chased by the great wolf in the sky and jerking and yelping and whimpering. So I guess it’s an unavoidable consequence of life and I ought to suck it up and quit whining about a phenomenum that is simply a fact of nature. |
| Psychocybernetics I have lots of tools and can fix damn near anything. If I don’t know how I can buy a “How Too” book and go from there. The problem isn’t having the knowledge, its having the will. I can afford the materials and have learned around here to do things by myself. The problem is summoning the desire. Once I used to fix things for the sheer joy of the project. These days my enthusiasm has a bit of an attitude problem and it’s becoming harder and harder to summon up the energy. I have a mental “To Do” list and a task has to hover near the top for several days before I force myself to do it. I find the use of Psychcybernetics useful in this regard. I trick my computer brain into thinking a task is life threatening and then it calls forth the minions and we get the job done. Our brain is dumb like that and can’t separate truth from a pack of imagined bull and responds to both regardless of whether or not the problem is real or imagined. To understand what I’m getting at, have you ever seen a movie and when you walked you were still enthused and mentally emulating the hero…Your brain thought the experience was real and was finding resources to get you ready for action. This is particularly evident in young children who see a move and jump about still under the action of the magic of the silver screen. I would explain the technique to you but you would think me juvenile and in bad need of professional help. It involves programming your mind to think you are simply great rather than a worthless piece of you know what. “I need some of that…..!” I hear resonating from the ether of the spirit world which forms a bond with the corporate identity of mankind. If you really do than the great Wizard, Percy Goodfellow, will provide a quick tutorial, (If the public outcry from my vast readership is sufficiently loud) and you too will be able to get your butt moving by feeding a bunch of totally false information into your bio-processor. It worked for Dorothy and her friends in the Wizard of OZ…..Why not you? |
| Jerkiness My brother and his wife came up and helped care for my mother the last year of her life. I was executor and under the circumstances everyone got along great and I really appreciate what Norman and my Sister-In-Law did to help out. As we were closing out the estate, Norman was taking the Real Estate Agent for a tour of my Parent’s property in the John Deere Gator. On the tour he hit a branch and the plastic fender tore along with the rear passenger panel. Today I fixed it with epoxy glue and a backing of sheet metal and rivets. It might not look great but replacing the panels would have been an unnecessary expense. My wife is wringing her hands and giving me that sarcastic….”Do you think we are destined for the Poor House look.” No! we aren’t but what the heck, every little bit helps….Linda will be retiring in six months and her nursing income will be missed, but we will get by none the less. In addition I tried to get the Dodge and 53 Ford running but to no avail. The batteries are dead and I am hoping an overnight charge will bring one or the other back to life. While I was working on the Gator, Frankie brought a mouse in and ate it in front of me. That is one gross spectacle to watch and I don’t recommend it to anyone. Today I played catch up on a class I am taking… Having taught one makes you more conscious of getting your lesson in on time. Its an HSP class and I decided to write lesson 3 at the E level. I’ll get chewed out by the instructor but what else is new? My jerkiness has a negative effective on the people around me and I have only myself to blame. Plus I am a grumpy old man at times and prone to tirades. Between the news and the Susan Anthony trial I am disgusted with TV and ought to follow the advice of my friend Karen and turn it off. My wife however, likes the TV blaring while she multi-tasks which is a necessary part of her constant need for noise. We are so different but seem to get along most of the time. Actually she is an amusing companion and my life would be ever so dull without her company. My goodness, I actually wrote this blog with only one typo… JERKINESS. I thought I made up that word. |
| Killing the Cash Cow I have a friend who is a Union Negotiator. I have never had a dog in that Union/Management fight and have watched that issue play out going back and forth with a sort of detached interest. On the one hand I understand that there would be no need for unions if Management had not historically abused workers. That Unions evolved as a consequence of Management exploitation of the working man. I get that. When I got out of the service and went back to Tech school we visited a John Deer plant in Iowa. As part of the tour we were taken onto the line where engines were being manufactured and a young management fellow was explaining the process as the workers did their thing on the engines. As he tried to talk they continuously interjected comments designed to embarrass and humiliate the management representative who was explaining things to us. As I watched this malicious