A Hand Repaired Gift

 When I was in Middle School (my mind clearly tells me the 6th grade, but I have no data for that beyond finding a picture somewhere), my mother bought me a blanket with a tiger for Christmas.  Why I received this particular blanket is a mystery now lost to the ages:  I did not have a particular love for tigers (more so than any other animal) and we certainly had other blankets.  But for better or worse, it became mine.

Over the years, it stayed with me:  at home until I went to college, then to college (multiple times), then to my new home and then to my family where - like many things of course - the blanket became less "mine" and more "my family's", being borrowed by Na Clann until it sort of unofficially became Nighean Gheal's possession on her bed or on the couch.  It came to hold memories, not just of the blanket itself but of the giver and everywhere it had been, a sort of physical history of people and places it had been used by and what had been going on at the time.

The blanket itself retained most of its integrity, but over time the outer stitching on the edging - a nylon sort of thread - began to fail and came loose, which resulted in the blanket beginning to tear.  I had done what I could by gently handling it, but it was clearly not getting better.

Sometime during this past year, when the question of "What do you want for Christmas?" came up, I mentioned in passing that I would love if the edging of the blanket could be repaired.  I am pretty sure it was before the relocation to New Home 2.0, but it was long enough ago that I completely forgot about the request.

Until Christmas Day.  My gift, from Nighean Bhan, was a blanket with resewn edging.

Look at those corners.  Pretty "like new" sewing, and far more sturdy than the original edging.

Nighean Bhan's comment was that a lot of time watching videos on The Tube of You was involved in this project.

It is hard to come up with a "Best Christmas Present I ever got" set of items, but surely this is now in the Top Ten. 

Given the distinct change in temperatures with the move to New Home 2.0, it will be used and enjoyed for many years more.

Bang The Drum Slowly: The Passing of Pioneer Preppy

In some future history work (assuming that there is a future history and that there is power to run it), I do not wonder that this early era of the InterWeb (we are only at 40 years old as of 2023) will be looked back upon the way we now look upon the Japanese era of Ukiyo.

Ukiyo (浮世) literally means the "floating/fleeting/transient world".  The era, which technically runs the Edo Period of Japan coinciding with the Tokugawa Era (A.D. 1600-1867) refers to the idea of the transience of the passing world and the importance of living in the moment.  Its most frequent use was (perhaps not surprisingly) for that of the world of pleasure, but it could be extended to any idea of a moment or moments in time to live for.  Most people only know it from its signature art form, Ukiyo-e, or Pictures of the Floating World.  In paintings and in woodblock prints, Japanese artists presented pictures of the passing world.

(Taking the Evening Cool by Ryogoku Bridge,  Okumura Masanobu, A.D. 1745 [source])

In a similar manner, the InterWeb and the blogs that populate it ultimately have the same concept:  transient constructions of electrons and pixels, rising and falling with the waves and interests and the willingness of authors to write.

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Blogs and websites usually erupt of out of nowhere, for the most part an act of fiat lux ("Let there be light") on the part of their creators.  But they all end one of two ways. The first - the more explicit and seemingly less common - is that the creator announces its end, perhaps providing a reason or reasons for the termination of the blog/website.

In the second, they do not end as much as they simply drift away, borne on the currents of decaying search engines and links on other blogs that point to a thing that is no longer a living concern, signposts to monuments of the InterWeb now abandoned except for ghosts and tumbleweed.

In most of these cases, we never know the reason for their end.  There can be a variety of course: Sometimes the author loses interest.  Sometimes life simply happens and writing becomes a thing that can no longer be easily done.  The entries become less and less until one day there are no more entries, just a trailing set of comments that drift off into the ether without response.

Occasionally though, we do get a reason.

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It is likely because of my recent vacation that I missed what has become the final post on The Small Hold this past 27th of December 2024, announcing the death of its proprietor, Pioneer Preppy, earlier on the 8th of December.

PP had been gone from formal posting since February of last year but in point of fact, for something longer than that:  his somewhat regular posts had begun to have longer and longer gaps between them, his comments on other blogs less and less.  He never addressed the reason for the gaps and most did not ever ask (we never do - as a group we bloggers seem uncommonly respectful of privacy in a modern world so free of it).  Comments to that final post went unanswered; periodic check-ins by commenters went without response.

Now, no matter how it happened, we know the reason why.

