Poesie? Sinon, l'hiver.

I love poetry. I'm especially fond of poems that are compact and simple, yet nonetheless vivid and meaningful. Much like a mathematical proof or a photograph, sometimes the beauty is in the simplicity — it includes everything necessary and nothing else.

At times, though, it can be difficult to distinguish the essential elements from the excess. For me, I'm a sucker for function words. I recall receiving feedback on an essay years ago: "almost too long," it said, "but it flows like butter." So in that case, the excess was actually essential.

Viv (left) mentioned a similar challenge in story-writing: character development takes time, and it can be difficult to empathize with a character who has too little nuance. It can be a struggle to create a character in as little space as possible, while still crafting all of his essential characteristics.

Yet this is exactly what Samuel Coleridge manages in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." The mariner himself is a surprisingly flat character, but there is just enough there for us to follow his story. In a sense, he's more of a frame than a character; the topic of the poem itself seems to be human nature, rather than the nature of any particular human.

In the photo, George recounts part of "The Rime…" to Viv as the two discuss the fate of the albatross over an inebriated game of Power Grid.
Poesie? Sinon, l'hiver.

Danzón

Why learn to walk when you can learn to dance? This toddler was practicing his "steps" at a Target Summer pops concert at San Jose State University, where Paquito D'Rivera combined melody and wit to present an interesting evening of music.

During the concert, Paquito and his band reimagined Mozart as a composer from New Orleans, and afterward played a Danzón by Juan Sebastian Baca (perhaps also known as Johann Sebastian Bach). As always, more photos to come…

Foggy Fotowalk Fri-err-Wednesday

This is Larry. Behind Larry, you can see a beautiful vista, featuring a brilliant full moon rising above the iconic Golden Gate Bridge, as seen from the mild but nonetheless warm and not-at-all-hard-to-get-to-from-south-bay-during-rush-hour climes of Hawk Hill.

Ok… so maybe not… That was the plan, at least, but the fog started off thick and gradually turned to opaque as we waited. Not good news. As a backup plan, we took off and headed off toward the eastern reaches of Tiburon.

In Tiburon, there was no fog but also no bridge, but sometimes you make do. I pulled out my tripod, but I never actually used it. As a people photographer, I ended up trying to find interesting scenes with people in them.

Here, my friend Jia takes a photo as a sailboat passes through the wavering reflection of the moon on the tiny waves in the bay.

As the sunlight fell and day turned to dusk, a variety of boats passed us as they returned to harbor. You see, Tiburon is something of a nautical town. Here, a sailboat follows the dwindling solar twilight as it heads toward the Corinthian Yacht Club.

An oddly-familiar-seeming boat with the inscription "Jaws" passes through the moonlight on the bay.

On the way home, I spotted some more fog spilling over CA-92 again and decided to stop a bit farther north, what with the full moon providing some illumination for the foreground. I love how the wisps of fog spill through the treetops on the mountain.

Mechanicking on a Budget

In a previous episode, I noted that Saab Story is rife with exhaust leaks. Jerrit took it upon himself to build us a new, less leaky exhaust. However, even the best-laid pipes of Jerrit and team do often go awry.

To start the process, Jerrit obtained some pipes. He wanted to flare the pipes to friction-fit them together before welding, so he bought a pipe-flaring tool…

So, there's an old saying about tools: "buy it cheap, buy it twice." It's not always clear how cheap is too cheap, though.

Well, let me tell you: this tool was way too cheap. Shortly after taking this photo, Jerrit discovered that the tool had stopped advancing. It turned out that some threads on the tool had destroyed themselves before the tool had done much of anything.

When you buy tools on a budget, it's useful to know how to fix them when they break. After the initial failure, I went to OSH and came back with a matching, higher-grade nut for the original drive shaft, as well as a new all-thread shaft in case the original didn't work.

Jerrit turned the shaft with the new nut, and eventually the threads on the new nut were destroyed as well. After disassembling the tool again, I also discovered that the steel conical compression part was starting to tear into pieces. It was at this point that Jerrit aptly suggested, "Let's just keep at it until it eats shit and explodes." Well put.

I swapped the original shaft for the all-thread, and put nuts, bolts, and lots of grease in the appropriate places. All of the new stuff held up this time, and we actually managed to flare the pipe barely enough for another pipe to fit in. At that point, we discovered that the other conical compression part had gotten crushed in the process. After two rebuilds, we gave up and ordered a different tool.

After spending all night flaring a single pipe joint, we finally pulled out the welder to try to finish things up. In keeping with our rate of progress the rest of the night, it took some inspection, a phone call, and resetting a tripped breaker to actually get some welding done. And even so, the incomplete flaring job made it difficult for Jerrit to make a decent weld, because there was a giant air gap between the pieces. Oh well…

The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!