harassment taking place I thought….when this manager grows up and becomes a decision maker how is he going to vote on moving operations to china. Up to then I had thought that decisions to move production facilities overseas were based on economics but suddenly I realized that this isn‘t the whole story. The acrimony and malice between management and labor has grow so divisive its become personal and it isn’t just economics driving the train. The Unions have to accept some responsibility and it just isn’t just because they drove a hard bargain on wages….It’s as much a result , in my opinion, as the toxic work climate they have helped foster in the work place. There will not be the same opportunities for the next generation of laborers that the last generation enjoyed, if any opportunity at all. Together Management and Labor have killed the goose that laid the golden egg and ironically put to rest the cash cow they were both stewards to nurture. It’s a damn shame is what it is. |
| 40 K Volt… “Let them eat cake.” My blog writing is streaky. That describes it and the evidence is on that little calendar that highlights the days in the month when you wrote. In addition you get an email if you fail to post in a timely manner. Maybe the reason I fail to post more regularly is to get an email… Today was another dismal day. We went from 50 degree weather straight to the 90’s and are now back in the 60’s. Why can’t the temperature just stay in the 70’s and 80’s? These old bones don’t handle well radical shifts in temperature. I have a John Deere Gator as a utility vehicle on the farm. When my brother was here helping me and Linda settle our parent’s property, he was “hot-doging” with the real estate agent and hit a branch and cracked the right front fender and back passenger panel. I priced a new set and they want close to $250 dollars for the pair. That might not sound like much for an insurance repair but that is a lot for an out of pocket expense, living on a fixed income. The patch panels are that green plastic so I decided to repair them myself and looked at some different processes today…. I went by the body shop I patronize and they have a plastic welder but they didn’t want to fool with anything under $1000 dollars. Told me $250 was cheap and I needed to pony up the cash over at the John Deere Dealership. It’s easy for them to say. Anyway I decided I will rivet a piece of sheet metal behind the cracks and epoxy up the seam. That is the low cost solution and won’t look all that bad if this epoxy that claims to work on hard plastic does the job. It’s not like I’m asking it to weld the seam together. I have a lot of equipment I repair and if it doesn’t look like it came out of the body shop or any other shop for that matter and who is going to see it but me anyway? Seems like I wrote a blog recently on “Are all things worth doing, worth doing well?” I guess it all depends on how you define "good". If one defines it as …. “To the best of your ability,” I’m on solid ground. If you are talking ….”Just like new.” Then my efforts always seem to be a bit lacking. I look at cars and trucks people drive with rust holes in them and think… I know they probably can’t afford gas much less a new car, however there are things an owner can do to make a vehicle halfway respectable without emptying the check book. I had to laugh that GM is grousing about Gas Prices and wants to add another dollar in taxes. This is so they can get more people to buy the Volt that lists for around 40K. The people who can afford to buy a Volt can afford to buy gas. The people looking for a job are happy to have any kind of beater, preferably one that is fuel efficient. I bought a 1996 S-10 for 2K. Another 250 for title and taxes. Then I put another 1K into it to bring it up to speed. I drive it every day and it gets good gas mileage, has a 5 speed transmission and drives nice. It will be ten years before the value of a Volt gets down around her to the point where average (On the margin Americans) can afford one used…. Only the Yuppies can afford them to tell their neighbors...."Look at me, look at me I'm GREEN... These are the same clowns who drove the ecomomy over the cliff to begin with....Oh! let the Taxi driver buy that quarter of a million dollar home.....What the banks won't lend them the money...? .why we'll sick ACORN on them.... Anyway what are they worried about? Fanny May and Freddy Mack will buy their worthless mortgages and "Repackage" them and foist them off on AIG the rest of those dumb assed morgage lenders, whowere "Too Big to Fail.". Ahhh, Sorry, I promise not to get on a harrang today. The point is that as things get worse with the economy people with next to no income will be gleaning the used car and truck markets for something to enable them to survive another week until the food stamps and welfare check kicks in. For the average young American, the dream is dead and nobody but the growing unemployed seem to realize what bad shape this country is really in. |