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Given the apparently non-search function of Blogger and its comments, I cannot tell you when I first "met" PP.  To my mind it was in the early 2010's, but trying to do a search of posts is somewhat pointless and given the small sample size, it appears that really I got few comments at all before PP showed up.

How he found me I will never know now; likely it was a random search on some subject we shared an interest in.  Repeated comments led to me going back to his blog; from that, the sort of InterWeb friendship that seems to spring up from these sorts of things.

He wrote of gardens and trees, of encroaching civilization and trying to be self sufficient and the ups and downs of weather in Missouri.  His tales of trying to keep his wood furnace going in Winter became a staple of my Winter reading.  And at the end of every post, his admonition to "Keep Prepping Everyone" encourage everyone - no matter what their position or circumstances - to do what they could, where they were.

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PP was meaningful in my blogging career in two major ways.

The first was that he always - up to the last few posts - made it a point to answer everyone that commented, a trait that I have incorporated (and value in all those bloggers that do the same).  A comment is that most precious of commodities, a slice of time and therefore a slice of life and should be respected as such.

The second was that he was the very first blog I was added to a blogroll on.

It is not such a big thing now - I do not know that anyone does such things anymore on a regular basis, given that blogs come and go.  But seeing my blog there on someone else's blog for the first time was something that I valued greatly.  I had "arrived" as a blogger.

For that, I will always remain grateful

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I have no idea what the final plans for his blog are.  In a way, his blogroll has become a sort of frozen moment in time, as other blogs have continued to disappear. Their names remain, as do their last updates:  1 year ago, 2 years ago, 6 years ago.  His, too, will now go on his own blogroll list, to either slowly be forgotten and unlinked to or simply to disappear one day, either by conscious choice of his heirs or the shutdown of servers that no longer store items of perceived value.

The Floating World will have claimed another victim.  And the InterWeb will be a bit less bright for his passing.

Salve atque vale - Hail and Farewell, friend.  May we met again under that Happiest of Skies.

The Collapse CLXXIII: Mail

05 Oct 20XX+1

My Dear Lucilius:

The most unexpected thing in the world happened today.

You may remember the Post Office that was attached to the local gas station/mini-market, one of the few establishments (along with the local bar/RV Park) to remain open here even to the Summer of last year. You may also recall that earlier this year, the Post Office was commandeered as a sort of Headquarters for what became our trek to McAdams and the almost nucleus of some kind of small governmental body.

The time for that body, as I have related, has passed – but Young Xerxes, loyal to the idea even in its lingering death, has taken it upon himself to save the maps and other items that are there (including, apparently, the radio we were using to speak with our friends to the North, although where that has gone he has not mentioned). It is not more than one street over and so, every day (per Statiera), he has been quietly bringing things back to their house. “Reasons”, he says when asked.

Yesterday, in the midst of carrying something to or from our house, he handed me something. “Found this in the Post Office” he said as he pressed it into my hand.

It was a letter. More specifically, a letter from you.

The postmark date is sometime last Summer, just before things began to unravel (including the mail, of course). Why was this left behind? Your printing is as inscrutable but vaguely legible, and in such a small town there is seldom if any question who “Seneca” was. Did it get set aside? Lost? Or was it the last delivery of mail that arrived only to find that there was no more service, a last gasp of a bureaucracy doing what bureaucracies even after the world they were designed for ceases to exist?

Looking at the envelope – your return address, my mailing address, a postmark across a stamp with a time, date, and location of a world seemingly vanished – I was struck by how emotional I found myself to be. For one moment there was no Collapse: it was me, standing in my living room, looking at a letter from my friend the way I had always received them in the past. An ordinary, not at all noteworthy, event.

You cannot imagine with what reverence I opened envelope.

Letters from the past are always capsules of a sort, fleeting frozen windows into time and circumstances and people that have vanished. Yours was no different – only in the sense that it was not remarkable in any way.

There were no dire predictions, no complaints about failing supply lines or infrastructure or power that was disappearing or a financial system in the midst of collapsing. It was just about and your life: your apartment, comments on a book you were reading about World War II, a recent dining experience you and Augusta had enjoyed. The sort of things that we used to write about, once upon a time.

Also – it is you, after all – you included the “holy grail” of prayer cards, St. Hyacinth of Kiev*, the unofficial patron saint of Strength Training. You remember I had been challenging you to come up with one of these for years to “complete” my collection (and by collection, I mean mostly that you continually sent them to me for over 30 years until I started putting them in an album).