| Structure and Wiring Diagrams Great writers could be great electricians. They lead a reader or an audience through a complex and convoluted chain of events that are like appliances in the wiring diagram of a home or auto. The reader or watcher has to but turn a dial, push a switch and sit back as the whole piece unfolds with an almost effortless understanding, mindless of the intricacy that lies beneath the surface. It is the difference between being a spectator and being a creator. We can listen to great music, read great literature and appreciate great sculpture but to create it is a different matter altogether. Some think they are so talented that all they have to do is push a pencil and pound the keys and from the locus of their minds will pour forth thoughts and words, appeaing as if by magic, beautifully arranged in an astonishing order of wonder, understanding and awe. Sorry, it doesn’t work that way…. You can no more write a great piece of literature without structure and complexity than you can wire an automobile. It is not just the technical skills but the artistic ability to integrate all the pieces into a harmony of function and prose. Right now I am struggling to rewire the exterior lighting system on my 1946 Studebaker. For the uninitiated let me say it is a lot like writing a drama or a novel. I can see the schematic and all the colored wires and the components neatly arrayed on their paths and can follow a single thread and begin to comprehend how the smallest portion works. However when I see it all laid out in a single diagram it is overwhelming and unintelligible to say the least… The human mind can only order so much in a single bite and the writer has to lead the reader (audience) along through the tangled web one thread at a time. I think if we took the time to diagram a novel or a drama we would be astonished by the many threads, twists and components that in reading or viewing become almost transparent to the consumer of the art. Yet it is there and if you aspire to be an artist, or even a technician you have to appreciate at a much deeper level than the casual reader or patron of the arts. Some people have diagrammatic minds and others have symbolically oriented minds. As a dyslexic I have trouble with diagrams so I have to translate them into alpha characters, and words and sentences of meaning. For example in looking at my wiring diagram I have to write it in prose. “i.e. Power for the Turn signal circuit comes from fuse B/U (Back-Up) which is either fifteen (15) or twenty (20) amp. This circuit splits after the fuse serving both the back-up lamps and the turn signal flasher. The wire is Dark Blue (DKBLU). It enters the turn signal flasher and goes into a two way double throw switch……” I won’t bore you with more as I think you get the idea…. The point being art must be broken down into prose to be understood and then there is but a glimpse of the tip of the ice-burg beneath which is a huge weight of underlying complexity, that goes into the “WOW!” of those who know it when they see it. |
| Grumpy Old Man It’s been another hot day in Wisconsin. Linda and I took the dogs up to Quick Trip and got a soft serve…. Yes we shared it with the girls. Then we drove home through farm country and admired the potatoes and corn coming up. The agro industry is in full gear and you would not believe all the corn that has been planted. I bought two Haynes books on electrical wiring, one their Automotive Electrical Manual and the other on Chevrolet S-10 pickups. One provides general information on wiring and components and the other is specific to the vehicle I am interested in. I am always amazed by how technical manuals seem to tell you everything but what a person needs to know . For example on the tail light circuit there is a four hole connector on the end. Logic would say that one is the blinker, another is the emergency flasher, another is the break and the other is the backup or license light… Further that when the appropriate plug is grounded it should light up and the turn signal should flash on the test light. Forget that…. When I actuated the left turn switch I got power to one of the four holes but it didn’t flash. Now Piffer told me that in order for the circuit to flash it had to have a full load…. That means the entire circuit needs to be hooked up to all the appliances before it will start to blink. If this is true then why the heck didn’t the Manual say something to that effect? I should have made a living writing tech manuals. I would have watched a technician and written down what that person did. Instead they hire a technician who winds up writing it and making altogether too many assumptions about the readership. They spend two pages in the introduction telling how user friendly their product is and then revert to the samo-samo gooble-de-gook techo jargon that technicians communicate in. What a waste of money for someone in their target audience. I got the John Deere Gator running today, am charging the Dodge Diesel, and cut up and blocked a full cord of logs. I am pooped. Linda has been giving me heck about all the equipment I have and that I should get rid of some…. She is right of course but she is much better at telling me to get rid of things than getting rid of things herself. Ever heard of a Garage sale Honey….HELLO…. It takes two to tango and we are both better at telling each other how to run their lives than putting our own affairs in order. Does anyone else have these issues with their spouse? Anyone who ever thought about moving to a farm and relaxing needs professional help…. The work is endless and most of the tasks are one in a lifetime events that require gobs of research and training and experience to perform. Better retire to a condo, buy a rowboat and go fishing for dinner. This is not one of my upbeat days….sorry to put my readers through it….Tonight I promise to take my Prozac and be a happy little bipper tomorrow. |