Just like that, it turns out you were able to do it.

Apparently I was gripping the letter so tightly that Pompeia Paulina came over and asked me what was wrong. I showed her, letter in one hand and prayer card in the other, perhaps a tear or two on my face.

How much I miss you, my friend, and a world where prayer cards in envelopes could be the norm.

Your Obedient Servant, Seneca

(* Hyacnith of Kiev or Hyacinth of Poland (A.D. 1185 - 1256).  Polish noble who became a Dominican Friar.  In A.D. 1240 during the invasion of Kiev by the Mongols, he went to the sanctuary to take the ciborium, the receptacle for the Eucharist, to save it from the Mongols.  At that moment he had a vision of Mary, who asked him to take a stone statue of her as well.  Although the statue was well over what he could normally lift, he took both the ciborium and the statue and fled, thus his unofficial patronage of Strength Training.   Also known as San Jacinto de Polonia, a pierogi festival is held in his honor every year).

(Source)

The FortyFive 2025 Edition: A Primer

Greetings and welcome to 2025!

As has become a practice (since 2021, apparently), one of the first posts in the New Year is intended as a guide to places and characters that inhabit this particular corner of the world.  Due to high level government concerns of secrecy (I wish; really it for the anonymity) everyone and most places here go by another name.  

To be completely frank, even I have to keep a "cheat sheet" (or "process aide", as we would call it in my industry.

I am your redoubtable host, Toirdhealbheach Beucail ("Toridhealbheach" is a version of my name in Old Irish Gaelic; "Beucail" means "booming or roaring", as in the sound of a cannon. If you ever met me in person, you would find I have only two volumes:  silent and "ON").  I have been taking up space on this corner of the InterWeb for this, my twentieth year (as of July).

A very brief history: I grew up in a small town, the same town my parents and my mother's parents had grown up in. I went away to college for two degrees that have nothing to do with what I ended up actually doing, then came back home and lived in and around that area (referred to here uncreatively as "Old Home") until 15 years ago, when due to a layoff we had to move (to the also uncreatively named) "New Home".  Last year in 2024 after a series of two layoffs in 2024 (Hammerfalls 2.0 and 3.0), I have now ended up in equally uncreatively named New Home 2.0, which is back closer to where I grew up.

I have a variety of interests.  I am a practitioner of Iaijutsu, a Japanese sword martial art.  I make cheese and other dairy foods.  I train with weights.  I write, both blogs and some kind of longer form.   I hike, mostly in the Sierra Nevadas but have also been down into the Grand Canyon.   I study languages, both current as well as the dead ones.  I read voraciously - primarily history and theology, but also philosophy, agricultural books and "old style" (say pre-1985) science fiction and fantasy.  I find myself doing far more travel than I originally anticipated.  In years past I have gardened, although the relocation has reduced this to more of a container gardening situation for the moment.

Dramatis Personae:

        - The Ravishing Mrs. TB:  To whom I have been married for over 30 years now and who actually makes sure the trains run on time and things get done.

     - Nighean Gheal: Number one daughter, a college graduate with a degree in International Business now living in the Cheongju province of South Korea, teaching English (at least through July of this year).

    - Nighaen Bhan: Number Two daughter, also a college graduate with a degree in Communications and pursuing a Master's level program in Speech Disorders (a.k.a., Speech Therapist).

     - Nighean Dhonn: Number Three daughter, currently studying Anthropology and Archaeology.

      - The Fiancé:  New to this years cast of characters, he is the fiancé of Nighean Bhan.   At some point I will have to come with a more original name.

     - The Director:  One of my two best friends from High School and still currently one of my best friends.  Lives in Old Home, one of the most intelligent people I know.  Currently working on his Ph.D.  On an unusual note, he is practicing Quaker.

    - Uisdean Ruadh: The other of my two best friends from High School and still currently one of my best friends.  Also lives in Old Home, currently living in The Cabin at The Ranch with his mother  A Mhathair na hUisdean Ruadh, who turned 97 in December.  Deeply Catholic, loves traditional Catholicism, planes, and history.  

  - The Berserker:  My weight training coach.  I have trained with him for 8+ years now.  I live in fear of his weekly training regimes, although they have been very successful.

- The Shield Maiden:  A friend I met throw Highland Games many years ago.  She lives much farther away than she used to (Picture the border of Canada and then move down.  Slightly.).  We chat via the InterWeb every day.  She is a reservoir of wisdom and the much needed lectures I will get from no-one else.