| When supporting characters rear their lovely heads Summer has arrived in the North Woods, although I am still a little south to be claiming residence in Paul Bunyan country. Still, after the briefest spring it got hot today….really hot. We languished inside for the most part, venturing out to the Grocery store and this evening completed phase 1 of my favorite pastime, painting the deck. Linda and I can deck paint together….We can’t wall paper together but we can deck paint even though she raises hell with me every time I drip a drop of stain on the walkway. She can’t help it….the compulsive gene makes her do it. This weekend I decided to hook up the turn signals on my 1946 Studebaker…. I can hear the groans…..not another mechanical blog… Well forget that….There isn’t much to report….I failed, overwhelmed by complications I won’t even go into. Bill Piffer told me to bring it in and he would do it and once I have that working it’s off to the glass man….That will be a major milestone. On the 1940 ford Sedan the fuel tank, pump and line are installed along with the transmisson. Now for the drive shaft and that will be another great accomplishment. Last year in Hot Rod Magazine there was a 1934 Ford that had been restored and street rodded as a race car. The article got a lot of heat because the builder used a painting process that resulted in a false patina that made the care look old. I thought it looked great….. Whenever I go to a car show I walk past the rows of perfectly restored cars with their 10K paint jobs and got where the “Rat Rods” are. Rat Rods are modern day Hot Rods, built by real people in garages rather than farmed out to custom shops and hauled around on trailers. I don’t mind it that others take a different view on what constitutes a cool set of wheels but when it comes to cars and trucks I love to see something fabricated by someone who doesn’t have a large bankroll and does his work on the apron of his/her garage. Anyway I am thinking about a novel where the 1940 Sedan is bought by my grandfather, raced by my father and street rodded by me and then put out in the barn and found by my grandson twenty years hence. Hmmm….let me know what you think. Linda and I watched the last episode of season 1 of “Justified.” I hated to see it end….We will be buying season 2 when it comes out. I like to read about the making of these serials and how they adapt to the unexpected. For example “Boyd Crowder” was a character who succeeded beyond all expectations and they had to do some extensive rewriting to take advantage of his success….Sound familiar…..Ever had a supporting character begin to eclipse the central character…..? Of course you have and when it happens you have to take advantage |
| Naptime, I have not posted a blog in a couple of days and apologize. I have plenty of excuses but will not insult your intelligence by offering them. We all know that if you are disciplined you will find time to do the things that are important. This blog is like a journal of sorts and keeping it up is important and I will try and do a better job in the future. I have an idea for a novel or drama and it involves an automobile and three generations of the Males in my family. In the first it is purchased by my grandfather who was a Presberterian Minister….My father gets the title and turns it into a circle track race car, and finally I get it and make it into a street rod. I am actually building (Subcontracting the heavy stuff) it and it will have the imprint of the three mentioned above upon it. The car will be a symbol of the threes passion for automobiles and the way it is manifested on the three generations of males. Despite the fact that the three seem and claim to be different and the outward appearances are different the three are very much alike, hence the name “Acorns.“ So I am beginning to outline that story. Then I have a sleep disorder….No cause for concern…..At my age I have many disorders, which include bladder, stomach and kidney stones and while none is in itself that serious, collectively they can combine at times and wear me down. Last month I was driving and woke up in the opposite lane and this week I am in the sleep clinic again getting a “Nap” Test. I hope my doctor can figure out what to do because I stay awake a lot and then doze snap back in cycles. It is something a retired person can deal with but not a whole lot of fun. The weather this week has been beautiful. It is seventy-two outside with a breeze….A Great Wisconsin Springtime day. Anyway tomorrow I will catch up on my class again and issue some instructions to my remaining students. For now….. Yawn, I think I will take a little nap. |
| Defining Problems Defining a problem is a real skill. At the Command and General Staff College a vignette was given to the students and they were asked at the end...what is the problem? If there were ten (10) students in the class there were always 10 uniquely different problem statements which helps explain why this definition phase is such an important consideration. What you define is what you solve.....Get it? In the military, the consequences of failure are so great that greater attention was decided to devote to problem solving in the cirriculum. It was already part of the war planning process. It begins with the problem statement which is formulated using this or something similar. “The problem is to determine the best way to….“ For my part I always had trouble with the word “Best.“ What it means to me is not what it means to everyone…..It is a take on the word “Good” and philosophers have been debating it forever. For my purposes I always thought of it as an optomization process. Still the fundamental definition eluded me….”What is Good?” Finally I came up with a Percy Goodfellow, pragmatic working definition which said…. “Good is a thought or action that improves an outcome over doing nothing at all.” I must be the only person on the planet that likes this definition but it works for me. To explain the variations, ie Good ,Better and Best I use "The Cave man on the plain example...". one of our primitive ancestors, who sees a storm coming. If he stands under the solitary oak nearby, he thinks to himself, that he can reduce the approaching strike of raindrops and the intensity of the wind by fifty percent….If he runs to a looming outcrop of rocks, that is better, where the reduction is estimated at seventy five percent and if he takes shelter in a distant cave that is best (optimal), because it reduces the effects of the wind and rain by nearly one hundred percent. Of course if he does nothing he will suffer the full effects of the storm. So in defining the cave man's problem, he might conclude, as he watches the storm approach “I need to determine how to best (The best way) escape the effects of the storm." Now this is only the first step in the process but a hugely important one. If he said the problem is.... "that strorms are dangerous that might be true, but this conclusion does not lend itself to a solution. If he said that storms are God’s punishment for our missdeeds and are a thing that builds character….that leads nowhere except to hunker down, wrap up in a bearskin and ride it out. If however he wanted to minimize its effects on his body he might define matters as I have suggested and do something to avoid the conditions that nature is about to present. |
| More on Assumptions It is cold today and almost the end of May. Forty-Seven (47) degrees and it drizzled all day. No wonder there are toranados further south. Imagine that ninety-degree (90) weather smashing into fifty -degree (50) weather. Didn’t do much… stayed inside and tended to the hearth. Wife and I took a trip to town but mostly stayed home…. The blog on assumptions got some interest, enough to get me to stress a couple of points. Anything we consider that has an element of futurity is an assumption. “The sun will come up tomorrow is an assumption.” I fairly reliable one but still an assumption. All assumptions should be based on an expectation of truth. Assuming that a dog has wings is not an assumption….it is absurd. We use assumptions as proxy facts, that is substitutes for facts that we are uncertain of. If something has already happened but is being concealed from us…. Like a state secret, we need to fill in the blanks with assumptions in order to fill the data field to the solution equation and solve the problem. Sometimes the facts are available but expensive to get or painful or difficult to obtain. If you want to solve the problem pay the price, suck it up or run down the facts. Don’t make assumptions about facts that are out there just because they are not readily or easily available. In the decision making process the first step is to define the problem. A good way to frame a problem statement is to say…. “I need to determine the best way to…” The next step is to gather facts bearing on the problem… Where there are holes in the facts….ie they have an element of futurity or are closely guarded secretive things that somebody already knows but won’t reveal, then by all means make recourse to assumptions. Then list the possibllities, show their advantages and disadvantages, compare them with one another, reach a conclusion of which one optimizes the solution, and make a recommendation. At this point you know the best (optimal) answer however it remains to work out a plan of action and get others to act on it... if it requires more than one person to execute., |