-La Contessa: My very good and old friend (post high school, so not quite as long as The Director and Uisdean Ruadh, but almost as long).  We regularly have dinners once a month when I am in Old Home.

-The Outdoorsman:  My brother-in-law and hiking partner in crime.  What started as lark of an idea (hiking the Grand Canyon) has turned into 3-4 smaller training hikes and a single big hike a year.

- The Cowboy/The Young Cowboy:  A father and son team, they have kept cattle at The Ranch for almost 20 years now.  They are regularly present there and help to keep an eye on the place when I am not present.

- The Brit:  My niece's fiancée who has also become a hiking partner in crime.

- Rainbow:  One of the earliest people involved with this blog, she lives in the larger vicinity of Old Home.  She and I speak more or less weekly about life, mostly disguised as a two person writer self-help group.

- The Dog Whisperer:  Another refugee from Hammerfall 3.0 looking for a new job.  Loves dogs (and animals of all kinds).  

Important Places:

- Old Home:  Where I grew up and lived up to 15 years ago.  Originally a combination of the small town I actually grew up in  as well as the larger areas there which we lived in before moving to New Home, I use it more now to indicate my hometown.

- New Home:  Where up to March of 2024, we lived. An urban area located in a state not where I grew up.  It has now been replaced by...

- New Home 2.0:  Another urban area, in this case much closer to the state I grew up in.  This is where The Ravishing Mrs. TB and I now live (currently in an apartment).

- The Ranch:  The Ranch is the property my parents own and live on in <insert yet another undisclosed location here>.  It is approximately 90 acres of land in the mountains which has been our extended family for over 60 years. 

(Note:  This is word for word from two years ago.  Still completely true.)

Like most budding bloggers, when I started this blog I had great visions of this being a mighty bulwark of discussion and thought that would be a beacon of light (and, coincidentally, would let me write full time). It only took about 10 years to realize that neither of these things were going to happen.  Either because of obstinance or foolishness (I am guilty of both) I persevered.

What I did find - and what I still believe in - is that blogging represents the Social Internet (not a phrase that I came up with, but one I love): the ability of people to read, think, and discuss things on the InterWeb (as opposed to Social Media, which I detest).  What has become critically important to me is creating a sort of InterWeb agora, a place where we can discuss subjects - some deep, some completely shallow - in a way that hopefully encourages thought and helps to build connections in a society which values neither thought nor connections except of the most shallow kind (otherwise known as Social Media).

What you find here most days is a combination of personal on-line journal, thoughts or concepts that have run through my mind, book reviews, occasional fiction, things that are just "going on" in my life, ruminations, and the occasional meme.  It is a smorgasbord of my existence (there are literally times I sit down to write with no idea what will be written, and no-one is more surprised than I am when it shows up).

Important Pages:

Ichiryo Gusoku Philosophy:  My overall guiding policy on my philosophy is here.

Ichiryo Gusoku Goals:  My overall aspirational goals are here 

The Collapse:  A rather long running fiction series (in a series of letters) about a man watching society slowly collapse is here.  

Moving TB The Elder And Mom:  As mentioned, my parents suffered a series of health reversals in 2021.  This page pulls together the experience in hopes that others that have or will have the same issues will benefit.

What are the rules?

There are only four.

1)  Be kind:  In all my years of writing here, I have had to not publish only a handful of comments because, frankly, they were mean or just outright wrong-minded.  You can certainly poke holes in my theories or my writing or the responses of others.  I just ask you do it kindly.  Everyone you are responding to is going through something.

2)  No profanity:  My mother was an elementary school teacher and a lovely Christian woman, so comment as if you were speaking directly to her.  Any profanity will simply not make itself a visible comment, no matter how relevant or good the comment is.

3)  No arguing current politics:  Politics as it is practiced currently is simply an exercise in "It is your fault!  No, yours!" followed by vulgarity and crudeness.  Political Science (the practice of forming political societies and their functioning) is far more useful to actually reach a solution.  

4)  No arguing religion:  I state up front I am Christian (useful background for some of what I write) and will happily discuss my own trials and travails and thoughts.  What we do not debate is the nature of religion or different religions.  Again, see the previous comments on kindness.

Thanks!

Comments are always welcome, but even the act of just stopping by and reading (as an investment of time) is greatly appreciated.