| Assumptions and Proxies Since Deadwood went off my wife and I watch the Mini Series “Justified.” It is by the same writers and directors and contains many of the same actors. It is a great series worthy of both study and enjoyment. My favorite character is Boyd Crowder, the son of a criminal kingpin in Harlan Kentucky, who claims to have had a conversion to Christ, however the audience is left hanging as to whether or not that is really true. Anyway the Protagonist, Marshal Givens, is having a relationship with a woman who was married to and killed one of the Crowder brothers. Marshall Givens has many enemies in his own right and one night as the two are in bed, someone enters and tries to kill them. The Marshall assumes it is one of the Crowders and goes to the penitentiary to talk to Boyd to find out who it is. Boyd tells him to reexamine his assumptions……That maybe the assailants were not after her but after him…..This turns out to be correct and raises a great question about the complexity of human beings and our motives for how we frame the constraints that shape our world view. Sometimes we use assumptions as proxies to explain to ourselves why we feel the way we do. Our brain is stupid and believes anything our awareness tells it. We can literally convince it of anything, often without realizing that there are factors at work that go well beyond the scenarios we have fed into its CPU….or had fed into it by others, for that matter. I know this sounds obscure so let me give an example. When I was a kid in Korea my mother had a house maid and one day gave her some brocade silk cloth to take to the dressmaker. On the way to complete the errand the young girl took a shortcut across the paddies and was raped by a thug. When my mother heard the news she was stunned and felt guilty that her request led in part to the rape and took action to insure the girl received the proper medical attention. That afternoon when she expected the girl to be in the hospital being treated she showed up with her mother and other family members with the ruined material pleading they not be asked to make restitution for the bolt of cloth. |
| The Importance of Outlining This class I have been teaching for New Horizons Academy has been as much a boon for my own writing as for anyone else. First there has been the research and mining a host of nuggets that in themselves don’t sound particularly profound but taken collectively and integrated properly can make a huge difference in the quality of what you write. The most important of theses is the outline which provides a structure. An organization for the many components a writer needs to consider in planning a quality work. Historically I wrote shorter pieces that tended to be sequential and were lacking in serious complexity. I could string these ideas together, one after the other and follow my muse as we started to write about them. “Get the story down on paper, I told myself and you can edit it later and polish it up a bit. As a result of my failure at novel writing I realized that my biggest problem was a lack of structure and resolved when deciding to teach the One Act Play course that even though such a drama was not long in words it required many of the same components of a larger drama compressed into a smaller place. In order to teach these principles it became clear that an outline was essential before any attempt was made at the actual writing. As this dawned I began to realize what I had been reading in the research. Many playwright spend months on the structure of a play before actually writing anything….I also see this being mentioned in screenwriting…. That a team of writer will brainstorm and outline for months before actually writing scripts. I sense that at writing.com many just start pushing the pen and seeing where the experience is going to lead. Often I see it written that this is a question of the style in which a writer writes but I am convinced as time goes on that such an approach is doomed to failure….first the idea that you just need to get something down on paper and you can clean it up later is flawed. Trying to retrospectively add structure while it is possible in certain linear simple works does not fly as complexity is added. Once something is written, it is an agony to go back and try and salvage it into something that is structurally sound. There is a rigidity that sets in once the actual words are being written and while they can be amended or tweaked or polished substantive change becomes increasingly difficult as the complexity goes up. Thus my advice is to think about your story and brainstorm it others that have a structural understanding of literature….As dramaturge I can take liberties with the dramatic content of a writers materials and make suggestions that would be considered too intrusive by many aspiring writers. This dynamic is working in the class even though it is causing pain for the students….However, it is much easier to write a good drama if you have a good story to start with that contains all the dramatic ingredients… a story worthy of a writers efforts. |
| Little Increments or one big Slam! I have a COMPAC laptop. It is five (5) years old and many of the letter have worn off my keyboard. That is no big deal because I took typing in High School and know what key is where. Several weeks ago however, the “F” key popped off the keyboard. By pressing hard on it clicked back into place but this is the second time it has done that. The reason I mention this is because I have had two newer laptops, a Dell and a Toshiba since I bought the Compaq and they are constantly in and out of the Best Buy Shop. I have WIFI in the house and my main desk top is in the basement and I always have recourse to that however, I like to sit in the bedroom and work. I am a fan of Icarte and have some of his prints adorning the walls. This world is not a very nice place….If my walk-on cats could speak they could discuss why to great lengths. People throw cats out when they drive past farms….. “On,” they must think, “That looks like a nice farm, I’m sure the people are nice there and would enjoy the companionship of a croaker sack full of kittens…..” No that is probably giving them too much credit. Then there is the bird that drowned in the wheel well of my overturned pick-up bed, and the squirrel squashed on the road and the dead deer lying in the ditch on the side of the road. Today I saw a mother deer cross in front of me, slowly followed by a fawn she had just dropped. The fawn collapsed on the side of the road and just laid there. I stopped wondering what to do, not wanting to interfere when it got up and followed mom into the woods. Then the cows in the rain….what a miserable life they have….we should count our blessings….we could be wild animals and nature is one cruel and heartless entity. I know I ramble but these are the things I see happening around me and every time I run over a squirrel or hit a bird something in me clutches and I find myself calling out to the great creator for forgiveness and praying the soul of the poor creature finds comfort in the next life. Here I am a retired soldier who has taken the lives of fellow human beings, acting like a child, clutching flinching crying out at all the suffering and misery that surrounds me. I can’t help it….It is what I have become and I have a fear that when the great accounting comes I will have some explaining to do regarding all the poor souls I have made to suffer and prematurely depart this life. I have this theory….that if you are unaware of the suffering around you and don’t take it in little increments then the “Big Guy” is going to drop a concrete highway divider on your head….So if you want to spare yourself that experience than show a little compassion and empathy for all those creatures, great and small that surround your life. |
| Acknowledgement Readers of my blog are often in disagreement with what I write. They see what I see but through a different lens….one of their background, culture, experience, education, intelligence and a host of other baggage we acquire along the road through life. Sometimes the issues they raise with what I say are justified…..Heavens know I long ago realized that all wisdom is not reposed in this brain of mine. While I don’t always agree the points that are raised sharpen my own crafting of the world view I have about the things that surround me. In writing my blog I am trying to reconcile what I see happening around me… the opinion or view I have about it…I am trying to clarify, focus, refine, distill what I see and the result is seldom perfect to my own satisfaction and I appreciate it when someone offers ideas that help shape the way I come to look at things. I delight in feedback and sift carefully through it in order to mine the kernels that reveal themselves. I often read an entire book for one or two kernels. .. Nuggets of wisdom. I jokingly refer to my blog buddies as “My army of Readers.” There is no such “army” only a few interesting souls that venture in and out and a handful that take the time to respond. To the responders I owe a special debt of gratitude. Thank-you |
| Inflation…..Invisible Taxation Nobody agrees with my views on economics but I have them anyway. They work for me. Here is one of them. If you put all the value of this country in a fiscal bathtub it would be only so full. It couldn’t get any fuller because there is only so much value in the country. Now the government can print money up to that value. What they do is throw an IOU into the tub next to it (debt tub) for the value that is in the fiscal bathtub. That is called the debt and the ceiling in the debt tub should not go above what is in the value tub. When it does the result is inflation. Now if an employee of a business is managing an account with say $100,000 in it and skims of $ 10,000 that is called embezzlement. They go to jail. However when the government takes value from the savings of Americans through inflation this is treated with a shrug….almost as if it is an act of nature….something unavoidable like a change in the weather. Most of the money in this country is controlled by senior citizens who are sitting on a nest egg. Historically they have trusted the government to insure that nest egg. What is happening now is that there is a very low interest rate being paid on Cds and there is “Invisible Inflation” taking place. In other words the government has printed more in currency than there is value. This is where the money is coming from for the “Redistribution” that is taking place. There is simply not enough being collected in taxes to pay for the overhead of government and the difference is being made up in Inflation which is an invisible form of taxation. It is a wire and mirror game and the trick to making it work is using creative accounting techniques. The government does not want the citizens to figure out where they are getting the money to keep going and that money is coming from inflation. Inflation that isn’t even being “Fessed” up to. I had to chuckle when it was reported that the government does not use food prices and fuel prices in calculating inflation. I have to say that the top two indicators on my list for calculating how much more it costs this year than it did last year are food and gas. I can remember what I paid last year at the supermarket and gas pump. My common sense tells me it is ten (10) percent more than last year. This is essentially a ten percent tax on savings accounts. Accounts that are only paying the holder one percent. Having money in a CD account is not a smart thing these days. People with greater understanding than our senior citizens (Foreigners and Investors) understand this and are beginning to demand higher returns on government notes and it is the Cds that old codgers like me that are sitting on that is paying the bill. Used to be citizens in this country (Like Japan) trusted the government more than anyone else. Unfortunately this no longer the case. Conservative Mutual funds that trade in actual value and funds that deal in precious metals are a much more sensible approach to safeguarding your next egg. |
| Perplexing Question Blogging, like anything else, is about discipline. You simply have to do one every day or risk breaking the habit and falling out of the routine. Even when I am distracted by the press of other compelling needs I try and find time to crank one out even if the effort falls somewhat below my personal standard. (Whatever that Is.) One of the questions I asked my students in the pre-course survey was if they agreed or disagreed with the following question. “All things worth doing are not doing well?” This blog is a sort of take on that question. The submission has to fit the time available and as a consequence does not go to the depth and length and “Profoundness” of some of the other efforts…..Does that mean I should not have bothered at all. I think that many writers think that way and simply don’t write if they think they have nothing worthy to write about. My father would have answered the question indignantly with the response….”If you are not going to do the job right then don’t bother…“ I know where he was coming from and for years I subscribed rigidly to that philosophy. Then I became responsible for a large organization that was hugely overcommitted and under resourced. There were certain responsibilities I had that would get me fired if they went unfulfilled and others that could be handed a lick and a kiss. Then there were the actions that I felt were necessary to the long term health of the organization. You see what I’m getting at here? Time is a resource, so is energy, so is the capacity of your brain….not to mention money…. As people enjoy success the world increasingly heaps demands upon those with the talent to make it all happen until eventually life’s demands exceed the ability of a person to get them all done……at least to the standard we would like to operate at. Thus the question….“Are all things worth doing worth doing well?“ Are there times when it is better to do something a little half-assed than ignore it altogether?. Are there times when a little grease is better than no grease at all? Every day I look at all the requirements I have and dole out the recourses accordingly. My father would be appalled at some of the corners I cut and perhaps I would do better to just do nothing than the little I do in some areas. Is it just me or do others struggle with the answer to this perplexing question? |
| Water Wings If you wonder where I have been on my blog the past few days it has been outside. Winter is a much better time for blogging than Springtime. The farm here looks like a salvage yard and Linda is raising Hell that I get things cleaned up. Then there are my automotive projects which get more fatiguing as the years rush by. Still I have kept my eye on the Course I am teaching and answering promptly and with encouragement the progress of my students. I don’t intend to let that one fall and in fact it has not proven to be as time consuming as I anticipated. It’s the students after all who have to write the plays and I am amazed and fascinated by the direction the individual writers are taking. I think many writers just pick up a pen and start writing. Following the keys to see where this or that idea is going to lead. In a smaller work that might work but in one of greater complexity that approach is asking for trouble. It is so easy for a larger work….like a larger fish, to get away from the writer. I don’t care how brilliant a writer is or how powerful a memory they possess they are still human beings and while I concede that some are more capable than others everybody’s brain capacity, in my opinion, gets exceeded at anything beyond 2500 words. If you are venturing into deep water you need something to help keep you afloat and I am not referring to “Water Wings.” I am referring to an OUTLINE. The reason so many writers fail is because there is no structure, no front end packaging of fundamentals, a central character who is anything but central, and bite sized chunks that lead consistently from one crises to the next and culminates in the big bad tsunami that rises and falls coming ever closer as the end draws near. This One Act Play Course offers a huge benefit to an aspiring writer that I didn’t fully realize when I got into teaching it. A One Act Play is the Flash fiction of Drama and if you can write one properly it will have huge spin-off benefits to anyone working at improving their writing skills. |
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Love it! Especially the safety measures for us homo sapiens...
